Rocks Crafted by Grace

My mom loves rocks and stones. She sees beauty in rocks. They are rocks. Pretty hard. Obdurate. Of all various shapes and sizes…. It takes a master mason to build them into something. We are God’s stones, which he chooses (and I think sometimes he chooses the hardest and the ugliest ones!), refines, crafts, and builds his people into a living temple that declare his praises.

Deuteronomy is a covenantal book, forming a people for God. God’s loving, sovereign electing choice is highlighted—they are chosen not because of their own righteousness but for his glory. Like I said, I think God chooses the hard rocks. Moses closes his book with several chapters highlighting their upcoming failure—all summarized in a song in chapter 32. Doesn’t Moses overemphasize it? We get it by now… No one likes their failures chalked up time after time after time.

Yet, this emphasis serves an important function. It reminds us: We can’t obey. We are rocks. A rock doesn’t melt, nor does it change itself. The song of Moses has some parallels with the fall of Adam; the inability to obey is human nature. Moses knows this, and so he emphasizes that the ability to obey is a work of the Lord in our heart and a thing of grace alone. Strikingly, he writes: “But to this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear” (Deut. 29:4). Only the Lord can engender obedience in our rebellious, depraved, deceitful stone-hearts (Jer. 17:9; Ezek. 36:25-27). Moses would agree that even our best attempts at obedience are not enough, for “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away” (Isa. 64:4).

Does this change under the New Covenant? Yes and no. Our flesh is still present. Yet, we do have a greater divine empowerment through the indwelling Holy Spirit, we have a renewed mind, and a heart of flesh now with the Lord’s own law written on it (Ezek. 36:25-27; Jer. 31). Praise the Lord for that!!!! Yet, salvation was by faith in the Old Testament just as it is in the New Testament. Salvation was by grace in the Old Testament just as it was in the New Testament. We live our Christian walk by grace alone; it is only the perfect obedience and the imparted righteousness of Christ by which we can be accepted. Our flesh is still present; we still sin; God is still a holy God who cannot look upon evil. As Moses made clear, our obedience does not spring something inherent in us or out of a greater gratitude because we have seen the full extent of his love, but only because Christ’s death, his cleansing blood, his authoritative ascension, and his giving of the Spirit that allows us to obey. Paul emphasizes it is the Lord’s work to even give us the desire (Phil. 2:13). It is the Lord who gives us a new heart and the freedom to obey and causes us to obey (Phil. 1:6; 1 Thes. 5:23-24; Gal. 5:22-23). It is a refining process, in which the Lord takes these obdurate, ugly stones and purifies them in fire, refines them, crafts and molds them (which can be hard and hurt!)—but he makes something beautiful.We are his masterpiece, created for good works (Eph. 2:10). It takes a Master Mason to make something beautiful.

What is he making? A temple that outstrips the glorious gold-shining glory of the first temple. Solomon’s temple was covered in gold and precious stones. He is making us into his precious stones for his living temple (1 Peter 2; Eph. 2). Our inability to obey and our failures highlight the grace of God. A preacher mentioned that in the book of Revelation, those before the throne from every nation and tribe sang first the song of Moses, highlighting our failures, and then the new Song of the Lamb, underlining the wonders of his grace and his acts on behalf of some ugly stones (Rev. 15:3). Yet the stones cry out and declare his praises. He is glorified!

“He keeps struggling with our reluctancies and hesitations. He comes and convicts me over something, and I begin to fidget. We are real tough to handle, aren’t we? The gracious Holy Spirit does not push. He just does some gentle nudging. When you fidget and become restless, He stops for a while and lets you go on. Then he comes again and catches you in a corner where you won’t fidget so much. In the corner, he does his beautiful work of turning you around. And what do you see? The Lamb of God? The cutting of the stone is done and you have been fitted in! That is how he is taking us, stones of all races and backgrounds, and fitting us together into a beautiful dwelling place of God.” (Festo Kevengere, cited by John Piper, Pleasures of God, 56-57).