We don't throw a guilt trip on them if they want to stay. Preaching on the subject from Matthew chapter 7, the great separation between doers and hearers only. We're coming to the end of our series. This is the 38th message. We started back in September of 2022, and I'm not going to ask how many of you remember that. It's just hard to believe the way time flies. But I hope that the repetition of truth, line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, has an effect upon you. God means for it too. And that's always my prayer as I continue in a series. We'll read verses 24 through 27 from Matthew 7 in a moment. Probably no passage in this sermon the Sermon on the Mount, the classic message from the lips of Jesus Christ. Probably no excerpt from it is more familiar than these words. Our youngest children, many of whom have just left, all remember singing the song about the wise man and the foolish man. And probably you remember doing that as a child. And you probably remember the motions that went with it, huh? You'll be thinking that all through the message, I'm sure. But I hope we won't dismiss the content of this passage as just something childish. Because honestly, I'm not saying this to create an effect for your listening to the message, but I think no passage in the Bible is more solemn than this one, unless it's the preceding verses remind us of Jesus as Supreme Judge actually telling people someday who worked for Him, depart from me I never knew you. That's pretty solemn too, isn't it? And so as we come to this passage Jesus hasn't changed the tone, or really the subject. There is a continuation here. Verse 24, Matthew 7, Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, puts them into practice, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell. And great was the fall of it." We'll read the closing verses, though they're not really part of the message, but I think it's good to see what happened here. And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at His doctrine, His teaching, For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." And that's the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. So we understand where we are in this sermon. Jesus has presented all of the points of the message. He's given the text back in chapter 5 verse 20. He's wrapping things up. His exhortation is complete. The instruction is all done. Now He reaches the end of the all-important application section, and every good message has an application. And this application comes down to two questions. It could be summed up in two questions. Jesus says, first of all, now have you really heard what I've been saying? Have you really heard? Do you understand? And secondly, will you set out to obey heard. Simple isn't it? Did you hear what I said? And are you going to do it? That's what it comes down to. You know that's the essence of faith. Faith is hearing and doing. There's no faith without obedience. There's no obedience without faith. Faith without works is dead. James tells us. I was interested to read a number of years ago in a book by Dr. L.A. Maxwell who founded Prairie Bible Institute up in Alberta, Canada. He told about a pioneer missionary, I forget the exact country where he was, who was laboring to translate the Bible into a primitive language. And we're going to kind of emphasize that with our missions conference coming up soon. This missionary was struggling to translate the Bible into the local language. And his struggle was over the word faith. There was no word in that language for faith. And even in English if we didn't have a word for faith how would you describe it? How would you give a concept of it? And he earnestly prayed and asked the Lord to help him this is an essential virtue, faith. How was he going to translate it? And so finally he came across this verse in verse 26, everyone that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them. And he said, Eureka! That's it. And so he took the word for hearing and the word for doing in that language and that was the concept of faith. Faith cometh by hearing. And hearing by the Word of God, it's not enough to merely hear. It's not enough to even understand. We must do the revealed will of God. Only the obedient believe and only the believing obey. This familiar story we just read is often regarded as a parable. And I have no problem with that. I think I know what people mean by that. But when we went through the parables in a series several years ago, all of the parables of Christ, we emphasized the fact that you can't press every detail in a parable to mean something. Parables have one central point, right? We talked about that a lot. And I think it's significant that this is not called a parable because the details do mean something. And so we're going to talk about the details today. I don't want you to miss their meaning. There's a double comparison here in this story. We have two men and we have two houses. And the contrast in both of those cases could not be starker. I think that's a word, starker, right? What do we need to understand if we're going to heed the sobering warnings contained in this picture? We're not going to rush through the outline today. I won't get done with everything that's on the outline. You're used to that, I know. We'll just, at the end, chop it off. When time expires, we'll chop it off like link sausage. But what I do want to cover today is this definition of terms, definition of terms used in this parable. And I think that in itself will really help us. Let's revisit the setting here, the whole setting for the Sermon on the Mount that I began 37 sermons ago. Jesus is not just speaking to His disciples, He's speaking to the multitudes. As we read in chapter 5 verse 1, it's saying, multitudes, plural. He went up into a mountain and when He was set His disciples came unto Him. So it's primarily His disciples that come unto Him, but the multitudes are listening. And so let's take that word whosoever, let's define it. We're doing a glossary, a verbal glossary today. Whosoever, that means anybody, anybody saved or lost who hears the words of Christ needs to take heed that he observes them. It's amazing how some people think they're exempt because, oh, I'm not a believer. I'm neutral about these matters of religion, you know. As if that excuses them from the obligations of the Word of God. And they get off the hook. They complete ignorance. No, as we have shown a number of other times from the Scriptures, all men are without excuse, all men have the combined witness of creation and conscience even if they've never heard a verse of Scripture, never seen a Bible, never heard the name of Jesus. And that's saying something. This is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, what John said. It can't be the light of the gospel because not every man hears the gospel. Jesus lightens every man with conscience and creation. General revelation we call it. This is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. I just need to remind you of that. We're all accountable to God. Every man, even if he's blind or deaf. hasn't somehow been able to experience God's creation. We think of Helen Teller. Every man, every woman has a conscience and feels the inward prickings of that conscience. So regardless of your spiritual condition this morning, I have no idea what your true state is before God. And regardless of that, This passage is for you. We need to listen. We need to hearken. We ignore this at our own parable. Jesus said, whosoever, whosoever shall hear. Matthew chapter 7, I will liken him unto either a wise man or a foolish man. The next term we need to define is the term house. That refers to one's life, and the totality of our lives is in view here. This squares with the two previous pictures that Jesus painted, beginning there in verse 15, talking about false prophets. He said in verse 20, by their fruits you shall know them. It's been a while since we talked about that, but I need to mention that again. What is the fruit of a false prophet? You say, well it's his teaching. I wouldn't argue with that, but is that all? No, the fruit goes deeper than the fruit of the mouth. We can say something and that's not us. There's the fruit of the life. And it is absolutely amazing as we find, as we study the book of 2 Peter and also the little book of Jude especially, as well as some passages in Paul's pastoral epistles, it's amazing how many false teachers are either immoral or greedy or both. It just runs rampant in those circles. Those false preachers may pay lip service to Christ's Sermon on the Mount. I could name some this morning. You've heard them on TV perhaps, and you know their true colors. You're aware of the fact they're false. But they'll pay lip service to the Sermon on the Mount. They'll act like they admire it and praise it, but they never put it into practice. Or if they do, they pick and choose what they will do and what they won't. There's the fruit of the life, by their fruits ye shall know them. Then Jesus gives another picture, we talked about that more recently, the ones who will stand before him someday in judgment and say, Lord, Lord, have we not done many things in your name? Healed people, cast out demons, done many wonderful works, preached in your name. And then he will profess unto them, depart from me ye that work iniquity, I never knew And so that's talking about the totality of their lives as evidence from their hearts. Every one of us is a builder. We are building a life. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3, we are using either gold, silver, and precious stones or the combustible materials, wood, hay, and stubble. It's all going to come out someday and some of it's going to go up in smoke. It will be tested. So let's talk about that test. I'd like to dwell on that for a while. A severe storm is described here in verse 25. We've had some pretty bad ones lately, haven't we? I don't know about you, but the other night, a week and a half ago or so, our power went out for two and a half hours. And we had to play Scrabble by Candlelight. I was tempted to cheat because I could have done it and I lost. But anyway, electricity goes out. Storms bring tests. They'll test the trees. They'll test the power lines. They'll test our roofs. Vehicles will be tested trying to navigate through them once we have flash floods. Again I believe that just as the details of the previous two pictures that I've referred to already individually meant something, so Jesus desires to convey some very definite ideas by the various terms used here. Rain, flood, floods, winds. I hope you don't think I'm trying to parse words or read something into it that's not there. I think you'll agree that it is there. Let's take the rain, the rain descended. What does that refer to? I think this refers to sudden, grievous, maybe even catastrophic circumstances. Jesus does not call this graphic story a parable, I mentioned that. And so we don't need to feel that we're taking liberties and pressing the details too far when we differentiate between rain, floods, winds. Think about what Jesus had already said concerning the rain here. Back in chapter 5 verse 45, chapter 5 verse 45, that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven for He maketh His Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. He's referring to rain certainly in a positive way as a common blessing. But don't we have common troubles as well? Sometimes rain can be destructive. Things like illness, financial reversals, bereavement. We've had so many bereaved families lately. Betrayals by people you trusted and thought better of, you're just trying to not even think about it. It hurts so bad. Dashed expectations, and on and on we could go. There are things that at some time or other come to all of us, right? Man that is born of woman is a few days and full of trouble. We're all going to have trouble as the sparks fly upward. It happens to the just. It happens to the unjust. We're tried to the core of our being by these circumstances that are common to man. The apostle Peter tells us in his first epistle, chapter 4, verse 12, that we're not to think it strange when fiery trials come our way. Not every trial is a fiery trial. And so when trials come our way, common trials come our way, we should think that God is picking on us, that God is unfair, that we're entitled to something else. No, everybody gets the rain with its positive and its painful effects. The rain comes our way. Then there's the floods. Not only did the rains descend, the rain descended, but the floods, plural, came. I would agree with Martin Lloyd-Jones, a great expositor, pastor in London, England of the last century. This refers to seeping worldliness. Some translations render it streams or rivers, not floods. But what it speaks of is such Great volumes of water at one time that it just sweeps before it anything in its path. Some of you have sat through hurricanes as I have, both in the Cayman Islands and in Raleigh. I think the worst ones were here in Raleigh. I was in the Caymans for 15 years. I sat through two hurricanes in the Caymans. One was on Chad's sixth birthday. Never forget that. have a birthday cake. We just had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Power went out. There was only one window we could see through. All the others were shut with awnings. But we saw the water rising. We saw the water rushing by. I couldn't believe how fast those garbage cans and boughs of trees and lawn chairs and anything that wasn't secured. I couldn't believe how fast that, whoosh, rushing. The floods. Floods sweep things away. I think floods represents the seeping worldliness that's all around us, the values, the pressures, the fashions of this world. And as John tells us, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. Oh, the pressures on us by the world. The insidious encroachments of the world in our lives, even in the church. Sometimes it comes with overt steamrolling power. At other times the world is just so innocent and silent and unobserved, but it does, it equal if not worse damage that way. Worldliness has an infinite variety of forms. The devil isn't concerned about what method the world uses as long as it keeps us from being serious about Christlikeness and holiness and power with God in prayer. And in our prayer meetings on Thursday morning and Saturday morning with the men by Zoom, we're talking about this a lot. The widow there in Luke chapter 18 in the parable Jesus gave, the widow and the unjust judge, I believe that widow, the best picture is to say that she represents the world under the encroachments and the bondage, or the church under the influence of the world, I'm sorry. The church under the influence of the world. And so we need to cry day and night that God will vindicate us of our adversary. I ask you, are we doing that? Not judging someone else but putting ourselves under the microscope. How much influence does the world have on us? Why do we not have revival? Why do we not see the power of holiness? Why do we not see people coming in to our services and just saying God is among them of the truth? I'll tell you why. The world is in us in all kinds of insidious ways. Would to God we would cry out day and night to Him. He's not unjust like that judge. He's holy and just. But if we cry out to Him long enough, He will avenge us speedily. Thank you. It's true. The floods. The floods of the world, if they haven't already, will come. They'll beat upon your house. It seems to be sweeping everything else in your path. And maybe you feel like, how can I resist? It's so powerful. It's so alluring. We even use the expression, just go with the flow. That's what I'm talking about. May I remind you that the world does not respect your sacred times and places. It will attack you at church. It will attack you with your open Bible. It will attack you when you go to Bible college. It will beat up on you during your quiet times. It will oppose you on Sunday. Even when you have so-called Christian fellowship, it can cause you to be jealous of another Christian's gifts or power. It'll just keep on beating up on you until it wears you down and you get tired of the And since I'm crowding 70 years of age, I think I can say this, please beware of old age. There's a certain slowing down that takes place naturally. I don't take two stairs at a time. I don't move quite as quickly as I used to. I'm not quite as quick to come back with a one-line put-down as I used to. There's a kind of a slackness and a lessening of resolve and intensity that will come over us if we're not careful in old age. As I preached recently on how to finish strong and quoted from that poem by Robertson McQuilkin, Home Before Dark, let's pray that we won't grow shriveled up like fruit dying on the vine as we get older, but we'll be stronger, fuller, brighter at the end. You don't have to black slide when you get old. You can go out with a blaze of light. Don't be swept away by it by old age. And then there's winds. Not only did the floods came, but the winds blew. I think that's satanic attacks. The winds blowing. You know it's really not hard to gauge what this points to spiritually because we're told that Satan is the prince of the power of the air. He's the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. The spirit world is compared to the wind in the Bible. The word spirit can be breath or wind. On the day of Pentecost. The arrival of the Holy Spirit was accompanied and somewhat announced by a rushing, mighty wind. We are warned not to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. And Paul equates those winds of doctrine with doctrines of demons. Oh, how violent the wind can be. Some of you have seen it, I have. At least you see it on TV if you've never experienced it. cars over. A tornado can embed a stick in a trunk of a tree and you can't pull it out. You can break it off maybe, but you can't pull it out. How violent the attacks of the devil can be. He just bombards us at times. I'm convinced most Christians never really know what the attack of the devil is. You may be shocked by that. Because the world and the flesh do His bidding good enough, they never really come up, buck up against Satan himself. But let me tell you something, if you triumph over the world you can expect Satan to oppose you personally. He reserves his fiery darts for you when you are at your weakest, even if it's your deathbed. That's why Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 6 that the only way to fight Satan, resist him, and win is to put on the whole armor of God and stand fast against the wiles of the devil, the strategies of the Satan. Nothing but a solid foundation will allow our house to stand. So I say it to help you, not to put you down. If you're swayed by the world, if you offer no resistance, to the suffocating, sweeping, insidious encroachments of the world. Don't think for a minute that you're going to be triumphant over Satan. If you lick your finger, put it up to the air figuratively to feel which way the wind happens to be blowing so that you will not resist the popular current, you're going to be blown away by Satan. I asked you this morning, what's your backbone like? Is it like a saw log or a jellyfish? It's going to be revealed, it's going to be tested. Well, there's the rock here. Thank God for the builder that built his house upon the rock. What's the rock? You say, well, that's Jesus. Well, yes, and I'll say more about that, but I think we need to be more specific. It's the teachings of Jesus. This house that stood, that didn't fall, had its foundation on a rock. We go back to the little chorus I referred to that we all know, so build your life on the Lord Jesus Christ, we say. But specifically, it's on His teachings. These sayings of mine, Jesus said in verse 24. I don't want to split hairs here, but to be sure, Jesus over and over in the Gospels equates His person with His words. We need to be aware of that. His person with His words, whosoever shall be ashamed of me and my words of him shall So my father be ashamed. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall be done unto you. He told his disciples when he sent them out on a short-term mission trip, if people reject the message that I give you, they're not rejecting you but they're rejecting me. Christ identifies Himself, His person, with His words. And that needs to be emphasized. Please don't miss the critical importance of the Word of God here. For several years now, mega church pastor in Atlanta, Andy Stanley, has been saying, and I quote, the thing that is really important and is a non-negotiable, it's not the inerrancy of the Bible but the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I hope that sends bells and alarms and whistles off in your mind. This is not a moot or arbitrary point. When you cast a glance back on the whole Sermon on the Mount, you'll find that Christ built them on the Old Testament Scriptures. Every one of the Beatitudes has an Old Testament Scripture that it harks back to. Blessed are the meek, for example, if they shall inherit the earth, it harks back to Psalm 3711, the meek shall inherit the earth and delight themselves in an abundance of peace. Blessed are the pure in heart, that certainly refers to Psalm 24 verse 3 and 4, who shall stand in the hill of the Lord Who shall stand in His holy place? Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart." And on and on we could go. We come into chapter 7, we find that golden rule given in the 12th verse. What is the golden rule? It's just the summation of the law and the prophets. It's just another way of stating the summation of the second table of the law, love thy neighbor as thyself. The Word of God, how we need to get back to the sufficiency of Scripture. You've heard me say this so many times in the last few years. I'll tell you what's under attack these days is not so much the inerrancy of the Scripture, though Andy Stanley doesn't get that, but what's under attack is the sufficiency of Scripture. We sang a few moments ago, what more can He say than to you He has said? A lot of people are expecting God to say more. Sarah Young in her book, Jesus Calling. She just passed away recently. She wanted more. She said so in her introduction. What more can He say than to you He has said? We don't need visions. We don't need out of the body experiences that are best selling movies and books and they don't even agree among themselves. But people go for them like hotcakes. We don't need some Word of faith preacher to tell us a prophetic word from the Lord. All we need is thus saith the Lord in this book. We've got to get back to that. The sufficiency of the Word of God. Would you take your Bibles and turn to Isaiah chapter 8 verse 20. We need the perfect revelation of the Bible We need all of it and we need it only. Isaiah 8, verse 20, to the law and to the testimony, you see that? To the law and to the testimony, reference to the Word of God. If they speak not, these alleged prophets, if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is only a little light in them. It is because there is some light eventually in them. It's because there is common light in them. No, it's because there is no light in them. Beloved, do you venerate the Bible? Is it enough? Or does it just provide a seed thought? Is it just a springboard? Christ and His teachings constitute the solid rock. That is the foundation of our lives. It's interesting, it doesn't talk about a man building a foundation. It talks about the fact that the foundation is the rock. And if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? If this intrigues you, you're really going to appreciate Justin Peters when he comes. And I encourage you to put that on your schedule, February 10 and 11. Well, that's the rock, the teachings of Christ. What's the sand? Obviously it's a contrast to the rock. There's a huge difference between rock and sand. How do we often describe sand? Usually in the same sentence. We talk about sinking sand. We also talk about shifting sand. Why? Because sand takes the shape of whatever it's squeezed into or put on it. Sand refers to subjective ideas rather than objective truth. And we live in a day when truth is no longer being treated as objective and fixed. We live in a day that speaks about truth as if it's being created. People talk about, well, this truth may work for you, but it doesn't work necessarily for me. Sinful man really thinks that he knows enough to stand in judgment on God's Word, then let God's transcendent perfect Word stand in judgment upon him. And when he does that, he has become the measure of all things. That is humanism, that is not Christianity. What does the Bible say about our subjective ideas? Proverbs 16.25, and it's repeated virtually verbatim in Proverbs 14.12. Here it is. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man. Oh, it seems so right. They're so sure of it. Anybody's a fool that doesn't see it. Don't you see that? Everybody sees that. There's a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. And so entire denominations that once took a biblical stand on issues like sexuality and gender and refusal to ordain women, they've done a complete 180, all in the name of tolerance and love and being progressive. And I say it in all candor and sincerity, within another decade or two the consensus on morals will have changed some more. What will it morph into next? Polygamy? Pedophilia? It's already happening. I'm telling you folks, when you get off on what's right in your eyes, not only are you going to have anarchy like they had in the time of the judges, but you're going to have wholesale destruction. Remember Pilgrim's Progress? Remember Christian, the protagonist, when he falls into that bog of quicksands called We would say slew in America, I guess, slew of despondent. The Brits would say slow or slough. And he's sinking under the weight of his sins on his back, the guilt of his sins, and a guy named Help comes along. And standing on good old terra firma, he pulls Christian out because Christian is struggling, and the more he struggles, the quicker and deeper he sinks. That's exactly what's happening to mankind when he depends upon his own ideas. We better cease from our own efforts, we better cling to Him who is our Savior and our Sovereign Lord. We used to sing, though I don't hear it much anymore, great song if many of you have heard From sinking sand He lifted me, with tender hand He lifted me. From shades of night to planes of light, O praise His name, He lifted me. And it better be Christ that lifts us. His Word never changes. He lifts us because He's on the solid rock Himself. Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is established in heaven. It is fixed, just like His holy character. I know you know this, folks, but we're going to have to affirm our faith again and again and again in these days and the sufficiency of Scripture. Well, I can't get into another major point. I wouldn't be able to do justice to it today. That'll have to wait till next week. I hope you'll come back for it. But could I close with a solemn challenge? And that is, will you use this passage? Will you use this Sermon on the Mount to test your foundation before that final storm, the final judgment comes and tests it? And then it'll be too late to change. You know, I've done a little bit of construction, mainly in the Cayman Islands. And, oh, I would get frustrated with the delays because the building inspector there would fail something that I'd done. And it probably deserved to be failed. I was a preacher, not a builder. I did my best. But sometimes the building inspector would come and fail something. And you have to have an inspection, you know, before you can cover up stuff with a slab for a foundation. We got delayed several times. But I would rather have that kind of delay and have to tear it up and do it over than have a hurricane do much more damage And that building with its superstructure has to be condemned because it wasn't anchored properly to the pilings or the footings. And so I ask you this morning, will you examine your foundation with me? We'll just look, take a cursory look at the Beatitudes and then I'm done. Go back to chapter 5, look at the first one, verse 3, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. Are you poor in spirit? Have you seen your own vileness? Have you seen your spiritual bankruptcy? You don't compare yourself to anybody else, you just see yourself the way the Lord does and you're like that publican that said, God be merciful to me, the sinner. That's what it means in the original. Not comparing himself to anybody else. Blessed are they that mourn, verse 4, for they shall be comforted. Have you mourned over your sin? Have you mourned over your depraved nature that still keeps manifesting yourself and you long for heaven so you'll be delivered from it? Do you mourn over the sins of others that bring such heartache? Tragedy. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Are you meek towards others because you have been dealt with so mercifully by the one who is meek and lowly of heart himself? Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness. Do you have the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ? Do you know you're justified? You're accepted in the beloved? Are you hungry to be holy? Are you hungry to have the imparted righteousness of Christ? Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. Do you long to show mercy to others because you've been shown such unbelievable mercy by God? Blessed are the pure in heart. It's so tragic how children are losing their innocence so young. The purity in heart is gone with the cell phone, the smartphone. I'll just say it like it is, folks. Blessed are the pure in heart. Is holiness of life intrinsically beautiful to you? The Bible speaks about the beauty of holiness. Is that beautiful to you? Blessed are the peacemakers. Are you a true ambassador for Christ? Are you beseeching others to be reconciled to God regardless of what they may think of you and what they may say about you after you've left? Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake. Do you count it a badge of honor to be persecuted to suffer for righteousness sake? Can you rejoice in that when men speak evil of you, falsely? They don't even have their facts straight. Do you have a pity party? Do you get indignant? Do you retaliate? Why am I going over these things? Because they show the cracks in our foundation. You don't need some helical peer system or stabilizer. What you and I need is to have the faith of God's elect, make sure we're not a false professor, and then do what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 13 verse 5. Examine yourselves whether you be in the faith. Prove your own selves. If you do that now, It won't be proven later by the storm of God's wrath. Shall we pray?