Matthew chapter 7 verse 24, and if you'll
stand we'll take a look at it.
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and
doeth them, I will liken him unto a
wise man, which built his house upon a
rock.
And the rain descended, and the floods came,
and the winds blew, and beat upon that
house, and it fell not, for it was
founded upon a rock.
And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine,
and doeth them not, shall be likened unto
a foolish man, which built his house upon
the sand.
And the rain descended, and the floods came,
and the winds blew, and beat upon that
house, and it fell, and great was the
fall of it.
And it came to pass, when Jesus had
ended these sayings, that the people were astonished
at his doctrine.
For he taught them as one having authority,
and not as the scribes.
When he was come down from the mountains,
great multitudes followed him.
Let's pray.
Father, we do thank you again for your
word tonight, and we ask that as we
come, Lord, to the close of this greatest
sermon ever preached, greatest message, Lord, ever given
to man, Lord, though it takes the rest
of the word of God to understand it,
this phenomenal sermon, Jesus, that you gave on
the mount, we pray that as you concluded
it, that the great conclusion of it would
come to our hearts.
And the importance of it, the absolute fundamental
truth of who you are, and what we
do with it, Lord, that you would bring
it home to every one of our hearts,
a great understanding of it.
For Father, we ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, as we have been going through the
Sermon on the Mount, of course, by now
the great principles of the Christian life have
been very, very well stated, of course.
And now Jesus, as he is closing off
here in chapter 7, he has been going
through a series of exhortations, essentially, exhorting us
of the fundamental importance of following these things,
not just simply listening to them and hearing
them.
But as Jesus says, in verse 26, everyone
that heareth these saying of mine, and doeth
them not.
He's there, he looks and he says, it
isn't, did you hear them?
He said, what did you do with them?
What happened with them?
And here is, he's bringing home the applications.
Now he's bringing home the great decision, essentially,
to us of what do we do regarding
whether are we going to follow the true
prophets or the false prophets?
For Jesus said, you know, he is through
the Sermon a number of times.
He said, you know, you have heard that
it hath been said by them of old
times, but I say unto you, he said
that six or seven times to them.
You have been hearing by the false prophets.
One thing, I'm telling you another one.
And as he straightened out the centrality of
the gospel and the importance of understanding the
reality of following with him.
And over and over, I've seen, you've heard,
but I say, and now he's telling us,
you got to decide whether you are going
to go the broad way or you're going
to go the narrow way.
And if we're straight as the gate and
narrow as the way, and few there be
that enter in there at their at, Jesus
says.
And here, Jesus is bringing home the great
reality that one day, the Bible tells us
that it's appointed to all men once to
die.
And then after that, the judgment.
The one great thing that we know that
is going to happen to all people is
that they will one day stand before God
to give an answer for their life.
For all of the issues that are important,
Jesus is bringing it down to this one
central great reality that each and every man
will one day give an answer for his
life in this final judgment.
And as Jesus talks about it here, he
gives some astounding things.
He says, there's a lot of people that
will say, but Lord, Lord, didn't I?
And he says, there'll be many, many people
who spent their whole life thinking they were
a Christian.
They're not.
And now, as he's closing it off, he's
once again bringing home another application.
There are the importance there of following him,
obeying him, doing the things that will determine
and define our eternal life.
And here, Jesus, he gives this final illustration
essentially of two men.
Both of them contractors, you might say, so
to speak.
Both of them building houses.
Both apparently believing they're Christians.
Both, it would appear, at least they're professing
Christians, as you would look at it.
And when you look at them, they both
seem to be ones, you might say, who
study the things of God, study Christianity.
They believe it's the right way of life.
They've seemingly heard what they believe to be
the gospel.
They seem to profess it, seem to be
disciples of it, building their life in a
way that would be right before God.
And yet, within this group, there's obviously a
very clear difference between the two.
One of them is God's child, and the
other one is not, but thinks they are.
An awesome sight, isn't it?
What a thing to think of one day
happened to us.
Both men, when you look at them, on
one hand, there's quite some similarities, I suppose
you might say, when you would look at
it.
Both men seem to have the same desire.
That is, both of them wanted a house.
Something to protect their family, something in which
to dwell.
Both men seemingly almost picked the same geography.
When you look at the picture here, as
it's kind of described, it almost appears as
if the houses, you know, are almost next
to each other, very close.
Both of them, I suppose you could say,
for the sake of the illustration gives here,
Jesus gives here, you might say, built their
house the same design.
You might look at the two, and they
both had the same architect, same subcontractors, you
know, all the way through.
Had the same material, same design, same expense,
same framers, maybe same plumbers, same electrical, same
roofers, you know, in a sense of building
all of this house.
They might have, as you would look at
these houses, they might appear exactly the same,
you know, right down to the very little
sign over the door, God bless this house.
You know, and both of them, as you
would look at the houses, you'd almost get
the picture, they're almost identical.
And yet, at the same time, Jesus doesn't
see them that way at all, not even
for a moment.
One of them is truly a born-again
child of God, the other is a pseudo
-Christian.
And yet, as you look at them, almost
for the sake of the illustration, as Jesus
gives it, it's almost hard to define the
difference between them.
You can't see any obvious differences, in a
sense, in the illustration.
By all the outward appearances, at any rate,
there, it's very difficult to see or determine
any real difference at all.
And much like, I suppose, the false prophet
and the true prophet.
When you would look at the false and
the true prophet, both of them say they're
teaching the truth, leading people into the truth,
both of them use the Bible.
Both the true and the false prophet believe
in God, or say they do.
Both of them would talk about Jesus Christ
in the way of following Christ.
Both of them, I suppose, might believe in
good morals, ethics, values, clean living.
And you have to study even the true
and the false prophet, sometimes very clearly, to
detect the difference.
And so, too, with many people that call
themselves Christians.
In the sense that you've got to look
sometimes very, very carefully.
And at first look at them.
You know, when you look at the true
Christian and the false Christian, they may look
very, very much alike.
And sometimes, the false Christian even puts the
true Christian to shame.
Sometimes, when you look at them, their values
may be even as good or better than
a born-again Christian.
They may have ethics, they may have morality,
they may have all sorts of standards that
are very, very impressive.
They may be even higher standards.
They may even have greater legal things that
they kind of keep and hold on to.
Sometimes, many Christians say, well, we can do
this and we can do that, and God's
grace is there.
And they may look and even live better,
on the surface, more righteously.
Sometimes, when you would look at those that
seem to embody themselves within what they might
call the family of God, whether it could
be a Mormon, it could be a Jehovah's
Witness, it could be Christian scientists, it could
be all sorts of others that are within
it, and you would try to observe them.
Many times, in their homes, the ethics, the
family, the values, the way that they may
do business, their honesty, their integrity, they may
be outstanding.
They may be somebody that, when you look
at it, they've got great biblical truths on
which they hang and have acquired their values,
their ethics, their moralities, the way they built
their lives.
They maybe have a chapter and verse for
every stud in the wall, you might say.
For every, you know, aspect of the wiring
that goes through, and all the connections in
the roofing, it may be something that they
can look and say, the Bible taught us
how to put this roof up here.
And they may actually have biblical references and
have followed scriptural truths all the way through
the construction of their house, their relationships, their
marriages, their families, their business practices.
Everything that is around them might be very
right, very biblical, very, very good, and kept
to the letter of the law, kept wonderfully,
kept very, very well.
They may practice biblical principles in their marriages,
raising their children, in all the aspects of
their life.
And next to a true born-again Christian,
where Jesus is making quite a difference here,
you might even look at one and say,
what right do you have to judge them?
Look at their family, look at their fine
children, look at their home, look at their
values, look at the way that they do
business.
Well, say whatever you want to, but as
far as Jesus is concerned, he divides them
right down the middle, doesn't he?
He looks at one and he says that
it's God's, and the other one isn't.
Very simple, very clear, very obvious from God's
perspective.
From heaven's perspective, there's no struggle at trying
to determine at all which is which, which
is okay.
In God's analysis, when God sits down and
he evaluates and he judges, though you and
I, you know, could put together a huge
panel that could never agree on anything as
to who is and who isn't, obviously and
clearly from God's perspective, when he sits there
in heaven, he isn't going to have any
trouble.
Every human being, when they stand before God,
will be easily, simply, quickly definable to God.
God isn't going to sit there and have
to say, you know, I got to ask
you a few questions.
I can't make up my mind about you.
I just go back and forth.
You've got so many great strengths.
You've got some really good stuff, but I've
never understood this.
No, maybe we as a panel might do
that.
God won't have that.
He'll have something that he knows, that he
knows, that he knows as deep and as
rigid and as true and as honest as
anybody can know anything.
And here Jesus separates between the two.
Doesn't have any problem.
And he makes it very clear, though, and
I suppose this is the important aspect of
this illustration that Jesus gives, is that ultimately
in his decision-making, in his evaluation, it
doesn't have anything to do, essentially, with what's
above the ground.
Just that simple.
When you look at here, you know, what
is really going on as Jesus is evaluating
it, it's not on the outside.
It's what's under the skin.
It's what below the ground, you might say.
As Jesus gives this illustration of these two
men building their houses, one of them is
upon a rock and the other is on
sand, and that makes all the difference in
the world.
That's the total determining aspect about it.
Luke chapter 6, verse 48, Jesus said, He
is like a man which built a house,
and he digged deep, and he laid the
foundation on a rock, and when the flood
arose and the stream beat vehemently upon the
house, and he could not shake it, for
it was founded upon a rock.
And here in Luke's, you know, evaluation of
Jesus' statement here on it, he looks there
and he says, here's somebody that they dug
deep, and they dug deep until they got
to bedrock.
They went down, they laid a foundation upon
a rock.
And here as he looks there, he says,
then this is the determining factor.
And one will ultimately stand or fall.
One will either be wise or foolish.
A wise man builds his house and a
fool.
A man who is just an absolute fool
is somebody that has made a terrible mistake
here as he looks at him.
And you might say, what makes him such
a fool?
Why is it that one of them, and
I suppose both of these men in one
sense, you might look at it, they both
worked just as hard in many ways.
Cost them the same, you might say.
You know what it was, you know, they
got the 16 inches on center on all
the studs in the walls and things.
They maybe got all of the, you know,
the right engineering done on the roof for
the, you know, the load to hold the
snow load or to all the other aspects
about the house.
It may be engineered the walls and it
may be where all the electrical is grounded
and all the plumbing, you know, flows in
the right direction sort of a thing and
downhill and everything else.
They may have plenty of water, you know,
pressure to run the house and everything.
But when it comes down to it, both
of them can work awfully hard.
They can sweat.
They can put out all the energy in
the whole world building the thing.
But when it's done, one of them followed
the rules and the other didn't.
And it's almost as if one of them
wanted a house and then almost to get
on with other things.
He didn't have the time for the foundation.
Didn't have it.
One builds, you know, and he, and maybe
he looks at it.
He says, this is all I need.
This will get the job of living done.
And it's something there that a lot of
people, sometimes I think when I look there
at what people believe, and I'm not here
to make fun or ridicule, you know, any
religious systems particularly.
But to me, when I look, for example,
at the foundations of Mormonism, when I look
at the foundations and the truth of what
God, where Joseph Smith got all of his
information, well-proven, very, very thoroughly documented, no
question about the fraud that went on in
his putting together the religion.
Now, I don't mean that as a cheap
shot.
I mean, it is an honest accusation.
It's well-proven.
And anybody that wants to go to the
roots and look at the foundation of it
and look at the Mormonism, you can do
the same thing with Mary Baker, Eddie in
Christian Science.
You can do it the same thing with
Russell and Rutherford and Jehovah's Witnesses.
You can do it when you want to
go and you look and say, where did
they come up with this?
How did they come about with these things
of which millions of people are living under
them and believing them and going to church
and building these unbelievable homes, building these huge
churches, dwelling inside of these religious systems and
they've got great structure to them, great all
sorts of other things.
But when you look down, what is it
upon?
What's the foundation of its existence?
Is it God from, you know, all the
way through?
Is it God's presence?
God's power?
God's supernatural revealed truth?
Or is it something there?
You got some mud.
You got a lot of man's thinking.
You got a bunch of clay.
You got a bunch of things there that
isn't.
That as it's built in many of these
theologians from the various religions trying to defend
them, they will even acknowledge you.
They made a lot of mistakes.
And, you know, when Joseph Smith declared that
there was people running around on the moon,
well, he kind of slipped on that one.
But somehow and other people don't say, wait
a minute, this is the guy that also
read these plates from Moroni.
Might be Maloney, you know what I mean?
So it could possibly be in a sense
there, but they don't look at it.
They don't look at the foundation.
They don't want to really know deeply all
the way.
And this is the terrible thing.
A lot of people, you know, they remind
me of me at Christmas, you know, or
something to where, you know, you get a
toy for your kids.
And on the outside of the box, it's
just kind of a little thing that says,
you know, requires some assembly, you know, or
something.
And look out for those.
You open it up and you realize you
need an engineering degree, you know, to put
these things together.
And you only got 10 minutes to do
it because the kid's sitting there pounding his
foot, saying, I want to ride it.
And so you don't sit there and read
the instructions.
Not if you're, you know, I mean, you
haven't got any time to really read them,
you know, and sort of thing.
And also, but even particularly when you're really
intelligent, intelligent people don't need to read instruction.
And not particularly if you're as intelligent as
I am.
In fact, I am smarter than any of
those things because I am so good at
putting things together.
I even end up with extra parts when
I'm done.
I don't even need some of the stuff
that they put in there until you want
to use it.
Then all of a sudden you'd realize, uh
-oh, I think those parts fit somewhere.
And the tragic thing is, is that there
are literally millions of people that have put
their entire life together and the parts don't
fit, but yet they say, well, it works
okay for now.
Not realizing the only issue is, does it
work eternally?
Does it work forever?
Here, both of these houses under normal weather
conditions apparently did absolutely fine.
Under just normal living conditions, normal seasonal things
that happen, the normal issues of life, you
could take the Christian, the true Christian, born
-again Christian, you could, you know, line right
up next to him all sorts of other
religious people and let the regular, the rainfalls
and the just and the unjust and the
regular storms, the regular trials and the regular
issues and you can have as many non
-Christians sometimes live through the seasons of life
almost as good, if not sometimes as well
or better than the Christian.
And you look at these houses and apparently
they did just fine through life, the regular
seasons of life, so to speak.
But you see, these people, the ones that
built it upon the sand, they didn't realize
that the most, the most, not just a
most or a, you know, important quality, but
the very most important aspect of the construction
had really nothing to do with the daily
issues of life.
It had nothing to do with, you know,
this house, when it was to be built
and when it was designed, it was designed
for the great specific reason of standing strong
in the day of eternal judgment.
This is the house Jesus is describing here.
This is not just simply kind of a
place to dwell through our three score and
ten here.
This is a house that is built directly
with the sense that one day a storm
is going to come like no storm has
ever dreamed of coming.
There is going to be a rain and
there's going to be winds and there is
going to be, you know, a tornado that
is going to come upon my life called
death, unlike any other thing I have ever
confronted.
And that's what my life must be built
upon.
That day in mind, that issue in mind.
This home was built not just for the
daily, as I said, the normal conditions.
Both of them seem to live through those
conditions just fine.
But one of them was built for a
specific day and it was built, you know,
for a day of judgment, not just thinking
about the ordinary conditions.
And it's something that this is something, though,
where the other man realizes this is why
I want to build my house the way
I'm building it.
The regular conditions of life, you know, in
the regular weather, those are fine.
And both of them kind of seem to
stand up pretty good through those things.
But one real aspect, you know, of the
house when it comes down, the only aspect,
as far as Jesus is concerned, about it
is the foundation.
He looks at that and he says that
is going to determine the great storm, the
real storm, the inevitable storm that every human
being knows is coming.
I don't know what's going to happen to
the economy this year or next year or
the next few years.
I don't know what's going to happen in
the world.
I don't know what's going to happen with
wars.
I don't know what's going to happen with
the nations.
I've got some pretty good ideas prophetically.
I don't know the timetable for them.
But one thing I do know is one
day the Bible says God is going to
close up creation as a vesture.
He spoke it into existence.
In Hebrews chapter 1 tells us God will
close it up as a vesture.
He created and He's one day going to
end it.
And everyone that He created, that lived within
it and was created by Him is going
to stand before Him.
And then that's the determining issue of all
of life.
And was the house built for the final
judgment or not?
And you know, you can have all your
regular little seasonal patterns that everybody can live
through.
But these are, this isn't a hundred year
flood conditions or a thousand years or you
know, this is eternal flood conditions that Jesus
is talking about here.
And you see one man has built his
house as he kind of did it all.
He built his old house with not really
that there's a true final building authority that's
going to inspect the job.
No, this guy, he really didn't need a
structural engineer, so to speak.
He knows everything he needs to know.
This house works.
It works for my friends.
It works for my neighbors.
Everybody around me is living in these houses.
And it's a reasonable house.
It's structurally fine or whatever, you know, and
besides, we've never had a flood like you're
talking about in this area.
Maybe in some other place they need to
how, you know, build a house for floods.
And we've never had a recorded earthquake in
this place here.
So what do you need to build them
with those standards for?
And that seems to be the way a
lot of people live.
The answers that they really have in life
is they even have their religious life, is
their spiritual life.
It isn't all about one day standing before
God and being, you know, accepted in God's
presence eternally.
Their issue is, is there, you know something?
When I stand before God, I built my
house right.
Everywhere, you know, I'm not afraid to stand
before God.
Every stud is 16 inches on center here.
Every, it's all got, you know, three nails,
you know, down there at the bottom.
It's got three nails at the top.
You know, there are fire blocks in between
and all the walls here.
It's properly insulated.
The wiring is good.
The snow load is effective.
They can, they go through the whole thing,
but they look down at the foundation of
what it is truly all about.
As I said, one of them, you know,
is a man there that he's just thinking
about this life and this works, works for
me.
But the other one looks, and he says,
I want a house that's going to last
and last and last.
And it's going to last through anything and
the greatest storm that'll ever happen.
That's what Jesus is talking about.
A man that built his house upon the
rock.
Well, look at the rock.
It's pretty simple who that is in a
moment.
But until we realize that that's the issue.
When I was up in San Jose, there
was a man in our church up there
who his father had worked, you know, a
whole career, was getting ready to retire.
In fact, a number of years earlier, just
planning his retirement in the Monterey Bay area.
He bought a lot there that just looked
out over the Monterey Bay there, the ocean,
just a beautiful place with that's where he's
going to build his retirement home.
And he came around time to getting close
to retirement.
And so he goes over, you know, get
some plans and turns them into the city.
And he's going to start building this house.
And the city comes back and says they
want a bunch of seismic work and they
want a bunch of extra soils analysis and
compaction stuff.
And he was angry.
So what do you mean?
He went back and forth with them and
he fought him on it.
But then the city still said, you're not
getting a building permit until you do this.
And he had to pay thousands of dollars
and go hire this company to come in
and do this silly work.
But when the information came back, he found
out that he had to go down almost
30 feet.
I mean, here this place, it had been
so settled in, there were huge trees growing
there.
There had been, he had this place and
he's looking at it, wouldn't look at this
place.
There's trees, there's huge things been here for
many, many years, hundreds of years of growth
here.
And now you're worried about if a house
will make it.
And when he, when they came back and
showed him that his house, if he built
it as originally designed, as it began to
settle, the foundation would crack, everything would have
been absolutely destroyed over a period of time.
Cost him over $100,000 to then go
down, to get literally the bedrock, to put
solid, you know, concrete, you know, things going
down into it to build the house upon
it.
But it was something there that he had
close to a million dollar home, I believe
he was putting on this thing.
And to imagine had he put a million
dollars, his entire life savings for his dream
home on something only to watch it give
way.
And he fought it.
They forced him.
They said, you will not build it unless
you do it this way.
Well, God doesn't fight with people.
He does tell every one of them, though
he says, however, you build your life and
if it is upon the sand, I don't
care what it is you build, you know,
going up.
If you don't build it right, going down.
And the the ultimate thing here is that
what is why this is so important is
as far as God is concerned.
When you look at this, why is the
foundation so important?
And it's very simple.
You see, as Jesus is speaking here, he
wants us to know you and I were
not married.
We were probably we were not created for
the house.
We were not created for marriage.
We weren't created for Christian marriage.
We were created for Christian families.
We were created for Christian homes.
We were created for Christian values, for Christian
business, for Christian ethics.
We were created for Christ.
And there's a big difference between the two.
One of them is a series of principles
of human behavior by which you build relationships
and you maintain relationships and you deal which
are very important and very good.
And those will help you through this life.
But they were not the reason I was
made.
I was made by God, for God, to
be with God, to be filled with God.
I was made to belong to him eternally.
And there is as far as God's concerned,
we look at marriages.
And yes, there's wonderful things for good Christian
marriage, good Christian homes, good Christian ethics, good
Christian values that are in the Bible that
we ought to practice.
And if we do, our lives are going
to be blessed.
But the issue here is that do I
sit there and realize above all else, I
was not just created to get through this
life and put a roof over my head
and have a nice hunky-dory time.
I am created with an eternal aspect of
which this life is a vapor.
The three score and 10 that we have
here in light of eternity, it's a flash
in the pan.
It just comes and goes.
And yes, we will maybe look back and
realize from an eternal perspective for a few
flickering moments, I was married, but in heaven,
there's neither marriage nor given in marriage.
We won't be producing children.
We will be living with God.
And unless and as far as God is
concerned, as I enter into an eternal relationship,
what religion is to be all about, a
relationship with God.
Unless I look there and realize this is
the primary issue of all of life.
And here Jesus is simply saying, listen, yes,
you've got each other.
That's wonderful.
I want to help you with each other.
And yes, you've got business.
That's wonderful.
I want to help you with your business.
And yes, you've got crops to grow.
You've got homes to build.
You've got things to do.
I want to help you with all that.
And I do and I will.
But you were made by God in His
image.
And until you realize the very need of
having Him above all else, Christ is our
life.
Christ is our home.
Christ is our eternal existence.
And until something happens where I settle it
on that, and when I also then begin
to build and I look and realize that
everything I would build upon, my own effort,
my own energy, my own righteousness, my own
commitment, it's sand.
My own goodness, my own consecration, God, I'm
going to build and I'm going to build
it good and I'm going to try hard
and I'm going to be wonderful.
God says, no, you aren't and no, you
won't.
You can't dig deep enough on your own
to get a foundation.
The most costly aspect of the home is
the foundation.
It's the whole basis of the home and
it is something that we cannot do.
But as the Bible says, that no man
can build on any other foundation than that
which is already laid.
It's already done.
For me to try to build it or
redo it is ridiculous and it's a denial
of the sufficiency of Christ.
But when I look at my life and
I'm able to look and realize, Lord, you
are everything.
And what you did to give me a
foundation to die upon the cross, to bear
my sins, to forgive all of my iniquities,
to look at me and say, I forgive
you and I love you.
And that's something, by the way, hopefully every
one of us know.
Hopefully as we're sitting here tonight, there's not
a one of us that we do not
know deeply within our heart.
Jesus Christ is the hope of the world
and of us.
Individually that I can look around and not
say, how have I done?
How do you like the framing?
What do you think of the roofing?
Nice interior.
How do you like it?
But we look at that and realize no
matter how good it is, what is my
life?
When the storm comes, when death comes, when
the final analysis come, what holds me up?
And when I look there and realize that's
to where the price has been paid by
Jesus Christ.
Him alone.
As somebody once said, I heard the words
of love.
I gaze upon the blood.
I see the mighty sacrifice and I have
peace with God.
When I look there and realize my hope
is built on nothing less than Jesus blood
and righteousness.
My life is based on him and him
alone.
And as Jesus, you know, the is closing
out the sermon, you know, and talking about
a wise man, he's talking about a fool.
In Proverbs, it says there that a wise
man, he seeks and he covets wisdom for
the gain thereof is better than fine gold.
That the wise man wants to look and
say, is my house built on the foundation
of Jesus Christ?
It's that simple.
And when you and I tonight, where are
you?
Where am I?
Is it something that, you know, with many
people it's done early.
You know, it's done at the beginning.
We try to get it.
An interesting thing as you look at people
at the farther they get through construction.
If you've ever noticed this, the older somebody
gets, the less likely they are to respond
to the gospel.
They've been building a long time.
Hey, I got a lot of walls.
I got a lot of stuff here done
and you want me to go down to
the very foundation and start all over?
I don't think so.
That's why statistically, most people when they become
Christians, they're younger.
After the teenage years, every year a person
gets older after they're a teenager, the less
likely they are to give their life to
Christ because the more they've already built and
they just want to say, hey, look, I've
done a lot of work in my life.
I've done a lot of building.
I've done, I'm a long way through the
project.
I don't want to go back and look
at the foundation.
And sometimes, God has to bring a, you
might say a pre-flood flood.
Imagine with many of us, the way we
kind of came to Christ is kind of,
we were building along.
We were fine.
Everything was pretty good for normal conditions.
And sometimes God has to bring something that
just shakes it.
I had a nephew.
I still had, I didn't have, I have.
You know, a wonderful young man when it
comes to ethics and values and morals and
a good husband and a good father and
wonderful qualities and wonderful human being.
You can't, you can't look at anything he's
done and have accusation against it, essentially.
Just wasn't a Christian.
Graduated from college, went through his life, going
through things.
Didn't need Christ.
Now, wonderfully, God in his mercy, just kind
of let the economy shift and let things
start underneath him to where his life really
starts getting shaky.
And only, and then he moved back, he
was back east.
And his wife, wonderful Christian, loving, praying, caring.
His daughter, wonderful little Christian, precious little girl,
no doubt loving, caring, praying for daddy.
Meantime, he's going along, things are fine.
He was so nice, he'd go to church
with him.
Didn't believe it, but he'd go to church
because he didn't want, he was a nice
guy.
And nice guys go to church with Christians.
And they sit there and they don't let
anything bother them because they don't believe that
stuff.
They don't need it.
And there they sit.
And yet, finally, something had to shake.
Lo and behold, the mother and daughter were
shaken to the core and my niece and
her daughter, when the pastor who'd given all
their call, every service they ever did, and
all of a sudden, he gets up and
he walks down.
And somehow or another, finally, need Christ.
Finally realizes my life is hopeless outside of
Christ.
How long that takes, I don't know.
But whatever it is, there's a fellow I
don't want to look at him tonight so
much, but he's sitting down here who I
haven't seen for years.
He went to my church in Redland, sat
and listened to me.
Priest, phenomenal sermons, powerful sermons, tremendous sermons, folks.
Ones that I'll tell you, you'd think in
hell, they were just listening to this begging
they could come back and listen to it.
But it was that good.
It didn't faze him a bit for years.
His wife, a wonderful Christian lady, would bring
him and he'd sit there.
Bank vice president, I got it all together.
Finally, I'll never forget, one Sunday, I gave
him all the call and he looked at
it and I thought, oh no, I'm ready
to go to heaven.
Comes to Christ.
Couldn't believe it.
I've wondered for years, is he still around?
Is he still walking with the Lord?
A few months ago, I pick up a
paper and I saw his paper, name in
the paper, in the criminal wanted, no, in
the starting a new bank thing and part
of the thing.
And I thought, Lord, how is he doing?
And I look out here at night and
here he's sitting here.
So I can hardly wait to find out
from his wife.
She'll tell me the truth.
But anyway, but when we look where, where
is our life?
What is the very foundation of it?
This is what Jesus has got to say.
And, you know, I think the saddest thing
every year, how to every year, you know,
when the weather turns, it seems like every
season we sit here in California and we
watch as the news, when the rains and,
you know, when the floods come to where
these multimillion dollar homes sitting right on the
ocean, you know, that have got, I mean,
some of the most beautiful homes in the
state, in these fabulous homes, hundreds and hundreds
of dollars a square foot, marble floors and
gold plated faucets and, you know, beautiful stuff
all the way through the finest materials in
there, inlaid, you know, you know, walnut and
pecan and extravagant woods used in building these
beautiful libraries.
And yet the sand begins to give and
the guy is sitting out there watching his
backyard as it's going in while he's looking
over, trying to grab his chandeliers, you know,
out of the house and his pictures off
the wall while he's watching his entire house
go down like a bunch of, you know,
cards into the ocean as it just folds
into nothing.
It had nothing to do with how much
it cost, how much effort, how good all
of the engineering was from the foundation up.
It had to do with the reality it
is not upon a rock.
And a lot of people go through this
life and they've got some beautiful lives and
they've got some well-constructed homes, they've got
good integrity, they've got good qualities, they've got
good things.
But they haven't had something happen and realize
the only thing that is important eternally is
not how good of a husband or father
I've been, not how good of a builder
I've been, not my honesty, not my integrity.
I'm not saying that those aren't important.
But the final analysis is he that has
the Son has life.
He that hath not the Son of God
hath not life.
And either I can say my hope is
built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and
righteousness or I'm lost or I'm hopeless and
it's done.
And when we realize there, as Paul says
in Corinthians, he says, for no other foundation
can no man lay than is laid, which
is Jesus Christ.
And something that sometimes and I think is
a good thing for us to do is
stop and look, is this what life is
all about to me?
To know God, to know His love, to
know His mercy, to know His power.
The evangelists oftentimes in past revivals, sometimes to
today, we think they were very harsh because
people like Charles Wesley, John Wesley, Whitefield, literally
they would examine, they wouldn't let somebody call
themselves a convert until they had been examined,
until they had confronted them and they had
a deep conversation and they were counseled that
they understand totally that Jesus Christ is our
only hope.
His blood upon the cross is their sufficiency.
His work.
And they wouldn't even let them join.
They wouldn't let them come in until they
had been almost interrogated.
Do they truly know Christ?
While back when I'm talking to the team
from Gospel for Asia, of which they were
telling me on how that they'd recently done
a baptism.
I believe it was for 13,000.
13,000.
And many of those, now there are literally
hundreds and hundreds of churches over there wanting
to affiliate with Calvary because a lot of
Calvary has been so involved in many ways
with K.P.O. Hannon and with these
churches being planted over there, but thousands of
them.
And I'm sitting there saying, now guys, I
got to ask you something.
I mean, how do you know?
I mean, 13,000 people.
How do you know they're saved?
I mean, when you got a massive thing
like that and you're baptizing them.
Oh, they said, no, no, no.
We won't, all those 13,000, they weren't
baptized until they had walked with Christ for
a minimum of six months.
And then they were all individually discipled and
taught and went through a class with their
pastor before they were presented for baptism that
they indeed understood and that they had revealed
the life in Christ.
I thought, wow, we don't do that.
You know, and things, and in a sense
of, you know, and the revival is sometimes
of old.
They just thought it was so important that
they could look at somebody and say, is
this who you are?
Where is your eternal life?
Because one day the Bible says everything that
can be shaken will be shaken.
Every one of our lives.
And either something has happened to where we
realize the rains will descend.
Interesting, just one thing here before we close.
But George Gallup, Gallup polls, you're very familiar.
That probably the most recognized pollster in the
country has done just a poll that just
came out last week.
It's this recent of just last week.
But 72% say their lives have meaning
and purpose because of their faith, according to
this new Gallup poll just publicized last week.
And then in the nation's spiritual index as
they call it came out of there, 74
.7 out of a possible 100%.
But 74.7 as they went through a
list of questions felt that they are fine.
Essentially, overall health, you know, they believe that
77% believe that the hope of a
nation is on a spiritual health.
They believe that life is 72% life
has meaning and purpose because of faith.
Faith is involved in every aspect of life.
60% of the people say in this
poll that taken by Gallup, 80% said
they were Christians.
Only 6% say they were non-Christians
and the others were some mixture of other
things.
80% of our country.
I'd just like to know, are 80%
of your friends saved?
80% of the people in your neighborhoods
saved?
80% of the people that you live
and work around?
I don't know.
I got to go check out my neighborhood.
I'm in a wrong neighborhood here.
There's some wonderful people.
You know, sort of a thing, but it's
something where 74% believe that God is
actively involved in their life.
67% believe that faith in Jesus Christ
is their hope.
67%.
Now, you just look at this.
Say, where are these people?
Where do they?
We need to import them.
We need some more of them around here
or something, wherever they all are.
I don't know.
But the thing is, is this tells me
that there are massive numbers of people who
are building their house and it's going through
seasonally fine, but eternally, they're in trouble.
How's your house tonight?
Not the outside, but when you tear up
the carpet and you go down and you
look, is it something where you can look
at it and who you are starts with,
in the beginning, God created the heavens and
the earth.
And God said, let's make man in our
image.
And God said, the day in which thou
sinnest, thou shall die.
And God said, the wages of sin is
death, but the gift of God is eternal
life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Is it something where you can look in
the foundation of your house as chapter and
verse and the blood of Christ all over
it, the sacrifice, the atonement, the gift of
God, eternal life through Jesus Christ.
That's the foundation.
And the rest of it ought to be
affected because that same Jesus who gave his
life for us is the one who gives
himself to us and helps us build the
rest of it.
But how the, but the ultimate thing is,
is do I rest upon him?
Do I rest upon him?
Where are you tonight?
Let's pray.
Dear father, we do thank you for your
love and your goodness.
And we ask that as we close out
this message, that Lord, your heart for us
would be brought to us, the Lord, that
we would realize that is the word of
God says that Christ died not for our
sins only, but for the sins of the
whole world.
There is not a person here tonight that
you did not die for.
There is not a person here tonight that
cannot have this foundation.
For God so loved the world.
And Lord, even as Paul says that God
is not willing that any should perish, but
all should come to repentance.
Lord, that we should look and realize tonight.
You look at every one of us.
You say, I'm not willing that I'd lose
any one of you, but every one of
you would come to me.
Provided the way of forgiveness.
And Lord, that we could look and realize
in the final analysis, there's only two people
really in the room.
You and us.
Not where we've been and what we've done
and how hard we try and who we've
impressed and how good our morality or integrity
or our promises were kept.
But we'd look there and realize at the
very core of our being.
Have we found that the only one that's
any important is the love of God?
And if I ever come to realize your
love forgives me, your love adopts me, your
love atones for me, your love looks and
says, you may be fine in this life
with the people around you, but if you
want to spend eternity with me, it's free
to you.
Though the price was everything to Jesus Christ
upon the cross.
And Lord, if anyone would think they're going
to go to heaven on any other foundation
than the sacrifice of Christ, may they know
they're hopeless.
And Lord, I pray that even tonight as
we close, maybe there's some that would look
and say, you know, I'm not.
I don't know that my house has had
this foundation.
I've got a lot of biblical truths and
a lot of principles, and there's a lot
of wonderful blessings.
I've been through a lot of seasons, but
I don't know if I'm ready for this
storm.
And Lord, I pray that right now, if
they want to look and realize it's just
you and them, even tonight, though there's others
around, you look at them and say, I
love you.
And I forgive you.
And I want you so desperately.
I'd die for you.
And Lord, I pray that even now they
could open their heart and come to you
and realize how great your love is.
And even as we're praying, maybe that's where
some of you are to say, Don, pray
for me.
I want to receive Christ tonight.
I want to know I'm his child.
And if that's where you are, wherever you
are, I'd like you just lift your hand.
I want to pray for you.
You want to invite Jesus Christ.
God bless you.
Down here in the front.
Any others?
You want to give him your life.
You in the back, in the side.
Any others?
You want to give him your heart.
The two of you over here.
Three over in the back there.
God bless you.
Any others?
Tonight, you want that foundation.
God bless you down here.
Just give you another moment before we close
it.
But maybe there's somebody tonight you realize, I
want to be able to stand just alone
with God and realize I can look at
him and say, I love you.
Thank you for all the blessings, all the
goodness, all the things in life.
But I want you more than any of
them.
And tonight you want to know that Jesus
Christ is in your life.
Any others before we close?
God bless you in the very back.
Another moment before we close.
If he's speaking to your heart, give your
life to him.
He loves you.
Respond to him.
Father, we thank you for your love.
And we thank you, Lord, for your goodness.
And I just pray that each one right
now that has lifted their hands and maybe
others that haven't, but would look and say,
Jesus, I know I'm ultimately going to stand
before you.
But I don't want to stand before you
as judge.
I'd rather tonight stand before you as a
sinner who stands before his savior.
Just thank you for forgiving me.
And if it's my choice, which it really
is for every one of us, we will
stand before you, but it's our choice whether
we'll stand before you as a judge or
a savior.
That you give to us.
You can build your house on sand or
upon a rock.
But Jesus, may we come and realize that
my life is sand outside of you.
And you, Jesus, are the rock.
And I just pray tonight for each one
that has opened their heart.
May they just respond to you.
Lord, may they find themselves, giving their heart
and their life to Jesus Christ.
So we praise you and thank you.
And even if tonight you have raised your
hand, I just want to pray and give
you the opportunity to respond and follow me
in this prayer, if you would.
Lord Jesus, thank you for dying for me
on the cross.
I ask you to come into my heart.
Cleanse me from my sin.
For I receive you now as my Savior
and my Lord.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.