In the psalm, this descriptive name referred to the nation of Israel who came from rejection to occupy the honored position. The messianic meaning of the name becomes clear in the New Testament verses that quote the psalm.
The Jews were like the builders. In unbelief, they rejected Jesus and had Him crucified. They did not realize that Jesus was the stone that God had chosen to cap His spiritual building. The Lord Jesus Christ should be both the foundation of all we do, but also the final stone holding everything together.
Peter points us to Isaiah , to which the Apostle Paul also made reference in Romans He was, and is, the Stone. He is the sure foundation. Israel as a whole failed to see it. He alone joins the entire building of the Church to become a Holy temple. He also emphasizes that the people who believe in Christ are now part of Christian citizenship that Christ, as a cornerstone, leads.
This is a very powerful statement by Paul to the Ephesians and it also resonates with modern-day Christians, as well. To be part of the Christian faith means putting our entire lives on Christ and making Him our cornerstone. In 1 Peter , Christ is referred to as a cornerstone chosen by God to secure a promise and that those who trust Christ will never be put to shame. As you come to him, the living Stone — 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:. It is also emphasized, in this verse, that Jesus is the living stone, which means that apart from being a cornerstone, He is a living foundation. He understands us, the chosen people because He lives among us. In these two New Testament verses, we are assured that God gave His Son, Jesus, as a promise that we are guided, and we have a strong foundation as long as we follow Him.
Just like a literal cornerstone, Christ should be followed in order for us Christians, to live a straight path. If a cornerstone is not followed, the path of construction will end up in demise. It is marvelous in our eyes.
It is a wonderful thing that God has done for us in laying Jesus Christ as the foundation, as the chief cornerstone. He was looking for the dawning of a day, a new day—the day of salvation. Peter speaks of the day dawning and the morning star rising in our hearts in II Peter Jesus Himself says in Revelation —one of the last things that is mentioned in the Book—that He is the bright and morning star.
When He was laid as the chief cornerstone, bringing light and grace, He became our salvation; He opened the day of salvation; and then He is going to finish it. He will be the capstone as well.
Does He not say Himself that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and the author and finisher of our salvation? See how complete He is. It is an amazing thing. Let us go back to Deuteronomy 30 just to pick up one verse here just to kind of sum up what I said here. God urges us here, with everything that is in Him, that we choose life. And notice why He says that.
He says of course, at the end of verse 19, that we will live—us and our descendants. Then He says:. Deuteronomy That you may love the Lord your God. Deuteronomy We cannot cling to Him without Him first offering to us a hand, through His calling, and our choosing that.
But the next phrase is what I want. That is how important the Chief Cornerstone is to us: He is our life and He is our eternal life. How long do you want your days extended—to 70 or 80 years by human strength? That is what is being offered us here. Abraham looked for a city, remember? God made a promise to him and it falls to us as his spiritual heirs too. But we have got to stand on the Chief Cornerstone. We have got to be built on the Chief Cornerstone. So in its most basic form, we can say that our salvation is a person—Jesus Christ.
He is to us all-in-all. Whom then shall I fear? This is exactly what God said in Isaiah 28; that if we stand on the foundation that He laid, then we will not have anything to fear, we will never be ashamed because we are standing on Christ, and He cannot be moved. But I want to do it in terms of what He said that He is to us. This should give us a well-rounded perspective of His importance to our Christian lives.
The two that are usually left off the list, I think, are two of the most important. If you were to put me up against a wall and put a gun to my head, I would say these two are the most important.
And like I said before— Romans —the carnal mind does not want to submit to God and His law. So we are going to look at all nine. We are going to go through them at light speed because we do not have the time. But I want to give just a brief summary of their meanings and I am going to leave it to you to meditate on them in the next days or weeks, as you get ready for the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread.
Speaking of the Days of Unleavened Bread, let us go to one we most often talk about during the Days of Unleavened Bread, and that is in John 6. We are going to go through these in Bible order—from front to back. Jesus says that He is the bread of life. I am not going to read all this, I am going to skip through here, but I think we will get the gist of it.
He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. John I am the bread of life. John Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. John Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
That is the basic understanding of what Jesus is trying to get across here. But it is better than that, because this is the kind of bread that if we eat of it, we will not die. Not like the Israelites in the wilderness who got physical bread, but they all died.
Their bodies were scattered throughout the wilderness because they did not follow the Rock, as it were. But Jesus says that if you eat the bread that He gives you He is the Rock; He is the Bread that came down from heaven —if we follow Him—we are not only going to live forever, there is going to be glory and wonderful things happen all the time because that is just how good His bread is.
So that is what we have got to think of this. The symbol then revolves around what we ingest, what we put, not in our mouth, but what we put into our minds into our hearts, you could say.
So it is not what we ingest physically; it is what we ingest spiritually, what we allow our minds to dwell on—the words that we allow to impact us. And He says that we have to eat and drink Christ to have eternal life. To us, then, Jesus is our spiritual food that we have to take in, we have to learn, and we have to make it a part of ourselves.
It is really neat, or kind of gruesome. Because what He says there is that we have to munch on Him, or chew on Him. It is not just the normal Greek word for eating, but it means really gnawing on, chewing, like eating beef jerky. You have to really chew it before you can swallow it. That is the impression that He wanted to make on our minds, that it takes time and effort to assimilate His teaching into our lives.
It means that we have to really struggle with it and we have to eat it, we have to masticate it, we have to beat it fine. We have to do whatever it takes, take whatever time it takes, to digest what He is and incorporate it into our lives—and into our character, I should say, as well.
Not just what we do, but we have to make it what we are. So it is really a very vivid illustration of the effort we have to go through. This next example comes right at the end of the woman caught in adultery. In my Bible it is at the end of the paragraph; it probably should be the beginning of the next paragraph because it actually goes better with what comes after it rather than what comes before it. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.
This is the opening salvo of a teaching on Christ bearing true testimony to who He is. But what He is saying here is that when He says that He is the light of the world, He means it. He is telling them the truth. That He is equivalent to the Lord in the Old Testament. The servant of the Lord, in Isaiah , is the light to the nations. And so He is essentially telling them at this point that He is the Messiah.
The Word of God or His law is a lamp and a light to guide our paths—that is Psalm Proverbs says something very similar. Jesus is saying to these Jews that He embodies these things. He is the Lord. He is God. He is Savior. He is Messiah. He is the Word of God. He is the revealing, illuminating guide to righteousness and truth.
Now you understand why they wanted to pick up stones to throw at Him? John himself says in John that His life was the light of men. So, to us, He does what light does. He makes things visible that were not visible before.
He illuminates. He reveals things to us. He makes things plain and clear to us. If we follow Him, our way toward the Kingdom of God will be clear and free and result in eternal life because He is showing us the way.
He is lighting it up so we do not run into doorjambs, so to speak. John Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. John I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. I did a sermon on this at the Feast of Tabernacles in , so I am not going to go into this in any great detail. But a door is an entryway. It divides one space from another. So Jesus, as the door of the sheep, is an access point. He is the means of entry for the sheep into the fold.
And in that sermon that I gave at the Feast, I gave five meanings to Christ as the door. These are the five things:. A door provides access to what is behind the door. So that means we have access to salvation and to the Father. We are able to go through Christ to the throne of grace.
A door provides protection when it is shut. Those who are outside cannot come in. So Jesus provides protection from Satan , this world, from false doctrine and all those bad things, if we trust Him. A door separates one space from another. Jesus Christ Himself separates us from the world, and it is through Him we become holy—set apart, different. We are separate. A door, especially an open one, is a sign of fellowship and so Jesus is the one who allows us fellowship with the Father.
We have fellowship with Him, and of course through Christ, we have fellowship with one another. A door allows us to go in and out. So, Jesus, as the door, is a symbol of our daily activities. If we go in and out in the Spirit of Christ, we have abundant life because we are living the kind of life He lived.
We are going in and out like He did. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. John I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. He laid down His life for us. That is how far He was willing to go to provide for all of our needs.
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