BUILDING ON THE ROCK
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on March 25, 2020 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: March 25, 2020 from Luke Luke 6:46-49
Theme: Spiritual repentance before God shows itself in active reforms of obedience.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
We’ve been studying from our Lord’s ‘Sermon on The Plain’, as it’s given to us in Luke 6. In this sermon, He taught several great spiritual lessons to those who were His disciples.
He taught them, for example, that those who are willing to suffer loss now as His followers will be blessed in the future (vv. 20-23); but that those who refuse Him now and cling to the things of this earth instead will suffer great loss in eternity (vv. 24-26). He taught them that, as His followers, they were to love their enemies and do good to them—and thus imitate His Father (vv. 27-36). He taught them that they were to conduct themselves according to the civics and ethics of His kingdom; not judging or condemning others, always being ready to forgive, giving generously—and all with a confident trust in God’s provision and care (vv. 37-38). He taught that they were to make sure that they don’t follow those who have no spiritual insight; nor were they to set themselves up as correctors of others while ignoring their own faults (vv. 39-42). And He warned that they must be careful to discern the true nature of someone by the outward conduct of their lives (vv. 43-45).
These are all glorious instructions. They are well-known. Many people can recite portions of them from memory. But it’s then, at the end of this sermon, that Jesus makes it clear that just hearing these instructions will not do anyone any good. The Lord Jesus declared that His instructions were meant to be put into practical action.
In verses 46-49, He said to His disciples;
“But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say? Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great” (Luke 6:46-49).
No one can simply ‘hear’ these words and then expect to be blessed simply by the hearing of them. They only prove to be a blessing to us if we will put them into action and actually do them. Only those who put our Lord’s words into action will be able to stand in the storms of life.
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Now; the Lord Jesus is very specific in this passage about what the thing was that was to be heard. He speaks of whoever comes to Him and hears His sayings. There is no promised blessing from the Lord to be had in hearing just anyone who has things to say. Jesus had warned earlier of the dangerous way that the spiritually blind would lead other blind men along; and of how both would end up falling into a ditch. To hear someone else’s teaching then, to the disregard of Jesus’ words, is to follow a blind leader; and there is no blessing or security to be had in that. Only Jesus’ words are sufficient upon which to build one’s hopes and to guide one’s way.
We should also notice that Jesus doesn’t say that someone will do well if they only follow some of His words. He speaks of His sayings as if they together form a unit—“My sayings” as a whole. We must never pick and choose which of His instructions we will listen to, and which of them we will ignore. If we do so, then we are placing our own authority over His. We must heed all of His sayings and submit to all of His instructions; and not just the ones we prefer.
What’s more, we can never ‘hear’ them in some way that is separated from a relationship with Himself. He prefaced ‘hearing’ Him with the idea of first ‘coming’ to Him. He never meant for His sayings to be gathered together as a philosophy of life that can somehow be followed on our own power or in our own independent initiative. Only those who first ‘come to’ Him are then able to hear His words as they should be heard.
Notice further that there are some basic elements that are involved all persons who come to Him. In His parable, He says that they all ‘build a house’. One’s ‘house’ is a figure for one’s whole life. And when it comes to building one’s life, there are no exceptions: All build. No one can choose not to build. The idea that someone can just be detached from it all isn’t an option. Everyone must be ‘building a house’—that is, they must be building their life. This is true even if someone chooses to think that they are not building one at all. To refuse to consider how one builds is to make a choice to build one’s house without direction and without a solid foundation!
But notice also that even though it’s true that all must build, not all will build properly or to good profit. Some will come to Jesus, and will hear His sayings, and will rise up and do them. Those who do so will prove to have built well. But some will come to Him, and hear His sayings, and not do what He says—thinking, somehow, that merely ‘hearing’ was sufficient. Those who do that will prove to have built poorly and will suffer loss. Jesus’ sayings are demanding; and they inherently require application. He Himself once said;
“My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority” (John 7:16-17).
His teaching was not His own, but was given to Him from the Father; and the true nature of it cannot be known simply from the hearing. It is proven through the doing. When it comes to our Lord’s sayings, then, it’s never a question of whether or not someone ‘hears’. It’s always a question of what one does with what is heard. Will they build on His sayings by putting them into action?—and thus prove that His words are of the Father?
And notice one more thing that all hearers have in common. Not only must all build, but all will also experience the storms of life that beat against what they have built. The floodwaters come upon both the ‘doing’ hearers and the ‘non-doing’ hearers. In both cases, the trials of life will test the quality of what one has built. Those storms will demonstrate whether or not someone has done what Jesus says, or has chosen instead not to do what He says. The trials are allowed by God to show whether the foundation is strong. The storms of life will give the proof; and only those who have built well—that is, upon the foundation of obedient ‘doing’—will avoid loss.
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With all this in mind, consider first …
1. THE PIERCING QUESTION (v. 46).
Jesus—after His discourse—says, “But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?” This is a great question; because to call someone “Lord” would—by definition—imply one’s submission and obedience. To call Him our “Lord”, but to then not obey Him, would be to contradict one’s self.
There was another occasion in which the Lord quoted the phrase that others would use toward Him—“Lord, Lord”. In Matthew 7, in the Sermon on The Mount, Jesus said;
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:21-23).
Those are sobering words. They show us that, if there is not a relationship with the Lord by faith, there will be no ultimate value in simply calling Jesus “Lord, Lord” on the day of judgment. We must not only “call” Him Lord, but we must also “know” Him as Lord in a personal way. But those words in Matthew 7 primarily speak of those who only pretend to have a relationship with Him, but who actually do not have such a relationship. They thought ‘doing’ would be a sufficient substitute for ‘knowing’. When it comes to those in Luke 6 who do know Him—who truthfully can call Him “Lord, Lord”—they must be consistent with what they call Him. They must show His lordship over them by obediently doing what He says.
The teaching of the whole Bible to all of God’s people throughout the ages—all of which, by the way, comes from our Lord Jesus Christ—is meant to be submitted to and obeyed by our Lord’s followers. Pastor James, near the beginning of his New Testament letter, wrote this:
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does (James 1:22-25).
It is a dangerous thing to hear the words of our Lord and not do as He says—especially when one thinks that ‘hearing’ is enough. It is a dangerous thing to think that blessing only comes from hearing. Jesus went on to show that this is true by giving …
2. AN ILLUSTRATIVE PARABLE (vv. 47-49).
Jesus contrasts two types of hearers. Both come to the same Lord Jesus; and both hear the same words from His lips. But the outcome is terribly different for the two, because of the two responses that were made to the ‘hearing’.
In the first case, the hearer is one who ‘does’ what Jesus says. Jesus said; “Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock” (vv. 47-48).
Notice first the way that the wise builder builds. In the original language of Luke’s Gospel, we’re told that the man first “dug”. He didn’t simply lay a foundation on the surface; but put forth the effort to dig. And then—again in the original language—we’re told that he “deepened”. The purpose of the digging was to go far down deeper, below the surface. to where the solid rock would be. And it’s then—upon the rock—that we’re told that he ‘laid the foundation’. Mere contact with the surface will not provide a sufficient basis for building a superstructure.
This shows us a good pattern to follow in studying God’s word—all of which constitutes our Lord’s teaching to us. We must not be content with merely resting on the surface. We need to put forth the effort to ‘dig’. When Jesus taught things to His apostles, we’re told in Mark 4:10 that His apostles would get alone with Him and ask Him about the things He said. That’s also what we need to do. And we must not be satisfied with just the initial encounter. We need to keep on going back to Him and keep on ‘deepening’ our understanding of His teaching. Mark 4:34 tells us that Jesus did not speak to the crowds without a parable; “And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples.” They had to keep coming back for more. Then—as we dig further and go deeper, and we find Him—it’s upon that rock that we must build our lives. We do so by actually putting what He tells us into use. We must do what we hear. Our encounter with our Lord’s words should be a matter of first careful examination, then a Holy Spirit guided interpretation, and finally an informed application—all in the context of a deep personal relation with the Teacher Himself.
Jesus said that, for those who follow this pattern, the trials of life will not topple their structure. The trials will come. They will beat against our faith. But they will not be able to shake our life or topple it, “for it was founded on the rock”.
But this is not so in the case of the second man. He did none of those things. He only heard. Jesus said, “But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation …” No sensible builder would build on the surface of the dirt without any foundation—not with the expectation, anyway, that the structure would last. Such a structure would have been put up too quickly and too poorly. Such a person will not be able to avoid the trials of life; “against which the stream beat vehemently”. The superficially-built structure would be fine until the trials came; “and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.”
We should always be careful about judging others recklessly. A shattered life may have many causes. But when we see a professing believer who constantly hears and interacts with the words of our Lord—but who never takes the time or effort to actually apply what their Lord says to daily living—we can’t really be surprised that their life can end up the way it does.
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These words of our Lord should remind us of what King David said in the very first of the Psalms:
Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.
The ungodly are not so,
But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the ungodly shall perish (Psalm 1:1-6).
To ‘meditate’ on God’s word implies a much deeper interaction than merely ‘hearing’. It implies a digging down and deepening. It implies a careful plan to put it into action so that it bears fruit in one’s life.
May we be those who meditate carefully on our Lord’s words—with a heart to do them!
EA
