A PRECIOUS CORNER-STONE

Where will the scornful be when the overflowing scourge passes through the land with a devastating force last seen when the death angel was active on Passover night? Yet Isaiah foretells how some of his nation will hide in a refuge of lies, in that coming day of wrath, v. 15. Their flimsy man-made construction will be washed away, whilst those founded on ‘the precious corner stone’ will be altogether secure.

Human ingenuity will construct that false hiding-place for those who still refuse the Saviour, but in Zion God Himself will lay a foundation that cannot be shaken. In three glorious terms God describes a foundation which we immediately recognise as His description of Christ. It has been summarised as ‘tested (Godward), precious (manward) and solid (selfward)’. Three terms had described those huge building stones that were the foundation of the temple built by Solomon: ‘great stones, costly stones and hewed stones’. Not any of them, not all of them, had the value that we attach to the precious corner-stone.

This precious corner-stone has already been tested by God before He laid it in Zion. The Gospels tell the story of that testing in both life and death, in order that God could lay a tried stone as the corner-stone of all that He is building. Without a sure foundation secured by an immovable corner-stone, no building could stand ‘the tempest of hail… [the] destroying storm … [the] flood of mighty waters overflowing’ to which Isaiah likens the judgement that Israel will face in the coming tribulation, v. 2. Only those who, like us, turn to Christ will not be swept away.

It is Peter who cites Isaiah’s prophecy, as he reminds us that this precious corner-stone was rejected by the builders. Almost thirty years before he had charged Israel’s rulers and elders with being those builders, Acts 4.11. In the day that Isaiah describes, the nation’s leaders will do the same. But to all who believe, that corner-stone is intrinsically precious, 1 Pet 2. 7, the corner-stone of that spiritual house of which they form part. Not all the opposition of the gates of hell can move the corner-stone that holds together what is so precious to God.