Cornerstone or Stumbling Stone

Mountain Hiking

One of the attractions that draws people to the Pacific Northwest is the abundance of hiking trails. The Pacific Crest Trail alone is more than 2,200 miles in each direction. Washington State is home to beyond 10,500 miles of mountainous hiking trails, some leading you beyond 12,000 feet in elevation if you are willing to travel non-maintained trails. The older Alean and I get, the more difficult it is to hike the more demanding trails, though we have friends well beyond our age who hike them with regularity.

There is a frustrating tension to hiking mountain trails as your attention must be divided between absorbing the breathtaking beauty that surrounds you and attending to the rocks and roots on the trail beneath your feet. People doubt me when I say it, but those trail rocks purposely jump up as you approach them in order to deliberately trip you up! It has happened to me more than once.

Twilight on the Mountain

Mountain hiking is healthy physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It can also be exceedingly dangerous.

Many trails have registration desks at entry points where hikers sign in and sign out on entry and completion of the day’s hike. This week alone, the bodies of two deceased hikers were recovered in Whatcom County, WA, where we live. The dangers of hiking increase as the daylight fades. Unprepared hikers, lacking headlamps and extra batteries, find that familiar, visible landmarks vanish, and trail markers become difficult to spot. The darkness on a mountainside can become so thick that you feel it in your bones. The warmth of the sunlight is taken from you and those who fail to carry warm layers can suffer rapid hypothermia from the plunging temperatures.

Give glory to the LORD your God
    before he brings darkness,
before your feet stumble
    on the twilight mountains,
and while you look for light
    he turns it into gloom
    and makes it deep darkness.
– Jeremiah 13:16, ESV

The warning from Jeremiah above is a threat from God, a threat of pending exile for an “evil people who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own heart.”¹ The phrase “Give glory to the LORD your God” is a flag phrase that compels someone to speak the truth.² This is not a call for praise. It is more akin to raising your right hand in the courtroom and swearing to speak with candid honesty. It is a call for confession, even though that confession may bring on punishment.

The imagery of the twilight mountains and the encroaching darkness are graphic and unsettling. Today, as in Jeremiah’s day, the shadows are deepening and dusk is gloaming, yet the world seems unaware and unconcerned.

We grope for the wall like the blind;
    we grope like those who have no eyes;
we stumble at noon as in the twilight,
    among those in full vigor we are like dead men.
– Isaiah 59:10, ESV

Jesus’ Darkness Warnings

Jesus warned of impending darkness as well.

So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.”
– John 12:35, ESV

In the spirit of Jeremiah and with the urging of Jesus, the call goes out today for the world, and for many in the church, to humble ourselves and repent of our love affair with self-centered lawlessness and debauchery. We are not cruising freely down a safe highway. We are careening down a dangerous mountainside at twilight.

Jesus – One of Two Rocks

{The Israelites in the wilderness] all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
– 1 Corinthians 10:4, ESV

The most important stone of any high-quality construction endeavor is the first stone placed—the chief cornerstone. In a project that is done well, any line on any floor of any wing can be traced back to and aligned with that cornerstone. The entire structure takes its direction from that single stone. In the house of God, the body of Christ, the church, Jesus is that cornerstone.³

As you come to [Jesus], 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. 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.”

So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

    “The stone that the builders rejected
        has become the cornerstone,”

– 1 Peter 2:4-7, ESV

…and

    “A stone of stumbling,
        and a rock of offense.”

– 1 Peter 2:8a, ESV

To those who hazard to reject Jesus, he becomes a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense. He is the stone on the mountain trail that trips me up, making me fall to my face and slide down the hillside.

And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.”
– Isaiah 8:15, ESV

Speaking of himself as the cornerstone, Jesus echoed the sentiment from Isaiah above.

And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.
– Matthew 21:44, ESV

The imagery referenced by Jesus also seems to be recalling Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a great image with a head of fine gold, chest and arms of silver, thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet a mixture of iron and clay. In Neb’s dream, a stone not cut with human hands struck the image on the feet resulting in the destruction of the image in its entirety and not a trace of it could be found. That stone became a great mountain that filled the earth.⁴ Jesus is that stone.

Responding to the Stone

The stone is a provider, a guide, a protector, a teacher. The same stone is a stumbling stone, a rock of offense, and a demolisher of nations. Same stone. Different outcomes.

Jesus has put all his cards face-up on the table. We know exactly what our options and outcomes are with Jesus. He has no hold-card. Everything is laid bare before us. We can respond to him with faith or offense. We can acknowledge him as the sacrificial lamb, the Lord of all that exists, and the King of kings, or we can reject him as a fool because he offends us. Faith or offense. Those are our choices.

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
– Luke 10:29, ESV

Build your house on the Rock.

1. Jeremiah 13:10
2. Joshua 7:19, Malachi 2:2, John 9:24
3. Ephesians 2;20
4. Daniel 2:1-49