BUILT ON THE ROCK
by Steve Zeisler
John Stott has called the Sermon on the Mount a manifesto for the Christian
counter-culture, and I think that is an excellent way of characterizing
it. Christians are to live counter to every culture. In the first century
Jesus called on his followers to live very different lives from the idolatrous
Greek, Roman and cultic mystery religions among Gentiles; and from the Pharisees,
Saducees, and zealots among the Jews. Christians are still to be a counter-culture
among both the contemporary irreligious pagans and religious hypocrites.
In this final study of Matthew 5-7 we will recall much of what we have considered
in these chapters. In the final paragraph we have come to an illustration
in which Jesus is going to challenge us one last time to obey him from the
heart. Matthew 7:24-29:
"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts
them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The
rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that
house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But
everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice
is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the
streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell
with a great crash."
When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his
teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers
of the law.
The right foundation
The illustration is obvious to anyone who has ever erected any kind of structure.
It shows the need for a good foundation.
I remember being on a backpacking trip with men from the church a number
of years ago. I have always been a fair-weather backpacker. In general,
I like to be able to go into the high country when the surroundings are
beautiful, the friendship great, and the weather conditions favorable.
On this particular trip there were probably fifteen of us. Paul Winslow
was the physical leader and Ray Stedman was the spiritual leader. Mike Tracy
and I were sharing a tent, and we were among the first to arrive at a site
where we were to spend the night. We looked around for a flat space without
any rocks on which to pitch our tent, and picked out a great spot. In retrospect
I think the reason there weren't any rocks and it was flat was the presence
of layers of sediment.
But sure enough, that night the rain fell, the winds blew, and the stream
rose. We had managed to choose a water course on which to pitch our tent!
Streams that came down from all the country above us converged into this
stream bed we were sleeping in. We woke up in the middle of what seemed
like a lake. Everyone in the group got wet, but Mike and I got wet from
underneath the tent, from water flowing in the sides of the tent, and from
going outside to try to salvage our equipment. We were completely drenched.
It was a test not only of our ability to make good decisions as backpackers,
but also of our spirituality. I remember being sure it was Mike who had
made the foolish choice to stay there. Of course he was sure it was I.
We would have gotten away with camping in the middle of a stream bed if
it hadn't rained. You can survive choices like that until there is a test.
When the test of the unexpected, torrential rain came, our spirituality
and our skills and everything else were shown to be less than we had imagined
them to be. That is the point that Jesus is making here: There is going
to come a test. We cannot fend off hard times. We may do our best on some
level to hold them at bay by providing securities of various kinds around
ourselves, but we cannot ultimately keep testing or pain from happening
to us in this life. When it comes, we will discover whether the foundation
of the house we have built has been laid upon the rock. That is much more
difficult, of course, than just finding some easy, flat place on which to
erect a building. But when the test comes, it is discovered to be worth
every effort.
There are three issues I would like us to consider in Jesus' words here.
The first is found in the phrase in both verses 24 and 26: "...everyone
who hears these words of mine...." Hearing is the first issue. The
second is found in the second phrase in verse 24: "...and puts them
into practice." And the third issue is the requirement that we will
be tested. What does it mean to face squarely that storms are going to come?
Hearing the words of Jesus
We live in a house that has a somewhat circular layout due to the way it
has been added onto and changed over the years. And it has always seemed
to me that noise gathers volume as it circulates around our house. Maybe
there will be a stereo playing in one bedroom, a television on in another
room, and the dishwasher running in the kitchen, and the din just seems
to build. You can be saying perfectly useful things to someone in conversation,
and their ears can work just fine, but very little communication takes place
unless you can deal with the noise.
Effective hearing has to take place in a setting where the competing noise
is done away with. One of the clear teachings of the Sermon on the Mount
is Jesus' insistence that we pay attention to what he says and stop listening
to the other voices that crowd in on our thoughts. He began with a series
of blessings: Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn,
blessed are the meek, and so on. Remember that Jesus said elsewhere that
hearing does not happen until you perceive what you've heard: "He who
has ears, let him hear." In order to hear those statements perceptively,
we need to stop the inner shouting of our own self-preservation: What is
this business about poverty, about meekness and mourning and persecution?
Everything in me resists wanting to hear that. I don't want such language
to penetrate very far. I want to protect myself, to not take seriously all
the risks that go with that.
The world in fact will threaten us. One of the Jews for Jesus members at
our early service talked about growing up in Moscow, attempting to celebrate
Rosh Hashanah as a fifteen-year-old, and being put in jail for it. Persecution
can be that overt, or it can be more subtle. People will cut us off, deny
us opportunities for advancement, misunderstand us, shut us out of relationships,
and isolate us. The world will threaten us, and the noise of the world's
threat can drown out the words of Jesus so that we don't hear them as well.
The arguments of those who would twist the Law also sound in our ears. They
take the firm, sharp, and incisive word of God and say, "Yes, it sounds
like it means that, but once you add all of the extenuating circumstances,
it changes the real point to be this in fact, which is much smaller, easier,
and less profound than the actual words declare." So these voices add
to the din, and we don't hear clearly what Jesus is saying anymore because
we prefer things easy to manage, the "ear-tickling," to use Paul's
phrase.
Applause can sometimes drown out the words of Jesus. That is another warning
of his. People will clap us on the back and give us acclaim for our godly
public behavior, whether it is giving alms, fasting, praying, or whatever.
The clamor to worship money, the anxious thoughts that wail in our thinking-have
we done enough, are we secure enough?-the hoarse whisper of judgmentalism,
and the noisy bustle of the crowds on the broad road all have the effect
of making us engage less perceptively with the words of Jesus.
He says that everyone who hears his words has taken the first step toward
building a house (a life) that is not going to be vulnerable in the storm.
But be very clear, hearing is only the first step, because the people who
are spoken of in verse 26 and those spoken of in verse 24 both take this
first step. Both of them hear, perhaps even perceptively. The second step
is what differentiates the group who will live securely from those who will
not.
Obeying what we hear
The second step is to act on what we hear. The group I imagine Jesus is
thinking of here are people who love the language of Scripture, Christian
conversation, Christian music, and even good Bible teaching. All the buttons
on their car radio are set to Christian stations. They have Christian tapes.
They have plaques on the wall with beautiful calligraphy declaring their
favorite verses of Scripture. They may have memorized Scripture. They have
libraries of Christian literature, with some volumes they have even read.
Their world is filled with Christian content. These are people who love
to hear-but they have a big disconnect when it comes to acting on what they
hear and obeying it. The words of Jesus have penetrated their minds, but
they haven't penetrated to the point of making any change in the way such
people live. These are the ones whose lives have been built on sand, whose
lives will be swept away when the hard times come.
Let me make the point clearly, though: Salvation is a gift. The Incarnation
that we celebrate at Christmas is pure grace. We can never deserve it, never
win our way toward it; nor can we fail sufficiently to have made ourselves
unworthy of it. Turning to God's grace and saying, "Thank you"
even at the last minute, with our last breath, is to experience salvation.
A quality life built on the rock over a lifetime is not required to be saved.
A relationship with Christ is all that is required. We are either children
of God through faith in Christ, or we are not children of God.
But at some point we will be confronted with illness, the loss of a job,
or violation done to our life and heart by someone we trust and love. Were
we to live on a different continent-or perhaps our own a short time from
now-we might easily face war, famine, political chaos all the terrible things
that such storms can do to human beings. So if you live a life that will
not crumble under pressure, and become a man or woman of substance who can
face those things and not have the house come down, it will be because you
have chosen to listen to and do what Jesus said. You have become strong
on the inside. You have become someone who has learned so thoroughly to
walk with Christ this day and the next day and the next, facing whatever
it is you have to face, that when the day comes that brings the storm that
day will be no different from the ones that preceded it. Jesus will be your
companion then because you have made a practice of hearing and obeying him,
and your life will have a foundation under it. You will be able to deal
with whatever tragedy life brings.
That is what the Lord is teaching us here. If we have received the gift
of his words and perceived what he said; if we understand that he loves
us and we are convinced that it is true, then the only reasonable response
is to say, "Thank you" by obeying what he said; by allowing it
to alter our convictions, our attitudes, and our actions-the way we live
our lives.
What are your options if you hear the truth of Jesus, the gospel, the promises
of God? One is to treat the truth with contempt. Jesus used the figure of
speech "throwing pearls before swine." Or you can receive the
truth with a phony enthusiasm. Have you ever expressed hypocritical enthusiasm
at Christmas about gifts that you really didn't want? You say, "Oh,
Aunt Fanny, you sent your fruitcake again this year. Thank you so much!"
when you have no interest in it at all. Another option is to have a genuine
but short-term enthusiasm; to be very grateful for and completely enthralled
emotionally with something for the moment. But a day or two or a week later
the memory of it fades, and nothing very substantial takes place in your
heart. Finally, the wise option when you hear the words of Jesus is to receive
the gift that is in that message and to enter a love relationship with him.
I was looking at a Calvin and Hobbs comic strip this week, which
illustrated hypocrisy. Every year, Calvin has the problem of having to be
good in December so Santa will bring him gifts. It's an enormous struggle
for this six-year-old wild man to be good. In this strip he tells his friend
Susie,
"Fortunately, I asked Santa for such great presents that
I can withstand any temptation. I'm being an absolute angel."
"What did you ask for?" asks Susie.
"A heat-seeking guided missile, he replies. "I figure five minutes
with one of those babies will make up for this whole rotten month!"
That is a hypocritical response to the gift-giver; it is manipulation, being
good only in the short term, building life on the truth in a phony fashion.
But what Jesus is talking about is something different. He is talking about
hearing the truth and obeying it because it matters to us, because our hearts
have been changed.
Being sure that storms will come
The third issue, beyond hearing and practicing what we hear, is being very
sure that there is going to be trauma. We cannot avoid a life that is going
to descend on us with pain and unexpected tragedy at times. It is going
to demand more of us than we have to give, surprise us, and threaten to
crush us.
Leslie and I were reading Friday's paper, and the front page told the story
of a prominent Stanford Medical School physician, whose wife we know slightly.
He had a young family. He was a brilliant, loving man with a marvelous professional
future. He was very athletic and trim; he worked out all the time. But he
dropped dead at fifty-one while running. His heart failed, his life was
forfeited and those who loved and counted on him faced sudden loss. There
is no way to protect ourselves, no way to have enough money, enough health,
or enough of anything to be sure that the storm won't come. The question
is, does our house have a foundation, or will it collapse? Will the depression,
darkness, and devastating sense of loss overwhelm us so there is nowhere
to turn, or is Jesus going to be with us because we have learned day in
and day out to be his companion in life?
Most people know the right thing to do in a lot of settings. Most of us
know that cholesterol is bad for us. We know that we're supposed to back
up the hard drive on our computers. We know that we should take time to
be with our kids when they're young. The question is, do we do anything
about it? Having been willing to hear with perception what Jesus said and
knowing the truth, will we make the tough choice to embrace it, live it,
and obey it as we ought?
The Sermon on the Mount begins in Matthew 5 verse 1 by saying that Jesus
sat down as a rabbi to teach, and his disciples came to hear him. But as
the teaching proceeded, others joined them and were listening in. The Sermon
on the Mount ends with the declaration of Jesus' authority. The crowd reacted
by saying, "This one speaks as no one else speaks. He doesn't quote
the ancient teachers or anybody else. He just tells us the thoughts of God
from the heart of God." But what we don't know about either the disciples
or those in the crowd is whether they believed any of it and it issued in
obedience for them, except for that handful of disciples whose lives we
can trace to the upper room after Jesus' death and resurrection.
We ourselves have been hearing some of what Jesus has said. We know what
matters to him. We have had an opportunity to be engaged with his mind,
to have him strip away our excuses. At this time of year-in the middle of
gift-giving, year-end evaluations, and resolutions for the year to come-let's
pick out just one of the things Jesus has taught us and find the courage
and conviction to say, "Lord, I hear your word, and I will trust you
for the strength to begin to do it." Engaging in the process of setting
a foundation under the lives we're living is worth attempting. I don't mean
that we should try to do everything all at once; we cannot go from immaturity
to maturity in one bound. But we can faithfully say, "Lord, let me
practice what I've heard in just one area today. Let me begin this obedience.
And I will trust you to open doors to further hearing and obedience to make
my life like Christ."
Let me ask you a few questions to close: Are you hiding something under
a bushel that ought to fill the room with its light? Are you pulling back
in a relationship? Are you failing in courage to speak up, to act differently,
to take a risk, to stand for Christ in a setting where it's going to be
hard and there's going to be a price to pay? Jesus said that light shouldn't
be hidden under bushels. It's not hard to understand what he meant.
Are you in the grip of lustful or angry thoughts and habits? Jesus said,
remember, that being overwhelmed in the interior of your mind with either
lust or anger is violent and deadly. Are you willing to take steps to obey
what you have heard him say in those things?
Is there an enemy you hate whom you could love? Is there a brother you could
stop judging? Are you anxious about life, or do you love money too much?
Is your spiritual life perfunctory and done for the crowd?
There are many things in just these three chapters that Jesus has made plain
to us. And the question we're left with is, will we do what he says? Will
we build a house on a foundation so that it will stand firm when the test
comes?
Catalog No. 4416
Matthew 7:24-29
Fourteenth Message
Steve Zeisler
December 18, 1994
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