“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. 26 “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.’ When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.”
Throughout this study I have emphasized to you that Jesus spent the greater part of it describing the Christian, and I have pointed out that being a Christian is not the result of mimicking a set of behaviors or following a set of rules, but that God makes the Christian and then by the work of His Holy Spirit makes the Christian what He wants him to be.
In the middle part of the sermon He stressed the sort of life that should be manifest in a true believer as pertains to his relationship to God and to other Christians and to the world.
Finally, He has issued some warnings saying, in essence, be very certain that you really are a Christian because there will be many, not few but many, who in the end will discover that they have been deceivers and self-deceived.
Does your life prove that you are a Christian? Not, does your life make you a Christian, but do your behaviors and your attitudes and your relationships demonstrate that you have the Christ-life in you?
In that day that you stand before His throne, will He declare that you have done the Father’s will, or will He shake His head and reveal to all that your profession was false and your works were as wood, hay and stubble and send you away as one would dispatch a trespasser?
Notice an interesting and vital point in these verses prior to today’s text.
Although we stress, and rightly so, that salvation is by grace through faith and not of works, Jesus seems to be saying that the most important thing on that great judgment day will be our fruit and whether we have done the Father’s will.
Now how do we reconcile this? Does this mean that our entrance to Heaven will be gained after all by our works?
Well the answer is still categorically, ‘no’. Because as you can see in verse 22 these ‘many’ that He is talking about will declare their works to Him yet they will still be rejected as strangers.
No, His point is that from the one who truly is Christ’s there will be Christ-like fruit and a manifest desire to do the Father’s will.
So the Christian will not be invited to enter in because he did the Father’s will and bore Godly fruit, but the fruit and obedience to the Father will be the evidence that he belongs. He will not stand before the judgment seat as a stranger, but as a child finally arriving at home.
TWO FOUNDATIONS
Jesus continues that thought in our text verses, drawing a sharp distinction between the true believer and the falsely religious.
I will repeat here that He is not talking about the unbeliever and the one who has no interest in the church or Godly things. He is talking about those in the church as an organization; some in the true spiritual church and many who are still worldly within and churchy without but still strangers to the Father, and according to the previous verses, they are false teachers, wolves and practitioners of lawlessness.
He uses this illustration now of two builders and two houses and two foundations and we need to observe some things about them.
First, although it is not expressed clearly in His words, we may envision two men with the same ideas and the same intent. We might even imagine that their houses are the exact same floor plan and so forth. They might be equally talented in the art of building and they may be starting with exactly the same materials and resources.
I say these things because in the course of the illustration the two fundamental differences we see at first are the types of foundation, and the Lord’s brief description of the two men. One was wise, one was foolish. The wise man built on rock, the foolish man built on sand.
Aside from those differences between these men and these foundations the only other thing that differs in the story is the result of the choices they made. We’ll talk about that later.
Well, there is one more difference but we’ll see that also.
SPIRITUAL FOUNDATIONS
As we come to make spiritual application of Jesus’ illustration, which we must always do if we are to be helped beyond just hearing a short story that any child can understand, we ask ‘what is the rock that the wise man built on?’
We only need to look at the text to see it. Jesus said these two men are ‘like’ something. They represent something to us beyond just a wise builder and a foolish builder of houses.
So we go back and see what evidences them as being like this or that and we see one more difference.
One did something and the other did not.
That made all the difference. One did something and the other did not do something. Because the one did something he was seen to be wise and he built a house that was able to withstand the wind and rains that beat against it.
Because the other did not do something he was seen to be foolish and he built a house that was not able to withstand the wind and rains that beat against it.
So what was this ‘thing’ that one did and the other did not?
Was it that one heard the words of Jesus and the other did not hear?
No. Verse 24 says ‘…everyone who hears…’ and verse 26 says ‘…everyone who hears…’ So they both heard; they just both didn’t ‘do’.
What did they hear? “These words of Mine”
So take note that it was not enough to hear the teaching of Jesus. It is never enough to hear the teaching of Jesus. There are very many in the church who hear the teaching of Jesus Sunday after Sunday, year after year, and not one word of it has ever changed one moment of their life.
Hmmm… what then is the problem? Well, one answer to that is found in the letter to the Hebrews.
“Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.”
Listen, church person. The words and the teachings of Jesus will not help you if you are only a pretender. If you are a self-deceived religious person who is in the church organization but not really a part of the church universal, you may read the Bible all day long, listen to radio sermons, watch the television preachers, read all the pamphlets and have a little ceramic loaf of bread on your kitchen table that is just chock full of little cards with scripture verses on them and none of it will profit you; none of it will save you; none of it will cause you to stand firm in the evil day.
God’s own Word says about itself that it will not help you if it is not united to faith within you. Faith is demonstrated in the obedience of belief.
The obedience of belief. Hear it? “…everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them.”
Your application of the words of Jesus here in the Sermon on the Mount to your every day life are an expression of faith; belief.
Your failure to apply the words of Jesus here in the Sermon on the Mount to your every day life is an expression of faithlessness; unbelief.
So the foundations from Jesus’ illustration are made of the mixture of His words and your faith. If you have the words only but not faith you are building on sand.
There may be nothing wrong at all with your house. That is, your doctrine may be sound insofar as your ability to expound upon what you have learned. Your practices may be in keeping with your denomination’s orthodoxy. Everything may appear to be just as it should. But if the foundation you have built on is sand then when the testings and trials come your house will crumble. Now I know that the typical application of this centers around the testings and trials of life that come against everyone. But just because of the context in which this is said it seems to me that what Jesus is really concerned about is the test of our Christianity that we will face before the judgment seat of Christ.
On the other hand if His words are mixed with faith in you, although your ‘house’ may not be any more well-built than the foolish man’s house, the tests of life and the judgment throne will only prove your foundation to be sound.
THESE WORDS OF MINE
Let’s be clearer on what Jesus meant when He said, “…these words of Mine…”
When He says ‘these words of Mine’ is that the same as other places where He has spoken of His words? Let’s look at just a few.
In John 5:24 Jesus said that anyone who hears His words and believes on the One who sent Him – that would be the Father – has eternal life.
The antithesis of that is found 13 verses later when He says to the unbelieving Pharisees that they did not have the word of the Father abiding in them because they did not believe the One the Father sent, meaning Jesus Himself.
In John 8 Jesus declares that if anyone keeps His word they will not taste of death. He uses this same phrase in subsequent discourses, in chapter 12, 14, 15 and 17, and they are all in reference to salvation coming out of believing what He said about Himself and the Father.
I think that here in the Sermon on the Mount He is being specific about something beyond believing for salvation. Remember, He’s projecting to the near future and talking about Christians. Now we tend to think in terms of the whole of the New Testament teachings; but the vast majority of these folks were hearing Him for the first time.
So when He says ‘…these words of Mine…” His hearers go back in their minds to the things they have just been hearing.
Love sacrificially. Do not judge with a condemning spirit. Practice your righteousness privately, for God’s approval rather than for man’s, which is hypocrisy. Your giving, your praying, your fasting, do all for God alone.
Lay up spiritual treasures in Heaven and do not seek the passing riches of this world. Let your religion be real and from a redeemed heart, not mechanical and lifeless.
All those things He has admonished the believer to exemplify in his life through the course of this sermon He is now saying, act on them.
Don’t just walk away saying, ‘Oh, those were nice words, Preacher’. ‘Oh Pastor, that was just such a blessing’. ‘Gee, he really gave us a lot to think about, didn’t he?’ ‘I dozed off for a while, but all in all it seemed like a pretty well-thought-out message.’
DO SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD, and you will be building the foundation of your spiritual life on solid rock.
Just let me toss this in for your consideration. There was no third guy. There was no third house. There was no middle-ground foundation.
In God’s economy you are either His or not. Saved or dead in trespasses and sins. You are either wise or foolish and your life is of the Spirit and of truth or you are a practitioner of lawlessness, a wolf, a false teacher.
Nothing He said here made provision for some mixture of the two.
I’ve heard people talk about ‘carnal Christians’. I’m not sure what that means. You are of the Spirit (saved) or you are of the flesh (unsaved), and since the word carnal comes from the Latin, ‘carn’ which means ‘flesh’, I just don’t think the term jives with Bible doctrine. According to the Bible you are carnal, or you are Christian; not some sort of hybrid of spirit and flesh.
Even so, your foundation is either rock solid or dangerously shifting sand. Nothing in between.
LOOK WHO’S TALKING
I want to spend the last moments of this study considering Who this is that has been talking.
Think about this. We have the entire New Testament. We have the history of the Christian church to learn from; the church fathers, the commentaries, the reference works, the books on systematic theology. We have the history of the Cross and the Resurrection to look back on to have the full revelation of Christ.
These people in this multitude listening on that day early in the earthly ministry of Jesus were just there to hear a man teach.
Now the teachers they were accustomed to, the scribes, the Rabbis, used to spend their days quoting the great teachers that had gone before. They expounded the words of Moses and read the prophets and were constantly saying, ‘It has been said’ and ‘according to Rabbi so-and-so’.
Suddenly here is this young man saying things like ‘you have heard it was said, but I say to you’, and ‘everyone who hears these words of Mine’.
Friends, there has been no one else able to use references like that to himself that was not an egotistical maniac, crazy, or an out and out charlatan.
Jesus never had to quote another to support His point. When He did quote the Law or one of the Prophets it was to expose the error and negligence of the religious leaders who should have known without a reminder. And since He was the inspirer of the scriptures when He quoted them He was in essence only repeating Himself anyway.
He never had to defer to the wisdom and great learning of some teacher gone before Him.
His every word was spoken with the authority of one above all other authority and never was there a word spoken from Him that allowed the hearer room for doubt that what He was saying was absolute, dependable, unfailing, unavoidable truth.
There is a statement made by C.S. Lewis in one of the essays he read on British radio during the late 1940’s that is recorded in the book Mere Christianity and has been used many times. Most of you have heard it more than once but the reason you have heard it is because it is so powerful and enduring. I thought of it as I was meditating on this sermon and I want to share it with you once more.
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
I think it often escapes our casual thinking, when we are reading or hearing the words of Jesus, that this is not just the greatest Preacher or the best Teacher who ever lived; but the God of creation, the great I AM, the Alpha and the Omega.
Peter made a simple confession in John 6:68 that may well be the most profound truth we could commit to memory and conjure up daily just to set us back on track, when he said “You have words of eternal life”.
When Lewis finished his statement saying , “…He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to”, he hit on the very point we need to be mindful of as we draw this study to a conclusion.
These words of Jesus are not suggestions and they are not just thrown out for us to consider and take or leave as we see fit.
They are words of eternal life and they are the most significant words ever spoken simply because of who spoke them and the authority that is His as Lord and God of all.
What is your response, Christian? What will be your life’s response to these things you have studied and contemplated over these past weeks?
You’ve sat on this hillside listening to this Man from Galilee and He has not been vague or uncertain. He has told you truth and He has told you what you must do with it; what will you now do?
Are you amazed at His teaching and His authoritative delivery? Well I would remind you that these who were hearing Him that day were amazed also. But three years later they crucified Him.
It is not enough to be amazed. It is not enough to be impressed. It is not even enough to nod in agreement and declare that His words are true and good.
His words must be united with faith within the hearer so that the benefit, the product, the result, will be Godly fruit, obedience to the Father’s will, a life of acting on them in the leading of His Spirit.
Remember the two men and the two foundations. There was one final difference in that story and it was the result. The endurance of one and the utter collapse of the other. There was no third house and no middle result.
When you stand for the final test before the Throne either you will pass or you will fail. You will hear praise from the Father or you will be utterly rejected. There will be no advocate to go between unless Christ is your Advocate now. There will be no debate, no rebuttal, no closing arguments, no opportunity then for a change of heart.
You are either one of those Jesus described in His Sermon on the Mount or you are one of those He warned about near the end and warned against being.
You have heard His words; will you act upon them?
Let everyone examine himself. (2 Corinthians 13:5)
