Where Are You Building Your House Series

INTRODUCTION

• I want to speak to you today about something that is very important. What God’s word has to say to us today can help keep us from doing something that we will regret.

• How many of you here today have been involved in building a house?

• What is one thing that you do not want to do when you build the house or chose the location on which to build?

• You do not want to build your house on a weak foundation. Why?

• Because if you do it does not matter how expensive or what quality of materials you use on the rest of the house because if you have foundation problems, the whole house will have problems.

• I remember a house we looked at when we were moving to Centralia, Missouri. The house was a very pretty home and we were very interested in purchasing it, but then we heard the dreaded words, “This house has foundation problems.”

• I have seen many of the houses in the Panther Creek area outside of Chatham. How would you like to spend the money to put one of those houses up only to have the walls crack because the land the foundation was built upon was weak?

• Jesus is wrapping up the Sermon on the Mount. In this seventh chapter Jesus has spoken to us about the narrow and wide gate, the good and the bad tree and now Jesus is going to focus our attention on the wise and foolish builder.

• Jesus is going to use the illustration of the builder and his house as an example of our lives and what will happen to them depending on what we chose to build our lives upon.

• As you listen today, I want you to think about the foundation you are building your life upon. Will you be one of the houses that Jesus looks at and rejects because it had foundation problems? Today, let us look at the two builders Jesus speaks of. Which one are you?

SERMON

I. THE WISE BUILDER (V 24-25)

A. What makes a builder wise? (v24)

• Notice what Jesus says here. Let us read verse 24.

• Jesus tells us that the person who HEARS His words AND ACTS upon them can be compared to a wise builder.

• How many times have we heard people talk about what they are going to do, and then never do it?

• We look at what people’s intentions are. We think that if our intent is to do something, it is as good as doing it!

• Jesus wants people who not only hear the word, and applaud the word, but instead, he wants people who will do what the Word says.

• James speaks on the subject of being a “doer” of the word verses being a “hearer” of the word. Look at what James 1:22-25 says.

• James repeats the same idea in James 2:14-20

• ROMANS 2:13 say, “for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.”

• Listen and do! Knowledge only becomes relevant when it is translated into action.

• William Barclay, in his commentary on Matthew said, “There is little point in going to a doctor, unless we are prepared to do the things we hear him say to us. There is little point in going to an expert, unless we are prepared to act upon his advice. And yet there are thousands of people who listen to the teaching of Jesus Christ every Sunday, and who have a very good knowledge of what Jesus taught, and who yet make little or no deliberate attempt to put it into practice. If we are to be in any sense followers of Jesus we must hear and do.”

• Hearing and doing can be summed up with the word obedience!

• Jesus says that the wise builder is the one who builds his house upon the rock.

• The word for “rock” does not mean a stone or even a boulder, but a great outcropping of rock, a large expanse of bedrock. It is solid, stable, and unmovable. Sand, by contrast, is loose, unstable, and extremely movable. The land agents selling lots on the sand are the false prophets Jesus has just warned about (vv. 15-20).

• Building on the rock is equivalent to obeying God’s Word.

• What is the rock that we are to build upon if we are going to be a wise builder? It is the Word of God. If we are building our lives upon the Word of God, then we are also building our lives on the rock of Jesus.

• This thought fits right in with what Jesus has already told us in this sermon. Remember when He said that not all who call “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of God? That was going to happen to those who did not build their lives upon the Word of God.