Doing the Words of Jesus – 9/8/24

One year before I was born, my maternal grandparents were looking for a house on a lake in Maine. I think they wanted to eventually retire there. They found one in Harrison, Maine that was on Long Lake, which is a beautiful 11-mile lake with stunning views. But the realtor wouldn’t go in the house because he said the foundation is crumbling.  You could look under, and the house, which was a large house, was resting on rotting logs and some stones and dirt. This actually is an old postcard my sister found from way before my grandfather bought the house, so it’s in a little better shape, but, you can’t really see underneath it there. But my grandfather decided to buy the house, even though it was about to fall in the lake, because it was cheap. It was $9,000. I don’t think you could buy a lake house for that. I’m not sure. And he saw something in this house, so he bought it. On weekends he traveled up before he retired, and I know my dad helped — I was of no assistance at the time — and they jacked the house up. And with his little cement mixer, they poured a whole new foundation, putting in a complete basement with shop and storage, and then repaired the whole upper part of the house. It looks not quite like that anymore, but I have a lot of really fond memories as a kid being up there in the summer. This is what the house looks like now. It’s worth a lot more than $9,000. And, of course, our family no longer owns it.

But one memory that stands out is one summer we were up there and a tornado came through and was just blowing away boats, docks, houses, trees, and my grandfather’s house stood firm. And I’ve thought about that house in relation to the story we’re looking at today a lot because, just like my grandfather saw something in that house — I know this is a little different, the analogy doesn’t fit perfectly. But just imagine how Jesus views us, cobbling together a life without a real foundation and then gathering us together to say, how about we jack that house up a bit and repour that foundation? Something that will last, firm.

So with that in mind, let’s look again at the passage Allan just read. And I want you to specifically look for some similarities and some differences between the two builders. Verse 24 of Matthew 7,

“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 that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

So you have a wise builder and a foolish builder. Look at the similarities first. Did you notice these? First of all, they both heard. Verse 24 and verse 26:

“Everyone who hears these words of mine…”

Both builders heard. They attended church, maybe even grew up in a Christian home or went to a Christian school, maybe. Read good books. Heard the stories of Jesus. Both heard. Both built. Verse 24 and 26,

“built his house…”

They both knew they needed shelter, both trying to navigate their way through life with all its complexities. They are building a life, a house, if you will. Both built, both experienced difficulty. Rain fell. Floods came.

“Winds blew,”

verse 25 and verse 27,

“and beat on that house.” Both the wise and the foolish experience storms.

Now don’t just blow past that, because there are false teachers today who will tell you if you live wise enough and good enough, then you won’t go through difficult times. Not true. Both the wise and the foolish experienced storms.

What are storms? Storms are difficulties in life. And they have…  One of the features of current storms, storms in life, difficulties, is they have a foundation-revealing benefit. Difficulties reveal what we’re trusting in, who we’re trusting in, what we’re resting on, climaxing in the final storm, judgment. So picture all these smaller difficulties are, in a sense, preparing us for the ultimate difficulty, the ultimate storm, which is the final judgment before God. So often in the Bible, storms are depicted, like in Jeremiah 23:19, as judgment.

“Behold, the storm of the Lord! Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest; it will burst upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart. In the latter days you will understand it clearly.”

So storms, or difficulties in life, reveal the nature of our foundation to prepare us, warn us, of final judgment. The ultimate storm. Both heard. Both built. Both experienced difficulties. Now the differences.

The differences, notice two. One is the foundation material is different.

“The wise man built his house on the rock.”

And the word for rock there is petra, which is not stone or pebble, but bedrock, a ledge of connected rock. It’s the same word used in Matthew 16:18 when God said, Jesus said,

“On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

Wise man. Foolish man built his house on the sand. Now, why would someone build on sand? Perhaps it’s more available. It’s definitely more flexible. Sand is much easier to work with. It is faster. You can pull sand together, perhaps more quickly. Contrast the bedrock, building on a bedrock, in a pre-dynamite, pre-bulldozer age. When you hit bedrock, you adjusted your plans to the bedrock. When you hit sand, you adjust the sand to your plans. So the picture Jesus is making is, your life is either founded on something that you design, and create, and form, you make you, and you rest on you, which he’s saying works great for a while until it doesn’t. It’s not storm resistant. Or you found your life on Someone far greater who doesn’t conform to your design for your life, you conform to his. Two very different foundations. One gets blown away, one not. So two different foundation materials. And then notice the storm damage is different.

“When the rain fell, the floods came. The wind blew the house and the rock did not fall. The house on sand fell, and great was the fall of it.”

Whereas the Christian Standard Bible translates it,

“It collapsed with a great crash.”

Now the story is just beautifully told, so succinct. It’s a great place to practice your outlining of texts because it’s so uniform, breaks down so nicely. But the question we need to wrestle with is, “What is Jesus’ point?” And let’s see if we can summarize it this way.

The difference between flourishing and falling or collapsing in life and death is determined by what we do with the words of Jesus. The difference between flourishing and collapsing in life and death is determined by what we do with the words of Jesus. Look at Matthew 7:24 again.

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them…”

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them…”

So the wise hear and do, the foolish hear and do not do. So, what does Jesus mean by “do my words”? How do you do words? Let’s do a little word study. Don’t you love word studies? Wow, there are some odd folk in here like me. Let’s geek out for a minute. Poieo is the word that’s used here. It means to do or make, practice, or produce. It is used, get this, in three chapters on the Sermon on the Mount, twenty one times. Let me give you a few examples. Matthew 5:19,

“Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever [there it is, poieo,] does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

Here’s another example, Matthew 6:1:

“Beware of [doing, poieo,] practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.”

So whatever it means to do the words of Jesus, it doesn’t mean to do to be seen, to perform. Matthew 7:12,

“So whatever you wish that others would [there it is] do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 7:17, a little different translation,

“So, every healthy tree [does] good fruit, [it’s poieo, same word] bears [produces] good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.”

Four times, two verses. Matthew 7:21,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who [poieo] does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

And then, of course, in chapter 7:24 and 26, two more usages. So what I’m trying to emphasize here is, this is not an insignificant theme. I don’t think we can really get our arms around the Sermon on the Mount if we don’t understand what he means by this. This is the climax. This is what he’s saying after teaching all these verses, you’ve got to do my words. So how do we do Jesus’ words? Is Jesus talking about legalism? Now what is legalism?

Legalism is when we try to do something in order to earn salvation or accrue merit before God. The most common religious version of this is the scale. And most people in the world think with a scale mindset regarding religion. I do some bad things. I need to do enough good things to offset my bad things, so that when I get before God, he will look and say, hey, your good offset your bad. And that’s just legalism. It’s not what Jesus is talking about.

What Jesus is talking about is not legalism, but liberty. It is a kind of freedom that is unlike any other. It’s going to take me a while to show you this, but I want us to see, because this opens the door for what Jesus means by “doing my words.” So let’s go back to Matthew 1:21, when the angel of the Lord told Joseph in a dream,

“She [Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Notice he doesn’t say, “for he will call his people to do enough to be forgiven for their sins.” No. Jesus is our Savior. Something I recently noticed in exploring this word “poieo” is, look at Matthew 4:19,

“And he said to them, ‘Follow me and I will [poieo] you fishers of men.”

Isn’t that cool? Follow me. Being one with Jesus, accompanying Jesus, identified with Jesus. He makes, he does us. He poieos us. He makes, produces us into something we would not have been. So this is why Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount, describing the identity of those in his kingdom, with descriptions like, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” The poor, the ones who can’t do enough, earn enough, prove enough, don’t have a good enough resumé to make it, they’re welcomed in the kingdom. Why? Because I do it. I have done, I have poieo, I make you. The most succinct statement of this is in Ephesians 2:8-10,

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his [poiema] workmanship…”

Let’s pause there for a second. Poiema is a word from poieo. We get the word poem from that, but it doesn’t mean poem. It does mean a work of art. Literally, it means we are his doing, his making, in an artistic sense.

“For we are his [product] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”

So we are his new creation doing who go about doing because he has done. Have I lost you?

“which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

So that’s that “follow me and I will make you” language. So all that to say, this is not talking about legalism. It is talking about liberty, a kind of freedom you will not find anywhere else. And to show you this, we’re going to go on a little bit of a field trip to a companion letter. I’ve mentioned in passing a couple times during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ half brother, James, wrote a letter that in many ways reflects the subjects of the Sermon on the Mount. So I want us to drop in where James unpacks what it looks like to do the words of God, to do the words of Jesus. And he uses three images to help us. I find it very helpful. James 1:22,

“But be [poietes]…”

So this is the noun form of the verb poieo that we saw back in Matthew 7. Now he’s using a noun. He’s actually describing us as doers.

“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

So hearers who are not doers are self-deceived. Why? And then he provides us with a vivid image of a mirror. Look what he says, verse 23,

“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a [poietes] doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. [24] For he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he’s like.”

So James uses a very mundane example. You’re having a good day. You’re going to use the restroom, you run to the bathroom, you wash your hands, and you suddenly notice in the mirror. Oh, no, I’ve got this piece of lettuce stuck in my teeth. Has it been there all day? No one said a word. I see something about myself that I was not aware of. Now, James is not worried about lettuce in the teeth, but he is worried about seeing ourselves accurately. So just as a mirror is to our appearance, the Word of God is to our identity. When we look in the Word, we are looking in the mirror, and we are seeing stuff about ourselves that at first is not pretty, right? That’s where I learn that I’m a sinner. That’s where I learn that I can’t earn my way to God. That’s where I learn that there is judgment for my sin. So there’s some bad things that I really wouldn’t want to know until I come to know them and realize. But then, as I keep looking in the Word, I see the Spirit opens my eyes to the grace of Christ, and that he’s washed away my sin. He’s making me a new person in Jesus.

So we begin to recognize ourselves through the Word as to who we really are, who we were designed to be, not evolved over millions of years to be a blob with shoes on, but a real image bearer who was made beautiful, and then broken by sin, and now remade in Jesus. And I see that through his Word. And it’s not something I can create. As James just said a few verses earlier, James 1:18:

“Of his own will he brought us forth…”

That’s birthing language. God, birthed us, begets us, regenerates us.

“by the word of truth.”

Just let that soak in. James is describing the Bible as the word of truth to people who have been defined by untruths for so long. So we have been rebirthed.

“by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creation.”

So we begin to recognize ourselves as we get into his Word, and the Spirit opens our eyes through his truth, that we are new creations, and we become aware of what we have been made to be, and our identity becomes aligned with reality through the word of truth.

But what James is saying is, if we experience that in the Word, and then we walk away and live any way we want, like the way we used to live, we’re like the guy who saw the lettuce in the teeth and just left it there. What are you doing? You’re not living consistent with who you really are. It is impossible to see who you really are, but not live who you really are without some kind of self-deception or amnesia. Forgetfulness. But in contrast to that way of living, look at verse 25,

“But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty…”

Isn’t that amazing. That’s the way James describes the Scriptures, the law of liberty, a law that liberates. And when we look in it,

“and persevere, being no hearer who forgets but a [poietes] doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

So liberty, according to James, is the freedom to live out your true identity in Jesus. You’ve looked in the mirror of God’s Word. He has transformed us, begets us, through the word of truth. And then we go live who we are. That’s freedom. Not hearing and forgetting, but hearing and continuing. But then, James, just before this, has used two other images that I find crucial to understand what it really means to “do” the words of Christ. That’s what we’re wrestling with here. What does it mean to do his words? Look at verse 21. James 1:21,

“Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”

So we just looked at the image of a mirror. And here James adds two more images, and it’s all about the Word. Notice it’s receive with meekness, the implanted word. But he uses what feels to me like two contrasting images. The first one is at the beginning of the verse. Can you put up verse 21 again? Yeah, the “put away.” That is the language of getting dressed and undressed. It’s a clothing term, put off, away. It would be like working in the yard all afternoon. You’re sweaty and dirty, and you come in and you strip off that shirt that is stuck to your body, all the filth. As he says, “filthiness and rampant wickedness,” de-clothe yourself, which seems like a very external image.

But then the third image is “receive with meekness the implanted word.” Implanted is more of a very internal image, that of a seed or a life-giving device, or something planted within us that grows and produces fruit. So Jesus is still talking, James is still talking about doing the words of Jesus. And he raises this tension that I think we all wrestle with at different times between the internal and the external. Like if I just put off and put on on the outside, then it feels like I’m just playing a role. But do I wait to put off or put on on the outside until something happens within?

David Gibson, in his masterful book on James called “Radically Whole,” refers to a book by C.S. Lewis which is titled “Beyond Personality,” and has a chapter in there called, “Let’s Pretend.” C.S. Lewis talks about two different kinds of pretending, a good and a bad. The obvious bad kind of pretending is when we are pretending to be loving someone, like Judas kissing Jesus, and really stabbing them in the back. That’s an obvious bad kind of pretending.

But the one we’re more familiar with is, we’re ready to go to church, we get in a disagreement, we say unkind words, we ignore them, and we just walk into church with a bright Christian smile and put on our church appearance. And it just feels very dirty, right? We haven’t really repented or reconciled, but we’re pretending like everything’s fine, singing, smiling with our church clothes. That’s not a good kind of pretending.

But then Lewis tells a good kind of pretending, and he gives the example of a little girl or a little boy playing dress up when they’re kids. The girl may dress up as a mommy playing with the doll, or as an accountant. Back off, women. I’m kidding! Or as an athlete. And the little boy may dress up as a daddy or fireman. And in many ways, that kind of pretending is not real. But what Gibson describes that as, is they are not so much practicing a made up reality, but an “anticipatory reality in appropriate guise.”  An anticipatory… I like that.

In other words, they are wearing clothes that might not fit yet, but they’re growing into them. They’re wearing what they might become. And it gives us a glimpse at what James is getting at when he talks about the putting off — undress, peel off this filthy way of living, put on this beautiful way, this garment of grace, compassion, purity, re-dress. But at the same time we’re thinking wait, I’m not that yet, fully. And it can feel like pretending.

And some people, you’ll hear this debate today. Some people will say, no, it really doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you believe. That’s what matters. Just believe. And whatever you do, God’s okay with. Does that sound like what we’re learning in the Sermon on the Mount? But then there are other people that are like, well, don’t worry about what you feel or what’s happening on the inside. Just do the right thing, keep the list, execute what you know is right, and hopefully one day you’ll feel more genuine about it. And both of these are getting at something, what Jesus means by doing my words, but they’re not getting at the full, the whole of it. David Gibson writes this:

“The gospel is not merely behavior change, surface deep or window dressing, but deep change, an implanted kind of change; so we need to learn how God grows that in us…”

Pause for a second. Don’t just blow past that, because I think that’s really important. We need to learn how God grows that in us. That may take you 10, 20, 50, 80 years to learn how God does that. But you notice, as he says,

“He implants his truth and tells us to watch our speech, our actions, and our habits, and over time, his Word and the action together grow us in righteousness.”

He plants. He’s implanting his truth in us and by his Spirit it is growing, and we are putting on and acting out and living and doing. And the two cannot be separated. Like in Philippians 2:13 or 2:12, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good.” Wait. Nope. Sorry. Wrong verse.

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling [not work for, work it out], for it is God who works in you both to will [inside] and to work for his good pleasure.”

Like the doings and the willing to do are all from him. It’s all grace. It’s all his empowering favor. So who we are and what we do is harmonized. So what my grandfather saw in that house in Maine in a very different way, but Jesus is doing in our lives — jacking up the house, repouring the foundation, and letting that foundation transform the way we build or live. And I want, I know we’ve covered a bunch in Matthew and in James, but I think what might help us is to end with a few questions to consider.

1. What are you doing with the words of Jesus?

What are you doing with the words of Jesus? We have been in the Sermon on the Mount for about 6 1/2 months. We started March 3. Lord willing, we’ll end next week. I want to make clear, by doing the words of Jesus, there are a lot of people with super sensitive consciences who might be tempted to pile guilt on themselves because, wow, there were many sermons I can’t remember. They were unmemorable, and I don’t know of any big life change from all these passages. And I think we can be in danger of falling off a cliff on the hyper analytical. But when we step back, I think we should be able to say when I look in God’s Word, and I hear it taught, or I read it on my own, when I look at a pattern, there’s a pattern in my life of believing and responding. Doesn’t mean every week I’m running out with my hands raised. But it does mean that I believe and value God’s Word above what I believe and value in my own head, my own thoughts and plans and designs. And so if I look back over the last six months, for example, and I say, well, God’s Word really hasn’t changed the way I think and live, then I think that should raise questions. What is my house resting on? Not that the foundation is visible, but the foundation is necessary and shapes everything above it.

Many of us as Americans are frantically building, working, adding, designing. And when we feel, when we go through a storm, whether it’s just a minor disappointment or a massive cataclysmic loss, we feel what it’s like for the earth to move beneath us. And those moments are designed by God to point us toward a true foundation. There’s none other than Jesus. Are we responding to that, or are we just getting used to feeling anxious, fearful, depressed, insecure. Or even when we do achieve success, feeling dissatisfaction with that, and we end up being like the builder whose house is about to slip into the lake. And rather than address the foundation, we’re like, let’s repaint. Let’s put flowers out front. In America, let’s add on, make it bigger. And the bigger it gets, the bigger the collapse. Novelist Matias Dalsgaard describes:

“Such a person must have no stable or solid foundation to build upon, and yet nonetheless tries to build his way out of his problem. It’s an impossible situation. You can’t compensate for having a foundation made of quicksand by building a new story on top, but this person takes no notice and hopes that the problem down in the foundation won’t be found out if only the construction work on the top keeps going.”

As long as I keep building, we won’t notice the rotting logs and the sinking sand beneath. So perhaps the Spirit brought some of us here today to say, hey, let’s pause for a moment. Jesus, are you my foundation? Do I place my trust in you and your words, your provision through your death, burial, and resurrection?

2. Where do you turn when the storms come?

When the rain falls, floods come, wind blows — and I’m talking about even the most minor disappointments or massive trials — where do I turn? Because I really believe these trials — often called the testing of our faith, James 1:3, Romans 5:3 — that they’re intended to produce steadfastness. And the way they produce steadfastness is they’re pointing us to Jesus and the firm foundation we have in him, rather than to our feelings, our emotions, our sincerity, our consistency. No, Jesus. Where do I turn? And they’re such kind gifts from our Father so that we are prepared when the big storms come and then ultimately judgment standing before God and having our whole confidence in Jesus. Nothing like that!

Number three question for us to consider is

3. How is God changing you? And this is getting at a little bit of those three images we saw in James 1; the mirror, the seed, and the clothes. Are you growing in an awareness of how God changes you? That internal, external tension that James was referring to, the way God plants his Word in us and by his Spirit fertilizes that and begins bearing fruit through our lives. I think that’s so important. Otherwise we’re constantly caught in this tension between. Is it me or is it him? Is it my doing or is it his doing? Yes, he’s doing, so we do. We do the words because he does the miracle in our hearts. Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for this time to talk about foundations. We don’t want to go through a tornado in an RV. Lord, we need a firm foundation. Otherwise, our lives will be all over the place, and then ultimately, we will be unprepared to stand before you. So you have given us this gift, these words of life. We receive them from you. Spirit of God, please plant these truths deep in our hearts. Cause life to emerge through our lives. Wash away our sin not because we can do enough, but because you have done enough. Lord, you died, you rose, you paid for everything you’re calling us to become. And so you’ve called us to hear your Word, to respond. And you are doing the change, Lord. But we act out your work.

So, Lord, if you’ve spoken to us in specific ways, may we say yes, yes, Lord. Please protect us from being a church where we just accumulate information and know so much, but don’t do anything with it. Meaning we don’t really believe it and we’re certainly not doing it. Please, may we be a place, a people, who do your words, who turn to you when the hard times come, who give glory to you when the good times are here, and grow in our understanding of how you transform us into your likeness. Thank you. In Jesus’ name, amen.