"...look
unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence
ye are digged."
-Isaiah
51:1 [KJV]
It
is as though the Lord would here by the pen of His prophet turn our
eyes to our native origin. And what is that? The same quarry out of
which the other stones come. If you and I, by God's grace, are
"living stones," we come out of the same quarry with the
dead, unbelieving, unregenerate world; there is no difference in that
respect. Nay, we are perhaps sunk lower in the quarry than some of
those in whom God never has and never will put His grace. It is not
the upper stratum, what is called "the capstone," of the
quarry, which is to be taken to be hewn into a pillar; they go down
deep into the pit to get at the marble which is to be chiselled into
the ornamental column. So with God's saints. They do not lie at the
top of the quarry; but the Lord has to go down very low, that He may
bring up these stones out of the depths of the fall, and lift them,
as it were, out of deeper degradation than those which lie nearer the
surface.
I
remember reading once an expression which a Portland quarryman used
when he was asked a question with respect to the hard labour of
getting out the stone. He said, "It is enough to heave our
hearts out." The stone lay so deep, and required such severe
bodily exertion, that the labourer was forced to throw not only all
his weight, sinews, and muscles into the work, but his very heart
also. So it is with the elect of God. They are sunk so low, in such
awful depths of degradation, at such an infinite distance from God,
so hidden and buried from everything good and godlike, that, so to
speak, it required all the strength and power of Jehovah to lift them
out of the pit. In raising them out of the quarry of nature, He
spent, as it were, upon them all His heart; for wherein was the
heart of God so manifested as in the incarnation of His
only-begotten Son, and in the work, righteousness, sufferings, blood,
and death of the Lord Jesus Christ?
-Gospel
report by preacher J.C. Philpot (1802–1869 A.D.)
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