INTRODUCTION
Sermonic Theme
Opening Statement: Form is meaning in the Bible. The way something is written or said indicates its meaning. I need you to help me make this point. If I say, “Once upon a time…” you expect a story. If I say, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today….” you expect a funeral or a wedding. If I say, “The party of the first part assigns to the party of the second part…” you expect a legal document or court record. If I say, “How do I love you? Let me count the ways…” you expect a poem. If I say, “Open your Bibles to John 3:16…” you expect a sermon. If I say, “Dear God in heaven, we come before you today…” you expect a prayer. If I say, “How can you tell that a blonde has been using a type-writer?” you expect a joke. (Answer: the whiteout all over the screen). Form is meaning. The form in which something is written is meant to prepare you to interpret what is coming up next. For example, if I begin with a poem and you expect a legal document, we’re going to miss each other. If I’m at a very formal wedding and I begin my wedding sermon with “How can you tell that a blonde has been using a typewriter” we’re going to miss each other, especially if the bride happens to be blonde!
Transition: There are many literary forms used in the Bible. There is poetry, proverb, legal document, dramatic narrative, hymn, sermon, theological treatise, personal letter, and apocalyptic vision. And sprinkled into all of these genres are figures of speech and word pictures that highlight what is being said.
Observation: We’re going to launch into a miniseries that deals with one of the unique forms that Jesus utilized in order to communicate with his audience and to prepare them for a major point that He wanted to make. I’m talking about Jesus’ use of parables or stories. Jesus was the master storyteller. For example, instead of launching into a 1-hour lecture on who my neighbor is, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. He’s all the time doing this in the Gospels.
Clarification: Some of the parables were true stories taken from daily life. They are told as fact in the present tense. We’ve seen seed growing, yeast at work in dough, children playing, sheep grazing, and we all know what it’s like to lose something. Jesus told true stories about these things. Some of the parables were story parables. These stories, which may or may not have actually happened (the historicity is not important), are meant to convey a significant truth. Jesus made up some of these stories and used them as illustrations. Then there are example stories. They give us examples to either follow or avoid. They focus on the character and conduct of the individual.
Observation: Perhaps what the parables show more than anything else is that Jesus was fully acquainted with human life in its multiple ways and means. He was knowledgeable in farming, sowing seeds, and reaping a harvest. Not only was he familiar with the workaday world of the farmer, the fisherman, the builder, and the merchant, but also he moved with equal ease among the managers of estates, the ministers of finance at a royal court, the judge in a court of law, the Pharisees and the tax collectors. His stories portray the lives of men, women, and children, the poor and rich, the outcast and the exalted. He knew about work and wages, about weddings and festive occasions as well as funerals and sickness. Jesus used an understood, familiar truth in order to teach an unfamiliar or unrealized lesson.
Notation: When we come to some of these stories, let’s not forget what we’ve already learned. We’re not looking at a legal document in which every word is carefully chosen. Neither are we looking at a joke or a poem. Remember, it’s a story. It’s meant to make an immediate impact and was to be enjoyed and re-experienced and thought about over time, not dissected and torn apart and analyzed word by word. And behind the story is a major point (not to the exclusion of sub points however), usually coming at the end of the story and is determined by the historical context.
Title: We’ll begin today by looking at The Two Builders – Two Foundations
Text: Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49 The Synoptic Gospels are inundated with His stories and his stories reveal His heart. They tell His autobiography and the autobiography of God.
Sermon
Opening Statement: In 1174 the Italian architect Bonnano Pisano (pç-zäʹnô) began work on what would become his most famous project: A separately standing eight-story bell tower for the Cathedral of the city of Pisa. The tower was to be eight-stories and 185-foot tall. There was just one "little" problem: builders quickly discovered that the soil was much softer than they had anticipated, and the foundation was far too shallow to adequately hold the structure! And sure enough, before long the whole structure had begun to tilt... and it continued to tilt... until finally the architect and the builders realized that nothing could be done to make the Leaning Tower of Pisa straight again. It took 176 years to build the Tower of Pisa and during that time many things were done to try and compensate for the "tilt." The foundation was shored up; the upper levels were even built at an angle to try to make the top of the tower look straight. Nothing worked. The tower has stood for over 800 years, but it leans 18 feet away from where it should be (10 degrees from the vertical, for all the engineers). One day, experts say, it will fall all because it wasn’t built on the right foundation.
Transition: Jesus told a story about the importance of a solid foundation in Matthew 7.
Background: Jesus had just finished giving the infamous Sermon on the Mount. He so desperately wanted His audience to go and do what He had just taught them because He wanted to implement His kingdom of righteousness on earth. So he tells a story for his conclusion. In this story, Jesus used three very common images: a house, a rock, and some sand.
Recitation: Matthew 7:24 “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house on rock. 7:25 The rain fell, the flood came, and the winds beat against that house, but it did not collapse because it had been founded on rock. 7:26 Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 7:27 The rain fell, the flood came, and the winds beat against that house, and it collapsed; it was utterly destroyed!” The Message: “These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit – but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock. But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.”
Luke 6:47 “Everyone who comes to me and listens to my words and puts them into practice—I will show you what he is like: 6:48 He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep, and laid the foundation on bedrock. When a flood came, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. 6:49 But the person who hears and does not put my words into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against that house, it collapsed immediately, and was utterly destroyed!”
The Story
Explanation: The people that Jesus was talking to often witnessed sudden downpours during the rainy season in ancient Palestine. Dry creek beds would turn quickly into violent streams in just a few moments of time after a cloudburst. According to Jesus’ story, when you combine these torrential rains and raging streams with mediocre-built housing that often included dried mud as a building material, and all of this sat on a shifting foundation such as sand, you have a disaster on your hands.
Illustration: In hilly WV where my brother lives, there is a small, gentle creek that goes in front of his home and he has to cross a bridge in order drive up his driveway. After returning from church one day, he just got inside his house, looked down the hill, and he said, “My bridge was gone.” That’s how quickly a wall of water with thousands of pounds of pressure can just wipe out anything in its path. Life has a way of invading our peaceful creeks; taking what we thought was a well-built life, and shattering it!
Clarification: Jesus is not teaching a parable about how to build our houses in protected areas. There are no storm-free zones! This is a parable about foundations, not avoiding the weather. When the pressure intensifies from all angels, the outcome is determined by the foundation we’re sitting on. Jesus helped the people to understand that God was not always going to be there to stop the rains, the flooding, and the tornadoes from invading our lives. Nevertheless, Jesus expected the people to be smart about life, to be careful about the priorities that they built their lives on, to be cautious about who they listened to and what philosophy of life they chose to live by. Because a wrong decision in these foundational areas would prove to be their undoing when the pressures and forces of life begin to mount.
Amplification: The idea of a foundation is so critical. One of the things that a lot of building contractors want to stay away from is digging out and pouring their own foundations. They would rather have a specialist come in and do it for them. Why? If you mess up the foundation, you’ve compromised the entire structure. Building your life on anything other than what Jesus taught is to “mess-up” the foundation. It is to allow fault lines and cracks to form at pressure points of life. Just like every solid building has a foundation, every life, every home, every marriage has a foundation on which it is built. What does your foundation consists of? That’s Jesus’ point.
The Application
There are two people in Jesus’ closing story. Both hear his words, but only one acts on them. A person who hears Jesus’ words and puts them into practice is like a wise builder who builds with the right materials in the right location at the right time. Those who choose other ways are sand builders. And there’s all different kinds of sand.
First there is the shifting sand of the pseudo-prophets, false preachers and teachers, the new enthusiasms and movements of signs and wonders.
Second, there is the shallow sand of TV. Young people, watching and learning about life from MTV is sand! Don’t build on that. Watching and listening to Jerry Springer is sand! Don’t build on that.
Then there is the quicksand of self-righteousness. Seeking an organized religion as your faith rather than the teachings of Jesus is sand. Don’t build on that. People have tried and pull up empty every time. Endeavoring to live a sinless life, as your ticket to heaven is sand. Don’t build on that. People like Martin Luther, the Great Reformer, nearly drove himself crazy trying to be the perfect Christian. Only when he flung himself on total dependence upon the righteousness that comes to us in Christ, did He find peace.
Instead, build your life on what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt.5-7). Just a summary reading through this sermon shows us how to build. Instead of murder and hate, build your life on forgiveness. Instead of revenge and getting even, build your life on reconciliation. Instead of being consumed by pornography and lust, build your life on respect and honoring. Instead of divorcing for non-Biblical reasons and splitting up the family, build your life on faithfulness and love. Instead of being evasive and deceptive, be forth telling with the truth. Instead of hating your enemies, build your life on prayer for them. Instead of just being outwardly religious, build your life on secret acts of kindness and worship. Instead of dedicating your entire life to the accumulation of personal wealth, build eternal values into the hearts of your children. Instead of worrying your way through life, build your life on a firm trust in the caring hand of God. Instead of always judging and being suspicious of others, build your relationships on loving acceptance. Instead of leveraging things to your favor and manipulating people to get what you want, build your life on a bended knee of seeking the Father’s Will when you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation or relationship.
The Conclusion
You are building today. Hearing and reading Jesus’ words are not enough. We must do them. You are laying a foundation with every decision you make. Will you choose to listen to Christ’s words? Even more importantly, will you choose to do them?
Two Illustrations
Sand - Think about Sand…Shifting…Sliding…Sinking
Ravi Zacharias writes, “A few weeks ago, I did a lectureship at Ohio State University. As I was being driven to the lecture, we passed the new Wexner Art Center. The driver said, "This is a new art building for the university. It is a fascinating building designed in the post-modernist view of reality." The building has no pattern. Staircases go nowhere. Pillars support nothing. The architect designed the building to reflect life. It went nowhere and was mindless and senseless. I turned to the man describing it and asked, "Did they do the same thing with the foundation?" He laughed. You can’t do that with a foundation. You can get away with the infrastructure. You can get away with random thoughts that sound good in defense of a world view that ultimately doesn’t make sense. Once you start tampering with the foundations, you begin to see the serious effects. Yet the foundations are in jeopardy; the foundations of our culture do not provide coherent sets of answers any more.”
Rock - Think about Rock …Stationary…Strong…Secure
Conclusion: To listen with no plan to act, to read with no interest to respond is to miss the whole point of Christ’s teaching on the mountain that day Divine truth is given not to satisfy idle curiosity, but to change lives, not to lull us to sleep in church, but to equip us for today and prepare us for eternity.
