Build your life on the Rock
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
What is up y’all?
I just want to start off by saying what an honor and a privilege to come and talk to you all today.
But so you don’t have some random guy up who just showed up and started talking to you, I am going to tell you a little bit about myself.
I grew up in a small town in northern Missouri, and I am the rare exception because usually if your parents are in ministry you are a Pastors kid or a missionaries kid, but I was a church camp kid. My parents own and operate a church camp.
It was on this church camp that I got my call to ministry, so when it came time for college I wanted to find a place where I can play football and get a degree in ministry… harder than you think.
So now as most of you assume because of where we are at now, I went to SBU.
Now I have 6 weeks of classes left there, I have met my wife (was a ring by spring type of dude), I am the Student minister at South Gate Baptist church (so if you don’t go anywhere and you don’t hate my sermon come swing by), but one thing that I learned during my time at SBU was something that I am sure is similar here.
Just because you go to a Christian school, does not mean that everyone is Christian!
Our Christian culture has gotten good at putting on this mask, putting on this fake face, making people around us convinced we are all in, but we are not LIVING IT.
So this lead me to what to look at a stat with you guys…
The Shocking Statistics
The Shocking Statistics
According to Lifeway Research, 66% of people who attend church as a teenager leave the church during their college years.
So look at the person to your right…
Now look at the person to your left…
Then include yourself into the math.
Out of the people sitting beside you, statically, only one of you will go to church the entire time that you are in college.
As someone who is passonate about Youth Ministry and lived through college where I saw this stat come true, it makes me stop and ask the question…
Why?
Why is this happening?
It all goes back to our foundation.
So today we are going to jump into a text that is going to question, test, and talk about our foundation.
If you have a copy of God’s word with you, please join me in Matthew 7:24-29
“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock.
But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. It collapsed with a great crash.”
When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching,
because he was teaching them like one who had authority, and not like their scribes.
Pray with me.
This passage is the end of the sermon on the mount. This is the greatest sermon ever preached by Jesus himself.
Jesus gets done and the people are amazed.
They are not amazed at the fog machines, at the lights, at the way he worded everything, how great of a speaker he was.
No. They were amazed at his authority.
That he was not like the scribes.
The scribes were breaking down texts, interpreting text, but not Jesus.
He makes this claim.
He says obey me, and you will have a foundation on the rock.
Do not obey me, and it will be on the sand.
THIS IS HUGE.
Jesus is saying I am GOD and if you want to weather the storm, you are going to need a firm foundation.
The things that I am teaching, that is how you get there.
Because this parable shows the imagery of two houses.
The ONLY difference is what they are built on.
What this is saying is that there are two paths in life.
Hear me out when I say this, there are only two paths.
There is the first path, the one whose house is built on the rock.
This is Jesus. Only Jesus. Nothing but Jesus.
We cannot add to Jesus, nor take away from Jesus.
He is making this claim and he is saying I am the only way!
Just like John 14:6
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
He is saying it is ME! I am God.
You have to follow me.
Anything else will fail.
Cause then there is the house is built on the sand.
This is anything other than Jesus.
Any other religion will fail.
Any other train of thought will fail.
Okay okay okay, but like Jesus was talking to unbelievers, like you don’t understand.
“This was all new to them”
“I go to a Christian school.”
No he is talking exactly to you!
Look at what he says,
The beginning of verse 24, “everyone who hears these words of mine”
Then the beginning of verse 26, “everyone who hears these words of mine”
He is not talking to people in a third world country who are still an unreached people group, he says here…
HEY, people who have heard God’s word! Listen up!
Which leads me to my first point…
Action determines your foundation.
Action determines your foundation.
Jesus is talking to people who had just heard him spoke.
He is telling them, since you heard me… are you going to do the things that I just told you or not?
Luckily for us. We have the Bible! We have the written Word of God.
But all of us are hearing the words of God all the time.
I know you are right now, because the Bible is the living and active Word of God.
Maybe it is through your church on Sunday.
It might be through a Wednesday night sermon.
Just maybe you are reading your Bible.
All of these things are “hearing” the Word of God.
So Jesus himself says when you hear these words what are you going to do?
So Jesus gives them a choice.
Act or do not act.
Jesus defines what it means to be built on the rock.
“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
They hear, then they act.
But he also defines what it is like to be built on the sand.
But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
You can know the Word of God, and still be built on the sand.
This is my fear.
Jesus says if you know the word, but do not obey or act on the word, then you are a fool.
That you guys go to a Christian school and you learn the Bible… but it is nothing more than mere stories to you.
You can hear these sermons, and think it is an encouraging message, but it not changing your life.
You go to church because your parents make you.
All of these things can make you know God, but not fear God.
They will make you know the Word of God, but not love God.
All of that head knowledge does not matter if you do not serve God.
But I am saved by Grace through faith! Oh absolutely.
The problem is at everyone uses that verse as an excuse to be a Christian couch potato.
I have said the prayer, I know the things, I was Baptized, so now I get to sit back and live like the rest of the World.
NO, absolutely not.
Everyone forgets the next verse when quoting Ephesians 2:8-10
For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—
not from works, so that no one can boast.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.
And then James says that your faith should cause action.
And without that action he calls your faith dead!
But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without works, and I will show you faith by my works.
You believe that God is one. Good! Even the demons believe—and they shudder.
James is saying here that you not only have to have faith you have to have works!
I want to preface, James is not saying that you can do good works and get to heaven.
You have to have faith, then your faith will cause works.
It is the same things that Jesus is saying.
Jesus is saying that you cannot just merely listen to me.
You have to do it too.
If you do not do it, then you are not truly built on the rock.
Life is too short to get Jesus wrong.
And here Jesus is mapping out the life, saying here is how you get me right.
Storms show your foundation.
Storms show your foundation.
Both of the houses went through the storm.
It did does not matter which side of the equation that you are on!
Both verses 25 and 27 says the same thing.
It says the rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house!
It does not matter if you are acting on the word, the storm is coming.
it is going to rock your life.
Its going to shake your house.
but when it comes are you going to be prepared, where are you going to be anchored?
When life comes your way.
When someone dies.
When you get the call that a love one has cancer.
When your girlfriend breaks up with you.
When you forgot that you had a test…
What is going to happen?
Have the bricks been laid?
Is your house going to stand.
Let me tell you guys a quick story of someone who laid their foundation well. There was the cool show that came out a few year ago called Quaterback. I am not recommending this show because there is a certain quaterback that many of you probably love that likes to cuss a lot. But the show follows 3 QBs around for an entire season.
One of those QB’s is Kirk Cousins who at the time was on the Minnesota Vikings. He is being the leader of this team. They make the playoffs, and Kirk has a terrible game, it was his fault that they lost. Anyone watching the game knew it.
He took the blame, but it was what he did when he got home. He got home tucked his kid in, and before he went to bed, he sang to him the song, “On Christ this solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.”
When it was probably one of the worst days of his life, he turned back to God.
We have to get there when the storm comes. We have to lay our foundation like that.
you lay those bricks by being completely surendered and obedient to God.
By being in his Word and acting on it.
By being the hands and feet of God.
By living in prayer.
By living in community.
By NOT JUST BEING HEARERS OF THE WORD, but also by being doers.
Or is your house going to fall.
Because you do not pay attention to the Bible.
The Bible does not change your life.
You are not intentional about prayer.
You are living in unconfessed sin.
All of these things, where you might say “I am a Christian,” but if you are not living like it, then you are built on the sand.
And I say all of this, but really it is more than this.
Jesus is referring to more than just this life, he is referring to the storm that is the final judgement.
Yes, hard things in life are going to come, but that’s not the root of what Jesus is getting at.
He is saying here, if you are not built on the rock the day that you die, your house is going to collaspe.
And when it crashes it is going to crash hard.
It is going to crash into the pits of hell.
You might be like woah, that took a turn. No, this is what Jesus is trying to get you to realize.
Look at what he said right before this passage.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’
Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers!’
Here again, we see Jesus say that the one who does the will of the Father will be in heaven.
You faith has to guide your life.
Every decision you make must be of Christ.
Every word you say must be of Christ.
Doing what the Bible says, not in a legalistic way, but because we are called to have a faith that has action.
So when this final storm comes and Jesus says why should I let you in?
You can say, Jesus, you changed me heart, you saved me, all I did was put my faith in you.
I know I cannot earn my way to heaven, but it is only you.
Because I do not want to hear depart from me…
I want to hear well done my good and faithful servant.
What is your foundation?
What is your foundation?
Guys, we have to take a step back an examine ourselves.
If you are running after God, having a faith the causes action, good.
Keep it up, start sprinting after him.
But if not, we need to ask ourselves why?
We need to examine and see if we are doing the Godly things because God has changed my life, or because this is what my parents and school tell me to do.
We have to live all in for Christ.
Going back to my stat at the beginning… why do 66% of high schoolers leave the church by the time they graduate college?
So many of them think that they have their foundation in the rock, but it is in the sand.
They have the knowledge, but they do not have the action behind it.
So they think that they are on the rock, but really they are living on the sand.
So when these kids move away, their parents are not telling them to go to church, their friends are not going, and they are away from the community you had at home.
They go back to their foundation, and if it is built on the rock, they have an established relationship with God, they keep going to church.
But if they lean on their foundation and it is soft and mushy, and they have been going through the motions, they quit going.
Guys I can’t see your hearts, but you have to look at it and be honest with yourself.
There are only two paths.
You have to start building today because the storm is coming.
Today, I pray that you start to lay your bricks on the rock.
Pray with me.
