The Storms Are Coming. Will You Stand ？

For Sun Valley Community Church, Henry, I trust that you are watching. You've been a tremendous blessing to us here in this church over, I don't even know how long it's been, five, six years, that Henry's been here and he's been an elder in our church and teaching Sunday school and setting a wonderful example of faithfulness to the Lord all these years that he has served the Lord. And so really, we wish we could see him, but obviously because of his age, it's not wise for him to come out at this stage. He's not leaving his house at all and that's good. Well, it's not good, but it's safe. So it's a pity he can't be here and we can't wish him a happy birthday personally, but on behalf of Sun Valley Community Church, Henry, we wish you all the best and we pray that the Lord will still spare you some more years as you remain faithful in serving him and teaching Sunday school and those things, and we really look forward to the day that we'll soon be able to meet again in the Fellowship Hall and continue to have Sunday school like in the old days. Amen. All right. So let's turn to the word and we're in the gospel according to Luke chapter 6, reading from verse 43 through 49. Luke chapter 6, reading 43 through 49. For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. But why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do the things which I say? Whoever comes to me and hears my sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like. He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock. When the flood arose and the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently, and immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great. And we're obviously in verse 46, and we're going to deal with the house on the rock and the house on the earth, or on the sand, from 46 through 49. I did touch on this verse during the shutdown in a different context. We spoke about having underlying weaknesses or conditions that render us susceptible to being unstable and being attacked. But I'm going to obviously go back to the verses today, because we, in our study of the gospel according to Luke. The other problem we have when we come to this verse, or these verses, is that there are countless sermons. I've heard hundreds and hundreds of sermons preached on this passage that Jesus is the rock, and that if you don't build your life on Jesus, then when the storms come, everything will fall apart. Now, while that is true, Jesus is the rock, Jesus is I, that basically says, Peter, you're the little rock, but upon this rock I will build my church. Peter writes in his epistles about the fact that he is the foundation, he is the cornerstone, he is the rock upon which we build. We understand all of those things. But that is not what Jesus is telling here. He is not speaking at all about the rock himself as the basis of the church. And so, while it is true that Jesus is the rock, and while it is true that you must build upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and if you don't build on him, everything will fall apart. Those things are true. But that is not what this passage is teaching. This passage is teaching being doers of the word and not hearers only, according to James. And so, we need to be careful how we deal with Scripture. This is the problem, is that people will use any Scripture to be able to preach any doctrine. And sometimes those doctrines that they teach are false doctrines. But sometimes they are true, they are correct doctrines, like the idea that Jesus is the rock and that we must be built on him. That's true. There's no heresy in that at all. But it is still a perversion of Scripture to use Scripture in a way it was not intended to be used. To use Scripture to make a point that you want to make, even if that point is correct, when that is not the point that the Scripture is making. And you say, well, what's the problem with that? Because it is truth anyhow. No, it shows integrity, first of all, in how we deal with information, how we deal with facts, and secondly, it distracts from the message that the passage is actually trying to convey. And so, if you extract some other truth from a passage which is not what that passage originally was saying, then you're destroying the passage, because you're destroying the message that the Spirit has intended in the writing of that particular passage. Now let me just touch very quickly on this issue of integrity and the way in which we deal with information. Even if the point that you're making is true, but the facts that you use to make that point are false, you are showing a lack of integrity, and you cannot be trusted. It's as simple as that. Now we've spoken about conspiracies, and I'm not going to deal with the whole conspiracy thing, but that touches very closely on what I've just said about this passage here. A little while ago, a long-standing friend of mine posted on Facebook a picture of the Bill Gates Foundation. Now, I'm not supporting Bill Gates, I'm not promoting Bill Gates, what I'm promoting is truth. But a picture of Bill Gates' building, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I think it is, and then it said there, the Center for Population Control. Now that's connected to a whole conspiracy, which I'm not going to get into. I looked at it, and something didn't sound right. So I actually, sometimes I just feel the need to just understand what's actually going on. And so I went to Google Maps, and I'm sure you know you can go to Google Maps and you can look at any building that you like. And so I went to Google Maps, and I looked at the building in Silicon Valley, and there's the building. And the words, the Center for Population Control, and I'm not sure that I had those words exactly right, but that's basically what it said, are not there. It's not part, it's not on the building. So somebody had photoshopped it. So I went back to my friend, and I said to him, this is fake, you can't publish this, this is nonsense. No, he says, it is still true, because Gates wants to control the world population. So it doesn't matter that we use false information to propagate something because we believe it is true. You can't do that, even if it is true. Your whole credibility is undermined, and I don't believe a single word you say any further because you've been proven to be a false witness. And so even when we use the Scriptures to preach things that are truth, but that's not what that verse is saying, that's not what that passage is saying, we are a false witness. Because the passage is saying something different to what you are saying, even what you are saying may be true in a different context or based on a different Scripture. All right, now having gone down that rant, let's deal with the passage. So Luke chapter 6 verse 46, Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do the things which I say? It's interesting that he uses the word Lord, Lord twice. He doesn't just say you call me Lord, the Greek word kurios meaning master or owner or sometimes sovereign, as in a sovereign king. Why do you call me the boss when you don't do what I say? And he uses the word twice, Lord, Lord, because people are trying to make a point and they're saying, you are really my Lord, you are really my Lord, not just by the way Lord, but Lord, Lord. In other words, you're emphasizing that he is your Lord, but you're not doing what he is saying. And remember that the whole concept of Lordship, the whole concept of a master, is that the servant does what the master says. Otherwise, you get fired. It's as simple as that. Otherwise, the relationship, the basis of that relationship falls apart. If one is the Lord, if one is the master, and the other one is the servant, and the servant doesn't do what the master says, well then there's no relationship. And obviously we understand that we are willingly in that relationship of accepting him as our Lord, and making ourselves slaves to him because he has bought us with a terrible price. And so, that's the problem today, is that there are multitudes of people outside the church who will speak about the Lord, or about the Lord Jesus Christ, but they don't submit their lives to him. But even worse, there are many within churches who call him Lord, and yet he is not their Lord. He does not dictate to them. He doesn't tell them what to do. They don't want to do what he tells them to do. And of course, from this we get a whole reaction to that mess of people saying, well, he is my Lord. When he is not my Lord, we get a doctrine called Lordship Salvation, which we don't hold to, and I don't believe is true. I don't believe that Jesus can be your Savior and not be your Lord. Those two concepts are contradictory. If he is your Savior, he has to be your Lord. If you accept him, if you receive him, then you receive him for all that he is. You receive him as Savior, and you must receive him as Lord and Master. You cannot receive him as Savior and not receive him as Lord. And the idea that there is a two-step process, as in the Lordship Salvation teaching, that you receive him as Savior, and then at some later stage you receive him as Lord, and so you're sort of half-saved to begin with, and then you end up fully saved, that's nonsense. You're either saved or you're not. And he is either all that he claims to be, or he is not. He cannot be your Savior without being your Lord. Now obviously that creates tremendous questions as to whether people who say they are believers call him their Savior and don't do what he says, whether in fact they are saved or not. And I'm not going to answer that question, because it is a lot more complicated than it seems. And so, why do you call me Lord? And we say, well, you know, we don't call him Lord, but every time we pray, we pray in the name of the Lord Jesus, or the Lord Jesus Christ. We all use that. And we say, well, that's part of his title. His title is the Lord Jesus Christ. But how can you use a title if you don't understand what you're saying? So every time we pray to the Lord, or to the Lord Jesus, or to the Lord Jesus Christ, we are making a confession that he is our Lord, when in fact he may not be. And so obviously Jesus is speaking to the multitude. There's a huge crowd of people, and he has just spoken the Beatitudes. We're still in that context. He has just spoken about being poor in spirit. He's just spoken about love. He's just spoken about all those things. And he says, you call me Lord, master, or teacher, but not really teacher, because that's a different word, but you don't do what I say. And we know that out of that whole crowd, there was only a handful who really had accepted him as their Lord. And so he says, whoever comes to me and hears my sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like. And so there are three steps here, and I'm not going to spend so much time on the houses. I want to spend more time on these first two verses, and then we'll apply it in the example of the two houses. So whoever comes to me, hears my sayings, number two, and does them, number three. So the first part of the equation is that we have to come to him. Now remember the crowd that he was preaching to, they had all come to him. They were all following him. But they were following him for the wrong reasons, because later on he says, well, you're not following me because of the words I speak, but you're following me because I'm giving you bread to eat. And so the first thing is that we must come to him. There are many people who want salvation, but they don't want to come to Jesus. They're quite happy to come to the church. They're quite happy to come to some kind of religion. They're quite happy to come to the pastor, but they don't really want to come to Jesus. And in fact, it's become a colloquial saying that someone had, and I really object to this, particularly when Christians use it, that he had a come-to-Jesus moment. Ever heard the saying? In other words, some kind of epiphany, some kind of wake-up call. Doesn't necessarily mean they got saved, just means that they saw the light on some political issue or some life issue or whatever. No, if we've come to him, we can only come to him on the basis of wanting what he has to offer. Many times when Christians have problems, they run to all sorts of sources. They run to their friends, they run to Facebook, they run to all over. But they won't come to Jesus. And at the end of the day, he's the only one who has the answers. And many times he is the last one that we will turn to in a time of need, or in a time when we're looking for answers. He is the only one who has the answers, and we must come to him. It's no good coming to church. I mean, there's this concept that is being preached today and being encouraged today, and no doubt, to some extent, maybe amongst us here. It's, you know, why don't you come to church? Well, it's great to come to church, but unless you come to Jesus, you've still got nothing. Coming to church doesn't help, unless it results in you coming to Jesus. We need to come to him. He is the only one who has the answers. He is the only one who has the philosophy that we need in order to live our lives. We must come to him. And when we have gone everywhere else and found no solutions and no answers in whatever everyone else in the world and even the church has to offer, Jesus remains the answer. He remains the solution. He remains everything that we need. We must come to him. And then he says, coming to me, you need to hear who hears my sayings. Now, the whole crowd was there, and they were listening to Jesus. But were they hearing? This is a challenge that not just Jesus faced, but that every preacher faces. And that there are people, and of those who are present here this morning, I don't know how many are actually hearing. I know not everybody has had the privilege—I don't regard it as a privilege—but to fly. And if you fly often, you know that part of the process of flying, and I don't know what flying in the new world or in the new age is going to look like, but part of the deal is that once you sit down, the air hostess—or I don't even know what the politically correct term is—the flight attendant. The flight attendant will get up and make some announcements, the same way as I get up and make announcements at the beginning of the service. And the announcements, I can tell you—I won't bore you with them, but I can tell you what they are off my heart, because I've heard them hundreds of times. That must be the most difficult job that anyone has, to stand up there and make the announcements, and the moment they stand up there and begin to make the announcements, everybody turns to their phone, switches on whatever's on the screen on the seat back, opens the magazine, gets a glazed look over their eyes, because everybody knows the story. Nobody's interested in listening. So everybody hears, and they go to great lengths to try and get you to listen. Some airlines have very comical things on the screen to try and get you to get the message. Everybody's hearing, all 600 people, whatever's in that plane, everybody's hearing, but nobody's hearing a single thing. Nobody has heard. In fact, I've heard some examples of flight attendants making bogus statements, just saying something ridiculous, and nobody even picks it up. And as I said earlier, maybe the second worst thing, worst job is to make announcements in the church, because I'll make the announcements on Sunday morning, and then at the door people will say, Do we have a meeting on Thursday night? But I said we have a meeting on Thursday night. I said it several times sometimes, or I get an email. Well, what about this? Well, I made the announcement. You were there when I made the announcement. And obviously I don't say that, I try to be gracious and patient. And then the third worst thing has to be to be a preacher. And Jesus was a preacher. And Jesus knew that people were there, but they were not hearing. They were not listening. And you know, there's a whole bunch of things that we do in this process, and I've touched on these over the years, and I'm not going to go through all of them, but here are a couple of the things that we do. The first is that we deflect. We deflect. In other words, I hope my husband or my wife or brother so-and-so is listening, because this is for them. No, this is not for them, this is for you. This whole message this morning from the beginning to the end is for you, for no one else. Whether you're seated here or watching on Facebook or wherever, this is for you. The second thing we do is that we modify the message. So when I say we must come to Jesus, I don't really want to come to Jesus, but I have inbuilt abilities in my mind to change the message so that it means what I want it to mean. Oh, I must come to church. That's what it means. And that's why I preach the way I do. I say the same things over and over. Peter did the same thing. Peter says to tell you the same things again and again is necessary. And that's why I make things very simple. You say, well, you know, how can you spend 20 minutes on one verse? I have to spend 20 minutes on one verse because exactly this problem is that we hear what we want to hear. We change it the way we want to change it so that it doesn't mean what it means. And then the third thing that we do is that we tune out. We tune out. Most of the time when I watch television these days, you know, we'll tell you I'm not watching. She has to tell me what happened because there's nothing to see anyhow. So I'm reading. I'm doing something else. And even when I am watching the screen, my mind's not there. She gets very irritated. When I say, what just happened? Because I just realized actually there was something out of the 100% there was 1% that I actually wanted to know about. And then she has to tell me what happened. Yeah, I was watching. I heard the words. But the penny didn't drop. It just didn't register. It's just part of the noise. And unfortunately the preacher and the Word of God becomes just part of the noise. We learn to live with it. A couple of us have a problem with the ringing in our ears. It's a real big problem. It's there all the time. But you learn to tune it out. You learn to somehow, but sometimes it penetrates and it really becomes irritating. But most of the time you learn to just push it away. And when God through His Spirit speaks to us, we learn how to just push it away and not to hear what He is saying. We must hear His sayings. And then the third thing is we must do what He says. We must do what He says. And you've heard me on this a thousand times. It's no good saying, I hear. It's no good being able to recite all of the Scriptures and being able to go home and to repeat word for word what I preached. Unless we do it. Because James speaks about this so clearly. He says, this is like a man who sees his face in the mirror and obviously James doesn't say this, but in first he sees that he has dirt on his face. But he goes away. And he forgets what he saw. He forgets that he needed to wash his face. And so we can look into the mirror of the Word of God. We can see our reflection against the standard, Jesus Christ. We can see, no, I have an area here I have to fix. I have something I have to do something about. But we go away. And unfortunately the devil is very good at this and Jesus speaks about the seed that fell on stony ground and the birds of the air came and snatched it away. And unfortunately the reality is that by the time we get home, by the time we leave the meeting and we drive home and stop at the convenience store to pick up bread and milk or whatever, and by the time we get home, it's all gone. It's all gone. God help us that we may hear and that we may do. Now, Jesus says, I will show you who he is like. Now, bearing in mind what I have just said, he is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock and when the flood arose the stream beat vehemently against that house and would not shake it for it was founded on the rock. And then of course the other man, he who heard, notice he heard and did nothing, is like a man who built his house on the earth without a foundation against which the stream beat vehemently and immediately it fell and the ruin of that house was great. Let's go back to verse 48. Yes, we must be built on Jesus, but here is the reason why Christians are unstable. And I don't know that you've ever heard anyone say this before, so I think this is important. The reason why Christians cannot stand the storm is because they have been disobedient. They have been disobedient. That's what Jesus is saying here. The storm obviously represents the difficulties and the trials that come upon us. And obviously when we are building, the weather is good. In South Africa and I suppose here to some extent people build on flood plains because they don't own the land and nobody else wants to build there so they just appropriate, take a piece of land and build a shack. And you say, well, that's crazy. No, it's not crazy. It's not raining. There's no flood. Everything's great until the flood comes. You see, the messages that you hear from the Spirit, whether it comes through the reading of the Word or through the conviction of the Spirit or through the preaching of His Word may not seem to be appropriate or of any value right now because there's no storm. There's no rain. And so you say, well, I'm going to carry on. I'm going to just live my life. But you haven't put down the foundation of obedience. And because there is no obedience, when the storm comes, everything falls apart. I've over the years dealt with pastors who've been Christians for many, many years. Who've been pastors for many years. And yet when the storm comes, their whole world falls apart. Everything collapses. And you say, well, why is this? Because of disobedience. You see, because when we obey, He is directing us to lay foundations in our lives that are solid. To develop a lifestyle. To develop a way of thinking that will endure the test of time. That will endure the storm. But when we are disobedient, we're building on nothing. We're not building on what He is telling us to build. We're building on our own ideas. And our own ideas don't cut it when you're going through these massive tests that we go through in life. Folks, the answer to stability is obedience. The answer to stability is obedience. When we obey, we're building on a solid foundation. Because the foundation is His foundation. When you build a house, the city inspectors will come and make sure that you have built exactly according to code. And we say, well, you know, that's a real pain. Ask me, I know. Why can't I take this shortcut? I know what I'm doing. Why do we need a foundation? We've never had a flood where this building is in the last hundred years since there's been a church on this property. Over a hundred years now, there's never been a flood here. Why do we need a foundation? You still need a foundation because the flood may come. You see, the permits or the permitting process has certain things that I need to do. And when I don't do them, the building is not safe and is not strong. And I understand when you're dealing with a city, they have rules that are just arbitrary. Just rules. But when it comes to the things of God, when He asks us to do things, nothing that He asks us to do is arbitrary. It's all designed to safeguard us against some future calamity. Well, not all. Obviously, it's to shape us and to mold us into the image of His Son and so on. But a lot of it, oftentimes, it is to prepare us for something in the future, some challenge that we're going to face. And I have just seen it so many times that people face a challenge and their whole life falls apart. And they say, well, I don't know how to... Brother, please help me. What must I do? And then I go back in my mind and instantly I recognize a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, I preached on that. Not because of me, but because of what God is doing. And had you listened to what I said a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago, you would be in a position to deal with your present crisis, or temptation, or whatever it is that you're facing right now. But because you were disobedient, now the house is imploding, the house is falling down. Folks, this is so serious because, you know, while we say, well, I'm not saved by the things I do, I'm saved by faith. Yes, that is true. But we push that to another level and we say, well, I don't have to be obedient because I'm saved, because I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, that may be true. I'm not even sure it is, but it may be true. But He is equipping us for life and for eternity. But because it doesn't look like I need it now, because the sun's shining and there's no rain, and there's no wind, and there's no storm, everything is cool. We need to hear and we need to obey. Now, I'm almost through, but I just want to pick up on the beginning of this verse again. He is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. He dug deep. No earthly foundation, no foundation of a building is just laid on top of the ground. You have to dig down. And ideally, well, there's no bedrock here that I know of, so you dig and dig and it's just sand and sand and sand. But if you can find bedrock, you need to found on that bedrock. But, folk, you need to dig deep. It's not easy to dig deep. It's much easier to do something on the surface, to just do something shallow. And I want to touch on this issue of repentance, because people will often repent, but it's a shallow repentance. A couple of tears, I'm sorry, but it doesn't go deep. It's not going down to the rock. It's not going down to the real issue. And, yeah, I feel sorry because I let the Lord down and I did this or that or the other thing, but I'm not getting back to the basic issue, and the issue is one of obedience or disobedience, of doing or not doing. That's where we need to get down to. It's no good saying, well, Lord, I'm sorry that I messed up. That's not the problem. The problem is that you've been living in disobedience and that's why you've messed up. You've been living in disobedience and that's why everything is falling down around you. And that's what we need to deal with. It's no good, if the foundation is bad, to keep patching the walls. Because if the foundation is bad, the cracks are going to show and the walls are going to begin to fall apart and you can put stucco patch or mud or whatever you like on the cracks and keep plastering over the cracks, plastering over the cracks, but it's not going to help because the problem is the foundation is bad. I remember many years ago when I was in business, one of the businesses that I was responsible for, the building had stood for, I think it was 120 years at that stage, it was a very old store. The building began to fall apart. We called in the engineers and we discovered there was no foundation. It had stood for 120 years. But there was no foundation. Well, those days they didn't really, they just put down flagstones and built on top of that. And we had to bring in specialists who had to dig down underneath, first shore up the whole building, it was a huge building, shore up the whole building and then dig down underneath and then begin to lay a foundation underneath so that the whole thing would be supported. And folks, there's no shortcut. No amount of mud is going to fix the cracks. You need to get down to the issue, the issue in which you have been disobedient, the issue that God is speaking to you about and has been speaking to you about for a long time. We need to get down to those issues and we need to dig deep and get down to the reality and to the truth. He dug deep and he laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood rose and the stream beat vehemently against that house, it could not shake it for it was founded on the rock. What are you building on? On the uncertain, shifting stands of your emotions and of having heard the message, been to church this morning or tuned in on the live stream or are you building on obedience as he directs you step by step how to order your life, how to change your thinking, how to get your life in line with the word of God. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you Lord that there is hope of a solid foundation not just and obviously in the Lord Jesus Christ but in obedience as we build on that rock and as we build according to the plan that you have designed for us in heaven, the plan or the pattern of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Lord I pray that you'd help us to be those who come to you, to be those who hear and really hear and Lord to be those that do what you ask us to do. Lord there is not one of us here this morning who is not guilty of at times hearing and not doing. Help us Lord to be doers of your word and not just hearers. Lord that we may have a sound foundation to our church and to our lives that when the storms come and the storms have begun and Lord we are seeing storms raging around us on every level, in the health area, in the financial realm, in the political realm, in the relationship issues. Lord the storms are raging and many are falling. But Lord help us to shore up those foundations that we might be able to stand. Lord we know that this is not the end of the road that times are going to get more and more difficult as we get closer to your return. And I pray Lord that we may be those who would endure to the end. I ask this in Jesus name. I pray that you'd go with us now Lord, keep us and protect us, bring us together again safely on Thursday. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.