Exposing Foundations

SERMON: 2008-07-23--sm0858--exposing-foundations SOURCE DURATION: 00:40:49.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: All candidates form a continuous narrative (theological exposition and pastoral application/benediction). Since there is no clear transition to music or announcements after this segment, the final candidate represents the conclusion of the sermon material. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:38:42.480-00:40:47.820 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- As we look then this morning at these verses that we've read together from Matthew chapter 7, the verses 24 to 27, like to make three observations. Number one, storms are an inevitable reality of life. Listen again to verse 25, "The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house. The rain came, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat." Sometimes it just rains on your parade. I don't know how many of you have seen the news story coming out of China this past week, but the officials in China are so worried about rain at the opening exercises of the Olympics that they have surrounded the city of Beijing with 26 artillery locations. Did you know that? About 25 miles away from the city, and these artillery locations and rocket launchers are designed to shoot silver iodide into any clouds that might gather and threaten the opening exercises with rain. Now it'll be very interesting to see how well this works because July and August in Beijing are the wettest months of the year. And a while back when they tried this as an exercise someplace, silver iodide, the idea is that it precipitates the rain out before it actually rains. This has been around for many years, only works so-so in most locations. But listen, in China when they tried this recently, they set off a phenomenal series of thunderstorms in some other location that just about washed them away. So we'll see how it all goes. Sometimes it rains in your parade and sometimes the rains are of our own making, aren't they? We spend our money foolishly, we drive recklessly, we don't cultivate relationships properly, and sooner or later it catches up with us and we pay the price. Other times the rain in our parade has nothing to do with us. I love this little story, it's circulating on the internet, somebody sent it to me a while back, it's under the heading things got you down, well then consider these. In a hospital's intensive care unit, patients always died in the same bed on Sunday morning at about 11 o'clock in the morning regardless of the medical condition. This, as you can imagine, puzzled the doctors and some even thought it had to do with something supernatural. No one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths occurred around 11 o'clock in Sunday morning. So they gathered a worldwide team of experts to investigate the cause of this incident. Well the next Sunday morning a few minutes before 11 o'clock all the doctors and the nurses nervously waited outside the ward to see for themselves what this terrible phenomenon was all about. Some were holding wooden crosses, prayer books, other holy objects to ward off the evil spirits. Just then the clock struck 11 and Pookie Johnson, the part-time Sunday custodian, entered the ward, unplugged the life support system so that he could use the vacuum cleaner. You're still having a bad day? Listen to this one. The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000 per seal. At a special ceremony two of the most expensively saved animals were being released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later in full view a killer whale ate them both. And you thought your life was hard. You want to hear still another one? A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen shaking frantically almost in a dancing frenzy with some kind of wire running from his waist toward the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood, breaking his arm into places. And then she discovered that up until that moment he had been happily listening to his Walkman. Sometimes the rain is your own stupid fault. Sometimes the rain is caused by other people's stupid faults. And sometimes the rain is just caused by the fact that we live in a world that is in turmoil and we get caught up in the changes that are happening. A number of months ago a number of people from here had the privilege of attending a leadership Nova conference in Toronto sponsored by the Willow Creek folks. Of all the speakers in all the workshops that most resonated with me was a speaker by the name of Leonard Sweet. Surprised me a little bit because it so happens that I have one of his books in my library and it's so complicated I haven't been able to get into it to read. But he talked about a thing called the perfect storm. You've seen the movie maybe or have read the book. A perfect storm is when you have a convergence of a number of weather elements that take a single storm and make it humongous. The Quebec ice storm you know years back that hung around was was one of those perfect storms. Back in 1953 when I was a young lad living in the Netherlands a combination of high tides and northwesterly winds flooded the whole part of the country where I lived in a perfect storm. And Leonard Sweet says that unbeknownst to most churches and to most church people the church in the 21st century is sailing into a perfect storm. And that perfect storm he says has three elements to it. Let me quickly walk you through them. The first is post-modernism. A change of thinking that is produced by in part the electronic revolution. He says one of the ways to remember and understand post-modernity is to contrast the operative words are Gutenberg and Google. Gutenberg is the printed page. Google is the symbol of the changing media world. The post-modern world is a visual world and people's brains are in fact being wired differently by all the video gaming and media messages which they are receiving. A very significant transition. Then he says we live in what's known as post-Christendom. That is to say no longer do Christians in our society hold the advantage of being the home crowd where society as a general rule is favorably inclined towards us. In the last couple of decades that has rapidly been shifting and our culture is not only increasingly non-Christian in its favor and values it is decidedly anti-Christian. And you hear that from all sides. And then he says and this is the one that I had never heard of before the third element of convergence he says is something called post-scale. And by post-scale what he means is that there comes a time when a society goes through transitions that all of a sudden you move from one state or from one position into another and a good example of that is water. Water is typically liquid and you can chill water all the way down to 32 degrees and all of a sudden what happens to it are zero degrees Celsius. It freezes. Now all of a sudden you can walk on water, you can skate on water, you're dealing with two different worlds. You've got the same thing if ever you've stirred your cream hard and long enough. You wouldn't be the first housewife to all of a sudden discover that your whipped cream turns into what? Butter. It has changed states. Well he says we live in a world where the transitions are now of such a nature they're moving us from one way of doing life into another and he summarizes it with the word green. G stands for genetic engineering. Nobody knows where that's going to lead and nobody knows what the implications of that are. R for robotic engineering. I, I don't happen to remember. And for nanotechnology where things are becoming increasingly small and a whole different set of rules begins to operate. And the point of what I'm making and the point of what he's making and all of that is that Christians as well as non-Christians are caught up in this changes that are coming and that are happening and there is not much we can do about it in terms of stopping it. It's very important to understand that because a lot of people think that somehow or another Christians ought automatically to be kept safe when the rain falls. But truth of the matter is scripture says God makes his rain to fall on the what? The just and on the unjust and the sun to rise on the good and on the evil. If a war were to break out in our country tomorrow you and I would be caught up in the turmoil of it. If the economy continues to go down the tubes you and I Christian or not we're going to be affected by it. The vast movements of life, the vast movements of society, the things that make us feel powerless, if we have a natural disaster we're not automatically saved. I mean Fred and Mark's trees they're all God or most of them even though God saved their house. See the promise in scripture is not necessarily that we will never go through storms in life as a lot of us can testify to here. The promise is that God will either avert all evil or he will turn it to our good but the reality is that sooner or later it's going to rain on our parade and God's promise is that in the midst of the rain he's still with us and he will somehow or another turn it around for our good. So storms are an inevitable reality of life and it doesn't mean that your faith is wiped out, doesn't mean God doesn't love you, doesn't mean that he's against you, doesn't mean that he has abandoned you, it simply means that he loves you enough to allow you to walk through tough times to make you strong for his glory. Here is how Charles Spurgeon, famous English preacher of the 1800s put it, he says whether your religion be true or false it will be tried. Whether it be chaff or wheat the fan of the great winower will surely be brought into operation upon all that lies on the threshing floor. If you have dealings with God you have to do with a consuming fire. Whether you be really or nominally, that is a name only, a Christian, if you come near to Christ he will try you as silver is tried. Judgment must begin at the house of God and if you dare to come into the house of God judgment will begin with you. But understand this, the whole world is heading towards a final day of judgment and if God allows fires to come into our lives today, if he allows rain on our parade, as I said a moment ago it's not because he's against us it's because he loves us enough so as to call our attention to the issues of life that he wants transformed in our hearts so that on that final day of judgment we'll be able to pass the test fly in color. Think of all the people that are going to discover when everything is tested by fire that there is nothing left and there is no longer the prospect of transformation. Storms, I say it again, are a reality even for God's people and the purpose of that then is that storms expose foundations, storms lay bare what your life is built on. Think back to a year ago. A year ago we first began developing the property at 100 College Street West. What is the very first thing our crews did when they began to develop that property? Well they carted truck loads and truck loads and truck loads of landfill out of there because it wasn't good solid soil to build on. I think back to the truck loads of old culverts that were hauled out of there. One of the neighbors who used to operate a television shop took it upon himself to dump all his used junk, VCRs, televisions on our property. For a long time the land was used as a landfill so all had to be carted out of there and then trucks had to bring back the gravel to bring it back up to proper grade for the foundation to be laid and why do we do that? Because anybody who builds can tell you that your house or your building is only as good as the foundation that you're building on. Now Jesus says in this wonderful little story that when it comes to building there are really two foundations that people build on. One is rock and the other is sand. Verse 24 everyone who hears these words of mine and put them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Then in verse 26 but everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them or does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. Now we read that over lightly and we sort of understand the basic concepts but allow me to take just a moment and talk you through each of these because they're very significant. What does it mean to build your life on the rock? We know what it means in terms of a physical building but what does it mean to build your life on the rock? Well the rock there of course is the person and the teachings of Jesus Christ and to build your life on the rock then is to confess that there is a God who has created us that we are alienated from him because of our sin that God in his love and compassion has sent his son into the world to pay the penalty and the price for our sin that he arose from the dead that he poured out his Holy Spirit that he not only forgives us our transgressions but that he now enables us to be in proper relationship with him and he enables us progressively to hear and to understand his will and to learn how to do it. That's building your life on the rock. In contrast to that of course is the sand and the sand here is the shifting philosophies of human thinking. Instead of submitting to the authority of Jesus Christ how he says life ought to be lived and how life can be successful we develop theories of our own and some of those theories are things that we make up on the basis of our own experience how we learn to do life and react and respond to it. Some of those theories are the result of traditions of the forebears that we have uncritically accepted and we've learned how to do life that way and some of those philosophies are in their ultimate manifestation the result of principalities and powers that try to shape the thinking of the world to be anti Christ and to be anti God and so what kind of sand what kind of philosophies am I talking about philosophies like thinking that you can have a relationship with God based on your own good works thinking that God likes you better if you do it right and that only you try hard enough he'll take notice of you. Philosophies like well if I go through religious motions or exercise religious practices then God will overlook my sin and I'll be okay. Philosophies like if only we can get the proper kind of education into people in the world then we can overcome all the disadvantages of the fall and we can produce an intelligent society that will get along with each other or if only we can get everybody to buy into a particular philosophical or political or social or economic movement then then we'll all be together on it and we'll be able to overcome the power of the curse and we can live a happy life. All you have to do is go to the bookstore look at the self-help section read current literature and current magazines on how to be more beautiful and how to be richer and how to be more successful and how to be a better lover and you'll get some idea of what are the philosophies of the world that we are encouraged to build our lives upon and the Bible says every last one of them is shifting sand it was Oscar Wilde I believe many years ago who made the observation that he who marries the spirit of the age will soon find himself a widow or a widower why because society keeps on changing you've noticed that have you not what is in vogue today is out of vogue tomorrow I remember the days when everybody said butter is bad for you you remember that eat margarine well now lately they tell us that butter is in fact better than margarine a while back all eggs were bad for you now maybe there is some merit in eating eggs I remember in my own lifetime the concept of continental drift you know how the continents spread apart was poo hard as a scientific impossibility so any kid looking at a map can say these things belong together right and of course in recent years we've discovered all about plate tectonics and how in fact historically there may well have been a landmass that was all joined together and that the great currents of molten rock have been moving the the continents into their locations things change all the time now here are two things I want us to understand about building on sand versus building on the rock it is much easier to build on salient go back with me to when we started the building program a year ago we spent as I said a considerable amount of money time and effort digging all that junk out of there it would have been much easier to bring a bulldozer in and just level that off nicely lay the foundations and put the building up we could have saved weeks and months of time why didn't we do it because sand and junk do not a good foundation make and so building on sand is really easy because all you do is you flatten it a little bit and you start building and the guy that's building on sand is half done before the other guys even started because remember now today we do a lot of building with heavy-duty equipment and we're grateful for errand and other guys like him who come and move great piles of dirt in no time at all but in olden days it was pretty much all handwork and you can imagine the digging down to the rock and building on that was a tedious and a difficult process and so I can imagine that many people building on sand said well you know don't be so fussy let's just get on with it look at that guy over there he's man he's just a sweating away in the hot Sun and and he is just so particular about getting it all right I say again building on what comes naturally following your natural inclinations doing it the way that your parents have taught you without examining it biblically following along the spirit of the age as to how you do life that is much easier than trying to examine who you are who God is and what God wants you to do and most of the time people like that seem to be much more content struggle much less than the believer who's trying to build on the rock until it rains because of what happens when it rains the rain exposes the foundation and yes you can build your life on shifting philosophies you don't have to live biblically when it comes to relationships you don't have to listen to what scripture says about whether or not you live together or sleep together or mess around before or after you're married you don't have to follow biblical principles in whatever area of life child-raising business work relationships we can ignore it whatever place we want to ignore it and part of the struggle of believers in scripture is that half the time the wicked prosper when the righteous are struggling isn't that true until it rains and when it rains the workmanship is revealed and the foundation is laid there while back we had this big downpour do you remember it I think it must have been on a Sunday or a Saturday it just rained like the sky at least in Belleville here it did and next Monday morning the workmen came to the job site and in a couple of places there was just water all over the place now when you find water all over the place in a building that's going up what's the first thing you do well you look at the roof right roof wasn't finished flashing isn't on in the past places where the flashing hasn't been put in place water got through so you're all these guys they're going around looking at the ceiling tile and the ceiling tiles not wet so now what where's this water coming from well it turns out that the storm sewer had backed up into the building under the pressure of water on the roof because one of the plumber workman had not properly fastened the closures on the pipe and John Roper told me later and I said you could have saved us all a lot of grief trying to figure out where that rain came from he was in there Sunday afternoon and he said the water was just us squirting out of the walls because some of these things were hidden inside walls see life's good till it rains and I'll tell you something if God loves you it's gonna rain sooner or later and when it does our foundations will be laid bare because the rain exposes what's there very important principle to try to understand because as I said part of God's love for us is to allow that to happen now rather than after the fact and that again is one of these fascinating object lessons about building the building better we discover it now we keep saying that to each other better we find out now then after the whole building is finished off and there is tons more money that has to be wasted trying to fix what should have been fixed the first time around very profound lesson for each of our lives so storms are a reality storms expose foundations and on account of that then we better build wisely the wise men did what he built his house upon the rock the foolish man did what he built his house upon the sand. A wise man or a wise woman in scripture is a person who knows how to cooperate with the reality of the universe. The reality of God, the reality of the laws of God, the reality of human relationships, the reality of this is how life works. A fool is a person who ignores that reality. That's why the Bible says the fool says in his heart there is no God. Why is he a fool? He can be the smartest person in the world. He can be highly successful but a fool he is nevertheless why? Because just because he thinks there is no God doesn't make it reality. God is God eternally. And a wise person then, knowing that it's gonna rain, sooner or later it's gonna rain, sooner or later you're gonna have the perfect storm. The wise man, the wise woman says in view of the coming storm I'm gonna do everything that I can today to build wisely on the teachings of scripture. A lot of you won't know this but every time there are natural disasters people in positions of authority and power sit down and they try to analyze what happened, how can we reduce the liability? And some of you that have been volunteers in the building program will know that in order to protect the roof of buildings from lifting off and the eventuality of a hurricane in our building on 100 College Street West we have over a thousand strips of steel. Some of you will remember this but all had to be nailed in place to hold the roof to the rest of the structure so that in a strong wind it isn't gonna lift off and fly away. Those that are built in earthquake zones, why do some stand and others fall? A lot depends on how wisely they have been built. So how do we build wisely? Well Jesus puts it this way everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Notice what he says, hears these words of mine and puts them into practice. He doesn't say he who hears these words of mine and understands them or he who hears these words of mine and knows how to analyze them or he who hears these words of mine and knows how to preach great sermons or write great books or develop other profound philosophical insights. No, no, no, no, no. He who hears these words of mine and does what? Practices that. Now isn't that an amazing thing? He expects to be listened to. I mean I love this story and some of you heard me tell it before. Preacher comes to the new congregation. Everybody's excited you know. He preaches one, oh it's just a Homer. I mean it's just a fine sermon. Everybody you know marches by and shakes his hand and they're so pleased with his new preacher. Next Sunday preaches the same sermon again. And they're a little bit puzzled because well maybe he was just busy moving into the parsonage and he's got a lot of visits to make. That's probably why he didn't have time to make a new sermon. Third week, same thing. Well now the good Christian patience is beginning to wear pretty thin and so tongues begin to wag. Well what's with this preacher but they're not yet brave enough to talk to him or ask him about it. So fourth week, finally the powers that be, they approach him tentatively and they ask him, "Pastor we love your sermon but why are you preaching the same one?" The preacher looked at them and said, "Well as soon as you start doing what I told you in the first one, I'll give you the next one." And frankly those of us who preach and teach have some sympathy for that position because guess what? It's not just about intellectual stimulation. It's not just about feeling good about ourselves or feeling bad about ourselves. It's not you know ecclesiastical basketball where the word of God comes to me and it's so hot I gotta pass it on to the next guy before I take another step. It's not about you know feeling good about God or feeling bad about God. No, no, no, no. It's all about putting it into practice. He who hears these words of mine and practices them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock. So why do I do that? Well it begins by taking him at his word. That is to say it begins by recognizing that Jesus knows what he's talking about. Surprise, surprise. You know as the eternally begotten Son of God, the full reflection of God the Father, he is the ultimate manifestation of wisdom. He knows how the universe operates. And as one who knows how the universe operates he expects us to listen to him because he has authority. We don't have time to deal with it this morning but the last verse of this passage goes on to say that the people who listened to his teaching were amazed. Why? Because he taught them as one who has authority. And somewhere along the line in your life and in my life there has to come a recognition, a bending of the knee that says that Jesus knows best how to do life and I must bend before his authority and let his word shape me. Never mind whether that's difficult. Never mind whether we fully understand that. That's not even the issue at this point. Do I recognize that he is Lord? And when I call him Lord I am saying you own me. I belong to you. When you say jump I must jump. I cannot sit here and argue with you. Though all of us do that a lot I'm sure. He is the ultimate authority who has the right to tell me how to treat my spouse, what I ought to be doing on the job, how I ought to relate to my kids, how I ought to relate to the broader world, how I ought to live my life. Not only that when push comes to shove of course I need to obey what it is that he says. He who hears these words of mine and practices them. Older translations put it he who does them. I like the word practice because it does more justice to the process right? I read a little piece in I think it was Reader's Digest just recently that says great musicians are not just the product of genetics but they are very much the product of practice, practice, practice. And some of our sinful habits in our lives are so deeply practiced that we slide back into them again and again and again. And part of the antidote to that is to take those places where God begins to speak to us and to convict us and we learn to start being obedient a step at a time until new habits are formed and new patterns are established in our hearts and in our minds. It takes practice to do the will of God. It doesn't come naturally to any one of us and I can guarantee you that if you are truly in Christ, if you've truly repented, truly bent the knee before him and said Lord I belong to you and I want to serve you then what you'll discover in your life is that sooner or later the Holy Spirit is going to come along and he's going to convict you in two areas. He's going to convict you about old patterns that are not acceptable that have to be put off, stuff that we don't usually want to look at, stuff that usually bugs the daylights out of us but a conviction that will not leave. And at the same time he begins to pull us in another direction, exercising forgiveness, learning how to love somebody that you don't want to love, learning how to be different in your relationship with your spouse, your kids, your worker, God knows whatever else. And it's how we respond to those urgings of the Holy Spirit that determine the foundation that we're laying. And the reason this is so important is nobody knows when the storm is going to come. And when the storm comes, whether it be individual, collective, whether it be minor or huge, that is not the time when you can rebuild your house because you don't even have time to batten down the hatches. It hits and it reveals what life is made of. As I said earlier, that is why God in his great love for his children, he doesn't wait until the final day of judgment because on the final day of judgment, it's too late. Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. And now he disciplines those whom he loves. Why? So he can bring us to our knees. We can learn what we need to learn. We can grow up in him and we can discover that God's power and God's grace is so amazing that even in spite of all our failures and the messes that we've made, he's still there and he's going to present us one day without spot or wrinkle or blemish. Christians do not need to fear the future. Leonard Sweet, when he ends his talk, he talks about the church facing into the storm, lashing onto the mast and riding [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:38:42.480; remove through 00:40:49.000] it out, knowing that [CUT] God has promised to be with us always, even to the end of the age. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock and the rains came tumbling down. The rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. And the house on the rock stood firm. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand and the rains came tumbling down. The rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. And the house on the sand went flat. So build your house on the Lord Jesus Christ. So build your house on the Lord Jesus Christ. And the blessings will come down. The blessings will come down as the prayers go up. The blessings will come down as the prayers go up. The blessings will come down as the prayers go up. So build your house on the Lord. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:40:49.000; resume after this marked segment]