Matthew 7:24-27
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 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. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
Imagine with me that you are a Jewish child in the first century. You have grown up being taught the Old Testament. Time and again you have been taught from God’s Word that obeying the words of Yahweh God will bring life and disobeying His words will bring death.
For instance, you have heard the words of Deuteronomy 28, which name blessings and cursings on the basis of whether or not you heed and obey the commands of the one true God. Thus, your parents read this verse to you from that chapter:
24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.
If you do not obey the words of Yahweh God, He will send a destructive rain upon you. Then, in verse 30, you hear these words:
30b You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it.
These words stay with you: if I obey the Lord God I will be blessed. If I do not obey the Lord God, He will send a rain that will destroy me. In particular, He will send a rain that will make the house I have built uninhabitable. If I do not obey God, I will build a house that will be unable to withstand the coming rains.
And imagine with me that you hear this idea reinforced in popular preaching. One rabbi tells a story in which a man who studies and obeys the Torah, the Word of God, is compared to “a builder who erected a foundation of stones and then built walls of bricks on the stone foundation so that floodwaters would not dissolve the bricks and cause the house to fall.” On the other hand, this rabbi compares a man who hears God’s Word and does not obey it to “a man who built his home with mud bricks on the ground. Even a small amount of water dissolved the bricks and caused the walls to collapse.”[1]
There’s that idea again: the man who hears and obeys God builds a house that can withstand the rains. The man who hears but does not obey God builds a house that is destined to collapse.
Then imagine with me that you, a young Jewish boy or girl who has been nurtured on the Word and Law of Almighty God, the God of Israel, the true God of all, hears another teacher teaching one day. He is standing there, surrounded by people. He is saying something truly amazing and truly terrifying. He is talking about carrying a cross. You creep closer so that you can hear. This is what you hear:
27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ (Luke 14)
What can this mean? Two things disturb your young ears. The first is the disturbing image of carrying a cross. After all, a cross was an instrument of torture on which Roman soldiers nailed the worst of the worst criminals. What could this teacher mean, “carry your cross if you want to be my disciple.” But, secondly, that thing He said about a man building a tower…that sounded familiar to what you were taught in the Old Testament. But this teacher says that if a man started building something without counting the cost of building it before beginning, he would not finish it and would look like a fool. That sounded strangely like the idea you were taught that if you heard but did not obey God’s commands, the house of your life would collapse.
You go home chewing on these things. Who was that strange teacher who spoke of crosses and building projects? And what was this strange feeling you had stirring in your heart. You try to put all of it out of your mind. However, about a week later, as you are walking with your father, you stop. There’s his voice again: the voice of the teacher from the week before. He is surrounded by a very large crowd. His voice is raised and He is teaching again. This time, His words stop you cold.
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 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. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
What did He say? What did this man say? You have been taught your whole life that the rains will come and the house of your life will collapse if you do not obey the words of Almighty God, Yahweh, the covenant-keeping, delivering, saving, God of Israel. But here is this man saying, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock…”
How can this be? Who is this man who would dare put His words on the level of the words of God Himself, who would use the popular image of building a house on a foundation and of the rains of judgment in relation to His own self? Who would dare do such a thing? Who could do such a thing?
Disturbed and stunned, you tug at your daddy’s sleeve. “Papa,” you ask, “who is that man? Who is the man who is teaching there.”
Your father looks down at you and then back at the teacher. “They say His name is Jesus.”
I. Everybody is Building Their Lives on a Foundation (v.24,26)
Church, let us begin with a simple acknowledgment: everybody is building their lives on a foundation. This is assumed in the words of Jesus found in our text.
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
26 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.
“A wise man who built his house…a foolish man who built his house.” Both are building. All are building.
Now, for any who suffer from a malady of excessive literalism, let me point out that the “house” mentioned here is really our very lives. We are building our lives on something. Everybody is building on something. It may be a foundation of despair, or blind optimism, or entitlement, or self-reliance. Or it may be a foundation of Jewish theology, Muslim theology, Buddhist philosophy, atheism, or political idealism. It may be a foundation of materialism or asceticism. It may be a foundation of hedonism, in which the pursuit of pleasure drives you. It may be a foundation of fatalism in which you think that nothing you do in life really matters. It may be a foundation of nihilistic despair, in which you feel that there is no real meaning or purpose in the universe. It may be a foundation of materialism, in which the accumulation of goods is your all-consuming desire. It may be a foundation of upward mobility, in which doing a little bit better for yourself each year is the goal. It may be a foundation of meaning-through-relationship, in which having a romantic attachment defines you and your sense of self-worth. It may be a foundation of hypochondriac fear, of political ambition, of drug addiction, or of health.
It may be any number of things, but it is something. Knowing and naming our foundation is vitally important to the living of our lives. We must know that on which we are building. And we must not allow our own confessions to deceive us. There are people who say that Christ is their foundation, but He really is not. Jesus warned about this very thing in Matthew 7:21, which we considered last week. We may deceive ourselves about the reality of our true foundation. We may tell ourselves that it is Christ when it is not.
Let me ask you a question: when is the last time you looked up under the foundation of your own life in order to evaluate the foundation on which you are building? Do you know your foundation? If we are honest, we all do.
II. The Strength of Every Foundation Will Be Tested By Storms (v.25,27)
Everybody builds on a foundation and every foundation will be tested.
25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
That is a simple fact. Jesus names different foundations but common circumstances: rain, floods, wind. We might interpret these storms in two ways. In one sense they can refer to the trials of life, the trying times that befall all human beings.
It is fascinating how the trials of life reveal the integrity of our true foundations. The storms of life will indeed come and, when they do, they will test the strength of our foundations. So I ask you: have you built your life on a foundation able to withstand the brutal hardships of life? When you are hammered with cancer, will your house stand? When you are hammered with deep, painful disappointment, will your house stand? When you are hammered with abandonment, with betrayal, with violence, with a crime committed against you, will your house stand? Will your house stand when he says, “I don’t love you anymore.” Will your house stand when the doctor says, “You’ve got 3 weeks, maybe.” Will your house stand when the voice on the other line says, “I’m in jail.” Will your house stand when she says, “There’s something I have to tell you, and it’s going to hurt.”
Will your house stand when you hurt yourself, when you look in the mirror and realize that you have dropped the ball, that you have really messed up, that you have let everybody down? Will it stand when you fall? Will it stand when you are drunk on the euphoria of some great success, some great blessing? Will your foundation withstand the storm of really good things?
Clarence Jordan observed thus:
All around us we are hearing the crashing of our civilizations, as one tornado after another rips it apart. Individuals, homes, communities, and nations are collapsing at an alarming rate. If the experiences of the last fifty years prove anything, they prove that we moderns, in spite of our tremendous scientific achievement, haven’t found a decent way of life. We have learned to build houses, but we don’t seem to understand the nature of foundations. We are skillful, but we aren’t wise.[2]
These storms may indeed refer to the storms of life. But what of the ultimate test, the coming storm of judgment? When you stand before God, will your house stand? Have you built on a foundation that is so sure that that it passes that test? “What can that mean,” you ask? “What is the foundation that can stand even under the eye of a perfect and holy God?”
III. Jesus is the Only Solid Foundation for Life (v.24)
There is one, brothers and sister. There is one foundation that can withstand even that…and it can withstand it because it, this foundation I am speaking of, was given as a gift from God. The foundation I am speaking of is Christ. Here is what Jesus says in verse 24:
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
There is the foundation: “who hears these words of mine and does them.” Hearing, accepting, and doing the words of Jesus is the foundation. Jesus Christ is the only solid foundation for life. That foundation is laid not by mere observation of Jesus. I will remind you of the chilling words of James in James 2.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! 20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
Satan observes the work of Jesus. Satan is also utterly orthodox in his theology. Meaning, Satan knows that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, that He was virgin-born, that He was God incarnate, that He laid down His life for His sheep on the cross of Calvary, that he rose from the dead, that He ascended on high, that He is seated at the right hand of the Father, that He intercedes for the saints, that He is coming again one day, and that His rule will be eternal.
Satan knows all of that. He knows the Bible front and back. He knows the truth. He has seen it. He has observed it. He knows it inside and out. But he has not trusted in it and he does not walk in it. The Devil’s knowledge is just that: knowledge. He knows but he does not follow. He observes but he does not walk in the ways of the Lord.
No, Jesus said that the true foundation is hearing and doing His words. There it is. That is what the Bible calls faith: trust and obedience. To hear the words of Jesus and to do them is the one, true foundation on which our lives can be built. What this means is that any attempt to live life outside of a walk with Jesus Christ is doomed for failure, for only Christ gives us the a foundation sure enough and strong enough to handle what life throws at us.
Perhaps you have heard of William Golding’s novel, The Spire. It is the story of a man, Dean Jocelin, who is obsessed with building a 404-foot spire on the cathedral of which he is Dean. He is warned time and again that the foundation of the cathedral is insufficient to handle the extra weight of so high a spire. Regardless, Jocelin persists. In the end, he is left with broken relationships, the destruction of worship within the cathedral, and a spire that sinks and settles crooked on the cathedral. He becomes the laughingstock of the entire area because he tried to build big on an insufficient foundation.
This is what Jesus is warning us about in the parable: trying to build on an insufficient foundation.
Is your life crooked? What is your foundation?
Is your life skewed? What is your foundation?
Has your life not turned out as you thought it would? What is your foundation?
Church, hear me: there is only one foundation worthy of building a life upon, and His name is Jesus.