Rock Solid
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Introduction
Introduction
Over the last few years, we have seen the demeanor of people in America and in the Western world changing. And much to the chagrin of conservatives, there has been all this talk of safe spaces and trigger warnings and such. Rather than trying to understand where this came from or why it has come about, many have simply gone to name calling—like “snowflakes”; and even I have done this myself. Over the last couple of years, I have seen things a little differently. Not a lot differently, but a little bit.
Over the last couple of years, I have experienced the triggering effect, the violent anger that has come from it, as well as the fear that nothing is safe, no where is safe, and very few people are safe. And over the last couple of years, I have been seeing why that is so. And while I can only speak for myself, I do believe that this is the underlying cause for many around the world. I had built a house—a life—on what I thought was solid rock, but found out was simply hardened earth.
In my life, I have had some pretty bad storms: pain from people in churches, pain from people in school, the loss of my dad a week after I graduated high school, Katie’s miscarriage, and so much more. And I kept on going, not knowing that the hardened earth was slowing being chipped away and eroding. I am not saying that I wasn’t a believer. I truly believe that I was. But my foundation—that which I should have been building my house—my life on—was not as solid as I thought it was. And that became apparent within the last two years.
This morning, as we open the text, we are looking at that passage that talks about building a house and the need to build it on a rock-solid foundation. And as we study this text, I want us to see three elements of building a stable home. The first element is building with the proper mindset. The second element is building with the proper motives. Finally, we see that we must build on the proper material.
Proper Mindset
Proper Motives
Proper Materials
“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?
Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like:
he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.
But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”
Proper Mindset
Proper Motives
Proper Materials
Build with the Proper Mindset
Build with the Proper Mindset
The first element to building a stable home—a stable life!—is that we must first have the proper mindset. Jesus asked the question:
“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?
Those are the proper words, but an improper mindset. We ought to call Jesus Lord. He is Lord. He is our Rabbi and we are his disciples. He is our King and we are his subjects. He is our Lord and we are his slaves. To call Jesus Lord is not just a sign of respect. It is a sign of humility for us and exaltation for him. To call him Lord is great. It’s right and true. But if it isn’t followed up with obedience then it is meaningless.
If you’ve ever been in charge of something; it doesn’t matter what. It could be that you’re a CEO of a company, a manager on duty at a restaurant, or in charge of the children you are babysitting. But as the person in charge, you expect—rightly—to be obeyed. The supervisors and managers are to carry out your orders. The staff at the restaurant is to comply with what you say. The children go to bed when they’re told. And if there is rebellion in the ranks, it is beyond frustrating. It’s infuriating.
Now I don’t believe that Jesus is yelling at his disciples. But he is confronting them with the rebellion that is deep in their hearts. That treasure that we talked about last week. It is a continuous product of disobedience coming from the hearts of his followers. All three of the verbs in this one sentence are in the present tense, active voice, and indicative mood. The indicative mood just simply means that this is a fact. Jesus is indicating that this is happening. It’s active—meaning that it is the disciples who are doing the action. Which means that the disciples are the ones not doing what Jesus is telling them to do. It is present, meaning that it is not something that they had done in the past but no longer are doing. It means that they are still doing it. It’s a consistent problem with the disciples.
So these disciples are at consistently and actively calling Jesus Lord, but also consistently and actively disobeying him! They’ve got the right words: “Lord, Lord.” But their mindset that they can call him one thing while contradicting that with their actions is all wrong! How can we build a stable house—a stable life—when we don’t build according to the architects instructions?
If we are going to build, we must build with the proper mindset.
Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like:
Here we have the right mindset. Do you see the three facets of the right mindset? Before I name them, I just want to point out that all three of these facets are present, active, participles. Again, just as before, these are present—showing that it is consistent. It’s active and so the person is doing the action and not having an action done to them. The participle aspect here is just simply that this is describing who they are! It’s what we call attributive participles. It is describing an attribute of the person. We often see these translated with an -er at the end of a verb. A farmer is one who farms. A cleaner is that which cleans. In today’s world, we have influencers—those who influence. In this case, all three of these facets of a right mindset, are pointing to what kind of people they are.
They are comers. They come to Jesus. Being present, this is a consistent coming. Being active, we find it is the disciple doing the action. No one is dragging them to Jesus. They come on their own accord and they come to him consistently.
They are hearers. They listen to Jesus. Being present, they are consistently listening to Jesus’s words. Being active, they are the ones listening. No one is making them listening. They voluntarily do so.
They are doers. They do what Jesus tells them—consistently and without others making them.
If you’re familiar with James’ letter to the scattered church, you’re probably thinking this sounds a lot like what he wrote.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
That’s the right mindset. Many of us have the right words but the wrong mindset. I’ll call him Lord. I may even come to him often and may even listen to him at times. But when it comes to doing—to building my home, my life—I have it covered. James says you’re deceiving yourself. Jesus says you’ll wreck your life if you do it your way.
On a scale of one to ten, where are you on coming to Jesus? How about listening/hearing him? Where are you on doing what he would say. Two years ago, I would have given myself a pretty high score on all of those. But I discovered I overestimated my doing.
Build with the Proper Motivation
Build with the Proper Motivation
So the first element to have a stable home is building with the proper mindset—I do what Jesus tells me to do. The second is the proper motivation. And you may be looking at this text and wondering where in the world Jesus is talking about motivation. It’s there. It’s actually one of the deepest longing of every human heart. Look at the end of Luke 6:48.
Luke 6:48 (ESV)
And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.
If we have lived long enough, we know that floods will rise. We know that streams—rivers will break against our house. And what is it that we want? We want our house to be stable. We want it to withstand the fury of the flood. We want it to stand unshaken. We want it well built! That’s our motive.
Now Katie will tell you that she has a fear of water. Not a fear of swimming pools or of lakes or oceans. She has a fear of water in the house. She has experienced enough water-damage to fill her for three lifetimes. What a joy it would be to have a house that can withstand the floods! If she was to buy some land and have a house built on it, the first thing—I guarantee it—that she would want, ask for, and reask a hundred times—is that the house would withstand the rains and floods. Is she wrong for wanting that? Not at all. Knowing the damage of flooding motivates her to protect the house and its contents. That’s a good thing.
When we look at this passage in context, we see Jesus from beginning to end talking about withstanding the rising flood waters. “Blessed are you who are poor. Blessed are you who are hungry. Blessed are you who mourn. Blessed are you who are hated, excluded, insulted, and slandered.” That deep, inner joy and excitement comes in spite of the flood waters of poverty, hunger, sadness, and persecution. At the same time, he said, “woe to you who are rich, full, laugh, and are popular,” because when the flood waters come, you’ll have nothing.
Do we want the ability to experience blessings in spite of the flood waters? Do we want the rewards of heaven in spite of the rising rivers around us? Of course we do. And yet, for whatever reason, we are not allowing these things to motivate us to build houses on the rock-solid foundation. We’re simply picking a spot that looks comfortable and looks strong “enough” and building our house on that!
We cannot allow comfortability to be our motive for where and how we build. We cannot allow “strong enough,” “decent enough,” “good enough,” to be our motive for building our lives. The house we build—the life we build—cannot be done in half-measures or with half-heartedness. When I was learning to renovate our house in Indiana, I had a friend who was teaching me. He was a jack of all trades; if it could be done in a house, he was able to do it: studs, drywall and mudding, electricity, plumbing, tiling. Everything. He was a master it seemed. But there was a running joke as he was teaching me. He would either say, “good enough for government work,” or “it looks good from my house.” In other words, it was “good enough,” but he wasn’t satisfied with “good enough.” Sadly, brothers and sisters, I think most people in the church are.
Let the blessings be our motive for building well. Let the rewards be our motive for building well. Let the unshakeable house be our motive for building so well.
Build on the Proper Material
Build on the Proper Material
We’ve seen the first two elements of a stable house/life: the proper mindset and the proper motivation. But we come now to the last element; we must build on the proper material. If we want to build a stable house, we must build upon a stable foundation.
Luke 6:48 (ESV)
he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.
If we want to be rock-solid, then we must build upon the solid rock. And by that, I don’t just mean that we build upon Jesus. The apostle Paul wrote,
For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
That is true. But in this context, Jesus isn’t actually presenting himself as the foundation. Jesus is presenting his teaching as his foundation. It’s very easy to look at 1 Corinthians 3:11 and think, “well of course Jesus is my foundation,” and yet all we mean is that we call him “Lord, Lord,” but still don’t do what he says. Jesus wants none of that. He wants us to dig deep and build on the rock—the rock of his teaching.
Now let’s stop and think for a moment here. We are finishing up with what is commonly called the Sermon on the Plain. And we have been in chapter 6 now for nine weeks. This is the first major teaching of Jesus that we have seen in Luke. In previous chapters we see that he has explained himself or his works, but he has not taught like we’ve been studying over these last nine weeks. Even the sermon in Nazareth was given in one sentence: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The rest, though we have learned from it, has been explanation of his ministry work. Chapter 6 begins his teaching. And here then is where he asks, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you.” And he is talking to his disciples—those who are there on the plain.
What is it that he has been telling them? What we’ve seen over the past six weeks—the Sermon on the Plain. And in reality, what we’ve seen over the past three weeks—specifically in Christ telling us to love our enemies with an extreme love, to show the mercy/compassion of God by forgiving and giving and examining ourselves rather than others, and by allowing the abundance of Christ’s riches spring forth from our hearts. And it is in reference to these specifically that he asks, “why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not do what I tell you?”
It’s as if he heard the disciples saying, “Yes, Lord!” “Amen, Lord!” And one disciple whispering to another, “The Lord’s got a good point.” And he stops and asks, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not do what I tell you?” As if he were saying, “You can agree with me all you want. You’ve come. You’ve heard. But you aren’t applying it to your life.” I guarantee that there is at least one person that has been here in the last three weeks that has thought something like, “So and so needs to hear this; I hope they’re listening,” or “I wish so and so was here; they need this.” And it’s as if Jesus were saying, “This is to be applied to your life. Forget about so and so.” It’s not Jesus’s teachings in general that he is referring to as the rock (though I think it can be applied as building material). But this teaching in particular.
You and I will never withstand the worst of life’s storms if we don’t know how to show extreme love. We will fall hard if we only love those who love us or do good to those who can do good back, or bless those who are a blessing to us and pray for those who pray for us us. Extreme love isn’t found on the surface. To find that kind of love you and I must dig and dig deep! We must do the hard work to go beneath the surface. There’s no half-way in this job.
Loving those who love you and responding in like manner to those who are cursing and persecuting you. That’s easy. Everyone can do that. Everyone builds on that foundation. And you know what the result is, don’t you?
But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”
Literally, “immediately it collapsed, and the wreckage of that house was great.” Building on that kind of foundation will wreck your life.
In the Middle East, there are these large dry areas of land that almost seem like concrete. They’re called wadis. A wadi is basically a section of land that is naturally made when flooding happens. It’s kind of like a dried up riverbed. When the actual river floods, the water makes its way to the wadi so that it can continue to flow. But if the river hasn’t flooded in a while, the land gets ultra-hard. It can be like red clay in Georgia. In a drought, that clay is nearly impossible to break through with a shovel. It seems sturdy enough. And if someone was to build a house upon one of those wadis, it might actually stand of a while. But when the rain comes and the rivers gush forth, that hard ground becomes soft and mushy. The flood waters beat against the house and it cannot stand. It crumbles. And that builder would be left to clean up the wreckage of his house.
The natural, surface level foundation that everyone wants to build upon is not good enough. It may look like it, but it isn’t.
The foundation is deeper, much deeper than most of us want to dig. This wording is often used with well-digging. A person who digs a well is not looking for surface water. They don’t even want water that is just below the surface. They want to dig deep and find an underwater stream. The most famous well in Israel—Jacob’s well—is 70 feet deep. We’re not digging for fresh water. We’re digging for a rock-solid foundation, so we probably won’t need to go as deep as the well. But we will need to dig deeper than we’re used to.
Extreme love, godly compassion, and self-examination are never found just lying around on the surface.
Over the last two years, I have had to be honest with myself. My life was built on the surface—on “good enough.” And in one weekend my life was wrecked and great was its wreckage. I was left picking up whatever I could salvage. I was left angry, confused, loathing, and hurt. Even as early as last September I was still reeling from it all. And I’m not saying I’ve arrived. But I will say that by God’s grace I have dug deep and have found the foundation on which to build. By God’s strength I am rebuilding so that if there is ever a next time, I believe I have a rock-solid foundation and a stable house.
Conclusion
Conclusion
As we conclude Luke 6 and the Sermon on the Plain, I would venture to say that there are some here who have built on a wadi. It seems strong enough and stable enough. There are others who might be finding out that it wasn’t. The foundation of your life was simply a surface-level-come-and-listen-to-Jesus-foundation. The digging—the doing—was never done. Loving brother? Check. Loving neighbor? Half-check. Loving enemy? Doing good to people you like? No problem. Doing good to people you’re supposed to like? I can do it. Doing good to those who mistreat you? Hasn’t happened—at least not consistently. Showing compassion? Giving? Forgiving? All done when it’s easy. So far, we’re on the same foundation as non-believers, non-followers, non-disciples.
It’s time to dig deep—to do the hard work—before your life is wrecked and how great is that wreckage.