The Most Expensive Doorstop In The World!

1 Peter 2:7-8 “Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone, and, ‘A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.’ They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for”

Jesus has done so much for us. He should be the most precious thing in our lives. But the greatest tragedy in all of history is that He is not considered to be precious by so many people. He is to believers, but not to millions of people. So many do not believe that Jesus Christ is the foundation stone for their lives.

Peter quotes Isaiah 28:16 and Psalm 118:22 and points out that Jesus Christ, while chosen by God, was rejected by men. He wasn’t the kind of Messiah they were expecting, so they stumbled over him. The rock they considered to be a nuisance -- in the way -- was then used by God as the cornerstone of his building.

It all began at a small Cabarrus County farmhouse in North Carolina. A farmer’s son stayed home from church one Sunday in 1799, along his two siblings.

While playing and fishing in the Little Meadow Creek, they found a rock, the size of a shoe.

When little Conrad Reed picked up the rock, he found it was very heavy. As any little boy would do, he was proud to show it to his father. His father, John Reed, took the rock to a Concord silversmith to see if it had any value. The silversmith quickly dismissed the idea of the rock being valuable.

Farmer John Reed took the rock home and used it as a doorstop for three years. Little did Farmer Reed know this was the world’s “most expensive doorstop.” He later found out that this rock was in reality “17 pounds of pure gold.” John Reed began to find more gold in that stream and mines started popping up all over North Carolina, which became America’s first gold rush.

(from Golden Promise in the Piedmont: The Story of John Reed's Mine, by Dr. Richard F. Knapp, revised edition, 1999.)

Just think of it, a large lump of gold used as a door-stop!

The same thing is true of Jesus. The same Jesus whom others have seen as a stumbling rock was actually a very precious stone. The foundation is the most important part of any building. The chief cornerstone is the most important stone.

The cornerstone was the major structural part of ancient buildings. It had to be strong enough to support what was built upon it, and it had to be precisely laid, because every other part of the structure was oriented to it. The cornerstone was the support and the unifier of the entire building. That is what Jesus Christ is to God’s building, the church. The whole building ties together because of the cornerstone.

If you reject the cornerstone, you are disregarding the one thing – the one person – who can hold your life together.