December 2

Listen to Me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut, and to the quarry from which you were hewn. — Isa 51:1 BSB

It's as though the Lord, through His prophet, is turning our eyes back to our humble beginnings. And what are those? The same quarry that everyone else comes from. If you and I, by God's grace, are "living stones," we come from the same quarry as the dead, unbelieving, unregenerate world—there’s no difference in that. In fact, we may have been buried deeper in the quarry than some who will never receive God's grace. The stones that are carved into pillars aren’t taken from the surface; the workers dig deep into the pit to find the marble that will be shaped into beautiful columns.

It’s the same with God's people. They don’t lie on the surface of the quarry; the Lord has to go down very low to bring these stones up from the depths of the fall, raising them from deeper degradation than those nearer the surface. I once read a Portland quarryman’s description of the back-breaking labor it took to extract the stone. He said, “It’s like heaving your heart out.” The stone was so deep and the work so exhausting that the laborer had to put all his strength, muscle, and heart into the task.

This is just like the elect of God. They are buried so deep, in such dreadful depths of degradation, so far from God, so hidden from anything good, that it required all the strength and power of Jehovah to lift them out of the pit. In raising them from the quarry of sin, God, so to speak, put all His heart into it. Nowhere is this heart of God more clearly seen than in the incarnation of His only Son and in the work, righteousness, suffering, blood, and death of Jesus Christ.