The five sermons in this next series are going to be about building your spiritual house. We heard Jesus say in the Sermon on the Mount that we need to build it according to his instructions or it will not last. So these five weeks are geared toward showing us how to build this house so that it will pass inspection.
We’re going to look at the property this week, then we need a plan or blueprints, a foundation, building materials, skills, and tools, and finally, hard work and perseverance. Never mind Mike Holmes, Jesus is going to inspect this house, so let’s see what it takes.
There’s a term called “spiritual disciplines”, the first word sits OK with most people, it’s the second one that makes us cringe a little bit. But like the word surrender, there are different ways of looking at disciplines. In one way these words immediately bring to mind restriction and loss of freedom. Discipline even has a punishment connotation to it. But what I hope you see through this series is that these two words when applied to your spiritual life are the most freeing words there are.
Take an extremely talented musician. Sure they may have some natural talent, but to get to the point where they can play a solo at Carnegie Hall they had to surrender their lives to learning their craft, they had to have the discipline to practice consistently. Now they look totally free up there playing so perfectly with such apparent ease. How many of these people or world class athletes for that matter, complain about the dedication and practice that got them to where they are?
Now they would also say that they wanted it more than anything else, and therefore were willing to go through the practice sometimes daily for many, many years, sacrificing other activities to get there. The same is true of your Christianity. What are we told to hunger and thirst for? Righteousness, Godliness. The desire makes the disciplines tolerable, or even enjoyable.
Well to achieve this, God has given us grace, the Holy Spirit, and he has made us Holy in His eyes through the shed blood of his son, but he also gave us certain practices or disciplines to help us achieve greater godliness, and just like a slack practiser of music or athletics will never be great, neither will the Christian who is slack in their practice.
But practice without a goal is useless, just like repeating a bad golf swing won’t make you a better golfer. So what is the goal? For the musician it might be playing for a great metropolitan symphony, for the athlete it may be an Olympic Gold medal, what is it for the Christian?
I think the Bible makes it pretty clear that it is to be like Jesus and therefore have the impact that he had on the world. How many of us can say that in becoming a Christian, that was our ultimate goal, how many of us can say that now? Is that our intention?
Well, we’ve already covered that, either you are committed or your not, and if you are these next five weeks are going to look at the means to build this spiritual house, to become more Christ like. These are biblical practices that God’s people including Jesus have been doing for centuries, and if you look at the most godly people throughout history, including Christ himself, you will see that they were consistent in these disciplines. They were the cornerstones of their lives.
Has there ever been a spiritually mature Christian who didn’t get there through consistently applying the basic practices of Christianity in their lives? 1 Timothy 4:7 gives the true meaning of this word discipline in the Bible where it says, “Train, or exercise yourself for godliness”. Discipline in the Greek actually comes from the word for gymnasium.
So if we want to build a Godly house, these next five weeks are going to hopefully give us what we need to get started, or to continue if the building has stopped. Today we’re going to start with the property, is it ready for building on?
Before you can build anything you need to have a piece of property, and that property has to be such that you can build a house on it. Jesus just told us in the Sermon on the Mount that building on the right kind of property according to his instructions, is vitally important.
This reminds me of the parable of the sower where we see the different kinds of soil in Matthew 13. So much of Jesus teaching especially in Matthew was about being fruitful. These were very appropriate stories in that agrarian society and for us here in southern Manitoba we can relate well to them also. Though this parable is about planting, I think it can also be applied to building because it is talking about the underlying conditions needed.
So what kinds of properties are mentioned in our Scripture today?
I. Public Property (v. 4)
This one’s pretty obvious. You’re not going to start building a house on public property, here a path, where everyone can come and go any time they want. For us today I want to talk about this in terms of having someone else’s faith. Many Christians, especially those who grow up in Christian households have what may be called faith by default. They grew up knowing the Gospel, going to church, and getting baptized as soon as they knew what it meant.
There’s obviously nothing wrong with this, in fact it’s wonderful. But sometimes a person can grow up never really developing their own faith, they just kind of inherit their faith from their parents or youth worker by default. Most can tell you when they were baptised, but when asked to tell you when they were really converted or made their own decision to really follow Christ, their memory may be a little fuzzier.
Sometimes this can lead to a rather shallow faith which can be plucked away when tempted with the real world, or being forced to make tough decisions regarding their beliefs. They can sometimes easily be influenced by others when they leave their spiritual shelter.
There’s a lot of research that shows that if people don’t come to Christ by age 18, they are less likely to ever do so. But the same research also shows that many young people brought up in the church, leave the church in early adulthood. They get plucked away by the world and all the influences that are put in their path. No, we need to build on private property where we have control over who we allow on it, and prevent trespassing by unwanted influences. You have to have your own tested faith.
II. Rocky Property (vv 5-6)
Though Jesus tells us to build on the rock we also need to be careful because we still need a foundation, something to attach the house to. Here we see that there is not enough depth to provide a firm foundation, and it also may be very hard to make level.
It might be tempting on a rocky uneven property to just pour dirt on it to make it level. But this is dangerous. As it settles it can become very uneven. It’s far better, though much more expensive, to blast the rock out so that it becomes level but you still maintain the firm footings. I know we’re stretching it a bit here with this analogy when the parable is about planting, not building, but I think we can apply a principle here.
It relates to throwing up a house quickly when the property was not thoroughly examined and tested to see if it would withstand a house for a long time. We’ve all heard stories of subdivisions where houses are just popped up very quickly, only later to find that the property was not ideal.
People move in to these houses and very quickly notice lots of cracks in the walls, doors not closing, problems with drainage or foundation problems. These houses get thrown up quickly but they don’t last very long, certainly not without lots of work that could have been avoided if the property was better chosen. This is the person who quickly accepts the truth about Jesus but doesn’t really get it and falls away when things get tough.
III. Overgrown Property (v. 7)
All property needs to be cleared before you can start building. Even if you clear all the trees, if you want a decent yard you need to keep the weeds out and maintain the growth around your house. Again this kind of property shows a lack of attention to details and preparation.
Our house in Mission had a huge beautiful shade maple tree right in front of it. The leaves were like a foot wide and it covered our deck beautifully. The problem was that the roots were pushing up the driveway and sidewalk and getting very close to the foundation of the house.
Too many trees or plants around a house can cause problems like that, or problems with bugs, blocking out the sun, causing poor air circulation and so on. A good property has to be cleared, and the growth of unwanted plants and weeds must be monitored and maintained. This person starts building but does not prepare and maintain the property, and it becomes unliveable.
IV. Perfect Property (v. 8)
This is the lot that is level, has nice firm consistency for the foundation but also has a good layer of soil so that you can do some nice landscaping, put in a good foundation. If a property is carefully chosen, cleared well, levelled, and prepared with adequate soil over a nice firm footing, you can build easily, and have a home that lasts a long time with minimal maintenance.
So choosing or examining the property, preparing the property, and maintaining the property are all important for long term, low maintenance living.
Now in an ideal world, we could always build on perfect property, but the reality is that there are very few if any perfect lots to build on (none of us are perfect), most of them need preparation to begin building, and then maintenance while building and after the house is finished. Remember the whole point of this is to prepare the property for a foundation in accordance with our plan or blueprints.
So I want to focus on two aspects of preparing and maintaining the property, clearing it, and levelling it. By now obviously by property, I’m talking about our inner and outer selves, the house of our souls and God’s spirit.
1. Clearing = getting rid of what isn’t needed right now.
For our purposes today let’s look at what this practically means when we’re talking about building our spiritual lives. It means what Paul talks about in Romans 6. We have decided to build, we have accepted Christ’s saving grace, which is like Him purchasing the property, and Paul says, “What shall we say then? Are we going to continue in sin that grace may abound?” In essence, are we going to build on top of garbage?
You see Christ does the clearing in terms of clearing us to build on the property, he gives us the legal right to start building, we are good to go at the town office, but it’s up to us to do the work of actually clearing the land and building the house. Paul goes on to say we are no longer enslaved to sin so don’t let it reign in your mortal body, don’t obey it. In other words clear out the garbage from your property. I’m not saying you have to clean up your life before you can be saved, but it is part of the plan after you have been purchased.
I’ve seen some construction sites where they’re pulling out old stoves, bicycles, Lord knows what else as they clear the lot for building. Now that the lot has been purchased it’s your responsibility to clean it up, it is after all the temple of the Holy Spirit.
So we clear the property by striving with all our strength to remove all the sin from our lives. Just because it’s forgiven doesn’t mean we should keep it around. That includes the big trees and rocks, but it also includes the smaller weeds and thorns and rocks that may cause problems down the road if we don’t take care of them.
Sometimes we need to hire someone to help, someone with the right equipment for the job. How often do we struggle with our own sin and never tell any of our brothers and sisters about it, or ask them to help us. “Confess your sins to one another”, James says.
Why? So our brothers and sisters can pray for us and we can be healed/forgiven. Also so that we can bear each others burdens as Paul says to the Galatians, and keep us accountable as iron sharpens iron. Of course this is only possible if we are committed to not judging each other.
If all you have is a shovel, you may need someone with a backhoe to effectively clear your property, especially the heaviest stuff. Your greatest effort with others help is the most effective way to clear your lot.
2. Levelling = preventing future problems
So you’ve got all the junk out of your lot, and it’s amazing what you might find sometimes like I said, or it’s at least as clean as you can get it, now you’ve got to make sure it’s nice and level. Not just flat level but also sloped just right so that you don’t have drainage and foundation problems later on.
What does this mean in terms of our spiritual lives? Well, there are a few New Testament references to being sober minded and being stable (Eph 4:14, Jas 1:6-8, 1 Pet 5:8). I believe there are two main things to consider here. First we must be stable, level in our beliefs. We can’t jump from one belief to another, from one interpretation, or doctrine to another. We need to ground ourselves in the truth and hold fast to that truth. What do we believe, and do we really believe what we say we believe, and are we willing to stand firm on those beliefs?
Secondly, we have to beware of being blown all around by our emotions. It’s so easy isn’t it when we get our property and we’re so excited, we want to run ahead and get building, get doing something. My pastor when I became a believer had to reign me in, had to slow me down a little, not because he didn’t like my zeal, but because I was running ahead of myself. The property wasn’t prepared for me to go start chewing it up and building recklessly on it. I had hardly even looked at the blueprints.
So for us to build a strong spiritual house, we need to be zealous yes, but we also need to be level, stable in our beliefs and our emotions. It’s like pastor Calvin prayed at one of our Easter prayer meetings, the word without spirit makes you dry up, spirit without the word makes you blow up, but spirit and word make you grow up. Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean you stop thinking, God gave us that capability for a reason.
But here’s the final thing I want to say about the property, you being the property. It never really belongs to you. Sure we can say that after we buy a property and even build a house on that property that it’s ours, but if we’re honest we know that nothing we ever have on this earth is truly ours. An earthquake, flood, or tornado could come at any time and wipe it away, the economy could crash and the bank could take it away. You get the idea.
Well, the same is true of the property we build our spiritual house on. We never own it, God can take it away any time, in fact he did actually purchase it. If we accepted salvation then Jesus owns it, if we didn’t then Satan owns it. But no matter who the owner is, the property gets taken away some day. We can’t pass it on to our relatives.
In some ways this is a great gift because the property is worth more than the house (at least that’s true in BC where we used to live), yet Jesus let’s us build on it, let’s us use it for as long as we’re here. We can let it sit empty or we can build something on it. I think some people say when they come to the realization that it’s all God’s anyway that, “Why should I put the effort into spending my life building this spiritual house when it’s never mine anyway. Why not just wait until I get to live in the mansion in heaven?”
I admit that’s awfully tempting logic. Why work so hard at my spiritual life, when I’m already saved? There’s only one thing to say to this and it has to bypass our logical minds. That it is our love for God and people. Why do I want to be as Godly as possible, build and maintain this beautiful house with meticulous care? Because I love God so much for giving me the property, and I want to give it to others.
We have already talked about the vision of what this house is to be like in the Sermon on the Mount, and we have hopefully made the commitment to build. Now it’s up to us to use the means He has given us to build something on it for His glory, if it’s about us we won’t bother starting, or we won’t stick to it. God wants us to build a house on His property that will make others look and go wow, I want a house like that.
Now some of you have natural gifting and ability to build something from scratch and somehow make something that’s liveable, I don’t, I need a plan, I need blueprints, and even then it’s iffy. Some Christians seem on the outside to be able to manage without the blueprints, living a pretty good life, but God forbid if the inspector ever came and looked at what they’ve built. They’d probably have to tear it down and start over following the blueprints. So next week we’re going to look at the blueprints for building this house once the property is prepared. Remember this house is never finished.
Are you prepared, are you a property that is ready to build on? Do you need to get the backhoe in there and do some clearing, get the grader out and do some levelling? Is there too much sin and worldliness in your heart that there’s no way Jesus is going to give you a building permit yet? Yes if you have given your life to Christ, the property is purchased, but it still needs to be made ready for building. Where are you in that process?
