Good morning. Now open your Bibles to the book of Luke chapter 20. Luke chapter 20. We're going to be spending most of our time this morning in chapter— in verse 17 and 18. I want to read the context of the passage to you. You'll remember if you were here last week, the main message from the passage last week was simply this: we are not owners, we are renters. And Jesus is communicating that to some people who had grown very prideful and full of themselves and counted all of God's gifts to them as something that they themselves could boast in. And Jesus is reminding them in this parable about the tenants and the vineyard that they are not the owners of the vineyard, they are renters in the vineyard. So let me catch this up.
I'm going to read verse, uh, starting in verse 9, and then we'll get to verse 17, and that will be our main text for today. And he began to tell the people this parable. A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while. When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent another servant, but they also beat and treated him shamefully and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent yet a third; this one also they wounded and cast out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.' But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; let us kill him so that the inheritance may be ours.' And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others. When they heard this, they said, surely not. But he looked directly at them and said, what then is this that is written? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.
I want you to see a pattern that's emerging in this, in this parable and Jesus' follow-up statement of a couple of metaphors that we see developing through Scripture, and that is the idea, like in talk about it in a few different ways, the idea of a tenant and a builder, or the idea of a garden and a city. So that's sort of what's emerging in this text, and I want you to notice that. In both of these statements, the one about the tenants in the vineyard, and then this follow-up statement about the builders rejecting the stone, Jesus is referring to these people as tenants, builders, laborers, people who have a job to do. And He's also inferring in both of those metaphors that someone is over them, that someone is over them. In the first parable, in the parable piece of this text, that person that's over them is the one who planted the vineyard, the one who owns the vineyard. And then it's implied in verses 17 and 18 that there's also someone over the builders. And that is that we would just probably call that person the architect, the one who had the plan for the building all along.
And I bring that up for a couple reasons. The first one is just to tell you this: the crazy people are not really in charge. It is easy, as we discussed last week, to think of ourselves as owners when we are, in fact, tenants. But it is also easy to watch the evening news or to read Drudge and think, my goodness, the builders of this world are nuts. And this is a reminder, just this couple verses, this is a reminder that when you look at a construction site and you see the builders going about, if you don't know anything about that kind of stuff, it looks like they're in charge. But the truth is they're not in charge. They can do nothing but follow the plan of the architect. And so the first encouragement that we would pull from this passage is simply that. It looks sometimes like the builders are nuts. And in fact sometimes they are, but the inmates are not running the asylum. There is an architect in charge of this great construction project we call earth, and his plan will prevail. In fact, that's kind of the second point I want to pull forward in seeing these two metaphors married together. Very often in Scripture, God refers to his people as a vineyard or a garden. And then there are other times in Scripture when God refers to his people as a city. Jesus uses both metaphors, right? Earlier in the gospel, he says, 'You are a city on a hill.' Later in the gospels, in John, Jesus says, 'I am the vine, you are the branches.' In the Old Testament, both these metaphors exist. So Psalm 80, 'You removed a vine from Egypt and planted it and cleared the ground before it and planted it and it expanded all over the earth.' In Psalm 80, God's people are a vineyard. Psalm 46, there is a river that makes glad the city of God. God is in the midst of her and she shall not be moved. God's people are a city. The New Testament does both. Referenced last week in Romans how Paul talks about God's people as a grove of olive trees, this garden idea emerging again. And in that passage, I think Romans 11, Paul talks about the the old branch being cut off and the new branch being brought in. So there again, in Paul's language, the people of God are a garden or an organic kind of thing. But then elsewhere, Ephesians 2, Paul says, you know, you who were once strangers and aliens are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens of God's household being built up into the structure, the dwelling place of God. So we see these metaphors showing up over and over again Oftentimes by the same people, as if one of them, just one of them won't do. God's people are a garden, but God's people are also a city.
And then finally in Revelation 22, we see these two ideas come together. Let me just read a short verse from Revelation 22. 'Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.' So this is a city, right? Streets, but there's a river flowing through the middle of it. Also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were there for the healing of the nations. So now suddenly at the end of the Bible, we have these two metaphors come together. We are not simply a garden, we are not simply a city, we are a garden city.
And that's important, I'm going to have a point here in a moment. That's important because how did this whole story begin? Well, it began in a garden. But Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden because of their sin. Well, when we fast forward all the way to the end of the story, how does the story end? Well, it does have a happily ever after ending, and it ends with God's people back in the garden. We've been redeemed back into the place where God's presence dwells. But there's an important difference, an important improvement. There aren't two people there anymore. There are, and I quote, 'a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes, people, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes.' God's building project is alive and well. He is redeeming a people from their sin, placing them back into the garden of his presence, and he's doing it at such a scale that we will not be able to number those who live in the garden city of God. So next time you read the news and think, oh my goodness, What is this world coming to? Let me tell you, it's coming to exactly what Jesus died for it to become. The Architect is in charge and His plan will prevail.
6 · This major transition shifts from divine sovereignty to human responsibility, establishing that while people are created as builders (image of God), they are incompetent at it
Well, there's a second point I want to bring forth and that is simply this: you, created in the image of God, are a builder yourself. You've been building things since you were a little kid. And just like the stuff you built when you were little, I want to drop this on you, you are indeed always building but you are not always constructive. In fact, I would just to call a spade a spade, you are always building, you are rarely constructive. We are all trying to build a life and we may not think about it very much, but we are also all trying to build a legacy, something that lasts beyond our lifetime. We're all builders, we're not very good at it. And that's important. There's a piece of historical context in this passage I think is crucial to understand, at least to remember, and that is this: back in Jesus' day, building wasn't this highly predictable process. Maybe you've seen stories on the news of buildings built in haste or under sketchy code requirements, say in China or somewhere else, and you've seen almost a sense of that they build these buildings so quickly and then they kind of tiptoe away with their fingers crossed, holding their breath, you know, hoping that these things stand up, and often they don't. In fact, Every country that's gone under a building boom has seen some buildings fall down and go boom. Like, it's just a part of the process of learning how to build buildings. The building arts are not as sure and predictable, especially on the front end, as we think of them now. For the most part now, unless I build it, when something's built, it stays up. But that's not how things were in Jesus' day. In fact, Jesus references earlier in the Gospels a story about, a true story, like a headline about a tower that was built and it fell down and killed some folks. So I want you to keep that in the back of your head as we talk about Jesus as the cornerstone. That when Jesus is talking about being a cornerstone, He's speaking to a culture where sometimes the buildings stayed up and sometimes they didn't. But that's also relevant because while we are better as a culture at building buildings, we are not any better as individuals at building lives. We really aren't any better than anyone's ever been, maybe worse, at building families and marriages and careers or churches or civilizations. In fact, we may be worse today in building the things that we want to build, the things that God has aspired, built an aspiration within us to build, the things that pertain to legacy. We're not actually very good builders. We're always building. We're very sketch on the constructive piece. I have a friend who was just divorced after 29 years of marriage. Who saw that coming? You know, a structure built for 29 years fell down. I've known people who've walked with Jesus, I thought were walking with Jesus for years, only to completely fall away from their faith. I've known people who pursued great health, made a strong commitment to health their whole life, only to be struck down with some disease. I've seen parents raise children as well as they possibly could, far better, far more excellently than I've done, only to see their children rebel. Yeah, we're always building. I don't think we're very often as constructive as we hope we are. Here's the deal. I want to speak especially to men, especially to men my age, and you guys that are younger, just listen, please. You will get to a point in your life where you will have felt like God has handed you a bunch of bricks that you're supposed to make something out of. Some work bricks, some talent bricks, some family bricks, some money bricks, some wife brick, a wife brick. You've been given so much. Here's the deal, guys, you've been given so much. And you are supposed to integrate all of this together into something that lasts. You know, I know a lot of you guys are sitting in front of a computer for your job. I was staying at Kent's house, Kent and Julie's house, and walked down and saw his little home office. I said, 'Is this where all the magic happens?' I want you to imagine, guys, those of you that work in an office, that one day you're tapped on the shoulder and you're brought out to to a group of bricklayers and they put you right on the wall and they hand you a trowel and the mortar is right there and they say, 'We'll feed you the bricks, you build the wall.' Do you know how awful you would be? Like, do you know how slow you would be? Do you know how poorly that wall would be constructed? I mean, do you know how— it would just be a mess. And the truth is that God's blessings are just coming. Man, and you can be like this guy who's never built anything before, just being fed more things that you're supposed to integrate and build and connect. And what are you doing? What do you have that's going to help you do that? Because it will pile over on top of you before you know it. You will build it wrongly, you will not keep up, you will be so confused in your 40s why there's a massive pile of bricks where a building once stood. You need help because, yeah, you've always been a builder, but it should not at all be assumed that you've always been a good builder. None of us are. My very first day in my office here at the church, I wrote on the whiteboard that faces my desk, Unless the Lord builds the house, those that build it labor in vain. You know, I like a lot of things about that verse. One of the things I like about that verse is it has that picture of me working and God working, right? It's a call to diligence, guys. It's a call to focus. But it's also a call to faithfulness, understanding that just because we're being diligent, just because we're being busy, just because we're doing what we ought to or think we ought to do with all these these blessings that God is handing us doesn't mean we're actually building anything. Unless the Lord is in our building, those that labor build in vain.
7 · This brief transition unit signals the sermon's turn to the cornerstone metaphor and announces that the pastor will explain the ancient understanding of cornerstones and how Jesus fulfills that role in Christian life
The ancient architects believed that this problem related to building, that the problem related to keeping a building up, the problem related to building a building right was all tied in to the cornerstone. And I'm going to explain to you why that was and why Jesus is the essential, not element, the essential everything related to building what God has called you to build.
8 · The pastor begins explaining the first function of a cornerstone—structural support—and connects it to the psychological need for security and hope in any building project, using the negative example of a house of cards
The first thing I'd just let you know is that these are all just very self-evident things about a cornerstone and the first one is that they are there to support the rest of the structure. You know, you need hope to build something. I'm going to explain why hope in a minute, but part of hope is this sense of security. You know, a house of cards is a hopeless thing. You're not going to walk away from a house of cards feeling good about what you've built.
9 · The pastor uses a personal story about his children's sandcastles to illustrate the futility of building on unstable foundations and the emotional investment people make in temporary structures
I'm looking forward to in a few weeks being on the beach with my family, like all of my kids, and Brooke's coming back from college, and Sarah's going to hold still long enough for me to look at her, and I'm so excited about it, but I I remembered the times when we took them to the beach back when they were little and they would build sandcastles and then we'd go inside for the night and come back out the next day and they were just indignant, right? That this sandcastle wasn't there any longer. Where did my sandcastle go? I spent all day working on my sandcastle and inside I'm thinking, well, if I'd have told you that it wouldn't be there, you would have not spent all day building it and I would have had to play with you. So just deal with it. That's life.
10 · The pastor applies the sandcastle illustration to establish the theological principle that all building requires confidence in a secure foundation, which is what ancient cornerstones provided
No, but I mean, to build something, you have to have a sense of confidence that the thing that you're building it on is going to stay put, that it's secure. And that's what a cornerstone was for. A cornerstone was this extremely strong, steady thing that you could build an entire building on.
11 · The pastor uses a future sermon preview about Jesus and Caesar to illustrate Christ's enduring security versus Caesar's obsolescence, then introduces sociologist Andrew Blanko's definition of hope as requiring both security and vision for the future
In a couple weeks, we're going to talk about Jesus. Talking to the people about taxes and Caesar and so on and so forth. There's this moment where Jesus says, you know, give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give unto God what belongs to God. And I was thinking about that passage thinking, you know, here Jesus is talking about the person who everybody would have seen as the most powerful, the most like a God-man in the known world. Jesus was a nobody at this moment, and he's talking about the ruler of the known world, the one whom people actually worshiped as a God-Man. And now 2,000 years in the future, Jesus' kingdom is still secure and all Caesar gets is a salad. So far as salads go, a good salad. So hope requires security. Building requires security. Something has to be there that's going to hold. And without Christ, who is the only sure thing, whatever you're building, it's not going to stand. And if you know that, and surely you must, why would you ever want to waste your life building something that won't stand the test of time? Why would you want to be a builder but not be constructive? Well, hope requires something else, building requires something else. You need a vision for the future. Sociologist Andrew Blanko wrote a book called, I love this title, The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope. And he makes the case that American culture, and in fact every culture, is organized around a compelling vision for the future. By the way, I totally agree with that. Don't get me started. That's a big deal to me. That compelling vision of the future is what a culture is founded upon. So Blanco defines hope this way. Listen guys, hope is the way we overcome the lurking suspicion that all our getting and spending amounts to nothing more than fidgeting while we wait for death. Hope is the way we overcome the lurking suspicion that all our getting and spending amounts to nothing more than fidgeting while we wait for death. A compelling vision of the future is necessary to build something that lasts. Not only this sense of something that's strong and stable that will hold up, but also something that gives us a vision for how this building is supposed to unfold.
12 · The pastor introduces the second function of a cornerstone—providing shape and plumb lines—explaining how ancient builders used the cornerstone's edges to ensure subsequent stones were properly aligned
And so I've talked about Jesus as the support, the cornerstone that provides support. Support, but it's also important to remember that cornerstones provided shape. You see, the shape of a cornerstone would give you the plumb lines you needed to build outward this way, right? So they would build those walls in keeping with the line of the cornerstone. The mason would— the stonelayer would look down and he'd say, is this one in line with the cornerstone? And if it's not, tap, tap, tap, move, move, move, or maybe just get rid of the stone altogether.
13 · The pastor applies the shape function of the cornerstone to Christian life, using the illustration of his old unsquare house to show that without Christ as the plumb line, life decisions made today will not align properly with decisions made years from now
Listen, as you're building your life, you not only need something strong and stable that'll support what you're building, but you also need something that's square, that you can use as a plumb line, as a guiding edge that'll help you to understand whether what you're doing is 7 bricks down is in line with the thing that you're focusing on. I have this really old house in Belleville. It's, I don't know, it's 100+ years old. And almost nothing is square in that house. And guys, if you've ever laid floor or put up molding or baseboards or even installed a door, you know, like it all feels like it's going so well. If you've forgotten that your house isn't square, none of it's gone well. And you wind up with these massive gaps that simply will not do. You need a cornerstone not only to support what God's called you to build, but also to tell you whether what you're building is square.
14 · The pastor identifies a common theological error: separating Jesus as Savior from Jesus as Lord (or support from shape), arguing that the cornerstone metaphor corrects this false dichotomy by showing both functions are essential and inseparable
So, so far I've given you a pretty self-evident understanding of what a cornerstone is. Let me just pause for a minute and refer to just this kind of classic controversy within matters related to Jesus. It is so easy to have an incomplete view of Jesus, and what I've just described is a way of thinking about how easy it is to have this incomplete view. It is easy to think of Jesus as this safe thing that we build upon. It's easy to emphasize the safety of Jesus, right? Without using Jesus as a guide. Okay, it's also easy to emphasize the guide element of Jesus, the example element of Jesus, the law element of Jesus, without trusting in him to be your support. This is really one of those kind of classic moments where it's easy to make Jesus your Savior and not make him your Lord. To use the Christian parlance, or it's easy to make Jesus your Lord without making Him your Savior. It's easy to use Jesus as an example that kind of dictates how you should live while neglecting the fact that He is far more than that. He's the foundation of your hope. He is your righteousness, and whatever is built upon that foundation must be built on His righteousness. It's easy to let Jesus be your guide without making him your hope. It's also easy to let Jesus be your hope without really, like, trying to look like him and grow into him and become like him. So this idea of Jesus as a cornerstone is important because it puts both of those things into view.
15 · The pastor introduces the problem of human failure—the gap between the ideal of building everything on Christ and the reality of how little believers have actually done so
But there's a problem. You have not built as much on Jesus as perhaps you would have hoped to have built on Jesus.
16 · The pastor applies Luke 20:18 to show that the cornerstone metaphor contains a judgment element—falling on the stone or having it fall on you
Jesus says earlier in the Gospels that the storm is going to hit everybody. Well, he says this: we're all builders, we're all building something, and we're all encountering storms that threaten the stuff we've built. And he describes two different outcomes. Those of you who've built your life on Jesus will endure those storms, and the stuff built on Jesus will endure. Those of you who have not built your stuff on Jesus, well, storms are going to come for you, not because they're seeking you out, they're going to hit everybody in this room. And what you haven't built on Jesus is going to not endure. Jesus says in verse 18, 'Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.' Jesus is just describing the judgment element of this truth. That as sure as Jesus is this foundation, you've got to build on Him for it to matter. And as sure as Jesus is this guide, you've got to use Him as that for it to matter. And the truth is that in being those two things, Yes, it sounds great right now, but if I gave you some kind of perfect memory pill where you actually could go back through life and ask this simple question: How much have I built on Jesus? And ask another question: How much have I done that was specifically with the standards of Jesus in mind? Yeah, it's not so comforting. Suddenly it's not a poster you'd buy at a Christian bookstore. The idea that Jesus is a cornerstone is really great if you and I have built everything on Him and around Him, but it's actually quite convicting, quite scary I dare say, if we got real and understood that God has provided this perfect foundation and we have built in the sand. And God has provided this perfectly square, perfectly holy, perfectly true thing, and we have built in this scattered craziness of our own passions.
17 · The pastor asks how a rejected stone becomes a cornerstone and explains that the religious leaders' rejection of Jesus was not passive but active and violent—casting Him outside the city, slandering Him, and having Him crucified
So you need to know a third thing because this is important. How does Jesus become a cornerstone? Just hold that thought about being convicted. Keep the conviction if you can. Just hold that for a second. How does Jesus become a cornerstone? Look at that, verse 17: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.' How does Jesus become the cornerstone? Well, stones don't really become things usually. So we've got a problem. But here's the idea: To these religious people, Jesus looked like an ordinary stone, not even worthy to be used as a piece of the building. The possibility of Him being a cornerstone was totally out of their minds. They were actually looking at Him whether He was useful as a stone in the building, and they decided no. So what do you do when you reject a stone? Well, you throw it outside the city into a pile of rejection, onto a hill of rejection. See what's happening here? Jesus' term for rejection in this passage is really referring to not simply them saying, 'No thanks, don't need Jesus,' but to a definitive, destructive scornful rejection. They didn't reject Him in the sense of like, well, yeah, no thanks, I don't need that. They cast Him outside the camp. They sought to bury Him. They slandered Him before the Roman government. They made Him out to be a traitor of both Israel and Rome. They forced the hand of Pontius Pilate, who had Him beaten and lashed and crucified and killed. That's how they rejected the stone. He was counted unworthy to be in the household of God. Understand that. The stones represent people in the household of God. Jesus was considered unworthy to even be in the household of God, so he is cast out of the city of God by the builders.
18 · The pastor makes explicit that Jesus' crucifixion—the act of rejection—is the very means by which He is revealed and established as the cornerstone through resurrection, turning sin into salvation
So how does Jesus become the cornerstone? Well, that's how. How does a stone become the cornerstone? In this particular case, Jesus becomes the cornerstone because He is cast out and rejected. It is precisely through these builders' sin against Him that He endures death, is buried as the castaway stone, and is resurrected as the cornerstone. That's how a rejected stone becomes the cornerstone.
19 · The pastor introduces little-known historical context about pagan cornerstone sacrifices, showing that the audience would have associated cornerstones with blood sacrifice for divine protection and structural security
Lots of folks don't know that back in Jesus' day, many, many years prior to Jesus' birth, yes, the cornerstone was there for support, yes, it was there for shape, but there's a third thing most people don't realize about these stones. It became customary in the pagan world to offer a sacrifice upon the cornerstone in an attempt to appease the gods and protect the builders and secure that building into the future. So that every cornerstone in the pagan world would have been bloodied. They would offer an animal and sometimes a human sacrifice on this stone before they installed it. Into the structure, therefore crying out to the gods for safety for those that would build upon it and security of the structure itself. Jesus would have been saying this to a group of people who'd walked past cornerstones that were stained with blood.
20 · The pastor synthesizes the three cornerstone functions (support, shape, sacrifice) to show that Jesus is not merely a guide or foundation but the living sacrifice who redeems faulty building efforts and makes sinners right with God
And so yeah, Jesus is the security you need to build the life God's called you to build. He's the square, He's the shape that you're called to build upon. But He's also the sacrifice that makes it possible for God to come and redeem all the stuff you've built that wasn't on Him. And to forgive all the things you've done that aren't square with Him. See, this is a living stone. This isn't simply a standard. This isn't simply a support. This is your salvation. This isn't just something that will help you build a good life. This is something that gives you life. Jesus became the cornerstone when his life was sacrificed. The builders rejected him. They cast him outside the camp, and in their rejection, Jesus was revealed to be the cornerstone. And through this sacrifice, all the stuff you've built on something other than Jesus can be, in its own way, sanctified. And through this sacrifice, you and I who are so deeply out of plumb with God's holiness can be set square with God.
21 · The pastor adds an unplanned fourth point about cornerstone size, arguing that God's choice of Himself as cornerstone reveals His massive intentions for the church—from two people in Eden to an innumerable multitude in the New Jerusalem
Now there's two more things I didn't include in my notes, but I got through this faster than I thought, so let me try to include a couple more points. First one is this: you could go find a cornerstone in a quarry, and you would have to know that if I want to build a really, really big building, I'm going to need a really, really big cornerstone. So let me add a fourth point to our outline if you're keeping notes, and that would be size. What does it say about God's plan for the church that He went and secured as a cornerstone for His church Himself. Let's think about that from a size question right now. How big is this structure supposed to be? How long-lasting is this structure supposed to be? How holy and straight is this structure is supposed to be. Think about it. That text I read from Revelation earlier, that two people started in the garden, were kicked out because of sin, and then suddenly at the end of the story we see not two people in the garden city, but we see a multitude without number, myriad upon myriad. So the size of Jesus as a cornerstone is absolutely amazing.
22 · The pastor adds a fifth unplanned point about centrality, arguing against the compartmentalization of life (separate foundations for career, family, spirituality, finances) and asserting that only Christ has universal authority to integrate all spheres of life into one coherent structure
And I want to add one more point: centrality. Guys, you do not need one cornerstone for your career and one cornerstone for your family and one cornerstone for your spiritual life and another cornerstone for your finances. In fact, if you do that— and that's what most people are doing. These days, you're not going to build anything. But what one cornerstone has the authority and the life and the truth to be the cornerstone that ties all of those things together? So that you're not building a bunch of little separate buildings, but you're building one cohesive castle for the glory of God. Well, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has authority in all those realms. He has truth for you in all those realms. He has security for you in all those realms so that we're not building little silos— a family silo and a church silo and a career silo. We're building one big massive structure on the Lord of all, the one whose authority extends to every one of those spheres. So that all these pieces of our lives are integrated into each other.
23 · The pastor applies the centrality principle pastorally, identifying stress in one life area as a symptom of poor integration and calling for submission of that area to Christ's authority as the solution
If you find yourself— I've been here myself— if you find yourself kind of just stressed out about one of those areas, here's a couple things I would do personally with you if we talked. I'd help you to see that that thing is probably not well integrated into the rest of your life. Money, emotion, whatever, it's not sexual life, whatever, it's not integrated into the rest of your life. But I would also help you to see that it can't be until you submit it to the authority of Jesus like everything else. All of the bricks God's handing you are meant to weave together on the one authoritative, universal, cosmically authoritative cornerstone there is. Jesus Christ.
24 · The pastor closes in prayer, summarizing the sermon's main movements (Jesus revealed as cornerstone through rejection, offering salvation, providing support and shape, encompassing the world, integrating all of life) and asking God to confront the men in the room with the question of what foundation they are building on
Let's pray. Lord, I've intentionally spoke to men today. I'm going to speak to women tomorrow or next week, so might as well. But did that also because just personally I know what this feels like to Yeah, I have all the supplies I need. I have all these bricks I don't know what to do with. I've been called to build this thing. Jesus, thank you for being the cornerstone who was revealed as the cornerstone by enduring the rejection of your own people. Thank you for becoming— you were always the cornerstone. Thank you for showing yourself as the cornerstone by enduring rejection. The rejection you endured was what we deserved for building our lives on other stuff, what we still deserve apart from you. So thank you for the salvation you offer as the cornerstone. Thank you for being a support. Thank you for being a shape. Thank you for being big enough to encompass this whole world. Thank you for being central to all things enough so that everything we're called to do integrates into our walk with you. Lord, I pray for especially— I pray for everyone in this room about this, but I pray especially for the men in this room. Lord God, give them faith to see that even in this Sunday, you might have just sort of placed your hand on their shoulder and just said, 'Hey, hey, Mr. Builder Man, what you building on?' Thank you, Lord, that you are, through your Spirit, alongside, working with us, working through us, so that our labor will not be in vain. In the name of our Cornerstone, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.