We have been considering how best to glorify God in our planned building endeavor. We want to glorify God with timber, and brick, and mortar, and stones. And speaking of stones, we should pay very close attention to a juxtaposition that the Lord placed between some stones in very different situations.
“And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out . . . And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation” (Luke 19:40, 44).
If stones can speak in a way that glorifies God, they can also be cast down and crushed into pebbles in a way that glorifies God. If stones can speak, then stones can have a heart, and if they have a heart, then God requires the externals of that architecture and the internals of that architecture to be saying the same thing, with the same motive, in the same love. Isaiah warns us in this way:
“Wherefore the Lord said, forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men” (Is. 29:13).
In order for the stones to cry out rightly, the heart of the building must consist of living stones that also cry out rightly. And in order for us to be those living stones, the sovereign God must take away our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. He must make us alive. He quickens the stone by taking away the stone. And when He does this, we are then able to quicken the stones by gathering as living stones to worship the Lord God of all Israel. So let the stones cry out.