It is interesting, and instructive, to see how three passages from the OT, one from the Psalms and two from Isaiah, are intertwined and interpreted by Jesus and two of his apostles in the NT. All three are about stones. The first occurs in Psalm 118.2: “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.” This is a Passover psalm, possibly the very psalm that Jesus and the eleven disciples sang before they left the upper room for Gethsemane (Matt. 26.30). The immediate reference, then, is probably to the nation of Israel, once enslaved in Egypt (building the pyramids, perhaps), but now, by the saving mercies of God, an independent nation with a great city and a resplendent Temple. The psalm speaks to us particularly of Palm Sunday, for it also contains the verse shouted by the crowd as Jesus entered Jerusalem: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” It is a poignant irony that the crowd who by their shouts endorsed the psalm as Messianic within a week had fulfilled half of the prophecy of our verse by rejecting Jesus, their Messiah. Jesus himself, of course, during this week quoted our verse as the coda to the parable of the tenants of the vineyard who rejected the landowner’s servants and drove out and killed his son (Matt 21 42, Luke 20.17). The two verses from Isaiah both seem to imply a contrast between a faithful remnant in Israel, the prophet’s followers, and the unbelieving majority of the people and their rulers, who are seeking security, not in their God, but in alliances with heathen nations on either side of them, Egypt (chapter 28) and Assyria (chapter 8). In 28.16 God says through his faithful prophet: “Behold, I am laying a foundation-stone in Sion, precious and specially chosen, a costly corner-stone for the foundations; and he who puts his faith in it will never be put to shame” (LXX). The earlier verse (8.14) makes the distinction between the faithful few and the unbelieving majority even clearer: for the faithful, the Lord Almighty “will be a sanctuary; but for both houses of Israel he will be a stone that causes them to stumble (‘proskomma’), and a rock that makes them fall.” The coming Messiah, then, for those who reject him will be a stumbling-block, but for those who accept him and make him the basis of their belief and the crowning glory of their lives, he will be both foundation-stone and capstone, both individually as Christians and collectively as the Church.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
SKANDALON 4 (b) OT prophecy - foundation-stone or stumbling-block?
It is interesting, and instructive, to see how three passages from the OT, one from the Psalms and two from Isaiah, are intertwined and interpreted by Jesus and two of his apostles in the NT. All three are about stones. The first occurs in Psalm 118.2: “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.” This is a Passover psalm, possibly the very psalm that Jesus and the eleven disciples sang before they left the upper room for Gethsemane (Matt. 26.30). The immediate reference, then, is probably to the nation of Israel, once enslaved in Egypt (building the pyramids, perhaps), but now, by the saving mercies of God, an independent nation with a great city and a resplendent Temple. The psalm speaks to us particularly of Palm Sunday, for it also contains the verse shouted by the crowd as Jesus entered Jerusalem: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” It is a poignant irony that the crowd who by their shouts endorsed the psalm as Messianic within a week had fulfilled half of the prophecy of our verse by rejecting Jesus, their Messiah. Jesus himself, of course, during this week quoted our verse as the coda to the parable of the tenants of the vineyard who rejected the landowner’s servants and drove out and killed his son (Matt 21 42, Luke 20.17). The two verses from Isaiah both seem to imply a contrast between a faithful remnant in Israel, the prophet’s followers, and the unbelieving majority of the people and their rulers, who are seeking security, not in their God, but in alliances with heathen nations on either side of them, Egypt (chapter 28) and Assyria (chapter 8). In 28.16 God says through his faithful prophet: “Behold, I am laying a foundation-stone in Sion, precious and specially chosen, a costly corner-stone for the foundations; and he who puts his faith in it will never be put to shame” (LXX). The earlier verse (8.14) makes the distinction between the faithful few and the unbelieving majority even clearer: for the faithful, the Lord Almighty “will be a sanctuary; but for both houses of Israel he will be a stone that causes them to stumble (‘proskomma’), and a rock that makes them fall.” The coming Messiah, then, for those who reject him will be a stumbling-block, but for those who accept him and make him the basis of their belief and the crowning glory of their lives, he will be both foundation-stone and capstone, both individually as Christians and collectively as the Church.
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