A Firm Foundation

(Introduction to the Sermon on the Mount)

Lets Pray…

Please turn to Matthew 7: 24-29. Let us read God’s word together.

Have you ever felt like the world is slipping out from under you? I have.
— Sometimes from daily pressures that just kept building up, and up and up.
— Other times there were life-altering moments that just stopped me dead in my tracks and it seemed that everything I knew was crumbling.
— Death of my brother
— My Dad’s serious illness
— Maybe for you it was a divorce, or losing that job, or maybe you made a decision that seemed to be harmless, but caused everything in your life to change.

The point is: there have been times in all of our lives when the world seemed to fall apart.

And whether we lived through those times, or if we are barely surviving through the fallout right now, Jesus speaks in to my life and your life through today’s passage.

He tells us that, regardless of what we used to build our life upon, regardless of the mistakes and false hopes that we have suffered under, He can give us a new and everlasting foundation, which will not only shore up things here in this world, but will also prepare us for eternity.

So what’s he talking about?

What is the foundation?

What words must we hear and put into practice?

Well, we get clued-in by asking, “What is the “Therefore” in Verse 24 there for?
This passage begins by looking back over the entire Sermon on the Mount.

The “words” that He tells His listeners (readers) to put into practice begin in Matthew 5 and continue through to the end of Matthew 7 — three deep chapters of Scripture.

Now, we are obviously not going to get through the entire Sermon on the Mount in one night. We are going to camp out on this mountain for several weeks.

Just to give you a broad-brush summary— in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us:
— How to pray
— What we should pray for
— He tells us the importance of forgiveness
— He teaches that there ARE times of trouble and struggles in store for believers.
— How to interact with one another, whether we are interacting with friends or foes or family.
— He tells us not to be judgmental.
— He tells us that we are to hold fast to the Laws of the Old Testament, but with the understanding that Faith is the Key to salvation. (Learn from the Pharisees good and bad examples)
— Jesus tells us to FLEE from sexual sin and to honor our marriage covenants.
— He tells us to watch out for false teachers who are not leading us on the path of Righteousness
— And he makes it clear that if we are part of His family, we will produce the fruit of righteousness.
— Again, that’s just the broad-brush pass at the Sermon on the Mount.

I would encourage you to read over the Sermon on the Mount this week, and read it over and over throughout this series.

And, when you are reading, notice how all of the teachings focus on creating a more complete relationship between the Lord and us.

Also,
Remember that it is IF we “hear the words and put them into practice,” it makes us into that house on the solid rock that won’t fall.

It creates a house around us that is a bright reflection of the light of God into our dark, dark world.

It takes away the old walls like selfishness, resentment, fear and dishonesty and replaces it with the Godly attributes like perseverance, hope, honesty, selfLESSness and more.
If we rebuild our lives, our view of the world (our houses), to the best of our ability each day, into this new structure, in accordance to Our Master Architect’s plans, we will be hard to miss.

We will be counter-cultural.

Some people will be put off. They will retreat from the light.
But others, who are hungry for God, who are being led by the Spirit of God into a relationship with God, will be drawn from the darkness to the light that we reflect.

Remember though, before we build that house that Jesus talks about, we have to make sure we are building on the solid foundation.

Jesus talks about a house with two contrasting foundations. The foundation that washes away could be many things in our lives. It could be:
— Depending on our own abilities and talents and intellect to support us.
— Depending on other people, parents, spouse, kids to provide us with a purpose for living or as the crutch to lean on in times of trouble.
— Depending on the things of this world, our government, our popular culture, to shape our frame that we look through to see the world.
— The sand that washes away can even be the church or religious activity, if that church or that activity is what we find our purpose in, or what we count on for our salvation.

The Rock is different. The Rock never moves. It will never wash away. The rock was there before the rains came, before the streams rose and before the winds blew.

Jesus is the foundation. Jesus is the rock.

And so before you build your house, even with all the right materials, make sure you are on the rock. Make sure you are right with God.

Now, that’s between you and God, if He is prompting you and you are ready to turn your life over to God, we’d love to walk you through the process.

If your not a believer and your not sure yet, that’s fine. We just ask that you keep coming back.

We will say to the non-believers that there are many principals that work in life whether your are one of us or not, but, there are other things in the Sermon on the Mount that will seem insane, naive, and maybe even offensive to you if you have not yet surrendered your life to God.

Just take it all in.

Some people come to faith through a sudden earth shattering moment of clarity, while others have to marinate in the Word for a while before one day, it all just clicks. So just hear us out. Maybe it will “click’ for you tonight.

Turn with me and read Matthew 5: 1-2 and we’ll just reinforce this point a bit further through the text that starts the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus saw the crowds, then he went up on the mountainside and HIS DISCIPLES came to Him. We are told that it was first and foremost Jesus’ followers that were given this message, at the end of the teachings we see that The crowds were amazed, so again, This is first for those who have submitted to Jesus, but even if you are just part of the crowd that wants to hear more, you will be amazed by what God has to say.

In closing, I encourage you read this and read it again and again in the weeks to come. Take it all in, get the big picture like we are doing tonight, and begin to ask God where specifically, He is trying to grow your faith in this text.

The bottom line is hearing a guy talk up here once a week, is not the entirety of a spiritual walk.

Begin tonight to study the Word on your own, begin this week to talk with other believers in your neighborhood about the things God is showing you.

And begin to pray continuously and meditate on his word.


So that’s it, Faith in Jesus Christ is our Foundation. And, like a master architect, He has drawn up the plans for a wonderful new house to replace our shacks that were destroyed in the storms of life before Christ.

Let’s go out from here and shine bright for Him.

Let’s pray…