Luke 6:46-49 How Firm a Foundation
Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 6, verses 46-49, that’s on page 863 in the pew Bibles.
Over the last few months it seems like we have been talking a lot about old time Sunday school and flannelgraph and all of that. Well I’d like to teach you all or maybe remind some of you of an old timey Sunday School that I remember from my youth.
“The wise man built his house upon the rock, The wise man built his house upon the rock, The wise man built his house upon the rock, and the rains came tumbling down.
“The rains came down and the floods came up, The rains came down and the floods came up, The rains came down and the floods came up, and the house on the rock stood firm.
“The foolish man built his house upon the sand, The foolish man built his house upon the sand, The foolish man built his house upon the sand, and the rains came tumbling down.
“The rains came down and the floods came up, The rains came down and the floods came up, The rains came down and the floods came up, and the house on the sand went SPLAT.”
Let’s pray together.
As you may have guessed today’s text from the Gospel of Luke concerns the wise and foolish builders, the one who built his house upon the rock and the other that built his house upon the sand.
Let’s look at the text and try to discern the Lord’s message for us today.
46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”
Now again, just like last week, we can’t remove this parable from its context. Jesus had been teaching on blind guides and those that followed them, on the hypocrisy of examining our brother’s and sister’s faults without dealing with our own, and, most recently, good trees bearing good fruit and bad trees bearing bad fruit.
This parable about the wise and foolish builders is most closely related to that last one, knowing a tree by its fruit.
Now just to state the obvious, we all want to be good trees, right? We all want to bear good fruit? And likewise, we all want to be wise builders with houses that don’t go SPLAT?
I love that song, and there is a third verse but it misses Jesus’ point in this parable, and pretty much the one point of this sermon.
I’m happy to give away the ending at the beginning. What is the rock that the wise builder built on?
Our Sunday School answer is: Jesus, the song’s answer is: Jesus, build you life on the Lord Jesus Christ and the blessings will come down…
But is that what Jesus said? No, it isn’t.
Jesus asked a very important and introspective question, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”
We all said that we want to be good trees that bear good fruit, here is a question that will expose whether or not we are in fact a good tree and whether or not we can bear good fruit.
JJ vanOosterzee wrote that this question from Jesus exposes a “fourfold relation to the Lord; there are men who 1. Neither say Lord! Lord! nor do His will; 2. say, indeed, Lord! Lord! but without doing His will; 3. do His will, indeed, but without saying Lord! Lord! (upright but anxious souls); 4. as well do His will, as also say Lord! Lord! The last, the concurrence of deed with word, is in every respect the best.
It’s clear that two of these conditions do not make for good trees, it is impossible to be a good tree without confessing Jesus as Lord, without saving faith in Him. It is the other two conditions that Jesus is most concerned with in this parable, saying Lord, Lord, but without doing His will, and doing His will as well as saying Lord, Lord.
As Martin Luther said, “It is faith alone that saves, but faith that saves is not alone.”
So what is the rock that the wise builder built on?
46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.
Other places in the New Testament say that Jesus is the Rock not made by Human hands, the Chief Cornerstone that the church is built on, but here Jesus says that the rock that the wise builder built on was His Word, calling Him Lord, Lord, hearing His words, AND doing them.
I want to point out that Jesus does not make a distinction between the two houses other than the fact that one has a foundation and the other doesn’t.
This reality still exists in the world and, most troublingly, in the church.
There are those who build lives of apparent faith, those who appear to have a relationship with Jesus because they do all the right things and seem to say all the right things. They faithfully attend church, they know all the words to the songs, they have a lot of Scripture memorized, and seem to have the Lord’s best interest at heart, they know all the right things to say. These are the folks that JJ van Oosterzee said, “do His will, indeed, but without saying Lord! Lord! (upright but anxious souls).”
So how do we know for sure which one we are? Christian Ludwig Couard, a German Lutheran theologian born in 1793 wrote on “The confessing of Jesus Christ in Christendom. It comes to pass that 1. With many the confessing of Christ is wholly wanting (they deny the Lord); 2. with many this confession is the thoughtless language of custom (they are Christian in name); 3. with some only an assumed pretence of godliness (hypocrites); 4. with others a matter of the heart and expression of living faith (true Christians).”
And that’s all well and good but how do we really know if we’ve truly built our house upon the rock?
The rains came down and the floods came up… And the house on the rock stood firm…
It is adversity that exposes the true nature of our building, whether or not we have a firm foundation.
John Calvin wrote, “True piety is not distinguished from its counterfeit till it comes to the trial.”
When the rains come tumbling down, what happens then? When trials come we often ask the question, why me? Why is this happening? Why God, what are you doing? He is exposing our foundations.
Jesus didn’t say that it wouldn’t be hard, that the trials were a piece of cake. Nowhere in Scripture are we instructed to paint on a smile and trip around like giddy idiots. But if our life is built on the Word of God, if our understanding of the world is based on how God has defined it in the Bible, when trials come our house will not collapse. Exposing our foundations is a good thing, Jesus bring the rain!
When people walk away from the Lord because things didn’t go according to their plan, God somehow didn’t come through for them in the way that they wanted, or somebody who claimed to be a Christian did or said something awful to them, that’s evidence of a house with no foundation.
This is how we can measure what kind of tree we are, what kind of fruit we will produce, if our faith is in Jesus and our life is built on His Word, not just knowing His Word but doing it.
James 1:22-25 says, 22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
Paul wrote in Colossians 2:6-8,
6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
Amen.
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!
