

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24). Jesus painted these two pictures to describe two kinds of people, those who build their hopes and choices and lives on him, and everyone else. The house was helpless, and so it was leveled by the storm. There was nothing under the structure that could withstand that kind of pressure and force. Again, the winds and the rain fell on the house, but this time they destroyed the little home. It proved to be a safe place, even when violent weather came crashing against it.Ī second man, Jesus continued, built his house on sand - loose, light, soft, ever-changing. Storms came with heavy winds and pounded on the little structure, but it did not move.

One man built his house on the strength and stability of a rock. Jesus, the cornerstone himself, used similar imagery when he compared two builders (Matthew 7:24–27).
CORNERSTONE CHORDS FULL
If we want to know God and experience full and lasting life, everything must be surrendered to him and built on him. But the only sure bedrock of the Christian’s life and worship is the broken body of our Savior.

As the cornerstone, he’ll change our priorities and habits and decision-making. When most of us first meet Jesus, we don’t want to make him the cornerstone. It’s much easier in some ways to fit Jesus in one room of our house or to find a place for him in a random wall. And at the very foundation, at the most important position, there’s a stone greater than all the others, a stone stronger than all the others, a stone on which all the others rest - a Cornerstone. Each follower of Christ, each of child of God, is their own stone - a living stone - and they have been formed, shaped, prepared, and filled with life in order to be a small, but important part of a house for God, a place of worship to our God. Peter uses this imagery of stones and buildings to talk about our relationship to Christ. It had to be perfect, reliable, strong, and sure. Small flaws or errors in the cornerstone or the placing of the cornerstone would affect the whole building. It was the most important stone in the most important place of a massive structure of stones. Historically, though, the cornerstone has been the first stone laid, the stone on which every other stone is built. Today, a cornerstone is typically a large slab of concrete placed at a prominent corner or place around the outside of a building with important information inscribed into it, like the date it was finished. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” (1 Peter 2:4–6) As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
