Build on the Rock

In Luke chapter 6, Jesus asks the people why they call Him Lord, Lord. See, when you say Lord, you're saying, You're my authority. I submit to Your kingship.

I acknowledge that You are sovereign over me. And so Jesus says, Well, why do you say that I'm your Lord when you don't do what I tell you to do? Well, that's certainly one of the bottom-line basics of what Jesus taught, isn't it? Obey.

In fact, it's at the core of the Great Commission. Jesus told the disciples to go and make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all He commanded them. As we continue Dr.

R.C. 's role series from the Gospel of Luke, we will see the important implications of Jesus' teaching. In Luke's version of the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, he recalls that Jesus asked the question, Why do you call Me Lord, Lord, and not do the things which I say? And we are still focusing on this problem of making a profession of faith in Christ.

That is not a true one. To refresh our memories of the full impact of these words, let me go back for a moment to the fuller version that we find in Matthew chapter 7, where before Jesus introduces the parable of the foundation on the rock, He says in verse 21, Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you.

Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness. Now some of you may recall that when we looked at this text in Matthew years ago, I pointed out the unusual character by which Jesus is addressed. He says many, many will come to Him, presumably on the day of judgment, and not only call Him Lord, but will repeat the title, calling Him Lord, Lord. And on that occasion that I expounded this text in Matthew, I went through about fifteen references in all of Scripture that included the literary form or the colloquial form of addressing a person by repeating their name, Abram Abraham, Moses Moses, Absalom Absalom, and Martha Martha, Saul Saul, and through all of those texts to illustrate for you that the phenomenon before us is one in which the person is claiming not only to be an acquaintance of the person whom he is addressing, but rather has an intimate personal relationship with that other person. So when Jesus said, they're going to come and call me Lord, Lord, they're not going to simply be claiming a passing acquaintance with Jesus, but they're going to be saying, I have a deep personal affection for you. I know you, Jesus, intimately. I've taken you as my Savior. And Jesus says to those on that occasion, excuse me, I don't believe I know you. Oh, you say you went to church, you were a pastor, you were a missionary, you were a member of the session or the deacons, you were a tither. Oh, but I don't know you. Please leave.

Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. You see why I call this the scariest passage in the New Testament, where Jesus says that there are all kinds of people. He's talking about church members here. He's talking about people who have made a public profession of faith in Him, people who say, I know Jesus. But as I said then, I'll say now in the final analysis, it's not going to be, do you know Jesus? The question is going to be, does He know you?

Are you known by Him? And Jesus says it's going to happen that this people will honor Him with their lips while their hearts are far from Him. And Jesus later said to His disciples, if you love Me, then keep My commandments. The test for the fruit is obedience. Anyone can say that they love Jesus, but the proof of the pudding is in obedience. If you love Me, keep My commandments, and if you don't keep My commandments, please leave. You're workers of lawlessness and of disobedience.

And so Luke puts it in question for me. Why do you call me Lord, Lord? And you don't do the things which I tell you to do. See, when you say Lord, you're saying, you're My authority.

I submit to your kingship. I acknowledge that you are sovereign over Me and that whatsoever you command Me, I am under obligation to do. And so Jesus says, well, why do you say that I'm your Lord when you don't do what I tell you to do?

He follows up that question with this brief parable about the building. He said, whoever comes to Me hears My saying and does them, I will show you whom he is like. Before, again, I mentioned the phenomenon in the Greek language of the distinction between the verb to hear, akouein, and the verb to obey, which is hupakouein, which we would come into the English language and say it's hyper-hearing. The difference between hearing and obeying is hearing and really hearing. That's why Jesus would say, He who has ears to hear, let him hear, because if you can really hear Me, you will obey Me. And the person who comes to Me, Jesus says, and really hears Me, he will not only hear My sayings, but he will do them. And that person, He says, I will show you whom he's like. He's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.

And when a flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. Now if you're familiar with the topography of Israel, you will know that that land is substantially desert. And what you find throughout Palestine are an innumerable number of wadis, w-a-d-i. How many of you don't know what a wadi is? Let me see.

Okay, so let's see who somebody didn't put their hand up. I'm going to call on them to give the definition. A wadi in Israel is a dry gulch. It's like what they call out in the American West an arroyo, where it is an empty creek bed that is only filled with water under extraordinary circumstances of rainfall. And in Israel there are two rainy systems, the former rains and the latter rains.

But for most of the year there is little or no rainfall as the arid conditions of desert prevail. But when the rains come and when it rains hard, all the rain is drained into the wadis and gathered there, and so the streams become like mini-Suzamis, where the water comes rushing down the wadi as Jesus used the term vehemently. And the power of that water coming down the wadi is something you don't want to get caught in either in Israel in the wadi or in an arroyo in Phoenix or in Los Angeles when the torrential rains come because that moving water destroys everything in its path. Now Jesus says, I'm going to show you what it's like for the one who hears My words and who obeys them. He's like a man who builds a house, but he takes care before he builds this elegant structure to dig deeply, to go down to the level of rock. And there when he hits the rock, he builds his foundation. And then on top of that solid foundation, the house is built. And if you build a house like that, all of the wadi torrential rushing water, when it comes and vehemently beats against the house, the house is strong enough to withstand it and to remain intact and secure. Jesus goes on to say, But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth or on the sand without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently, and immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.

You see the contrast. The second house may be palatial in its grandeur, but it's built on sand. It has no firm foundation, and it looks beautiful for a season until the flood waters come. And now when the stream beats vehemently against that house, it's not like the house begins to creak and to groan and to lean and to lose a few shingles. No, at the first flood, that house instantly topples. It collapses.

It has no strength to withstand negative forces against it, and it crumbles. And Jesus says the ruin of that house was great. You know, the Bible says a lot about foundations. The building metaphor of foundations comes all the way through sacred Scripture. Back in the Psalms we read that if the foundations are shaken, how can the righteous live?

If the foundations are shaken, how can the buildings stand? And now we hear frequently the idea that Jesus is the foundation of the church. The church's one foundation, we sing, is Jesus Christ our Lord. Well, that's not exactly the way in which the Scriptures describe the church building. Rather, we are told that there's no foundation that can be laid except that which is laid in Christ Jesus. But as we saw earlier in the service, in the introit, I believe, the general image of Jesus is not that He's the foundation, but that the foundation is laid in Him and that He is the chief cornerstone.

The stone that the builders rejected, we are told, has become the chief cornerstone of the church. Well, what is the foundation of the church? Again, according to the Scriptures, the foundations of the church are the prophets and the apostles. And let me show you how that works in sacred Scripture. If I can turn just for a moment to the book of Acts, we read in chapter 2, verse 42, after three thousand people had been added to the church, and they continued steadfastly.

In what? They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and in the breaking of bread and in prayers. This is a glimpse of life in the primitive Christian church after Pentecost in Jerusalem, that the people of God gathered together on Sunday, and they steadfastly continued in the apostles' doctrine.

What does that mean? That at the heart of the gathering of the early church on the Lord's day was a devout attending to the preaching of the Word of God, because the study of apostolic doctrine, beloved, is the study of the Word of God, because where you find the apostolic doctrine is in sacred Scripture. Now, if the apostles and the prophets are the foundation of the church, we find that foundation in sacred Scripture. Let me give you one more example of that at the end of the New Testament in the book of the Revelation, where we read of the new Jerusalem in chapter 21, that comes down from heaven, where John was shown the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, her light like a light of the Lord, her light like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.

And she had a great and high wall with twelve gates and twelve angels at the gates and names written on them. And then in verse 14, now the wall of the city, this is the heavenly Jerusalem that comes down, the wall of the city had twelve foundations, not just one, twelve, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the land. In the heavenly city, in the city of God, the foundation is built on the apostles. That's why the early church came together to devote themselves to the study of the doctrines of the apostles. And that's why we're here this morning, to be instructed by the apostolic Word because if we're going to live as faithful Christians, we have to be rooted and grounded in the apostolic Word. To be grounded in the Word of God is to dig the foundation of your life down to bedrock, where you take that Word and you embrace that Word, and you are able to stand against anything the world and the flesh and the devil throws at you. But if you don't have that foundation, that foundation in the apostolic Word, then you're building your house on sand. And when the storm comes, what you will experience, dear friends, is ruin.

Now here is where it's rug-cutting time in the application of what Jesus is teaching here. It's when I ask you to finish the sermon for yourself by searching your own heart and searching your own soul and answer this question, what have I built my life on? What am I building right now my life upon? What's the bottom line of my life? What's the big idea of my life? What is the core of who I am and what I am trying to accomplish? What am I building? But more importantly, what am I building on? Am I building a house of cards, or am I building a life rooted and grounded in Christ and in His Word, submitting myself to His authority?

Now I'm asking you to answer that question for yourself. Now I know if you're a professing Christian, your bias and your temptation will be to say, well, of course I'm building my life on Christ. Of course, I have a strong foundation. Of course, I'm doing that, and here's how I know from my fruit and from my obedience. You see how this follows after what Jesus was saying last week.

We're known by our fruits, not by our verbal professions. And again, what we do will not get us into the kingdom of God. Only trust in Christ can get you there.

But the test of whether your trust is real, the test of whether your faith is sincere, the test of whether your justification is authentic is in your fruit, in your obedience, or your lack of it. You know, we live in a country where still over 95 percent of people say they believe in God. And so I say we have a nation that embraces hypothetical theism, and yet practically speaking we live as if there is no God. If you found out tonight that there is no God, how would your life change?

Are you one of those people who hypothetically affirms the existence of God and the lordship of Jesus Christ, but for all practical purposes you live as if there were no God? Well, that's how a person who is a lawless person lives. There's no fear of God in them. They don't care what comes out of their mouth.

They don't care if they keep their promises because their house is built on sand. But if you build your house on the Word of God and you build your house on Jesus Christ, the everlasting rock, even a tsunami cannot ruin your life. Well, that should cause us to stop and think, shouldn't it?

Are we building our lives on obedience to God's truth, or are we fooling ourselves and just claiming to be living by that truth? Our study of the Gospel of Luke has brought us to the end of chapter 6 today, and we'll continue this sermon series by Dr. R.C. Sproul next Sunday. I do hope you'll join us. If you haven't requested our resource offer, we do hope to hear from you.

It's R.C. 's commentary on the Gospel of Luke. Contact us today with a donation of any amount, and we'll be happy to provide you with a digital download of it. It's nearly 600 pages of insight into every passage. Our offices are closed on this Lord's Day, but you can give your gift and make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. Your generous donations allow us to continue producing teaching material like you've heard today, and it's having an impact around the world.

I'd like for you to hear what Flavik had to say. Back in 2003, when I was a church member in a very legalistic church in Ukraine, because of that fact, I was fighting with severe depression back then. But in God's providence, there was one book that I found in a church's library in the basement preserved by God for me, and that book was chosen by God, R.C.

Sproul. It has changed my life forever. I have never heard biblical reform theology before, so I moved to America and started to grow under Ligonier Ministries' teaching.

I was so hungry. I wanted to know biblical God, and then resistible desire started to grow in me, and I said to myself, I want my Christian brothers and sisters in Ukraine to hear Dr. Sproul. So I started to translate video messages of Dr. Sproul into Russian language on a weekly basis and send it to Ukraine. I want my Christians in Ukraine to know who God is. I just can't let my Christian brothers and sisters in Ukraine to live in theological darkness. Thank you, Ligonier Ministries, for not only have you transformed my life, but you are transforming the lives of Christians in Ukraine today. Well, Flavek's testimony is certainly timely, isn't it? And another reminder to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world, especially in those places where the church is suffering. Thank you for joining us today, and I hope you'll make plans to be with us again next Sunday. For another sermon from the Gospel of Luke by Dr. R.C. Sproul.