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This podcast is a production of Watermark Community Church in Dallas, Texas, USA. Watermark exists to be and make more fully devoted followers of Christ, looking to God's Word as our only authority, conscience and guide.
Good morning, Watermark. It is good to be with you today. This is such an honor for me to be here. My wife Kelly is here as well. Kelly, raise your hand. She's here. Everybody say, on the count of three, "Hi, Kelly." One, two, three. All right. There you go. Awesome. It's so good. I want you to know your church is an amazing church. Your church influences _our_ church. Your church influences churches all across the nation.
I mean, for decades, the ministry that has gone on here and the things that are happening now are just incredible. You have an amazing pastor and pastor's wife with Kat, as well, and their family. Let's just tell him. So good. I just love you so much, TA. We have been buddies for so long and good, good friends. We get on the phone together. Here's what's fun I want you to know about your pastor and me: We laugh all the time on the phone, just laughing about all sorts of stuff, which is so fun. We have such a fun friendship.
Then there are times, as well, I'll call him and ask, "What do you think I ought to do about this?" And he'll call me. "What do you think I ought to do about this?" We'll gain godly wisdom from one another. You have such a great Bible teacher in him, and many others I know throughout your church, but TA giving leadership here. You guys are blessed upon blessed to have him as your pastor in this great church. You should be so grateful for how God is using you. I know that you are. It's a special, amazing thing.
A year in the Word. What an awesome thing you're doing. I know some of y'all are still in Genesis, and that's okay. There's grace. Keep on moving forward and being able to do that. We love that. What a great vision. What a great accomplishment that will be in a godly sense. How much change that will bring in your life. It is awesome. So, just keep on going with that.
You've influenced _our_ church. Next year, we're going to do a year in the New Testament. We're not quite at a year of the Word, TA, but we're going to get a year in the New Testament, to be able to do that with our devotional guide that we're going to do. So, your influence is huge. Absolutely incredible.
Then, to hear of the generosity of your church, being able to raise money for Bible translation… Wow! How incredible is that? Then, to already have given to Hurricane Melissa. Have you seen the news reports of all that has taken place? When you live on the Gulf Coast, like I do, of Houston… You guys don't get hurricanes like we do.
When we see hurricanes coming, we start watching the map. We start trying to figure out, "Where's that thing going to go? Is it coming toward us?" We've survived a bunch of them. To see what it has done in Jamaica and the ways it has influenced and impacted Jamaica and Cuba, and all of these places, to be able to go, "Wow! How could we not give? How could we not pray for those people who are going through so much right now?"
I want to show you a picture of Hurricane Michael. If you'll go back to October 10, 2018, Hurricane Michael hit Florida. It was the first Cat 5 that ever hit the Florida panhandle. It caused \$25 billion in damage. It swept through in such a way that it was one of the costliest hurricanes in US history. Eighty percent of structures were damaged, severely damaged, or destroyed, leaving _this_ picture of the beachfront. Now, think about what that looks like, just devastation, this storm coming through and waylaying everything that is there.
I want you to turn in your Bibles, with that picture in mind, to Matthew, chapter 7. We're going to look at a house built on the rock. We just sang about it a few moments ago. Perfect song for this message. That the rains came, the winds blew, and the storm came. The hurricane would come through, if you will. And how do we build our house on the rock? We're not talking about physical storms. It's a beautiful day today.
We're not talking about physical storms. We're talking about trials. We're talking about temptations. We're talking about problems. We're talking about crises. In Jamaica, they really are dealing with a physical storm and the aftermath of those things. But as we look at this, how do we build a life on a foundation of Jesus Christ so that our house, our life, our family, is built upon a rock? That rock is the rock of Christ.
Now, Matthew 7 is pretty interesting. You've heard Matthew 7 before, because you just read Matthew 7. I know you just finished John. I thought it would be good for us to go back to a gospel before you jump to the book of Acts. Looking in Matthew 7, there are three sets of twos. You knew this, but you didn't know this.
First of all, there are two roads. There's a road that's broad that leads to destruction, and there's a road that's narrow that leads to life. Then there are two trees. There's a bad tree that bears bad fruit, and there's a good tree that bears good fruit. Then we end up with where we are today. There are two foundations. There's one that's built on sand, and there's one that's built on rock.
So, we have the two trees, we have the two roads, and we have the two foundations. That's basically what Matthew, chapter 7, is about, and Jesus giving these parables. When he gives this parable here, he's giving a choice to us, particularly in this one we're looking at. He's giving a choice. Is your life (again on twos) going to be built on _your_ wisdom, on _your_ willpower, on _your_ efforts, or is your life going to be built on _Christ's_ wisdom, _Christ's_ power, and _Christ's_ foundation of truth?
See, the Bible is like an owner's manual to us. We can look into it and see, "How do we take care of what's going on in our life? How do we turn to this?" It has been said many times, if you find a worn-out Bible, you'll find a life that's not worn out. If you find a tattered Bible, you'll find a life that's not tattered. It doesn't mean we won't go through trials (we'll see that in a second), but it means that when we go through them, we go through them with the strength and the power of the Lord.
So, listen to Matthew 7. We're going to begin in verse 24, and we're going to read verses 24 and 25. We're going to make it all the way through verse 29, but let's just start here. Here's what it says: **"Therefore, everyone…"** It's open to anybody. **"…who hears these words of mine…"** That's Jesus speaking to us. This is the end of the Sermon on the Mount. **"…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."**
Here's the first thing I want to give you: _firm foundations are built on salvation and wisdom_. _Salvation_ is the first thing I want you to hear on this. Did you notice the first word in our passage in verse 24? It was _therefore_. Every time you see _therefore_ in the Bible, you should ask, "What's that _therefore_ there for?" Right? That's what it's talking about. _Therefore_ means it's pointing to something back.
If you were to look back to verses 21-23, you would find it's the famous passage where it says, "Didn't we cast out demons in your name? Didn't we heal the sick in your name? Didn't we do all sorts of things for you in your name?" Then Jesus says to them, "Turn away from me, for I never knew you." It's a place where Christ is comparing religion of doing a lot of stuff to relationship, having a relationship with Christ.
Salvation does not come because of religion. It's not about doing stuff for God; it's about a relationship with God. So, he says, "Therefore, because you have a relationship with God…" This is really important. Salvation is a relationship, not religious activity. It's not about going to church, though going to church is great. It's not about reading your Bible, though reading your Bible is great. It's not about doing the right things, though doing the right things is a whole lot better than doing the wrong things. It's about a relationship with God.
I want you to know that and hear that from a pastor, hear that from TA as well. TA and I go to church more than any of you go to church. We live in this setting right here. I feel like, at my funeral, there's going to be the worship font that comes up on the LED screen. That's what my obituary is going to be written in: a worship font. You're going to look at me in the coffin, and I'm going to have a wireless microphone on my face, lying in the coffin, because you won't recognize me if that doesn't happen at that moment. You'll be like, "I don't know what…"
We go to church all the time. I mean, we live at the church. I'm telling you, it's great. It's awesome. It's a blessing. It's a calling. I wouldn't want it any other way. But my relationship with Jesus is the most important thing. My personal mission statement is "My call is to follow Christ; ministry is an overflow of my walk."
My call is to follow Christ. I'm not going to get to heaven and have anybody call me "Pastor Gregg." My call is to follow Christ; ministry is an overflow of my walk. Jesus said it like this in Matthew: "From the overflow of the heart the mouth will speak." It's the same thing just put in a different way. "Therefore, because your salvation is based in a relationship with me, I'm going to tell you these things about living in wisdom, living on the foundation of Jesus Christ."
John Stott, in his commentary on Galatians, writes about John Wesley. John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist church. He and his friends visited prisons. They fed and educated children in the slums. They observed the Sabbath. Actually, Saturday _and_ Sunday they would observe it.
Then he went to this church on Aldersgate Street. This is why many things in Methodism are called _Aldersgate_. He received Christ as his Savior. There was a burning in his heart that he had a relationship with Christ. He had done all of these works. But listen to this phrase. I want you to hear this phrase. John Wesley said, "I had the faith of a servant, though not of a son."
I want you to know, Watermark, Jesus Christ has come. God the Father has come through Christ so that you could be a son or daughter of God. You can have a personal relationship with God through Christ. We'll help you do that today. You can talk to me. You can talk to anybody. We'll give you direction at the end of the service. But that's what that _therefore_ is there for. It's pointing back to this moment where they thought it was religion instead of relationship.
I'm telling you, as we jump to our next thought, this is of eternal significance that you understand this difference. It's not about just doing the right thing; it's about a personal, "Jesus, I ask you to be my Savior and live in my heart" relationship with Christ. I prayed that when I was 16 years old, students, and Christ came into my heart and changed my life.
So, he says if you're going to build a firm foundation, it has to be on salvation. It also has to be on wisdom. Look at what it says in verse 24. **"Therefore…"** Now you know what that _therefore_ is there for. **"…everyone…"** It's a call to everyone. **"…who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man…"**
So, here's what we have: _wisdom_, _not just knowledge_. If we're going to have a life that's built on the rock, we have to, first of all, have a relationship with Christ. Secondly, we have to have wisdom, not just knowledge. Now, knowledge is everywhere. You have more knowledge in your phone than most people have had in the entirety of history.
We can find out anything. We can just say, "Find out _this_ for me. Find out _that_." (I almost said the person's name that we could say on your phone, but then everybody's phones would go crazy if I said that at this very moment.) So, we can get all of this knowledge. There's no wondering anymore. There's just knowledge that we can get. Knowledge is one thing; wisdom is another thing. Knowledge is great; wisdom is of life.
In our world, we consume so much knowledge. Popular estimates are that we consume 74 gigabytes of knowledge a day. Now, I have no idea what _one_ gigabyte is, much less 74 of them, but it sounds like a lot. So, I broke it down a little bit further. The average person consumes the equivalent of 16 full-length movies a day. It doesn't mean we watch that; it just means every billboard, everything you're seeing, everything that comes across your screen, all of these emails…
If you're a TikTok person, the average user of TikTok is on 90 minutes a day. The average clip is 24 seconds. That means you're consuming 225 pieces of content per day…boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And they're all people just dancing. I mean, what else do you have to know? I mean, come on. It's like the same thing over and over and over, but you have 224 of them happening. So it's coming. It's full tilt coming.
Do you know what happens? You get all this stimulus of all this knowledge. Let me just tell you from my own heart. This was this week. I'm a pastor of a church. I spend time with God all the time. I preach messages like this. I got into bed a couple of days ago, and I sat there, and I didn't want to read my Bible. I wanted to be on my phone. I'd been on my phone all day long…emails, blah, blah, blah. I wanted to grab my phone (which should have been in the other room, but it was on my nightstand at that time) instead of reading my Bible.
Then, when I read my Bible, I was so kind of geeked up, I couldn't slow down enough to really get into the Word. Do you ever feel like that? You have great intentions, but you never get there, because so much is coming at us every single day. We're just bouncing…boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. When it talks about sitting with paper and a pen (What are we talking about?) and reading something and really getting into it and getting quiet and getting extended from all of the electronics and all of the things that need us…
Wisdom comes from _this_, not from all of the things that are going to hit you. "Well, I can read my Bible on my phone." I know you can. That's not what I'm saying. Slowing down and getting into the Word… It is listening and obeying. We'll see it in just a second. In verse 24, it says he hears the words and _acts_ on them. It is listening and obeying. It's trusting that our house was built on the rock.
Now, _salvation_: trusting Jesus Christ as your Savior through grace. He's the only one. You can't trust in yourself. _Wisdom_: "God, I need your wisdom for life." Not just knowledge. "I need your wisdom for me to parent." Parents, you need wisdom. We have a 17-year-old and a 24-year-old. We've been where some of you are, and we _haven't_ been where some of you are.
Watching that wisdom come through…wisdom in your office; wisdom in your school; wisdom, students, in making decisions over who your Friday-night friends are and who you're spending time with in the week; wisdom of what you're doing…all of those things. We need that wisdom. How do we get it? Let me give you two quick things.
First, read the book of Proverbs. You just want some quick wisdom? Just read the book of Proverbs. Pick whatever day it is on the calendar. Today is November 2, so pick Proverbs 2 and read Proverbs 2. It's that easy. You just go along. What you're doing with the Year in the Word… You're gaining wisdom every single day by cruising through the Word. That's an amazing thing. So, that's one thing.
Secondly, James says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of the Lord, who gives beyond reproach." So, we ask for wisdom. One of my prayers almost every day (I'm not going to say _every_ day) for the last 30 years has been asking for wisdom and leadership, those two things. "God, I ask that you give me wisdom, and I ask that you give me leadership." I mean _leadership_ in two ways. "God, I want you to lead _me_ so I can lead _them_," my church, my family, the places of leadership God gives me.
"I need wisdom, God, and I need your leadership if I'm going to lead in any other place in my life." If you have kids, you have a place of leadership in your life. If you have friends, you have a place of leadership in your life. Everybody is a leader at some level. In your workplace, you have a place of leadership in your life. So, pray and ask God to give you wisdom. God will give it to you, and you'll be able to have that for that moment.
So, here's what we're going to do. We're going to take a little pit stop in the middle of the service, the middle of the sermon. We don't usually do this, but we're going to do this. I'm just going to have us pray, and we're going to ask for wisdom. We're just going to do it. Before we get to the next point, we're just going to ask for wisdom.
What do you need wisdom on? Is it your family? Is it your marriage? Is it your singlehood? Is it your being a student? What is it that you need wisdom on? We're going to ask in general, "Lord, give me wisdom in general," and then, "Lord, give me wisdom in this specific area." Are you ready? Let's pray. Let me lead us.
Father, we just come in Jesus' name, mid-message, and we pray that you would grant us wisdom, God, wisdom from heaven. We do not know what to do or how to do it many times. We need your wisdom.
Pray now, if you would. Just ask God in general, "God, give me wisdom for life," and then ask him for that specific situation.
Father, we believe you can give it to us, that you are the greatest source of wisdom, that you are able to guide us. We need that, Lord. We trust you, and we love you. In Jesus' name, amen.
**"Therefore…"** Salvation. **"…everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice…"** We're obedient with the Lord. (We'll see that in a minute.) We're walking with God in obedience, and in walking with God in obedience, we will become a wise man or woman. Asking God to do that, because we're looking into the owner's manual of God's Word, asking God, "Would you speak to us? Would you show me what I was created to do, how I was created to be, what I need to do?" An owner's manual, if you will.
Now, do you typically read owner's manuals when you get a product? Some do, some don't. Most of the time, we just read the owner's manual when something is not going well. Right? I started thinking about this. You know, we have a 2022 Ford Explorer as our car. It's my wife's car. She typically drives that. So I thought, "You know what? I'm thinking about this owner's manual thing. Let me go find the owner's manual in the 2022 Ford Explorer." That's, like, four years ago.
Here's what I found, guys. I found the owner's manual, and it was still wrapped in cellophane. Four years later, I've never cracked it open. I haven't even opened it. I mean, here it is. It's just in cellophane here, wrapped together, stuck in the glove box, never having been opened. Do you know why? Because we've never had a problem with the car.
Many of us have our Bibles wrapped in cellophane. God is saying to us, "Don't just turn to this when you get a problem; turn to this every day so you can see the wisdom I have in the Word of God for you." Instead of it being wrapped like _this_, have it open and tattered like _this_, and to have the Lord use us in that way. The result will be…
It says at the end of verse 25, **"Yet it didn't collapse…"** Why? Because the builders were so awesome, the wallpaper was so pretty, and the light fixtures were so beautiful? **"…because its foundation was on the rock."** There's no other foundation we can lay except for laid in Jesus Christ is what it tells us in 1 Corinthians 3:11. We are a life rooted in Christ's Word. We'll ache, we'll cry, and we'll hurt, but we will endure and make it through the storm. See the beauty of that?
Now let's look at the other part of this in verse 26. Here's what it says. **"But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn't act on them…"** Notice there is no difference in the storm; there is only difference in the acting upon it. **"…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."**
_Feeble foundations are built on foolishness_. I told you that _firm_ foundations are built on salvation and wisdom. _Feeble_ foundations are built on foolishness. It says the foolish man does not put these words into action. The foolish man or woman keeps the Bible wrapped up in cellophane. The foolish man or woman is the one who hears it today as I'm speaking it and then, by lunch, has forgotten everything and applied nothing. That's the foolish. God's words, not mine.
Which do we want to be? I want to be on the wise side. Right? Joshua: "As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord." I want to be a parent who's leaving a legacy. I want to be a parent who's leaving seeds in my kids' hearts. It doesn't mean they're going to be perfect, by any means, but to be able to leave that.
I want to be a person who, in my workplace, people see a hardworking man of integrity. I want to have wisdom when making those decisions. I want to be able to be wise in a conversation with my wife. I want to be wise in those things. I don't want to walk in foolishness. I want to walk on a firm foundation, not a feeble foundation.
How important are foundations? I have a couple of quotes from construction companies. These aren't even Christian construction companies. I'm not judging the salvation of the people who own them; I'm just taking a guess. This is just what they say about foundations. Here's what one company says: "The foundation is the cornerstone of any construction project. It ensures the stability and the durability of the structure. A strong foundation is essential for longevity and safety in a home." The second construction company: "Neglecting the importance of a robust concrete foundation can lead to disastrous consequences, from minor cracks to complete structural failures."
So, I've given you construction companies, and I'm giving you Jesus' words here, and they're lining up just perfectly. It's a lack of application. It's listening but ignoring. It's like James, where you're a hearer of the Word but not a doer of the Word. When we don't have that right structure together, and we don't have the application that is there, we can know truth but fail to apply it. Then we lack stability in our lives.
We begin to be geared by our emotions. We begin to be led by whatever the coolest thing that's going on is. We begin to be taken by money. We begin to follow the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. It's either pride or money or other people's eyes toward us, worrying about what everybody thinks about us. Instead, we say, "No. I'm going to walk with a place of stability, and I'm going to take that step and trust you, God, that you're going to do your work, and I'm going to stand firm on you."
So, a lack of application. Not a lack of hearing, not a lack of building…a lack of application. That's when the wisdom disconnect is there. If you and I don't apply what God teaches us and tells us, we are not wise people. You can't say, "I disregard the things of Christ. I disregard the things of the Bible. I disregard the things of Proverbs, and I'm walking in wisdom."
You begin to walk in foolishness in that spot, and then that foolishness brings a lack of stability. He says it's like shifting sand. It's like a sandcastle instead of a firm foundation. Then the collapse comes. The great crash comes. The foolishness doesn't bring the difficulty; it just leads you into the destruction that _comes_ from the difficulty. So, we're able to say, "God, I don't want to live like that. I want to live on the firm rock. I want to obey what I'm hearing."
Now, someone sent me a text message. My family and I have gotten to go a bunch of times to a place called _JH Ranch_. Some of y'all are maybe familiar with this place. It's a great place. So, we got to go do that, which was a blessing. I took my daughter. I'm still in this group chat with all of the dads, and this is amazing. Every single day, for the last two years, one of the dads has posted a Bible verse in our group chat.
Every single day (except Saturdays and Sundays, but every day of the week), we get this, and we "heart" it and "thumbs up" it and do all that sort of stuff. He put this on one of them, and I thought, "Wow! This is really amazing." Talking about the application and the obedience to God's Word. Let me show you this picture. This would be kind of an illustration of that. "I believe God." "I obey God." I'm not saying this is directly correct percentagewise. It's off Instagram. We can't believe everything. But you get the point.
I'll just speak for me. For me, "I believe in God" is Houston or Dallas, Texas, Christianity in a lot of ways. "I obey God…" That's when we begin to really walk with the Lord. Not cultural Christianity. I'm not dogging your town or my town. I'm just saying we have to walk in a place of obedience to God. That's the narrow road. Remember, this whole thing is about two things. We have two roads. We have two trees. We have two foundations. Here's a picture of two roads. We want to be people who obey God and walk with him.
The trials are universal. Both houses faced the same thing. The words of Christ were open. The second word in this passage is _everyone_. It's open to everyone. But the change and the difference was the application and the obedience of what Jesus says, and then to be able to walk that out. So, hear the Word. Read the Word. Year of the Word. Get into the Word. Apply the Word. Pray and ask God for wisdom and let him walk those things out in your life. It does not mean the storms will not come. The storms will most assuredly come. It means you will make it through the storm.
There's a place about a mile away from our house that's this old used bookstore. It's really quirky. The floors aren't even. It creaks when you walk through. Books feel like they're going to fall off the shelves. It's really a cool place to find some crazy, random things. I found _this_ one. It's called _The Complete Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Man Skills_. Yeah. Let's go, dudes. Come on. It has a Swiss Army knife here. Let me just give you a couple of things. Guys are going to be like, "Man! I might need that. I'm not sure."
The third chapter is "How to Outwit a Pack of Wolves." Okay. You go down a few other chapters. "How to Deal with a Charging Bull." I found that one very interesting. I don't think I'm going to be faced with that, but "How to Deal with a Charging Bull." "How to Survive a Pirate Attack." That's a good one. You never know. I live on the Gulf Coast. We go to Galveston every once in a while. So, "How to Survive a Pirate Attack," to be able to do that.
_This_ one you might need here in Dallas and in our church as well. This is a real chapter in this book. "How to Disarm an Irate Golfer." Some of you guys are like, "I need to read that one for my buddy. I've got a tee time this afternoon. It's a pretty day. I need to be able to…" "How to Disarm an Irate Golfer." It literally has a thing… "If he comes with a club…" Write some notes down. "…get closer so the club head can't hit you. Grab the shaft." All of these sorts of things. I mean, it's just great. Then, "Push them in the lake." That's what you do. Just let it be. In the bunker.
But there's one that caught my eye thinking about our message today. "How to Sail Through a Typhoon." So, I turned to it. It has 12 steps on it, like every good program. I'll just give you the first three. Hear this with your heart. How do you sail through a typhoon? How do you make it through a storm? First, _reduce speed_. Just slow down. You get in the Word. You pray. You talk to a friend. Slow down. Reduce speed. Secondly, _determine your position_. Where are you in the problem, and where are you with the Lord? Determine your position. Thirdly, _adjust your course_. Those are great spiritual principles.
When you're going to sail through a typhoon (some of you may be in one right now), the first thing you have to do is to slow down. "Be still and know that I am the Lord. I am God, and I will be exalted in all the nations." I have to slow down. I have to get my pen out. I have to journal a little bit. I have to talk to a friend. I have to get in the Word. I have to get alone. I don't need to be surfing the Internet. I need to be right _here_, and I need to slow down. I need to say, "God, where am I? What did I do in this storm? Did I cause any of it? Is there any forgiveness I need to ask for or receive? What do I need to do, Lord?"
I need to determine my position. In determining my position, then I need to adjust my course. "This foolishness got me into this problem, so I'm going to adjust, I'm going to turn, and I'm going to go _this_ way in my marriage. Getting my way hasn't been working. I want to get where I can honor her and bless her" or "honor him and bless him." "I want to be _that_ kind of person in the marriage. I want to love my kids in _this_ sort of way. I want to say no to my kids when they need to hear 'no.' I want to say yes when they need to hear 'yes.'"
I'm going to adjust my course, and then I'm going to trust that the Lord can walk us through. If you have your phone… You've been waiting to touch it all day long. Now you can touch it. Here we go. We can touch our phones now. Let me give you a chart. As we've been talking about wisdom and foolishness, let me just show you this chart we have here. It just gives you some Scriptures of wisdom and foolishness, of how to be able to look at these two things and see the difference.
So, that's a picture of foolishness (me) right there, but hopefully wisdom… There it is. Wisdom, foolishness, a Bible verse with every one. The source, the attitude, the speech, the decisions, the relationship, how we use our time, how we spend our money, and what the outcome is. A lot of them are based in Proverbs, as you can see. We want to be on the wisdom side of that and not on the foolishness side. When that happens, worst-case scenario, I have _this_ right here in my hand, the Word of God, and I can trust God with those things.
Here's the point I want to give you: _we can't avoid storms_, _but we can choose our foundation_. We can't avoid temptation. We can't avoid trials. That's how we're defining _storms_ in this parable. We can't avoid crises that happen in our lives, problems that happen in our lives. We can't avoid those things. It's coming. It's coming this week. It's coming for you. To be able to look and to say, "Okay, we're going in _this_ direction." We can't avoid it, but we can choose our foundation.
Now I want you to look at verse 28. **"When Jesus had finished saying these things…"** Now, _saying these things_… That is the Sermon on the Mount. He's finishing the Sermon on the Mount. These are his closing words in the Sermon on the Mount. **"…the crowds were astonished at his teaching, because he was teaching them like one who had authority, and not like their scribes."**
So, Jesus, who is of the highest authority, declares, "If you'll trust in my wisdom, I will take care of you, and I will walk you through these things." Trust him to take us through the challenges of our lives. It doesn't mean it's going to be fun. It doesn't mean you're going to like it. It _does_ mean he will see you through it, because he has authority. Jesus does not just give advice; he asks and demands obedience. He's not like a scribe giving you an idea; he is the Lord and Savior giving God's Word.
When we submit to the authority of Christ, we're on the right step of building a firm foundation. Now, in our society, we don't like authority. We don't want anybody to tell us what to do about anything. But I'm telling you, the greatest place in your life is when you accept the authority of Jesus Christ in your life. You say, "God, you're in charge. I'm not. You're going to be the one who goes through."
I remember my wife and I… I was sitting in an orange plastic chair years ago in the hospital as we were looking at the sonogram for our second child. We could see the panic on the nurse's face, and we knew something wasn't right when they said, "I'll be back in just a minute." When they came back, there was no heartbeat. The baby was gone.
We came home from the hospital, and Kelly's mom showed up at our house about six hours later. Kelly and I came home. We turned on worship music. We cried. We prayed. We stood on the rock of the Word. We wondered "Why? Why wouldn't we be able to have another baby, Lord? Why? We're good parents. We can do this. We have the resources. It seems unfair that folks who don't want children and don't have the resources have children, and here we are wanting and we _don't_ have. How does this all work, Lord?" We gave it all to the Lord.
Then the knock on the door came, and it was her mom, her sweet mom, coming to hug my wife after a miscarriage. How amazing. How incredible. But the reason she was there was not for the hug. She was there because the next day we were going to take her to MD Anderson to begin cancer treatment. Within a year, we lost her mom, and we lost a baby. My sweet wife lost her mom and a baby within a year.
We didn't just read this. We clung to this. We hung on this. We stood upon this. We praised God through the midst of it. Now we have a wonderful daughter who came after all of that, and maybe we would never have had her. I don't know what the story would be. But we got her and we love her. She's a senior about to graduate. I'm telling you you're going to go through storms. You're going to go through heartache. Don't quit.
Tomorrow, I'm going to do a funeral. Funerals are tough. It's going to be a lady who lost her son in his 20s about two and a half years ago. Her husband just died this week. She's going to sit there on _that_ pew, probably right around there (not, of course, at _this_ church but at _my_ church). I'm going to look her in the eyes, and I'm going to be able to tell her Jesus is true, and he's real, and he will take her through. The church will minister to her and care for her and her friends will come around, just as you would do in your church. I can say this: the stability of the rock foundation of Jesus is real and true.
So, we can't avoid things, but we _can_ choose our foundation of getting through things. Let me close with this. Do you remember the picture I showed you at the very beginning of the beach wiped out? Let me show you a similar picture again. It's a picture with a house that's circled off to the side. Do you see it off to the left-hand side? There's just one house that made it through.
Let me zoom in on that house for a second. This is a house right there on the front. It's on the front line of the beach. It's the first house on the beach. How did that house make it through and the rest of the houses didn't? Here's how it made it through. They spent about 15 to 20 percent more on the house so that it would be built to withstand 250-mile-an-hour winds.
They put in one-foot concrete walls. That's what that house is made of. Not sheetrock and plywood and two-by-fours…one-foot-thick concrete walls. Steel cables hold the roof in place. The soffits on the roof had no gaps so wind could not get in it. It was sealed in that way. The windows were made for a four-pound projectile to hit at 140 miles an hour. They had two windows that were hit in that way, and just the outer layer shattered, but the inner layers held, so the wind did not get into the house.
The pylons, most importantly, are typically 30 feet on a beach house. They said, "How much more would it be to build them 40 feet?" They put them 40 feet down into the ground. This is from the Weather Channel. They interviewed the guy. He said, "We built our house at extra cost to withstand the storms we knew were coming."
Oh, Christian, build your house at extra cost. "I don't have time. I don't have time to read my Bible. I don't have time to go to church." At extra cost, so that you will be on a firm foundation by the application of God's Word; to walk in that way so you'll withstand the storms. They're coming. You're either in a storm, just got out of a storm, or going into a storm. There are varying levels, but that will be what happens. So, which is your Bible? Is it wrapped or is it read? Is it there just in case you need it or is it applied every day? Walk in wisdom.
Jesus, we come. We thank you, Lord, that you are so powerful and you're so great. We trust in you, God. Speak to our hearts. In this moment, if there's somebody who doesn't know and trust in you as Savior, that they would know you as a son or a daughter, not just as a servant. May today be the day of salvation.
Right now, even in this moment, to pray and say, "Jesus, I ask you to forgive my sins, to wash me clean, to save my soul." Pray those words. Trust in his grace, his free gift.
Father, for those of us who do know you, we pray and ask that you'd give us wisdom. We want to walk with you. We want to trust you. We ask, God, that you would give wisdom and strength and we would apply the things we know from you.
Take a moment and just pray in your own heart. What did God say to you today? Speak that back to him. In Jesus' name, amen.