Weather The Storm Series

The Sermon on the Mount 25

Weather the Storm

Mat 7:24-27

Guess what folks? We’re at the end of the Sermon on the Mount! Jesus originally preached this message to willing and anxious ears. They sat quietly through His sermon which even though it may have taken Him only an hour or two, we have been going through it, as of today, for 25 weeks. So, I hope that fact hasn’t ruined you on the topic, but that’s the nature of expositional preaching. He said it, and I’ve expounded on what He said, bit by bit in an effort to make it a little clearer and to encourage you to live it out in your own lives.

Now we’re at the end. He’s given us principles to live by. He’s told us that followers of His will display certain characteristics in their lives, and then He began wrapping it all up by making a call to all of us to live it by treating others as we would wish to be treated, to follow the narrow path toward His righteousness, watch out for false teachers who would lead us astray from that path, and now, to build our lives as a house on a solid foundation. A solid foundation. Bedrock.

You know, we have a very serious problem going on in this world today. In our “Christian” world, we’ve got a dropout problem. We’ve got dropout disciples, collapsing Christians, famishing church members. We’ve got a lot of people who should be standing up for Christ, who are instead folding up and putting up and shutting the door. They’ll come to church for a while, get baptized and are all “gung ho”, but then when something happens like trouble, persecution, heartache, or temptation, they just fall away. They’re Alka-Seltzer Christians; plop, plop, fiz, fiz, oh what a relief it is. But when the fiz fizzles, they’re gone. Jesus said they’re like the seed that was sown on the rocky ground. It grew up a bit, but because it had no root, when persecution or affliction came around, they fell away.

Now, just in case you’re thinking I’m talking about church members who, for whatever reason, haven’t been around for a while, I’m not. I’m talking about those who have fallen away. They were rocky ground believers who had no root. In today’s message we’ll see that they had no foundation. Or, they had the wrong foundation. No solid foundation.

Back in 2005, hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast. It was a category 5 hurricane that caused devastation all along the coastal states. One of the hardest hit areas was New Orleans. At about that time, my son Daniel was undergoing a hernia operation, and I was sitting in the hospital waiting room watching the effects of the storm on the TV news. While watching the devastation and thinking about the storm of life we were currently going through at that same time, a song came to me. It’s the same song you just heard me play and sing, titled Weather the Storm. What I was seeing on TV made me think of all the homes and lives that were affected, and I wondered what kind of a foundation they all had.

You see, this is what Jesus is talking about in His final appeal today. Not only are we to enter through the narrow gate and walk the narrow road, but we are to build our house, which is a symbolic way of saying build our lives on a firm foundation. Jesus said…

Mat 7:24-27 "Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: (25) and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. (26) "But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: (27) and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall."

The Lord is talking about building on a firm foundation, and friend, when something is going wrong in your life, if you’re losing hope, or you feel like the bottom is falling out, then you need to go back and examine your foundation. Because folks, there is a storm coming. There is always a storm coming. You simply can’t live this life and not be hit with a storm now and then. So, check your foundation. It needs to be solid. It needs to be on the rock, because I can guarantee you that there are 3 truths about this life. Those truths are that you are either just getting out of a storm, or you’re in the midst of a storm, or you’re getting ready to go into a storm.