The wise and the foolish builder
Yes, I know I promised more sermon transcripts months ago… but it takes time to translate and type them. Anyway, here’s one I gave last year about one of my favorite teachings:
Someone said a while ago that it’s a bit weird how many christian authors and preachers apparently do nothing much but travelling by plane and having all sorts of interesting experiences and inspirations on those flights, which they manage to masterfully include in their messages. Today, it’s going to be a bit more down to earth. So when I was travelling on the high speed train to Hamburg the other week, I had to think of how often there are storm tides in Hamburg. I don’t know why that’s what came to my mind, I guess I’ve been influenced by the media and all the thunderstorms and hurricanes that I’ve read and heard about recently. And I thought that such a regular storm tide doesn’t really matter much to the people of Hamburg. They’ve been wise enough to not build any vitally important buildings in places that usually get flooded during these tides. We all know from the news that it doesn’t always work that way because we all remember what happened in New Orleans a few weeks ago, when it more or less completely sunk into the water during a hurricane, a lot of things were destroyed and even now they are still busy pumping the water out of the city again.
Maybe you already noticed: today I just keep going on about tides and floods and storms and of course there’s a reason for that. I want us to look together at a story that Jesus told of two men who each built a house. Matthew tells us this story in chapter 7, verses 24 – 27.
When we read or listen to that, we notice that apparently there are good and bad ways of building a house. Oversimplying the whole thing, you could probably say that the planners in Hamburg are more like the wise man and the planners in New Orleans are more like the foolish man.But Jesus isn’t really talking about building houses of stone or clay or whatever they used back in His time. The house symbolizes our life – the building of our life. The stony, hard ground, that’s Jesus – and the sand, that’s all the many other things that we like to build our life upon instead.
I think it’s quite easy to build on sand. You know, a rock is quite hard and heavy and means a lot of work; sand on the other hand is easy to shovel and move (yes, it’s easy for me to say so – please, don’t ask when I last held a shovel…). So building on sand seems to make sense at first. If only there were no storms and floods.
And that’s the point that always confuses me for a short moment because it doesn’t match the picture I would like to see. Jesus does not say that you can avoid the storm and the flood by building on a good foundation. On the contrary – both men get the exact same dose of storm and flood. Jesus isn’t promising us insurance against the occurance of storms, all He promises is that we will be able to withstand them and won’t be washed away if we build on Him. And that’s a great thing – I think many who have built on sand at some point in their life later wish they had chosen a more solid foundation. I mean, nobody in his right mind start to build saying “I’m going to find myself a nice insecure spot, with lots of sand that gets flooded all the time and then I’m going to build a nice house there”. Usually, it just happens without much thinking – probably because we don’t think much about it. And most of the time, we don’t even notice where we’ve built. All is quite and peacful. Maybe you just started a good job, your dream job. Success, fun at work, nice colleagues – and you built on it going on like that. But suddenly the storm: the company goes bankrupt… unemployment, no future – is the building of your life still strong enough or will it collapse? Or you started a relationship with the love of your life. You’d do anything for him or her… but after some time, it doesn’t go well, something’s not right, maybe the other person finds somebody else… separation. Is the building of your life still standing?
When you’ve built your life on the things of this world, then be prepared to swim when the flood comes. Personally, I find it reassuring that Jesus says no matter where we build, the storms will come. Why I find that reassuring? Because it shows me that it’s perfectly normal to experience storms in my life. It’s not a question of what foundation my life has. The storms are not the real problem, the problem develops when the foundation doesn’t hold in the storm. In my life there have been a number of storms. During the first ones, I wasn’t a Christian and even when I already was, I did swim quite a bit. But since I really started living with Jesus, the foundations have been strong – at times I couldn’t believe it, but they did withstand the storm.
Maybe you’re in the middle of a storm just now, the rain is blasting down on you and you can hardly see for all the rain that gets in your eyes. Maybe all is calm and you don’t even notice the small clouds on the horizon. What do you see when you look at the foundations of your life?
We have one major advantage over houses made of stone – we can change our foundations even when the storm is already there. So if you are a Christian, but you realize that you’ve built your life on things of this world, it’s not too late to go to Jesus and tell Him that and ask Him to help you build your life truly on Him instead. If what you’re standing on is insecure and won’t survive a storm, use the chance to move your life onto a solid foundation – better do it now than wait until you’re already swimming.
Add comment September 30th, 2006
.