Upside Down Living #22 - Permanence in a Time of Disruption
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund concludes the Upside Down Living series on Jesus' teaching on the Sermon on the Mount discussing the differences between the foolish and the wise builders.
Message Transcript
Well, good morning. And I wanted to add my welcome to the new space here that we're in today. This has been just a great journey and I'm so excited to be together in this space. And I hope that you enjoy it. I'm thrilled with the way that it turned out, what will happen here in the days ahead, and what's happening here now, but as more and more people come back, and this place becomes filled again, we're just excited about how that will live and what it will mean. You do have one challenge obviously and that is to pick a new seat, right? Wherever you used to sit, you have to decide where you now will set it. You have to try out a few different places to decide, but it should all be good.
Hey, I also want to just add my thank you. You saw on the video, how we were able to take some resources to some families in our community. Our small groups have resourced that. So maybe it was one of your groups that helped that to happen. And we were able to provide food for a lot of different families. And beyond that, your generosity to the Eleos Fund earlier in the year has allowed us as a church to help several families in our church who've gone through some really hard times this year because of everything we've gone through. So, I just want to say thank you for your generosity in so many ways.
Today we're going to finish our series that we started back in July on Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew five through seven, we called it Upside Down Living. And this is a way that Jesus had taught probably in his most extensive and detailed section in our New Testament. And so, this has been significant, but I have to be honest, I did think about changing this today because we were new in this space, I thought maybe we should do something with a little more pizzazz too it, or something different than what we actually are doing, or maybe I should move it forward.
But as I looked at how this unfolded, I thought, this really does fit this day for us as a church, it fits this day in the Strip District. As some are going in this, we're going through a leadership transition there, it fits in Butler County with the new building that is on the horizon in 2021. And it fits just for all of our lives. Whether you're here and, you're saying, "Look, I'm not really concerned about anything that's going on in Orchard Hill Church." This is an important teaching.
So, I want to read to you the words of Jesus that we find in Matthew chapter seven, verses 24 through 29. Here's what we read. "Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house, and it fell with a great crash. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught us one who had authority and not as one of their teachers of the law." This is the word of the Lord.
Will you pray with me? Father, we ask as we're gathered here today, gathered online in the Strip District, Butler County, that you would speak to all of us, whatever our experiences have been over the last week, whatever our expectations are, we pray that you would be our teacher, that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
If you've ever taken a public speaking course. You know that what you're taught very quickly is that the two most important times in a public speech are the first few moments and the last few moments. So, in other words, in the very early moments you're supposed to do all you can to establish a connection, to build rapport, to establish a little bit of credibility so that people will listen and say, "This matters." Maybe even that they'll lean forward on their chairs a little bit. And then at the end, what public teaching instructors or public speaking instructors will say is at the end, you need to have something that's compelling and action oriented and encourages people to do something. And to remember what it is that you talked about.
Well, Jesus here was giving a sermon, hence the title Sermon on the Mount. So, this wasn't written communication, he was speaking, and it's recorded for us in the gospels, in Matthew and in Luke. And Jesus ends his sermon with this incredibly simple straight forward story. There's two men, they each build a house. Their houses look remarkably the same. We're not told that detail, but you assume that from the way he told it, but they built on two different foundations. One built on rock, one built on sand. And the one who built on rock and the one who built on sand, both encountered a storm. But when the storm came, they had different results. The person who had built on the rock, his house endured the storm, the person who built on the sand, it came crashing down. And Jesus says, "There's a wise and a foolish way to approach life." And he clearly uses this as a metaphor for life. And he's saying, there's a wise and a foolish way to approach life. And you have the choice. Basically, he's saying, "Take these words that I've given you and understand that the way that you build your life will make a radical difference."
Few years ago, my wife got into the TV show, Downton Abbey, and she was watching it. And it was one of those things where she would watch it, if I wanted to spend time with her, I'd have to go in the room where it was on, which normally would not be my choice of TV show. She says that it happened once, I think it happened more than that. It happened enough that I know a little bit about the show. And the show basically had people of some means, who lived this polished, pristine life kind of in the better part of the house, but the real action took place underneath in the servant’s quarters, where things were really decided and really happened. And it's a little bit like Jesus is saying, you can build your life in a way that looks good and everybody sees it. But the real determining factor is what it is at the foundation, what's under the surface, what is unseen.
John Stott in talking about this in his commentary says this. He says, "That the two people here both read the Bible, both go to church, both listened to sermons, both buy Christian literature. The reason you often cannot tell the difference between them is that the deep foundations of their lives are hidden from view." You see, the foundation that you have, the foundation that I have, it's not what everybody sees.
And Jesus is communicating this because he wants us to understand that sometimes we can be deceived into thinking that what we're building is secure when it's not. In fact, if this year has taught us anything, it's taught us that security is not found where we think it's always found because this year has shown us that a global pandemic can come along and can change all of our plans. It can change all of the things that we thought we understood about how the year would unfold or what we would do or where we would go. And all of a sudden something comes along if you want to call it a storm and our foundations are exposed.
Here's what I know about me and I think it's true about most of us who are gathered here and online, and that is, most of us want security. In other words, we want to know that the life that we're building, whatever we're investing our energy, our time, our passion into is secure. That's what we want to know. And Jesus is saying, "I want you to know that it's secure as well." And so, I want to consider this by just simply looking at the wise person that Jesus talks about, the foolish person that Jesus talks about, and then talking about some implications for all of us in this.
So, first the wise person, and we see two things that are true for this wise person. The first is this, and that is the wise person hears the word of God, verse 24. "Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like the wise man who built his house on the rock." Jesus' statement is very straightforward. He says, whoever hears these words of mine, now clearly, he's referring at least in part to this sermon on the Mount, Matthew five through seven. But it doesn't take much of a stretch to say, that by implication, he's saying, all the words of God, he's saying, "These words, whoever hears them, pays attention to them. This is the person who will be wise."
And then in verse 29, the writer Matthew says that the crowd was amazed because he taught us one who has authority. And that points out something that's true, and that is all of us will source our authority somewhere. And what I mean, when I say that is what we'll do is we'll either choose to say, "I'm my own authority." Or "I'm going to seed authority to something outside of me." Now, it doesn't make a lot of sense for most of us to seed authority to something outside of ourselves. If you're a grown adult, you're not going to call your mom every other day and say, "Mom, what do you think I should do?" Now, some of you moms may like that, but it's not healthy.
Come on, come on. Hey, you can work with me a little on that. The idea is that you, as you become an adult, start to say, "I know what I need for myself." But the problem is that then we start to think, "I shouldn't have any authority except me. And I certainly shouldn't have the word of God as my authority." And here's why this is a problem because what ends up happening is, we end up picking and choosing things from the Bible that we want to believe and affirm things that we want to practice and things that we don't. And if you and I choose the things that we accept from the Bible and reject the things that we don't like, it's not the Bible that we're actually bending our knee to, it's ourselves. Do you see it?
And what Jesus is doing is he's saying the wise person actually hears the word of God. I remember years ago I was traveling, and I came to a rest stop. And I went into the bathroom and there were a group of men in there changing out of some tuxes and into some other clothes. And they were carrying on and talking about their plans for the night. And they had big plans. Their plans were to consume some substances. Their plans included some of the women that they had just met and some of the things that were going to happen. And I had a moment where I'm in this restroom and I'm thinking, "This is kind of an interesting moment." And I had the thought, "What if I went over to these guys? And I said, "Listen, I'm a minister. And I would like to offer you an alternate to your plans tonight. Would you like to go out on one of these picnic tables and would you like to have a Bible study and see what God says about all that's..." Do you know what I mean? I didn't do that because it would have been weird, especially in the bathroom, I didn't do that. But I had the moment where I thought, "You know why they wouldn't want to have a Bible study because they don't actually want to know what the Bible says at that moment."
But here's the thing, it's easy to say, "Well, those guys with the tuxes and the big plans, they don't want to know it." But do you know sometimes you and I may not want to know what the Bible says about certain things, because we don't like the implications. We don't like to seed authority to somebody outside ourselves and what we need to do, if we're going to be wise, according to Jesus is seed authority and say that "I will hear the word of God because it's true in what it says about me, that I'm a sinful person who needs a savior. And I learn from the Bible about God and his goodness. And I don't just learn about God and his goodness and my sin and my need for a savior, but I learn about the realities of life. I learn how to be a better parent, how to be a better husband, how to be more loving, how to be industrious, how to be wise." The Bible speaks to the essence of all of our lives.
So, Jesus says the wise person hears the word of God. But then secondly, the wise person heeds the word of God. Verse 24 again, "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice..." So, Jesus just simply says this, and that is, "You want to know what wisdom is? It's hearing the word of God and heeding the word of God. It's putting it into practice in your life."
Now, if you've been around Orchard Hill for any length of time, you know that we're very meticulous about trying to make sure that nobody ever walks out of these doors saying, "If I obey God, then I get heaven. And if I disobeyed, then I don't." Because the Bible is incredibly clear that obedience does not equal salvation. That salvation is by grace, Ephesians 2:8 and 9, "It's by grace that you're saved, through faith, not of works, so that you can boast." In other words, it's never what I do, but that doesn't mean that obedience is irrelevant. Sometimes what happens when you hear that message over and over again, and you will, if you come here because the gospel is what we celebrate, is what gives us spiritual power and spiritual life.
But sometimes when you hear that message over and over again, you can get the idea that says, obedience is optional. But what Jesus is doing here is he's showing us that obedience is not optional because to not heed the word of God is to, in a sense, put ourselves in a place where what we're doing is, we're saying, "I know better." Think about it this way, if you had some coastal property and you knew that there was a good chance that a hurricane would one day come across your coastal property and you were building a house. What you probably would not do is say, "How many shortcuts can I take to the building code? Because I don't think that really matters. And they seem a little extreme." What you would do is you'd probably say, "What does the code say? Because this has been studied for years. And the wise thing to do would be to follow the building code. So, when the Category 5 storm comes my house can endure this the storm." Do you see why it matters?
And what does say verse 25? When the storm came that the wise man who had built his house on the rock of hearing and heeding the word of God, his house didn't come crashing down.
But Jesus doesn't stop there, then he has the fool. Verse 26, and notice that this begins the same way. The first characteristic of the fool is that they also hear the word of God. Here's what it says. "But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand." And so, Jesus says, "If you want to know what the fool looks like in a sense, they hear the word of God as well, but what's the difference? They don't heed the word of God." So, the two characteristics of the fool here are the person who hears it but doesn't heed it.
Now you may hear that and say, "Well, okay, that's part of how we need to think about this." But part of what we need to understand is that what the Bible says, what the Sermon on the Mount says about us, is easy for us sometimes not to heed. You see Jesus teaching was chapter five, verse 48, "Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect." Another words he keeps raising the bar in his teaching and saying, "Here is the demand." But he also provides the way for it to be met because we're told in chapter five or 17 through 20, that Jesus fulfilled the law. In other words, Jesus came and was perfection for us. And part of not heating, the word of God is saying, "I don't need a substitute. I don't need a savior. I'll take my chances on being good, and whatever God is going to judge. He's certainly going to judge me better than the people in my life." And what we need to understand is that the message of the Bible isn't just obey God so things go well for you. It's recognized that there's a standard that you can't meet, and Jesus has met matted on our behalf.
But there are also these directions and instructions throughout the pages of the Bible that speak not so much to our eternity as they do to the quality of our life here and now. Let me just give you a few where we get the indication either directly or by implication from the scripture that it's foolishness. And again, this is what Jesus is talking about. The fool, the person who knows right, but chooses not to do it.
In Proverbs chapter 10, verse four, we're told that a lazy person is foolish. Now that's pretty self-evident and simple, but Proverbs also tells us that chasing kind of dreams, fancy dreams, is foolish. In other words, some of us, what we'll do is we'll spend our lives rather than working hard, blaming somebody else for us not getting ahead, or trying to figure out some shortcut to what it takes to where we want to go. And in a sense, that's building on a faulty foundation. Proverbs chapter 10 verse 18 says that slander is foolish.
What of us will do is we'll live our lives and we'll say, "You know what? I understand what God says, but you know what? God didn't have my boss. And if you had my boss, then I would have to say what I say about my boss to other people." Or, "God didn't have my spouse." "He didn't have my sister-in-law." "He didn't have my neighbor." And so, we feel justified somehow in saying things about people that the Bible calls slander. And so, we say, "I know what it says, but I don't heed what it says."
Proverbs 17:10 says that to ignore a rebuke basically is foolish. Sometimes what we'll do is when people come to us, is we won't heed the coaching and instruction and loving wisdom that comes from somebody. Proverbs 18:2 says that to be argumentative is basically foolish. In other words, to always be at odds with our spouse or with our children or our parents or our coworkers, or our boss means that in essence, what we're doing is we're building on a faulty foundation and then take Jesus' words just from the Sermon on the Mount. He says, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." Do you know who your enemy is? Your enemy is somebody who's hurt you, done something that is wrong in your eyes. Somebody who has lived in a way that you look at and say, "I don't appreciate that." And Jesus says, "Here's what I want you to do. I want you to love that person. I want you to pray for that person." How easy is it to say, "Well, I know Jesus said that, but that's got to be in the fine print somewhere. That isn't really what he meant."
Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Meaning those who don't think too much of themselves, "Blessed are the merciful." Those who will give of themselves and be merciful when somebody doesn't deserve it, "Bless it are the peacemakers." People who are always working to bring people together, not to tear them apart. And he says in Matthew 6, that we shouldn't worry about our future, in Matthew 7, that we shouldn't judge. Do you see how easy it is to say, "I hear the word, but I don't practice the word." And then we end up building on a faulty foundation. And I think part of Jesus' point is that it's really easy to build something and think this looks good, and to be deceived.
Now, I do need to clarify something. And this is important in biblical interpretation, anytime that you read something in the Bible, you at least need to ask the question, what does the whole Bible say on this subject? Because it would be easy to read this section of Jesus teaching in isolation and say, what Jesus means is if you do good, you get good. And if you do bad, you get bad. And I don't think that that's the overall teaching of the Bible nor do I think it's what Jesus is actually saying here.
Here's why I say this isn't the overall teaching of the Bible. In the Old Testament there's a character named Job; whole book named after him. And job was somebody who the text goes out of its way in chapter one of Job to say he was righteous and above reproach, he did right in the eyes of the Lord, basically. And then do you know what happened in job's life? All his kids died, and after his kids died, his wealth was taken away. And then he had incredible health problems. In other words, everything that we would consider to be his house, his life crumbled. And yet the text tells us that he was building on the right foundation.
And the reason that I point this out is you cannot draw a direct straight line all the time from what we think is the foundation of security and what we think is our role in that. Now you may say, "Well, does that just invalidate what Jesus says?" Not at all, because here's what Jesus must mean. In part, he must mean that security is something other than what we always tend to think of security as, and secondly, it doesn't negate that typically the more we heed the word of God, the more secure our life is, but that there are times when something may crash into our life and may cause something where there's not a direct line. Now you may say, "Okay, you're piecing together a whole bunch of stuff here, and I may not be following you Kurt, right now."
But here's what we need to see. And that is that sometimes you can't look and say, "What happens in my life is a complete story." Maybe, just maybe sometimes God allows there to be what feels like a crashing of our life as a way to let us see that what we were building wasn't really secure, so that we have real security. In other words, sometimes it might be that what has that happening is we've been trying to build the right foundation, but down deep, our real love, our real affection has been our appearance, it's been our job, it's been our wealth and our security that goes with that. It's been our family. It's been our friendships. It's been our reputation. It's been something else where we say, "This is where I really have my security." And maybe, just maybe Jesus sometimes lets those things be shaken so that we come to a point of saying, "This is not where my ultimate security and hope is found."
I remember years ago when I lived in Chicago. I used to drive by a building that was being constructed. And the building took a couple years to build. And I'd drive by it on a regular basis and always kind of wondered what it would be. It looked like a grand office building, was several stories high. And then it sat empty for a long period of time, and I started to wonder why it sat empty. And so, one day I did a little research and what I found out was that when the building went to get its occupancy permit, the contractor, the building had been constructed slightly off at the foundation level. So, the whole thing was leaning. And when the construction ended and they went to get the occupancy permit, they couldn't get it because it was leaning. And it went into litigation where they tried to fight with the government to say, "Can we get an occupancy permit?" In the end, I believe that building had to be destroyed.
See, Jesus' point is you and I can build on a faulty foundation and not realize it until it's been so built out, that it's actually hard to watch the crumbling of what we've spent our lives building. And it's really a warning and an encouragement, a warning to say, be careful in terms of what you're building, but also be encouraged because if you build it right then there's security that transcends all the storms. So, what are the implications? Well, first you and I will all source our security in something. You will, you will believe that you're secure in this world because of the way you look, how much money you have or make, the reputation you have because of the spouse you have, the kids you have, the family you have, where you live, where you've gone to school, you will source your security in something. And Jesus, I think is saying, source your security in the rock. That all that other stuff ends up being sand, even though it's good.
Secondly, we realize here that storms are inevitable. Jesus says, When the storm comes..." Teaching in the Bible over and over is that there will be trials, there will be hardships and only what is built on the rock will survive. In fact, when storms come, it's when our foundation is exposed, it's when the things that have been hidden are revealed and when our shortcuts are seen. And Jesus, I believe is saying, "I want to spare you that day when you get the occupancy permit and realized the whole thing's leaning just a little."
Yeah, I also think there's an implication for us as a community today, as a church. We called this permanence in a time of disruption and building on a rock is similar for a group of people as it is for individuals. We're here in this beautiful new space, but one of the things that I believe is true is that the space is the house above the foundation. That the foundation is the word of God. And the people who make this their church home saying, "I will bend my knee to the word of God."
It's not smoke machines and cool sound and great video, we like that stuff, but the foundation is a group of people who say, "We are committed to what the Bible says and then bending our knee to it every time, even when it's difficult and unpleasant, even if it's against the cultural norms, even if it's something that causes us challenge with one another, because we have to have some hard conversations about what may not be right.
You see, so often in the modern church, what people do in church is they do what I call a Ted Talk with a verse. You know what a Ted Talk is? It's a high interest talk that's dumped into about 15 minutes where there's always a solution. And a Ted Talk with a verse is saying, "Let's just do something that makes us comfortable and we'll throw a verse on it so that we feel spiritual on our way home." But the word of God sometimes will make us uncomfortable and will challenge us in ways that we don't want to be challenged. And the wise person, the wise community will say, "We will build our house on the rock by saying, we will bend our knee to the word, whether we like it or not." And that's the foundation that we want to build here at Orchard Hill.
You see, church can be really simple. That is when people are committed to God and live in community together, what happens is their whole life then is being built on that rock. And Jesus earlier in this teaching in Matthew 5, says a city on a hill cannot be hidden. And that image has been used by Christians for generations to say that the call of the people of God is collectively to say, we will live lives that are distinct in such a way that it's an alternate city to the city of our world.
In other words, the way that God works is when people say, "We're building on the foundation." And people in our culture say, "There's something different about the people who name that church as their home. They don't give into petty slander; they're not driven by selfishness. They're characterized by generosity and love and compassion and grace." And one of the things that you see about Jesus that's so beautiful. And this is important, especially if you're here and you're feeling like your house has been crumbling. Jesus loved to spend time with those whose houses or lives were crumbling.
In fact, in the Bible, the way it's said is Jesus was one who spent time with sinners, with tax collectors, with prostitutes. And what this means is that Jesus' way of interacting with this was not simply to say, "Listen, get it right and you'll have a nice house. Get it wrong and your house will come crashing. Ha-ha." It was, "If your house has crashed, I'm going to be right there with you. And by grace, help you begin to rebuild and point you to a better foundation." And that's the mission and the heartbeat of the gospel, it's the mission and the heartbeat of this church.
And so, if you're somebody who says, "This day, today, things seem to be in a good place for me." You are called to be part of that alternate city, part of that mission. And if you are somebody who says, "My house, my life is crumbling." This is a place where hopefully we reflect Jesus, and you can come and begin to rebuild the foundation.
And that's how Jesus ended his sermon. He said, "Listen, there's two different options here. You either build on the foundation of the rock or on the foundation of the sand." And that choice may not be obvious for a long time, but there will come a day, there will come a day, when where you have sourced your security will matter immensely. So where are you sourcing your security? Is it in Jesus, in his rock, his word, and heeding his word? And if so, you can say, "I adore him for what he has pointed me to." And if it hasn't been, you can say, "I adore him because he's inviting me with grace to come and rebuild it again."
Some of us have a pile of regret because you hear a talk like this and you say, "Oh, I wish I had." "I wish I hadn't." And you replay all kinds of things in your mind of things that you know we're a sandy foundation. And right now, your house feels like it's crumbling. And you're saying, "God, why didn't you warn me sooner?" But just God's grace right now is saying, "Come back to me and you can start to build again. But on the rock this time, and you can have a different sense of security. One that transcends all the things that we tend to think we have."
Father, we thank you that you invite us to build on such a strong foundation. God, I confess that oftentimes I build on things that are sand. I ask that you help me to see those things and turn towards you. And I pray that would be true for all of us who call this our church home. And God for those who are here today, and maybe aren't sure about church or you, I pray there would even be just an awareness of how tenuous the life that we build is, and that maybe today would be a day to say, "I want to turn to Jesus as my ultimate security." Because you are the one who's worthy to adore. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
