Building A Legacy - Foundation Series

Title: Building the Right Foundation

Theme: To show that to build a Family Legacy we must start with the right foundation.

Text: Psalms 127:1, Matthew 7:24 – 27

Psalms 127:1 A Song of Ascents. Of Solomon. Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain.

Offering:

Proverbs 3:9-10 Honor the Lord with your possessions, And with the firstfruits of all your increase; (10) So your barns will be filled with plenty, And your vats will overflow with new wine.

Opening on Building on the Rock from Tony Evans: Building Foundations Message

The words in Matthew 7:24-27 conclude one of the greatest sermons ever preached. Jesus Christ brings to culmination the great Sermon on the Mount, and he does so with a poignant truth about two men. These two men raise the question, what kind of foundation are we building on? These two men can be seen in terms of a comparison, a contrast, leading us to a clear conclusion.

The two men shared the same vision

Note first of all the comparisons between these two men. These two men had the same vision. They both wanted to build a house. Their dreams were the same. Their longings were the same. Their desires were the same. What makes these two men alike is that their view of the future was on par. They both wanted to build a house.

Both men listened to divine truth

Not only did both have the same vision, they both went to the same seminary, because it says both men "heard these words of mine." Both men went to the same classroom and had the same professor. You don't get any better than this, because in this case, the written word was communicated by the living Word. Jesus himself was the professor

Both men faced the same storm

There's a third comparison. These men lived in the same neighborhood. I know what you're saying. You're thinking, I've read this story, and I don't see anything about the location of the houses. They lived in the same neighborhood because they were both affected by the same storm. The description of the storm is precisely the same in both cases, and affected both men. Both men were subject to the same storm, which meant they were in reasonable proximity to one another.

The two men possessed two different characters

Those comparisons in this story are paralleled by some contrasts, some things that made these men different from one another. First of all, these men possessed two different characters. Jesus calls the first man a wise man. He calls the second man a moron. The Greek word for "foolish" is where we get our word moron from. One is viewed as wise, a wise man who wants to build something, a wise man who gets spiritual training, and a wise man in the storm. The other man is a foolish man who wants to build something, a foolish man who exposes himself to divine truth, a foolish man in a storm. Wisdom, in Scripture, is the ability to take divine truth and apply it to life.

The fool in Scripture is not necessarily the person who lacks information. It is the person who does little or nothing with the information received.

The two men had different foundations

What contrast demonstrated the fundamental difference between these two men? It's all about foundations. It says that the wise man built his house upon the rock, and it says the foolish man built his house upon the sand. While both men have the same vision, while both men have the same dream, the same training, and the same storm, they did not have the same foundation. The undergirding and underpinning of their dreams, of their training, and of their trials were not the same. What's the difference between building on a foundation of rock and building on a foundation of sand? What were the two thinking that made one a fool and one a wise man? When Luke tells the story in Luke 6:48, it says the wise man dug deep. It costs to build on rock. You can build on sand fairly cheaply. To build on rock is hard work; to build on sand takes little time. It costs time and energy and effort and additional funds if you're going to go deep. You can be cursory if you want to stay on top of the shifting realities. You can be quick about it on sand; you can't go too fast on rock.

This difference between the two men is fundamentally rooted in the fact that the second man, the foolish man, was building a house for show. The man building his house on rock was building a house to last. The second man was not concerned about how long the house would be there. He just wanted to make sure for however long it was there people would want to drive by and look at it. It was for a public persona, not for depth.