It Had Been Founded On The Rock

So we're coming toward the end of our study of the Sermon on the Mount. We've probably got two more sermons after this one, and then we'll be done with it. I want to start by asking you a simple question. What are you working on right now as a Christian? What I mean is, what sins or weaknesses have you identified in yourself, and how are you working on them? Maybe another way to ask the question is, how are you seeking to grow in godliness? And what are you actually doing to that end? It would be one thing for us to say, well, I don't know. I don't have anything like that. But I don't think that's probably the answer most of us would offer. If I ask, well, what are your weaknesses? I think probably we could answer that question. And then if we ask, well, what are you doing about it? We would probably say, well, I should. And that's where I think that we get stuck. That word should. Instead of saying, well, I am doing this, we say, well, I should be doing this.

The whole point of the sermon today is to get us to connect the things that we hear, the things that God says, with our lives and with our actions. To be a Christian is to be growing in godliness, to be becoming more like Jesus Christ. Not simply to want to become more like Jesus Christ, but actually be pursuing it. And so that's why I asked the question at the beginning, what are you working on? What are you working on? My hope this morning is that God will help us. to work on the things, the sins, the areas of weakness in our lives, so that when difficulty comes into our lives, we will not be swept away. Our text this morning is Matthew 7, verses 24-27. Would you please stand now as you read the Word of the Lord? This is the Word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came.

And the winds blew and slammed against that house, and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell and the floods came. The winds blew and slammed against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So at the very beginning, Jesus says, therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them. He's coming to the end of a sermon. We've been studying it for about a year. By my count, this is the 49th sermon we've had on the Sermon on the Mount. And we'll probably end at 51. We started it at the end of July last year. And so when Jesus says, everyone who hears these words of mine, what he's talking about is what we've been studying the last year.

during worship the sermon in the mount starts with the beatitudes blessed are those who we had 10 sermons on that then there's a section that says that the ancients were told that are entitled that it was entitled the ancients were told you have heard that it was said but i say to you do not commit adultery do not steal then there was a section where he warned us not to practice our righteousness before men not to pray and not to do it so when to to behave only when people are watching, but to do it all of the time. We were warned to store our treasure up in heaven where moth and rust don't destroy. We were told to treat other people the way that we would like to be treated, the golden rule. Jesus told us that we can't have two masters. We can't serve God in wealth. He says you'll either love the one and hate the other, or you'll despise the one and serve the other. We were told that we ought to make righteous judgments. Judge not lest you be judged. But for the same manner in which you measure it out, it will be measured to you.

More recently, we were instructed in traveling down the narrow path and entering through the narrow gate, which few find. And just finishing up last week, we talked about identifying and avoiding false prophets so that our souls aren't cast into hell along with them. And so these words that we're to act on are these words. Martin Lloyd-Jones, when talking about the Sermon on the Mount, says this is the distilled truth of Christian living. And if people would only learn these things, They'd be like Jesus. That all that we need to know and all that we need to be instructed in and all the things that we need to understand and believe are contained here just in this sermon, in these few words. The danger, of course, is that we would hear them and not apply them. If you're like me, when I was thinking, okay, what was in the Sermon on the Mount? I could have named a handful of things, you know.

But when I went back and looked at the sermons that I'd preached, the titles of them, and how many sermons we had on this section and that section and the other, I went, I've forgotten, as the preacher, many of those things. I think that the same thing is probably true of you. And so the question then comes to us, if we don't remember, how can we act on it? Now, it is true that you can't be acting on everything all the time. That would be best described as being a busybody. But there ought to be things that have stood out to you over the course of time that you say, this is an area of particular weakness. This is something I need to work on. And it's probably not the sort of thing that you work on for a few days or a few weeks, but something that you're going to be returning to over the course of years and probably decades, always working to make progress in that area. If we don't do that, then this passage warns us that we'll be like...

a fool who built his house on the sand. We're going to focus on that portion of this text next time. But I first want to impress upon you that there's no point in you reading the Bible. There's no point in you memorizing the Bible. There's really no point in understanding the Bible if it stops there and you don't then ask the question, how then should I live? Or what do I need to change? How do I need to be changed by this? What does this passage mean to me? And so Jesus doesn't go through here at the end of the Sermon on the Mount and list out all of the things he said and pull back all of the applications and all of the points that he had previously made. He simply summarizes it by saying, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man, may be called a wise man, will be a wise man. And this really is the point of all Scripture, not just of the Sermon on the Mount, that we would take what we read and we would think, where do I find myself in these words?

What do these words mean to me? How do I need to change? How do I need to grow? Where am I blind? What do I need to see? And so Jesus preached his whole sermon on the mount with this goal in mind, that the people who heard would be changed by what they heard. That they would go home and consider those things. That we would go home and consider the things that we hear. Have you ever come across a passage of scripture and you start to read it and you're like, I know what that says. I think I've told you guys before that if I'm reading and someone quotes scripture, it's incredible. The thing that I always want to skip over in the article or the blog post or whatever, it's the passages that they quote. Why? Well, because I know what that says. I already know what that says. I've read that before. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what do I have to do? I have to discipline myself to read that part. To slow down and to read that part. Because those, after all, are God's words. And all the rest of that article is not.

But those words, those are God's words. You could have all of the Bible memorized and go to hell if you can't put the smallest part of it into practice in your life, if you have no will to or desire to do it. If we aren't putting Scripture into practice in our lives, if we're not motivated by Scripture, really, if the Bible isn't our guiding light in how we organize our lives, what we prioritize in our lives, what we say yes to and what we say no to, that's going to show up later in life because our sins will remain intact and we will remain spiritually weak. If you think for a moment about somebody who's gone through some sort of a tragedy or gotten some very bad news, we've all heard it said, well, there's really nothing to say in that moment. If someone were to lose a child or be diagnosed with cancer or some terrible thing happens, what is there that you can say that there's nothing to say?

You can't fix the problem. There's not a special phrase or scripture that's going to make it all better. Some people handle those problems better than others though, don't they? When that difficulty comes, some people bear up under it and continue to serve God and some people don't. And what I would submit to you is that the one who bears up underneath those burdens and weights is the wise man who's built his house on the rock, who's made it a point to do the things that God has said. that there weren't magic things that all of those loved ones that remain, that come to them and speak to them and care for them, that they can only speak to and work with what's already there. And if what's already there is one who hears and has lots of head knowledge but doesn't put these things into practice, then I would say there's not much to work with. But if, on the other hand, that person who's suffering has put Jesus' words into practice in their lives, then there is truly something to work with.

And they're able to withstand the storm. Not because of what's said to them and not because of the support that's around them, but because they put into practice what Jesus has said. So how do you know if you're doing that? That's the question that's on my mind. How do I know if I'm doing this? To what extent am I doing it? Where am I not doing it? It's true that Scripture doesn't answer every question you have. Should I wear these clothes? Should I take that job? Should I marry this woman or this man? Scripture doesn't answer these questions in detail. But it does give us principles. It does give us direction. It does give us warnings and instructions. And so we should be able to say that the big decisions that we make in our lives, the things that define us, we do because we're Christians and because the Bible calls us to do it or warns us away from it. Why don't you go out and get drunk on the weekends? Why don't you curse and swear? Why don't you look at pornography? Why don't you lie and cheat and steal? Why don't you do those things?

A Christian's answer should be because God warns us away from all of those things and says that the fires of hell are waiting for those who do those things. That's why I make it my purpose not to do those things. I'm sure the world has reasons for not doing those things as well. But those ought not to be our reasons. We should hear what the Bible says. We should study it. And we should submit to it becoming our roadmap for life. Inevitably, it's going to lead us into things that are uncomfortable, into things that are scary to us, into things that are dangerous for us, into things we don't know how to do. And yet those are no reasons not to do it. The real danger is in hearing it and then plugging our ears to it, in hearing it and then saying, well, isn't that nice? In hearing it and assuming that we're doing it. James warns us with these words in his chapter 1. He says, if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer,

He is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he immediately forgets what kind of man he is. And so there's a real danger in hearing things, hearing what God says, and just presuming that we do it. And forgetting about it as soon as it's not right in front of us. You know, like when you scroll on social media and the scripture pops up, and you read it and you say, that's good. And you scroll past it. In less than a second, you don't remember what you read. It had no effect on you. You forgot it. Actually, the point wasn't to be meaningful to you. It was just entertainment. This is one way in which we're hearers of the word but not doers of the word. We have to remember the things that God says. We have to do them. Forgetting is very dangerous because if we forget that there's danger, we'll walk into those dangerous situations without having been warned away from them. Can a man pull fire into his bosom and not be burned?

We know the Scripture says no. You know I'm just quoting Proverbs to you. But we do it, don't we? And it's not a large part because we're unaware of the fire. We didn't remember it. We didn't pay attention to it. We've forgotten about it. Proverbs 22.3 also tells us that the prudent sees danger and he takes cover, but the simple keep on going and they suffer the consequences. What is that proverb telling us? Except that the wise man sees the danger and he takes action based on it. But the simple, or the foolish, They ignore it. They hear it and they say, yeah, but it'll be okay until it's not. And then they suffer the consequences for it. They pay the penalty for it. And so if we forget what God says, we're going to end up with fire in our laps. We're going to end up with danger, with problems, with bad consequences. So all of this means that the actions that we take in our lives, the things that we actually do, should in large part be justifiable biblically.

you should be able to say, I did this because the Bible says that this is a good thing for us to do. And you ought not to be ashamed of it. There will be plenty who would, you'll face pressure to be ashamed of it and to say, well, that's too bad. It's an interesting thing. There's a lot of us who are married, married young. And there's this sort of question of whether getting married young is better than getting married older. And what I think is that whether you marry young, or whether you marry old, you're not going to avoid problems. The problems may be different. A couple that gets married young is going to have a different set of problems than a couple that gets married older. But there's not a quantitative lessening of problems one way or the other. Really, the thing that's going to inform the problems of that couple most are whether or not they're mature and wise. Because you could have a mature young couple, or you could have a very immature older couple. And so their maturity, their ability,

to act on the things God has said in their lives are what will dictate whether their marriages are good or bad, enjoyable or miserable. So the one who hears the words of the Lord and acts on them is comparable to a wise man who built his house on the rock. Now, some of you might know that houses have foundations, but really all a foundation is there for is to keep the house from sinking into the ground or blowing away in a storm. That's the only purpose of a foundation. It's an important purpose. Right? It's very important. If we're going to have a house and we're going to live in it and we're going to spend lots of money on it, we would prefer that it not sink into the ground or blow down the road. One of the things that you'll notice when kids build houses or forts, they never have foundations. And what happens to them? They fall apart. That's okay if kids are building forts out in the backyard or out in the woods or building sandcastles on the beach. No one expects those to last, right? But your house that you live in, you need to last.

And so you have to build that house to withstand the forces and the storms that it's going to face. Is there anywhere where you can build a house where there's not inclement weather? I was thinking about this. Like around here, what are the problems that we have? We have wind and we have tornadoes and we have freezing rain and we don't really have earthquakes. I mean, every once in a great while, there's just this little tiny shake. But those are the problems around here. You go to other places, you might have earthquakes. You might have any freezing. They don't have any problems with freezing, but they have earthquakes. You go to other places and they have hurricanes. You go to other places and they've got miserable, bitter cold and 60-mile-an-hour winds in the middle of winter and no daylight. Really, anywhere people are going to inhabit and live, they're going to live in housing, and that housing needs to be able to withstand the storms that it's going to face. We would be foolish then to think that there's a place where we can go or that our lives will carry on without storms.

Our lives will face storms. We will face difficulties. And so if you were building a house around here, and you know that we have a freeze-thaw cycle in our ground, there's codes about how deep that foundation has to be set, how deep the footer has to be in the ground. Because really all they do is they dig a trench and they fill it full of concrete, and their goal is to set that... That footer, which your foundation sits on top of, it's sort of the base of your foundation, their goal is to set that far enough below the frost line because when the ground freezes and thaws, it moves the things that are in it. And so their goal is to say, we're going to set something really, really heavy and connected down below where the storm can affect it, where the pressures of this area can affect it. And so around here, if you have houses that have shallow foundations, what's going to happen is they're going to start to tip over time or they're going to start to sink or they're going to start to heave depending on the time of the year. I remember when my wife and I were doing premarital counseling, our counselor's house was Isaiah's, your parents' house, right? And it was a stone house. Everything was stone. It was a cute little house. And they had limestone on the inside. And you know what I'm going to say, don't you? Talk about the cracks. The cracks in the limestone would open up. I mean, open up.

or closed completely, just depending on the time of year. How much moisture was in the ground, how hot and cold it was. The whole house just moved. Now, your houses do the same thing, but they don't have stone walls on the inside that show you that. Your drywall cracks. You get a little crack in their drywall, they're getting a crack in their stone. Their foundation's doing things that you wouldn't want it to be doing. So houses need foundations, and they need those foundations to be dug deep enough to withstand the force that's going to be exerted against it. The storms will come. They will not be avoided. And so foundations have to be dug in and dug in deep. All to be buried, basically. None of us come by and we look at the foundation and admire it. The only people who admire foundations are people who are building new houses and are excited that their project has started. They come and they look at the hole in the ground and they say, isn't it wonderful? We have a hole in the ground. There's a big trench and they filled it full of concrete and it's got little metal.

threaded rods sticking up out of it. Really what we're excited about is what they build on top of it. They cover all that over with dirt and gravel and concrete. But when the storms come, you'll be glad to have had a foundation. And so a wise man builds his house on the rock. Another way of interpreting that is to say that a wise man digs down until he gets to the bedrock. And then he sets his foundation right on that. He digs and digs and digs until he finds the thing that cannot move. And then maybe he drills a hole in it and he puts anchors into it and then he pours concrete on top of it so that his concrete for his house are attached to the limestone in the ground so it cannot move when the storms come. This is what a wise man does when he builds his house. He anchors his home to the ground so that when the tornadoes come through, his house won't be whisked away. His family won't die, no matter how bad the storms get.

This is what we need to take into account in our lives. This is what we are supposed to do. This is what putting into practice what Jesus says means in our lives. We need to dig down and we need to anchor ourselves to the rock. The rock is God. He is our rock. Many Christians would say, I've dug deep enough. It's good enough for now. But the question is not, is it good enough for now? The question is, is it good enough when the storms come? That's when it needs to be good enough. Is it anchored for when the difficulty arrives? Not, is it good enough when it's sunny and 70? And so God is our rock, and a wise man anchors himself to Jesus Christ, to our God and Father, so that when storms come, they're not able to be blown around and swept away. Psalm 95.1 says, Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. It's the sort of thing that we would just pass by.

The rock of our salvation. It's just a description. But to the people who lived in that time or who lived in that region of the world, they would understand rocks really well. Rocks are their lives. Rocks are mountains. Rocks are in your face every day. Wherever you want to go, you have to deal with rocks. You have to deal with the fact that they don't move. That they're in your way. That you build on them. That weather doesn't... Tear them up. Some of the majesty and the glory of the Rocky Mountains is not that they're lush and that they're full of life, but that they stand there through the nastiest weather. And they just stand there. And they don't move. Fire comes and sweeps through them and they don't go anywhere. They're still there. And so when the psalmist said that we should shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation, he's telling us something about the character and nature and reliability of our God. Not concerning rocks, but concerning being immovable. Talking about the city of God.

Isaiah said this in Isaiah 33, verse 20. He says, Look upon Zion, the city of our appointed feast. Your eyes will see Jerusalem, an undisturbed habitation, a tent which will not be folded. Its stakes will never be pulled up, nor any of its cords be torn apart. So that's not a rock, but it's talking about things that are anchored in a rock. And he says that you're going to see them. They're an undisturbed habitation. This was not a peaceful place to be, a peaceful time to be living in. He says, but this city, these people, they're going to be attached to the ground. This city's never going to go anywhere. It's going to be there. Whatever troubles come, whatever hardships come, you'll never pull up its foundation, its stakes. The beauty of stones, the beauty of mountains is that they don't move.

You can count on them being there. And so those who attach themselves to them also remain. You guys ever spent a day shoveling stone or moving big rocks? You know how physically demanding it is? Like rocks just carry with it this misery of weight. There's just no such thing as a light rock except lava rock. And what's the point of lava rock? Like maybe it floats and that's cool, but the only reason it's cool is because rocks aren't supposed to float. They're supposed to sink. And so we find stones and rocks showing up in Scripture in many places. In 1 Peter 2, he says this, Behold, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious cornerstone. You may not know what a cornerstone is, but a cornerstone is what everything in the whole rest of the building is based on. They dig down and they put this big giant stone in the ground. Before we hit, we pour concrete and we build everything off of that. It's the right height. It's the right placement. It's immovable.

Nothing can shake it. Everything is built off of it. And so the Lord says, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious cornerstone, and he who believes in him will not be disappointed. This precious value then is for you who believe. But for those who disbelieve, the stone which the builders rejected, meaning the stone that was placed, this became the very cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. And he's speaking about Jesus Christ and he says, you know, the Jews, they tried to get rid of him. They thought if they killed him, they would be done with this problem of Jesus Christ. But he's immovable. They couldn't get rid of him. They were afraid. They set guards on the tomb saying, they're going to come and steal his body and they're going to make up these lies and these stories. They did everything they could to move this stone, this rock, Jesus Christ. Because he was a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. But they were unsuccessful. They were unable to move it.

Peter says they stumble because they are disobedient to the word. They hear the word and don't obey it. They are disobedient to the word. And to this doom, they were appointed. Zechariah 12, verse three, he's talking about Jerusalem again. And he says, it will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. He's talking about Jerusalem and them being attacked and them having everyone coming up and trying to wipe out the people, trying to get rid of them. And this is God's promise to them. that he's going to make them a heavy stone. In that day, I'll make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will be severely injured. Have you ever dropped something because it was too heavy on your foot? You ever broken your foot like that? You ever known anybody who's done that? Oh, I can lift it. And they get in there and all of a sudden they've thrown out their back, hurt themselves. That's the imagery of this passage.

that Jerusalem is going to be, the city of God is going to be there and all of its enemies are going to come and they're going to assail it and they're going to try to take it down and they're going to try to destroy it. They're going to try to lift it up and what's going to happen is they're going to be severely injured because it's too heavy. It's too big. It's permanent. And so the Bible teaches us that God is weighty, that he cannot be displaced or moved no matter what happens. Now that's something that we desire ourselves, isn't it? We would like the security of knowing that whatever storms come in our lives, whatever hardships we face, whatever trials we have to endure, whatever pain there is, that we won't be swept away by it. That's what I want. That's what's most important to me, is that I know trouble's going to come in my life. I know trouble's going to come in your lives. Spending our lives trying to avoid the trouble is not the best way to spend our time. Rather, making sure that our foundations are sturdy enough and strong enough.

Before the storm comes, that's what's worth our time. This is the sort of stability that we need. This is what Jesus is getting at when he says this wise man builds his house on the rock. His habitation, where he's going to live, the things that are going to define him, that are going to protect him, they need to be rooted to and anchored to his God and Father. In Hebrews 6, it talks about this idea of being immovable in this way. It says, this hope we have as an anchor of the soul. A hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil. Do you guys know how anchors on boats work? You think of them as being a big hook that hooks on the ground. The problem is if you have a big hook that hooks on the ground, you can't get it back up when you need to leave. You don't want it to get stuck on the bottom. So how does it that the huge big tanker ships can anchor themselves in the sea?

and endure the storms that come. What they do is they have these big, giant, massive chains that they just lower down, and they'll have a ball or some heavy thing on the end of it, but they lower it down, and the goal is that they just lower enough weight that it can't be moved. That there's enough weight resting on the ground, and it's pulling down on the ship enough that when the storm comes, the ship can't move. And then when they want to get the anchor up, they turn on these massive engines, and they back the ship up over. where they lowered it because the ship could never pull the anchor. So they turn on these motors and it pulls the giant anchor, the ship, back over the top of it and it pulls it back up into the ship. That's how boat anchors work. You see them when they've got, like in smaller boats, they've got these hooks and they've got these things on them. That's great if you've got a mud bottom to throw it into. You throw one of those anchors into something that's got a rocky bottom or a bunch of tangles and stuff in the bottom, you'll never get it back up because it will get stuck.

And so here Hebrews tells us that we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope, both sure and steadfast, one that enters within the veil. And so we can think of having, as Christians, an anchor that is attached to God, that goes into a place we're not welcome to come yet, beyond the veil, but that it's stuck there, it's held there, and that whatever storms we have that come into our lives and push on us and threaten to undo us, we have a hope, both sure and steadfast, that will not... When Paul was preaching about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, he says to them at the end of this long discourse on the resurrection, of Jesus' resurrection and their upcoming resurrection, he says, When you think of something that's immovable, what do you think of? I think of rocks and anchors and things that...

that cannot be changed and moved. This is whom we are to be. This is what we are to be doing, is to be becoming these immovable, steadfast people that are connected to God in such a way that whatever storm comes, they won't be swept away. When the storms of life come, our connections to Jesus Christ, our foundations, will be exposed. We'll see them, and other people will see them as well. Here's the thing about storms. If you lived in Florida or if you know people who live in Florida who deal with hurricanes, if they wait to get the stuff to protect their windows and homes until the storm's on the horizon, there's no more stuff. It's like snow shovels and salt around here. It's like if you wait until the storm comes and be like, oh, I need to go buy a snow shovel, great, good for you. It's not going to get here. You're going to go to Lowe's and they're all going to be gone because you waited too long because you needed it.

In Florida, they need plywood to put over their windows beforehand. We need to be anchored to Jesus Christ and to the rock before the storms come. Because when the storms come, it's too late. That's why when there's a hurricane coming into Florida, you see the roads full the days before, the week before. The people are leaving when there's time to get away from the danger. Because if they wait until there's 90 mile an hour winds, they're like, I think we should get out of here. It's too late. The time's passed. And so if you think, well, how do I build a strong foundation? When do I build a strong, like, where does that come from? The first thing I'll tell you is if you wait until the difficulty comes to try to paddle fast and establish your connection to God, you will fail. You'll fail. You will not have the time or the strength to do it. Instead, you're to do it now. And you're to do it by hearing.

By listening to what God says and then making it your mission to do it. And you might think, well, what's the big deal? That question, what's the big deal, however it's formed in your mind, has caused you untold trouble. I'll get to it later. I can do that tomorrow. I can do that later. I don't want to be concerning myself with that right now. There's a country song from a few years ago that says, everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go now. We're all too busy enjoying the comforts of this life and how immediate the gratification is and how quick the turnaround is. The problem is when the difficulties come, all those comforts are going to be gone. And you're going to be left with whether or not you have the metal to deal with the difficulty. I want you to be prepared for it.

So that when it comes, I can't as your pastor and your elders and your spouse and whomever else, they can't come to you and fix it in the moment. They can't give it to you in the moment. It's either there or it's not. And our mission should be to get it there. We should be building our house on the rock when it's calm. Nobody likes to do construction when the weather's miserable. We'd all much rather be out building and doing construction when the weather is agreeable. And so if your life is agreeable, if you've got time and you've got energy and you've got strength, then now is the time to take what you've heard and to put it into practice. Because if you neglect it, you won't be able to do it later. Hear what God says and put it into practice. That passage that I quoted from in James earlier, it's like a parallel passage. I was actually thinking when I'm done with the Sermon on the Mount, I'm going to preach that section from James. I actually was wanting to preach a sermon.

on this connection between hearing and doing. Because I'm afraid that too many of us could all give the right answers, but if we were asked, how are you doing with all of that, we'd say we would quickly have excuses and be pleading for mercy and saying, well, you can't actually expect, I mean, I'm just not doing all this stuff. And I'm saying, okay, well, let's change that. We need to change that. So this parallel passage in James, it mirrors our text in Matthew, says this. He says, therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, putting it aside, laying it aside, all of it, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. And here what he's saying to you is, there's word planted into you. You should be thinking about the parable of the soils. Seed goes in. What happens to it? Do you cultivate it? Does it grow? Does it bear good fruit or does it get whisked away?

In humility, receive the word implanted which is able to save your souls. If we were to rephrase that in Matthew's words, he would say that the house did not fall because it was founded on the rock. You'll be able to save your souls. But prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he's immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides in it, that abiding is the action. Not just knowing it, but abiding in it, doing it. He who abides in it, not having become a forgetful hearer, but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. This man will endure the trials and burdens that come to them in this life.

Job is a good example. He's actually a good example of a man who had built his house on a rock. Most of the book of Job is him not doing well. But in the beginning, you remember that Job was tempted because he was a righteous man, not a perfect man. As we see throughout the book of Job, you realize all of the sin and temptations and weakness that still were present in him, but Job was a righteous man. Job did well. And the bookends of the story of Job, are a testimony to the fact that Job was anchored to the rock. And so I don't mean to tell you that if you do all of this, that when storms come, you won't have any damage. It's possible to have a house that endures a storm and has broken windows or siding that's ripped off of it, right? But there it stands while other houses don't. And so Job did well. Job was a righteous man.

And in the end, Job, when the Lord came to him, he said, oh, I'm going to argue my case and I'm going to tell the Lord he did everything wrong. But when the Lord actually showed up, Job repented. Job came to his senses and he went, who in the world do I think I am to question the will of the Lord? And so he was a man who was wise and had built his house on the rock and was able to endure the terrible tragedies that he endured in his life and receive back from the Lord blessing more than all he had had previously. The final thing I'll tell you about building a strong foundation is that that work is largely unseen. If you're doing that work, it's not going to be done where everyone can see it and for everyone's observation. It's not the sort of thing that ever will make it onto social media. It's the sort of thing you'll do with an audience of one, the Lord, who sees what you're doing and who is attentive to it and who helps you to do it. Many people who want to lose weight think that the answer is at the gym.

But anyone who knows anything about losing weight knows the answer to losing weight is not actually in the gym, it's in the kitchen, right? You'll never outwork, you'll never work out enough to overcome bad eating habit. But you sure can show people how hard you're working at the gym and get a lot of encouragement, but then go home and eat, you know, a quart of ice cream or more. The work that you'll do in building a strong foundation will be the times that you spend studying the Word of God. memorizing it, praying and asking God to help you serve him better, identifying the areas of weakness and then taking them on. In time, people will notice that. They'll say things to you like, man, a few years ago you were obnoxious, but something's changed in you. You're not obnoxious anymore. I've said that to people before and it's like, what happened? What happened? What happened was they made it their purpose to stop being so proud and boastful. They did the work.

They saw an area of weakness and they asked God to change them. They disciplined their tongue. They disciplined their thoughts. This is our work and God sees it and God blesses it. And so my exhortation to you is to be a wise man who builds your house on the rock so that when the storms come, the rains fall, the floods came, the wind blew and slammed against the house. We've all been on the other side of that wall, right? Where you hear the rain coming, the wind coming down and sheets beating on your house. And yet the house didn't fall and we're thankful for it.

Because those who built it, built it well enough to withstand that storm. You ought to be that house. Built well enough to handle the storms that are going to come to you. Because that's what will glorify God. That's what will glorify God. All of the words that we have and all of the things that we do in peacetime, in easy time, are not nearly as meaningful as how we bear up under burdens and trials. If in those moments we serve the Lord well, then we're wise men that have built our houses on the rock. And if in those days we fall and don't withstand the difficulty, then we're the fool. And to the extent that we're fools, we should dig deep and become wise men. Let's pray.