Living the Dream
01/28/2007 - Building a Life That Lasts
This morning we come to the conclusion of our series on the Sermon on the Mount called Living the Dream with a teaching I've called "Building a Life That Lasts." Throughout this great sermon of Jesus we've been challenged to have a different perspective on life, God's perspective on life, which reminded me of a funny story I heard this week.
Apparently there was a man who was to talking to God and said, "God, from your perspective what is a million years like?"
And God said, "A million years, well that's like a second."
The man said, "Wow! That's amazing!"
Then he asked, "God, from your perspective what is a million dollars like?"
God said, "A million dollars? To me a million dollars is like a penny!"
The guy went, "Wow! That's unbelievable!"
There was a long pause and then the guy said, "God, can I borrow a penny?"
And God said, "Sure, just wait a second!"
God has a different perspective on life than we do and we've been calling God's perspective on life his dream, the dream of God. And the dream of God is that one day his kingdom will come to this world so that his will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God wants to make his home right here among us by bringing heaven to earth. And that's going to happen some day. That's where, I believe, history is headed.
But until that day comes the King has placed his citizens, Christ followers like you and like me, all throughout this world to live out his dream, to be salt and light, and to be a blessing to others. We are to bring a little bit of heaven to this earth right now. Around here we call that the mission of Christ.
And in this sermon that we've been studying each week Jesus has been telling how to do that. If you remember he started with the Beatitudes. The first word out of his mouth was "blessed, happy, fortunate." Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. God's blessing, his divine favor falls on these kinds of people.
That's God's perspective on life. That's not our perspective on life so we called it upside down living. And the very week we taught the Beatitudes back in October we saw them lived out by a group of humble people called the Amish who extended forgiveness to the killer who shot ten of their young daughters in a one room schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. That kind of supernatural love and forgiveness was a dramatic display of what it means to live out God's dream in the midst of hell on earth and it gripped the attention of an entire nation.
Jesus went on to tell us that our righteousness had to exceed that of the religious professionals, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law if we wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven. The religious professionals had built an elaborate system of rules and rituals, dos and don'ts, that nobody could keep.
So when the crowd on the hill heard Jesus say that they looked at each other and gasped, "You've got to be kidding, Jesus! We've got to be better than the spiritual pros to get into the kingdom? How are we going to do that? The bar is already way too high?"
But Jesus wasn't talking about adding more rules and rituals to an already hopelessly complex system. He wasn't talking about biting the bullet and trying to live a sinless life. He was talking about getting a new heart installed that later on he would say comes from believing in him. It's our heart that Jesus wants and so for the rest of the sermon he addresses issues of the heart like anger and hatred, lust and dishonesty, pride and prejudice, worry and fear, love and generosity.
He's taught us to pray. He's told us over and over again that God is our loving heavenly Father who wants to hear from us about anything, anytime, anywhere.
And last week Jesus drew a line in the sand and asked us to cross over it. Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Two gates, two roads, and today Jesus ends his sermon with two ways to build your house. Look at Matthew 7:24-29 , "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." 28When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
Jesus who spent most of his adult life working as a carpenter knew a few things about construction. And so he closes his sermon by taking us to a job site. He uses a house to illustrate our life, which makes sense because a house is what we live in.
He says, "So what are you going to do with all I've told you? Are you going to put my words into practice or not? You are the architect of your own life and you have a choice to make. If you build your life on the solid foundation of my words your life will endure. But if you build your life on the shifting sand of some other philosophy or someone else's teaching, someday your life will come crashing down. So be careful how you build."
And the crowd went, "Wow! We've never heard teaching like this before. This rabbi teaches with authority, not like the guys we're used to hearing." In that day it was common for religious teachers to open the Bible, which would have been the scrolls of the Old Testament, read a passage and then start quoting the opinions of one rabbi after another.
This is what Rabbi Hillel says and this is what Rabbi Shammai says and this is what Rabbi Eliezer says and on and on never confident enough to say what they thought the Scriptures meant, but not Jesus. All throughout the sermon he's weighs in by saying, "You have heard that it was said … but I tell you. You have heard that it was said … but I tell you. And now I tell to that the wise man and the wise woman will build his or her life on me and my words. So which one are you?"
I was thinking a lot about that this week and I'd like to conclude this series by giving you three reasons why I believe that Jesus Christ is the only foundation worth building our life on.
The first is because Jesus Christ has unmatched credibility. On Tuesday I was on the phone with a friend from Valley View who was telling me about a conversation he had with a co-worker recently. He had just met this fellow and they seemed to hit it off right away and before long they were involved in a pretty heavy spiritual discussion.
He thought that was kind of unusual but he decided to go with it. And at one point the fellow started challenging his belief that Jesus was God. He was saying things like, "I believe that Jesus is the son of God, but I don't believe that Jesus is God. Jesus never claimed to be God. The Bible never says Jesus is God." And my Valley View friend started to get real confused and wondered if that was true. In fact, it upset him so much that he couldn't even sleep for a few nights.
So he wanted to know if there was any biblical evidence for the fact that Jesus is God. And so we looked at some Scriptures together over phone where Jesus claims to be one with the Father and where he accepts worship and where others like Thomas and Paul refer to him as God and on and on.
We didn't even get into the fact of Jesus' many miracles and the hundreds of predictions that he fulfilled during his lifetime, predictions that were made by the Hebrew prophets centuries before he was even born.
"But the bottom line for me," I said, "is the empty tomb. Jesus is the only one with a resurrection on his resume and that gives enormous credibility to every statement he ever made." The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most well documented event of the ancient world, witnessed, the New Testament says, by over 515 different people.
I don't know about you, but If I'm going to build my whole life on somebody's teachings I have to be absolutely convinced in my soul that that somebody is credible, because like you I'll only get the opportunity to build one house and I want that house to last. And I'm convinced that Jesus is the rock that's worth building my life on.
The second reason we can build our foundation on Jesus Christ is because his wisdom works.
There's been a shift in my lifetime over how truth is validated, maybe you've noticed. It used to be validated by reason and proof. In other words, I know this is true because of these five reasons. But more and more these days truth is validated by experience and by what works. In other words, I know this is true because I've had this experience or because this worked for me. Some have called this the shift from modern to postmodern thinking.
In his book Postmodern Pilgrims author Leonard Sweet puts it this way, "Moderns want to figure out what life's about. Post-moderns want to experience what life is about because reason does not answer the deeper needs of the heart."
Today, perhaps more than ever before, people aren't looking for clever answers to all their spiritual questions. They're not so much looking for truth as they're looking for something that is real, something that they can touch and feel and experience. And something that touches them deeply. We're all looking for exactly what Jesus uniquely equipped his followers to give and that is love.
Today we're having a Valley View Welcome after our second worship gathering. And if it's anything like Welcomes that we've had in the past somebody is going to say what impacted them the most when they came to Valley View for the first time was the love they felt in the room. They may have enjoyed the worship and appreciated the teaching, but it was the love of the community that got their attention. And it was during the greeting time when people were shaking hands and hugging and talking and laughing that they could tell there was something real going on here.
Someone told me this week, "It just felt like home the first time we came here." That's the love of Christ being expressed. Jesus has always offered what the human soul is desperately seeking most, that is love. And that love transcends modernism or postmodernism or any other culture in the world.
And when we apply Jesus' teachings to life they work. Our relationships improve, our marriages get better, our stress levels drop, our joy increases, peace and contentment replace jealousy and greed. And the reason they work is because they are true. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life, Jesus said.
Build your life on the foundation of Jesus Christ because he's credible, because his wisdom works, and because the storms of life are coming.
Notice that the storm Jesus describes hits both houses, not just the foolish man's. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew, and beat against both homes. Just because we're Christ followers doesn't mean that we're insulated from the struggles of life. And whatever belief system we have will one day be put through a stress test.
It may be a job loss, a financial crisis, a wayward son or daughter, a broken relationship, a divorce, a miscarriage, the loss of a child, a chronic illness, migraine headaches that don't go away, a lawsuit, a blended family, a serious accident, the death of a loved one, a battle with depression, some personality disorder, an addiction that's out of control, a special needs child, cancer, a stroke, or some other bad news from the doctor and on and on it goes. And those are just examples of some of what's going on right here in our own church community. Inevitably storms will come. And if we're fortunate enough to escape some of those crises we're all going to face the ultimate crisis one day and that's our own death.
Jesus was up front about all of this. He told his followers in John 16:33, In this world you will have trouble. Whether you believe in Jesus or don't believe in Jesus the storms of life are going to hit both houses. But what I love about John 16:33 is that Jesus didn't just make a prediction about the coming storms, he also gave us a prescription of how to deal with them.
Look at what he says, I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
In the midst of the storm Jesus offers us what we all need the most. That is peace and courage. Peace in knowing that he's in control of whatever happens, and the courage to face whatever is coming down. And the foundation that we build our life on is going to make all the difference in the world in how we weather the storms.
It will be the difference between going through them alone or going through them with God. It will be the difference between feeling powerless or plugged in to the supernatural power of God. It will be the difference between fear and a courage that's based on confidence and hope. It will be the difference between perpetual panic and a peace that passes all human understanding. And when we come face to face with the ultimate crisis those who have built their life on the bedrock of Jesus Christ can have the assurance that because Jesus lives they will live also.
We never know when the storm clouds are going to gather. We never know when the wind is going to start to blow and the rain will begin to pelt our house and the streams will start to flood. But we can know what foundation our house is built on. And that makes all the difference.
This week before any work could begin on the Sunnyside property the building inspector from Lower Providence Township came on site. And what he wanted to see was not the condition of the roof, or the walls, or the windows. He wanted to see the condition of the foundation because before we could build anything he wanted to be sure that the foundation was solid. And so a hole was dug about three feet deep so that he could see the foundation for himself. And after he saw it he concluded that were building on a solid foundation and gave us his permission to begin the project.
What foundation are you building your life on? Have you done an inspection lately? Jesus, the credible one, says, "I am the rock. Build your life on me and my teachings and it will endure forever."