Building on the Rock: Hearing, Doing, Enduring

Speaker A: 00:00:06

*"Too often we treat faith as if it is simply belief. The world will often disparagingly tell us that, but faith is not merely believing something, at least not from a biblical perspective."*

*The Deep Waters Way. Where Scripture, Theology, and Transformation Meet.*

Welcome once again to The Deep Waters Way. I'm Ray Cooper and I want to thank you for joining me on our continuing journey into the depths of faith.

For the last several weeks we've been looking at the idea of new beginnings and the transformation that comes by responding to the call of Christ in our lives. If you found these episodes useful or inspiring in any way for your own faith journey, I would ask that you take a moment and follow the podcast wherever you listen so that you never miss an episode. Then, if you would, please leave a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts or on Podchaser. It only takes a moment, it doesn't cost you anything, and it helps new listeners find the show. Thank you again for listening and for your help in making The Deep Waters Way more visible to others.

Now it's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters.

Have you ever gone through something in life so strong it shattered everything? Alternatively, have you ever been through something that should have left you shattered, but you came out the other side stronger — battered and bruised maybe, but nonetheless stronger for the experience? Have you ever been in the midst of something like that and had people tell you, "You are so strong to endure this"?

In today's episode we're looking at Matthew 7:24–27 and what Jesus has to say about the foundation of our lives and how what we choose to build our life on in response to his call can make all the difference in whether we stand or fall.

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 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. 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. 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."

These verses come at the end of what we typically call the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew records this discourse from Jesus in chapters 5–7 of his gospel. Luke has a very similar passage, often called the Sermon on the Plain. There's some discussion around the nature of these two sections of Scripture, with scholars generally settling on one of three conclusions. Some say that the Matthew and Luke passages are relating the same event, but are focused on different aspects and different parts of Jesus' teaching. Others say that they're different events, but that the similarities in the teachings are explained as simply being Jesus repeating portions of his teaching in different places at different times. And then the third camp says neither is an actual event, but rather the passages collect various teachings of Jesus and present them as a coherent whole.

The third option is not well supported, and to me it's the least likely explanation — in part because it would make both passages, especially the longer passage in Matthew, untrue in their settings. And while the Gospel writers do seem to arrange material in ways that support or present a particular theological point, they do not make up settings and events for what they record. Of the other two positions, either could be correct. With the first, there's much discussion trying to reconcile the two different geographic locations and pointing to the similarities between them and the events surrounding them. The second view tends to point to the differences between the two accounts, including the geography. Additionally, there's the idea that itinerant teachers usually share similar but not identical discourses in multiple places. And then, as John tells us, not everything Jesus said and did is included in the Gospels.

Personally, I lean to the second view, but I'm willing to entertain the first. However, I don't think either one of those positions undermines what Jesus is teaching or the Gospels themselves. What we see between the two is easily explained and is not a case of contradictory accounts. And that is where the third viewpoint fails in my opinion — it creates a falsehood within the Gospels.

So, looking just at these verses as the end of the Sermon on the Mount, let's talk briefly about what Jesus has been teaching when he brings his discourse to a close with this final section.

The Sermon on the Mount opens with what we call the Beatitudes. I'm hoping at some point in the future to do a series that focuses on those verses, so I won't go into too much detail with them today. However, let me just say this: you may have heard the term described as "these are the attitudes you are to have in life, and thus they are the be-attitudes." That's not where the word comes from. It actually comes from the Latin translation of the Greek word that starts each of the sayings Jesus gives there, and it's a word that means to be happy — or, as it's often translated into English, blessed.

Jesus moves on from the Beatitudes to begin discussing interpersonal relationships, including the ideas of not being judgmental. Then he discusses what the focus of our lives should be, and then worry or anxiety about the future and about our needs. And then he ends the passage — the discourse, the Sermon on the Mount — with the verses we're looking at today.

However, these verses are actually part of a slightly longer section that offers four choices that people face. Together, these choices comprise a warning about life and about our perspective on life. Those choices are that we can decide between two gates and the roads that follow from them, between two prophets and the fruit they bear, between two kinds of disciples, and then finally — the verses we're looking at — between two foundations for life. The ultimate question answered by all of these choices is: are we with Jesus or not?

Far too often in life we want to be able to say — or actually even do say — that God is on our side. But that's not how that works. God doesn't choose who he is going to side with on an issue. He simply declares what his position is and allows us to choose whether or not we're going to follow him. A fairly recent trend is to equate this with being on the right side of history. This doesn't work either, because history is fickle and our view of it often shifts over time as our cultural attitudes shift. What we view today as being on the right side of history, or standing up for what is right, tomorrow may be looked back on as being wrong. And who knows — in a hundred years, or even less, that view may shift again. So no, being on the right side of history isn't stable. Nor is claiming that God is on our side. We can only choose to look at his word and choose to side with him or not.

And we can see this clearly in a passage in the Old Testament, in the book of Joshua. Shortly after Israel crosses the Jordan, they're preparing to face the city of Jericho. Joshua is walking near the city and as he's doing so, he's confronted by what Joshua 5:13 describes as "a man standing before him with his sword drawn in his hand." Joshua asks, "Are you for us, or for our adversaries?" And the reply he gets is, "No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come." Joshua immediately falls to the ground in worship and asks what the message from God is.

This being is often described as the angel of the Lord. However, given the full context of the encounter, many scholars see this as what they call a theophany — that is, an appearing of the pre-incarnate Christ. And he has declared that his agenda is not aligned with either Joshua or Jericho. Rather, Joshua is expected to align himself with the goals and the will of the commander of God's army. And that is exactly what he does. And that's precisely what Jesus is calling each and every one of us to do in these four choices that culminate in our passage today.

In our passage, Jesus highlights the foundation of a building and uses that to demonstrate that, just like buildings, our lives need a secure and fixed foundation. We'll talk about what he specifically cites as that foundation in a moment, but let's look for a bit at what foundations can mean to a building.

In order to fully understand the importance of foundations to a building, you have to understand how soil tends to operate. This is something that is fairly unique to different geographic areas, but there are some general trends that apply across various areas. Sandy soils can appear dry and sturdy, but they easily wash away in water. Clay soils, on the other hand, can go through cycles of expansion and contraction based upon the weather. And underlying both, you find what's typically referred to as bedrock.

Jesus specifically uses two types of foundations in his description — rock and sand. And that's because that's exactly what the people listening to him could look around and see. Jesus spent much of his ministry, and even delivered the Sermon on the Mount, on the northwestern side of the Sea of Galilee. This area is a transition area between the rocky hills and plateaus and the more sandy, silt-like soil along the edge of the lake, the Jordan River, and in dry stream beds called wadis.

In these sandier areas, during the dry, hot summer months, the soil would bake and take on a hard, crusty layer that appeared stable. And a builder in a hurry might look at it, give it a quick scuff with his foot, and think, "Good enough." He could start building without much trouble. But that appearance was deceptive. When the winter and early spring rains arrived — often suddenly and violently — flash floods would race down the wadis. The crusty surface would quickly soften and wash away, and the loose sand and silt beneath it would erode and shift. Anything that was built directly on that ground had no chance once the soil began to move.

In contrast, higher up in the hills and even on the plateaus — and even under much of that sandy soil — lay solid bedrock, mostly basalt from ancient volcanic flows and limestone. A prudent builder would look at the soil and would dig down, sometimes several feet, even up to ten feet or more in some places, through all of that loose material until he reached that unyielding rock. And once the foundation was laid on that rock, the house above it was far less vulnerable to the shifting soils and the raging floods.

Now, while Jesus is using this vivid imagery of building a house, he's not primarily giving construction advice. He's talking about how we choose to live.

In the Old Testament and in first-century Jewish thought, "wise" and "foolish" aren't simply about intelligence or how clever your thinking is. They are profoundly moral categories. They describe how a person orders their entire life. That's why Psalms and Proverbs both tell us, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." The wise person lives with a reverent awareness of God and builds their life on his word. The fool may be quite intelligent, but he lives as if God's instructions don't ultimately matter.

And notice what Jesus does in these closing verses of Matthew 7. He takes that familiar building imagery and says: the practical foresight that leads a prudent builder to dig down through the loose sand until he hits solid rock is the same quality that leads a person to build their life on my words. They hear them — and they do them. In contrast, the short-sightedness that says "good enough" on a crusty summer sandbar allows a person to hear Jesus' teaching and maybe even agree that it's good, but then walk away with no real change in how they live.

This is where life gets real, and it connects directly to what the rest of the New Testament says about faith.

We love to quote Ephesians 2:8–9: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." And we sometimes stop right there, almost using it as an excuse not to change. But we can't neglect verse 10: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." James says it even more bluntly: faith without works is dead. It's not really faith at all. And a person who hears God's word and does not obey it is like a man who looks at his reflection in a mirror and then walks away, forgetting what he looks like.

Too often we treat faith as if it is simply belief. The world will often disparagingly tell us that. But faith is not merely believing something — at least not from a biblical perspective. Hebrews 11:1 says this about faith: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Hebrews 11 then goes on to detail a number of people who exhibited faith. And for every single one of them, faith is seen by what they do — not simply what they believe. They heard a word, and it may have even seemed impossible. Yet they heard, they believed, and then, crucially, they acted on what they heard. That action is the essence of trust. You do something because you trust the one who told you to do it. Faith shows our foundational belief in something being true, even if it is not yet realized. This means that from a biblical perspective, when we say we believe something, we act like it's true.

I've used this definition of faith before, and it bears repeating: faith is acting on the presumption of reliability. It's not just mental agreement or warm feelings. It's trusting that the One we're listening to is completely trustworthy — and then living differently because of it.

That's exactly what Jesus is driving at here. Hearing his words is just the starting point. But the wise life — the life built on rock — is the one that acts on those words, that obeys, that changes course, because we trust that what we hear is true and we act upon it. If you want your life to be built on a foundation of rock, you can't just hear Jesus' words and say you believe them. There has to be a change. That change is not the cause of your salvation — but it is the product of it. If you truly have saving faith, your life looks different than it did before. And that is a life that can withstand the storms.

In contrast, the foolish person chooses their own way. They lean on their own understanding. They may accomplish much in this life, but when the storms hit and the fall happens, it's catastrophic. And remember — we're not talking about houses. We're talking about lives.

And if you've listened to episode 1, you know that I'm speaking from personal experience. I've lived that foolish life. I read the books. I listened to the sermons and the lessons. I even taught them and preached them. Yet I didn't let the Holy Spirit work deep enough into my life to change something down deep. And when the collapse came, it didn't just hurt me — it hurt everyone around me. We like to look at the foolishness in our lives — the sin, or whatever else we may have — and say, "I'm not hurting anyone." Let me tell you, you might be right. You might not be hurting anyone. But when you fall — and you will fall — everyone around you will be hurt.

If your life is built on sand, the collapse will come. But as long as you're drawing breath, there is hope. Even after the collapse, it's not too late to rebuild on rock. That's part of the grace of God.

Many of us come to true wisdom not just through gaining insight or hearing the call, but through the rubble of our own poor choices. The collapse can become the moment that we finally dig deep. We clear away the debris, repent, and start anchoring our lives to what is solid — the words and the person of Jesus.

The opportunity to rebuild is real. Whether you're listening to this and realizing you've been building on sand and want to change course now, or whether you're sitting in the aftermath of a collapse — there is hope. And if you've been listening to the episodes in this series, you've seen that over and over and over again. You've seen him offer healing and transformation. You've seen him call the prodigal home. You've seen him speak to the elder brother who wanted to pass judgment. He takes ruins and builds something lasting. I know that from my own personal experience, and we even see it in Scripture. Jesus charging Peter with caring for believers after his own personal collapse is just one such example.

But we also have to be honest, and I'm going to get serious here for just a moment. The opportunity does not last forever. Life is not an endless series of do-overs. There comes a day when the house is complete, the storm arrives, and the foundation we've chosen will be tested one final time. Jesus is inviting you right now to choose the rock while there's still time to build — or even to rebuild. Let his words here in Matthew be your call to a new beginning. Because in the end, only what's built on him will stand.

Thank you for joining me today. If this episode has spoken to you in any way, please share it with someone you think needs to hear it. And if you would like to reach out, you can email me at admin@thedeepwatersway.com.

Now, it's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters.

*The Deep Waters Way. Where Scripture, Theology, and Transformation Meet.*