Built to Last - Matthew 7:24-29

Today marks exactly 1 year since we answered God’s call to come to harvest

it has been a sweet year in which God has confirmed his call on us as a family

He has confirmed his call on my life as a preacher of his word

He has stretched us and challenged us

But he has also provided richly.

In fact, this past year for us has given us a great appreciation for the words of Hudson Taylor, who was the first missionary to inland China

“God’s work in God’s way never lacks God’s supply.”

He has supplied grace upon grace, he has supplied people, he has supplied faith when it was lacking…

And we are so grateful that Harvest is the church that we get to share that story with.

And we are grateful to all of you for receiving us so well over the past year.

Well, today also marks another milestone: We are finishing up the sermon on the mount in this second part of our study in Matthew.

So let’s turn our attention to God’s word and turn to Matthew 7

As you turn there, I want you to think of how a house is built

It isn’t just built with materials - it is only in the hands of a skillful builder that a house can be built to last

A knowledgable contractor can build something that will last

But a contractor who doesn’t know what he is doing, even with the best materials and the best tools, won’t build anything that lasts.

Why? Because the flaws in his knowledge will lead to flaws in his building

This is why the Old Testament book of Proverbs uses the word “wisdom” the skill of living

The Hebrew word for wisdom is a word that is applied to a skilled craftsman

It is a knowledge that produces something of value

And so building anything that is lasting, in the biblical worldview, requires wisdom.

And this morning’s text is going to show us what it looks like to live with wisdom as God’s people in his kingdom

And it will result in us building lives that last

But if we don’t listen to these words of Jesus, the lives that we build will ultimately fall apart.

So we must give these words our full attention if we are to build lives at last

Matthew 7:24–29 ESV

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.

Big Idea: True wisdom means building your life on Jesus’ words [5:00]

I want you to notice that contrast in the big idea

If true wisdom means building your life on Jesus words then the contrast is that false wisdom or foolishness means building your life on anything else.

To trade Jesus’ words for someone else’s, even your own, is a foolish trade.

Now this is a very familiar passage to many of us, and we must be careful because the more familiar we are with something, the less we observe about it.

And so whenever we come to a text that feels familiar, we must stop and notice some details that we might have otherwise overlooked

So I want you to notice first, the emphasis in verses 24, 26 and 28 on the words of Jesus.

Verse 24 everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them.

Verse 26 and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them

verse 28 the crowds were astonished at his teaching.

Now in verse 24 when it says "Everyone, then” that word is a logical connection all that came before it.

And when Jesus says “these words", that's a word that points back.

So, “Everyone then who hears these words and does them” is referring to the entire sermon on the mount.

Specifically, Jesus’ words and what you do with them.

And when he says in v. 24 and 26 that the wise and foolish men are building their “houses”, that is a metaphor for your life.

All of us are trying to build a kind of life

And all of us are building that life on something

So putting these things together

Jesus is saying - There is a way to build your life that is wise and a way to build your life that is foolish.

So, how can you notice which one describes you?

How can you know if you are building wisely or building foolishly?

Notice the difference in v. 24 & 26

Everyone hears his words

But some “do” them and some do not “do” them

The word that Jesus uses here for “do” carries with it the idea of “practicing” or “following.”

So, the wise person builds his life on the words of Jesus, following them, practicing them

The foolish person builds his life on something else and does not follow Jesus’ words, but ignores them.

So we are left with a choice at the end of the sermon on the mount

In light of all that Jesus has said in ch. 5-7, will you listen and follow?

The truth is that there is no shortage of voices that would call you to follow them

Our lives are constantly filled with people saying, “Live like me, listen to me, and your life will be great.”

So we have to decide who we are going to listen to and who we are going to follow

… Whose words we are going to build our lives upon

And true wisdom means building your life on Jesus’ words, not someone else’s

[Which really necessitates the question]: Why should we follow Jesus’ words compared to other voices and other opinions? What is it about Jesus words that are better and wiser for us to build our lives upon?

We are going to see three traits….

Jesus’ words are...

Sustaining (24-25) [10:00]

v. 24 - What will you be like - “A wise man who built his house on the rock”

Historical background - Building practice in Galilee - solid rock was just beneath layers of sand.

A wise builder would dig deep to reach it.

You had to move past what was on the surface to get to what was stable.

So Jesus is contrasting what is on the surface with the stability of what is deeper.

You with me so far?

And I want you to notice the actual words

“THE Rock”

If he was speaking generally, he would just say, “Build your life on a rock… on something strong”

Definite article - “Which one?”

In the OT, the image of a rock is used of God Himself—stable, immovable, faithful

Psalm 18:2 “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

How would you take refuge in God as a rock? You would listen to his words

You would trust his way

God isn’t a stronghold for those who reject his word… He is only a stronghold for those who believe his word.

Are you with me?

So Jesus is using the same imagery about his own words - His words are the rock upon which you and I must build our lives.

It is so easy to build your life on superficial things because those things are visible on the surface everywhere you look around the world

Building your life on money

Building your life on success

Building your life on popularity

Building your life on your beauty or your public image

Those things are all visible on the surface

And it is so common in the world for people to build their lives upon them

But those things will not sustain you because they are not firm, but weak

They are not lasting, but ever-changing.

The life that will be sustained and will endure is the life that is built upon the rock of Jesus words

Nothing else

Now you might be asking, “What do you mean that Jesus’ words will sustain me? Sustain me through what?”

Well, look at verse 25:

“And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”

In the Jewish mind of the first century, steeped in the Old Testament, storms, wind, rain, and floods referred to God’s judgment.

The archetype of this is the flood in Noah’s day in Gen. 6-9 - Wherein God’s judges the whole earth for its sin.

And that theme gets picked up throughout the rest of the Bible to represent God’s judgment

God refers to various times of judgment in the Old testament as a flood or as a storm

And in the context (vv. 21–23), Jesus is speaking of people standing before Him on the last day and being turned away.

[Look - “On that day…”]

So when Jesus says “the storm,” He’s not primarily talking about a tough week at work. He’s talking about the day we stand before God at the end of time.

We don't often consider the day that we will stand before the throne of God.

But Jesus is concluding the sermon on the mount by highlighting the fact that judgment is coming and how you and I will hold up in that moment depends entirely on how we view his words.

And the only life that will be sustained on that day is the one founded on Jesus' words.

To build your life on Jesus’ words is to align yourself with God’s way.

And God’s way has always been that His people would be marked by righteousness.

The problem, of course, is that we aren't righteous.

We can't stand before God's judgment on our own.

We’re sinful. We’re broken.

We constantly rebel against God’s perfect standard of righteousness

That’s why Jesus is not only the one who gives the words to live by—He is the very one who lived them perfectly on our behalf and died perfectly in our place

And so you and I, when we follow Jesus by faith, when our lives belong to him, we receive his work on our behalf, we receive his perfect righteousness. We receive his sufficient atoning death

He takes our sin so that it no longer defines us

He gives us his righteousness so that it does define us

And we stand before God justified, not by righteousness that we have done, but by the righteousness of Jesus.

So we are no longer condemned in Christ, but adopted as sons and daughters, transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of light

That is why his words are sustaining.

And that’s why Jesus can say that the wise person—the one who listens to His words and puts them into practice—will not fall when the storm of judgment comes.

Because your foundation isn’t your own effort—the foundation upon which you have built your life is Jesus Himself.

And because his words sustain us in the final day, they can sustain us every day between this day and that day.

That’s why Charles Simeon once wrote,

“No other foundation can support us then, therefore no other foundation can sustain us now.”

Friends, if you know your life is built on Jesus and His righteousness, take courage in the fact that his words will sustain you: There is no hardship, no loss, no pain, no anxiety, no financial setback, no relational fracture—nothing—can undo you.

He will hold you fast.

If Jesus’ words will hold you up before God’s throne, surely they can hold you up through your current sorrow.

This is why Charles Spurgeon so famously said, “I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the rock of ages.”

So let me ask you: What are you facing today?

Listen and follow the words of Jesus in the midst of it

And you can live with confidence knowing that he is the Rock who will sustain you.

Now, here is the deal: If Jesus’ words are the only words that can truly sustain us, that means that any other voice is lesser than his, which leads to the second truth about Jesus’ words…

Jesus words are:

Exposing (26-27) [19:00]

Jesus contrasts the wise builder who digs down to the rock with the foolish builder who embraces what is only on the surface.

He hears the same words, but doesn’t want the cost of following

He is satisfied with the superficial - He embraces the social media guru or the self-help book as being good enough for the life he wants

But there is a problem…

Sand is shifting, changing, easy eroded - It is the opposite of the rock.

The rock doesn’t change - The sand does

God’s word doesn’t change - The world does.

The opinions and views and passions and ideas that are popular today will be nothing but a memory tomorrow, if even that

The wisdom of the world does not last - Which is why it is not wisdom at all, but folly.

To build your life on what the world says is to embrace folly and by definition to build your life on what will not last.

In your Bible, specifically in Proverbs, the Fool is the one who sees his own way as better. The fool is the one who will not receive instruction, who will not receive correction, who sees his own way as right and therefore leads himself to destruction because he would not receive instruction.

[Illustration] Have you ever gone to the beach and you build a sand castle? And within only a few minutes of the waves crashing on that sand castle, it's as if that castle was never built. It's gone completely flattened, and everything has been restored to what it looked like before that sand castle was even built.

And Jesus is saying, if you hear my words and choose to not practice them, your life will be like that sand castle built for a moment, and as soon as the flood comes, it will be wiped away.

Look what Jesus says:

“The rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell. And great was the fall of it.” Great was the fall of it, complete ruin is what that means. It was completely ruined.

[HUMOR] I'm not sure if you know this, but there is pretty extensive research that has been going on for quite some time now… It shows that if you’re disciplined and careful about what you eat, if you exercise and stay active consistently, if you are wise with your money and build a nest egg for your later years in life… you'll still die?

The research is pretty conclusive on that fact..

In fact, I'm pretty sure we're right at about 100% on that one.

And if you and I listen to the wrong voices and build our lives on the wrong thing, we will find out when it is too late that we wasted our lives

The day of your death is coming…

And it is appointed for man to die once and then comes judgment…

I promise you: when that moment comes, your bank account won’t help you. Your nice car, the size of your house, your networking, your wardrobe, your résumé—none of it will stand in the presence of the Holy God. And not only will it not help you, you will see it for what it was: a waste.

But listen: By God’s grace, he allows hardships in our lives to expose the superficial things of our lives for what they really are so that we can change course now!

While I certainly do not wish suffering on anyone, there is a great value in suffering in this life.

Not sure if you have ever thought of suffering as valuable, but I promise you that it is…

Here is why it is valuable: suffering has a way of pulling back the curtain and showing us what’s really there.

Suffering reveals just how powerless money, beauty, reputation, and popularity really are.

That’s why Jesus’ words are exposing.

They show us how shallow, how fruitless, how ultimately worthless it is to build our lives on what everyone else is chasing.

And when trials come, we realize that the only thing that can help us endure are the words Jesus… nothing else.

His words reveal the falsehood of self-reliance and the vanity of material pursuits

And it is a kindness of God to let us suffer so that we will have the world purified out of us.

Like precious metals that are heated to the boiling point so that impurities rise to the surface and can be removed

Suffering in your life and my life exposes the things that need to change them to the surface so that they can be removed

So that we can build our lives on Jesus instead

So let me just ask you: What is Jesus exposing in your life and your heart right now?

What have you been building your life on that Jesus’ words in the sermon on the mount exposes as needing to change?

Or let me ask you one more question: Whose voice have you been listening to more than Jesus lately?

[CONFRONT] We have to be very, very honest about the time in which we live, where things like social media and AI especially have way too much of our attention and way too much of our allegiance, and we put way too much stock in what they say.

And we listen to lesser voices way too much.

And if you don’t agree - Consider this: How many social media posts this week moved you to action compared to how many bible verses moved you to action?

It is very exposing how quickly we will implement a life-hack from TikTok or YouTube compared to how reluctant we are to apply Scripture to our lives.

For many of us, if we’re honest, we’ve been building on the wrong thing.

Jesus’ words are exposing that fact.

And the right response is to repent where we’ve been exposed,

And build our lives on Jesus’ words, knowing that his way will never fail us.

So, Jesus’ words are sustaining and exposing, which highlights the third point…

Jesus’ words are…

Unmatched (28-29) [29:00]

Matthew 7:28–29 “And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.”

I want you to notice the contrast there

the Scribes were the experts in the law, experts in the Old Testament and God’s commands. They interpreted the commands and taught people how to obey them

And the people look at Jesus and say, “He teaches with an authority, that even the scribes don’t have.”

How can he do that?

John tells us in John 1 that Jesus is the embodiment of the word of God

And that Jesus is the presence of God who walked among the people of God

So Jesus, living as the embodiment of the word of God, speaks the very words of God, because is God

In the likeness of human flesh

Jesus words are unmatched because he is God overall whose words are the very word of God

Listen: There are countless celebrities and social media gurus and influences who would have you believe their words matter

But none of them speak with the authority of God.

Jesus does - So you can build your life on his words, because to build your life on his words is to build your life on THE rock.

And that truth begs a very simple and very important question: If that is who Jesus is and that is what his words are, the very words of God, then why would we not build our lives upon them?

Too often we live as if we are indifferent to the words of Jesus, as if he is just another voice in a sea of opinions.

And so we hear his words and we think, “That’s nice” and then we listen to someone else more…

Jesus would call that foolish - To hear his words, turn from them, and follow someone else.

The wise builder builds his life on Jesus words.

Because they are the words of God… sustaining… exposing… and unmatched.

[Conclusion] [36:00]

Now, this is the end of the sermon on the mount and so it is worth seeing where this section of Matthew fits in Bible as a whole.

It isn’t something new - Jesus is actually reminding his followers of something very old.

To see it, I want you to turn back to Genesis 2.

If you’ve been around Harvest very long, you know that I often refer back to the first few chapters of Genesis.

And it is because Gen. 1-2 shows us what God’s good design looks like. Then, Gen. 3 shows us what went wrong that explains why the world is the way that it is

And Gen. 3 concludes with what God is doing to make all things new again

And so your whole Bible looks back to creation and looks ahead to new creation

And when you understand that, you see how the Bible is telling one, unified story fo all of reality.

For our purposes this morning, we are going to look at Gen. 2

God has created the heavens and the earth and he has created the man and will soon create the woman to complete mankind as God’s image bearing couple.

Now I want you to look at Genesis 2:8–9

“And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

God made lots of trees for food, but two are named because they serve as a choice for humanity.

What is that choice?

Go down to v. 16

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.”

So let's just take inventory of the trees.

There are all the trees that God made which include the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

And God says you may eat of all of the trees that I have made, except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

So in all of the trees that God made, what tree is included in the one’s that can be eaten from? The tree of life

What is God saying?

“Just follow my words, and you’ll live.”

“I am declaring to you my words of what life should look like.

Just practice my words, hear my words and do them, and you will have life.

But hear my words and don't do them? Listen to your own voice or the voices of others?

Eat of the tree that I said not to eat of… Do that and you'll die.”

God told the man in the garden: “If you hear these words of mine and do them, you’ll live in my wisdom and you’ll flourish.

But if you hear these words of mine and don’t do them, you will live in your folly and you’ll die.”

And Jesus at the end of the sermon on the mount says the same thing.

The sermon on the mount is a retelling of the words of God in the garden to the first man.

They are a retelling of this is what it looks like to live under the reign and rule of God.

Jesus is bringing with him the Kingdom of God and he is ushering in new creation through his sinless life, substitutionary death, and glorious, victorious resurrection

So it is fitting that he would bring our minds back to the choice that has always been before humanity

Do it God’s way and you’ll live.

And in hearing it from Jesus, we hear it from the mouth of God himself.

So as the people of God who desire to live in his kingdom…

Let's look back over this whole series and see all the ways that Jesus has shown us what it looks like to live in the kingdom of God.

Let's repent of all the ways that we have embraced the kingdom of the world.

And let's listen to the words of Jesus and do them

Because true wisdom means building your life on Jesus words.

Amen.

[40:00]