Feeding Sheep S1E12 “Sermon on the Mount: Foundation is Everything”

We are continuing steady in Season 1 titled “Back to the Basics.” Episode 12, “Foundation is Everything” which will take us into the closing statement of Jesus in His first public sermon. 

The story has been preached many times, but in my preparation, I felt like the Lord told me to present this in a different way than I’ve ever heard it before. 

We all know we either build our life on Christ or we don’t. That trials come and we either stand or fall. We’ve heard it 1,000 times. 

However, the Lord took me into a preset day application that may not be so popular in society. But I’m not here to appease the position of people, and while I love people and want to be friends with everyone, I must be obedient. So if you agree, awesome, and if you don’t, I love you anyway, and I hope you’ll still stick around. 

The world around us fixated on the hot topic of deconstructing their faith and many have walked away from God, the church or both due to a crisis in their faith. 

I came today to present that both examples of the people in Jesus’ sermon heard the word. But only one received it and built upon it. Both had storms come, but only one stood firm.

When storms come, questions are going to rise. That is a normal human response. God is not scared of our questions, and faith most assuredly can survive even the toughest questions. 

Most people in their deconstruction stories are talking about a search for truth—but I dare to say it isn’t a search for the truth and validity of God that they find, because nothing and no uncertainty will ever diminish His existence or His position—but rather the truth of their foundations are revealed.

Like I said, today is gonna be a little touchy, maybe even controversial, but I hope you take a listen and gain something from this.

This will wrap up Season 1 for us. Please join us for the beginning of Season 2 beginning June 5!

I hope you enjoy this episode and will continue to follow along with us as we endeavor to walk this path together, and sit at the table of the Lord and feast together!

Please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments that you may have. We will do our best to answer in a timely manner either in writing or on another future episode! But we do want to hear from you and be able to interact with you. 

May God bless you! Can’t wait to see where we grow from here. It’s an honor to be able to speak into your lives, and I don’t take it for granted!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Good morning. Welcome back to Feeding Sheep Podcast. This is going to be episode 12, our last episode of season one, back to the basics. We are going to be finishing up the Sermon on the Mount today. Probably not in the way that I had planned, but I really feel the Lord pricking my heart to go in the direction that we're going to go to. So buckle up because this is going to be very transparent and very possibly very raw, a little bit upsetting maybe to some folks. You may agree, you may disagree. And either way, I love you, and I hope that at the end of this that you love me too, and that we can all uh get along and come closer to the Lord. Uh so without any further ado, let's finish up Matthew chapter 7. We're going to be in verses 24 through 29 to finish up the Sermon on the Mount, the first official public sermon by Jesus Christ recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. And it says this 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, 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. And 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. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and slammed against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall. And 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. So we see here that by the reaction of the crowd that it was not for a lack of hearing the word. They had heard the word, they had been taught the word the entirety of their known lives. But something was different about this particular man that they were coming in contact with. It said he taught as one who had authority. And what is so incredible to me is that it is one thing when people teach you the word, it's another thing when the word speaks his own word to you. Um, what authority is that? The authority of God that he had given to Christ as his son, um, the authority that he had, because the very things that he was teaching, the very things that he was saying, um, were actually the embodiment of who he is. John 1 tells us that in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only forgotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And so, in essence, this word that we hold in our hands, the word that was taught from general from Genesis all the way until Revelation, this word is the embody of Christ came and embodied the living word of God inside of himself. So when he spoke, it wasn't just like a normal person talking. He was talking because he was the word when it was spoken, when it was thought, when it was written, he was there. Um, he inspired it, he was it, he we we we in him we live and we move and we have our being. Without him, was not anything made that was made. Like literally, when God said, Let there be, and he spoke creation, it is Christ going forth out of the mouth of God through the power of words to create everything that was created. Like, and until you see that, uh, you don't really understand the magnitude of what it means for Christ to literally be standing in front of people and proclaiming his word. Um, it is, it is, it is amazing, and it is the difference, and you see it uh so many times in our lives. We see it, we see people who can quote the scripture, people who go to church, people who teach the scriptures even. Um, but their teaching, their words, their recitations, their sermons, they fall flat because the authority of the word is not living within them. Because there are people who have been founded on the rock, and there are people who have been founded on the sand. There are people who have received that word, and the authority of the word now lives on the inside of them because they've been born again, they've accepted the blood of Jesus that forgives and cleanses for the remission of their sins. They've been reconciled back to God and once receiving the blood through being born again, they also receive the Holy Spirit, which is dwelling on the inside of us. And so that when we speak, we're not speaking of ourselves, we're not speaking like we just read a book and we're giving a book report. We are speaking because we are tapping into the Spirit of God that lives on the inside of us, and He is revealing Himself to others around us through the words that are being spoken. And that's the difference why you can hear some people and it doesn't move you, and then other people it will shake you to your core because some people are operating in the authority that Christ has given, and some people are just regurgitating. Some people have heard his words and they've received them and it's become life to them. Some people have heard his words and they can just recite them, but they've never been received fully into their lives. And so it says both of these people, the the people whose houses were built upon, founded upon and built upon the rock, and the and the people whose houses were built upon the sand, it says both of them heard the words of God. Both of them had access to the to the recipe or the remedy, if you will allow me to put it loosely. Both of them had access, but only one, only one of them didn't didn't just hear it, but took it in and begin to practice the things that he or she or whoever this person is that he's talking about, whatever they had heard, they had received, and begin to live it out in their lives. And when we begin to take the word, and we're not just students of the word to know what it says, but to bring it into our lives and to then walk it out and live it out and wrestle with it and uh break and become and be molded and shaped into the likeness and the image of the word of Christ that we behold. We behold him. Okay, catch this with me over. I believe it's in Corinthians, it says that we are transferred into, or we are transformed rather, into what we behold from one glory to another glory. And many times we want to focus on it is, you know, we are sitting in our in our prayer closets and we are sitting before the Lord and we are beholding his face, and so then we're being transformed into the part of him that we see. But every time you open this Bible, every time you open this word, you are beholding the Lord. He is the word. So when you look into the Bible says this is the mirror of the word. When you look into this mirror, you begin to have to wrestle with the inconsistencies, not in this word, but the inconsistencies between you and what this word is saying. And so some people hear it and they, you know, they want community, they want relationships with other people, and so they find themselves in a group uh of faith, um, but they're not, they haven't received it. They they've received the relationships, they are good people, they are giving, they're loving, they're kind, but it's never truly sunk in. Um, to follow Christ is going to be to wrestle. He said, if any man is gonna follow me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me. Paul said, I die every day. I'm crucified every single day. Why? Because I want to come into alignment with this word. I don't want to be Paul. My name's always gonna be Paul. I'm always gonna be in this body that I'm in. But when I stand before the Lord, I don't want to stand before him as the man that I used to be. I want to stand before him as the man that he's called me to become. And so I want to put in the work and I want to put in the effort and I want to figure out why I am acting the way that I'm acting, what is causing me to sin against the Lord? What am I hanging on to that he's requiring of me to let go? And I don't know if you've noticed this or not. Um, but there, I mean, there are there are people who submit and surrender to the process and they dive in and they wrestle and they and they mortify the deeds of the flesh and they receive the word of God and they transform, and then there are people who have been the exact same that they were since 1900 when you first walked in the door. Good folks, no growth, no change, no difference. I didn't write the book. I'm just don't be mad because I'm pointing it out. You're already thinking it. Um, and I don't know that if you've if you've noticed or not, but in the world right now, one of the most popular things that is going on is deconstruction. Um, I just got on the platform of TikTok. I still don't know how to do it. I have to have some help with that and bless the Lord for the precious, wonderful lady that helps me do that. Um, but I almost hate to, I hardly ever get on there and scroll because every time I do, it's just someone else. I'm deconstructing, ex evangelical, ex this, ex that. I and and then sometimes I just I listen to their stories. And most of the time something tragic happens that causes them to begin to question. And in their questions, they start finding holes and gaps and things and la-da-da-da-da. And wonder, you know, is this, you know, is this my faith? Is this the faith that I chose, or is it someone else's faith? Or, you know, yada yada yada. You guys have probably heard more of the stories than even I have. But as I begin to prepare for this last, this last moment of feeding sheep season one, back to the basics, I wanted to tackle the topic of deconstruction. And I want to tell you that even the most faith-filled people have moments in their life where they question. Questions have come to me. Um, you know, in my life, there have been things that I didn't understand, uh, things that weren't fair, things that should have never been, but they were. And yes, this flesh is going to question. You're gonna question God, you're gonna question who he is. You're gonna let me let me tell you, Jesus isn't afraid of those things. But I will also tell you that the questions are not going to expose whether Jesus is a lie or the truth, because he's the truth, period. What the questions are gonna do is they're going to expose whether you have been built on the rock or you were built on the sand. Because what we see here is that rock people and sand people both hear the word. They either receive it into themselves or they don't and proceed to build. And once they have built, the rains come to both. The winds come to both and the and the water slams, the floods come, the rain comes, the floods come, the winds blow and slam against the house. Both of them. That is going to cause questions. And let me tell you, faith can survive questions. It can survive questions. Why? Because I'm a living testament to that I have questioned. God, was I taught right? Not because I think that bad people were teaching me, but just because when you get in the middle of a hurricane, when you're in the middle of a cat five storm, and you're in your house all by yourself, and you're hearing all the commotion going on outside, and you know that you're helpless and there's nothing that you can do, your brain's gonna go into overdrive. You're gonna have conversations with God that you never thought that you were going to have. Rock people are, and sand people are. Christ is not afraid of your questions. He is the answer. He's the answer. And we we we see people who tell these stories of of how something tragic happened and then they saw holes and they saw gaps and and all of these things. But really, it wasn't it wasn't gaps in the word. It's not gaps in Christ and who he is. It is an exposure of what the foundation truly is. Some people serve God off of muscle memory because this is what I've always done. This is what my mama said to do, this is what my grandma said to do. This is the way that we've always done it. Some people have dove into the word for themselves. Some people have pursued the Lord as he has pursued them. They have pursued him back. They have had encounters with the Lord, not emotional highs, not emotional experiences. Although our emotions are touched, I will never just belittle an encounter with the Lord as merely an emotional experience. He is the God that created me. He created my physical body, he's going to affect it. His spirit is going to affect my physical body if he made it. He's going to affect my spirit because he is spirit. He's and I worship him in spirit and in truth. He's going to be able to touch me in my sadness. He's going to be able to move me to tears. He's going to be able to stir up joy in me, get a laugh, get a smile. Godly sorrow, godly sorrow that leads me to repent and course correct and change and go towards him. Deconstruction is not, is, is not a battle for truth, but rather a an exposure of where the foundation truly laid. And I'm if you disagree, I love you, you're you are, you can totally disagree with me. You can call me small minded, you can call me ignorant, you can call me whatever that you want. But I have faced hard questions when death has come, when um when tragedy has struck, whenever um affairs have happened, whenever children are harmed, whenever all of these, like I I've come head on with all of these things. The rapture, the the way that people use and manipulate religion and they use Jesus' name to push their agenda, and they they they use the word of God to manipulate Christians into going with what they want them to do because they are counting on Christians, not being stewards of the word and not knowing what the scripture really says. I've come face to face with all of these same things, but yet I have found that the God that I encountered as a young, small girl is the same God who saw me through every question and gave me peace and letting me know that there are just things that I'll never understand. And I have to resolve myself to the fact that the answers do not belong to me. Though I would love to have them, the answers belong to God. And in Jeremiah, he says, Call upon me and I will show you great and mighty things which you do not know. But when he says to call on him, he is going to give us the information that he needs for us or desires for us to have. Some information is just too big. Some burden, some information creates burdens that are too much for the human, the human being that we know right now to be able to bear. Have you ever learned something and wish to God you had never found it out? Don't you think that the Lord knows everything that's going on, all of these big questions that you have that are like, God, if you don't answer them, then I'm not gonna serve you. That's that's absurd. That's absurd. We we go through life with our children, and there are just appropriate things that we as parents talk with our children about, and then there are things that are just not appropriate. There are things that our children should not know about until they are old enough and mature enough to handle them. And even as adults, there are things that some of us have walked through, some of us have lived through, some of us have learned and experienced that would to God we had never had to do it. Because the burden of that experience, the burden of that knowledge, created a weight that was crushing and debilitating. And there are some things that we find out that some people cannot come out from. And so the Lord reserves the right to keep some of the answers to himself. And when the day comes that we see him face to face, and whether you've deconstructed or whether you are in the faith, there will come a day, deconstructed or not, that you will stand before the Lord God Almighty. And on that day, you will know that he is who he said he is, and that he loved you the entire time. Don't be so stubborn, don't be so bullheaded that you have you, that you hold your right to be right, that you hold the Lord at hypothetical gunpoint to give you answers that belong to him. The world and the words and the frames of the world and everything that was created that belongs to him. It is copyrighted by him, the galaxies and the stars and the sun and the moon and and why things have been made the way they are, our DNA, like the it is copyrighted, it is patented in the heavens, it is born out of who he is. It belongs to him. And you're not gonna go up to someone who owns something and demand that they give it to you when you have no right to it. It's absurd. And I love you, I love you so much, and I don't mean for this to come across hateful or mean or whatever. I'm just I'm I am troubled by the amount of people that I see that are walking this path. And I'm I'm sincerely praying for the hearts of young people and old people, all of the people in between, all across this world, not just in America, not just in the panhandle of Florida, but all across this world who are walking through these times that Jesus said will come. Rains will come, rain will turn into flood because sometimes there's nowhere for the rain to go, so it just overflows into everything else. The winds are going to come, the swirl, the tornado, the the they're gonna slam against your house. But the questions are not, they're not moving him. No question of mine, no question of one who has deconstructed or whatever term they want to say at this point, no question from any human being is going to take God by surprise. It's not going to offend him, it's not going to move him or lessen his authority or his ability or his sovereignty or his omnipotence or his omniscience or his omnipresence. It none of those things. So why do we why do we reduce our faith to the smallness that it cannot withstand a question? That it cannot withstand a season of confusion, that it cannot withstand a season when doubts arise or when fear creeps in or depression or oppression. Friend, God is still God. Christ is still Christ. He still bled. He still died. He still rose again. He's still sitting at the right hand of the Father. He's still talking to God about you. Even in your mess, even in your even in your brokenness and you saying, I I don't claim, I don't claim the Lord anymore. I don't do any of these things. Even in that, he loves you. And there's breath in your body, and he's not done. And I'm believing and I'm praying and I'm asking the Lord to show up once again in your life, to show up and show himself mighty, even if it is in the smallest of things. Because the Lord is the same. We don't have the ability within ourselves to remain the same. We are constantly being transformed in this walk. After being born again, we are walking a walk of sanctification, which means that I am walking towards holiness. And the closer that I get to holiness does not mean I'm self-righteous. Holiness and self-righteousness cannot coincide together. Okay. Holiness is not about me being able to say, I'm so holy. Holiness is about me being able to walk up into the presence of God and remain. Come on, somebody. Holiness, as I the closer that I get to holiness, the more sure I am of who he is, because that relationship has been established along this walk. The more I transform into who he's called and created me to be, to what his word has established and said and spoken over my life and your life. See, just because you've never read it doesn't mean he wasn't speaking over you. Just because you never received it, doesn't mean it's not meant for you. But he will open up and he will reveal not only himself, but he will reveal where we are. Faith can withstand a storm. And the way that it will do that is because faith in Christ, not faith in a system, not faith in stories, not faith in tradition, faith in Christ will stand the test of time and it will withstand the storm. Storms are coming. It's going to rain on the just and the unjust. It is going to rain on those who have heard the word, whether they've received it or they have shunned it. Either way, rock people are getting the storm, sand people are getting the storm. Questions do not expose the Lord in a way that He is negative or a lie or not the truth. Our questions will ultimately bring about the holes that are in ourselves. And we're going to have to come to faith, face to face with face to face with some hard truths. Is that I walked for a long time thinking that I was founded upon a rock, but a storm came and I fell apart. Not because God's not God, but because somehow I went through the motions all these years and I was never founded on the rock. I lived, I lived my family's faith. I lived my community's faith, but I had never really encountered the Lord for myself. I wore the shirts. I did all of these things. The storm doesn't reveal God as untrue. The storm reveals the foundation that we are built upon. And if it is a sand foundation, if it is, if it is systems and this world and traditions, and this is the way we've always done it, if it's that, you'll fall apart. But blessed be the breaking. Blessed be the breaking, because had the house never fallen apart, you would have never known that you were on the wrong piece of ground. So we bless God in the breaking. We bless God in the mess. We bless him in the storm. We bless him in all of the craziness that we experience because it is it is merely only bringing us closer to him, closer to understanding where we truly are. Because until we understand where we truly are, we're never going to be able to get where we're supposed to be. You can't course correct if you don't know that there's a problem. You can't change lanes if you don't know you're driving in the wrong direction. So sometimes head-on collisions happen. Sometimes the storm is going to destroy everything, but even through it all, faith in Christ that is founded on Christ, not your favorite preacher or speaker or the best lady that you ever knew who prayed for you, da da da, all the things founded, rooted in Christ. Faith will survive the questions, the relationship will survive the questions, and he will be God at the end of it, and you will be better for it. And so we have seen here, I'm fixing a wrap up because I don't want to go too far over time, but we have seen these themes in the Sermon on the Mount that God wants us to be blessed. Jesus wants us to be blessed and to be a blessing in every situation, good and bad. He wants us to remember who we are in the world, that we are salt and we are light, that he already told us what our calling is in the very beginning, in the first message that he said, we can't forget who we are and who he's created us to be. He's taught us how to navigate our personal relationships, where we love God first and love people. How we serve the Lord in our giving, in our prayer, and in our fasting, and that our heart posture in all of these things matter more than we could even imagine. That we would keep ourselves clean and our eyes focused, and that we would hold each other accountable, but we wouldn't be self-righteous and correct everyone and forget to correct ourselves, that we wouldn't be anxious, that we would keep praying, that we would keep asking, that we would keep seeking and keep knocking, that we would be watchful and obedient, that we would be able to discern the lie and the truth, and that we would stay built upon his solid rock because everything else in this life will give way. It's only just a matter of time. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. Season two is going to start June the 5th, and I can't wait to see you back then for our next season of feeding sheep. I pray you have the best day you've ever had. And I pray that you do ask yourselves the hard questions and that you realize that the Lord is for you, He's not against you, that He has a plan for your life. And no matter how far you've deconstructed or broke it down or walked away, all you got to do is turn around and he'll you'll run right into him because he's been following you. He's been following you where you're going. And all you got to do is turn around. He came today to meet you where you are. I love you with the love of the Lord. I bless you in the name of Jesus. Thank you again for joining us and me and all of all of the people who have been following along. Uh, we are quite the squad. And so uh what a blessing it is to be one of his sheep. And so, anyway, I'll hush now and I'll talk to you later. God bless you. See you soon for season two, June the 5th. Subscribe and join us and share it with a friend. Okay. Bye.