Foundation

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"

God to Job, Job 38:4, NKJV

 

When construction begins on a building, many preparations must be made before the building is ever built.  One doesn't just go out with sticks and stone and throw up a structure with no planning or preparing and expect it to stand, at least not for very long.  A building is not built randomly or by accident.  There is a process.

 

First, the plan.  An idea is conceived in the mind of a visionary, who expresses the concept to an architect, perhaps, or an engineer who uses their knowledge and skill to begin drawing up a plan that will bring the dream into reality.  A site is chosen for the project.  Land must be surveyed, plotted, measured, and tested.  Grades must be shot.  The ground must be evaluated.  The plan for the building is matched to the place, and more plans are drawn, situating the construction on the site and detailing all the preparations that must be made before one piece of equipment is activated, before one inch of ground is disturbed.

 

The plans must be submitted for examination, for evaluation, for multiple approvals.  Adjustments are made.  Permits are purchased.  A project manager is appointed.  Bids for the work are solicited, submitted, considered, and contracted.  Workers are hired.

 

Dirt work begins.  Some must be taken out, more brought in.  It must be leveled, tamped down, made firm to properly bear the weight of the construction.  Footings are dug.  The size of the building determines the type of foundation that must be laid, the depth and breadth  of the footings, a support structure that will be mostly underground and likely unnoticed by those who will later marvel over the final construct.  Forms must be built, rebar fixed in place, concrete poured.

 

When the foundation is ready, the building can go up.  If at any point along the way the foundation is not laid correctly, it imperils the entirety of the process and the future of the structure.  The foundation must be sure.  It's true for a tool shed, a house, a parking garage, a tower, a palace.  Whatever is built must have a solid foundation.  And if that is true for something that man builds on the earth, the same must hold true for the earth upon which everything is built.

 

First the plan, conceived in the heart and mind of the eternal, immortal, invisible, and only wise God, carried out in the power of His will by the authority of the Word under the moving of the Spirit.  And for a foundation there could be only one starting place, a single cornerstone upon which all other construction must take place.  And that cornerstone is Christ.

 

All creation began upon that one original building block, and continues upon it today.

 

"Behold, I lay in Zion

a chief cornerstone, elect, precious,

and he who believes on Him

will by no means be put to shame."

1 Peter 2:6, quoting Isaiah 28:16