What is Our Foundation?

A strong spiritual foundation built on Christ's teachings is essential for navigating life's challenges. This foundation rests on loving God completely and loving others authentically. Like a lighthouse withstanding powerful waves, faith grounded in Christ provides unshakeable hope, lasting peace, and enduring purpose. Building this foundation requires consistent Bible study, prayer, community engagement, and active service to others. When we choose to build our lives on these eternal truths rather than temporary pursuits, we develop resilience that withstands life's storms.

Transcript

Well, this morning we're going to be talking about foundations, and I am incredibly lucky that I have a Ms. Amanda, because over the last couple days, I looked for our game of Jenga, but I could not find it. And so she brought her version of Jenga. You guys, you've seen this game, right? Has everybody played Jenga before?

What is the object of Jenga?

To keep it standing, to pull out the pieces without. So the idea is that you take this preconceived tower and it's three bricks facing opposite directions, like at a perpendicular to one another, and you stack them all up and you pull one out from the lower part. And you want to build the tower as tall as you can build it, and to try to keep it standing. The only way you can do this is if the foundation of this Jenga tower is solid. When I play Jenga, I like to pull from the highest area possible and stack it up right?

Like, the best way to build this tower taller is to take something from, you know, way up here and you pull the little piece out. Oh, I guess you're not supposed to touch it with two hands, right? I am a cheater. Oh, that's already tough. You know, you can.

You can build up a tower pretty easily with Jenga, but the problem is if you start pulling from down here, you're going to end up with a problem. So if you start pulling away the foundation, your tower is going to fall, right? The same is true for our lives. When you think of the word foundation, what are some of the things you think of? Have you ever lived in a house with a crappy foundation?

Anybody? It's really fun when you try to close your doors and the doors don't close, or you try to open your doors and you're now stuck in the room. Right. You ever experienced that before? I used to live in a house when I lived in Oklahoma City and had just graduated from college.

I lived. Lived in a great house built in 1927 that had a basement, and it didn't flood. Nicole, if you're watching this online, you can build basements in Oklahoma, and it's fine. So, all right, so we lived in this great house, but there was not one single door that would shut. Right.

Like, I remember having to pull doors off hinges and then trim them at the bottom or sand them along the edges so that they weren't, you know, jammed. What are some other things you think about when you think about foundations?

I think of the Temple Mount in Israel, where the whole temple that Solomon built was destroyed, but the foundations of that temple are still there thousands of years later. Anybody else? Oh, foundational traditions in your family. That's good. So not just a physical thing, but like an emotional or kind of connectional thing.

That's good learning. To have a good education, you have to know the basics, the foundation, the reading, writing, arithmetic. Right. The three Rs. I didn't get that till I was, like, way too old.

Foundations matter because they bear the weight of everything that's built upon them. A bad foundation leads to instability, both in homes, in lives, in our spiritual life. Friends, one of the most important things about life is having a strong foundation in every aspect of who we are. As we talked a little bit about last year, the same about foundations that we find in our lives are true in houses. A home with a broken foundation has cracks, has misaligned doors.

It can lower property value. One time, when I was growing up, the house that we lived in, my dad poured concrete in the bathroom, but there was not a whole lot of concrete throughout the rest of the home. And I guess after time, that concrete began to settle. And we got back from New York in the middle of a really cold snap, and it was frozen. And this foundation had settled so much that it broke a pipe in the middle of the wall and flooded our driveway.

And my sister and I, when she was in town just a couple weeks ago, were kind of reminiscing about the time we had to throw ropes into the house to drag each other from the car and unloading it out, you know, out of the driveway, into the house. It was pretty crazy. Foundations are important. Can you repair a broken foundation? Yes.

Is it easy? No. It complicates everything when you have to repair a foundation. Perhaps the most famous example of A broken foundation failure is the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We've all seen this, right?

If you notice Harry's shaking his head, you haven't seen it. You've never seen the. Well, you haven't been there, but surely you've seen it. Foundational education, friends. Alright, so this is a Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I think we all recognize it because it sits on a weird slope. The construction for this building began in the year 1173. That's pretty old. And the foundation it was built in was laid in soft soil composed of clay, sand and shells. The tower began to lean almost immediately, a problem that was only worsened as construction continued.

Although today we've got modern engineering that have kind of of steadied the structure. It's still sinking. You can see that at the very top they tried to correct it. Well, it's leaning a little. Let's make it a little straighter at the top.

What is the foundation of a tree? The roots. Right. What happens when the roots of a tree are shallow or weak?

Yeah, we have all seen limbs through roofs here in Oklahoma, right. When some of these terrible wind storms come through. Do you remember the Father's Day storm of not 2024 but 2023? It was just a straight line wind, there was no tornado, but 80 to 100 mile hour winds blew trees down and we lost power for a week.

The deeper the roots go, the stronger the tree is and the same is true in our lives. The deeper our spiritual roots go in Jesus and in the Gospel, the stronger we are, the more it will take to damage our faith and our hope in Christ. I think too often the foundation of our lives are things that shift and sway us. I don't think that we build our foundational faith in Jesus. I think we sometimes build our foundational faith in.

Well, a Sunday school teacher taught me this one thing one time or I listen to this really great podcast where this pastor from wherever told me about this. Or I build my foundations on my finances or my relationships or whatever. Fill in the blank.

Far too often we build our foundation on things that don't make sense.

First Peter 2, 4, 5 says this as you come to him, the living stone, rejected by humans, but chosen by God and precious to him. You also like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

This is the good news of the Gospel of Jesus. When we say yes to Jesus, when we put our trust in the foundation of Christ, we are being built into something that is bigger and better than we could be on our own.

We are being built like living stones into a holy priesthood. Now, I know some of you in this room are thinking, man, that just doesn't sound fun.

Listen, being a holy priest is really fun. It's fun. I promise. Psalms 62, 5, 8 says this. Yes, my soul, find rest in God.

My hope comes from Him. Truly, he is my rock and my salvation. He is my fortress. I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor depend on God.

He is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, you people. Pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. The scripture is a beautiful reminder that God is our refuge. He is trustworthy to build our foundations on.

We can trust God.

You guys have seen lighthouses, right? We've all seen lighthouses. Have you seen some of the things that lighthouses are able to endure?

My house would not sustain that kind of damage. Right? This is a lighthouse that is. It's called Felgueirs Lighthouse in Porto, Portugal. And it was built in 1886.

Could you imagine enduring and withstanding that kind of pressure being built in 1887? My house was built, like five years ago. Nope, it isn't going to sustain that.

Check this out. This is 160ft tall. And that wave is 100% like, at least. And there's some pictures, like a whole series of pictures of this particular lighthouse in a storm. And there are waves that are just up over the whole roof.

This is on the French island of Ouessant, off the coast of Brittany. It's 160ft tall, and the waves completely engulfed it at one point. I didn't want to show you all the photos. If you want to go see them, you can look up lighthouses. It's beautiful.

This is actually an American lighthouse. This is a small lighthouse. It's at Tillamook Rock, and this is off the coast of Oregon.

Lighthouses stand firm even when they're built on rocky cliffs because their foundation is set deep and on something that lasts. In the same way, our lives need a foundation that can withstand life's tempests. A shaky foundation leads to a shaky life. But a solid foundation provides unshakable hope for us. And to have the strongest faith possible, we have to build on Jesus teachings.

Luke 6, 43, 49 says this. And this comes from the Sermon on the Plain. He says, no good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes.

Or grapes from briars. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart. And an evil man brings out evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. His heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

Can I get an amen? Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say. As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like. They're like a man building a house who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house, but it could not shake it.

It because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.

Jesus calls us to act on his words. Building a spiritual foundation that withstands life storms. And Jesus core teachings are pretty clear, right? Love God. Jesus says that repeatedly.

Love God. Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. This is one of Jesus most basic teachings. And doing these things doesn't mean we just do them whenever we feel like it. Today is a good day.

I love God. Today's an awful day. I don't even think about God. Right? That's not how this works.

God shouldn't be the last thing we remember before we go to bed. Oh, wait, wait, wait. I gotta pray. Okay. I haven't done it all day, but now I'm gonna catch up.

We have to love God with every piece of who we are.

We have to love God in every moment of our lives. In the good and in the bad. Psalm 25:28 says this. My tongue will proclaim your righteousness, your praises all day long. Anybody do that yesterday?

Just all day praising God. Friday. Anybody do that on Friday? Right.

I think we get wrapped up in so many things that we forget that our foundation is on God. Some of us, we might really truly believe that our foundation is God. But we spend so little time worshiping God, reading about God, understanding God, diving into God's word, that God is our foundation in name only.

If you think about it, there's great stories in scripture where even from the depths of despair, people praise God. Do you remember that every time something awful happened to Job in the book of Job, Job's response was that he praised God anyway.

That's like one of the hardest things to do the other part of Jesus mission the other part of Jesus teachings was that not only do we love God with everything that we have, but we also have to love our neighbor as ourselves. Every moment of Jesus earthly ministry proved that we are to love others. Jesus never stopped loving the people around him, even when. Even when he was questioned about who neighbors are. Right?

Jesus pointed out in the story of the Good Samaritan that even our enemies are our neighbors. Even those that we don't like, even those that we don't care for, even those who are different color of skin or maybe believe differently. Those people are our neighbors and we have to love them too, love God and love everyone else.

And I know that that's not super in depth, it's kind of a distillation of the gospel. But these things are some of the most important teachings of JEs and we often forget that those things are what the Christian faith is about. It's not about the prosperity gospel. If I just believe in Jesus hard enough, I'm going to have all my needs met. I'm going to have a million dollars by the time I retire.

I'm going to go to heaven and not have to worry about anything else. Hallelujah. That's not what faith is, but in America, that's what it's become.

Even James, the brother of Jesus, who became the leader in the church of Jerusalem after Christ ascended into heaven, he reminded the church that being a follower of Jesus is more just being able to spout off a scripture. It's more than just posting religious memes on your Facebook profile. Faith is bigger than those things. In James, chapter one, verse 22, he says, do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

I fully believe that many people who think that they're Christians, Christians simply aren't because they think that all that following Jesus entails is saying a quick prayer of repentance and then their salvation is complete. I gave my life to Jesus when I was 8. It doesn't matter that I've never been to church since then. It doesn't matter that I'm not tithe or not given of God my talents or my gifts. Doesn't matter about any of those things.

I repented, therefore I'm saved. We have got to get out of that mindset.

The implication here is that faith, faith has to be built, right? When we say the phrase faith is built on the foundation of the gospel, it implies that faith has to be built. It doesn't just suddenly appear.

Faith is built in the seasons of our lives, the foundation that we lay by reading God's word, hearing God's word revealed to us a little bit deeper through Sunday school, through congregational worship, all of that kind of sets the tone for what our faith will look like when it's done right. We have to do what the Word says, and we can't do what the Word says if we don't know what the Word says.

Too many Christians today are deceiving themselves. And I'm not the one saying it. James is saying it. Don't deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

Hypothetical. What do you think the world would look like if everybody's foundation was built on Jesus?

Way different, right? We guys, in the world that we live in, we have been so divided over the last, I don't know, decade or so that we can't even be in the room with people who disagree with us anymore. We intentionally hurt and attack and berate other people who believe differently or think differently. That's not what we're called to be.

The world would look vastly different if we really, truly built our foundation on Jesus. Think about it this way. Did any of you guys ever build a bridge when you were, like, in middle school? You guys haven't done that with toothpicks, right? Well, think about that.

You upscaled that. You did it, okay. How'd you do?

A hundred pounds.

Okay, I want to see that, because that's incredible. Yeah. So somebody else. Who sucks? Anybody else?

Mine was, like, 13 pounds or something lame when I was in high school. But, you know, toothpicks were made way differently back then. They were just not the quality toothpicks that you guys have this day, you know? So when you scale that up, right? When you think about craftsmen who.

Sorry, I spit all over the place. When you think about craftsmen who build bridges, every single bolt, every beam is essential to its stability. There's no wasting of resources by adding a bunch of unnecessary stuff. Now, let's be clear. You can make bridges beautiful, like, after the structure is done.

But likewise, you can't make shortcuts when you're building something that people's lives are dependent upon. Similarly, every single teaching of Jesus is vital for strong spiritual foundations, right? We can't just focus on the teachings of Jesus that we really like that are easy for us and say, well, I believe in Jesus because I do this. These three things that Jesus did while neglecting the hundreds of other things that Jesus tells us that we have to do, too. We have to remember all of Jesus teachings.

We can't just say, well, I truly believe that we should let the children come unto Jesus, for such is the kingdom of heaven, while forgetting that we have to turn the other cheek. We can't just say, well, I love my enemy. But then we forget to give to God that tithing is important. We can't just say, well, God tells us not to worry. Jesus tells us that the birds have everything they need, so I don't ever have to worry about anything.

Meanwhile, we're not wrapping our cloaks around our waist to wash the feet of those who need it.

We can't forget any of these important teachings of Jesus. Otherwise our faith is incomplete. Our foundations are not full.

I think we all know that faith built on the rock of the Gospel stands firm while the faith that's built on other things and the sand of life crumbles.

But I promise you, when we build our faith on a solid foundation of Jesus, we can have hope even in the midst of life's storms. When we build our lives on the foundation of the Gospel, we have hope and we have assurance. When loved ones pass away or they get these awful diagnoses of cancer or awful things that are happening, we can still have a hope for them that this life is not the end. There's something bigger and something more. When our jobs are lost, we can find hope in the fact that God might be leading us to something different, something even better.

When our relationships fail, we can trust that God is shaping us for something new and different.

Matthew, chapter 16, verses 13 through 20 says this. When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say the Son of Man is? They replied, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. But what about you? He asked.

Who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Jesus replied, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Every time I read this, I get astounded in the fact that Jesus asks two very different questions. Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

What is everybody's understanding of who God's Messiah is going to be. Well, everybody seems to be in disagreement. Maybe a prophet, maybe Jeremiah, Ezekiel, somebody. And then Jesus says, yeah, yeah, who do you say that I am? Do you notice the difference, General?

Who's the son of God? And Jesus is telling his disciples everything you've experienced, everything you know about me. The, you know, the teachings that you've experienced, the healings that you've been a part of, everything I've told you. Who do you say that I am? And Peter says, oh, you're the guy.

You are him.

Peter's faith made him the foundation of the early church.

And if you've read about Peter in the scriptures, you can tell that Peter was a flawed guy. He denied Jesus. He misunderstood a lot of Jesus teachings kind of repetitively. And oftentimes, Peter was one of the disciples who broke Jewish traditions. Despite all of this, his foundation in Christ allowed him to live a life where he could be the difference maker.

There's a lot of hope that we can read from the story of Peter. He is the foundation of that church because his foundation was solidly in Christ.

Any of you ever done anything with clay, like thrown pots? Anybody? Yeah. Oh, that's right, Kessie. Yeah.

You have a wheel at your shop still, right? Or pots and storage. Storage. Get it out. Throw some pots.

All right. So when I was in college, one of my electives and my senior year, I had a lot of things I had to fill out, and I didn't really have anything super exciting to get done. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to learn how to turn pots. I'm going to throw pottery.

That's what they call it when you're a professional. And it's really amazing to watch a chunk of misshapen clay becomes something that is useful, potentially something that is valuable. It starts as something that's misshapen, something that's just a blob of something else. And as a potter, you can work through those flaws to create something extraordinary.

God wants to do that in us. Through the example of Peter, Christ proves that there is hope for all of us. The flaws can be worked out. There's still enough faith to build a foundation on Peter. And the church became something incredible because of his leadership and the leadership of others.

Again, all flawed people. Don't let your flaws make you think that you're not enough for God to use.

Say that again.

Unique. Every flaw makes it unique. You're right. Matthew, chapter 5:13 through 16 says this. You are the salt of the earth.

But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.

Instead, they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Salt enhances and preserves. Light reveals and it guides. We are called to be both bringing flavor to life and illuminating God's love and the dark places in our world.

I don't know. Are you guys. Do you ever get to that point where you love to just, like, share random things with people? I have to say this. Like, when we have these weird experiences of awful restaurants, we tell people pretty sternly, don't go there.

It's not good. The service is bad. The food is poor quality. We saw the mice, you know, like, don't go, right? I cannot tell you the number of times my wife has shared with me smells in our house.

Hey, smell this milk. Is this good? Hey, smell this cheese. Oh, it's not good. Hey, is this egg?

Have a chicken in it. Like what? You know what I mean? Like, when we experience these weird, strange things, we are really, really excited to like. Hey, can you just double check my nose here?

Can you experience this with me?

Why don't we share Jesus with the same urgency and enthusiasm? Hey, I've experienced life change. Hey, my life is so much better because of the people that I met at church on Sunday morning. Hey, I would love for you to come to worship with me. I will buy you lunch after.

Come and worship God on Sunday. Let's do this right? Like, why is that so difficult? But, oh, my gosh, you got to come see what is left in this toilet. Like, that's really easy, right?

Think back to Christmas Eve when we were gathered here. Now, I know that not everybody was gathered here with us on Christmas Eve. But when we think back to Christmas Eve here in this place, we imagine the candles and how dark the room was. Each of us holding our candles before they were lit. But then, one by one, as each flame was lit, the room began to be bright.

Each flame offered guidance. It offered light. It offered a little bit of hope that the darkness could be overcome. Friends, every one of our lives, when we are lit with the love of Christ, we can do the same for other people. We can be that flame of illumination to the world around us.

I have to ask you, are you sharing Jesus or are you holding him back out of embarrassment or fear?

The only way that we can be sure that we are pointing to Jesus Christ is if we are letting our light shine so brightly that people can't help but see the God that lives in us.

Have you heard the word vocation before?

Yeah. So a vocation is a particular occupation, a business or profession, or calling is what the dictionary says. It's a strong impulse or inclination to follow a particular activity or career. It's a divine call to God's service or to the Christian life.

Friends, all of us have a vocation in some way or another, right? Our vocation is a piece of that calling that we have along with our desires and our hopes for our own lives. It's kind of this beautiful mix of God's call on our life and our want.

Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 10 says, for we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. God has already called you, and God wants you to do something brilliant for his kingdom. Because we're made by God and in the image of God. When people see us, they should also see the God at work in us.

So just I want you to think about this in the coming week. What does it look like for us, every one of us, to embrace our calling as salt and light in a world that needs hope?

And I want to remind you that you have a choice. You can resist your vocation to be God's light in the darkness, or you can embrace it. So this week, I want us, every one of us, to be intentional about bringing hope to those around us. I want us to speak life, to offer love, to shine God's light in the dark places. This week and always, friends, let us lock eyes with our culture.

Let us be the God flavors and the colors that the world desperately needs.

Let us be individuals and let us become a church that is unshakable because of its foundation in Jesus Christ. And let us be the people who every single day bring hope to people who have none.

Our foundation of faith can help turn a crumbling world into a kingdom of hope. Let's pray.