of old. But then God will lift him to his rightful place of exaltation. My story of the rejected son is confirmed in that scripture you know so well, the scripture of the rejected stone.'
And before they can recover from this startling expository insight, with a stroke of genius Jesus welds on two more verses from Isaiah 8 and Daniel 2 which also speak about stones. The Isaiah text cautions that if Israel does not trust the Lord, then the Lord himself will become like a stone over which they stumble. The quotation from Daniel speaks of a stone or a rock symbolizing the kingdom of God, which will be used at the end of the age as a hammer in God's hands to destroy all the opposing kingdoms of the earth and smash them to smithereens.
And by fusing all these scriptures together, Jesus is issuing a solemn warning. The stone the builders discarded, he says, now lies on the ground. You are plotting to murder God's Son. Careless people stumble over him to their destruction, as Isaiah said they would. But one day soon he will be raised up to the top of the arch. And for people who are foolish enough still to reject him then, it will no longer be they who fall over him, but rather he who falls on them, as Daniel predicted. 'It is a dangerous thing', he says, 'to reject me. You are playing with fire. Put yourself in the owner's place in my story and you will realize why. Do you really think God is going to tolerate the preposterous insolence of the human race for ever? Do you think he will stand idly by and grant his beloved Son no vindication in the face of his enemies?'
No, a day of accounting is coming. 'What you do with me,' he says, 'the Son, the Stone, will determine your final destiny on that day. You must choose either to be broken voluntarily by me, your rebellious pride humbled and chastened by recognition of who I am; or you must choose to be finally crushed by me, judged, condemned for your complicity in this rebel world.' This is a solemn
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