Sermon: Four Warnings (Part Four): Founded on the Rock
Remaining Centered on Christ
#1746
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 03-Feb-24; 81 minutes
description: (hide)
transcript:
Well, we finally come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Beth (I do not know why she chose to do this), picked out listening to my first sermon on this, "Poor in Spirit," and told me today that that was April 2022. So I have been on this for almost two years. It has taken me that long to get through these three chapters. I believe this is the 25th sermon. Of course, there have been feasts and other things that I have done in between. But it has been a long slog through the Sermon on the Mount, but it has really helped me focus my attention on the basic teachings of Christ and the things that we have to do to be His disciples.
And so we come to the end here at the end of chapter 7 of Matthew and not only is it the end of the Sermon on the Mount, but it is also the last of the four warnings that He gives there at the end, those crucial cautions for His disciples as they go through life toward God's Kingdom.
I have described them in the past few sermons as being in the form of a descending spiral, something that starts wide, way up in the air, and as it comes toward the ground it always gets closer and closer to us until the funnel, at least the part that touches us, is sharp. It goes from wide to narrow. It is like a hawk or an eagle flying above, descending, gliding down in great spirals until it finally strikes its prey.
Let us go over just for a minute these four warnings so we can kind of see this spiraling toward us motion.
The first warning calls us to remember that God's election is limited. It is limited from His point of view as well as ours. We have to come in through the narrow gate. It is not something that is wide open to everybody. I mean, the gospel is preached widely but those He actually calls and chooses are few.
The second part of that is that His path that we are to follow is constricting. It is restricting, if you want to put it that way. He calls it narrow, and it is something that we have to focus on or we have to focus our minds on the fact that the Christian life is not going to be easy. From beginning to end it is constricted. His Word squeezes us, if you will, in a certain way so that we will make certain decisions. Not take the easy way that most people take, but the difficult way that is His life.
The second warning cautions us about false prophets and that we will encounter false prophets, false teachers, false teachings, and we must be vigilant and evaluate them by what they, the false prophet or their teachings, the false teachings, produce. So we cannot just label somebody a false teacher in one blow unless of course they are very "out," like that guy that David [Grabbe] was talking to out in the parking lot. I mean, he could see the fruits immediately when he was taking a blade to the Bible and taking out certain passages and calling them lies.
But normally we have to take a great deal of time to evaluate such false teachings and look at the fruits and to see what they produce. Because most of the time false teachings adhere very close to the truth, but they are just enough off that we cannot see it immediately. And so we have to wait to see what they produce.
The third warning argues against the idea that God requires only confession. That is, that all He asks of us to do is name the name of Jesus Christ and we will be saved. That is not true. God's way or God Himself, I should say, requires not only confession or profession, but obedience. He says there that, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." So it takes more than just saying Christ is Savior or that Christ is my personal Savior. He wants not only that, not only the loyalty, let us say, that one does in professing such a thing, but He wants us to read His Word, to hear the teaching, and conform our lives to that so that we are actually doing the revelation of God; that it is in that way that it comes and solidifies, if you will, on our hearts, that it becomes character.
Today we have come, then, to Jesus' fourth warning, which focuses on building on the right foundation. And it is here that both the warnings and the Sermon come to an end. The final words in any kind of speech, or even in a book, an essay, an article, are very important. They are, we could call them, especially important. Perhaps the writer or speaker gives a final piece of wisdom that wraps everything up or maybe it is a short summation of his main point. And I think we should consider this fourth warning as Jesus' parting admonition. He is, in a way, tying a very helpful bow on the whole Sermon on one hand, and on our walk with Him, which in the four warnings has been a caution about how we walk.
I found this very interesting. I talked to Martin about it this week, I talked to Mark about it this week, and I found it just amazing, intriguing, that He would end the Sermon on foundations. And it made me dig deeper and think deeper about what He means by ending on the subject of foundations. Should that not have come before "Blessed are the poor in spirit"? Because the attitude of poor in spirit is a very late and deep thing in most people's conversion. It is like He started where most of us end, but He ends where most of us think He should have started. And so it made me really think about what He meant by ending the Sermon on the Mount, His final pitch to us, on foundations.
So let us go there. Matthew 7, verses 24 through 29. I am not going to be talking much about verses 28 and 29 but I will read them because it is the end of the chapter and we will just kind of leave it at that.
Matthew 7:24-29 "Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall." And so it was when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
Now, just a little bit on those last two verses, especially about the idea that He taught with authority. The scribes at the time and through much of Jewish history, always prefaced their statement with, Rabbi so-and-so (you know, Joe Blow the Rabbi) said, and then they would give a saying or they would give an opinion or say that this is the way I look at it. And so they always refer to other authorities before them so that people will say, "Oh yes, this is sage advice from one of the wise who came before us."
Well, Jesus did not do that. He said, "I say," "I say unto you," "But I say unto you," this is what you have to do. This is the way that God approves. You must not do this, but instead you must do this. He did not refer to any of the scribes. Sometimes He referred to a prophet or whatever, by quoting something out of the Old Testament. But more often than not, He would say, "I say" because He is God and He has every right to teach His truth from the first person.
Let us get into these verses between 24 and 27. Now this fourth warning is in structure, a parable, and it is easily understandable. I mean, He gave us a great image for us to understand; that if you build a house on a rock, if you found it on bedrock, that when the storms of life come by it is not going to fall into ruin because it is solid, it is stable. And on the other side, if you build it on sand, like in a creek bed or on the beach, as soon as a hurricane comes up, well, it is going to be blown into the sand dunes or into the water or float away with the flood, and no more house. It is going to be destroyed. That is very easy to understand.
It offers a choice, this parable that He gives, very similar to the one found in Deuteronomy 30:15-20. You know, I have set before you (Moses wrote there) today, life and good, death and evil. And it gets to choose life. I want you to live, choose the good thing, choose to build on the rock. That is the way you are going to endure and have the best. Your life will turn out much, much better if you do this. That this is a very similar choice that He sets before us here in the New Testament.
In Matthew 7, the choice is not between life and good, death and evil, although it is. But the imagery here is or the way Jesus speaks about it here is, hear, that is, listen, take in what He has given and practice it versus hear, take in, and ignore. Because the foolish man who built on sand does that. He ignores what has been said and goes his own way, does his own thing, makes decisions that are not Christ-like at all. So he says here that if you choose to hear and practice, well, that is going to produce endurance all the way to the end. You will weather the storms, you will end up with eternal life. It is not said but that is what is implied.
On the other hand, if you hear and ignore, well, the only result, the only fruit, is great ruin. And that is a terrible thing because He dangles the foolish man over the fires of hell, if you will. He said you will die, you will actually die the second death. It is very grim, and that is probably why the people were astonished also because He ended his sermon on such a stern and serious thought: "And great was its fall." He ends with destruction, which is itself a trumpet of a warning. "Hey, get your lives together. Build on the rock."
Now, in this sense of choosing life or death or making the choice between practicing what one hears and ignoring it, in this sense it follows up on the third warning, where the one who failed to practice God's will is confronted with Christ's judgment. "Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!" It is the same sort of thing, same sort of end, same sort of judgment.
However, if it were just a further illustration of that point or just a corollary to the third warning, it would be superfluous. Why would He say that again? There is a different point that He is trying to bring out in the fourth warning that He brought out in the third, and it hits us right between the shoulder blades or right between the eyes, if you like that one better, about our practice, our lifestyle, our choices while we are in the process of conversion. Because remember, He says both of these people, the wise man and the foolish man, hear. They are listening, they are trying to learn something, they are taking something in. One responds properly and the other responds in a way that leads him away from Christ.
So we cannot merely take this fourth warning as an addendum to the third one. That is not going to teach us anything. But this warning, this fourth warning, has a complementary but distinct purpose. We need to take note.
Now, we can see this purpose in two words within this passage. That is the word found or founded and the word built. You could think of them as perhaps, using synonyms, grounded and growth. Founded, in verse 25, it says there, "The rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on the house and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock." This is Greek the themelioo. It is Strong's 2311, if you want to look it up at any point, and it means to found, to lay the foundation of a building. Metaphorically, it means to ground (that is why I use that synonym), to establish, to render firm and unwavering. It is a near-exact counterpart of our word found, to found, and the corresponding nouns of both the themelioo and founded, that is, English foundation and Greek themelios, they are perfectly aligned. They are parallel in their meanings.
The word built, which appears twice, once in verse 24 and once in verse 26, both having to do with building on the rock or building on the sand, this is the Greek word oikodomeo. It is Strong's number 3618 and it means to build a house, to build, to repair, to establish, or enlarge a building. Or it can mean to construct or establish anything, something, anything that you would normally establish and build. It is literally, remember oikodomeo, oikos, which means house, and doma, which means roof. It is literally house roof. Oikodomeo suggests, because of these two root words, building completely. You start with a foundation and you build until you put a roof on it. So you are not just making something and stopping halfway, you are building a whole house.
Metaphorically, oikodomeo can suggest to contribute to advancement. Think of it this way, people now build a fund to advance a certain idea or the cause. Let us say the cause of curing cancer. And so they build a fund, they add to, they advance the purpose that they are behind. So it means to contribute to advancement, but more importantly, it means to edify, to build up. In fact, from the book of Acts on, after you leave the gospels, oikodomeo is the act of encouraging and strengthening God's people, the brethren. And it is rendered almost every time edify or some form of edify, like edification.
Here, we are still in Matthew 7, oikodomeo alludes to the building up, the strengthening and the lifetime growth of a Christian. So this building that He talks about in terms of building a house, is actually building your life, building your maturity, your spiritual maturity, to its ultimate that can be done as a human. And so He is talking about the edification of a member of the church, of a child of God.
Now, these two words strike at the heart of Jesus' teaching in His sermon here. And that is why He left it to last because it covers actually the whole sermon. 1) the foundation or ground of a disciple's belief and behavior. You have got to have the right ground for your belief, the right ground or foundation of your behavior. And 2) it strikes at his growth to spiritual maturity.
Jesus warns here that whether we are wise or foolish hinges on the constant choices of both foundation and building methods and materials, with greater emphasis here on the foundation because it is vastly more important. Now, we think, but did we not choose Christ the Rock when we were called, when we were baptized? Did we not say that we would follow Him at the beginning? Is it not a once-for-all decision?
It should be. Once we make up our mind to follow Christ, we should be gung-ho for Christ for the rest of our lives. But you and I know that that does not happen. It would be the rare person who, once he made that decision, always, every decision was made for Christ. We may hope to reach that level one day. I hate to disappoint you. You will probably not reach it. Only Jesus Christ has done that. Only Jesus has made every good, wise decision that came to Him. We are going to fail and we are going to fail a lot. We just hope that as we go on through our conversion, that we fail less and that God can see our trajectory as positive and growing. Because we are feeble, human, carnal, easily swayed.
But if He can see that we are determined and we are trying to be diligent and we are in love with Christ so much that we do not want to displease Him at all, then that satisfies Him. He knows we are headed in the right direction. That is why we trust in His mercy. That is a big part of His mercy because we are such failures. But if we can show Him that we are determined not to be a failure and begin to make more and more wise, godly choices, then He knows that we are growing in the right direction.
So what I am trying to say here is that human nature is fickle. It is unstable, it is variable. We are constantly changing our minds about things and our support and our enthusiasm tends to wax and wane like the phases of the moon. We are so inconstant! One week, we are on a high and we think we could go conquer the world for Christ. In another week, maybe the next week, maybe within the same week, maybe within the very same day or the next second after we are trying to conquer the world, we are thinking, "How can I do this? This is so hard." And we feel like drawing back. That is just how we are. We are human. We still have the vestiges of human nature. And not only that, not only in a macro scale, we are inconsistent in our readiness to respond to different parts of God's revelation.
Look at it this way. We may support one teaching that we find from the Bible but be hesitant about another. Same God, same goal, same process of salvation, but we love one thing and doubt another. Why? Because we are stupid, we are foolish. We do not see the consistency that God puts in everything that He teaches. Actually, I use that word deliberately because that is actually what Jesus says here about the foolish man who built his house on the sand. He called him stupid. One of the interpretations of it. Others are like idiotic, brainless, senseless (and we will get to that in a bit).
Here is another example. We may be gung-ho about keeping the Sabbath. I know a lot of these people, I have had to deal with them. People who want to keep the Sabbath, who say the seventh day Sabbath is the true meaning of the fourth commandment and we should be keeping it. And then you mention Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread and Pentecost and Trumpets and all the holy days, "Oh, I'm not too sure about that. The Sabbath is great but those holy days. Nah, I don't know." People are like that.
What about those who, "Oh, we should give offerings to God. We should show our love for God with giving Him money." "What?! Tithing? First tithe, second tithe, third tithe. What are you trying to do, impoverish me? I'd be in the poorhouse if I tithed!" Inconsistency.
Some people enthusiastically support marriage between a man and a woman. "It should only be between a man and a woman!" They will go and write all over social media about marriage should be just between a man and a woman. But when it comes to divorce, they are kind of like, "Oh yeah. Okay. You know, if people can't get along, we should let them split up and we shouldn't be too hard on them."
We may say, "Right on!" when the preacher gives it to sinners, but outraged when he turns to our pet sins.
We are just a bundle of inconsistencies. You see how this works? We do not think and speak and act on the same foundation for every matter. Do you get that? We are not rooted and grounded on every decision in Christ. In some areas we are rooted and grounded in Christ, but in other areas, we still have got one foot in the sand. That is the problem. That is why Jesus put this at the end of the Sermon on the Mount because He knew that we are very inconsistent. And we may say, "Lord, Lord, I love You. You're wonderful. I'm going to commit my life to You." And 15 minutes later, we get distracted by something and go off into the sand.
That is the way we are. We are not consistent. On some points we are squarely founded on Christ, but on others, we are sinking in quicksand. Our lifetime job, once we are baptized, is to sweep away all the sand under our feet until we are firmly and consistently standing on the rock. It is almost like the rock is there underneath, but we have got all this sand that we have got to clear out before we can have truly firm footing.
I want to go through a series of passages where other authors basically said the same thing. We are going to start on in I Corinthians 10, verses 1 through 13. Now, Paul's image is a little different, the way he approaches it is different, but the teaching and the warning are similar. So let us read this. He says,
I Corinthians 10:1-13 Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now, these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play."
Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell; nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; nor murmur, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now, all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come. [Now listen to his conclusion.] Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
Like Christ, as the Lord of the Old Testament leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, like them, we went through a similar process. Theirs was done on a macro scale leading them out of Egypt. But we in our similar process were called, and we had to believe, and we had to repent, and we had to be baptized. We have now come out of the Red Sea with the Israelites, if you will. There we are like them, we went through that process. But during the walk to the Promised Land after that, after coming out of the Red Sea, the Israelites all failed but two. They succumbed to this or that sin along the way. And what happened? They died. They were destroyed and died.
Paul is telling us we are not much different. We are doing these same things in a spiritual way and for us, the stakes are a lot higher. That is why God wrote them down in the Old Testament, so we would not make the same mistakes now, in the New Testament under the New Covenant. So like Christ taught in Matthew 7, Paul warns that we are prone, as human beings still dealing with our human nature, to the same failings. Hopefully, we have a little bit better grasp of things and we know a little bit better what we should do, but we still can follow that same trajectory of allowing something that comes up in life to turn us away and cause destruction and death. We still have a propensity to be tempted into disqualifying sin. For them, they just scattered their bodies all over the wilderness and their bones rotted out there. But for us, it is eternal death. It is the Lake of Fire. So we had better be careful about how we approach this life.
Now, that solid early foundation that we have when we vow to follow Christ is wonderful. That gets us off on the right foot. Baptism is great because it shows a dividing line between the old life and the new life and we are full of fervor. We want to go out there and be the best disciple ever. But that euphoria usually ends fairly quickly because we begin to realize that as soon as we step forward along the path toward the Kingdom of God, there are a lot of obstacles and most of those obstacles are in our heads because we like the foundation that we had built over the years. It was comfortable to us. We like the sand. Is it not nice to go out on the beach and stroll along the sand? We get a lot of joy out of that.
But in a similar way, once we come into the church, once we are converted, let us say, we find that God wants to us to walk on the rock, not the sand. And we have to begin thinking about how we can do that. We have to start changing a lot of our ways of thinking and many of the things we believe that we fooled ourselves into thinking were okay. But after we are baptized, we find out that they are very distracting and not very consistent and that they could easily lead us away from Christ.
So the smart, wise person figures out that he must constantly check himself to see if he has remained on that secure foundation, which is Christ. Because unlike a house—I have never seen a house with actual working legs—we can move off our foundation. I just thought of this. Some of those vicissitudes of life, like an earthquake or a strong wind could move the house off the foundation, sure. But we have the ability, much more than a house, to move away from Christ, to move away from the rock with our decisions and our actions.
Now, Paul says here in I Corinthians 10, that God will faithfully do His part to keep us from being overwhelmed and find a way to overcome what threatens to derail us. But as Paul writes here, we who think we stand firm with God must take heed lest we fall. We need to be careful that we do not imagine that we are secure just because of our first vows to stay on the foundation. God will do His part to keep pushing us back toward the foundation. But we have to make sure that we take the initiative to check ourselves frequently so that we remain on the foundation voluntarily, of our own will, and that we are constantly moving back to Christ.
This is why constant self-evaluation is so valuable and necessary for true Christians. Paul says in II Corinthians 13:5 that we have to examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith and it should be done more than just the one time before Passover. This should be a constant thing. When we are facing a decision, any decision that has a spiritual element to it, we need to think, when I make this decision, am I standing on Christ or am I standing on sand of some sort, some other foundation, some other belief, some other philosophy, that has crept into our minds and we have accepted without really thinking it through. Because if we allow that sand to remain, the more we go along the line the further and further we are going to get from Christ, because all sand in this analogy is wrong. It is not Christ. So we have to examine ourselves frequently about how centered we are on the foundation of Christ.
Let us go to Hebrews 2, another example of this. I think Paul was especially worried about the people in the church on this particular point because he keeps bringing it back. I am telling you right now, I believe the author of Hebrews was Paul. But be that as it may, here it is again.
Hebrews 2:1-4 Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels prove steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will.
Yeah, back there in the Old Testament under the Old Covenant, that word was sure. It was verified through angels. And that was very serious because when they broke the law, judgment came. It is far harder on us in that sense that it is eternal. But we have a patient and merciful High Priest who will forgive us our sins and help us back to center. But we need to be careful. We cannot neglect our salvation. Because if we neglect our salvation, we drift away from the rock. Or in the way He put it, from the dock. It is our moorings have been untied, have slipped, and we are going out to sea, or down the river, away from safety.
Now, the author of Hebrews again speaks about this same principle, but he looks at it a bit differently. But again, it is very similar and should help us. Human beings, even those who have God's Spirit, tend to drift away from the truth. It is just a human thing. If they drift away from the truth, they drift away from godly practice. And usually what causes them to drift away are distractions. Something fires their imagination or sometimes it is just plain dullness, which we will see in a minute. But oftentimes it is some sort of thing that we want to do. And so we give it a lot of our time, and then we give it a lot of our time, and then we give it more of our time, and suddenly Christ and His revelation have slipped. We are not thinking about it. We are not praying about it. We are not studying it. Eventually, we are not doing it because we have neglected it.
God of course, will not give up on His children. He will give us all kinds of warnings, trials, alerts, what have you, to get us back to center.
Let us go to the Hebrews 6, verses 9 through 12. We can kind of think of this as the way Christ thinks of us. He says,
Hebrews 6:9-12 But, beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you [even though you have been drifting, we know that you can come back, that you can do better], yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner. [He was pretty harsh to them in the end of chapter 5 and the first part of chapter 6.] For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. [You have done great things. You were standing on the rock when you did those things, but you have begun to drift away.] And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence [meaning the same early diligence when they were doing the good things] to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish [dull], but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Go back to the first works, he is saying. Do what you can to reignite the fire of love for God and do the things that He wants you to do, all those practices that He has given us so that we become more like Him. So God will not give up on His children. He says, "I expect more from you and I know you can do it. You just have to apply yourselves. You have to be diligent. You have to be enduring." Because He will keep trying to pull us back to Him. He does not want you to fail.
So staying moored to Christ will take constant diligence, as he says here. Deep faith and patience, or endurance, all the way to the end. We cannot allow ourselves to slack off because if we do, we are going to move off the foundation. So we cannot be negligent. That is a big no no. It is going to end up badly.
We can see that the Christian life is nothing like what nominal Christianity teaches you: profess Christ as Savior and you are saved. That is about it. That is the doctrine of eternal security. But real Christianity is not that by a long shot. It is a long term, a lifetime struggle to hear Christ's words and do them, keeping His commandments, growing, and enduring the storms of life. They are going to come. We might as well be prepared for them. And the best way to be prepared for them is to be founded on Christ—in everything. So we have to constantly battle our carnal natures and that requires frequent self-correction to stay aligned with Christ.
It is enervating to be a Christian because we have always got to be on top of ourselves. And you know, human nature hates that. It wants freedom, as human nature defines freedom. That is, I can do my own thing. When you sign the dotted line for Christ, that goes away. You no longer live for yourself and doing your own thing. You live for Him and you do what He says, because He is the Master and you are a slave of righteousness. That is just reality. I hope I am not breaking anything new to you. But this is why we struggle—because our human nature hates that. And we have to overcome the human nature and do what is right.
Let us go back to Matthew 7 and pick up the story of the foolish man here.
Matthew 7:26-27 "But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall."
Now, Jesus calls, as I mentioned a few minutes earlier, the one who builds on sand foolish. That is pretty harsh because this is the Greek term moros, like moron, Strong's number is 3474, and it means dull, sluggish, foolish, stupid, absurd, heedless, without sense, an idiot. Jesus could mean any of these adjectives. They all fit for what this foolish person does. They imply someone who is mentally deficient, one who makes poor, ignorant, or unwise decisions. He does not have anything physically wrong with him, but there is something in his mind that does not allow him to act or decide in wisdom.
We use phrases about this all the time. We say, "Oh, his elevator doesn't go all the way to the top." I am sure you have heard that one. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer; not the brightest bulb. I have heard, several fries short of a Happy Meal. He is only running on three cylinders. What He is talking about, Jesus that is, is a mental spiritual deficiency. We could even describe it as self-destructive insanity.
The hearer fails to follow Christ's words, builds on a foundation of sand, we just read. This is the Greek word ammos, Strong's number 285. And you will wonder at the meaning of this term, sand. It means sand. That is the Greek word for sand. Now consider sand. This is from the New American Oxford Dictionary, "Loose granular substance, typically pale yellowish brown, resulting from the erosion of silicas, like quartz and other rocks." We all know what sand is. I mentioned, we go to the beach. We go to Myrtle Beach in the fall. We go out on the sand, we know what sand is. We have known what sand is from when we were very young because we played in sandboxes. We know what sand is. Everybody understands what sand is.
This is very interesting when juxtaposed to rock. This is the Greek word petra. It is number 4073. As we learned from Mr. Armstrong many, many years ago, it is a great mass of rock. It is a great crag. It could be a cliff, a mountain. Believe it or not, Greeks used the word petra even for full mountain chains. That is how big the rock can be. As a matter of fact, we could probably call Earth a rock. It is a petra. It is a huge, singular, solid rock.
Now, the contrast between sand and rock is very sharp. A rock is massive, solid, immovable, or fixed. It is unitary, meaning there is only one. It is a single piece and it is enduring. Rocks last for a long, long time, especially huge ones like the Rock of Gibraltar. Sand, though, is the exact opposite. Even though it is made of silica and other rocks, it is not a petra. It is tiny. Each grain is tiny. It is loose or movable or shifting. We have that saying, shifting sands. I mentioned quicksand before. Sand is also made of countless grains. It is not unitary. It is not one unit. Sand is singular, but it is actually made of sand, grains of sand. And another thing is that sand is transient. All it takes is some stiff wind or some water and sand blows. You have great dunes out on the desert because the sands have been blown by winds.
That is the difference here. We can see: rock, massive; sand, tiny. Rock, solid; sand, loose. Rock, a single unit; sand, multitudinous, many grains. Rock, fixed and enduring; sand, transient.
Now I ask you, I do not have to ask this question, but I will. As a foundation for life and belief which is better, rock or sand? It is rhetorical. The answer is obvious. In terms of stability and long term viability, the rock's qualities are all positive. Sands, on the other hand, all negative. That is what Jesus is talking about here. Why in the world choose to build on sand? The answer, the solution to the problem is so clear. Choose life, choose Christ.
But you know what? We are more than likely to choose the sand because it is a habit. It is a habit that we have done for years. We have grown up doing these things and it takes such a long time to begin choosing the rock more consistently. Only one a few bricks short of a load would choose to build his converted life on sand. That is, trying to synchronize many small-minded, loose, shifting, here-today-and-gone-tomorrow, ideas and philosophies with God's revelation. Why take what is pure, that has been given to us freely, and sully it with all these other stupid human ideas? I do not think mankind has ever lived in a time when there were more stupid ideas in the world and they are all hitting us at once over social media through the Internet.
Why? Because we are human, because we are weak. And I include myself in there. I am just as susceptible to this as anybody. When we do that, when we try to mix God's pure Word and way with all these other philosophies and ideas that people have, it forms a confused, competitive, contradictory mélange of notions, and beliefs, and opinions, and perspectives that cannot work together. They will not bring us to a good end because they are all fighting for dominance in our minds. And because of all that, because of all that fighting, it produces mental and spiritual chaos in our heads, in our hearts. That is why we have troubles and trials and stumbling blocks. Because we have not properly prioritized the foundation of Christ and it eventually leads to death. For all of us, every one of us will die.
We are not going to approach God's Word and His way in full purity until the resurrection. But we have to understand that we need to be working to get that sand out of our shorts, if you will, because sand in your shorts, if you do not know, the experience is not comfortable, it chafes, it drives us to distraction. So it is far better to construct one's life on Christ, who is God, who never changes, has a unified perfect doctrine that if followed leads to eternal life for every follower who does His will.
There is no comparison between the sand and the rock. The rock has everything. The sand has nothing for us.
Now, what sandy ideas and philosophies compete with Christ for prominence on our foundation? Have you ever thought about that? Probably not. Maybe you have. What ideas and philosophies, what beliefs do you still have that contend with Christ for your loyalty?
Let us go to I Corinthians 1. We are going to use the Corinthian church and beat up on them a bit because they were trouble. They were big trouble for Paul. Paul's dealings with the Corinthians fell along similar lines to what I have been talking about today.
I Corinthians 1:10-13 [He writes] Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household, that there are contentions among you. Now I say this, that each of you says, "I am of Paul," or "I am of Apollos," or I am of Cephas," or "I am of Christ." Is Christ divided? [he asked] Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
No. We should all be of Christ. Yes, Peter was a wonderful man, very dynamic, I am sure. Had great stories about his life with Christ, probably could tell them all day, and he was probably so dynamic that he got people, you know, "Let's go. Let's get to the Kingdom!" And Apollos. Oh, silver-tongued Apollos. You could just listen to him all day because he sounded so good. And Paul, wow, Paul was deep. "We've got to follow Paul because he brings things to mind that we've never heard."
And Paul says, balderdash. Absolute balderdash. We are not of Peter, we are not of Apollos, we are not of Paul. We are of Christ. He is our Lord and Savior. He is our foundation. He is our goal. He is our example. None of us matter. That is, men. It is all for Christ. "You guys have a problem," he tells the Corinthian church, "because you are prioritizing things wrong. You're looking at man, you're not looking at God, you are not looking at Christ. You have different ideas because you're not focused on Christ. Christ is not divided. Fix it."
Let us go to II Corinthians 6 now. His problem with the Corinthians went this way and that way. And finally, he decided to do what he does here in II Corinthians 6.
II Corinthians 6:11 [He says] O Corinthians! We have spoken openly to you, our heart is wide open.
He is basically saying, "Look, I've laid all my cards out on the table and they are filled with love for you."
II Corinthians 6:12 You are not restricted by us [That is, we are not holding a sword over your head. We are not trying to constrain you in any way. We are totally open to you], but you are restricted by your own affections.
Not just affections for Paul, he says, but you guys have affections for things that are restricting you. You like certain things that keep you from unifying the church and with Paul. It is your affections, your likes, the things that you think are good things that are restricting you.
II Corinthians 6:13-16 Now in return for the same [he is saying, in return for me being open to you] you also be open. Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, "I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be My people."
There is no communion with these people, with these ideas, with these practices, because we have God in us, God is amongst us, and God is pure, but these things are impure and we have to retain, as well as we can, the purity and holiness of God. So there is no communication between the ideas of men out there and the revelation of God. They do not have much in common, hardly anything, maybe nothing!
II Corinthians 6:17-18 Therefore "Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you." "I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty."
II Corinthians 7:1 Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
Let me tell you what happened here. The Corinthians had brought many worldly ideas into the church with them out of the city of Corinth or wherever they came from. And once they were in the church, they were soon targeted by various false groups within the church or tangential to the church. People like Judaizers, early Gnostics, hedonists, ascetics, you name it. Everything happened in Corinth. The Corinthians thought, this is the way they tried to synchronize all these things, they thought they could please everybody by believing everything, by accepting everything, all these disparate philosophies that they were hearing from all these different sides, and by doing so, they could still please God.
Now, Paul, to put it mildly, disabuses them of this notion. God's Word and way are totally separate. They are undivided. They do not mix with satanic, worldly ideas and practices. There is no communion between the Devil and God. They do not get along. God is pure and holy, Satan is evil to the core. There is just no meeting of the minds there. These various ungodly things and philosophies cannot dwell then harmoniously with God's revelation and practice. If you try to do that, it will always produce dissent and division and destruction. And ultimately, somebody is going to die the eternal death. It is just a way of it.
Paul's instruction here, then, is a directive which he includes himself in. Let us, he says, do this. That is chapter 7, verse 1. Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. He writes then that this is the way, the means, the process, by which we go about perfecting holiness in the fear of God. We have got to cleanse ourselves. We have got to get the sand out from under the house and have our house sit on the pure Word of God—Jesus Christ.
Let us go back to Luke 14. We are not going to spend much time here, but I want to show it to you.
Luke 14:25-33 Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish?' Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty-thousand? Or else while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and ask conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple."
And that includes ideas, philosophies, and such that we got from the world.
Christ, here, is expounding on what it takes to be His disciple. And He approaches the same theme that I have been going through today, in another way or actually four ways. Each of His statements here gives an example of a way a disciple can move off Christ's foundation and no longer be a disciple. And if we fall prey to any of these four things, that is what will happen to us, we cannot be His disciple, which He says three times within this paragraph. Let me give you the four ways just quickly.
1. We have more devotion to our intimate human relationships, that is, our empirical self, of our family, our wife and children, that sort of thing, and ourselves than to Christ. If we love our family and those who we are intimate with, you know, family, friends, relatives, what have you, more than Christ, then we are failing.
2. If we are unwilling to bear our cross, that is, our sacrificial struggle to overcome human nature and sin. That is, we say, "This is too hard, I can't do it anymore."
3. If we stop our efforts to grow. This is the man building the house. He leaves off and everybody mocks him. He failed to finish what he started. He did not endure to the end. Such a person cannot be His disciple.
4. If one feels overwhelmed by the foes that he has against him and surrenders to the enemy. He compromises on God's principles and he is no longer a disciple. Jesus says, "Think about this. You have to put Me first. You have to be willing to suffer, you have to grow, grow, grow all the way to the end, and you can't give in to the enemy." No compromises.
If you can do these four things, wonderful! Eternal life is in your future through Christ. But if you cannot. . . Let us look at verse 34.
Luke 14:34-35 "Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"
He is saying as He finishes His thought here, He very sternly says that people who were once salt of the earth who have lost their flavor, that is, who have no Christ in them because Christ is the flavor, will be cast out. And we know what He means by that. Cast into the Lake of Fire because they cannot be re-flavored at that point, using that metaphor.
Let us conclude in Hebrews 10, because I do not want to leave this on a downer.
Hebrews 10:35-39 Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. [remember, he talked about doing His will and practicing His Word]: "For yet a while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith; but if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him." But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.
Hebrews 13:20-21 Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ [and I will add our foundation], to whom be glory forever and ever.
Well, living the life of Christ in this world, ridding ourselves of all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, can seem impossibly difficult. With Christ's mercy and help, and our diligent, faithful growth and endurance, we can inherit the promises. We should not think that the problems and trials of life are too much for us to overcome, because we are founded on Christ and He gives us the strength to overcome. He will not leave us hanging. But we should never think that we can tolerate any kind of worldliness or human philosophy to be part of our foundation. We will fail if we do.
So, if you get nothing else, keep your eyes and your minds focused on Christ and His revelation, and if you do, your house will not fall.
RTR/aws/drm