A SURE FOUNDATION

Our Lord taught those who heard His word the importance of the foundation when the floods come and the winds beat upon the house, Matt. 7. 25. A firm foundation is equally necessary when we are in the path of the whirlwind, Prov. 10. 25, and, says God by Isaiah, when the hail and the floods come, v. 17. And who better to lay a foundation than God Himself?

Graciously, God has laid in Zion ‘a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation’. It is nearer to the scornful men who rule in Jerusalem than any city of refuge ever was, Num. 35.15. It is laid where they are and yet they prefer their ‘refuge of lies’, v. 17. In the day of wrath that still lies ahead, how dangerous the course chosen by the scornful, v. 14! The rulers may reject the sure foundation which God has laid, but the poor, the afflicted, those who have had to endure trouble brought upon them by those very rulers, will find refuge on the sure foundation, 14. 32. It will be one more occasion on which the poor will hear gladly God’s good news, Mark 12. 37.

The poor will esteem the rejected Christ a sure foundation. Their endorsement of the claims of Christ may be mocked, but they will have the Spirit’s witness in their hearts that the Lord is indeed a sure foundation for the believing soul. They will be able to fall back on Isaiah’s word that the precious corner-stone is a ‘founded foundation’, the repetition of the root emphasising the absolute immovability of this foundation. The end-times, after the rapture, will culminate in a period when Jehovah will shake the earth until it reels ‘to and fro like a drunkard’, Isa. 24.19-20; cf. Hag. 2. 6; Heb. 12. 26-27. How reassuring to have a sure foundation in those days.

Isaiah witnesses to the effect on those who do trust in Him who alone is the true foundation: ‘he that believeth shall not make haste’. The latter phrase may be translated: ‘will not have to move’. What a testimony that will be when everything else is being shaken! Perhaps they will borrow words that we use in another context: ‘other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ’, 1 Cor. 3.11. ‘How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith!’, John Rippon.