The Wise and Foolish Builders

Reading Isaiah 26

A Song of Praise

¹ In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:
       We have a strong city;
       God makes salvation
       its walls and ramparts.

² Open the gates
       that the righteous nation may enter,
       the nation that keeps faith.

³ You will keep in perfect peace
       those whose minds are steadfast,
       because they trust in you.

⁴ Trust in the LORD forever,
       for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal.

⁵ He humbles those who dwell on high,
       he lays the lofty city low;
       he levels it to the ground
       and casts it down to the dust.

⁶ Feet trample it down—
       the feet of the oppressed,
       the footsteps of the poor.

Gospel Matthew 7

The Wise and Foolish Builders

²¹ "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven.   ²⁴ "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

Sermon

The Sermon on the Mount extends all the way from chapters 5 to 7. Early in Matthew, Jesus is introduced. There are the birth narratives. The magi follow the star bringing symbolic gifts. Jesus is baptized by John and is tempted in the wilderness. Then he calls his first disciples and starts his ministry in Galilee.

The Sermon on the Mount contains a big chunk of Jesus’s teaching, beginning with the Beatitudes. The wise and foolish builders come toward the end of the Sermon in a passage headed A series of Warnings. After that, the sermon ends and Jesus acts. So first he teaches – then he acts, and he acts by healing many people.

What then are these warnings about? As we said last week when we read about the destruction of Jerusalem, these warnings are about the end of time, and the establishment of the Kingdom of God in all its fullness.

There’s no shades of grey in these warnings. Only black and white. Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road easy that leads to destruction. There’s no meandering in the woods between two paths. Only the wide and the narrow. Black and white.

There’s sheep and wolves. No hybrids. Good trees and bad ones. Good fruit and bad. You will know people’s character by their fruits, by the way they behave. Good trees cannot bear bad fruit, and bad trees cannot bear good fruit.

Everyone who hears all these words, Jesus adds, are like a wise man who builds his house on the rock. The elements did their best to destroy that house, but it stood against gales and floods, because it was founded on rock and not shifting sands.

The foolish man built his house on the sand. Why did he do that? Because he was lazy. Building a house on rock meant carting materials up a hill. Hard work. Building a house by a river is so much more pleasant. So much easier. Flatter. Even the view is better. But there’s no rock in a flood plain, and eventually the whole structure is washed away.

The parable is an easy one to interpret. We all know what it means. The rock is Jesus Christ himself. Faith in him. The winds and floods are the vicissitudes of our lives. The calamities and afflictions shake our faith, and if it is not founded on the rock it will be shaken and fall.

Those who heard the Sermon on the Mount will have been familiar with God’s judgement being visited on people, as they saw it, through the natural world. Noah’s flood. The Apocalypse as I mentioned last week is often seen as a terrible tempest. So the message of the wise and foolish builders was clear to them, and as builders themselves they would be only too aware of the need for proper construction.

For us, the message is equally stark. There are only two states: obedience and disobedience. Salvation and destruction. And whilst our faith is rightly grounded on love and we believe in a loving Father God, these warnings are in scripture for a purpose, and we would do well to heed them and not allow them to be too quickly dismissed or passed over.