Cornerstone
"From Judah will come the cornerstone, from him the tent peg...I will strengthen the house of Judah and save the house of Joseph." (Zechariah 10:4a, 6a NIV)
There are a couple things that really charge me up when I'm doing Bible study, and both of them happened when I was searching out today's key verse.
The first is coming upon messianic prophecy. I love that we do not have to wait until Emmanuel shows up in a barn in Bethlehem to get to know Him and to be awestruck by who He is. As Sally Lloyd-Jones beautifully conveys in the subtitle of "The Jesus Storybook Bible," the whole of Scripture "whispers His name." But some verses shout it, and today's verse is one of them: "from Judah will come the cornerstone." The Cornerstone. Rejected and cast aside by many, the Messiah is nonetheless the crucial building block of faith and of any sound spiritual house.
The other thing that really feeds my Bible study fire is stumbling across a portion of Scripture I feel like I've never seen before. (Full disclosure: here I am not talking about a verse like Ezra 2:3, for example. Maybe I should get excited about the descendants of Parosh, but I'm just not that dedicated.) Not only is Christ referred to as the Cornerstone, He is also called the "tent peg." The tent peg! How have I missed this for so long? What a fabulous new way to look at Jesus! If you've ever been tent camping, you'll easily understand the significance of this imagery: no matter how secure a tent looks when it's set up on a still, sunny day, when the rains pour down and the winds howl in the middle of the night, those pegs in the corners, driven deep into solid ground, are what will keep that lightweight structure in place.
Jesus: Cornerstone of our spiritual house, peg of our spiritual tent...and Lord of all.
"My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus' name.
When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
Christ alone, Cornerstone.
Weak made strong in the Savior's love.
Through the storm,
He is Lord,
Lord of all."
("Cornerstone," Hillsong Worship, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izrk-erhDdk, original lyrics from "The Solid Rock" by Edward Mote.)
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I'd love to hear from you! Feel free to tell me what you really think. Years ago, I explained to my then-two-year-old that my appointment with a counselor was "sort of like going to a doctor who will help me be a better mommy." Without blinking, she replied, "You'd better go every day." All of which is just to say I've spent some time in the school of brutal honesty!