No Other Name than Jesus Christ, the Cornerstone
Acts 4: 1 – 12
Back in the days when the Old West was being settled, hundreds of thousands of people made their way to the west over the Oregon Trail. When they got to the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, they found a stream that was too wide to cross by just stepping over it. To get across, they “two-stepped” across by using an ugly lump sticking up out of the water in the middle of the stream as a step to get across.
Thousands of travelers came through that crossing though out the decades, thinking nothing of that ugly steppingstone. A bridge was eventually put in and the crossing went unused. Years went by and pioneers settled in that area, built cabins, strung fences, and plowed fields. It was said that one man built his cabin near that same stream near that same crossing. The man needed a cornerstone for his cabin and he dredged that big ugly rock out of the stream to build his house upon.
Time moved on and a nephew of the old pioneer went east to study geology at a university. Years later the man went back home and went to the old cabin his uncle had built. He had been there before in his youth. There wasn’t much left of the dilapidated old structure; a few rotted boards, a crumbling fireplace and that old ugly cornerstone of the old cabin, the rock that had been stepped on by many, for so many years.
But as he looked now with new eyes, with the new insight and knowledge that he had received in his studies, the ugly stone was much more than just a steppingstone. He took out his tools to get a closer look. With new eyes, it was clear that this wasn’t just some river rock, in fact it turned out to be a nugget of pure gold, the largest gold nugget ever discovered on the eastern slopes of the Rockies. The value of that steppingstone, that cornerstone of that modest little cabin, was much more than any of the thousands of people that walked over it could have ever imagined.
Our lesson today comes almost directly after our lesson from last week. As you may recall John and Peter were on their way to the 3 PM prayer at the temple in Jerusalem, when they encountered a man lame since birth, seated at the Beautiful Gate into the temple, begging for whatever coins people would toss his way. He was there every day, mostly unnoticed and dismissed over the years.
Peter, as you may recall, had no coins for the man but offered him much more valuable than a mere steppingstone, he offered him a cornerstone on which he could build a new life. Peter calls out to the man “In the name of Jesus Christ, Walk” and the man, with some assistance from Peter, got up and walked.
The crowd, seeing this man that they had known for years as being lame and a beggar get up and walk, was astonished at what had happened. They were so taken with the apostles’ miraculous work, they worshipped them. Yet Peter pointed the crowd away from himself and John and to the true source of power, to the strong name of Jesus whom God raised from the dead. It was in the name and power of Jesus Christ that this transformation from begging, dependent cripple to a walking, capable and joyful soul happened!
As we come to our message lesson in Chapter 4 of Acts, we find that while Peter and John are continuing to teach this awestruck audience, the temple authorities comprised of the chief priests from the Sadducees burst on the scene “much annoyed.”
They are angry with the commotion over the lame man’s rising in up in this holy place and, especially, with the apostles’ crediting this wondrous event to the risen Jesus Christ, because you see the Sadducees believed that they had eliminated Jesus and they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead under any circumstances.
They would have been particularly disturbed, and a little jealous, over the people’s rapt attention to the gospel of the resurrection of Jesus. The wisdom and authority of the temple leaders was being seriously challenged on their own turf by these rabble rousers.
How is it possible that this group which was supposed to be looking out for the best interest of the Nation of Israel and for the people of Israel, could be anything but excited and thrilled at the sight of this 40-year-old man be healed and whole for the first time in his life?
They had walked by this man almost every day on their way to Temple for week after week, month after month and year after year. Surely their individual sense of compassion for the man must be greater than the hatred that they had for this Jesus character. But as it turns out, that is simply not true. The Sadducees had an immoral preoccupation with their own best interests. As we know from the Easter story the motivation and purpose of the Jewish elite for eliminating Jesus was to protect their own self interests.
Despite the fact that the Nation of Israel was occupied and controlled by the Romans, the Sadducees had it pretty good. They had everything else that they could want, money, food, gracious homes, respect and most importantly power and control over the Jewish people. They did not want that to end!
But this Jesus character, who Peter and John followed, threatened all of that with his talk of new covenants and new laws. They believed that they had put an end to that nonsense by having the Romans crucify Jesus at Calvary. Yet it is with the shadow of the cross still lingering over these two disciples and with the full knowledge that their lives are literally at risk, go about witnessing and testifying to the loving and sacrificial acts of the now resurected Jesus. So, as the scripture tells us:
they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who heard the word believed; and they numbered about five thousand.
The next morning, they are hauled before Annas and Caiaphas, by the way two men that sat in judgment of Jesus during his sham trails on Good Friday. Peter and John know that their lives are at stake and yet they were more than willing act out their faith, compassion, and love on this poor man. And they chastise the council after they do it. The council could have easily dealt with them the same way that they dealt with Jesus.
When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’ Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by No Other Name than the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.
Peter tells them that Jesus is “the cornerstone that was rejected by you, the builders; He has become now the cornerstone of faith” There is salvation and spiritual healing in no one else, for there is No Other Name under heaven by which we are saved.
There is that word again, cornerstone, what is a cornerstone? Well, the cornerstone is the first stone set in the construction of a building, it is laid first and the rest of the building stones work out from and upon it. The cornerstone needs to be substantial because the integrity of the foundation depends on it. In fact, the cornerstone of the temple in which this trial is taking place, the Herodian temple, the cornerstone is 45 feet long by 11 feet high by 8 feet deep, weighing in at approximately half a million pounds!
All the other foundation stones are set with respect to the cornerstone, which means that the cornerstone determines the basis of the entire structure. For the building to be sound, all the foundation stones must line up with and be supported by the cornerstone.
Of course, what Peter had said to the Annas, Caiaphas and the Sadducees about Jesus being a cornerstone is metaphorical, yet as we have come to understand, Jesus is the foundation upon which the church is built and upon which we as believers are stones as well. In fact, later in his life Peter reiterates this truth in his first epistle to the diaspora, the Jews that had been driven out of the homeland after the stoning of Stephen.
Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:4 – 7; As you come to him, the living cornerstone, 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,” on which the church will be built and on which we build our faith!
If we will align ourselves with Christ, the cornerstone, we will be in right relation to God the Father. And if we don’t align ourselves with Christ, we stand in opposition to him. The choice is ours.1
Here the Good News my friends…….
In his letter to the Ephesians Paul tells us: So, then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple for the Lord. Ephesians 2:19-22
Just like the ugly rock in our opening story, upon which so many stepped, dismissed as simply a lump in a stream, then used as a cornerstone, yet having enormous value, Jesus himself was also dismissed as nothing more than irritant to the high and mighty.
But with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone for the Church, our faith and our actions of love and service, we are becoming built into the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
So Dear Ones, in whose name will you do these things? In whose name will you show love and compassion to others that are in need? In whose name will stop justifying our inaction and step out in faith and act as the Spirit leads us, regardless of what others may think or how they might react or what it might cost us?
In whose name will you do these things? In the name of the One whose love for us was so great and so deep and so wide and so eternal that He willingly gave of himself for those that hated him and scorned him and put him to death. Christ’s love is the peerless example of how we should be loved and should love. In whose name will we do these things? In No Other Name than in Jesus Christ, the cornerstone, the bedrock, the foundation of our faith, our church, and our life!
- JoAnn Taylor; pastorsings.com/2018/04/22/christ-the-cornerstone-sermon-on-acts-45-12-easter-4b/