Well, today I want us to briefly start with an overview of kind of where we've headed, where we've gone since the beginning of February with our study on the Sermon on the Mount. If you have missed any of these lessons, Nate does such a great job of recording these. So they're on our website. They're also on Sermon Audio. But as we began back in February, this greatest of all sermons, preached by the greatest who ever preached, we noted five reasons for studying this particular sermon. First was that it underscored the necessity of the new spiritual birth. It's important to remember that this sermon was meant for Christians and could only be rightly applied and lived out by the power of the Holy Spirit. Secondly, this sermon helps us to grow in our sanctification. By thirdly, pointing us to Jesus. We'll see today in the closing verses, the crowds were astonished at what Jesus had said and who he was. They were astonished at who he was by saying these things. Fourth, it shows us the way of blessing for Christians. If you want to be blessed in your Christian pilgrimage, this is a good study to come back to. and by God's grace to live out. Fifth, the Sermon on the Mount helps us with evangelism. We've seen that over and over, how Jesus has much to say to, on the one hand, the scribes, the Pharisees, the false prophets, the unbeliever, but He has a lot to say to the believer, too, and in contrasting the life of the unbeliever with the believer. Well, then we turned our attention to the Beatitudes and we noted that it's impossible for these to truly characterize the unbeliever. However, for the Christian, it is possible to live out these Beatitudes because we have faith in the Lord Jesus and we have the Holy Spirit living within us to help guide us and to help us apply it. How do we apply the Beatitudes? It's by looking to Jesus. who embodied all the characteristics and who gave us these words. Well, Christians should also be salt and light, letting your light shine before others so that others may see your good works. and give glory to your father who is in heaven, Matthew 5, 16. In this way, as we glorify the Lord in our lives, we bear testimony to the watching world of his faithfulness to us in fulfilling his promises. We looked at the importance of the verses found in Matthew 5, 17 through 20, where it said, Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And the tendency in many broad evangelical circles is to, even the word has been used, can you imagine this, to unhitch the Old Testament. No, we can't unhitch it because it's God's Word, and it's all God's Word. The whole counsel of both the Old and New Testaments, Jesus points out the danger of relaxing the commandments and teaching others to do the same. Finally, he said something that would have been shocking to the scribes and Pharisees in the crowd, that our righteousness should exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. And this is, in fact, one of the primary themes of the Sermon on the Mount. Whereas the scribes and the Pharisees who had an outward and a superficial and therefore a false righteousness, Jesus is saying, no, no, no. As Christians, you have an inward righteousness that rests upon Christ alone in his righteousness. We rest upon that great exchange that occurred at the cross of Calvary. where He took on your sins and my sins and imputed to us His righteousness." Well, the remainder of Matthew 5, if you remember, looked at six corrective illustrations. Each one of them began with the phrase, you have heard that it was said of old, which means that the people had already heard something about each one of these illustrations. but they had heard it taught from the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus is now going to explain them in a way that causes people to look at the inner part of the person, again, not just the outward. And the six corrective illustrations have to do with anger and lust and divorce, oaths, retaliation, and loving your enemies. Then we discuss the importance of giving to the needy. How did the scribes and Pharisees give to people? They made a public show of it, right? And Jesus is saying, no, it's more about the heart. And it's giving to the needy because I've told you to give to the needy and those that are in need in a private way so that God alone will be pleased. The next section of verses dealt with how we should pray in the Lord's Prayer. We didn't do an exhaustive study of this because we did a really in-depth study of this last spring. But we kind of did an overview of the importance of one of the things I love about the Lord's Prayer is that He is our Father. Right? And so, when we say that collectively in worship, even as we say it today, we're saying as brothers and sisters in Christ, as God who has adopted us by His Son's blood, that He is collectively, He is our Heavenly Father. He's our Heavenly Father. And so, He tells us in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus does, how to pray. how to pray. And we know that prayer does not change God, right? As you'll see in some of the modern... of evangelical literature. No, prayer changes us. God commands us to do it. As we do so, we are growing closer to Him and being conformed into His Son's image. We looked at the importance of fasting for the right reasons. We also discussed the importance of laying up treasures in heaven. And so the idea is not that we shouldn't have material goods here on earth, but it's more about our heart focus as Christians. should be on the eternal and not on the temporal. Well, in Matthew 6, 25 through 34, we saw we should not be anxious and given to worry, something that many of us in this room and many Christians struggle with. But we saw how to worry is ultimately to have little faith. The phrase little faith is used five times in the gospel. Each one," it's referring to the disciples, not taking heart for what God will do for them. We worry then ultimately because we forget. We forget God's promises to us. Then we looked at the idea of asking and receiving. In these verses, Jesus underscored the power of persistent prayer. Then we looked at the golden rule. Instead of comparing ourselves to other, comparing ourselves to God's straight edge, pursuing the narrow gate, which leads to eternal life. And then last week, we came to this section of verses about a tree and its fruit. And we said the scribes and the Pharisees and the false prophets and the unbelievers bear bad fruit on diseased trees because they do not have new life in Christ. They can't bear good fruit because they don't have the right root system. And the root system is justification. Conversely, we as Christians have a good, strong root system, foundation, built upon the Word of God in Christ, and so we should and can produce good fruit. In fact, we cannot help but produce good fruit as Christians as we grow closer to the Lord. Well, that was about a seven-minute summary of the last three months. But that brings us to where we're at today in the Sermon on the Mount. So, if you have your Bibles, turn to Matthew 7. We'll be looking at verses 24 through 29. Matthew 7, beginning in verse 24. Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man. who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against the house, and it fell. And great was the fall of it. And when Jesus finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as the scribes." Well, I want us to look at these verses under three headings, which is on your handout. The first we're going to look at First, actually, the similarities between the wise and the foolish man, the similarities, verses 24 through 27. Also, in that same section of verses, secondly, we're going to look at the differences between the wise man and the foolish man. And then thirdly, we will conclude by looking at the authority of Jesus in verses 28 through 29. But let's first discuss the similarities between the wise and the foolish man. Notice, first of all, that both builders, if you will, heard the very words of Jesus." Verse 24, everyone who hears these words of mine. So, both the wise and the foolish man heard Jesus, heard the gospel, heard the way of salvation. Secondly, after hearing Jesus' words, they both proceeded to build. Both proceeded to build a house. Now, the house represents one's life. So as such, the wise man builds his house, his life, if you will, on the words of Jesus. But the foolish man does not build his house on the words of Jesus, but thinks that his house will be secure simply because he has heard Jesus's words, though he is not personally committed to them. You see the difference? The foolish man has heard the Word of God, but he refuses to bow the knee. He refuses to personally commit and submit, so he has a false assurance. Both builders have confidence that their house is going to stand. However, the wise man places his confidence in the Lord, and the foolish man places his confidence really in himself. Well, thirdly, John MacArthur points out that both builders build their houses in the same general, we could say general location, evidenced by their apparently being hit by the same storm. In other words, the outward circumstances of their lives were essentially the same. Are you with me on that? They build the house, similar location, everything kind of looks the same on the outside. One doesn't have an advantage over the other, at least on the outside. They lived perhaps in the same town, possibly attended the same church, heard the same preaching, went to the same Bible study, fellowship with the same people. Everything looked outwardly the same. Fourth, the implication is that they built the same kind of house. So in other words, outwardly, their houses were very much alike. They appeared on the same on the outside. This goes right along, doesn't it? With what we said last week about the false prophets. They looked the part, they spoke the part, but on the inside, very, very different. They look like sheep, but they were what on the inside? Wolves. And so we could say that at least outwardly in the context of our message today that both builders were religious, they were moral, they were law-abiding citizens, perhaps they even both served in the church, yet there was a difference seen by Jesus on the inside. It is this point that's so very important. So don't overlook this. This is very important in the context of these verses today. Though both houses look the same on the outside, they were very different on the inside. And this led to a difference in how their homes stood up under pressure when the storms of life came. That's one of the key themes of this particular passage. Well, this leads to the second point. We've looked at how the builders were similar. Now, we've got to look at how they're different. They both heard the Word of God, even built similar homes in similar locations. The difference between the wise man and the foolish man is what he did with the Word of God, how it affected him. The wise man acted upon God's Word and lived out his life as a drink offering, giving himself to the Lord. That's what's pictured here. The foolish man, on the other hand, did not act upon God's Word, and he continued to live for himself rather than live for the Lord. The word for rock in verse 25 is petra. Now, I may be dating myself when I say this, but anybody remember in the 1980s, I know it's been a while, there's a group called Petra. You all remember that? Christian group. All right. Lest I diverge anymore. Let's go. So, verse 25, Petra means rock, but it's more than rock. It's a solid, immovable expanse of rock. immovable, something that cannot be moved. Sand, on the other hand, as you all know, is loose, unstable and movable. Even a kid can move sand. The scribes and the Pharisees built their house like the foolish man on sand, meaning that their foundation was not upon Christ and his word. They had heard the word preached. but they didn't build their house upon it. Rather, they built it on the traditions of man." A.W. Pink was rather blunt at times, and I'm going to read a statement that describes this, which really gets the point across. They bring their bodies to the house of prayer, but not their souls. They worship with their mouths, but not in spirit and in truth. They are sticklers for immersion or early morning communion, yet take no thought about keeping their hearts with all diligence. They boast of their orthodoxy, but disregard the precepts of Christ. Multitudes of professing Christians abstain from external acts of violence, yet hesitate not to rob their neighbors of a good name by spreading evil reports against them. They contribute regularly to the pastor's salary, but shrink not from misrepresenting their goods and cheating their customers, persuading themselves that business is business. And here's what it comes down to. They have more regard for the laws of man than those of God, for his fear, that's God's fear, is not before their eyes. That describes the scribes, the Pharisees, the false prophets. In other words, they may look and act, so to speak, like a Christian outwardly saying the right things, but their heart is far from God. The foolish man builds his house on sand. In other words, he builds his house on idols. If you don't build your house on Christ, you're going to build it on something. And if it's not Christ, it's going to be whatever it is or whoever it is. that you're ultimately worshiping. His entire house, his entire life is built upon what he thinks is important rather than what God thinks is important. He may build his house on materialism, on human opinions or wills which are always fluctuating. MacArthur writes, to build on sand is to build on self-will, self-fulfillment, self-purpose, self-sufficiency, self-satisfaction, and self-righteousness. What's the common denominator there? Self. It's either God or self. We're either going to build our lives on God or we're going to build our lives around ourselves. Paul warns against this. 2 Timothy 3, 5 through 7, avoids such people, he says, for among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions. And then listen, always learning and never able to arrive at the knowledge of truth. So it's kind of a false facade. They're always going through the motions. They're doing the right things even, but their heart is not changed. The wise man, however, hears the word of God and he builds his house firmly upon the rock, which begs the question, who or what is the rock? What is Jesus himself? Paul writes, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. Ephesians 2, 9 through 20. Again, in Acts 4, 11, this Jesus is the stone who was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. Jesus himself is the rock, the cornerstone. And so a wise man will build his entire life with Jesus being the foundation. The true mark of discipleship, the true mark of discipleship is not just hearing and even believing, but it's hearing, believing, and then therefore doing. Having an active life that pursues holiness. James writes, but be doers of the Word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he's like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like," James 1, 22 through 24. James MacArthur says about that section of verses, in other words, a person who professes to know Christ but does not obey Christ has no lasting image of what the new life is all about. He glimpses Christ and glimpses what Christ can do for him, but his image of Christ and the new life in Christ soon fade. His experience with the gospel is shallow, superficial, and short-lived. Again, some of these people are ones that show up at church week in and week out. They listen to the weekly sermon, but they leave unchanged. They're living for their own sinful pleasures and desires without a true inward heart desire to live the Christian life. However, the house that was built, the life that is built upon the rock, having Jesus as a sure foundation is a life of obedience, the kind of life that Jesus has been describing all along in this great Sermon on the Mount. It's a life concerned with true internal righteousness rather than false external righteousness. It's a life that is daily consecrated to the Lord, that mourns over sin, that strives by the help of the Holy Spirit to put on the new self, producing fruit and more and more fruit that's pleasing and glorifying to the Lord. It's a life that will go through the narrow gate, though the world will try to distract you and say, no, there's an easier way. But it's also a life that will lead to the ultimate reward, eternal life in heaven with God himself. Well, if you're wondering, as we go through this, Which man am I? Which woman am I? Am I like the wise man or am I like the foolish man? Ask yourself these questions. Are you applying and actively doing and living out the Word of God in accordance with an inward heart desire that propels obedient outward service to the Lord? Do you have a disdain for sin and a desire for repentance? Do you come to church because that's what you were raised to do, or it's even what you've got in the habit of doing? Are you just coming in and leaving, or are you coming and you're coming here with the desire to worship the Lord Jesus, to meet with Him week in and week out, and to leave here changed? We've looked at the differences between the foolish and the wise man. Now we've got to consider the result of building on rock versus building on sand. And we see that in verses 25 and 27. And the rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against the house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. Contrast that with verse 27, the foolish man, the rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat against the house and it fell. And great was the fall of it. So here we have a huge contrast. They faced the same storm, right? The rains, the flooding, the winds that beat against the house, but the outcome was entirely different. The wise man's house weathered the storm, we could say. with no issues, for it had been founded on the rock. However, the foolish man's house did not weather the storm well and ended up falling because it was built on sand. Again, let's think about the house as one's life. Storms will come. How many of y'all have had storms and trials in your life? Yes. How many of y'all right now even? Many of us. The storms come, the trials of life come, so to speak, but the wise man continues to stand, not so the foolish man, for when the storms come and the trials of life come, he crumbles under the weight of hardship. He's not able to weather the storm because he doesn't have the right foundation. Reminds me of James 1, 2, 3, 4. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So for the true Christian, who's encountering storms and encountering trials, this is the promise that we have from God's Word that the Lord may be testing us, but that testing is producing steadfastness. So let it have its full effect that we may glorify the Lord Jesus even more in our lives. Now, this does not mean that it's sinful or a sign of foolishness to be concerned or even sad when you have a difficult diagnosis. or when you have a difficult time in a particular relationship. No, these storms will come in our lives, but the wise man has a secure, settled peace. Why is that? Because his very foundation is built upon Christ alone, who does not change. Now we look at how Jesus concludes in these last two verses, verses 28 and 29. And when Jesus finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He was teaching them as one who had authority and not as the scribes. So we see here in these concluding verses, in this great sermon on the Mount, the reaction. What was their reaction? Astonishment. It was almost like they were taken back. from what they had heard. Why was that? Why were they astonished? Well, it says, because they had not heard that before. It was different, if you will, it was different than the teaching that they had had from the scribes and the Pharisees. And so then we ask, how was it different? Well, it says here that it was with authority, spoken with authority. Alexander Bruce writes, The scribes spoke by authority, resting all they said on the traditions of what had been said before. Jesus, though, spoke with authority, out of his own soul, with direct intuition of truth, and therefore to the answering soul of his hearers. What's the difference? Scribes and Pharisees spoke According to tradition, they spoke by authority. Jesus Himself spoke with authority because He Himself is the authority. Jesus spoke with authority because He is authority and has authority. He says later on in Matthew 28, 18, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Well, this brings me to a concluding question. Now that we have heard the Sermon on the Mount, how will we respond? We've heard it, how will we respond? Will you say as some have, these words are true. These are great sayings. They are the key to morality. So I'll just try harder to live this way. What does that sound like? Sounds like secular philosophy, right? Just trying to roll up your sleeves, do better, get better. Jesus is saying, no, you're deceiving yourselves and missing the entire point of this great sermon if you do that. Boyce writes, Jesus is saying here, I'm not asking you to go out and try harder. You'll never be able to do it. To go out and try harder and to try to construct that kind of character in your own strength, that's the key. Construct that kind of character in your own strength is like trying to build a mansion upon sand. Actually, you will only achieve that kind of character when you build upon me. So dear brothers and sisters, let us daily consecrate our lives to the Lord, building our lives on the firm foundation of Jesus himself and on his word. Let us pursue the narrow gate. Let us stand firm when the storms of life come. Let us pray for one another and encourage one another when those storms of life come on this Christian pilgrimage. and let God use us in a way that will bring glory to himself and bear testimony to others that we are his. As we conclude, are you able to sing these words along with the hymn writer? Words that we're gonna sing actually in a moment. These are the words, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ, the solid rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand." All other ground is sinking sand. We thank You, Lord, for Your Word. We thank You that You have given us Christ, the chief cornerstone who came and lived a perfect life, died a death that we deserved, and is now reigning in heaven at your right hand, even preparing a place right now as we pray, Lord, for those that are in Christ. Father, help us. Oh, help us to continue to build our lives on the sure foundation, the steady foundation of Christ alone. And Father, as we do that, we need the help of the Holy Spirit. So help us, Lord, to make use of the ordinary means of grace. Lord, to spend time in your Word, to come to church, but not just to go through the motions, but to come, to learn, have a desire to grow closer to you, that you would continue to transform us, making us more and more into your Son's image. Oh, how we pray this, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.