Yates Baptist Church

“I believe,” the father cried — before the doubt. A sermon on Scripture's most poignant confession and its meaning for today's doubters. Click here to read the sermon I Believe — Help My Unbelief! Mark 9:14–29 It is great to be with you here today. I want to give all these musicians a hand — thank you, Keith, and thank you to everyone up here. I love all the instruments, and even Michael Jessup is making a joyful noise over there. God bless you guys. I want you to know first and foremost that I am praying for Pastor Christopher, for his family, and for Yates Baptist Church during this time of transition. I also want some of you to know — I'm sure some of you are thinking, who is Marty Childers, and what is Tri-West? It used to be called Yates Baptist Association. We had to change our name because things kept getting confused. People would come to our building looking for you, and people would come here looking for us, and checks got crossed, and a lot of things happened. So that is one of the reasons we changed the name. We are Triangle West, the western part of the Triangle Baptist Network. We say Tri-West. But more than that, I want to give you a real quick infomercial, because I want you to know who we are as Tri-West. I have had the privilege for the last almost ten years — Mike, in October it will be ten years — to work with this association. I have had the privilege of working with many people from this church, and I just want you to know that we are all about strengthening, planting, and resourcing the local church to fulfill the Great Commission. Strengthening, planting, and resourcing the local church. When I first got here, if I'm really honest, a lot of associations in North Carolina had their own plans, and they did a lot of things, and they asked the churches to come along and help them execute those plans. But we said no — we want to flip the script, because God's Plan A is the local church. So the association wants to do everything we can to help the local church fulfill the Great Commission. As a part of that, we are helping revitalize churches, and we are helping to plant new churches. In fact, just in the last year and five months, we have seen four new church plants start in our area — in Durham, in Chapel Hill, in Hillsborough, where I live. And your participation in our association actually helped fund some of those things. Just recently we voted to send five thousand dollars to a youth camp in Haiti that Yates Baptist Church has been supporting for many, many years. As you are a part of this network, you are also helping church planters in Oaxaca, Mexico — two weeks from today I will be in Oaxaca with about thirty-five students, and I am looking forward to that. Your participation also helps us with a Farsi-speaking church in Armenia, which is a story I would love to come back and tell you more about. As we participate together as a network of about sixty-five churches in the greater Durham area, we can do more together. We are trying to help churches not to be silos, not to be isolated, but to look around and say, hey, you are doing that too — let us see how we can collaborate. I want you to open your Bibles, or your apparatus, to the Gospel of Mark, chapter nine. We are going to be looking at verses fourteen through twenty-nine. I am going to read through verse twenty-four first, and then I want you to keep your Bibles or your phones open there, because we will come back to the rest of the passage a little later. Mark, chapter nine, beginning at verse fourteen: And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran to him and greeted him. And he asked them, "What are you arguing about with them?" And someone from the crowd answered him, "Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able." And he answered them, "O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me." And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, "How long has this been happening to him?" And he said, "From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us." And Jesus said to him, "'If you can'! All things are possible for one who believes." And immediately the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief." (Mark 9:14–24, ESV) [Prayer] Father, we thank you for this time to worship you. We thank you that we have had this moment to lift songs to you. We are here to praise your name, but we are also here to be taught, and to be encouraged, and to be challenged to live the life that you have called us to live. So Father, I pray that you would use this passage, that you would use this Scripture, and that you would teach us the things we need to learn today. Father, I pray that we would listen as your Spirit teaches us. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Do you believe? Charles Blondin was a famous French acrobat who made international history as the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope, on June 30, 1859. He successfully traveled along a more than thousand-foot-long, two-inch-thick cable suspended 160 feet above the raging waters. Over the next few years, Blondin crossed Niagara Gorge more than 300 times, consistently raising the stakes each time with a new dangerous theatrical variation of his walk. He walked across on stilts. He put himself in a body sack and went across. Once, in the middle of the gorge, he set up a small stove and made an omelet, then lowered it down to someone waiting in a boat on the water below. One day after crossing, he brought out a wheelbarrow. He asked the crowd: how many of you think I can push that wheelbarrow across? Hands went up. How many of you think I can take a person across in it? Hands went up again. Who wants to volunteer? Silence. Do you believe? You will notice that we started in verse fourteen, right in the middle of the chapter. It opens by saying "they came to the disciples" — but who is "they"? That is Jesus, Peter, James, and John. They had just come down from what we call the Mount of Transfiguration. We do not know exactly which mountain it was, but it was a mountain, and they were descending from a moment in which Peter, James, and John had seen a glimpse of God's glory. For just a moment — the text does not give us the mechanics of how it happened — Jesus' humanness seemed to be peeled back, and they saw him in white, blinding in its intensity. Peter had wanted to stay there. But as they came down the mountain, they walked straight into chaos. How many of you have had a mountaintop experience and then come back to find that life hits you? It seems like almost every time I go on a mission trip, I come back so full, and then I hit the muck of life — the junk, the everyday things that have to happen. That is exactly what is happening here. They descend from the mountain and walk into confusion. At the bottom, Jesus finds a desperate father — and Happy Father's Day, we will come back to that in a moment. He finds a tormented child. He finds nine frustrated disciples. He finds a crowd who may be looking for a spectacle, just waiting to see what is going to happen. He finds religious leaders ready to argue. This is the context into which Jesus steps. Do you believe? These are the final months of Jesus' earthly ministry. He had been with his disciples for three years. He had fed the five thousand, he had fed the four thousand, he had done many miraculous things. And now he comes down from the mountain and walks directly into a crisis. I believe that a crisis is an opportunity for God to show up. I believe a crisis is where God does some of his best teaching. Some of you are thinking back to situations in your own life — maybe this past year, maybe a decade ago, maybe a long time ago — when you were in a situation you did not understand at all, and now, looking back, you can see it clearly: oh, that is what God was doing. A crisis is where God shows up. The first thing I want to share with you today — and for those of you who take notes, feel free — is that this is a story about faith. The boy's father had come looking for Jesus, but Jesus was not there. Still, he was encouraged, because some of Jesus' disciples were right there — maybe they could help his son. He would have been glad had they succeeded. For whatever reason, their efforts were lacking. And by the time Jesus and the three disciples arrived, an argument was already going on. The first question Jesus asks is, "What are you arguing about?" I can imagine the disciples going up against the scribes, and then — as these things tend to escalate — the disciples maybe turning on each other. Well, we were not able to cast it out because you said the wrong words. You lifted your hand wrong. You did not do it the way we did last time. You know how that goes. Our enemy is always looking to divide us. And then Jesus responds. His response is pretty heavy. "O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?" He asked a version of that question several times throughout the Gospels. The one that always comes to my mind is when they were crossing the Sea of Galilee and a great storm came up. Jesus was asleep in the back of the boat. The disciples came and woke him: "Master, Master, don't you care? We're going to die!" Jesus stood up, spoke to the wind and the waves, and the sea went calm. But then he turned to his disciples and asked, "Where is your faith?" (cf. Luke 8:25, ESV). Do you believe, or do you not? I do not know where you are today, but I want to ask you the same question. Where is your faith? How is your faith? On our phones we can check the weather. I have not found an app yet to check my faith — today it's pretty low, today it's high. How is your faith? Now, we can be very judgmental on this father, because we already know what he is about to say. We know he is going to say, "I believe; help my unbelief." And we tend to fall hard on that second part — on the unbelief. But before he said "help my unbelief," he said "I believe." Before he admitted his doubt, he declared his faith. I think this is one of the most poignant statements in all of Scripture. The man — this father — pulls back the mask, pulls back the curtain. He is being transparent. He is open and honest. He is saying: I believe, I want to believe, I really, really want to believe, but I am struggling to believe. His honesty matters. We have to remember that we are on this side of the resurrection — he was on the other side. He did not have the whole story. And he was struggling, but he wanted to believe. Maybe some of us are struggling today. Maybe some of us have been there. "I believe; help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24, ESV). I felt that way this week. Maybe you have too. Did you notice, though, that he said "I believe" first? That was his first statement. He did not lead with I'm really struggling, but I'm trying. He led with I believe. And I think that matters enormously. It is also interesting that he says to Jesus, "If you can, have compassion on us and help us." I almost wish there were a question mark in Jesus' response — "If you can?" — as if he is saying, do you know who you are talking to? And then he goes on: "All things are possible for one who believes" (Mark 9:23, ESV). That is the first thing I want you to remember. This is a story about faith. By the way — this is a book about faith. The second thing I want to share is that this is also a story about failure. We do not like to talk about that, do we? We would prefer to talk about success stories. We would prefer to talk about how the walls of Jericho came tumbling down (cf. Josh 6:20), about how Moses led the Israelites through on dry ground (cf. Exod 14:22), about Daniel in the lion's den (cf. Dan 6:22), about Jesus raising a little girl who had died (cf. Mark 5:41–42). We love those wonderful, powerful stories of the Bible. But guess what? This book also includes a lot of stories about failure. The Scripture reminds us that we will fail. When I was working with the International Mission Board — I think it was our first or second year — we kept hearing a phrase over and over: freedom to fail. We don't like to fail. But sometimes we don't accomplish things simply because we are not willing to try. I believe — and I know there are a lot of Duke fans in this room, so we can debate this later — that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time. But he missed so many shots. Great home run hitters have hit many home runs, but they have struck out many more times. You will not accomplish things if you don't try. This passage reminds us that there are going to be moments of failure. There will be failures in our families. There will be failures in our marriages. There will be failures at work, in our personal lives, in our churches. But I think that is precisely where God wants to show up. He wants to remind us that he not only has the answer — he is the answer. Scripture tells us that God wants to use our weakness so that he can demonstrate his strength (cf. 1 Cor 1:27, ESV). What greater moment of weakness is there than when we fail? When you are in the pit, when you are down in the dumps — that is a theological term, by the way — God is saying, let me show you what I can do. This is a good reminder that we are human. Sometimes — and be honest with yourself here — sometimes we can get puffed up. We do something well, and then we do it well again, and we are just on a roll, and we think, man, I have got this. But there will be moments when we fail. When we do, we need to realize that God is there. Just do not allow your failures to become distractions. Do not allow your failures to pull you into a pity party. Do not allow your failures to keep you stuck in that moment of depression, believing there is no hope. I keep hearing a phrase lately that I have to say I hate: "pessimistic Christian." That is an oxymoron. Who should have more hope than we do? Nobody. This passage reminds us that we will pass through moments of failure. Hebrews tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6, ESV). So in our greatest time of need — when we fail, when things are not going right, when things are not going the way we planned — God is still in charge. We need faith most precisely in those moments. I love the character of David. I love David — but I wrestle with the fact that the Bible calls him a man after God's own heart (cf. Acts 13:22; 1 Sam 13:14), even though he committed adultery, tried to cover it up, committed murder, and tried to cover that up too, until Nathan came and confronted him (cf. 2 Sam 12:1–13). He thought he had actually gotten away with it. But the Bible calls him a man after God's own heart not primarily because of who David was, but because of who God is — and secondarily because David truly repented. His heart changed. He did horrendous, terrible things, and then he came before God and said, I am sorry. I messed up. I have done this terrible thing. We see in the Psalms, over and over, David saying something like: Lord, where are you? Have you abandoned me? My enemies are all around me, looking to destroy me. And then three or four verses later: but I will worship you, I will praise you, because you are the only true God, and you will be my refuge and my strength (cf. Ps 22:1, 27–28). David did that over and over because he had a heart that was willing to be honest — just like this father was willing to be honest. I believe; help my unbelief. Here is something interesting about this story. Just a few chapters earlier in Mark, Jesus actually gave his disciples authority to heal and to cast out unclean spirits. In chapter six, verse thirteen, they had healed many people, and they had cast out many demons (Mark 6:13, ESV). They had the power. But now, a little later, their faith is flagging and they have begun to argue. And here is the problem: when we begin to argue, the ministry stops. Recently there was a gathering in Orlando at the Southern Baptist Convention. I am sure you saw the news stories. The news stories always find the things we are arguing about and run with them. The truth is, there were nearly a hundred missionaries appointed and sent out to go all over the world. There were a lot of great things happening. But when we argue, the world watches, and the world is going to publicize it as much as it can. I read one theologian who put it this way: "Accept the rebuke from God as a gift that exposes your need." When Jesus says to his disciples, "How long am I going to have to put up with you?" — I think he says that to me sometimes. I am pretty sure he says it to all of you too. We do not like to admit that we have needs. But that is what David did. And that is what this father does. He has exhausted every possibility to find healing for his son, and now he is standing in front of Jesus. The third thing I see here is that this is a story reminding us that we are in a fight. You do not hear a lot about this today, but we are in spiritual warfare. I know people are going to say that sounds strange. But it is biblical. The Bible talks a great deal about this. We served as missionaries overseas for twenty-seven years, and we saw things happen that I can only describe as illogical and unnatural. Another time I will come back and tell you more about that. But when I say illogical and unnatural, I mean things like a little boy who died at the bottom of a pool, and two weeks later I saw him running down the aisle of the church. We saw both good and bad. But this much is clear: we are in a spiritual battle. I know a lot of people today do not like to talk about Satan. I read all the time that more and more people in the church do not actually believe in the devil or in demonic reality. I am pretty simple, Mike — whatever this Book says, I try to believe it. And the Scripture tells us that Lucifer was an angel who fell from heaven because of pride, because he wanted to be like God. The Scripture tells us that the enemy and his demonic presence are at work in this world. That is why we have so much trouble. Now, I do not want to get into a debate about whether this particular boy was possessed or oppressed, or whether what was happening was epilepsy or something else. In fact, the passage uses the word "spirit" throughout, and my Spanish Bible says "demonic spirit." Whatever was happening, something was happening, and the father was looking for help. Jesus is about to heal this young boy. He asks the father how long this has been going on. The father says, from childhood — and that the spirit had often cast the boy into fire and into water to destroy him. I hesitate to share a personal example here, but I want to. Melissa and I have four grandchildren. Our oldest grandson is named Elijah. Elijah is just so cool — but he is different. He has been diagnosed with autism and is non-verbal. He can say a few words once in a while. When I read about this boy who was mute — the one the world was probably looking at strangely — I think of my grandson. If Elijah were here today, he might run up to some of you and smell your hair. That is one of the things he loves to do. He might run up and hug a random person. Most of the time, people hug him back — but more and more lately, people just look at him as if something is wrong with him. He is awkward. He is lanky. He moves differently. And when I think of this story, I think of that father watching his son go through something like this, day after day, week after week, year after year, desperate to find help. So where did he go? He went to Jesus. That is what you and I should do. When Jesus arrives, the spirit responds immediately. It sees Jesus and it throws the boy into convulsions. It recognized what was standing there. That is the nature of spiritual warfare. Our enemy seeks to destroy you and me. He seeks to destroy your testimony. He seeks to destroy the image of God that is in you and in me. He wants you to see the worst in each other instead of the image of God in each other. He seeks to divide us. He will do whatever it takes to get us off track. But I want to remind you: our God is more powerful. The fourth thing I see in this passage is that it is a story about freedom — because God brings freedom. He heals this young man. When Jesus commands the spirit to leave, look at what happens, beginning in verse twenty-six: After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, "He is dead." But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. (Mark 9:26–27, ESV) What I love about this is the variety in how Jesus heals throughout the Gospels. Sometimes he heals in an instant. The centurion said, just say the word, and it is already done (cf. Matt 8:8). There are times he heals lepers and sends them to the priest, and they are healed as they go (cf. Luke 17:14). There is one time he heals a blind man and it actually takes a second touch before the man can see clearly (cf. Mark 8:22–25). What I want you to see is that sometimes God heals in an instant, but sometimes it is a process. It was not immediate here. The boy fell down and convulsed and rolled on the ground. Sometimes it is a process. We do not know whether what happened between the command and the boy arising from the ground took ten seconds or ten minutes. But the spirit came out — the text says so plainly — and I want you to know that sometimes we are waiting for God to show up and do something, and he is already at work. It is just not on our schedule. He is working. He is bringing healing, he is bringing redemption, he is bringing all those things. Just not on our timetable. I love what the passage says next. The boy was on the ground, and they all thought he was dead. But Jesus reached down and took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. There is something in that word — arose — that is not accidental. It foreshadows the morning when Jesus himself, after the cross and the grave, arose. He has power over death. So we do not have to fear it. I talk to people almost every week who are afraid of dying — people in their thirties, in their forties. But as Christians, we do not have to be afraid, because we have hope. That reminds me of Peter. Do you remember when Peter was out on the water with the other disciples and Jesus came walking to them on the sea? Peter said, Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water. And Jesus said, come on. And Peter got out of the boat — Peter, not Jesus — and he was walking on the water too, until he noticed the waves, and the wind, and his circumstances. And he began to sink, until Jesus grabbed him and pulled him up (cf. Matt 14:28–31, ESV). If we fix our eyes on our circumstances, we are going to sink. But if we fix them on the Lord, all things are possible to the one who believes (cf. Mark 9:23, ESV). The fifth thing I want to share — and I will admit this one stretches the alliteration a little bit — is that our first priority should always be prayer. A little later in the passage, beginning at verse twenty-eight, we read this: When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, "Why could we not cast it out?" And he said to them, "This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer." (Mark 9:28–29, ESV) Your translation may say "prayer and fasting." Either way, the idea is focused, concentrated, committed prayer. I have heard a statement a lot lately, and I love it: prayer is not part of our strategy — prayer should be our strategy. I actually tried to Google who said it. I could not find a clear source, so I am not going to claim it. But it is a great statement. Let me ask you something. When you have failures, when you have struggles, when you are dealing with a difficult situation — is prayer the first thing you do, or is it your last resort? Here is something worth noticing. Go back this afternoon and read this passage slowly. You will see that Jesus talks with the disciples, he talks with the father, and the boy is healed. But there is no moment in the text where I see Jesus kneel and pray. There is no recorded prayer. I do not think he is saying you have to stop every minute and formally pray. What he is saying is what First Thessalonians says: we are to pray without ceasing (cf. 1 Thess 5:17, ESV). We are to live a life of prayer. We are to be in constant communion with God, in a way that makes us conduits of the Holy Spirit's work. I love the fact that he says this kind can only come out through prayer, but we do not see him stop to pray — because he was already living that life. We know that many times Jesus would take his disciples somewhere and say, stay here, watch and pray, and he would go away and pray. And he would come back and — I am not going to say this is any of you, because I don't see anyone sleeping this morning — but they were asleep. There is a tension there worth sitting with. There are a lot of great theologians who have thought deeply about prayer. Augustine said that prayer is the language of the heart's yearning for God. Martin Luther, who would get up before sunrise to pray for three or four hours before he even opened his Scripture — and then pray for three or four more hours afterward — Martin Luther said, "The less I pray, the harder things seem to get. The more I pray, the more I see God move." Could you pray a little bit more? Could you begin developing a lifestyle of prayer? I want to close with a story from about thirty years ago, when I was serving in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I had gone to a meeting of pastors at First Baptist Church in Santa Cruz. I was leaving with my good friend Eladio Alvarez. Eladio and I walked out of the building and looked down the one-way street. Nothing was coming. I started to step out into the road. And just as my momentum was carrying me into the street, something pulled me back. A truck — going the wrong way on that one-way street, at about fifty miles per hour in a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone — went flying by. Whatever hair I had was flying. Eladio and I both turned white. I said, man, you just saved my life. And he said, no, no, I didn't do anything. I said, no — I was stepping into the street and you pulled me back. He said, no, you were about to step in, and then you just awkwardly jumped back on your own. We went back and forth on this for a while. Finally he said, you know what happened? You got grabbed by an angel. I said, I don't know about grabbed — but something supernatural happened. My momentum was into that street, and all of a sudden I was standing on the curb. I got on a bus and went home. When I walked in, the light on my phone was blinking — and this was one of those regular phones, not a cell phone, so those of you under forty, feel free to Google it. The message said: this is Bobby Long from Central Baptist Church in Hickory, North Carolina. That's my home church. Bobby said, I woke up this morning about five-thirty, and I just had this uneasy feeling that you were in danger. So I have been praying for you. He said, at seven-thirty I still didn't have any peace, so I started calling the deacons. We set up a prayer chain. We have been praying for you for the last three hours. Please call me collect. It cost about five dollars a minute back then. But I called him. And I said, Bobby, your prayers were answered. When I told him the story, he could not believe it. About the same time I was stepping into that street, almost four thousand miles away, a group of people were praying. When God brings someone to your mind, stop. When God puts a person or a situation on your heart, stop and pray. Prayer is not part of our strategy. Prayer is our strategy. This kind can only be driven out by prayer. What are you facing today? What difficult situation are you carrying? Our God is powerful. We have to have faith even in our failing moments. We have to know we are in a fight — but our Lord has the power to bring freedom. [Prayer] Father God, I thank you so much for this passage. I thank you for this Scripture that reminds us of who you are and what you do. Father, I thank you that you are all-powerful. I thank you that you have the power to heal and to cast out every unclean spirit, and that you have the power to do anything in everything. Father, we pray right now that we would realize that we must confess, just like this father did: Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief. Help our unbelief to grow, and help our faith to be strengthened. Help us to grow in faith. And Father, I pray that we would do that by praying. I pray right now for Yates Baptist Church — that you would bring them together as one body, that you would unite them, that you would fill them, that you would direct their path, and that you would use this church to reach many, many families, to reach many people who might walk out of darkness into your light, not because of who they are, but because of who you are. So Lord, we pray in the name of Christ that you would do your will and your way and in your time in this place. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Works Cited Augustine. Expositions of the Psalms 33–50 (Enarrationes in Psalmos). Translated by Maria Boulding, OSB. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000. (For Ps. 37.14.) Augustine. Expositions of the Psalms 121–150 (Enarrationes in Psalmos). Translated by Maria Boulding, OSB. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004. (For Ps. 125.8.) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. 2011. Wheaton: Crossway Bibles. Luther, Martin. Luther's Works: Vol. 31, Career of the Reformer I. Edited by Harold J. Grabe. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957. (For writings on prayer's necessity.) Luther, Martin. Luther's Works: Vol. 54, Table Talk. Edited by Harold J. Grabe. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967. (For reflections on prayer and God's activity.) Luther, Martin. The Large Catechism. Translated by John W. Doberstein. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961. (For teaching on prayer as essential.) © 2026 Marty Childers. All rights reserved.

The stone builders reject becomes the cornerstone. God is building a temple — and you're not just a wall. You're a priest in it. Click here to read the sermon “A Spiritual House” 1 Peter 2:4–10 As we begin this morning, I want to thank you for hanging out with me for the past few Sundays. It has been a great time here at Yates. It is always a blessing to be with this corner of God's kingdom. A little heads-up on where we are headed in the next few weeks: I will not be here next week — Marty Childers from the Tri-West Association will be preaching that day — and then I will be back for two Sundays after that. I am excited to come back and spend a couple more weeks with you. Some of you already know — I am kind of like a bad penny. I keep coming back. So as we come to this morning, I want to continue a conversation that I have been having with you for the past few weeks. A couple of weeks ago, the point of the sermon was this: if you are a Christian, you are a saint. Sainthood is not a category reserved for an extraordinary group of Christians. Instead, it is a status bestowed by grace, and it is a calling that we pursue. To be a saint is to be a holy one of God. It means that you have been claimed by God and set aside by God for his purposes. So: you are a saint. Last week we continued that conversation to say this — and that is a good thing. Sainthood is not about being a goody two-shoes who never has fun. It is not about hypocrisy. It is not about being holier-than-thou. No — sainthood is about following Jesus into a vision of humanity. It is following Jesus into the people that God intends and calls us to be. You are a saint, and that is a good thing. Today we are going to move to this: we are saints together. If you are called to be a saint, that is not a lone wolf calling. Instead, you were called into a people. You were called into a community. And that communal piece is central to who we are. To talk about this communal dimension of sainthood this morning, I want to open the Bible with you to 1 Peter chapter two, verses four through ten. Let me give you a little backstory on what is going on in 1 Peter. Peter is writing to groups of people in places called Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. These are groups of Christians who are falling on hard times because of their devotion to Jesus. The surrounding communities are not being kind to them; they are suffering for the name of Jesus. Peter writes into this setting. Through much of chapter one, he reminds them who they are and what they are called to. He uses different language, but he hits some of the same beats we have been hitting in the past couple of Sundays. In chapter one, verse fifteen, he says: "But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy'" (1 Pet 1:15, NIV). Peter is reminding these people that they have been called to holiness. They are to follow God into that calling — to reflect God to the communities around them. Then you come to chapter two. Peter gives them a few ways this is supposed to happen. In verse one he writes: "Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind" (1 Pet 2:1, NIV). If you are going to be holy, there are certain ways of being that you need to put away — ways of living that do not match the kind of life God is calling you to. And notice: Peter is already intimating the communal character. He says rid yourselves of malice, of deceit, of hypocrisy, of envy, of slander. These are all ways of being that destroy community. Put them away. And instead, Peter writes: "like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good" (1 Pet 2:2–3, NIV). Put away the ways of life that are not what God intends for you, and realize that your life of faith is not static. You are meant to grow up in your salvation. You are meant to be nourished by Christ. Which brings us to chapter two, verse four: As you come to him, the living Stone — rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him — you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame." Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone," and, "A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble because they disobey the message — which is also what they were destined for. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Pet 2:4–10, NIV) It is a well-known and beautiful passage of Scripture. This morning I want to approach it not in order, but by taking up the middle first and then jumping back to the beginning to see how these pieces fit together. The middle — verses six through eight — is all about who Jesus is. To understand what is going on here, you need to understand that Christianity emerged in those first decades as an incredible surprise. Jesus came and fulfilled the role of Messiah, but he did it in a way that was unexpected. Come Good Friday, when Jesus dies on the cross, his followers believe the game is up. We had placed our hope in him, and yet he has died at the hands of the authorities. We must have misplaced our hope — until Resurrection Sunday, when we learn that even the grave could not keep Jesus down. He begins to appear to his followers. It turns out that Jesus really was the Messiah. The resurrection proves that. But he fulfilled that role in an unexpected way, which means we have to go back and reconsider everything that came before. It is kind of like one of those movies where a key piece of information is withheld until the very end. And then once that revelation is finally made, the light bulb goes off. You realize that everything has been leading to that point, and you have to go back and reconsider what came before. It is often such a gut punch that you have to watch the movie again, and as you watch it, you begin seeing clues all the way through. You wonder how you did not see it before. Imagine the disciples. Jesus has been raised from the dead. He really is the Messiah. But that means we have to go back and reconsider all of our preconceptions. As they return to the Scriptures, they start seeing those clues. They start saying: we can read this in light of Christ — in light of who he was, in light of who he is. In fact, Jesus himself had applied the Psalm that mentions a cornerstone to himself (cf. Matt 21:42, NIV). And so the disciples say: Jesus applied that to himself. There are other passages that have stones in them. Those seem to apply to Jesus too. What Peter does in this passage is stack all of these passages about stones and apply them to Christ. It goes like this. In verse six: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame" (cf. Isa 28:16, NIV). Then in verse seven: "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone" (cf. Ps 118:22, NIV). And: "A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall" (cf. Isa 8:14, NIV). You can see how these come to be applied to Jesus. Here we have the Messiah who was rejected by the authorities, rejected by the world — and yet it turns out that he was indeed the chosen one of God. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Notice the imagery Peter is drawing on. You have people building a building. They find a cut stone and say: that stone is not appropriate for our building; we will discard it. But it turns out that God has chosen that very stone to be not just any stone in the building, not just an appropriate stone, but the cornerstone. The cornerstone is the first stone that is laid in a building. It has to be cut perfectly, because it determines which way the building faces. It determines the angle of the walls. It is the first stone that gives shape to everything else. The stone the builders rejected has become the most important stone in the building. That certainly sounds like Christ. And there is also the promise that the one who trusts in this cornerstone God has laid will never be put to shame. That is us. We put our faith in this cornerstone. We will not be put to shame. But then there is also a stone that causes people to stumble — and we keep seeing people in our communities tripping over this message about Jesus. It is a message about rejection that is actually a message about acceptance and chosenness. The world may be rejecting Christ, but in God's eyes, Christ is the cornerstone: rejected, but actually precious and chosen by God. Remember, these are people experiencing rejection as they are true to Christ in the world. The same thing is true of them. Peter will go on to say: you are a chosen nation. This passage is in part about those who feel rejected actually being those who were chosen. Here is what I want you to see this morning. Peter goes a step further. He really plays on this idea of Christ as the cornerstone. The cornerstone is the first stone in the building. And when you zoom out, you start to see that the cornerstone is part of a larger structure. Go back to verse four: "As you come to him, the living Stone — rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him — you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Pet 2:4–5, NIV). Notice this. Jesus is the cornerstone, the first stone God has laid. And now each and every Christian also becomes a living stone that is built into what is called a spiritual house. That is temple language. The temple is God's special dwelling place on the earth. It does not mean that God is confined to the temple, but this is God's special dwelling. Peter seems to be saying that you have Jesus as this cornerstone, and around Jesus, on Jesus, in tune with Jesus, God is building a temple where he will dwell. You are the people of God. You are God's special dwelling place. Together, you are the spiritual house that God inhabits. You make up the walls of God's temple. And God dwells among you by the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the cornerstone. You are a living stone who, with other living stones, is being built into a spiritual house. But you do not just make up the structure. You are not just part of the walls of the temple. You also make up the ministry group within the temple. Peter goes on to say that God is building you up to be a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Not only do you together make up the special dwelling place of God — you are also the priests in God's house. And it is your vocation, both individually and together, to offer up spiritual sacrifices that are pleasing to God through Christ. Spiritual sacrifices has to do with what we do here on Sunday morning. It has to do with proclaiming the deeds of our great God. It also has to do with who we are throughout the week — who we are together, how we pursue this calling of sainthood together. You are part of God's house. You are a minister in God's house. You offer spiritual sacrifices to God. You are a priest. And this is where I want to camp out this morning — this idea of being priests before God. Now this is a place that Baptists love to camp out. How many of you have heard of the priesthood of the believer? We like to hammer home that we do not need a mediator between us and God, because Jesus alone is the mediator between humanity and God. And therefore, as Hebrews says, we can approach the throne of grace with confidence to receive mercy and to find grace (cf. Heb 4:16). So in one sense, we are priests before God. We are able in Christ to approach God without mediation, and we are able to offer sacrifices to God — those spiritual sacrifices we talked about just a moment ago. Priesthood is relationship to God. But here is where I really want to camp out this morning as well. It is not just about our relationship to God. It can also be about our relationship to one another — or maybe we could say it is about our relationship to God with one another. Here, maybe we could talk about sports. Anybody here play golf? Golf is an interesting game because it may be more fun in community — you can go out with other people — but ultimately you do not need anybody else to play golf. Sometimes we think about Christianity like that: it is really just me and God, and maybe sometimes it is more fun when there are other people around, but really I can do this on my own. But what if Christianity is less like golf and more like baseball or soccer? With those kinds of sports, you cannot play by yourself. You can toss the ball up and down, but you really need other people if you are going to play baseball. You can juggle the ball, but you need other people if you are going to play soccer. Christianity — church — is like that. It is a team sport in which we are brought together as the people of God. We approach God together. We serve God together. We pursue God together. It is a communal calling, this priesthood piece. We see this. We come together and we raise our voices together in praise. We seek to be the hands and feet of Jesus to our community together. And yes, we do that individually, but there is something special about when the people of God come together as priests who approach God and who, on God's behalf, approach the world. We are priests before God individually. And we are priests with one another. Do you remember last week, how we talked about how the Holy Spirit is bringing about fruit in our lives? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (cf. Gal 5:22–23). We said: these are good things that we want. This is part of the life that God has for us; this is what God is bringing about. What is interesting about those qualities is that so many of them are communal. Yes, they have an individual aspect, but if you are going to love, you are going to love one another. Joy can be individual, but it is so much sweeter when we are joyful together. Peace — because we need peace among one another. Patience — have you met Baptists? Goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It is as if God is making us able to be community. God is fitting us to be a certain kind of people. We are priests with one another, which means it matters how we are with one another. There is one more piece of this priesthood that I want you to see. This is something that Baptists sometimes overlook, but it is really important. We are also priests to one another. Now that is not because we need a mediator between us and God. It is because God often chooses to work through people. How many of you have ever experienced a moment where a fellow Christian came alongside you and said the right word at the right time? It was almost like God had sent them to you. It was almost like they said the words that you knew you needed to hear from God. Priesthood can also work like that — where on God's behalf, we do the work, we say the words, we hold one another up. It reminds me of a story in Exodus. When the Israelites were attacked by the Amalekites, Moses sent Joshua and the fighting men down to battle. And it says that as long as Moses stood over that battle and held up his staff, they did well. But when Moses began to lower his arms, they began to lose — which becomes pretty problematic, because you can hold your arms up for a while, but eventually you are going to get tired. The way the story goes is that there were two people with Moses: Aaron and Hur. They realized they needed to help him. They pulled up a stone behind Moses so he could sit down, because even just standing had become too much. And then they stood on either side of him and held up his arms (cf. Exod 17:8–13). The Israelites won the battle that day because Moses held up his hands with that staff — and Moses held up his hands because Aaron and Hur gathered around him and helped him with the task. Sometimes church is like that. Have you ever felt like you have got this thing you have to hold up, but you are just so tired? And sometimes God chooses to work through people — to send them around us, to pull up a chair, to hold up our arms. The sainthood thing is not about being a lone wolf. It is about being called into a people. It is about being called together. Together we become the walls of God's temple. And notice how each stone offers support to the stones around it. Not only are you a member of God's dwelling — you are a priest in that dwelling. You are a priest before God. You are a priest with others. And you have the privilege, at times, of being a priest to one another. Yes, we are called to follow Christ and to become who we are called individually to be. And we are also given the privilege of being called into a people. Works Cited The Holy Bible, New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids: Biblica. © 2026 Michael Smith. All rights reserved.

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