The parable of the two houses in Matt. 7:24-27 brings the Sermon on the Mount to its climax, and in doing so does what every sermon should do: it strikes for a verdict.
As Jesus ends His sermon He does not ask, "Well, what do you think about all this?" but, "What will you do about it?" Because we build the house of our life out of the bricks of actual behaviour: not of dreams we dream or high thoughts we think.
It is surprisingly easy to be deceived about that. I am sure there were people who went home the day Jesus preached that sermon and said things like, "Very challenging, wasn't it?" and "The Rabbi really gave us food for thought today, didn't He?" and "Moved to tears I was ... haven't been stirred in years like I was today." We too, can react like that to preaching 'in the Spirit,' and imagine that because we are still able to think deep thoughts, and feel strong emotions, and experience a stirring of conscience, and make high resolves, that we are spiritual people, and everything is OK with us. But Jesus here says, "That's not good enough. You can hear everything I say and approve it - even believe it - and it do you no good at all. The only response to my teaching that will do you any good is obedience, not feelings and thoughts. In fact, not even obedience by itself is enough - you are to give that obedience because you recognise that my teaching is the truth."
To drive home the point, Jesus pointed there and then to some of the farmers' homes dotted about on the slopes of the hills where they were. Along the northern shore of the Lake the hills are scored by ravines gouged in them by the winter rains. In summer those streams dry out. The soil is baked hard by the incessant sun, so hard that almost any spot will serve on which to build a stone house. Digging down through that hard-baked soil to find a shelf of rock beneath it is desperately hard work. Sometimes people just did not bother. And you could not tell, just by looking at the houses, nestling quietly in the folds of the hills, who had built well or who had built badly. They all looked the same. Only the builders themselves knew.
But come the rains, everybody knew! The country then was exposed to sudden, heavy storms. Rain clouds driven up from the Mediterranean Sea emptied themselves on the hills in torrential down-pours. Water-courses which for months had been filled only with stones were suddenly filled with foaming flash floods which carried everything before them. Old water-courses were filled in with tons of mud and new ones gouged out. Land-slides carried whole hillsides away, and everything on them. If you had not founded your house on the rock-shelf, then not only your house, but the very foundation on which you had built it was swept away. You might have built a fine house - as fine, even finer than your neighbour's. But if you had not gone down to the rock when you laid your foundations it was swept away, a heap of rubble.
It is a parable. You can look at the houses of life men build and see little or no difference between them: a good Christian's life here, and there a good man's life who is not a Christian, and you say, "Where's the difference? The honest pagan's life is as good as the Christian's." And so it may be. But a day comes when the one stands and the other folds. The floods come: some storm of trouble, some overwhelming bereavement, a marriage crisis, the collapse of the business, a frightful accident, a crippling disease, some dreadful injustice that leaves you penniless. Then is when you see the difference: the one stands, the other goes to pieces.
What makes the difference? Not just the sort of life each lived, but the ground on which they had built it. The one grounded his whole life down on God and His Word. The other grounded his life down on his own dreams and ideals. When the floods come, the one cannot be moved, the other cannot stand.
"By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of His mouth. He spoke, and all things came to be: He commanded, and they stood forth out of nothing." (Psalm 33:6, 9) By that Word, creation stood forth, and the earth was fashioned into order out of its primeval chaos. By that Word, life itself sprang up. The Word of God is the living reality upon which the whole created order rests and by which it is maintained in being. That Word endures for ever: when the heavens and the earth are rolled up and cast away like a garment, that Word will not have passed away.
"All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of the grass: the grass withers, and the flower falls; but the Word of the Lord abides for ever." (I Peter 1:24-25) "And that Word is the Gospel which is preached to you" ... and where better than in this Sermon on the Mount by the Word made flesh?
Unless we dig down, right down to God's Word, and build on that, our life has no foundation. Build as high as we like, build as splendidly as we may, we build nothing but a heap of junk unless we build on God and His Word. That, and that alone, is what is true and real and permanent and dependable. We have to build our life on that, or it will all fall to bits. If we do not, what we build may last a long time; it may survive many storms; it may even survive every storm we face in this life: but just beyond this life is the storm of final judgment, and that storm it will not survive. Only if we have grounded our life on the true and living Word of the Eternal God will it survive. Only as we do that can we find any meaning in our birth, any worth in our life, any hope in our death, or any purpose in the whole framework of life in this world. Only that Word can truly console us in our grief, stay us in our temptations, relieve us of our guilt, hold us through our failures, direct us in our darkness, whisper to us in our loneliness, lift us above the swirling confusion that threatens to sweep us off our feet, and make us able to stand, even in the Day of Judgment. Only the Word of God. Nothing else.
Not even a good life can - only a good life grounded on the Eternal Word.
To lay hold on that Word of Truth as it has been spoken to us by the Son of God, and build on it, is the one thing supremely we must do. And that means more than hearing it, more even than hearing it with approval. To believe Jesus is not enough. We have to believe in Him: so trust Him that we do live life His Way, and see it through. The fellow whose house fell to bits had heard all right - but he had done nothing about what he had heard. It is the man "who hears these words of mine and does them" whose life is storm-proof.
Think what sort of man he will be, what sort of woman she will be, who "hears these words of His, and does them." Summarising the elements of the Sermon he will be one ...
• who does not fold up under mockery and scorn,
• who can sink his pride and confess his fault,
• who does not give up on his marriage because he holds to God through everything,
• who stays honest under all pressures,
• who trusts God enough not to take the law into his own hands,
• who serves his neighbour's interests even to his own loss,
• who actually loves his enemies, and honestly prays for those who make his life a misery,
• whose secret of religion is religion in secret,
• to whom God matters more than money,
• who looks to God to feed and clothe and shelter him, because it is his heavenly Father's business to which he is devoted,
• who, while he looks to God to give him a right judgment in all things, does not run his brother down,
• who is concerned to put his own life straight before he attempts to put others' straight,
• who has faced God alone, and gone through the narrow gate of repentance to Him,
• who has truly let God take charge of his life,
• it is that man, that woman, whose life holds up and knows no defeat, even if his life is taken life from him.
We should not be deceived by those who would tell us that the Sermon on the Mount is no more than a heady ideal, which even Jesus Himself knows we cannot live up to, and never expected we would: or that it is really only a frame-up to ensure that we all acknowledge our sins and sue for mercy. The way Jesus told this little parable gives the lie to that. He meant every word He said. He here gives us the solid basis on which to build our life. "Now build," He says, "and build on this."
Let us again remember Who it is Who says these things to us, and hear Him say them to us personally and directly. Only so do we hear them truly; only so can we take them seriously. There is in these Words no life that will stir in us and enable us to keep them unless He speaks them to us. And even then they have that life in them only because they are grounded down in the very character of God. "I have told you the way it is," Jesus says to us, "because that's the way GOD is."
The character of God and the presence of Jesus ... those are the two things on which the Sermon on the Mount wholly rests, the two things on which we are bidden to build. What God is in Himself is the solid foundation upon which all life rests; and what God is, Jesus is ... among us.
The truth is in His words. They are like the words of no other man in history, for they are not the remembered words of a dead man: He lives and speaks them still, with living lips and out of a beating heart. "Hearken to me," God has said, "you who have been borne by me from your birth, carried, even from the womb: Even to old age I am He, and to grey hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and I will save." (Isa. 46:3-4) And Jesus says, "Lo, I am with you always." You can stand on that; you can build on it.
That means that the obedience Jesus asks of us is not an obedience He would impose on us, but an obedience He will inspire in us. The Sermon on the Mount is not a new Law. It is not Law at all: it is Gospel, from start to finish. 'Law' makes a man rely on his own strength, and strive. 'Gospel' meets a man with the gift of God, and invites him to let that gift inspire his striving.
Life with Jesus is a life of response; all down the line it is a life of response to the grace of God made over to us in Christ Jesus.
• If He says, "You are the light of the world,"
that is because He is Himself the Light of the World, and so gives Himself to us as to make our lives shine with it.• If He says, "Your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees',"
that is because He is Himself our righteousness, filling our hearts with His own Spirit.• If He says, "Love your enemies,"
that is because we live daily in His love for us who were His enemies.• If He says, "Forgive those who wrong you,"
that is because our hearts are filled with the forgiveness He Whom we have wronged has given us.• If He forbids us to judge others,
that is because in His marvellous grace He has lifted judgment away from us.• If we are bidden, nonetheless, to be realistic in our evaluation of others,
that is because God is realistic in His evaluation of us: though He relates to us in love, He does so always in truth.• If we are bidden to be free from care,
that is because we know it is a Father we have in heaven Who truly cares for us, even in small things.• If we are bidden to be generous even to the ungrateful, that is because we have discovered how astonishingly generous God is to ungrateful us.
• If we are bidden to hide the pain of self-discipline from others, that is because God hides His own pain in all His dealings with us.
• If we are bidden to be always asking, seeking and knocking,
that is because God is ever asking: pleading with us, seeking us, continually knocking at our door.• If we are bidden to be utterly devoted to God, setting His interests above our own,
that is because we know, since we have witnessed the Cross of His Son, that He is utterly devoted to us, setting our advantage above His own, heedless of the loss He bears to do so.• If we are bidden to be perfect,
that is because God Himself is perfect, and has planted His own heredity in us, so that like real children we bear the family likeness.• If He bids us come to Him through the narrow door,
that is because we know that He Himself has come to us through the narrowest of all doors, stooping like an eskimo crawling into his igloo to enter our life through the narrow door of birth from a woman's womb.• If He bids us build true,
that is because He is Himself the foundation on which He would have us build - and the blueprint to which we do it - and the Master Builder who will guide our hand.• He asks everything of us only because He is everything to us.
The Sermon on the Mount is Gospel. How can we hear what God says to us in it about love and forgiveness and not discern behind His words the Cross of His Son where that love and forgiveness is secured to us? "Freely you have received, freely give."
It is not a burden He lays upon us - or if it is, it is the sort of burden that wings are to a bird. "My yoke is easy," He says, "My burden is light."
If therefore there is any part of this Sermon on the Mount that leaves us feeling, "This is a hard saying, who can bear it?" that can only be because there is as yet some dimension of His grace that we have not discovered in its relevance to our need, but which, even yet, we may.
Said Paul, "Not as though I were already perfect, but I press forward, drawn by the upward call of Christ Jesus my Lord, eager to lay hold on all that is offered me in Him, even as He Himself has laid hold on me."
Let us receive the Lord Jesus into our life to be ...
• the foundation on which we build it,
• the strength in which we build it,
• the wisdom with which we build it,
• the material with which we build it,
• and the goal of all our building.
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