REBUILT WITH PRECIOUS STONES

 

OCTOBER 10, 2023

 

Isaiah 54:11-17

^11-17 “Afflicted city, storm-battered, unpitied:
    I’m about to rebuild you with stones of turquoise,
Lay your foundations with sapphires,
    construct your towers with rubies,
Your gates with jewels,
    and all your walls with precious stones.

(The Message)

 

If you have ever gone through a home renovation, you know that there are some things that need to be demolished. Sometimes that means ripping down a wall or tearing out old floor tile or relocating some plumbing features. The reality is that some of the old features need to be removed, cleared out, before the rebuild can be put into place.

I was at a workshop a while ago and one of the questions we were asked to think about was this: “If your life was a home renovation project, what would be removed and destroyed before the building work could begin?” How might you answer that question?

God promises in this verse from Isaiah 54:11 that he will rebuild the “afflicted city, storm-battered, unpitied” with precious stones. Truth is life can generate experiences where we feel “storm battered” and afflicted, and we can feel unsettled and without comfort in those seasons. Perhaps you have been there, or maybe you are there today.

You see wrapped up in our commitment to follow Jesus is the decision to allow God to begin a process in us where he can rebuild us from the difficult and painful storms we suffer. This rebuild is not an easy process, it means trusting the “Master Builder” the Creator, to lay the foundations for God’s grand design/purpose for us.

I find the writer C. S. Lewis description of this extremely helpful to remember.

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

If we were to take an easy path and just make everything look good on the surface, like some do these days when they flip houses. Perhaps you have read or heard about some renovators who do not give as much attention to rebuilding the damaged foundations, that will eventually sink. They just focus on what the eye can see.

As Jesus followers, we need to allow “the master builder” to break up our shaky foundations and to rebuild our lives. This may mean giving up things we once held as important, it may mean asking for forgiveness from God, and acknowledging where we have been going wrong, by placing too much emphasis on surface things.

In 2 Corinthians 5:17 we read how we can be made new: “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

Our passage from Isaiah 54 above tells us that God does not rebuild us with the same old stones. God’s promise is to rebuild us with “stones of turquoise, Lay your foundations with sapphires, construct your towers with rubies, Your gates with jewels, and all your walls with precious stones.” Did you hear that? God rebuilds us with precious stones! We may feel like a “storm battered” city, but God’s promise is that we will become something new, a new creation and we can shine like the precious stones that Jesus rebuilt us with.

Let Us Pray

Thank you, God, that you can rebuild our lives and when storms have lashed us, you are our comforter. We pray that how
ever hard the process of rebuilding our foundations is, that we are open to this rebuild so that we can be a new creation that can shine for you. In Jesus name, Amen.