The Stories Jesus Told #8 - The House on the Rock
Message Description
Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the "Stories Jesus Told" message series teaching out of the gospel of Luke sharing the parable of the house build on a firm foundation.
Message Transcript
A few weeks ago, I was looking at my news feed and I saw an article about some missionaries in Haiti who ended up having their lives taken from them because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was a story that is maybe something that seems remote to us. But as I read the story, I thought, how far away is my life from being concerned that I'm going to have somebody kill me simply because it's expedient?
But then I quickly asked another question, and that question was this. And that was these are people who have given their lives to go to another country, to serve the poor to tell people there about Jesus Christ, and here their lives are taken from them. At a young age, it seems kind of senseless. And certainly, you know, people who have appeared to give no concern to the things of God who've lived into old age, comfortably, easily. And so, you say, well, how does that work? And maybe it isn't that question exactly. But the question is probably something that many of us ask in different ways.
Maybe you or somebody you know has wanted to have a baby, and you've prayed, and tried to honor God with how you lived your life. And the baby hasn't come. And then you know somebody else who just gets in a room with somebody across the room and it seems like they can get pregnant, and they aren't somebody who gives any thought to the ways of God. Or maybe you have been somebody who's prayed, tried to live faithful, take care of your body, and you get a terminal diagnosis. And yet you know somebody who again hardly is concerned about the ways of God or their own personal health, and they live and have no issues.
Now, why do I start with these contrasts today? Well, when you come to this story that we're looking at today, Luke, chapter six, verse 46 through 49, we've been looking at the stories Jesus told, the parables. It's a story that when you first read it, you may think that what it basically says is that you have a guarantee that if you do the right thing, you will not suffer. And it seems to be at odds with our life experience in many ways. But I think that when we read and understand this story as Jesus tells it, that it actually is a beautiful promise and it's significant.
When we're laying out these stories, I chose this story specifically knowing that today we'd recognize high school graduates. And my hope is that wherever your life takes you, these verses will be verses that will help instruct the way that you live. And so, in this story is a story that is very simple, as most of Jesus’ stories are.
It's a story about a man who builds his house on a strong foundation and a man who builds his house on a weak foundation. And then when the flood comes, the torrent comes, says the text. One house stands. One house is destroyed. And if you read this story as a guarantee that if you do the right thing, nothing bad will happen in your life, what will happen is in time you'll be devastated if and when you experience a storm or something, because you'll say God has somehow let me down. If you read this story as a guarantee what will happen if you're not devastated and blame God is you'll look at yourself and you'll say, I didn't do right. I must have done something wrong, and you'll blame yourself or you'll simply look at the universe and you'll say, I just live in a random universe. There is no order. There's no point to how or why I do anything.
But it's important to notice that Jesus, when he tells the story, almost assumes that storms will come. He doesn't say do the right thing and there will never be a storm. What he says is, if you hear the word of God and obey the word of God, then when a storm comes, you'll be able to endure it in a way, is what he's saying.
N.T. Wright has written this about the idea of suffering. He says, “Early Christians understood their vocation as Jesus' followers to include... their own suffering, misunderstanding, and likely death.... The suffering of Jesus' followers is ... not just the inevitable accompaniment to the accomplishing of the divine purpose, but actually itself part of the means by which that purpose is fulfilled."
When you read through the New Testament, what you see is that suffering or pain or storms, whatever word you want to use, is not something that's foreign to the people of God. But what Jesus does here is he says, these storms, these hardships, they don't need to destroy your house. Now, what is the house here? That's an important question, because how you understand this house is going impact how you understand this parable, this story.
And so, in the Bible, the image of a house or a dwelling shows up in several places. Let me just show you a couple. Psalm 90, verse one says this. “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.” So, what is the dwelling place? The house. The Lord is your dwelling place. First Corinthians, chapter six, verse 19 says it this way. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;” And so, he says you're not your own. Your body is the temple. The imagery of a dwelling, a house, a temple is probably meant to connote everything that's significant that is not vulnerable to the storm in our lives.
If you think about a house, it's where you keep what's most precious in here. It's equated to the temple of God, to the dwelling of God. In other words, the house is talking about your spiritual relationship with God, your eternity, and what the storms of this life can't ultimately take away. And what he's doing when he says, if you build on this foundation, that will not be taken away, is he's saying, there is a way to build your life, that when the storms come, the most important things don't feel vulnerable.
Now, I know in saying that, that it's easy to say and some of us have lived through some storms, some hardships where we say my whole world was shaken. And that isn't to say that there won't be very challenging, hard moments in life. But what it's to say is that Jesus is saying, I'm offering you a world in which you won't be devastated by the hard, painful moments of your life.
Here in Pittsburgh, we live in an area of the country that's pretty insulated from natural disasters. You may not feel that way, but we rarely have, you know, horrible blizzards once in a while. But, you know, it's every decade or so that it's really a bad blizzard. We don't really have earthquakes. We don't really have tornadoes. I know there was one that kind of came through the other day, but because of the hills and though where we are, it's not like Kansas or something and we don't have hurricanes. We get an occasional flood, but we built our city in such a way that it can handle a lot of flooding without it being a big deal.
But if you live in Florida, how you build your house for a hurricane, rating matters. And here's what you see in Florida is that sometimes builders will come in, and they'll build in such a way that they cut some corners to save some dollars. And when the storm comes, it's not strong enough to withstand the hurricane. And other builders build up to code or beyond code. And those houses, even when a devastating storm comes through, stands. And what Jesus is saying is you can build your life in a way that it'll stand.
So, what is the key to this? Well, there's two here. And the first I'm just going to say is to hear the word of God. Listen to this. This is what he says. Verse 46, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like.” So, he says, everyone who hears my words puts them into practice. So, hear and heed. Those are the two keys. Hearing the Word of God. Heeding the Word of God.
He starts out by saying why do you call me Lord, Lord? And that's an important title. Sometimes the word Lord can just wash past us when we hear it. But it meant Master. And so, the idea biblically is that Jesus becomes your master. And here's what's true probably for a lot of us, is we're okay with Jesus being our assistant, Jesus being our advisor, Jesus being our guru to help us, but the idea of a master seems foreign to us. And what we think is, look, I'll take advice from Jesus, but I don't want a master, I don't want a Lord. But the way that he phrases this is he says why do you call me Lord, Lord? Why do you emphasize that I'm your master, but you don't do what I say.
And then he goes and he says, I'll show you what it's like. The person who hears my word and does what it says. He says, this is the person who builds on the right foundation. So, to hear the word means that we discipline our lives in such a way that we're consistently taking in the Word of God so that we hear the word.
I think there's a personal element to this where we orient our lives so that on a regular, consistent basis we are reading and taking the Bible into our lives. Some people call this a quiet time. Some people call this devotion. But this is just saying that in some way you take personal responsibility to say, I am going to let the Word of God operate on my mind on a consistent basis.
Then I think there's also a corporate element. That's what you're doing here today, coming together with other people who are followers of Jesus and saying, I want to hear the Word of God. Hebrews chapter ten emphasizes the importance of this. This is verse 23 and following. It says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” So, what's he saying? He's saying you need to have a weekly rhythm of coming together with other people to hear the Word of God.
I know statistics say, and this is going to be my word to you, college, you're about to be college students, high school graduates, and that is, statistics say 60 to 80% of you who grow up inside a church will leave church at least for a decade. In other words, you go off to college and you'll say, I don't need church, but what you actually want to do is the exact opposite and say this is a time to let the Word of God shape me in community as well as personally.
Now, I know that part of what happens is that over time you kind of get in the mindset that says well, I've already kind of heard everything like the stories Jesus told, read them, don't need to hear them again, but like, I get it. But here's what happens. You hear it differently at different seasons of your lives, and it impacts you differently.
And so, to keep taking the Word of God in whether it be personally, corporately, or both of those is a way to let God's word operate so that you begin to think the thoughts of God. And here's what's true. And that is if you don't let the Word of God operate on your mind continually, sooner or later culture will shape your worldview and your perspective instead of the Bible.
Here's biblical proof for this. Romans chapter 12, verse two says don't be conformed to the age in which you live. But what's significant there is that the verb form that's used for “do not be conformed” is not active, but it's a middle or passive, it's a deponent verb, which means it can be middle or passive. And all that simply means is that it's something that happens to you rather than something you choose. So do not be conformed. What that means is that you will naturally become conformed to the age unless you do something to the opposite.
Then it says but be transformed again. Passive meaning. It's something that happens to us by the renewing of your mind. So, what is it that helps us not embrace the cultural views and narratives of our day that will lead to a sandy foundation in our lives? It's letting the Word of God operate on our mind so consistently that we actually think the thoughts of God.
And then after we've been disciplined enough to take the Word in on a regular basis, personally and corporately, we need to make this decision, this simple decision, to let the Bible say what it says. And here's what I mean, that sometimes what we'll do is we'll say, well, okay, I'll take the Bible in, but then we become the arbiter of whether or not we think that it really makes sense. Here's where this matters in all kinds of places but let me just give you a couple.
Think about salvation. What does the Bible say about how somebody is saved? Now, if you've been around Orchard Hill, hopefully that's an easy question. You're not saved through your own efforts. It's not your work. It's the work of Jesus Christ. But do you know what the most natural cultural narrative is to say, well, it's really about my behavior, my goodness, and God liking the way that I live. And if you're not careful, what happens is even the religious kind of Christian version of that does one of two things. It either makes you proud because you say well, yeah, but I've done all these things that God somehow commends me, or you become defeated because you say, I haven't lived well enough, and either way it's spiritually destructive.
But when you're rooted in the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is God's work through Jesus, not our work that makes us right with God. And you keep letting that truth be something that you resonate on, and it changes the way you think. Now you can live and move in this world without pride and self-righteousness and without being defeated because your status and your standing are entirely based on what Jesus Christ has done. You can also know that when you come to some moment where you say, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, that you can still choose to say but I trust what God says.
You know, there are some industries where telling the truth will cost you, and you'll be faced with those moments where it's like everybody fudges on this. This is probably okay, it's no big deal. I'm not going to rock the boat over this. And so, deciding to say I'm letting the Word of God say what it says, you'll face the same issue when it comes to your resources. When the Bible talks about taking the first portion of your resources and giving it to something of God's work rather than your own. There's a moment where you say yeah, but if I do that, that's not going to make a lot of sense to me. And so, there's this moment of saying, I want to decide to say when the Bible says something, that settles the issue.
Now, there are a couple of dangers when it comes to hearing the Word of God. One is just the danger of a false teacher. And we see this in Second Peter in chapter two, verse one. We see it in a bunch of places, but that's one place where it's very clear. It says, “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord...” And all that's saying is just because somebody uses a Bible and talks about it doesn't mean that it's true. If you've been around here, you've heard me say this, you should check everything that's said. Just because I say it from this stage or somebody else says it from this stage doesn't make it true. You still need to verify that what's being taught is actually the Word of God.
And you need to be aware that the Bible says in later days that there will be even more false teachers. So just because somebody says they're teaching the Word of God, unless you can look at it yourself and say this is what it actually teaches, doesn't mean it's the Word of God. And the further away somebody gets from actually making their points from a text, the less likely it is to actually be the Word of God. In other words, when somebody starts talking about a text and then they end up five steps removed, then you have little reason to believe that they are actually teaching you the Word of God.
And that leads to a second error. And I'm just going to call this the error of conflation. Here's what I mean when I say the air of conflation. Conflation is where you take something that is clearly taught, then you make implications from it. And then you make even more implications that are personal from it, and you universalize them. And when you're on the other end of somebody who does that, you start to say well, I'm hearing something that I'm not sure is the Word of God, and it actually conflates issues.
Now, I realize that's a theoretical way I just described that. So let me now say this hopefully in a way that's concrete and clear. A little more theory on this. In Luke six when he says hear the Word, the word that's used here is the Greek word logos, which is a word that means word. It's also might be familiar to you from John one, in the beginning was the Word, was the logos. It has a connotation of all that God is about. But that's distinct from another word of God in Ephesians six, where we learn about the armor of God. It says that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of the Lord. And the Greek word that's used is the word “rhema”. And that means a specific word.
Here's the distinction that I want you just to understand a little bit. There is a clear instruction that the Bible gives in an area, and that is the Word, the broad word, the logos. Then there is an implication that you make from it where you say, well, because it says this, it means this. And then sometimes there's some very specific applications, “rhema” that come to us in which we say, okay, now I need to choose this, but that may not always be a universal application. And so sometimes when people take their specific words and universalize them, then we end up hearing things that we're saying I'm not sure that that's God's word for me. And it becomes disheartening.
So, here's my non theoretical example. That was still a lot of theory and I'm sure some of you are going, what, right now. So, Philippians 4:8-9 says something like this, is a very loose quotation, but whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are beautiful, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are true. Think on these things. So, clear instruction is what? Think about things that are beautiful, good, and right. Okay, that's pretty simple. So, what is an implication? Well, an implication would be that you should be careful not to think about, consider, watch, pay attention to things that are the opposite of all of those things.
So, what's the specific application that you might have? Let's say you're hearing the Word someday, maybe it's in a setting like this. Maybe you're reading your Bible and you come across that and you go, wow, I should spend more time trying to think about whatever is beautiful and pure and right that evening. You're tired, you're done with schoolwork, with your work, and you sit down with Netflix and you're like oh yeah, look at this, binge watch this.
All of a sudden, you have a moment where you say you know what, this is not going to be good for my soul. Because let's just be honest, how many times do you sit and watch Netflix for 2 hours and go, wow, do I feel great now? I'm not saying you should never watch Netflix for 2 hours, but you might have that moment where you have that specific word that says you know what, go think about something that's better than whatever this is. That's a good specific implication, but it's not to be universalized. When it gets universalized is when you then say no one should watch Netflix because I had this moment the other day where I felt like God was telling me to read my Bible instead of watching Netflix. And if you universalize it, now you've conflated things.
And by conflating things, what you do is you make the Word of God, not the Word of God, because the Word of God has clear instruction that is to everybody, compelling implications that you can can say, this seems like what it's about. And then there's some personal implications that from time to time, as you have a relationship with God, will become abundantly clear. So, we need to hear the Word of God.
But then secondly, we need to heed the Word of God. Here's what He says. “As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like. They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”
So he says here, not just hearing the word of God, but heeding it, is the key to a life that is not vulnerable to the storms. And what this means is that once God has revealed something to you as true, you say, I am going to do what I know. I believe that one of the reasons that sometimes it feels like we're not hearing from God is because we're not doing what we already know to be true. You see, revelation, I don't mean the book of Revelation, but revelation from God, where God's revealing Himself to us through His Word, through even the taught Word, is muted because of our disobedience. Sometimes we don't hear what God has to say and it feels like we're not getting anything out of something because we're not obeying what we've already heard.
Have you ever heard somebody do the I'm just not being fed from the teaching around them. I have a theory about that. And you might expect me to have a theory about that. But here's my theory. My theory is when you start to say I'm not being fed, there's probably a disobedience issue in your life because you're not hearing any more. Now, I don't mean that every time you hear a message, you're going to be like that was awesome. There are plenty of bad messages, right here from this guy. Okay. But what I mean is that is that even the worst message has something if you're hearing the Word of God. And when you obey, you hear more clearly.
The reasons we don't obey, if you really just boil it down, are because one, sometimes we think we know better. And that's just the simple, yeah, I know God has said this or it seems like God has said this, but I can't do that and be happy. God wouldn't want me not to be happy. So, I need to do this instead of that. Or we simply don't care, and we say someday I'll obey, someday I'll get this right. But right now, I don't care. You see, the house here is threatened when we don't obey. And so, you might rightly ask the question, does that mean obedience is necessary for spiritual standing, for salvation? And I believe that our salvation is not our obedience, but the obedience of Jesus. But our obedience is evidence that we understand that and celebrate that in our lives. And so, there's a concern for obedience.
There's a directional choice that we make that isn't always perfectly followed, but a directional choice to say, my life is aligning with the principles of God. Here's one of the places we see this. John, chapter 14, verse 15. It says, “If you love me, keep my commands.” Jesus' speaking. John, chapter 14, verse 24. “Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.”
And so, what that's simply saying is if you care very little for obedience, there's a chance you're not born of God. If you are comfortable with known sin, you're demonstrating a rebellion against God. And if you're at peace with sin, you're at war with God. But if you're at peace with God, you'll be at war with sin. You see, storms will come. And what Jesus is doing, is He's saying, even in the midst of a storm, what's most valuable, what's most precious, is something that will continue to be precious to you.
Elisabeth Elliot was married to a man named Jim Elliott who was martyred as a missionary in Ecuador decades ago. She's written a few books since then. She experienced a lot of suffering in that time and later. And here's what she said. “I am not a theologian or a scholar, but I am very aware of the fact that pain is necessary to all of us. In my own life, I think I can honestly say that out of the deepest pain has come the strongest conviction of the presence of God and the love of God.” You know what she's saying, somebody who walked a long way in this world, built her house on a foundation, she's saying that it's actually in those storms that I learned the most about the presence and the love of God.
See, some of the most valuable things that can happen in your life and in my life, happen when it feels like we're the most vulnerable because it's then we recognize what is most precious and what our firm foundation is. And so, today, my hope is very simple, and that is that you should see Jesus’ story not as this guarantee that says you'll never have a storm, but as a guarantee that says if you build your life on my Word, hearing it and heeding it, then you will know that what is most precious will endure whatever challenges this world throws at you.
God, thank you for this day and Lord, the way that this Scripture just encourages us to live, knowing that in the midst of a storm, what is most precious doesn't have to be vulnerable. And I pray that that would help each of us to put ourselves in a place over and over again where we hear and heed what your Word says. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.