KINGDOM | Build Different

Hey, a couple of weeks ago I was putting up lights um on our house and uh not Christmas lights, although I think that's perfectly fine because we can celebrate Jesus year round.

So if you're throwing shade, you can just throw shade somewhere else.

So no I was putting up the lights that had the LEDs where you can change colors, right?

So like you know, yesterday, last night, orange and white for the Vols, baby win over Kentucky.

Today it's gonna be orange and blue for the Broncos, right?

You know, during baseball season, they're black for morning.

And um sorry.

I love the Rockies.

We go a lot, but there's there's not a whole lot of celebrating in that type of arena.

Uh no, but you can change all the different colors.

And I was out there.

Um my dad came in town.

I'm from Memphis originally, and uh my dad came in town to help me.

And um, now I wouldn't call myself like the Home Depot professional installer type of person.

Um, you know, you can fix it, we can help.

Uh I get it done and I have no problem, but like OSHA is not recommending me for anything that I do, right?

So I just like I just want to throw this fair warning out there in that.

And and we had this corner that we had to go to that was on the right side of our house.

Um, and on this little perch of the roof, it was uneven because it like came down and went down this way.

Um, and so I had a ladder, and I it was it's literally the corner one, like the last one that we can get.

I got a picture here.

Um, this is me.

Now you can't see all of this, but the left side of that ladder is on firm ground.

The right side is not.

It's like eight inches off the ground, and I've I've got my dad there helping me hold it, right?

And he's like, okay, you good?

I'm like, man, just hold the ladder, dad.

All right.

Like, just this is I'm trying, I gotta get this last one.

And I was hit at that moment that I was steady because I had a father that was giving me a firm foundation.

Amen.

And in the world that we live in today, I think that we have a lot of people that are living on uneven ground, but they don't have a good dad that's giving them a firm foundation because they haven't put their faith in Christ yet.

And in the world says things like, hey man, you just you stand on your truth.

Well, that's wild.

You do you.

Be the best person that you can be.

Do what feels right.

And man, that feels so good in the moment, doesn't it?

It's like, yeah, let me let me carve my own path, do my own thing, stand on my truth.

I mean, it sounds so good until it's like not good.

And I'll just be honest with you, like, statistically speaking, like secularism and those types of ideas are actually failing us right now.

Uh, and they've been failing us for a really long time.

But I think a lot of people are realizing, oh, this is not working.

It's not giving me what I thought it was going to give me.

It'd be a little bit like trying to build a house on sand right before the storm came.

And I think that's what the world is doing now.

And I think what happens is they can begin to feel the shaking, like anxiety is up, family issues and things like that are like family morale is down, right?

Their faith is is is weak to a degree.

And it's not that people don't want meaning, and it's not that people don't want purpose or anything like that.

It's just that they've built something on something else that cannot hold them.

And they have nothing there to give them a firm foundation.

They don't have a good dad holding the ladder steady when the ground is uneven.

And I think that's more true than we would like to admit.

And this is exactly what Jesus talks about as he wraps up the greatest sermon ever given.

It's what we call the Sermon on the Mount.

For those that are new with us, for the last 11 weeks, we've been walking through the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew chapter 5, chapter 6, and chapter 7.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

And today we're wrapping up Matthew chapter 7, verses 24 through 27 of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 7:24–27

And what he's been doing, he's been giving us all this information over the last several weeks.

And in the last two weeks, we've talked about really application about what we do with our lives, how we let this impact our everyday living.

And that's what Jesus does.

He gives us the way to live like citizens of heaven while we're here in Denver, Colorado.

And what he was doing then was he was saying, hey, you're a citizen of heaven, citizen of heaven, yes, but you have time on this earth.

What you need to do is bring heaven down to where you are and live like you're a citizen of heaven, not on a shaky, unfirm, sandy foundation of the world.

I think in this last portion, what he really shows us and the big idea that we can take away from it is the foundation that you build on determines the future that you stand on.

The foundation that you build your life on, your career on, your marriage on, your family on, your serving on, your finances on, and all of those things is actually going to determine the future that you stand on.

It'll either be solid ground or it will be shaky and fleeting and failing from underneath you.

I'm gonna read Matthew chapter 7, verses 24 through 27.

Matthew 7:24–27

Look, I'm gonna do something old school, so can you can you bear with me for just a minute?

We do this every couple of weeks when it's a shorter passage.

Some of you know it's coming.

Do me a favor.

In honor of reading God's word, can we just stand for a minute?

Uh I think he's worthy of that, just to read his word.

These are his words, literally.

It says this at the Matthew chapter 7, verse 24 through 27.

Matthew 7:24–27

It says the two foundations in my Bible, it says, therefore.

And when we see a therefore, you have to ask yourself, what's it there for?

Right?

It's a little trick.

Everyone, do me a favor, say everyone, leaves no one else in there.

Everyone means everyone.

He says, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

Give me a favor, say rock.

The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded the house, yet it didn't collapse because its foundation was on the rock.

But everyone, there it is again, say it with me, everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn't act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed.

And it collapsed with a great crash.

Let's pray.

Father, we love you.

Thank you that you don't leave us wondering what we should do.

You tell us very clearly, very specifically, God, how we are to live, what we are to do, based on the words that you tell us.

Lord, at the end of your Sermon on the Mount here, Lord, you're very clear.

Two foundations.

One is wise, the other one is foolish.

One falls, the other one stands when the storms come.

So, God, I pray that based on your word today, not anybody else's in here, your word today, God, that we would build our life on the firm foundation that is you and your word.

Give us the encouragement, give us the strength, give us the boldness to be able to do that in a world that tells us not to.

We love you, we praise you, and we pray all this in the mighty and matchless name of Jesus.

And all God's people said, Amen.

Amen.

You can go ahead and have a seat.

I think there's a couple of movements that we see here before we get some real application from Jesus.

And he's he doesn't hold back at all here.

I mean, he's very, very specific.

In the very beginning of this, in verses 24 and 25, he tells us that the wise people build deep.

The wise people build deep on the rock.

He says, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them.

So by the way, this is not just information.

Information can get you a little bit, but information and download of information and intake of information is not what Jesus is talking about here.

He's talking about implementation.

I'm hearing these words of mine and I'm putting them into practice.

I'm obeying them.

He's not saying wisdom comes from how much of the Bible you know.

He's not saying that if you've memorized all the books of the Bible and you know the songs and you went to the kids' church back in the days and you did awanas and all these other things, and you got the patches to prove it, that that is actually going to be wisdom.

Knowledge of the Bible is not wisdom, it's how much of the Bible you actually obey.

He's very clear in that.

He doesn't hold back whatsoever.

Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them.

Then he said it'd be like a wise man built his house on the rock.

I love Luke's version, the physician.

He says that he dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.

Deep means that you have to keep digging deep until you hit something that doesn't move.

And so you got to keep digging and keep digging.

Because don't you know that like to get to the rock, it actually takes work?

I think there's a false reality that if, well, if I just believe and I just attend and do these things, it's gonna be okay and it's just gonna come to me naturally.

No.

Just like anything in our life to become proficient in it, to be living it, to be doing it.

If it takes 10,000 hours of practice of something to become a professional, it's gonna take work to get down to the rock.

You can't build a deep faith on shallow habits that you have in your life.

You can't attend once a week and hope that you get enough to last you throughout the week when the storms come.

You have to build deep habits to build a deep faith.

You gotta dig beneath comfort, you gotta dig beneath convenience, you gotta dig beneath your own desires, and you gotta see what it is that God is wanting you to see through his son Jesus Christ.

When Jesus says the rain fell, the winds blew, the rivers rose, he's reminding us this.

Follower of Christ and non-follower of Christ in the room, storms are coming.

Like it's not an well, it might come.

He's literally saying that the storms will come.

Everyone who hears these words and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew.

Not, hey man, if the rain comes at some point, and I know we live in Denver, that's hard to imagine.

We don't get a lot of rain, right?

But we get some wind, amen.

Like wild wind.

I didn't know when God called us to come here eight years ago that it was like tornadic winds in Denver all the time.

It's like, oh, no worries, just 95 mile-an-hour winds today, Chris.

What in the world?

But the fact of the matter is, these storms, these winds, they will come for everyone.

But the wise people don't fall because they're anchored to something well below the surface.

So when life shakes, you don't rely on the weather to just go away.

You rely on the foundation to protect you when life does come and shake and move, and rivers rise, and winds blow, and rain falls.

Don't think that the Jesus life will keep you from the storms.

It won't.

But it will keep you upright when the storms do come.

That's what Jesus is saying.

He's saying you don't need even ground.

You don't have to have level, firm ground in this type of way, but you need a solid foundation.

You've got to dig deep enough through the sand to get to the solid foundation that is gonna hold you when the storms of your life are going to come.

You don't need to control the storm.

Some of us want to control the storms that are in our life.

We want to control the things that are going on.

We want to control what is happening in our life, and you don't need to control it.

You just need to trust in the Father who is holding your ladder.

It was foolish for me to get on a roof and have one side on level ground and eight inches on the other side, not on level ground, to allow my dad to hold the ladder.

But man, I trusted my dad.

I never had a second thought about it.

And that's what life is like when we put our hope and our faith and trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

He says, the wise build deep.

But he doesn't stop there.

He then compares it, right?

He says, the foolish build shallow.

He keeps going, he says, the wise build deep, the foolish build shallow.

He says, but everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn't act on them will be.

By the way, these are promises from Jesus.

You hear them and act on them, you will be.

You hear them and don't act on them, you will be.

These are not question marks.

This is not a maybe.

What he is saying is, when you hear and act, you will be wise.

When you hear and do not act, you're a fool.

As a matter of fact, the word that he uses here is in the original language is moros.

And that's how we get our original, that's how we get our word moron.

So literally what he's saying there is that when when you do this, when you hear and you do not act, you're gonna be like a moron who built his house on sand.

Now, he's not being mean.

Honestly, I think he's being merciful when he says that.

It's a warning sign, it's a warning shot.

He is warning us.

He's saying shallow faith is always going to collapse under deep pressure.

Don't be a foolish person, don't be a moron, don't act unintelligent and build your life on a shallow foundation that is just going to collapse when the pressure comes in our life.

But man, it's tough because like sand is so easy to build on, right?

Like you can build so much, it looks so good, you don't have to dig deep.

Have you ever tried to dig a hole for like a fence in Colorado?

Like it's not easy.

It's like, what in the world?

I mean, like it's still frozen from last winter, I think.

But you go to the beach and you're like, dude, I could give me a postal digger, I could do this all day long.

It's easy to build on the sand.

It's flat, it's fast, it's convenient, there's no digging, there's no delay.

And in the sunshine, it looks just as good.

When you finish it, it's like, yeah, this looks great.

Sunny, no wind, no rain, no rivers coming, no storms coming.

It looks amazing.

And it's a little bit what the world promises, right?

Just take this little thing, you'll be good.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, cut this corner, you'll be all right.

It just, man, just take a little hit.

It'll make you feel better, it'll relieve all the anxiety.

Yeah, a couple more drinks, you'll be feeling great tonight, right?

Hey, marriage is struggling, intimacy is there, pornography will solve all of that.

You'll feel good in the moment.

It looks good in the sunshine, but deep down when the storms come, you are shaking.

That's what Jesus is saying.

We build a whole society in our culture that wants to take the easy surface-level foundation way out of everything.

Feelings, not faith, self, not surrender.

And it works fine until the rain starts coming into our life sideways.

It's so good.

Until it's just not.

And then everything collapses.

Jesus even says, with a great crash.

So when the storm hits, notice here that both houses get the same rain.

They get the same rivers rising, the floods that are coming, they get the same wind, but the difference is not the storm, it's the structure and the foundation that it's on.

It rains sideways no matter what your foundation is on.

The difference is the structure and its ability to stand based on what it is built upon.

One had depth, the other one did not.

One was built on devotion, the other one is built on comfort and convenience.

Can I ask you a question?

Are you building your life on something that can withstand the pressure or something that just looks good in the sunshine to everybody else?

Do your neighbors think you have it all together?

Your coworkers think you have it all together because you're trying to build things on the world's foundation?

Or would you say that, man, it doesn't matter what anybody thinks about me, I know that when the storms come in my life, I have proof, I have evidence, I have faithfulness of God in my life that I'm built on the firm foundation.

Because we're either doing one thing or the other.

It's like last week's message.

There's two roads, there's only two ways here.

I'm telling you, man, you can have all the right decor, you can have the right design in your house, but if you were built on the wrong foundation, it is only a matter of time before your house falls.

Jesus says, and it collapsed, and it was a great crash.

Scholars believe he's talking about when they come to judgment that day.

Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, he talks about many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did I not do these things?

Did I not do those things?

Did I not do these things?

And he said, Depart from me, I never knew you.

What he's saying is this great collapse.

We're gonna be built on the world's foundation.

We're gonna kind of have this way where we haven't really put our hope, faith, and trust in Jesus, but we put more of our hope, faith, and trust in the world's ways, and we're gonna get to that point where we're sitting there meeting him face to face, and he's gonna say, Depart from me, I never knew you.

Your house is going to collapse and crash at that moment.

And there will be a time where we have to account for that.

Because it's not just physical that we're talking about here, it's very spiritual.

Marriages collapsing, spiritual, faith collapsing, spiritual, integrity, witness.

They're all crumbling because the foundation that they had were never deep.

And I think the reality is that storms don't discriminate, do they?

Storms don't just come in and go, okay, we're gonna skip that area of the city.

We're not gonna rain over here, we're not gonna blow winds over there.

Storms don't discriminate, they differentiate.

And they reveal what is actually hidden deep down.

If it is not anchored down, it will blow away.

Storms ultimately test everything in our life.

And this is what Jesus is saying to us.

They test everything.

Jesus finishes this entire sermon that he's given us with a storm.

Rain fell, rivers rose, winds blew, and it pounded the house.

Some of you right now are going, my house has been pounded for a while.

Like right now, you are tired of the storms in your life.

And I'm just telling you that the only thing that will keep you grounded when the storms are coming in your life is the foundation that you have in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Both houses face it the wise and the foolish, the faithful and the fake, the ones who look solid, the ones who looked spiritual.

Storms do not discriminate, they hit everyone.

But ultimately they reveal what it is that you are really standing on because they don't destroy what it is that's real, they expose what it is that's fake.

Let me show you what I mean.

Some of you are like, why do we have ladders on the stage?

What's happening?

It's not just the illustration there, but I think these ladders probably represent two different foundations that we have.

They both look really good on the outside.

But they're built on different foundations.

To kind of illustrate that, I have a little bit of a peg down here on this one.

And so this kind of represents the world's foundation that's a little bit rocky.

This one represents the firm foundation that is standing on God's word.

And you know, I think what happens is here's what we do in our lives as Christians.

We kind of like, we're like, all right, you know what I'm gonna do?

Let's just do both of them.

Wouldn't it be great?

I can have my hand in the world.

I can also, yeah, believe in the Lord, right?

I trust in God as long as it lines up with my plan.

I believe in you, Jesus.

Your word is true.

Unless somebody tells me that, oh really?

Would God do that or say that?

Oh yeah, my whole faith and trust is in you, Lord.

Unless my plan doesn't look the way I wrote it out five years ago.

And like what happens is we we get higher and higher, and you know, we're a little shaky.

We're like, oh no, I won't fall, I promise.

I'm a professional.

I got this from Home Depot.

But it's like it's a little bit shaky, and we don't know what to do.

And what happens is like the higher we go, we go higher, we higher, and we're like, we're sitting here, we're like, okay, I'm over here and I'm over here, I'm I'm living both ways.

But what happens is this one gets like shakier and shakier, we don't know what to do, and then we're like, we're like, where do I go and what do I do?

And what happens is if I'm standing here and this one shakes too much, I can handle it for a little while, but ultimately if it continues to shake, I'm going to fall.

And at that moment where we have to shake and we have all this going on beneath us, we have to make a choice what we're gonna run to.

Are we gonna run to the world's ways that are shaky and failing and fleeting us, or will we firmly hold on to the way that God has called us to live our lives with meaning and purpose that lines up with his will?

And so we can stand over here and it's gonna shake and we're gonna do all this, and it's like ultimately you will fall.

What I'm telling you is that ultimately what you need to do is stand and put your firm foundation where the Father is standing at the bottom of the ladder and he is holding you firmly, whether you feel it or know it is there or not.

You might not even know it because it is so firm and it is so rock solid.

You got to look and turn away from the ways of the world and the foundation that we are trying to live our lives on that is just going to fall when it shakes and shakes and shakes.

And I promise you, you can hold it for a little while.

But if you've ever watched like Survivor and places like that, where they're standing on those posts for like hours on end, what ends up happening?

They shake, and the water's coming in, and they ultimately have to get off the post.

But you can hang on to that your whole life and every moment, every situation, and every encounter you have with anything.

And that's what Jesus is telling us here.

The imitation of the entire Sermon on the Mount that Jesus gives us at the very end of this is trust your father enough to build your life on him.

Trust him enough.

And I just want to say this right now.

Some of you right now, I want to say to you, I promise you that if you would just give one year of your life to trusting in the Father more than anything else you've ever trusted in your entire life, I promise you, if you get involved in community, if you give back to God what is his, trusting with your resources, with your gifts, with your treasures, with your talents, with your time, with Sunday morning worship, with reading the Bible every single day, with praying and being involved in an intimate relationship with him, I promise you, like money back guaranteed, you will have the best year of your life.

I want to tell you this, like a little asterisk.

Come on, you can say amen to that.

A little asterisk is it may not look like you thought it was gonna look like, but it will be exactly in the center of God's will and you will be the safest you've ever been in your entire life.

Because you're standing on his foundation, not the world.

I promise you, some of you just need to commit to go, you know what?

For a year I'm gonna do this.

When I was standing on uneven ground trying to hang those lights, my dad was holding the ladder steady.

And he's always been there to hold the ladder for me, even when I didn't ask him to.

He didn't move the ground though.

He just made sure I didn't fall.

God might not move the ground, but he's gonna make sure that you don't fall.

He's gonna give you balance when everything underneath is unstable.

That's what your heavenly father does.

He doesn't take away the storms, he doesn't remove the hardships, he doesn't do those things, but he will hold you steady through it.

Way more steady than the world ever will.

He is not asking you to find perfect ground.

He's asking you to trust the perfect foundation that is him and his son Jesus Christ.

So I think that the question that Jesus kind of like asks of us from this entire Sermon on the Mount, this entire upside-down kingdom living that we're supposed to be living is what are you standing on?

It's the culmination to this moment.

Like Jesus has given all this information, all of this kingdom living, all of these insights.

Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the humble, all of these types of things.

Knock, ask, you receive, and all that, all of this to go.

I've said all of this now.

What are you standing on?

It's the question that he's asking us is what are you standing on?

And the reason is because the foundation that you build on is going to determine the future that you stand on.

You might not be able to control the rain, you might not stop the wind, but you can choose the rock, and the rock is a person, his name is Jesus Christ.

That's who the rock is.

And the good news is maybe you're in here this morning and you're like, dude, I built on the sand.

What do I do?

And I've said this before, church is like Home Depot.

You can fix it.

We can help.

We can bring you alongside and point you to the personal work of Jesus Christ.

Maybe it's time for a renovation project in your life.

Maybe you've built on the sand, maybe you don't know what to do.

It is time for a renovation project in your life that you would build on the firm foundation.

I mean, he says, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them.

It doesn't say, well, if you've heard them and you didn't act on them, you will never be able to course correct.

He says, if you hear these, you're hearing these words today, and you act upon them, you can be, will be a wise person who built their house on solid foundation.

So don't just hear it, build on it.

And when the storm comes, you're going to be standing.

Because the truth of Matthew 7, 24 through 27 isn't about knowing the rock or knowing about the rock, it is about building on it and applying it and implementing, living a Jesus life in your life.

So the application has to move everybody, believer and seeker and non-believer alike, from hearing to actually doing something about it.

If you forget anything else today, remember this.

Every day you're building on something.

You're building on something.

And the foundation that you build on determines the future that you stand on.

So maybe it's a reaction, maybe it's a routine, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a reputation.

You are either stacking bricks on top of sand or you are digging deeper into the rock.

You're doing one or the other.

And so here's what I want you to do this week.

This is great, Chris.

What do I do?

I think there's two questions you can ask, and the answer to the first question actually should inform your second question is the answer.

First one is this is where have I been living surface level?

Where do I just have some sticks in the sand?

Am I just attending?

Is it in my relationships?

Where do I just have sticks in the stand?

And then ask yourself, where do I need to dig deeper into obedience?

Whatever your answer is to number one should be your answer to number two.

So write down one area tonight, today, this afternoon to start building on the rock.

Don't just ask it and think it.

Don't hear it and then not act on it, but hear it and then act on it.

Like if you want to be really bold, text it to someone.

Tell a spouse, tell a friend, tell a fellow brother or sister here before you leave.

I need to do this in my life.

Maybe it's more time in the word.

You need to go from hearing to doing.

Maybe it's a relationship that you said you're going to forgive, but that you've not wanted to forgive because you just don't feel like you can forgive yet.

Maybe today you forgive.

Maybe for some of you it's generosity.

Maybe you've been living in the sand, you've never stepped into obedience of giving back to God what is rightfully his through tithes and offerings.

You've been tipping God with things, and it's time for you to trust your resources to him with a tithe.

Maybe it's integrity, maybe it's purity, maybe it's prayer.

Stop decorating your house and start strengthening the foundation of what you are building upon.

That's what Jesus is asking us to do.

For some of you, it's finally surrendering to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Like you've admired his words.

He's a great teacher.

I learn a little bit from this.

It makes me feel good, but maybe it's time for you to actually trust his ways.

Believe that God sent him to live a sinless life, only to be murdered on a cross, buried in a tomb, and risen on the third day.

And for some of you, it's time to say, I'm putting my hope and my faith and my trust.

I'm asking Jesus to forgive me of my sin.

He'll be faithful to do so.

I'm believing in his death, his burial, and his resurrection.

I'm going to receive him as Lord and Savior of my life.

I'm going to start today putting my hope and my faith and my trust on the solid foundation that is the rock, and it's a person named Jesus Christ.

Maybe you would say, I'm done balancing ladders.

I'm done.

I'm tired.

My legs are weak.

They're shaky.

And you would say, Jesus, I'm going to build my life on you.

Storms are coming for every single one of us in the room.

Storms are coming.

Maybe you're already in one.

And you're sitting here thinking, dude, the rain doesn't care about my resume.

Because it doesn't.

The wind doesn't check my church attendance.

Because it doesn't.

The floods don't look at my quiet times or my Instagram feed.

But the rock holds.

Even in the storms.

So if you're tired of the wobble, you're tired of pretending that you can hold up in the sand and the sand that can hold you, step into a relationship with the rock today.

Let your father steady you.

Let it be a firm foundation that's hold you, that says, you're not going to fall, I've got you.

And start building on something that lasts.

So my encouragement is that we build something different here.

That we build something deep, that we build on the rock, that when the storm comes, we're still going to be standing here in Denver saying, we are trying to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ so that everyone else around us in Denver, in the West, and in the world can have a firm foundation that is built on him.