Deeper ReflectionWhat will most easily and naturally get attention: a great
statue of “extraordinary splendour” and “awesome
appearance” or an ordinary stone? Obviously, the great
statue. In speaking to Nebuchadnezzar in his dream, God chose “a
stone” (v.34) to represent His Kingdom – “a kingdom which will never
be destroyed” and “will itself endure forever” (vv.44). God’s choice of
“a stone” reveals His ways of subversive wisdom.The statue and the stone show a contrast. The contrast confronts us
with the issue of
appearance and reality. In appearance, the stone
looks ordinary, but not so in reality. The stone is “cut from a mountain,
but not by human hands” (v.34, NLT), unlike the great statue that is
designed by the human mind and built by human hands. Jesus, who
embodies the Kingdom of God and is Himself the true King, came to
earth as “Jesus of Nazareth” (Jn 1:45-46). And Nazareth was a town
“considered totally insignificant”
17 . By appearance, Jesus was “totally
insignificant”. But Jesus is “that stone…on whomever it falls, it will
scatter him like dust” (Lk 20:17-18), just like the stone that “struck” and
“crushed” the human kingdoms of the statue “so that not a trace of
them was found” (vv.34-35).In history, kings and kingdoms
rise and fall. Kings rise because “the
God of heaven has given” them “the kingdom, the power, the strength
and the glory” (v.37). And God can easily and effortlessly “put an end
to all” human kingdoms (v.44) and “all at the same time” (v.35). God’s
people in exile can rest in this God.
17 Herman Ridderbos, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Eerdmans, 1997), 88
