Christ the Foundation Stone

Theme: Parables of Rejection

SCRIPTURE
Mark 12:1-12

And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country.When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this Scripture:

“‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord's doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.

LESSON

In 1 Corinthians 3 we have the great New Testament illustration of this fact. Paul says, “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care how he builds upon it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:10-11). This is our only foundation. There is no other way to God. There may be a thousand ways to Christ, but there is only one way to God, and that is through Jesus.

Jesus did not say, “I am one of the many equally good ways. I am a phase of truth and I am an aspect of life.” He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). Never be afraid to say that Christianity is exclusive, positive, final, and absolute, and that the Lord Jesus Christ sits upon a solitary throne that allows for no other. I had a visit one day from a man and his wife who were without Christ. Every time I spoke to them about their need of Christ, they began to talk about their good works. They talked about how kind and charitable they were, and I kept responding, “There is no other way but Christ.”

Finally I said to them, “Where do you live?” They told me and I said, “Suppose someone came there at three o’clock in the morning and put up a ladder to the second floor window and began to climb in. What would you do?”

“Well,” said the man, I suppose I’d shoot him.” I said, “What right have you to shoot a man? Can’t a man come into your home in any way that he wants?”

He said, “Of course not!” “Well,” I said, “you are saying that you can get into God’s heaven any time, any way, any back window, with any ladder you wish to put up. God Almighty has made definite, positive, and absolute rules for entering His heaven, rules as definite as our civilization makes about entering someone’s house—you ring the bell or you knock on the door. And if I approach your house and there’s a sign on the door that says, ‘Please go around to the side door,’ that’s what I do. This is your order, and that is your right.

“God has done the same thing. He says that anybody may come in—anybody! He just asks you to come in through the cross of Jesus Christ. That is the one condition, according to God. But man, in the stupid arrogance of his blind pride, says, ‘But I’ve made me a little ladder. I’ve been working on it for years. I’ve put it up against a window, and I plan to break the glass and go through in my own time and way.’ God will not tolerate that.”

STUDY QUESTIONS

• How is Christianity “exclusive, positive, final, and absolute”? 

• Is this a good or a bad thing?

• What does this teach us about salvation?