Build Wisely
- Jack Schull
- Jun 17, 2023
- 5 min read
We are each building a life. We’re building on a foundation. We each get to choose what that foundation is and at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is calling us to choose him as that foundation. He is the one to build your life upon and the only foundation that will help you and I withstand the storms of life. To build your life on Jesus means that you trust him and that you not just appreciate what he says, you actually do it. Doers of the word, not just hearers.
Elements City Church, Tucson Arizona.
Build Wisely-Sermon on the Mount
Jack Schull
The Sermon on the Mount is the most famous sermon Jesus ever preached. It derives
its name from the place where Jesus preached it; a mountainside that acted as a
natural amphitheater along the shores of Galilee. The Sermon on the Mount, preached
to ordinary people, covers a wide range of topics like prayer, fasting, money, worry,
forgiveness, anger, lust, judging others, and more. But the theme that unites it all is
Jesus explaining the heart of God behind His given Law.
It's here in the Sermon on the Mount -- found in Matthew 5-7 -- that King Jesus gives
us a radical picture of what life in His Kingdom looks like. And it’s our hope that, as we
meditate on Jesus’s words, we might become people who more closely follow His Way
and experience a life that truly flourishes in the process.
“I think the Sermon is a piece of wisdom teaching from Jesus that invites people into
true human flourishing through wholeness centered on God and his coming kingdom.
Jesus’s Sermon invites us to see the world in a certain way and to be in the world in a
certain way that accords with God’s nature, will, and coming reign upon the earth; in
short, “righteousness” (cf. Matt 5:20). It is a call to faith‐based discipleship in Jesus,
the Son of God.” - Jonathan T. Pennington
Matthew 7:24-29 NIV
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is
like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams
rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had
its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does
not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain
came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it
fell with a great crash.” 28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds
were amazed at his teaching, 29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not
as their teachers of the law.
Quote:
“It’s important to note the radical Jesus-centeredness that undergirds this closing
exhortation of the SOTM. Jesus does not say that the wise and foolish are
distinguished according to how they obey God or practice Torah or follow the
teachings of the elders. Jesus emphasizes that the wise and foolish are distinguished
on the basis of how they respond to his words. While Jesus is certainly presented as
both a Prophet and Sage, he is also repeatedly offered as more than these roles - the
true and final source of revelation itself. His hearers are invited to build the foundation
of their whole lives upon his teaching and way of being in the world. He is presenting
himself as the authoritative arbiter of God’s revelation and the path to human
flourishing.” -Jonathan T Pennington
2 stories side by side. 2 builders. 2 identical storms. 2 different results.
One is viewed as wise, a wise man who wants to build something, a wise man who
gets spiritual training, and a wise man in the storm. The other man is a foolish man who
wants to build something, a foolish man who exposes himself to divine truth, a foolish
man in a storm.
Wisdom, in Scripture, is the ability to take divine truth and apply it to life. The fool in
Scripture is not necessarily the person who lacks information. It is the person who
does little or nothing with the information received.
Jesus is the sure foundation to build your life upon.
When Luke tells the story in Luke 6:48, it says the wise man dug deep.
46 “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? 47 As for everyone
who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you
what they are like. 48 They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and
laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could
not shake it, because it was well built. 49 But the one who hears my words and does
not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a
foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction
was complete.”
It costs to build on rock. You can build on sand fairly cheaply. To build on rock is hard
work; to build on sand takes little time.
This difference between the two builders is fundamentally rooted in the fact that the
second man, the foolish man, was building a house for show. The man building his
house on rock was building a house to last.
Only the storms reveal the nature of your foundation. TRUTH: Our foundation must be
formed before the storms come.
John 16:33 (Jesus said) “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have
peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Jesus is to be your foundation, which involves the truth of God applied in the realities
of life. Foundations are not merely the information to stand on. It is to have the truth of
God as the modus operandi of decision-making. What differentiated these two men?
Both heard, but only one did.Jesus is saying - build your life on me.Don’t just be a
hearer of my words - be a doer.The apostle James would later write:Do not merely
listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to
the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror
and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in
it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they
do.--James 1:22–25
Matthew 7:24 NIV
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is
like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
Jesus explained that his true followers, by acting on his words, are like a wise man who
built his house on rock. The one who builds “on rock” is a hearing, responding
disciple... not a phony, superficial one.
As character is revealed by fruit (7:20), so faith is revealed by storms. The wise person,
seeking to act upon God’s Word, builds to withstand anything. It will be the foundation,
not the house, that will determine what happens on the Day of Judgment. What action
did Jesus expect as a result of his words? What “building” did he expect to happen?
Radical discipleship—people whose lives revealed the characteristics that he had been
describing in this entire sermon (see Matthew 5-7).