Broken or Crushed?

‘Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.’  Matthew 21:44

Which would you choose?  The breaking or the crushing?  Honestly speaking I’m not sure that I would want either, but this is the choice given by Jesus to the chief priests and Pharisees.  I’m sure our Saviour’s heart was heavy as he left the temple that day, the knowledge that His words would have fallen on deaf ears discouraging.  

I remember a time in my life when I was broken.  So broken.  Into little pieces.  Not my bones, but my heart.  Dashed upon the rock.  Truly rock bottom, my life shattered into little pieces around me.  Sounds awful doesn’t it.  But I remember what happened next.  Jesus picked me up, took my broken heart and mended it, took the shattered pieces of my life, and put them back together until they were beautiful.  Psalm 40:2 became my song, “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire, he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.  Many will see and fear the LORD and put their trust in him.”  From that broken place my Abba Father truly put joy in my heart and for that I am eternally grateful.  Not only did He give me joy but life everlasting, relationship with the King!

You see, Jesus is that stone, our precious cornerstone, the one that we can fall upon, the one that we can go to in humbleness of heart and say, “I can’t do it, LORD, help me, heal me, save me.”  When our hearts are shattered into a million tiny pieces we can fall upon The Rock.

If we head to the concordance, we can see that the word ‘broken’ in Greek means broken!  Or even shattered.  But dig a little deeper, the root word of that broken denotes ‘union, companionship, completeness!’  It speaks of relationship, relationship with the very God we have fallen upon.  When we humble ourselves in that broken place and fall upon Jesus, we come into relationship with the very God who created us!  Perhaps choosing the breaking is not so bad after all.

What about the crushing then?  Being crushed by the rock?  In comparison crushed means ‘ground into powder, scattered in the wind.’  Dissolved into dust and disintegrated to nothingness.  Truly a point of no return.  The crushing fury of God’s judgement coming down with full force, crushing into nothing.  “I think I understand now LORD, I think I’m ready to make my choice.”

We can choose to either fall on the rock and be broken, let Him fill every area of our lives, give our lives to Him, and let Him take those broken pieces and refashion them, remake them into something wonderful.  Something that reflects Christ.  Or we can choose to let the rock fall upon us, the rock of God’s fury, obliterating us to dust.  We can choose life or death. Following Jesus or not following Him. Not wanting to preach gloom and doom or even hellfire and damnation, but not choosing is also making a choice.

Now today, when I think about Jesus, I wonder if as He said these words, he was thinking about the choice He too had to make?  Did his thoughts stray to the fact that only in just three days He would be crushed by the rock?  Crushed instead of us, for us!  Taking the punishment, we deserved upon Himself, drinking the cup of God’s wrath.  Today, as I think about Jesus, I know what my choice will be just as I know what His choice was.  Do you know yours? Today, I am thankful that because of Jesus, I can throw myself upon the rock, my Saviour and Redeemer.

 “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.” Isaiah 53:10 and 11.