Too often I walk away from corporate worship without giving thought to what God has taught me and how I should apply it. Yes, even pastors can be guilty of going through the motions. I am not disengaged; I will note an interesting point in a sermon, re-listen to a worship song, or pray for someone that I had a conversation with, but rarely do I give sustained thought and prayer to what God has taught me and what He wants me to do with it.

Therefore, I am starting a new blog series on Monday mornings where I will think and write about what God taught me on Sunday. Lessons may come from messages, songs, conversations, or Scripture readings. Not only will this give me an avenue to think, pray, and write, I hope it will also encourage you to think and pray through what God taught you as well!

This Sunday, we considered Matthew 7:24-27 and Jesus’ instruction to build our house on the rock. “House” is a metaphor for our lives and the “rock” is a metaphor for Christ. We can build our lives on Christ, the rock, or on the shifting sands of the world. Storms will come and beat against our houses, but only those whose house is built on the rock will stand.

But what does it mean to build our life on the rock that is Jesus? Two things. First, to build our life on Jesus means to have Him as the foundation of our life with God. We must recognize that there is no foundation other than Him that can reconcile us to God and keep us in intimate relationship with Him. Nothing and no one other than Christ can deal with our sin debt or provide us with the perfect righteousness that we need to stand before God.

To have Jesus as our foundation means that we do not try to earn favor with God based on anything about us: our personality, our hard work, or our good deeds, but on everything about Jesus. When we believe in His perfect life, death, and resurrection on our behalf, He sets the foundation for our life with God. He is the foundation of our life with God. And the rest of our life builds upon that foundation.

Second, we build our life on Jesus by obeying His commands. But we must be careful not to mix up the order here. We are reconciled to God by trusting Jesus. He took our sin on the cross and gave us His perfect righteousness. That’s the foundation of our life with God, and it is strong and secure. But we continue to build our life on Christ by obeying His commands. “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me” (John 14:21).

Jesus tells the parable about two builders, one who builds on the rock and one who builds on the sand, at the end of His Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-7:27). The sermon itself demonstrates the two-fold way in which we build our life on Jesus. First, the Sermon reveals our great need for Christ. Who has never gotten angry (Matt 5:21-26), lusted (5:27-30), broken a promise (5:33-37), hated their enemies (5:43-48), performed a good deed for show (6:1-4), withheld forgiveness (6:15), stored up treasures on earth (6:19-21), loved money rather than God (6:24), struggled with anxiety (6:25-34), judged others (7:1-6), or treated others wrongly (7:12)? Jesus takes the law to the heart level, and we all stand guilty before it.

Therefore, the Sermon on the Mount drives us to the One who is preaching the sermon. Only He perfectly kept the law and only He paid the penalty for our sin. Only He offers us perfect righteousness and fills us with His Spirit so thatwe can live according to His commands.

So how do we build our life on Jesus? 1) We trust Him. 2) We obey Him. We trust Him for our salvation. We obey Him because we’ve been saved by Him. In that order. Those who do build their house on the rock, and when the rain falls and the floods come and the wind blows and beats on our house, it will not fall, because it has been founded on the rock- which is Christ.

“On Christ the solid rock I stand

All other ground is sinking sand

All other ground is sinking sand.”