Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders

It was 15 years ago, homecoming weekend. We'd been having

some trouble with one of our buildings, older buildings, having

a crack in the wall. Fitzhugh hall, you know it, Science building.

And so we hired a structural engineer to come and to study the

problem and to see what we could do, kind of patch it up, do

whatever. And I got a phone call. It was late on Friday afternoon.

And the structural engineer said, I need to see you today. I

said, well, you know, it's homecoming weekend. I'm kind of busy.

It's four o'. Clock. I really can't do this today. How about we

do it next week? He said, no, I need to see you today. I said,

well, like right now? He said, yeah, right now. Wherever you are,

I will come to you. He came to my office and he said, you need to

move everybody out of Fitzhugh hall immediately. I said, what do

you mean? We got a few cracks in the building. It's 125 years old.

Of course it's going to have cracks in the building. He said,

no, that building is going to fall down. I said, fall down? I see

the cracks. Yeah, they're bad, you know, but we've had bad cracks

before. He said, no, the building's going to fall down. I

said, well, we can't move everybody out right now. We're in

the middle of a semester. How about we wait until the end of the

academic year? We'll make some plans. Because we had all our coaches

in there, we had administrative offices, we had classrooms

in there, all kinds of stuff going on. He said, no, you can't

wait. I said, well, how about if we wait till the end of this semester

in December and we'll do it then? He said, no, you can't wait.

I said, well, when do you want them out? He said, Monday, no later.

He said, the building's going to collapse and kill somebody. And

I sat at the football game the next day and I had my administrative

team with me, and we made plans to move 65 people out of that

building and put them other places on campus on Monday of that

next week. You see, what had happened is that building was 125

years old. And when they built that building, they built it on a

foundation of sand. It did not go down to bedrock, but there was

sand that was hardly hard packed. And because the sand was

hard packed, the building held up for 125 years. But we had a water

leak up on the third floor of the building that nobody saw that

was running down through the walls and it was going into the foundation,

and over time, it was starting to erode that sand, and eventually

that sand eroded so much, it was bringing the whole building down,

which eventually we did. Took the whole thing down, replaced it,

built it like it's 125 years old. But we replaced it with a new

facility built on rock that'll stay for the next two, 200 years

or more. You see, a building can look strong. A building can look

beautiful. A building can be functional. A building can have even

expensive materials in there. But if the foundation is wrong, the

entire structure will not stand up to the test of a storm that

comes, even if that storm is only a little water leak that just

drips and drips and drips. Jesus at the end of the Sermon on

the Mount, what we consider the greatest sermon ever preached

ended with a parable. And the parable is a story, you know, well

about two builders, two houses, one storm, one success, one

enormous failure. Jesus tells this parable right at the end of

the amazing Sermon on the Mount that summarizes the whole Gospel

message and the whole kingdom message. And out of that, we see

several things. The first is, both builders had the same vision.

They wanted a house. They had dreams. They had hopes. They had

desires. They had an outlook for their life. They. They wanted

the same thing. They wanted a life worth living. They wanted a

home of significance. They wanted somewhere that was going to

be theirs. They wanted a place for their family, a place out of

which they could build a career, have meaning, happiness.

They wanted the same things 2000 years ago that we want now.

It wasn't any different. They both wanted stability. They both

wanted some vibrancy in their life. They both wanted to live strong.

They both wanted to stand up to the test of time. You see, both

men had the exact same vision. There wasn't any difference between

the wise builder and the foolish builder in what they wanted.

Second thing that we see in the Scripture is that both builders

listen to divine truth. Both builders listen to divine truth.

See, Jesus tells us at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, which

is the blueprint for how to live our lives. You know, some people

say this is. I understand why they say it, but some people say,

well, I just can't figure out the Bible. It's too big. It's too

complex. I just can't figure it out, so I can't do anything with

it. The Bible. Listen to me. The. The Bible is not difficult to

understand. If you want to understand the Bible, don't worry

about the whole thing right now. Go to Matthew chapter five,

six and seven, the Sermon on the Mount. And that's where Jesus

summarizes all of his key teaching in three chapters. You can

read it in 15 minutes. If you read it for 15 minutes the rest of

your life, every single day, it'll change how you live. Jesus,

you see in those days preached the same message many times when

Jesus was teaching. People didn't sit around with a notebook

or a power book and say, I'm going to take notes and write this

stuff down. Most of them couldn't read, most of them couldn't

write. Paper was nearly non existent and if you did, you used

a quill pen and maybe you could get out five words in a minute

or two. So that wasn't an option. So they memorized. They memorized.

And because they did not have the ability to take notes like we

do and to read and to go back and look at it again, they had a

gift of memory that we've kind of lost in our modern day. And so

these messages of the Sermon on the Mount were preached that day,

but they were probably preached many, many, many times.

And Matthew, who records this, memorized that and years later had

it written down. Well, in the Sermon on the Mount, at which at

the end he tells about the wise and foolish builders, he covers

23 very specific topics, very specific topics, three chapters and

here they are. He talks about grace, he talks about worldview,

forgiveness, hypocrisy, mission for your life, planning,

money, possessions, contentment, judgmentalism, discipleship,

prayer, holiness, anger, integrity, revenge, love, marriage,

generosity, religion, self righteousness, visible fruits, and

doing unto others. He summarizes everything that's important

in the Christian life. In living in the kingdom of God, remember

all the other parables. He begins with that phrase, the kingdom

of heaven is like, or the kingdom of God is like. Well, in

this one he doesn't have to say that because he just laid out

the whole thing in all these topics. And so that is the kingdom

of God. So if you want to understand the Bible, don't worry

about the whole thing for now. Go to Matthew 5, 6, 7. Learn it,

study it. That is the blueprint for how we are to live.

And Jesus said at the end of that, you have a decision to make.

He said, I love you so much that even though sin corrupted the

world, I will give my life to be the sacrifice for you. And I will

give you, here in these three chapters, the design of how you are

built to function effectively. It's essentially, you know, the instruction

booklet for how it's Designed to be lived. Life is to be lived

like we would for a computer or some other mechanism. So he says,

I love you that much that I'm going to do that for you. And he

lays it all out. But he also says, I love you so much that I will

give you the freedom that if you don't want to do that, I'm not

going to force you. You can do it your own way. And then he says,

I just want you to know if you do it your own way, there are going

to be consequences, and it's really, really going to hurt. He

says, in telling this story, the wise and foolish builder, he

says, anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise,

like a builder who builds on the rock. So that's what we find

here. We find that there is a option. We have to listen and do

it or listen and ignore it. You see, because both builders. Excuse

me, let me go back to that list again, because that's important.

Both builders had heard the truth. And you've heard the truth.

You've heard it in chapel. Now, maybe you come to chapel and

you flip your phone, you try to ignore it. That's your choice.

You've heard it in class. You've heard it from coaches. This

year in chapel, you've heard 19 messages on the parables of Jesus,

the core design of how God designed it. And then you have a

choice. Jesus said, you can follow that and be wise and build

on rock, or you can choose to do it your own way and build on sand.

But you will fail. He outlines what the kingdom of God looks like

when we live there in the Sermon on the Mount. Well, the third

thing we see about both builders is they both face the same

storm. Same storm. They lived in the same neighborhood because

he said, the same storm came to both of them. So they weren't

living in two different countries. They were both hit by

the same storm. I want to tell you something about storms. If you

don't hear anything else I say today or all year, I want you to

hear this storm in your life is not a matter of if you will have

a storm. It's only a matter of when you will have a storm, because

you will have a storm. Storms come to all of us. All of us get

hit, and all of us get hit hard. And it's just a matter of when,

not if. We knew we were gonna have a cyber attack on the campus.

We didn't know it was gonna be last week, which it hadn't been.

Kind of messed up my week A whole bunch of other people's. But

we knew it eventually would come. So three years ago, we began

planning for that. We began putting protections into the system

that weren't there before. We began restructuring things and separating

out servers so they couldn't talk to each other in certain ways.

We raised our insurance from a million dollars to $5 million. We

were prepared building a foundation for the storm of a cyber

attack that we knew would come because it comes to every organization

and every college in America gets hit. University Medical center

got hit three weeks ago, really hard. Everybody gets hit.

So we prepared the foundation and you're going to get hit. You

are going to get hit. Sometimes it hurts because I know

it's going to happen to you. And I see your faces. I love the

happy, I love the optimistic. I love the smiles. I love the hope

I see in your eyes. I love the dreams you have. But I also know

eventually some of you are going to face a bankruptcy. Some

of you are going to face a spouse who walks out on you. Some

of you are going to face fraud. Some of you are going to have

children who rebel, break your heart. Some of you are going to have

illness in your family that totally consumes you. Some of you

are going to die before I do. You see, storms will come. It's not

a matter of if, it's just a matter of when. And both builders

face the same storm. So we had these two builders, same vision for

their lives. They heard the same truth and they faced the same

storm. And that's where the story deviates, you see, because

each built a different character into their life. This is

where the differences get radical. A very different character.

A character that's so different that Jesus called one of

them wise and one of them a fool. Now, in those days, 2,000 years

ago, using the word fool was really strong. Really strong. You

see, in Scripture, wisdom is the ability to take divine truth

and apply it. And a fool in Scripture is not a person who lacks

information. They're not stupid. It's a person who does little

or with the information they have. And Jesus said, I just preached

on the Sermon on the gave you the sermon on the Mount and gave

you the whole blueprint for your life. And if you don't follow

it, you are an absolute fool because you are going to crash your

life. It's just a matter of time. The fool is selfish, full of

self, short sighted. The fool is self taught. They think they know

better than the one who designed them. The wise are obedient

to the one who created Them. You know, there are a lot of people

who are kind of wishy washy on their faith and they don't want to

commit because they get all hung up on this word obedient. You

know what obedient means? It means to be smart, to follow the

that teaching that Jesus gives and how we were designed to make

life productive and happy and meaningful and abundant. And it's

a response to love. My kids aren't obedient to me because they

always agree with me and see the bigger picture. I see they're

obedient because they love me and they know I want the very best

for them. Obedience is not about. God's going to give you a

list of all the stuff you can't do, and now life's not going

to be any fun. You're missing the point altogether. Obedience is

finding out how you were designed to function at the very

best level and to make that work and to do that because God sent

his son as a sacrifice for sin to restore us to God so we can have

fellowship and live that life in the kingdom right now. So each

of these builders started by building a very different character.

One was wise and one was a fool. And then we see that each built

a different foundation. The last really big building we built

here was a University Village. We've built some others since then,

but that one was really big. And through the years, university

president, I probably built about 25 buildings. And the most

important part of every building is the foundation. Now,

you may not know this, but Jackson, Mississippi sits on top

of a volcano. The volcano, the crust of the volcano is where the

Mississippi Coliseum is. If you went to Anime Fest this weekend,

you're sitting right on top of the volcano. That's where it was.

And all this area is part of that area. And so we have what's

known here as Yazoo clay that goes down very deep and it moves.

And that's why it various things like the front door of my

house, half of the year it lines up perfectly. And the other

half of the year I can't get it open because the clay moves and

it moves back, back and forth. Well, that may work for my little

house, front porch, but it sure doesn't work for a big building

like University Village. So when we built University Village,

we had pilings that went down so deep and they were so expensive

because unless we could get them on rock, there is no way that

building would stand up. And we spent not only a lot of money

but a lot of time digging down, down, down. Foundations are

Slow work. Foundation building is not glamorous. Nobody takes pictures

of foundations, how great they are. But a foundation in a building

or in your life and mine determines everything. You see, sand

is anything we build our identity on other than security and

obedience to Christ. That's what the sand is. So we say, you

know, if I succeed enough, I feel secure. So we build a life built

on the sand of achievement. Or if people admire me enough, I must

be doing well. We build on the sand of reputation. Or if I'm ahead

of others, I'm going better than they are, and I'm more successful

than they are, I must be on track, right? So we build a life

on the sand of command comparison, or something feels right,

it must be right. And we build our life on the sand of feelings.

Or if the culture celebrates the kinds of things I do, it must

be good. And we build a life on the sand of cultural approval.

The sand foundations, whatever they are, have one thing in common.

They only hold up until the pressure comes. The foundations of

your life are poured right now. Your habits, your convictions,

your integrity, your worldview, your spiritual disciplines.

You see, because it comes down to this, the direction of your life

will not be determined by the storms you face. It will be determined

by the foundation you build before the storm arrives. You see,

our foundations have to be built before the storms come. As

I said, I built a lot of buildings, and so I've learned a

lot about foundations. And here's what I know about Cannot pour

the concrete if it's raining. You can't pour the concrete if the

cold front comes through for the storm. The foundation has to

be poured when the weather's good, before it rains. Now you can

pour it after it rains. And there are a lot of people in life

who do that. They mess up so bad and they crash so hard. Then

they finally go back and try to rebuild it. But why wait? But

you can't do it while it's raining. It's too late. And if you

wait till the storm of life comes to try to build that foundation

in your life, it's too late. Well, each experience different results.

One stood in the storm and one fell. And Jesus didn't say the house

just fell down. It said it greatly fell. A mighty crash. It

was a total collapse, you see, because only in a storm is your foundation

revealed. You don't see the foundation when it's all going well.

You only see the foundation when the storm comes. Now, the foolish

house stood for a while. It may have looked strong, it may have

looked successful. But when the storm came, it exposed the foundation

and it collapsed totally. Jesus is warning us, he's trying

to warn us that a life built on popularity or achievement or money

or reputation or feelings or peer approval may appear stable,

may appear attractive. But when the storm comes, it reveals

what the founded point, what the house is built on. And it will

collapse as long as the sun's shining. Looks pretty good. But Jesus

said the rains will come and the floods will rise and the winds

will beat against the house. He said these are major storms, hurricane

type storms. And when those storms came, each had a very, very

different result. Well, the difference really comes down to a

decision. It wasn't about intelligence, it wasn't about opportunity,

it wasn't about background. It's a decision to live in obedience

to Christ. They both heard the same teaching. One acted on it and

the other said, I think my way is better. You see, Christian maturity

is not measured by what we know. It's measured by what we do

with what we know. And that's what Jesus is telling us. You've

been at a Christian college and you've heard all this stuff,

and if you haven't done anything with it, I'm sorry, it's

not my words, but Jesus says you're a fool because your house

is going to crash. And what we do with what we know determines where

we anchor our trust with when the storm comes. This cyber attack

has really pretty much consumed my life for the last 11

days now. I think we're on. I've had an awful lot of nice notes.

Some of you have written really nice notes. And I appreciate

other students, faculty and others have written really nice notes.

And people have kind of said the same thing. They said, thanks

for keeping us calm in the storm or keeping us calm during all

this or sure, lots going on. But you don't seem worried, and I'll

tell you I'm not. This thing could cost us millions of dollars.

We could lose millions of dollars over this. You know, it costs

a million dollars a week to run this university. It could cost

several million dollars. We could lose students. For the last

11 days. We don't know who's tried to apply, who said, couldn't

get in and said, well, I'm going someplace else. We could lose

reputation, we could lose people's confidence that we know

how to run a place. I'm not worried because my foundation is

built on the rock of Jesus. This is not my university. This is

not the Board of Trustees university. This is not even your

university. As much as I hope you'll always love belongs to God.

And the God I serve is a lot stronger than a couple of evil guys

stuck away in a basement someplace in the world who think

about nothing every day other than how to be evil to people they

can't see. And my God will take care of them. I'm not worried

one bit. I'm not fun. That's a lot of work, but I'm not worried.

Our foundation is strong, you see, A secure life is built long

before the storm arrives. I could not feel that way if I waited

till the storm came and then tried to sort all that out. I've

lived that way for years and years and years because the foundation's

strong. Jesus sends a sermon on the Mount with this decision.

It's not a theory, it's not an idea. It's a decision. When he finished

the sermon on the Mount, he didn't ask the crowd, well, what

do you think of what I taught you? No, he asked him, what are you

going to do with it? You see, everybody builds a life. You're building

one right now. The question is not whether you're building the.

The question is, what are you building on? Because someday, a storm

will test the life of every single person in this room. Pressure

will come, loss will come, injustice will come. Hurt will come

that will crush you. And when that moment arrives, the strength

of your life will not come from what you intended to do. Yeah,

I'm going to get right with God when I just finish. No, it won't

come from what you intended to do. It will come from what you actually

built. So hear the words of Jesus and do something. Build your

life on them. Build it before the storm arrives. The storm doesn't

determine whether or not the house stands. The foundation does.

It wasn't the house that weathered the storm. It was the foundation.

The foundation of your life is a choice. Jesus said, if a storm

hit you today, would you hold steady? If you're building your foundation

on the rock of Christ Jesus, then our benediction verse is a prayer

of confidence. Let's say it together one last time to end this

academic year of chapel. No eye is seen, no ear is heard. No

mind is conceived, but God has prepared for those who love Him.

Thank you for listening so well all the way through the year.

I really have enjoyed this time. I've learned a lot about the

parables. It's been a great time, and I hope they've spoken to

you. God bless.