Solid Rock

Good morning. For those of you who are new with us, we've been walking through Luke and we're here now in chapter six. And if you open your word there and you're looking, you can see we're coming to the end of this sermon that Jesus has been giving on the plane. This is different than Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, which we'll find in Matthew. Luke is recording a summary of what Jesus' teaching would typically be like here. And oftentimes our authors are selective as to what they're going to choose to include and not include. Guided by the Holy Spirit, we trust we have every word we need. As we just look back, as we conclude this study on Jesus on sermon, he gives us the great challenge of blessings and woes in verses 20 to 26. Bless for the poor. Lord of the rich. Blessed are those who are persecuted and spoken of poorly. Woe are you if people speak well of you. Love your enemies. Judge not. Be weary of the hypocrisy of trying to get the speck out of your brother's eye whenever you have a log in your own eye. Last week, just the clear statement, a bad tree produces bad fruit because its treasury is bad. A good tree produces good fruit because its treasury is good. Call to recognize and self-examine what kind of good work has God done. This last week, this last section is a call of reflection again. Why Do you call me Lord and not do what I tell you? That's the pressing question. We see the familiar most likely analogy here or simile. A person built on a rock or built upon no foundation. We're hearing the high calling of the discipleship. There's many ways in which God's word gives us simple clarity about what discipleship is. Deny yourself, carry your cross, follow me. That's the simple way in which Jesus himself defines discipleship. Here are the things we're supposed to be doing. As I think about the things Jesus taught, I want to take us actually to the Great Commission. The Great Commission found in Matthew 28. The most basic declaration that he's saying to his disciples, he says, make disciples. That's the one clear command, make disciples. With three qualifications. by going, baptizing, and teaching. Now, many people are giving different examinations of evangelicals, the evangelical movement in America. Let me take my shot. I think we've done a pretty good job of going. It's amazing how we have gone out, the different missions organizations. Some represented right here, even now. We've gone out in many ways. Yes, there's so many other places we've got to go, but the movement we've had, the activity, the energy we've put into going has been fantastic and encouraging. Baptizing, I believe here he's giving a shorthand of conversion. Baptism is how the church recognizes and receives someone who has become a Christian, been converted. We hear those are going or proclaiming the gospel and they're being baptized. The third one, teach all that I've commanded. Teach disciples. Disciples teach disciples to observe all that I've commanded, all that I've taught. I think this is the weakness. There's been lots of going activities, there's been lots of evangelism. Not enough, but a lot. But do we see the fruit of that in churches established on the Word of God? Church is established knowing that the gospel comes by faith through grace. Do we see churches holding to the gospel dearly and then seeing, by grace, I'm also gonna be obedient? This is one of the great challenges throughout the church, recognizing the call of salvation is a gift. And once we receive that gift, we're called to be disciples, which means workers. This morning, we're gonna consider Jesus' teaching. Our need to obey it, our need to teach it. Simple, clear point, those who call on Jesus should obey him. Those who call on Jesus should obey him. Again, the primary question, the pressing point, it's a why. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I say? Three simple points. Call on the Lord Jesus. Call on Jesus as Lord. Call on Jesus as Lord. Hear the words of Jesus and obey the commands of Jesus. Three necessary practices of a disciple. Call on Jesus as Lord, hear the words of Jesus, and obey the commands of Jesus. I draw those out because in verse 47, everyone who comes to me, that is equivalent to calling, they hear my words and they do them. A disciple calls on Jesus, hears Jesus, and obeys Jesus. Just to be clear, this is a warning passage. Why do you do this? He's speaking to disciples. He's training his disciples. He does not want his disciples to be like the Pharisees, like the hypocrites, those who say one thing and do another. Let's look at point one. Call on Jesus as Lord. To call on Jesus is to pray, to ask for help, to acknowledge our need of him. I believe calling on him, as I just said, is the same as coming to him. To come to Jesus, to call upon him, to request him. The power of the gospel is that Jesus invites sinners to call upon him to be saved. He invites us to come to know him. He's come down already to become like us in every way. except for sin. He came to be a sinless human so that he would die on the cross for sinners. The righteous one dying for all the sin of those who believe in him. He rose again to give new life. He ascended to the right hand of the Father. He's done all the work we need for salvation. So what do we do? We call upon him. We call upon Jesus in faith, saying, Lord, I need you. Save me. The key there is you have to call upon Him. We have to believe and actively call upon Him. Now, what really amazes me is how little we really understand at that moment of calling upon Jesus. Remember back the first time you called upon Jesus? What did you know? It's startling as a study of humanity, study of conversion, study of Christians, how little each of us really knew of our sin. By God's grace, we're convinced of sin, but we're not overwhelmed by how much sin. At the moment of calling, you have to be convinced of sin, but think about If you can, way back then, many of us, how little we really got of what sin was. How convincing it was. And then think about what little we understood of salvation. We typically have a sin we're convinced of, convicted of, and the truth that we need forgiveness, but how little we understood about adoption, redemption. renewal, regeneration, washing, and the whole Christian life is growing more up to recognize the sin we have and the greatness of the gospel and the salvation we have. This is why on Wednesday nights we're walking through those different aspects of salvation, from election to justification to regeneration to sanctification to glorification. There's so many different ways in which God saves us from all our different sins. We call on him. And He saves us. There's no obedience required beforehand. There's no prerequisite. As the great hymn says, all we need is to see our need of Him. Again, we go back to the why. Why do we call on Him as Lord, Lord? There's a sense in which we can hear the promise, a Savior, we hear the promise, I'll save you, I'll forgive you, I'll heal you, I'll help you. So we call upon Him. We trust the promise of salvation. The why question is, if we trust He has the authority to keep the promise of salvation, why do we not think He has the authority to command our obedience? That's the point here. Why would we trust He has the authority to save us and not the authority to command us. I think what the real issue is, it's pinpointed, it's we lack reverence. We call upon him as Lord, Lord, there's an enthusiasm, there's a zeal, but if we're gonna call him Lord, are we recognizing as the great authority? Shouldn't we have a great reverence? So how do you call on him? How do you call him? If you're not a believer this morning, our number one desire is that you would call upon him. So how do you do that? There's what some call the sinner's prayer. It isn't in scripture. There are usually summaries of scriptural truths. One such example would be this. Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner and I ask for your forgiveness. I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sin and I invite you to come into my life. I want to trust and follow you as my Lord and my Savior. What sweet truths. Now my own testimony as I came to salvation, I was reading the Bible most nights. not always sober, and so I didn't always enjoy it, but I had to read it. There was something about it. I was lost, and it was the word of truth. And then one day, I went and found a letter my grandfather sent me three years prior, and as I read that letter, the fullness of conviction fell upon me. I fell on my knees, and you know what I said? When I caught up on him, the only thing I could say is, I quit. That was the best I could say. because I knew I had been resisting him. I knew I had to eventually choose to follow him because his words just rang so true to me and I was such a fool. And the best words I could come up with at that moment by myself was I quit. And then I went to my grandfather's house who wrote the letter and he showed me this thing called the sinner's prayer and as I read it I just started weeping. This is what I wanted to say. Too awful to be true that sinner's prayer is like it's magical words. It's not the magical words. It's faith in the Savior. It's your desire to have your sin removed and to stop being your own authority and to come to Christ and believe in Him. But if you wanna know the worst to say, oh, the sinner's prayer is true. Those things you could pray, I turn from my sin, I know that I'm a sinner, I ask for your forgiveness. We can just full stop. That's the beginning of your calling upon Jesus as Savior. What we're really discussing here is what does genuine conversion look like? When God calls us and we call upon Him, there's a conversion, there's a transformation, there's regeneration. We're taken out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of the beloved Son. We go from a dead tree with dead fruit and bad fruit to a living tree with good fruit. What a genuine conversion. That is really important for us as a church. Because as we preach the gospel, what are we looking for those who would hear and believe? As we hear the gospel ourselves, what kind of fruit should we expect of one another? It's important to see here that he's charging the person who says, Lord, Lord. There's only twice that we see this kind of declaration, Lord, Lord. The other one is also a warning. When Jesus says, many of you call to me, Lord, Lord, and in the last day, I will say, I never knew you. Depart from me. Being enthusiastic is not enough. Recognizing He forgives us, renews us, calls us. Children of the church, if you're 18 and younger, are you listening? Our greatest desire is that you would call on the Lord. Our desire is for you to hear the gospel here every week, to sing the gospel every week, to come on Wednesday night and be taught the gospel, to be in the Babel Basics as a young child and hear the gospel, to be in the homes and hear the gospel. Our greatest desire is that you would call upon the Lord. Being part of a Christian family is not going to save you. Being part of a church isn't going to save you. It's calling upon the Lord, your own profession of faith. I want to clarify something that I believe is pretty important. We typically delay baptism for a young child. We do that because of what comes after this passage. We want to see a foundation that's going to endure. We want to see a child who professes faith is going to then show the good works and the good fruit and the healthy foundation. Do not let our delaying baptism make you think you need to lay calling upon the Lord. Call upon the Lord today. Call upon the Lord today. The first thing a Christian does, a disciple does is call upon the Lord. The second, he hears the words of Jesus. Look at verse 47. Everyone who comes to me and hears my words I will show you what he's like. Notice the 49, the one who hears and does not do them. They both call, they both hear. What does it mean to hear the word of the Lord? He's talking to disciples. They've called upon him and they've also heard him. Now, they had the benefit of actually hearing the word of God himself in flesh use words to them. Much better than what you're getting right here this morning. The very word of God speaking truth. They marveled at his authority. And still Jesus is concerned. You're hearing me, you're calling upon me, but you're not yet embracing it. We need to ask, how do we hear the word of God? It is nothing like the very dangerous book, Jesus Calling. I don't like to call out things in this manner often. But the whole premise behind the book, Jesus Calling, is that she said in the original preface, the Bible isn't enough anymore. I wanna hear something new and fresh from Jesus. If you ever hear that, run away, throw it away. The Bible that has preserved and kept, sustained the church for 2,000 years is more than sufficient for us today. Be very clear here, we are a book religion. We are a book religion. Jesus has authored every single one of these words. The Holy Spirit has carried along men, the very Spirit of Christ has carried along men to provide the words we need. What we need is to meditate upon them. Our whole service is designed so that you would be overwhelmed with the Word of God. Our call to worship is inviting us in through the Word of God. We sing, Lord willing, the Word of God. We're praying according to the Word of God. Lord willing, you're hearing the gospel proclaimed according to the Word of God. We're gonna end with a benediction, a word from the Lord. It's not meant to just be consumed. We're meant to read it together. We've gotten to this individualist society that said, if all you do is read your Bible at home, then you're a good Christian. No, you have to read other people. What's my proof for that? No one before the Gutenberg printing press had their own Bible. For 1,500 years, the church existed, coming together, reading the Bible together. If you're only reading the Bible by yourself, you're not doing it right. Because that just makes us consumers. We read it with others so that we learn and they learn. We're called to read God's word together so that we're building each other up with it. How do we hear it? We read it. We share it. We talk about it. The great danger that Jesus is getting at was why would you call upon me and hear and not do is what James talks about in his letter. You look at a mirror and then you quickly walk away and you forget what you look like. God's Word is meant to be a mirror. It shows us our sin. God's Word is declaring who the Savior is so we can be forgiven of that sin. God's Word is a guide to direct us into a righteous life now that we have believed in Christ. This book is the bedrock of Christianity. We can't get away from being a book religion. God's Word should refine All we believe, all we value. Let me take a moment here and talk about how we should read the book though. There's three simple questions I always want to ask of every single text. How does it reveal sin? How does it reveal salvation? What is it telling me to do? And you have to ask those three questions in that exact order. If we get the last question and we put it first, we become moralist. Where we're looking, what sin is clear in the text. How is Christ resolving that sin and now what do I do differently afterwards? If we're not looking for the gospel that way, it becomes a mere encyclopedia book of information or a lesson in morality. In our text today, what's the sin revealed? hearing and not doing, not being obedient, not practicing. There's a lack of reverence revealed in our own hearts as we look to this text, because as we look to God's word, we hear it, but we don't always do it. What's the solution? First and foremost, we can go elsewhere and see Christ obeyed where we've disobeyed. His death is what forgiven us of our disobedience. His new life is what gives us the hope that we can be obedient. His Word is our very foundation. What's the call to worship? Or what's the following action of obedience? Obey. Change our practices, change our words, change our habits. There's something clear here in this question. Why do you call on me as Lord, Lord? Hear me and not do it, I tell you. There's a simple way in which he's clear. To really know Christ means to practice with him. To obey Him. We hear the Word of God by looking to His book. This is where we know Christ and His Word. Our third point, obey the commands of Jesus. This is the crux of it. This is the clear difference. One person will say, I've heard you, and not do what he says, and another will hear it and do it. That's the key difference. As a teacher, I always found the question a student asks in class kind of conflicting. When a student asks, is this going to be on the test? Because there's two ways you can interpret that question. One is, they're really diligent and they want to make sure that the important things they get, they're going to memorize and hold on to closely, right? There's a way in which we can, you know, hope for the best of that question. But typically, I think when that question is asked, what they're saying is, can I check out now because I find this boring? Is it gonna be the test? Because if not, I don't know what you're even talking about and I'd like to do something else. Maybe play tic-tac-toe. There's something important though about knowing what's on the test. Christian obedience is going to be on the final test. Obedience will be on God's final test. test. We preach salvation by grace alone, through faith alone. You do not obey in order to believe. But if we believe, why would we not obey? There is going to be a reckoning. When we stand before Christ, not at the judgment seat, but the bema seat, we're gonna have to give an account for what we've done, or not done. We go back to the Old Testament, and it's frustrating if we read it right. Israel was just redeemed from Egypt in the most amazing way. God obliterated Egypt and Pharaoh to make his glory clear and known. Then he crosses the Red Sea, obliterates Pharaoh clearly, fully, finally. Takes him to the mountain, declares, I am the Lord your God. Who took you out of Egypt? And then he gives them Ten Commandments. What's frustrating about that is they failed to keep the Ten Commandments over and over again. While he's given the Ten Commandments, they're breaking almost all of them by building a golden calf. They called upon the Lord, God save us from Egypt. God heard them. God saved them. God took them to the mountain, gave them the promise, I have saved you, now be my people. and they failed. Jesus comes to us and says, all who are weary and heavy laden, come to me, call upon me. My yoke is easy, but that doesn't mean there's no commandments. The whole sermon here has been high callings of what God expects of us. We call on him and it must be with a reverence. I believe that is the key between the person who hears and does and does not do. The one who does has a reverence for Christ. When we call upon him to save us, he calls us to obey. Let's look at the two analogies or the similes. Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like. All right, dude number one hears the word Obeys it. He is like a man building a house who dug deep, laid the foundation of the rock. The second person who hears and does not do, he's somebody who builds a house with no foundation. Now I am no person who would ever build a house. I've attempted maybe a shed and it didn't work. But there's something I've learned that the foundation is essential. A house with a foundation is worthless. Here we see that there's hard work. Notice it says, the guy who obeyed, he dug down deep to find the rock. Let's just come up with a fun illustration here. If you go to the fellowship hall in the kitchen, there's these random weird holes in the floor. Those holes are because when they laid that, when they built the fellowship hall, they built it on field dirt without packing it in. So about four years ago, we had to get a construction company to come out, dig underneath it, and pump concrete in, and it was awesome to watch. But an incredibly frustrating expense. That's why those holes are in the kitchen floor. Because it wasn't done right. They cut corners. There's something true here. You can't cut corners or be lazy and be a faithful discipleship. There's no cutting corners or laziness in discipleship. We see words like effort, work, diligence, duty. Friends, these are words from Scripture. You can find almost all of them in 2 Peter 1. To believe is to call upon Him. To obey and to have the foundation we need, well, that takes hard work. It takes practice. So let's ask, why? Why would somebody call Jesus Lord, Lord, and not obey Him? Why? I have three possibilities, three doubts. We would oftentimes believe that we can call upon Jesus but not wanna obey him because we don't believe Jesus is good enough. We don't believe he's really good. We don't believe he really has the best promises and commands. We look at the desires we have and we look at the commands he has and we just think those aren't really good. I think I can choose better. The second would be he's not powerful. He's not powerful enough. He can't keep his promises. He does not have the authority to declare these things to me. If you want to see where those two come from, those are the very first two temptations from Satan to Adam and Eve. Surely God wouldn't say, questioning his goodness. Surely you won't die questioning his power. The third question. Is he really worthy? Is he worthy of denying myself my immediate gratification and holding out for the blessings and promises that he gives? Those are three doubts to possibly wrestle with, even though I'm sure there's many other reasons we hear and do not obey. What does it mean to dig deep? We talked about last week the heart work, which is so hard. Learning to stop a pattern, that's one thing. Learning how to dig deep in the heart, that's another. I think there's a text here that really helps us. Romans 6 gives us three basic commands. Know who you are in Christ. You've died with him, you've been buried with him, and he uses baptism as an illustration. And I believe the second one is the most important, Romans 6 11. Consider yourself dead to sin and alive in Christ Jesus. The third command begins in Romans 6, 12. Present yourselves. You see their obedience. There's a knowing Jesus and what he's done. There's a presenting yourself, but right there in the middle, consider. I fear we too often have the information and the morality, but we don't do the considering, the reckoning, the evaluating, the recalculating. We must consider when we're tempted with sin, we're dead to that sin. It's more than just knowing Christ died for sin, but we're recognizing, no, his death has a meaning for me that I now have died to that sin. It no longer has power over me. Consider is this mental process of saying, this is my truth. Oprah's really onto something there, isn't she? Oprah's on to something. We all do this. We all say, this is my truth. The difference is when Jesus is speaking, it's true truth. You get that? Everybody does that. This is my thing, that's your thing. You be you. No, there's one truth, it's Jesus' truth. And the goal of the Christian is to say, that truth, the true truth, I need it to be my truth. Got to embrace it. And evaluate it. And own it. And begin recalculating everything according to it. We all do it. The beauty of what Jesus says is you can do it with the true truth. Present yourself. This is merely just putting yourself in the right practices. We're habitual creatures. God designed us this way. we should be practicing the things that help us recalculate. Notice here in the similes again. It's interesting, in Matthew, he records that Jesus says you're building on the sand, and if you build something on the sand, it just washes away and it falls apart. Here he actually just says, there's no foundation. That's not a complete house. The most important part of the house is missing. We oftentimes think there's gotta be some way to live some middle ground between the bad tree that has bad treasure and bad fruit and the good tree with the good treasure and the good fruit. Somewhere between, live between the man who puts off sin and puts on Christ. No, there's no middle ground. Disciples call upon Jesus, hear Jesus, and obey Jesus. A question for us to consider. Always a good question to ask. At what cost? Will you obey or disobey? And at what cost? The key parallel is a when statement. Notice there in verse 48. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it because it had been built. It'd been built well, well, well built, well built. The other one statement is in the end of verse 49, when the stream broke against it, immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great. Dude number one did not have a foundation. Or had a strong foundation, well built. Dude number two, no foundation, great ruin. There's a cost. The hard work and the diligence to have a foundation. There's a cost there. It takes work, it takes diligence, it takes practice, it takes effort. But the benefit, you're well built to withstand whatever the storm is. And notice it's not an if statement, it's a when statement. All right, what cost? A person with no foundation. I'm just gonna believe and see what happens. I'm gonna believe and just trust for the best. Oh, the cost. Great ruin. The idea there is fractured, ruptured, not able to be built back again, just completely demolished. There are two ways I think we need to consider this. Many will call upon Jesus as Lord, Lord, and they do not know him, and we know they do not know him because they do not obey him. What's actually worse than calling upon Him and not knowing Him is that Jesus will say, I never knew you. Depart from me. There is a final great ruin, and if we do not believe in Jesus, we do not call upon Him and seek to follow Him, the narrow path, be feared, be fearful. The call, according to Jesus, is depart from me. Don't delay obedience. Don't presume upon grace. I believe there's also a here and now aspect. Timothy tells us that some people have even shipwrecked their faith. There's some who called upon Jesus. The parable of the seeds we'll see a little bit later in Luke. The gospel truth, it's received, it's Jesus called upon. But sometimes it's choked out. Sometimes it's scorched. Sometimes it never takes root. All those are ways in which the faith of someone gets shipwrecked. It doesn't grow. And it never lives. Oh, the stream, when it breaks. Could be temptations of the world. Could be worries of the world. Could be bad health. Could be death. There is going to be suffering. How well are we built? Is your faith built to endure trials? As we conclude, disciples, we hear here the heavy calling. Jesus himself, why do you hear and not obey? Why do you call upon me? Why do you use your lips to proclaim my name and then not obey me? Why is there hypocrisy, essentially? It's really an invitation. confess that His obedience. And pray for the grace to be obedient. The key here is that we would pray. We would call upon God. We will learn to pray. And we'd be obedient. The benefit. The house well built. The life and the faith that's able to endure. And Lord willing, one day, hearing our own Lord and Savior say, well done, good and faithful servant. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you did not leave us in our own destruction, in our waywardness, Lord, you caught us out of that darkness. You put us in light. You help us see our sin and you help us to see our great Savior. You help us not only escape death, but the regular destruction that sin brings. Lord, thank you that your salvation is perfect and complete. Forgive us for doubting your goodness, your authority, your worthiness. Lord, may we leave here with a great reverence for you and a desire to obey you and to teach one another how to obey you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Let us close by standing and singing our song of response, Be Thou My Vision.