Look to the Rock From Which You Were Cut

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness
    and who seek the LORD:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
    and to the quarry from which you were hewn;
look to Abraham, your father,
    and to Sarah, who gave you birth.
..
– Isaiah 51:1-2

Stone quarry overlooking Sephorris

While we were in Israel we spent every day doing a lot of walking in the land, following our rabbi and learning with our feet as we walked. One morning, we walked from Nazareth, Jesus’ home town, to Sephorris (also called Zippori), a much larger city built about the time of Jesus by Herod Antipas. As we were walking cross country between the two cities, a distance of about three miles, we were led to an ancient stone quarry. The rocks that were cut out of this quarry were almost certainly used to build Herod’s nearby city. The New Testament describes Jesus and His father’s occupation in the Greek as “tekton”, which in English means,” a craftsman who builds”. Most translations render this as “carpenter”, however, if you have been to Israel, there is not much wood to work with. Even today, almost everything is built out of stone. It is much more likely that Jesus and Joseph were stone masons and were craftsman in that occupation. If this was true, then the quarry that we were in could have been worked by these two men and their relatives from Nazareth as they helped build the nearby modern city of Sephorris.

While we walked through the quarry we learned how the stone masons used the natural fault lines in the limestone, iron chisels, and pieces of olive wood to take massive stones out of the bedrock. They would chisel a channel down into the rock and then fill it with olive wood stakes. The wood would then be soaked with water and allowed to expand. This would break the rock away from the quarry along the natural fault lines and the channels cut in the rock. These master craftsmen would then carefully chisel the stone to its correct shape to fit in its spot in the wall or building before transporting it to the job site. Many ideas have been proposed as to how they got these enormous stones – some weighing up to 100 tons – from the quarry to the job site and up on the wall, but no one knows for sure.

In Isaiah 51;1-2, God gives us the picture of His people all being cut from the same vast quarry. That quarry that we are cut from is our Jewish heritage! We all come from the same quarry as Abraham and Sarah, as well as the other famous Jewish forefathers, such as Isaac, Joseph, Moses Joshua, Deborah, David, Hezekiah Ruth, and the New Testament heroes like John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, John and others. Our roots are in our Jewish heritage and amazingly we are cut out of the same stones as they were! This picture of us all being cut out of the same rock is a powerful visual image and faith lesson. When we come out of the quarry, cut by the master craftsman, we are just a big ugly and useless stone. But in the hands of that master craftsman, He begins to chip and cut us into the shape that we need to be to fit into our place in God’s building. To be one of His disciples, you have to be willing to put yourself into the Master Tekton’s hand, with His hammer, chisel and saw, and let him shape you. It isn’t always nice or pretty and the chips and pieces fly as we are being fit for our spot in His plan for us. We have to be worked; the pieces aren’t just right and they need to be shaped. It often hurts when God is making us into the stone that He wants us to be! We love the Messiah part, we love being part of the building, but we don’t like the shaping and chiseling.

Now, look at Ephesians 2:19-22. “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a Holy Temple in the Lord. In him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit”.

Also, listen to these words from 1 Peter 2: 4-5. “As you come to Him, the living stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to Him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house …”

In light of this image of the quarry and the stones, don’t these scriptures just jump off the page? Collectively, we are being built into the temple that God dwells in, by His spirit and He is constantly having to shape and chisel us to make us fit into His ultimate plan for us. We need to remember two things from this Isaiah passage and quarry story. One, if we are seeking righteousness and pursuing the Lord as Isaiah 51 says, then we need to look to our Jewish roots to find the answers to those questions. Secondly, we don’t have any excuse for not being what we ought to be. We have what it takes because we were cut out of the same quarry as those other great heroes of the faith. We have everything that we need to be a disciple of His. We just have to be willing to be faithful and diligent to do our part in the cutting and shaping process. Then we will fit exactly where the master craftsman intended us to fit and be that living stone that He intended for us to be.

Bob Dodson

About the author:

Bob is the creator of this site and a disciple of Ray Vander Laan. Along with his wife of 50 years, he teaches a Bible study at Christ’s Church in Roswell, NM. He is also an avid hunter and fisher.