Hello everybody, apologies that the video was cut short and I want to give a final conclusion to the sermon. We left off talking about how there is an opportunity or a fork in the road to reject or receive the cornerstone, to object or receive the truth. And as people who are suffering, that they might have been tempted to all of a sudden let go of the truth that they hold on to.

Apostle Peter's exhortation is to stand firm in it and in order to exhort them, he gave a warning by quoting some of these passages in the Old Testament. I made the case that there is a warning for us, that if we were to reject this truth, our hearts would be so hardened.

And likewise, there is a passage in the New Testament that we were turning to. As we were imagining the religious leaders, the Pharisees and rulers, they were people who were well versed in the Scripture. They were people who learned it from when they were really young. And they were even maybe leading other people and teaching people in these truths.

But if you turn over to Matthew chapter 11, chapter 21 that is, verses 42 to 44, Jesus said to them, "Have you ever read the Scriptures?" It's almost sarcastic. But he says this, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

But look at this warning from Jesus Christ. Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him." So the idea here is that Jesus just finished describing a parable to these Pharisees.

That the land master had left his workers in the field, and when he sent people to reap the produce of it, they murdered them. And finally when he sent his son, they killed him too. Jesus asked this question, "What is the landlord going to do?" And they themselves say, "Well surely they will be punished." Well that idea of "surely they will be punished" is the same idea that's warning us.

If we leave the Gospel message, if we jettison the truth that we say we believe, then God Himself is going to judge us. The way that He describes it is the stone that was supposed to be our sanctuary, our foundation, now becomes the thing that we break upon, the thing that crushes us.

So that's a clear warning for us, that that fork in the road, for one, leads to a path of sanctuary, and the other leads to a path of destruction. But the other point that we have to understand, that there's a valuable lesson to learn from all this. We talked about expectation, how when we're disappointed, then we sometimes change our expectations.

But many times what we do is when we're disappointed, we actually stop trusting. We stop trusting the people, we stop trusting God. And that can't be. See for Apostle Peter, he learned a valuable lesson in trusting the Lord. Do you recall when Jesus Christ was teaching the disciples, when He was telling them, "I'm going to leave you." He was telling them that Christ must suffer.

He was telling them that Christ must go towards this persecution. And Apostle Peter was one of the first ones who said, "You don't have to do that." He was one of the first ones who said, "No, I'll fight for you." He actually pulled out his sword and said, "I'll even kill for you." That's when Jesus essentially told him, "You don't know what you're talking about, and you need to get behind me." See this valuable lesson Apostle Peter had to learn, and we need to learn it as well.

That just as Christ, the cornerstone, the real cornerstone, experienced first the suffering, then entered into His glory. For us too, we likewise, as living stones, must first go through hardship, and then we enter into our glory. So in terms of our expectation, do we expect glory before suffering? Let me ask you, do you expect to have all the results before putting in the work?

Do we expect to have rewards before actually competing or fighting and toiling? Do we expect to have victory without there being any battle? I think many of us probably, we would like to learn. We would like to learn the easy way. We would like to have the fruits of sanctification without necessarily going through the process of being purified.

But the truth of the matter is, we, just like our Savior, are going to go through the same process and timeline. And that helps us explain and at least grasp what's going on. That as Christ left an example for His people and disciples to follow, we as those who are in Christ will follow the same way.

A couple of lasting questions I want to ask is as we think about that, the main question for us was, what are our expectations? What are we looking forward to in saying, "This is what I anticipate for my life." And if we so, were so foolish to just think that as long as I'm God, they'll never suffer.

Or we were so foolish to think as long as I love people and I'm kind to them, then they'll be kind to me and I won't suffer. We have to make sure that we adjust our expectations and also to look at the reality of Christ and the reality that He set forward for us.

The other part I want to ask is, the reality is God is doing the work. God has been preparing a plan and building us up to be a spiritual house. So God from generations before, God in Christ and God now, even though it doesn't seem like it, is doing an amazing work of building.

Now there's two builders. One who's going to continue to build what God has been building. Are you bought into that plan? Are you building a kind of house, a spiritual house, a spiritual life where Christ is the chief cornerstone, where Christ is the foundation? Or are you building something for your life where Christ is going to get in the way and He's going to be nothing more than a stumbling block to you?

Let's make sure that we build in such a way where He is the cornerstone and our sure foundation. Amen.