Jesus Promised You Would Stand in The Storm

Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City.

I want to look at Peter, the apostle, as a type of a person who, in his initial encounter with Jesus Christ, thought that his own worldview could make his house ten. Thank you for joining us today for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon. And this week's message couldn't be more timely. It's titled, Jesus Promised You Would Stand in the Storm. If you're discouraged, troubled, and fearful of what lies ahead in this traumatized world, this message is just for you. Listen now as Carter teaches from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24.

We're going into a season of incredible hardship. It's going to be worldwide. I know it in my heart. It's going to be difficult. You don't even have to be a prophet. You can just, I'm not a prophet, but you can go into any news channel.

You see it now. The financial hardship, the social confusion, the nation rising against nation, the possibility of new diseases, famines all over the world. We're going into a storm, folks.

There's no way around that. And the good news is that Jesus promised you would stand in the storm. That's the title of what God's given me to speak on. Jesus promised you would stand in the storm. Let's start with Matthew chapter seven, verse 24, where Jesus makes an incredible statement. He says, therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock.

He's been almost three chapters plus teaching about his ways, giving his word, talking about fasting, talking about prayer, talking about worry, talking about all of the things that loving our enemies, talking about issues like marriage and home and divorce and all of these things in these teachings. Now, this is only a small part in a sense of the word of God, but he puts a capstone on it in verse 24. He said, whoever hears these sayings of mine, the words that I speak, if you hear them and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house and it did not fall for it was founded on the rock.

But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rain descended, the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house and it fell and great was its fall. He's speaking of almost like a total collapse of any house that is building its supposed relationship with God outside of truth, outside of the word of God, building it on human emotion or human opinion as it is. And so it was when Jesus had ended these sayings that the people were astonished at his teaching for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. In other words, people would have walked out of that particular session, that teaching saying his voice doesn't sound anything like the powerless religious talk that we've become used to in our time.

Oh yes, they went to the temple, they went to the synagogue, no doubt about that and they heard words that weren't necessarily untrue, scriptures were read but there was a powerlessness in it and yet they heard the voice of the son of God. He said he doesn't speak like the scribes speak, he speaks with authority, he speaks as if he has the power, the final say, may I put it that way, and the power to do what he says. And he said, if you keep these sayings of mine when the rains come and the winds beat on your house, it will not fall for it is founded on the rock. I want to give a warning to every church leader that's listening to me online around the world. I give a warning to every person who professes to be a Christian. If you hold lightly the words that God speaks to you and to me, especially in the New Testament part of the Bible, your house is going to fall in the days ahead. You will not stand when the storms that are coming on this world begin to abound, you're going to find that your homemade Jesus is not going to be able to stand. Your homemade theology is going to fail you.

That rock you thought you were built on is not a rock at all. I want you to listen to the pitiful words of Solomon. Now Solomon was a king, and of course the scripture says he was the most wise man that ever lived. It's a shame that he didn't have the courage to follow his own wisdom. He was used of God to write things in the Old Testament that he himself didn't follow.

It's incredible. In order to be king in those days, you had to hand write out the law was part of the, in a sense, the qualification of being king. And God would have given him these words in various, I don't have time to go into all of this, but he had to write, do not accumulate horses, for God did not want any king of Israel to trust in any other strength, but the strength of God. Do not accumulate wives, which were military treaties that were sealed by making you part of the family as it is, giving you a wife from that particular nation to say, we will be there to protect you and you'll be there to protect us. And Solomon was told, and he knew, don't bring all these allegiances, trust in God, trust in the strength of God. Don't start leaning on your own strength.

And he also had to write out, don't accumulate silver. In other words, God's saying, I don't want you starting to trust in any other resource but me. I will be your resource. I'll be your guide. I'll be your guard. I'll be your protector.

I'll be the one to fight for you. Don't start leaning on other things that are going to take away your trust from God. And so here's Solomon knowing these things and actually writing some profound words in the Old Testament. At the end of his days, his pitiful condition is really spoken about in Proverbs chapter five and verse seven is the first verse.

He says, therefore, hear me now, my children, and do not depart from the words of my mouth. Then we go down to verse 11, and you mourn at the last when your flesh and body are consumed, and say, how I have hated instruction. And my heart despised correction. I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me. I was on the verge of total ruin in the midst of the assembly and congregation.

Now that's Solomon's life encapsulated at the end of his days. I was there. I had access to the word of God. I had people who actually stood up and taught me things from the word of God, but I had chosen my own reasonings over the word of God. And because of it, I was sitting in the congregation, but I was not aware that I was in almost total ruin because I had handcrafted my own theology and put away the words of God. Remember Jesus said, if you hear my words and do them, I'll liken you to a man who built his house upon a rock.

And when the winds come and when the waters stand against it, and when the waves begin to beat on that house, it's going to stand and it's not going to fall. I want to read to you some things that I was looking at online. It's an article by a man called Ken Ham who does a commentary on the Barna survey that was done about Christianity in America. This is just very recently this was done and George Barna and his organization have a high rating of credibility when it comes to these surveys.

I want you to listen carefully to this. This is who America has become today. Seven out of 10 U.S. adults call themselves Christians. And yet only six in 100, six percent actually have a biblical worldview. So what does the rest of Americans believe? Well, according to research from the Cultural Research Center, there are seven major worldviews that Americans are mostly influenced by.

Biblical theism, Eastern mysticism, Marxism, moralistic therapeutic deism, nihilism, postmodernism, and secular humanism. During a recent address of the Family Research Council, pollster George Barna shared that most Americans blend their beliefs to create a customized worldview. In other words, the dominant worldview in America and really much of the West today is syncretism. A little of this and a little of that blended into a worldview that's custom made by each person. With such a worldview, there's no ultimate authority.

Truth is determined by whatever seems right to each person. Another ministry recently released their biennial state of theology survey and the results are a mess. They found that evangelicals, now evangelicals are defined as people who have said I have prayed to receive Christ as my Savior. I have trusted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Now they found that evangelicals hold to a host of beliefs, beliefs that are far from scripture.

Listen to these statistics. 56% of evangelicals believe that God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Nearly half, these are evangelicals folks, believe that God learns and adapts to different circumstances. In other words, God changes. Though the scripture says I am the Lord, I change not.

They believe that God learns and adapts. 70% strongly agree that Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. Jesus is not created by God. He is eternally existent as God, the third person of God.

God did not create Jesus. It is a heresy that's been long condemned by the Christian church for centuries. 38% of evangelicals see Jesus Christ as a great teacher, but not God. 60% of evangelical Christians say that the Holy Spirit is a force, but not a person. 27% of evangelicals think the Holy Spirit can tell me to do something which is forbidden in the Bible. 57% believe that everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature. 37% agree that religious belief is a matter of personal opinion.

It is no longer about objective truth. In other words, I am free now to form my own God. I can, I might put it this way, I can deconstruct the original Jesus and create my own Jesus.

And somehow when the storms come, my house is going to stand. Not so. There are some biblical teachings accepted by the majority as real. However, the same people who accept some of the traditional teachings on marriage, sin, abortion, Christ as savior, eternal salvation, et cetera, et cetera, also affirm the statement that God accepts the worship of other religions. 99% of the evangelical survey respondents said the Bible is the highest authority for what I believe. But based on their answers, they either really don't believe it or they don't know what that means, or they don't have a clue what the Bible really says, which I believe is probably the closest thing to reality. The survey reveals that what Christians believe is a mess.

They hold to contradictory beliefs about a variety of things from God, from who God is and what is nature as to how they should view the Bible and how people are saved. It's a mixture of Christianity and the thinking of our culture. Barna says, why does all this matter? Well, he says, your worldview is the filter that you use to see and understand and experience and respond to the world around you. Because your worldview enables you to make sense of the world, you need a worldview just to get through every day. In fact, every single decision that you make, and you make hundreds of them, if not thousands of decisions every single day, every one of those flows through your worldview. The choices that you make are a result of what you believe as described by your worldview. The conclusion is how you see the world has consequences for what you do, for what you value, and what you pass along to the next generation. I want to look at Peter, the apostle, as a type of a person who in his initial encounter with Jesus Christ thought that his own worldview could make his house to stand.

I want to just look at him as a type of many people today, in my opinion are making the same mistake. In the Gospel of Matthew chapter 16 verses 21 and 22. Now here's the word of God and Peter's interpretation. From that time, Jesus began to show to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised the third day. So there's nothing hidden.

He's telling these gentlemen clearly what's about to come in the next short season. Verse 22, then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him saying, far be it from you Lord, this shall not happen to you. In other words, Peter's worldview, in spite of what the word of God, now it doesn't get any more pure than coming out of the mouth of Jesus.

Do you understand? He is the word of God. In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God. And the word became flesh and we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. So Jesus is speaking, but Peter chooses instead of listening, he chooses his own interpretation. And his interpretation is that suffering and rejection and the cross are not part of his redemptive theology. I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot like some Christianity in America today. We don't sing about the cross anymore. The cross is violent.

Nobody wants violence in the house of God. We don't sing about the blood unless somebody should be offended coming into our worship sessions. We don't sing about suffering. We don't talk about suffering as being a potential part of the Christian experience. In America today, it's all about me, myself and I.

It's about all the horses, the silver and all of the relationships I can get, how I can be enhanced in every area of my life. The thought of yielding to the purposes of God, the thought of dying in a sense or losing our freedom so someone else can have theirs is no longer in our theology. And that's the error that Peter made.

The word was there, but he was not listening to the word. I can't tell you how many people that describes most likely in our generation, or they have access to the word of God, but they're not listening to the word of God and they're forming their own redemptive theology. Again, as we go ahead to Matthew chapter 26, verses 31 to 33. Now Jesus said to them, all of you will be made to stumble because of me this night, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.

So this is the word of God. Now, Peter again answered and said to him, even if all are made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble. His estimation of himself is that he could stand in his own strength and his own self-determination when the word of God was telling him he couldn't.

How many people does that describe today who are holding on to this image of self, holding on to their own grit and determination, and even to walk in the kingdom of God, believing that they have this ability that we don't have? Paul the apostle in Romans 7 makes it really clear, and I'll paraphrase it, but he says in essence, in Romans 7, he says, I know what to do. I know what truth is and I even delight after it in the inner man, but there's something, there's another law at work inside of me of sin and death that is constantly dragging me down with such force and power that I can't rise above my condition. He calls it a body of death. He says, I know what to do, but I can't do it.

And who will deliver me from this body of death? And he concludes by saying, thank God through Jesus Christ, my Lord. See, Peter didn't believe at this point that he needed to be delivered. He believed that he could do all these things in his own strength, even though the word of God told him he couldn't. Matthew chapter 26, verse 34 and 35, Jesus again, here's the word of God coming again.

I'm just giving this as examples. Assuredly I say to you this night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. And Peter said to him, even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. And so said all the disciples, God help us. When we come to conclusions that are not in line with the word of God, the word of God is speaking. And in every instance, they're choosing their own thought above the word of God. What a dilemma that is.

Somehow thinking that this house has the power to stand. Later on in verse 40, they go into the garden of Gethsemane and he asks his disciples and he says, pray with me, pray with me. This is an hour when I need you. And he came to his disciples in verse 40 and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, he didn't say it to the other disciples, according to the gospel of Matthew, he said it to Peter.

He said, what could you not watch with me one hour? Now that's not about prayer. A lot of people take that about prayer, that prayer should be an hour, et cetera, et cetera.

It's not even about prayer. He's actually saying to Peter, didn't you just boast of your strength? Didn't you just boast of your ability? Didn't you just tell me about your loyalty? Didn't you just set your own thoughts above the word of...

I was telling you, you didn't have the strength, but you claimed you did have the strength to go all the way and even to die with me. But here you are, you can't even pray for one hour. Do you see yet, Peter, do you understand that your house won't stand? If you don't have a biblical worldview, your house is not going to stand. And so the scripture tells us when, as we read in our opening scripture, when the floods came and when the wind started to blow.

Psalm 18 verse four, David the King said, the floods of ungodliness made me afraid. We're living in a day when ungodliness is coming in like a flood, is it not? It's happening so fast.

Everybody just keeps saying it's... I can't believe how fast ungodliness is coming into our nation and other nations. I can't believe the things that people are thinking. I can't believe the sexual confusion that's going on in our societies.

I find it hard to... The incivility that's coming against the people of God, the floods are coming against the houses of the people of God. The floods are coming against the churches of Jesus Christ in this generation. And hear me on this, especially online, it's going to get worse. It's not going to get better. It's going to get harder, not easier. The floods are going to rise.

The waters are going to rise. They're going to beat against your life and against your home and your family and your house of God. But if you are building your life on the word of God, if the word of God is your value system, if the word of God is the pillar under your house, you will stand. That's the promise of Jesus.

You will not fail. The church of Jesus Christ is going to come back to the word of God. The true church of Jesus Christ. As the ship starts to go down, as the house starts to get beat on by the wind, some houses will fall. But even though they do fall, there'll be people who start crying out to God again and say, God, have mercy on me. Have mercy, Lord. I'm not trusting in my own power. I'm not trusting in my own might. I'm not trusting in my own thoughts. I'm not trusting in my own directions, but oh God, I hope in your word now, I'm going to build my life on this book. I'm not going to add to it.

I'm not going to take away from it. What God says is what I believe. This book is going to be my biblical worldview. Praise be to God. If God says it, that's the way it is.

If God doesn't say it, that's not the way it is. I'm not substituting my thoughts because my house is going to stand in the last days. My children are going to stand. My grandchildren are going to stand.

The church of Jesus Christ is going to stand. I'm not going down in the storm. I'm not going to be overthrown by the waves because I am determined in my heart to walk with the real Jesus.

I'm determined to let his value system become mine. If he says, love your enemies, I will love my enemies. If he says, forgive those that have cursed you, I'll forgive those that have cursed you. I will not set my judgment above the word of God. And he promises that when the winds beat on my house and the rains come and the floods come, my house will stand because it's built upon a rock. Paul says in 2 Timothy 1.7, for God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power.

Not horses. The power that comes from God. Then a sound mind which is standing on the unshakable foundation of truth. That's where the sound mind comes in.

Sound. We've studied the scriptures. We believe what it says.

You don't have to be a scholar. Just believe it. Just believe it.

You don't need to know the Greek and the Hebrew. Just read it and believe it. That what he says is what he means. And you begin to walk in that and suddenly you have not only the power of God, not only the love of God flowing, but you have a sound mind. You have a sound theology that Christ promised will put your house on a solid foundation. As a matter of fact, he promises you won't be overthrown. No matter what this world throws at us. No matter how the floods of the ungodly increase.

As David once said in one of the Psalms, if the mountains are shaken and fall into the sea and the seas overflow their borders and calamities start appearing on every side, David says, my heart is fixed. I choose to trust in God. I choose to believe his word.

I choose to walk in the way that God says. There's going to be a great falling away, the scripture says in the last days. Yes, there will be a great turning to God, but there will also be a falling away.

I believe there'll be simultaneous. Many people who thought they stood are going to find out that they don't stand at all. The Christ that they formed is not the Christ of the Bible. The scripture says in Acts 27, when the ship was going down and Paul was on it, the scripture says when all hope that we would be saved was finally gone, suddenly everyone on that ship, 275 people are crying out to the concept of God and it's doing no good. But there's one man on the ship that has a real relationship with the real God. He knows that suffering is part of the call of the cross. He knows his life is not his own.

He knows the strength he needs to have doesn't come from any amount of human resource. It comes from the presence of God's Holy Spirit and God speaking to his own heart. And with one man who has a biblical worldview, even though the ship goes down, the people are given a chance to receive Christ as Lord and Savior. A lot of ships are going to go down in the future.

A lot of things that people have trusted in are going to fail. But yet, God never fails. You've been listening to Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information and resources to help you in your walk in Christ, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. And be sure to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.