Wise + Foolish Builders

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

kindergarten through fifth grade, I want to invite you to, you can run on to the back and hang out with Ms. Christie, I believe it's today. Ms. Christie is hanging out with the K-5ers. I don't know about you, but in junior high, way back when I was in junior high, which seems not that long ago, I was a Levi's kid, right? I wore Levi's and I liked it, okay? I didn't really know that I was a Levi's kid. It's just what my mom bought me, okay? But then my freshman year of high school comes, and what is popular? JNCO jeans. Do you remember JNCO jeans? Okay. Not all of you are having this moment right now, so I'll just move on, but JNCO jeans were so cool, right? There was the name on the fly, they were cut just right, they were French sounding, they were perfect for tight rolling. Oh my gosh, they were great. The coolest kid I knew, a guy named Steven Barus. Steven, if you were to listen to this podcast, bro, you were the coolest kid I knew.

And when he got some, I immediately had to have them, right? I went from being a Levi's kid to immediately and only needing JNCO jeans, which of course were like five times more expensive, okay? The day before I saw Steven Barus wearing JNCO jeans, the day before that I was content with Levi's, right? But now that Steven Barus is wearing JNCO jeans, I only needed Jibo. Look, what happened to me from junior high to freshman year really is, it never really stops, right? It never really goes away. It's not just Levi's to Jibo, right? But it's always us thinking like, are we competent enough? Are we pretty enough? Do we make enough money? Do we vacation the right way? Do I post things when I should post things? Do I show proper respect? Am I a good parent, right? Is it ever enough? Sometimes we think we're enough, but then we see somebody else and we go, okay, maybe that's not good enough.

Maybe like we're about to go, you know, my family and I were about to go on vacation. And maybe on that vacation we're thinking like, yeah, this is a great vacation. Then we see somebody else's pictures of their vacation. We think, oh man, we did vacation totally wrong. We should do vacation just like them. Look, that's not great. That's not a great way to live. That's actually pretty toxic, but it really goes from toxic to lethal when it comes to spirituality, okay? Because now we're not comparing vacations anymore. We're comparing quiet times. We're comparing how we sound spiritually. We're comparing the songs that we sing. And when we are insecure about that, just like I was my freshman year with my Levi's on, when we are insecure about that, about how we should sound or whether we look mature enough or whether we're doing this spiritual thing right, it can leave us feeling like we are in junior high spiritually.

Like we don't know the right next move. We get really insecure. We don't know kind of what to do. And so when we feel insecure, we don't want to pray out loud. When we feel insecure, we do not believe that we can actually read the Bible with another person. When we are insecure, we will never share the gospel because we don't think that we can do it. We don't actually believe that. Insecurities prevent us. Wholesale from investing in other people, and this really prevents us from growing significantly or at all. And so today, I want to tell you, if you are insecure, if you are fighting that, if you want to become secure, if you want to fight that, then you need to dig deep. You need to dig deep to discover some spiritual security. Our summer series, we've been looking at the sayings of Jesus, and most of them have been parables. And in today's parable, Jesus shows us how to be secure, how to dig deep.

And it's a relatively short parable. And whenever Jesus starts this parable, we're going to be in Luke 6 today. Sorry, I failed to mention that a little earlier. We're going to be in Luke 6 starting with verse 46. And we're only going through four verses, right? 46 through 49. When Jesus introduces this parable, it hits like a Mack truck. Right? It just comes right at us. And he starts it with a question. He says, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you?

A scathing question. Just in its question, it's scathing. And this is a question that I'm sure has crossed your mind. It's crossed mine. Right? If I'm supposed to be mature spiritually, then why do I struggle? If I say I love Jesus, then why can't I have a consistent quiet time where I'm praying and reading the Bible? If I call Jesus Lord, why am I looking at porn? If I love Jesus, why do I have suicidal thoughts? Why do I chicken out of gospel conversations if I'm supposed to be a Christian? If I'm supposed to be this mature, spiritually growing person, why am I not investing in somebody else's spiritual journey? These are not easy questions. These are questions that keep us up at night. These are questions that are uncomfortable to ask. But Jesus faces that question head on at the very beginning of the parable. And in some ways, it's kind of a relief.

Because you kind of get the sense that he's going to answer that question. So he does in the parable. Look at the next couple of verses, verse 48 and the...sorry, 47 in the first half of verse 48. It says, everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like. He is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.

So Jesus begins to answer that question with a parable. He has stated his own question, so this is a little bit different than what we've been looking at before. Where somebody else is posing a question to Jesus like we did last week. This week, Jesus is posing his own question and he's answering it with a parable. And what he says is, he says those who hear and do are like...it's like building a house. Jesus is pointing to the how, not the what. He's not saying it's like a house. He's saying it's like building a house. He says, when you build a house this way, right, if you hear what I say and you do what I say, you are building that house by digging deep. Digging deep. He is like a man building a house who dug deep. And although the Bible does not often talk about itself this way, or it does sometimes, but we definitely don't think about the Bible this way.

The Bible is actually a book of ancient wisdom. I know that's kind of a weird conception, but it's actually true. It has ancient wisdom in there. The Old Testament, of course, has whole books dedicated to wisdom, like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job. They're actually called the Wisdom Books. And Proverbs, Jesus in the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians 1, is actually called the Wisdom of God. It's a title that he has. Jesus is the Wisdom of God. In Acts and in many other places, the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Wisdom. So the Bible is this book of ancient wisdom. And the thing about wisdom is it does not just fall into your lap. If you want to gain wisdom, it's not click and ship. It doesn't arrive at your doorstep, right? You have to dig for it. Wisdom is something that you have to dig for. Proverbs, chapter 2, and it's not going to be on your screen,

but it kind of gives this really good picture. So I just wanted to read Proverbs 2, 3-6. It says, yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, and if you seek it like silver and search for it as hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth come understanding and knowledge. This process of digging deep, of finding things worth finding, it means time in the Bible. It means actually reading, meditating, reading it with other people, teaching it, praying through it, contemplating on it, extrapolating from it. Digging. Digging is more about time than knowledge.

Digging is more about time than knowledge. And after you dig, then you can build. So you see in these verses, he says he's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. Obviously, he's digging deep first. He's not finding the rock yet. So you first have to dig deep, then you can build. So a man or a woman who hears and does is like a person who built a house, dug deep to find the rock and now is laying the foundation on the rock. You don't stop with digging, you must apply something on that foundation. And then when that happens, look what happens. The next half of 48 says, and when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it because it had been well built. It had been well built. So the flood is rising, the stream is breaking. We have had some flooding in North Texas. Oh, about what, 18 months ago was it now, Amy, that your house was flooded

with several inches of water? Obviously, we had a big freeze, and that was, gosh, I can't believe it was 18 months ago now. We had a big freeze and pipes burst in homes. And when that house flooded, it wasn't just like a week-long thing. It wasn't that, it was months. How many months was it out of your house? Eight months out of her house when it flooded, right? This is, when we're talking about flooding in a house, when we're talking about what's going on here, this is major renovation. This is major discomfort. This is major adjustment. This isn't, this is living out of your suitcase in an Airbnb. This is different. This is a major shakeup. And what Jesus is saying here in these verses, he's saying, there's a way to build your life that when it derails, when you get the diagnosis you didn't want, when you suffer the loss you weren't planning for, when you deal with heartache in an unexpected fashion,

your life does not fall apart. Jesus says, when you build your house in this way, when those storms come, and they're coming, your life does not derail because, why? Because you are built on something deeper than comfort. You are built on something more secure than your best guess. We're going to come back here, but let's finish the parable because there's a little bit more to cover. Verse 49 says, but the one who hears and does not do them, is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell and the ruin of that house was great. Let's not gloss over this. This isn't just the opposite, right? There's something else going on. It says that those who hear and do not do are also building a house. I don't think it's much of a stretch in this metaphor, but it's more parable for us to understand that building a house

is like building a life. It stands to reason, as we're reading this, it stands to reason, in verse 49, that whenever we're talking about, he who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. It's somebody who's saying, Jesus is saying, there's people who are going to hear what I say and not do it, and they're still building a life. Nobody's checking out of the life-building endeavor. And I don't mean like you just got married and you're building a house or you just had kids and you're just starting a family. I'm not talking about, you're still building a house even near the end of your life. You're still building a house. You're still building. And what he's saying is, he says, those who hear and do not do are also building a house. He says, when you build a house this way, you're building two things. You're building on the ground, it says.

Which is the opposite of digging deep. So if you're building on the ground, you're not looking at Scripture. You're not praying for wisdom. You're not waiting for understanding. There's no patience with you. You need a decision now every time. All of your prayers are like, come on, God, hurry. I'm busy. I got decisions to make. I got deadlines to meet. You're not patient. You don't pray for wisdom. You don't pray for understanding. You are finding the nearest and most convenient facts you can and scrabbling, just putting all that together. You are looking for wisdom in places that you should not, like memes or song lyrics. So if your wisdom that you're hanging your hat on is like, Jesus is my co-pilot, okay? You have not dug deep. If your mentality is like, hey, you know what? You miss all the shots that you don't take. Go big or go home. Buy dirt.

Look, there's common wisdom everywhere you look. And it's just on the ground, just ready to be picked up. It's just so cheap and shallow. And it's not incorrect, right? It's good to sometimes don't worry, be happy. That's not a bad thing to think every once in a while, but it's nothing to build your life on at all. That thing can't take any weight. It just crumbles. You're not digging deep for it. So you're building on the ground. You're also building without a foundation. Obviously, this is the opposite of laying your foundation on the rock. And when you are building without a foundation, you are making it up as you go along. You're making it up as you go along. You're not consulting Scripture. You're not consulting pastors that you know. You're not involving Christians who love you into your life, into these decisions. You're making everything in isolation.

You're cobbling it together, and you're just kind of making it up as you go along with a smile on on the outside. This is what it is to build your life not on the rock. This is what it is to to hear and do not. You do not do what Jesus is asking you to do. You are building without a foundation. You are building mindlessly with your fingers crossed. I hope it works out. Really got to make sure this happened. And when storms come, when storms come, they absolutely ruin that whole house. It says in the verse, it says, and the ruin of that house was great. There's a similar parable in Matthew, and it says, really, it says the same thing. It says the fall of that house was a great, very great fall. I don't remember exactly, but it brings Jesus, when he's telling this story, it brings attention to the fact that the ruin of the house was total. He's highlighting the fact that the builder didn't just build another house later.

It's not like, you know, whenever your house got flooded and you got to move in eight months later, that's not, there's no eight months later. There's no nothing to return to. The ruin of that house was great. They lost everything upon its fall. And what Jesus is doing and what we need to, what we need to partake in this morning is to feel that urgency. We need to understand the consequences of what we're doing. Everybody's building a life. Everybody's going to get storms that come. What's going to happen when they do? Nobody's exempt. Let's feel that urgency. Let's dig deep. Let's build the foundation on the rock. How? How are we going to do that? Let's go back to the original question that Jesus asks. It says, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you. The way Jesus is posing this question to us, it's actually very simple. It's not, you know, sometimes,

I've been at this a while. And it is a common thing for people to go to, like, a Bible study or listen to a sermon or do, you know, just some kind of spiritual exercise. And in a complaint about it, when they're complaining, if they were going to critique it, a common complaint is, you know, I liked it. It just wasn't deep enough. It just wasn't deep enough. You know, just too surfacy. It just didn't go deep enough. And I often, I've heard that, I've heard that for decades. And I often ask the question, what do you mean? What do you mean by deep? That's a fair question, right, if we're going to use this adjective, we should understand how we're using it. What does it mean to dig deep? What does it mean when you say that Bible study's not deep enough, that sermon's not deep enough? Tell me what you mean when you say that. I have never gotten a satisfactory answer.

I've probably asked that question 30 times. And people that I know well, not just kind of, you know, people that I kind of run into at a church service, but these are people that I know that are telling me, hey, it's not deep enough. I'm saying why. May I define deep for us today? Let's let Jesus do it instead, instead of me, okay? Jesus is defining deep by action, by hearing and doing. That's deep. Jesus says it's very simple, you want to go deeper, you want to plumb the depths of what it is to follow me, then act on it. Jesus defines digging deep by action. These two actions in particular, the first action is that you must take time to dig. You must do that. You must take time to dig. You must be quiet enough to hear Him through the Bible and prayer. You must get still. We're going to look at this more in a minute, but it is only after you dig deep, only after hearing Jesus that you can begin to act.

So you must dig deep, but then you must act. You must do something. And at this point, a question should be pregnant in front of you. If it's so important to act, if it's so central to this parable that Jesus is telling, we must act, we must hear and act. What should we do? What does Jesus say to do? It's a pretty forward-facing question, is it not? If Jesus is so concerned with hearing and doing, what did He say? What He command people to do? Francis Chan has a great illustration of this. I have, I think I've used it before. I don't care. It's a great illustration. So I'm going to use it again. Francis Chan is a Christian speaker, pastor, author, and I've heard him tell this story on a video that I watched, and he said, okay, I have a daughter. I have an eight-year-old daughter, okay? And I told my daughter before I left, I said, clean your room. Hey, honey, clean your room. Yes, daddy.

I'll clean my room. So Francis leaves the house for a while, most of the day, and then he comes back, and her room is not clean. Like not even close, she didn't even touch it. And so dismayed and bewildered and frustrated, he says, what happened? Surely there must be some reason for you not having, you understood that I wanted you to clean your room. You said, yes, sir. There was acknowledgement. There was this verbal contract going on. I said to do it. You said, yes. What happened? And then he begins to explain what the daughter, how the daughter says, well, you know, dad, I heard you say that to me, and I want to thank you for that command. I was so, I love when you speak to me, dad. I just, I love to hear it. It's so good to just hear you speak to me. And it means so much when you tell me to do something. In fact, it meant so much that when, after you left,

I invited three of my friends over, and we studied that command to clean my room. In fact, we even looked at it in Greek. We studied it all the way down. Clean your room. What a good command. Dad, I just want to say, it was just so moving for you to command me to do that. And I'm still kind of just swimming in it. It's just so good that you commanded me to do that. And of course, Francis' example, I mean, the daughter misses the point entirely, right? She didn't clean her room. She kind of missed it. She said a lot of nice things to dad, but she didn't clean her room. And the question still, what did Jesus say? Did you clean your room? Did you obey what I said? What did Jesus tell his followers to do? Over and over and over and over and over again. Jesus calls us to invest in other people's spiritual journeys. Over and over and over and over again. All over the Gospels. What does he say?

Go and make disciples. All over the Gospels, what does he do? He goes and makes disciples, right? In the book of Acts, what's happening? People are going and making disciples. What's happening in the rest of the New Testament? It's how to be a disciple, how to be part of a church, how to make disciples, right? We must act on Jesus' call to invest in other people's spiritual journeys. What I want to do, I want to leave you with this, I want to leave you with some barriers to hearing and investing and three ways to start hearing and three ways to start investing. Okay, I just want to leave it with that. The barriers. We have four barriers on hearing and investing. Those four barriers are insecurity, distraction, laziness, and pride. Now look, showing people their shortcomings is not always the most inspirational thing. However, it really is helpful for us to acknowledge some barriers

that we have to investing in other people's spiritual journey. With insecurity, if you're insecure about it, you really don't believe that you are capable of investing in anybody's spiritual journey. Now, that could be for a variety of reasons. Maybe you're like, maybe you're neck deep in sin. Maybe you're just, maybe you think you're a total idiot. Maybe you just spend all your time comparing yourself to other people and you don't think that you're mature enough or you've been a Christian long enough. I don't know. I can't guess all of that. But what I can do is say that whatever lie you believe about yourself that prevents you from making disciples, from investing in somebody else's spiritual journey, that has way more to do with you than with reality. It has way more to do with the story that you're telling yourself than the event as they are. Because the Lord has equipped you.

You know what I would say? If somebody would say, listen, I don't know if I can invest in somebody else's spiritual journey. I don't know if I can ask somebody to read the Bible with me. My only question, the only question I have is, wait, sorry, do you have the Holy Spirit? If you do, if you have the Holy Spirit, that's all you need. That's all you need. Yes, we got training. Yes. But as far as desire is concerned, as far as merit is concerned, as far as your wherewithal, your ability to stand before somebody and say, listen, let's read the Bible together. Let's talk about the things that the Lord together. Let me pray for you. For you to be able to do that, all you need is the Holy Spirit. You don't need any kind of P.C. You don't need to have been in church for 10 years. You don't need any of that. My gentle counter to you is that it's way more about you being insecure

and you believing lies about your own capability than it is you actually not being capable. Insecurity. Distraction. Look, you're just not paying attention. There's just a lot of other really important things going on. And if you are battling that kind of distraction, if you are too busy to invest in anybody's spiritual journey, then divest yourself of some commitments because nothing's more important. Nothing's more eternally focused. Right? Everybody else's schedule is flexible. Trust me. Okay? Everybody's schedule is flexible. Make the time. Laziness. It's not that you don't believe you're capable. It's not that you aren't paying attention. It's that you just don't care. You just don't care. You're just kind of stuck in your own little kind of got your blinders on and all that just kind of feeds a laziness. Right? You just don't really care enough. You don't think it's going to make a difference.

Maybe you're just like, I don't know, it's too complicated. Obviously, that's a pastors and missionaries. Pride. Pride is that you really think you're above it. You really think it's something that other people do and that that's not, hey, you don't do that. That's something that maybe that's something a new Christian can do. Maybe that's somebody, you know, an inexperienced Christian. That's, yeah, until they grow to become more secure in their faith like me, then they need to go and make disciples. One of these four, one of these four is blocking you from hearing and investing. One of these four, insecurity, distraction, laziness, pride. And right now, I just want you to take a second. I want you to look at that list. I want you to take a second. And I want you to consider which one you're wrestling with. Consider it. I want to give you three ways to start hearing now.

Three ways to start hearing. First way, get quiet. Get quiet. Second way, read his word to gain wisdom. And third way, ask to hear him. Right? So three ways to start hearing. And I think we have him up on the screen. Three ways to start hearing. Get quiet, read his word, ask to hear him, okay? If you're going to get quiet, if you're really distracted, if you're really busy, if you're really wake up earlier, I don't know, go to bed earlier. At some point, this is going to, this should matter to you, but nobody can make it matter to you. And it's got to matter to you at a really key point like when I'm going to go to bed or when my alarm is waking me up. It's all these like little key battles, just, they seem really small at the time, but it's about you being quiet and just kind of getting that before the Lord, listening to him. You would not believe how much noise there is in your life until you try to get quiet.

Right? You'll hear it. You'll see it. It'll intrude. Read his word. And really, read his word to gain wisdom, man. Just listen to the Lord speak through his word. I'm going through Proverbs right now. Highly recommend it. It's a great book. And it's right there. You have it too. We all have the book of Proverbs. It's all like at our disposal. We can just read it whenever. And my encouragement, read it. Gain wisdom. Ask for wisdom. And then third, ask to hear him. Look, these seem super basic, but I mean, my response to that is, okay, it's so basic, then why are we all doing it? Right? Let me just encourage you, do it. My thought is we don't get quiet enough. And we're not really like listening to him. We're not reading his word. There's no hunger there. We're not asking to hear him because we're not reading his word. It's kind of a train there. And so, look, it's not necessarily sequential.

If you need to start by asking to hear him, then ask. That's a great prayer. If you want to read your word today, help me want to read your word. That's a fine prayer. That is a fine prayer to pray. That's way better than not praying. That's way better than, oh, Lord bless you today. And that's it. And you're kind of zombian through it. Okay, three ways to start investing. First way, repent. Second way, assess. Third way, take the risk. So, repent. If you're not making, if you aren't investing in somebody else's spiritual journey, right, what the Bible calls making disciples, right, if you're not investing in somebody else and their attempt to walk with the Lord in any capacity, even if it's somebody who, I mean, they feel super dumb and they feel like they're not, maybe they don't even know if they're a Christian or not. You can invest in that journey. You could say, hey, listen, what's going on?

Let's talk about it. Let's read some scripture over it. Like, it's not rocket science, but maybe the first thing that you should do is repent, where you hit the reset button and you ask for renewal. Just repent. Second thing, assess. And this is just a good thing to do. Just take a second. If you need to write it down, if you're like me, writing things down helps. Assess, who are you called to? Look around you. Look at your coworkers. Look at your physical neighbors. Look at people in your extended family. Look at people that are on, other parents of the team that your kid is on, okay? Kids, the team that you're on, okay, look around you. Who is the Lord calling you to speak to? To ask how they're doing, to invest time and energy into their own spiritual journey. And the third, take the risk. Look, talk about Jesus. Testify about God's goodness. Ask if they're interested in studying the Bible with you.

Just kind of get where they are. A really good question that I use is just, I'd say, look, just tell me about, like, tell me about your religious history, okay? Like, do you have any history with the church or anything like that? It's not, obviously, it's not an opener. Like, you're not asking that question on the outset. But it is something, it's just a way to gain some kind of perspective on where they are spiritually, okay? This week, I want you to make a commitment. I want you to commit to start somewhere. Start hearing, start investing, start somewhere. And when we do, when you and I do that, when we begin to hear what Jesus is saying and do what He's saying, we build what Jesus calls an unshakable life. That when storms come, things don't fall apart. It's not built on comfort. It's not built on whatever we kind of want to do with the time or, you know, making sure we've got jebo jeans

when everybody else is wearing Levi's. If your life is built on that, it's going to crumble. But if your life is built on investing in people's spiritual journey, in hearing a fresh word from the Lord Jesus Christ and doing it, the storms will come, but they will not derail you. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank You. We thank You that You are a rock, that You invite us to dig deep. You invite us to listen to You. You invite us to have our priorities rearranged. And more than that, You call us to invest in people, specific people that are around us. You call us toward that. You put them on our hearts. You call us out to pray for them. Sometimes we don't even know why, but we're just praying for people. Lord, help us to do that. Help us to be obedient to that, to walk in that, to know that You are in control and to follow You, not just follow whatever distraction we're on, but to follow You.

That's Your name that we pray. Amen.