051. The Foolish and the Wise

The message today is about the choices we make in life.  Will we build our life on sand?  Or will we be wise and build our life on the solid rock?

You’ll remember the story about how Delphine and I got married at the ripe old age of 19 after knowing each other for only 6 months.  Before too long we didn’t have a marriage – we had a mess!

Then we thought, we need something better if we’re going to fix up this mess.  So we got out the Bible we were given when we got married.  Maybe we needed to read the Bible – it might help.  So we got it out and dusted it and opened it to the note written inside the front cover.  Here is it is …

Pp   (picture of whole inside of front cover)

This copy of God’s Word was used in the marriage ceremony in which Raymond Percy Archer and Delphine Margaret Osborne linked their lives together at the home of Mr and Mrs Haydn Sargent, Brookfield, Brisbane, Queensland.  On the 24th day of February 1968.  May God bless your journey.  Ministers  ET Hart, Haydn Sargent.  Psalm 127:1

Pp   (enlarged Psalm 127:1 piece in bottom corner)

Then we thought, what is this verse?  Psalm 127 verse 1?  So we looked it up.  Let’s all look it up!   Psalm 127:1 in our Bibles today. --  Page 713, Psalm 127:1. – Here it is.   “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain who build it;” – we’ll stop there.  “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain who build it.”

When we saw that, we decided to spend more time with the Lord, Jesus, and make Him the third partner in our marriage.  It worked!  And it still works today, 48 years later.

Please turn in your Bible to the Book of Matthew and chapter 7 on page 1118.  In Matthew chapters 5,6 and 7, Jesus teaches the most famous explanatory sermon ever given about the practical aspects of keeping God’s wonderful Ten Commandments, His Law of Love.  —  We know it as the Sermon on the Mount. At the close of the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus teaches a parable. What’s a parable?  A parable is a simple story used by Jesus to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.  So here it is on page 1118, Matthew 7 and starting at verse 24.

V24   “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man (or woman) who built his house on the rock:  

V25    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.   

V26    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:

V27    and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell.  And great was its fall.”

That parable closes the Sermon on the Mount. But Matthew, the writer of this gospel, makes a final comment in verses 28 and 29. 

V28    “And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching,

V29    for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”

Let me just say a word about the interpretation of parables, first of all. I think it's very important in interpreting parables that you be sure to study first of all the story line, the story itself, and in studying the story to notice what are the turning points. We have a parable here where our Lord really tells two stories, side by side. This is one of His famous two-story parables. (The most famous, of course, is the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Elder Brother.) Where you have that kind of parable, you have two story lines that you must follow, and usually the clue to interpretation is to notice the elements that are similar in each story and the elements that are different. On those similarities and on those differences usually rests the turning point, the clue as to how to interpret the parable.

Okay, notice this parable. There are two stories that are told, side by side. In these stories there’s one part in each story that’s the same, and there’s one part that is different.  Let's, then, observe the similarities—the parts that stay constant, that stay the same—and then let's observe the variable. --------

In each story, each person builds a house. Now let me interpret that right away. In Jesus' story we are all house builders. Delphine and I were building a house, the house called life, and we were building it on sand.  We cannot escape the fact that we are all house builders. I suppose we can observe that our Lord is talking about major decisions that people make, and every person is deciding upon careers or relationships, value systems, philosophies of life—maybe they’re the houses we build. Jesus does not make house-building a turning point in the parable. It's not a variable; it's the same in both stories.

We are all house builders.

As a matter of fact, that's even true with what we may think of as ‘non-decisions’ in our lives, or where we put off making a decision. Suppose Delphine and I saw the mess oour marriage was getting into and we decided to hold our grudges against each other.  We let them build up day after day and week after week, until we were in a really big mess.  Of course we should have followed that Bible verse in Ephesians 4:26 that reads …

Pp   Ephesians 4:26     “… don’t let the sun go down on your anger.”

Instead of stewing over the upsets we had about each other, we finally got into the habit of sorting things out before went to bed each night – and it worked!  

We could have each said, “No, I’ve got my own pride.  I’m not going to make a decision to sort the mess out yet.  I’m going to wait it out for a while to decide."  So that becomes, in effect, a non-decision, or a deferred decision. But according to this parable, there is no such thing as a deferred decision, because each person builds a house. So even the non-house, or the not-good marriage will be the house I'm going to live in. The non-decision actually becomes a not-good decision, according to this parable. It's not up for grabs. Everyone builds a house – for bad or for good.

Let's look at the second constant in the parable. This is not so comfortable for us, perhaps, but in each story, each house faces a storm. In fact, our Lord is a good storyteller; He makes that very dramatic. He says, "The rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house." That's in story number one. And notice in story number two that He uses exactly the same language again, which accentuates the similarity.  "The rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house."  Identical.   Jesus does that deliberately.

In each story, each house faces a storm. We all have storms, according to this parable. This is not, in other words, a parable about weather. It is not a parable about finding a safe climate for growing your faith or your family. It's not a parable about avoiding storms, but a parable about building houses for storms. It's a big difference.

Now we're not sure we like this, and Jesus knows we're edgy about this question. I think He proves that in Matthew 13, in His famous parable about the weeds and the wheat.

Remember in that parable, the owner is a farmer, and the wheat is planted, and then the workers rush in one day and say in our Lord's story, "Master,  there are weeds out there amongst the good wheat."

And the owner says, "Well, an enemy must have done this." Then the workers say, "Will we pull the weeds up?"

And then the surprise of the parable: The owner says, "No, let the weeds and the wheat grow together, and then at the harvest we'll take care of them both." What a shock! We don't like that. We don't want to raise our children where there are weeds around. We don't want to raise our families where there are storms around. But nevertheless, that's clear in the story: Each house we build faces a storm, a problem.

Well then, what is the variable? The variable in this parable is the foundation upon which the houses are built. That is where the story turns. ---  He says one house is built on a rock, another house is built on sand. By that variable in the two stories we have the clue to what Jesus is teaching in this parable.

So, number one, we’ll put up on the screen that….

Pp    Jesus is a sure foundation to build our lives on.

Now what is He teaching?  I’d like to make two theological observations about this parable.  First of all, this parable is about Jesus Christ Himself.  There’s no question about it.  This is a profoundly Messianic passage, a Jesus passage in the New Testament.  The people who heard our Lord’s sermon – and these closing words in the closing parable – were aware of what was at stake in what Jesus said.

I prove that you by Matthews comment that we read at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in verse 28.  “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.”   In other words, the people caught the significance of the Sermon on the Mount itself and this closing parable.

This parable is a parable about the Lord Himself.  In this parable, our Lord affirms, stresses the point, that He and His words are faithful, and that we can rightly build our lives upon that foundation.  That’s made clear in the parable.  He says, “The wise man is the one who hears My words and does them.”   Jesus Christ makes Himself and what He says and what He teaches the foundation that is what He calls ‘the rock’.   

In fact, in the parable, our Lord raises a huge question.  And the question our Lord raises is this.  If you do not choose to trust in Jesus and His principles as the starting point of your life, then what do you propose to build your life upon?  What do you propose to put in the place of Jesus Christ as the rock for your life? --  Your work?  --  Your family? --  Your church?  Your money?  Things you are accumulating?   If it isn’t going to be Jesus Christ, what is it going to be?  And notice how the parable poses that huge question.  The parable is about Jesus Christ Himself.

Now here’s a point …

Pp  We have to make an ongoing decision to build our lives on the foundation of Jesus Christ.

The parable shows that we have to make a personal ongoing living decision about starting points and foundations and throughout the whole house-building, life-building journey of our lives.  According to this parable we need to make the right decision.  It’s the most important choice in our lives.  The choice in which we decide where to build our lives, and what to put our lives upon. -------

Notice two things about this parable.  First of all, the parable shows us that our faith – that event of planting and trusting your life upon which foundation you choose, hearing what Jesus says, hearing and doing --  is itself tested. ----   And now we come to that constant that’s in both stories  --  the storm. -------  the storm that comes to the house and its foundation.  In other words, our faith, our decision, is tested by the storm.   Personal failure, in the form of sin, is what happens when the storms of life and temptation belt down on a shaky, sandy foundation.

If we were given the assignment to research on overcoming personal failure, and we are, then what is the best New Testament text for this serious theme? I think that the very best text for this great theme of overcoming personal failure, has to be the Sermon on the Mount, because that single sermon creates more awareness of personal failure than any other passage in the Bible. If you're going to have an explanation that grapples with personal failure and the restoration of a person in the midst of personal failure, we've got to take the text that makes us aware, very sharply, of what personal failure is. There is simply no escaping it in the Sermon on the Mount. Our Lord creates a profound crisis for every listener. When our Lord finishes His completion of the fulfillment of the law, if you had any loopholes before, that you were operating with, He has closed them all. You feel more guilty. The Sermon on the Mount in a sense is bad news before it's good news.

And so you have to ask the question, "Where in the world is the gospel, the good news, in the Sermon on the Mount?" Where is there hope or a solution, for the crisis that the Sermon on the Mount poses? I'll tell you where I think it is. First of all, it's in the Preacher who says it. It's the Messianic element, the Messiah element, the Jesus element, in the Sermon on the Mount that in the profoundest sense is its gospel.

It's who handles the law, who fulfills the law, who speaks to it. Jesus Christ himself, the Preacher himself, is the good news in the Sermon on the Mount.

And I have a curious second element of good news that's in the Sermon, and I think I can prove it in the Bible. The second good news element in the Sermon on the Mount is the fact that Jesus himself is aware of the crisis that His words have caused. When our Lord speaks of murder, we all felt, most of us at least, that we were not murderers. That was one law where we could say, "Lord, at least I didn't murder anybody." But when Jesus finishes the redefinition and says, "When you say, 'Thou fool,' to your brother,"…oh, my goodness, what happens then to that loophole? Even that one is closed. Our Lord takes every one of the great Ten Commandments, and they become in their fulfillments so profound that every one of us is each caught up and made aware of our own undoing. But the second part of the good news is that our Lord Himself is aware of the crisis that His words have caused. The proof of that is just a few sentences earlier than this final parable. Our Lord, in teaching on prayer, says to His disciples, "Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it will be opened." And then He tells another little parable here: "What man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?" In other words, He encourages us with these very down to earth words, encourages us to come to the Father, and knock, and ask, and seek. Our heavenly Father gives us wonderful help. He tells us about awful storms—that they'll happen to every single person. And the good news is that it's never too late to be a wise man or wise woman and build the house that you're building back on the rock. That's the good news. It's not too late to hear and act and build or even re-build.

This parable also shows that faith is an ongoing relationship of our lives with Jesus Christ Himself.

Jesus is a sure foundation to build your life upon

Now what is he teaching? I'd like to make two theological observations about this parable. First of all, this parable is a parable about Jesus Christ himself. There's no question about it. This is a profoundly messianic passage in the New Testament. The people who heard our Lord's sermon—and these closing words in the closing parable—were aware of what was at stake in what Jesus said.

I prove that to you by Matthew's comment that we read at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, "And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished" (the word Matthew uses) "at his teaching. He taught not like the scribes but like one who had authority." In other words, the people caught the significance of both the Sermon on the Mount itself and this closing parable.

This parable is a parable about our Lord himself. In this parable, our Lord affirms that he and his words are faithful, and that we can rightly build our lives upon that foundation. That's made clear in the parable. He says, "The wise man is the one who hears my words and does them." Jesus Christ makes himself and what he says and what he teaches the foundation that is what he calls "the rock."

In fact, in the parable our Lord raises a huge question. It's an existential question as well as a historical question. And the question our Lord raises is this: If you do not choose to trust in Christ's faithfulness as the starting point of your life, then what do you propose to build your life upon? What do you propose to put in the place of Jesus Christ as the rock for your life? Your work? Your family? Your church? If it isn't going to be Jesus Christ, what is it going to be? And notice how the parable poses that huge question. All right, the parable is, therefore, a parable about Jesus Christ himself.

Friends, let me tell you something about earthquakes. Let me tell you about the Golden Gate Bridge in California. …

Pp  (picture of bridge showing 2 piers plus whole bridge)

The San Andreas Fault is well known to Southern Californians, but it's even better known to northern Californians because of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. The San Andreas Fault literally goes under the south pier of the Golden Gate Bridge. Let me tell you about that bridge. Two great piers: the north pier, the south pier. The south pier is on the San Andreas Fault. The bridge has the two piers, it has this 1.6km span, and in the middle, it'll sway

almost 7 metres. And they've closed the Golden Gate Bridge only a few times in its history because of windstorms. Not because the bridge was in danger—it wasn't swaying that far—but they closed the bridge because campervans and caravans and semi-trailers were tipping over on the bridge.

I want to tell you something that may surprise you. If you’re travelling in that earthquake country around the Golden Gate bridge in America, and you want the safest place to go, you go to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. That will withstand probably 9 on the Richter Scale. It's an amazing structure. It will not fall, for two reasons. One, it's flexible—that sway. But I'll tell you another reason it stands: That bridge is a marvel of cantilever and suspension in construction. Every bit of concrete, and all the bitumen and concrete, and every bit of steel in that entire bridge—all of it relates one piece to another. Every piece of metal in that bridge finally relates to two giant cables, that finally come up to two great piers that go down into bedrock, and two anchors out on each side, also locked down into the bedrock.   That's the genius of a suspension bridge—every single piece of metal, every single piece of concrete, is preoccupied with its foundation. And it's satisfied with the foundation. You don't see big, huge cables going from the top of the bridge to anchors out in the sand:  you don't have that.   They decide to completely trust the pure living rock that those great piers go into. -------

An attractive girl was asked by a young man if she liked rock’n’roll.  Thought he’d like to take her out and get to know her.  “Do you like rock’n’roll?” he asked.  “Yes” she answered.  “Jesus is the rock, and my names on the roll.” A very good answer.

And that's what this parable is all about. This parable is about finding a really solid foundation to build your life on.

Build your life on Jesus Christ and his Word. That's the way our Lord ends the Sermon on the Mount. We still need that word today.  And if we’re going to survive the storms that come in our lives, we need a strong relationship with the rock, with Jesus.

Stand and pray etc

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