Build it on the Rock

In this sermon, we look at Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:24–27 and the difference between hearing truth and actually building life on it. Jesus makes it clear that maturity is not found in admiration, but in obedience. A life that stands is not built by listening alone, but by putting His words into practice. This sermon challenges us to move beyond knowing what Jesus said and begin living it where it matters most.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, when I was growing up, my dad would often do the same thing, and I remember these long talks we had. And sometimes we would be going over a subject and we'd get halfway through, and I'm like, Dad, we've talked about this so many times. But now as an adult, as I look back at those moments, I realized what he was doing. He was reinforcing that truth. It wasn't something new, it wasn't something I didn't already know, but he wanted me to know that this matters. He wanted me to know that you need to pay attention. You need to apply this to your life. This morning, as we dive into God's word, our lesson isn't one of those that you're gonna walk away this morning and say, Man, I've never thought about that before. But it's one of those lessons that we all need to hear over and over and over again. One of those lessons that we need to have in the forefront of our minds as we navigate this world and the different things that come our way from the storms to the peace and everything in between. Because we have to be strong in our foundation. If we want to grow in God's word, if we want to grow in stature, we have to be built on a solid foundation. We have to be built on the rock. That's our message this morning as we dive into God's Word. If you have your Bibles, I encourage you to open up to Matthew 7, verses 24 through 27 and stay there because we're gonna kind of focus on that text as we make our way through the sermon. So to begin, I want you to think about this. We all want a life that holds, don't we? In many ways, what we're seeking is peace. Whether that, whatever that looks like for each and every one of us, but the things that we're trying to acquire, the things that we're trying to build in our own world, oftentimes what we're seeking is peace. Another thing that we want is strength, because the reality is that storms come our way. We want some kind of strength to hold on to when this world is caving in, when hurt and pain come our way, when disease and illness hit our families. We want some kind of strength that will be there for us in those moments. There's not a single one of us that wake up in the morning and say, Man, I sure wish my life would collapse right now. No, we don't look at life that way because we want something different, because we all want a life that holds in these moments. What I want you to see this morning from our text is Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount, he ends with this warning. This warning is almost uncomfortable to us as Christians because he says you don't just have to hear it, you gotta live it out. This isn't something that you just process in your brain, but it's something that you have to obey, something you must follow. If you want a life that's gonna hold, if you want a strength that's gonna last, you have to put these things into practice. It's not just about knowing, but it's about living. It's about standing on the rock. Jesus tells us it's possible to hear the truth, to agree with it, to even admire the truth, and still build a life that cannot stand. You can know the truth all day long, but if you're not living it out when those tough times come, that strength may not be rooted in a place that's going to hold. And I think that's the tension here as we dive into this text this morning. Because the issue here is not whether these men in our text knew the words of Jesus, it's whether they applied them. Both of them heard the word. The issue was what they did once they heard those words. And so in this message this morning, Jesus is asking a very simple question. A question that every listener must answer. What kind of life are you building with the words of Christ? So let's look at the words this morning. Matthew 7, 24 through 27. It says, Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a man who built his house on the rock. It says, the rain came down, the stuff, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house. Yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. How do we know it? And the wise man's house went splat, right? I'm not gonna ask you to sing that song almost. I thought about it this morning. We did on Wednesday night, I think. Was it this Wednesday or one before? Recently on Wednesday night, we all sang that song and did all the hand motions. But there's a reason we learned that song as a child, because this truth is one that we have to apply. This truth is the words of Jesus reinforcing in our minds. You can't just hear it, you gotta live it. He says, He who hears and does these words of mine. The tension this morning is the danger is not ignorance, it's disobedience. And I think this is what makes this passage so important to us. Jesus is not contrasting a believer and an unbeliever in the obvious sense. He's not contrasting a man with a Bible and a man with no Bible. He's crashing, he's contrasting two people who hear. Two men, two houses, two foundations, one storm. But in that storm, there are two very different outcomes. One stands firm, the other goes splat. So why is that the case? Why do we find this to be true? The difference between them is not exposure to truth, the difference is their response to that truth. That means the danger in this text this morning is not just rebellion out there in the world. The danger is self-deception. Like we we believe we're heading in the right path. We're showing up to church, I'm reading my Bible, that's enough, right? But no, it's more than that. Being obedient to that word that you're reading, those practices that you learn, getting closer to him by doing what he says. You can still sit under preaching for years. You can know the songs, know the vocabulary, know the verses, know when to nod and say amen. And still let the words of Jesus never move from your ears to your habits. That's the real question we're exploring this morning. Are you putting these words into practice? And I think this is why this passage lands so hard at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. He just goes through all this truth. And at the end he says, I know you hear me. Are you doing it? Now, what are you going to do with what you just have you ever been out somewhere in a different state or different city? And it's especially true. I was thinking about a way to make this kind of resonate with us, and obviously the first thing I thought of was college football, right? So have you ever been out somewhere and you saw someone wearing your team's colors? Let's say, okay, you won't hear this much from me. Okay, so you're out and someone's wearing an Alabama shirt, and let's say you're all the way out in Utah or North Dakota, some random place, and you see a guy wearing an Alabama shirt, and you walk over to him and you say, Okay, I'll say it. You walk over to him and you say, Roll tide, right? Nobody clipped that out or anything, okay? That's not the important part. But you say those words to him, and the guy just looks at you and he's like, What are you talking about? What's your response? What? You don't know those words? Like, why are you even wearing that t-shirt? He said, Oh, I just thought it was a cool shirt. I picked it up at the thrift store. Or it was one of those that somebody handed down to me. I don't know what in the world this is. I'm just wearing it. I think sometimes we do that with our Christianity, don't we? We claim to be a Christian, we may put on the clothes, but when it comes to actually doing what we're saying, we're not putting it into practice. It's like throwing on a t-shirt and knowing nothing about the school that you're wearing. A few years ago, there was this picture that ran around the Auburn circles. It's probably been a decade or more ago, of Leonardo DiCaprio wearing an Auburn hat. And everybody got so excited. Whoa, Leonardo DiCaprio is an Auburn fan. This is awesome. Like he's he's got this, he's got our brand on his head. It's gonna be awesome. So some people, as they do on the message board, go sleuth mode and start looking around, trying to figure out why he's an Auburn fan. Like, where does this come from? Why is he wearing an Auburn hat? And as they began looking, they noticed oh, wait, here's a picture of him in a Notre Dame hat. Here's a picture of him in a Georgia hat. Oh, here's one in a South Carolina hat, USC hat. It's like, wait a second, he's not an Auburn fan. He was just wearing a random hat. And it we figured out, I say we, these people on the Auburn message board figure out Leonardo DiCaprio is not an Auburn fan. He just has this big collection of college hats that he likes to wear with whatever he's wearing that day. Again, I think that's the danger of us sometimes. What are you wearing today? Are we putting on our Christian hat? Are we putting on our Christian t-shirt? Or is it a reality in the decisions you're making? Is your life with Christ a reality in what you're doing each day? How you build your schedule, how you plan out your life? Is it just something that you mention? Maybe it's on your bio, on your social media page, Christian first. But does that resonate into every area of your life? That's the danger. That's the tension that we find. The danger is not ignorance to God's word, but it's found in disobedience. You can know the truth, you can put on the hat, you can wear the t-shirt. But if his word is not making a difference in the way you live each and every day, you're just as lost as the person that doesn't know. In the Christian circles and the academic field, they often call this functional atheism. When we say we believe, but the reality is we're not living out the things that we proclaim. Because isn't that what it sounds harsh, doesn't it? Functional atheism? That means I don't believe in God. Sure, I believe in him. But do you? Do you really believe in him if you're not doing the things that he asks? If you recognize he is Lord, if you say, I know you came and died on the cross for my sins, but that's not gonna make an impact on me, then you don't really believe what he said. You don't believe that he is who he says he is. Because if you truly believe, it changes the way you live. And that's what Jesus is saying here. If you want to survive the storm, you want to be standing at the end of the day, hear these words of mine, and put them into practice. Let's go to our first point. Using your outlines, wise people build their lives by doing the words of Jesus. Verse 24 in your text, everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Jesus calls the wise, he calls this man wise, not because he heard the words, but because he heard them and did. And I think that matters. In Scripture, wisdom is not mere knowledge, it's not just what you know. Wisdom is truth that's applied. Wisdom is truth embodied, it's a life brought into alignment with the will of God. It's impacting our world. So the wise builder is not the one who says, Hey, that was a great sermon. The wise builder is the one who orders his life around the authority of Jesus Christ. Who hears those words, does them. Notice the phrase, these words of mine, Jesus says. And I think that's a massive claim. Jesus places eternal weight on his own words. He doesn't say these helpful principles. And I think some teachers out there that want to discredit God, discredit Jesus as the Son of God, to say, well, he's just a great teacher. He's not just teaching moral lessons, he's teaching you the truth of God's word. He says, these words of mine, he's claiming an authority that no mere teacher has. We can't look at Jesus and say, oh, he was just a good dude. Because look at the claims that he made. In looking at him and the reality of who he was, we have to make a choice. And we talked about this before, but there are three conclusions we can take as we look at who Jesus was. You can look at him and say, He's a liar. All these things that he said, he must have been lying. You can say he was a lunatic, he was just crazy. He was a good guy, but he's just a little off in the brain. Or the only other logical conclusion that you can make about him is to say he is the Son of God as he claims to be. There's no looking at him and taking a neutral stance. Look at the words that he said, look at the life that he lived. You have to do something with that truth. It's not something we can pass over and just mark it up as a good teacher in history, as some like to do. But the rock in this passage is not generic spirituality. It's not even sincerity. I think sometimes we think, well, their mind was in the right place. It's not just about church attendance or solid footing of taking Jesus at his word. But this is bringing your life under his teaching. This is allowing the things that he says to change the way you live. The house stands because it has been founded on the rock. The emphasis here is not on the foundation, because a foundation is hidden, but it's decisive. Nobody praises the foundation itself, but everything rests on them. Probably no, I'm a realtor. Um, and this isn't an advertisement for that. However, if you are looking to buy or sell out, no, um I've walked into a lot of houses with people over the years. People that are looking for a new home, a new place to live. And that house is going to be so important. Like it's the foundation of our lives, oftentimes. It's our place of peace, it's our place of rest. It's our place to come home to. It's literally our home. You know, every time we walk into a house, what do you think people are looking at? Oh, this is a nice looking room. It's a nice big living room, open concept. Look at the granite countertops, look at the space we have. This is great square footage. The layout is perfect. We have one room on one side, so it's a split floor plan. The other bedrooms are on the other. This is perfect for what our family needs. And you know, when it comes to making a decision, is this the right house for us? When we're first entering into that process, how many people are really going underneath and looking at the foundation? Looking behind the walls and saying, is this one gonna hold up? Looking at the roof and saying, is this gonna last a while? And that's why every time I'm working with someone that's trying to buy a house, I'll always tell them, you always get an inspection. Always, always, that's the number one rule when you're buying a house. Always get a home inspection. Because what's gonna happen in that home inspection, someone that's looked at a lot of houses is gonna go in there and look at the plumbing. They're gonna go in there and look at the attic and the insulation. They're gonna take a close look at the roof. They're gonna look at the foundation, the bones of the house. Is this house gonna hold? And so before we're able to move on to the next step in buying this home, it's so important that you look at what lies underneath. Because the house can look great. I've looked in some houses before where everything looked great. This is the perfect house for us. And guess what? We did the inspection. And they looked under the house, some of the floor joists are rotted. Some of the walls look like they're about to fall apart if you just tap it just a little bit. And the the roof might cave in any moment. It looks great on the outside, it looks great when you're walking through. When you look at the bones of the house, and this thing's not gonna last. Because the foundation is not what it ought to be. As we look at what the word tells us, like your hat, your life can look nice on the outside. You can show up where you need to show up, you can say the right things. But when the storm comes, where's your foundation built? You can find peace, you can you can you can feel like you're getting things done. Maybe your schedule's so busy, maybe your home life is great, maybe you have a great relationship with your kids and your wife. But what happens when those things are gone? Where does your foundation stand? Are we building our life on these good things, or are we building our life on Jesus Christ? There's a difference. A strong life is not built on dramatic moments, but it's built in daily submission to Jesus. So, how do we get there? How do we build that foundation? Well, it's built by looking at Jesus and everything. It's about forgiving when your flesh wants revenge, it's about telling the truth when dishonesty would be easier, and maybe you think you'd get more out of it. It's about turning from lust instead of flirting with it. It's about praying even when nobody's watching. You want to grow closer to Jesus, you want to build that foundation. It's about repenting quickly when the Spirit convicts you. It's about ordering your choices by what Jesus says and not what our culture says. It may sound nice, but what does Jesus say about it? So wisdom is not hearing Jesus talk, wisdom is building your life on what Jesus actually says. Number two, and uh, we'll go faster up there. Foolish people run their lives by hearing Jesus without obeying him. And for this, we look at verse 26 in your text. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. This is where the text gets uncomfortable. The foolish man also hears the words. He hears the words of Jesus, he's not ignorant, he's not uninformed, he simply refuses to obey what he hears. That means foolishness in this text is not about low intelligence, but instead, it's about resisted obedience. He may have had a reason. Sometimes the sand is easier, it's quicker. Sand is more convenient. Sand lets you build now without the costly work of digging deep. What happens when we build our life on sand? Foolishness often looks efficient at first. Obedience, on the other hand, can feel slow. Obedience might feel costly. Repentance can be costly to us. Holiness can be inconvenient at times as we try to walk in this world. In today's culture, it can cost us jobs and relationships and friends. And truth often feels heavy when it convicts us, when it's bringing us to some uncomfortable conclusion that, hey, maybe I'm not living like I ought to live. The thing is, a shortcut foundation is still a shortcut foundation. We didn't have the proper floor joist, so we just we just use this other wood from the barn out back. It'll hold for a little while. It's just easier, right? It sounds ridiculous. How often? Do we do that in our own lives? It would be more challenging to do what God wants us to do, but my way seems more efficient. My way seems more fun. The thing that I'm choosing in this moment is better for me and my family. It may sound nice, it may look more efficient, but in the end, if we're not following God's word, it's disobedience, is what it comes down to. A shortcut foundation is still shortcut. So, what is sand? What is that to us today? It's delayed obedience, it's knowing the truth and just not doing it. I'll get to that later. It's about sand is about selective surrender. Like I'll follow this rule, I'll do what God wants me to do here, but I'm gonna still hold on to this secret sin. Nobody knows about that. It's not a big deal. Sand is emotional agreement without practical submission. We leave saying amen. I'm moved by that sermon. I'm moved by that Bible class or that discussion I had with my friend. They really convicted me today as I'm walking out the door, but then when we get back to the house, we forget everything we've heard and we don't put it in. It sounds nice, but if we're not doing it, what's the point? Sand is wanting Jesus as your Savior without bowing down to him as your Lord. Following Jesus is about surrender, it's about recognizing his ways better. Recognizing that he died on that cross for my sin. So I'm gonna live for him because he's the one that gave me life in the first place. Jesus does not say the foolish man built no house. Foolish man still built a house from the outside. Both houses may have looked impressive. It's a good possibility that the one built on the sand may have even looked nicer. The difference is what was underneath. And I think that is what makes this such a searching passage for us. Appearances can hide disaster for a little while. You can't just put lipstick on a pig and make it look bad. That's what we often try to do in our own lives. It's possible to look stable and still be structurally unsound. You can build a respectable public life on a collapsing private foundation. You can learn Christian language without developing Christian instincts and practices in your life. You can feel convicted again and again and again and mistake that for coming to God with repentance. There are truths many of us have heard for years, but still aren't obeying. That's what this practice, this is what Texas is pressing on us this morning. And I would say, pull in your toes before I say that, but I'm stepping on mine too. What is that one truth that you know? One that you recognize, but you just continue doing it. We all have them. We all have those places in our life that I encourage you this morning to think about what those are to make a change. Where have you been debating what Jesus has already made clear? Hearing Jesus without obeying Jesus is not neutrality, it's simple foolishness when it comes down to it. And that's what he says here in the text. Last point. Verse 25 and 27 are set then in our text. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house. And then then the rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat against that house. Rains came down and the floods came up. You know it. You know the story. The storm hits both houses. The storm comes. It's not a matter of if it's gonna come. The storm is going to come in your life. And if you're not in the middle of one, it's on the way. I don't know how many times I've said that, but it's true. It's one of those things we need to hear. You gotta be prepared. You gotta build on the foundation. Jesus does not say obedience keeps the storm from coming. Follow me, everything's gonna be perfect. That's not the words of Jesus. If you're hearing that from somebody else, they're telling you false truth. I promise you it's out there. You don't have to look hard to find it. He says obedience determines what happens when the storm comes. It's not a matter of if, but when and what are you gonna do with it. And I think that's crucial. Faithfulness is not storm avoidance, faithfulness is storm readiness. The same rain falls, the same floods rise, the same winds beat, but one house stands and one house falls. And I think sometimes we need the storms. Have you been there before? I was I kind of skirted in at the last minute this morning. I don't know if anybody. It was like a couple minutes before nine. Turns out I woke up early this morning, like six o'clock, like, and I was ahead of the game. You've been there before, like I'm I'm doing good, I'm ready, everything's going well. Then I started working on something else. I was like, I got plenty of time. Let me work on this for a little while, and then I'll jump back and take a shower, then head to the church building. I'll be there at 8 o'clock. You know, I got plenty of time. But things were going so good, I got distracted. Started working on something else. Next thing I look up and oh no, it's 8 40. I better jump in this shower and get onto the church building. I don't have any time left. So that moment things were so good I got distracted. I started looking at other things instead of focusing on what was most important. Been there before. Think sometimes the storms help us stay focused. Sometimes those things that are often awful in our lives are the very moments where we get the closest to God that we've ever been. And we look back on the terrible thing that happened. We don't want it to happen again. We say, man, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. Because it let me realize what my foundation is. It helped me remember that I'm built on the rock, or I need to start building on the rock because that house in the sand is gone. What are you building on this morning? The storm does not create the foundation, it simply reveals what that foundation is. Verse 27 says, And great was the fall of it. Jesus ends with ruin, not inconvenience. He doesn't say, and then they had a tough time for a few years. He says, No, it was a great fall. The fall is catastrophic. It's not a cracked wall, it's collapse. Because this closes the Sermon on the Mount, I think the warning reaches beyond hard seasons in life, all the way to final judgment. The point is not less than daily hardship, but it is more. A life built in disobedience will not stand before God. Not about just surviving the storms of this life, but it's where you're headed when this life is over. Can you stand before God with the way you're living right now? I'm not calling for perfection. That's not what Jesus is asking for. But he is asking for surrender. He is asking for a turn. That's what repentance is. We look at him and we say, I need you and I'm gonna change. And slowly, as we submit to him, the Spirit works on us through his word. And as we find obedience in it, we grow closer to him. That's the truth. A life built in disobedience will not stand before God. You can know the truth. Are you living it out? Again, it doesn't mean you're perfect because nobody is. There's not a single person in this room that's perfect. Now is the time to build. Not when the storms come, not when the marriage is already strained, not when the child is already wandering, not when the heart is already cold, not when the conscious is already calloused, but now, this moment, this morning, this week's obedience matters more than you think. Quiet obedience builds loud strength in the end. So in those daily moments, those little things, are you choosing God's way because they stack up in the end, and that's what builds your foundation. The storms of life and the judgment of God will reveal what your habits have been building. You do not prepare during the storm because at that moment you're too late. Nobody nails down the roof after the wind's already tearing through the house. And in the same way, you do not suddenly become obedient when everything starts collapsing. What holds in the storm is what you built before the storm. What are you building today? Ask yourself, what am I practicing right now? What kind of person am I becoming? What is my life resting on underneath the surface? Because stature grows when obedience becomes instinct instead of debate. And again, this text does not bear moralism. Jesus is not saying go fix yourself with extra effort. That's not the point this morning. He's saying something much deeper. He's saying, build on me by obeying my words. Because a life that stands is built by obeying Jesus Christ. And this raises a problem for every one of us because every one of us has built on sand in some way. So recognize the sand. Anyone growing up, and I'm sorry, anybody growing up, you watch those cartoons or TV shows, and somebody stands on quicksand and all of a sudden they're like falling under the sand and like, oh no! Did you grow up thinking, man, quicksand is gonna be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be? Like quicksand's never been an issue. But how do but but sand is a problem when we try to build on it? Maybe there is a gentle warning underneath all those cartoons that we grow up seeing. Because if you build your life on the sand, it's going to collapse. That's what Jesus is saying right here. And it's a truth he wants to get in your brain. Again, this is not a topic that you haven't heard before. You're not gonna walk away saying, wow, I've never thought about that before. But I hope you walk away saying, man, I need to take a closer look at what I'm doing every day. Because the truth is we all have sand in our lives. My question for you this morning is where is that sand in your life? Where do you need to make a change? Where do you need to build on the rock? Where is your foundation unsecure? We encourage you this morning to make a change. We encourage you to turn your life to God 100%. Maybe that change is a 180 from where you've been before. Maybe that means giving your life to Jesus. You've never made that choice before. We want you to do that this morning. Because all of us in this room have fallen short of God's glory. And the only way to find righteousness again is through the blood of Jesus. It's by submitting in Him, naming Him as our Lord and Savior, being buried in that watery grave of baptism and raised to walk a new life. If you've never made that choice, we want you to do that this morning before it's too late, before the storm comes. Or maybe in your life you do recognize that sand, and we all got it. Is it time to come forward and say, hey, I need some help in this? Is it time to come forward and say, Man, I gave my life to Christ, but I've been running the other direction. It's time to return to you. If you need to turn back to God, if you need the prayers of the church, if there's anything we can do for you this morning, we invite you, we implore you. Please come. As together we stand it.