Good morning, everyone. Take your Bibles.
Open up to the Gospel of Luke chapter 6.
Luke chapter 6. That's page 915.
If you're using one of the Bibles in the seats around you,
if you don't have a Bible, please take one of those.
That's our gift to you. And then bring that home and use
that throughout the week. Luke chapter 6.
And I want to begin reading this morning at verse 46.
Jesus is speaking and he says these words.
Why do you call me Lord? Lord, and don't do the things I
say? I will show you what someone is
like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them.
He's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the
foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the river
crashed against that house and couldn't shake it because it was
well built. But the one who hears and does
not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a
foundation. The river crashed against it and
immediately it collapsed and the destruction of that house was
great. I think one of the most common
experiences in the human life is sitting in a classroom where
you're asking yourself, why am I here?
What is the point of sitting in this class right now?
For me, that class was chemistry.
I hated chemistry. I had no clue why chemistry
mattered in my life at all. Memorizing the periodic table
seemed completely pointless to me.
My apologies to all the chemist in the room, but that is just
where I landed. And I want you to know I
appreciate you, chemist, because you make the rest of our lives
better. But chemistry was pointless for
me. It reminds me of some Charlie
Brown movies and cartoons that many of us have seen.
When you are in the classroom and Charlie Brown hears his
teacher speaking, what does the teacher's voice sound like?
Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, right?
Well, we are in the final week of this section of the book of
Luke as Jesus teaches the sermon on the plane.
And I hope that nothing we have learned over the last number of
weeks would land you in a space of going well that was
pointless. Why did we ever go through any
of this teaching? Jesus has been teaching some
things that are very different than what most of us understand
how life is supposed to work. And I just want to remind you
quickly of a few of those things that Jesus has taught us as
we've journeyed through Luke chapter 6.
Way back at the beginning, He taught us about power and what
the point is of us having power. That power is something to be
used to draw people in instead of pushing them out.
That power is to be used to heal and restore and help people to
be new. That success is not what you
think success is. That you can be poor and hungry
and store and sorrowful and still be blessed.
He taught us that life built on temporary pleasures is going to
leave you empty. That there's a danger when it
comes to money and being self satisfied in life.
He taught us that love looks different than the way we think
love looks. That love does good without
expecting anything in return, even if that person is your
enemy. And he also taught us that
there's a better way to view the people around you who annoy you
and frustrate you. That you are to see people
through the eyes of mercy and humility instead of judgment.
Then last week we were reminded and taught by Jesus that the
only way that your life in my life bears good fruit is if we
make sure that we also have a healthy route.
And the question in front of us today is whether or not anything
that Jesus has taught us in this chapter has made any real
difference in our lives. Is it changing us in any way or
is it just background noise? Amongst all the pieces of
information that you get week in and week out, you you get all
kinds of people speaking in your life and saying things that you
should do and you shouldn't do. And it's the things that Jesus
have been teaching us, only more noise and more information.
On top of that, all the things that Jesus is teaching us is not
because he's trying to lay more burden on your life of all the
things that you need to get right.
Jesus is not the teacher who is just dumping up a backing up a
dump truck of information for you to memorize and learn so
that you can pass some test or exam.
But the verses we just read a couple minutes ago tell us the
heart of Jesus, of why He has taught us all of these things.
That He loves you and He wants you to understand something.
The foundation of your life will determine how well your life
stands the test of time. If you were to travel to
Malaysia, you would see a set of towers known as the Petronas
Towers. We're going to put a picture up
on the screen. These were built in 1996 / a
period of three years. They stand about 450 meters in
height, about little under 1500 feet, so just a little bit
shorter than the CN Tower. The challenge is in building
these towers though. See they are located on some
incredibly unstable soil. So in order to build these
towers to to fix the problem of the unstable soil that they were
going to be built on, builders took almost one full year to
create the foundation for these buildings.
The foundation had to be dug deep, like real deep, 400 feet
deep foundation for these buildings and it uses over 100
concrete piles to spread the load.
It was the only way that they could deal with building these
buildings and create a solid foundation.
And when it comes to buildings, we all understand the importance
of having a solid foundation when it comes to our homes and
our workplaces and any other building that's around us.
If you've ever had a flood in your basement because of a
cracked foundation, you get why it's important to have a good
foundation on your house. But what about your life?
How often do you even think about the foundation that you're
building your life on? In the verses we read, Jesus
comes along and he tells the story of two people who have
built their lives on 2 very different foundations.
One foundation is on a rock and the other just builds into the
ground with no real foundation per SE.
And one of the things I love about Jesus is just how honest
he is about life. Jesus doesn't ever come to us
and say, hey, I promise you, life is always going to be
great. In both examples in Luke chapter
6, Jesus says this. He says when a flood arose, when
a river crashed against the house, Jesus saying it's not if
the flood's going to rise up, it's not if the water's going to
come up against your house, it's when it's going to happen.
It's a guaranteed life will get hard sometimes.
You will have seasons and moments where you feel like the
whole world is crashing in on you.
It's the health diagnosis. It's the job loss, it's the
breakdown of a relationship, it's the mental health battles
that you face day in and day out.
It's the death of someone that you love or the realities of
just wondering, do I even have enough money to buy groceries
this week? On a bigger scale, it's when the
place that you live in is facing something like a pandemic, where
you're being persecuted because of your faith or because the
country you live in is at war. Life will get hard.
And many of you in this room, you know that right now you're
living it. You're, you're walking in some
deep, dark, difficult days in your life.
Some of you are facing things that might maybe just feel like
a minor problem. It's like a minor leak in the
basement of your house and some of you feel like a tsunami or a
hurricane has just shown up and has rocked your whole world, and
you're not even sure if you're going to make it.
And if you're not in that place today, don't get too excited
because at some point your life will get hard too.
It's one of the certainties that we will face in the heart of
Jesus for you is this. He doesn't want your life to get
wiped out. He wants you to be able to stand
the test of time, no matter what it is that life brings your way.
Because your life has incredible value and purpose in the eyes of
a holy God. But He wants you to pay
attention to the foundation that you're building your life on,
because the foundation that you're building it on is going
to determine how well you stand the test of time.
And then we learned this from Jesus.
What you do with Jesus is going to determine the foundation
you're building on. See, the difference between the
two men in these stories is really what they did with Jesus.
Every single one of us is building a foundation on our
life. We all are building our lives on
something. Every single one of us has some
type of foundation that we go to and trust in to keep us safe and
to give us a sense of success and security in life.
We build it on our education sometimes.
How many degrees can I earn? We build it on our careers and
our finances. How much money can I make?
How many dreams can I achieve in life?
We build it on other people. We build it on our kids.
Some of us are building our entire life on the sense of my
kids and who they are and what they're achieving and
accomplishing in life. Some of us are building it on
our families as the foundation of life or friendships.
But those people, they're the ones who keep me stable.
Sometimes. We build it on our health.
As long as I can stay healthy, I'm fine.
For a lot of us in this room, we build it on church and religion.
As long as church life seems good.
As long as religion seems good, as long as I can come and sing
the songs that I like to sing, then that's the foundation that
I build my life on. And then when nothing else seems
to be working, we build life on the foundation of ourselves.
I I can't trust anyone, so I just go and take control of my
own life and I'll do whatever I want and provide my own sense of
safety and strength. And the reality is every single
one of those foundations have some incredible limitations to
them. Whenever life gets really hard,
those foundations are going to show their weaknesses.
Just ask the students who spent 10s of thousands of dollars to
get a degree only to graduate and no longer have an
opportunity for a job in the field that they got trained in.
Ask them how stable the foundation education is.
When you love someone deeply and they're the foundation for your
life, what happens when they leave you?
What happens when they pass away?
If your kids are the foundation for your life, what happens when
your kids move out? You're left with no foundation.
The winds of life are going to blow your way.
And all of these foundations, they're going to get shaky and
they're going to shift and they're going to show how
untrustworthy they are. But then there's Jesus.
Listen to some of the ways the Bible describes Jesus.
In Revelation chapter 1, Jesus says this about himself.
He says I am the Alpha and the Omega.
I am the one who was and is and is to come.
Alpha and Omega. They are the first and last
Greek letters of the alphabet. And what Jesus is saying is I'm
eternal. I have always been.
I was never created. I was always been at the
beginning and I will be the one still standing in the end.
I have always been. He's claiming that he is all
powerful. Colossians chapter 1 says this
about Jesus. By him all things were created
and in him all things hold together.
The stars that you see at night, the sun in the sky, the moon in
the sky, the galaxies and the planets, the earth and the axis
that we rotate on, All of it, all of it created by the hand of
Jesus and all of it he holds in place.
Hebrews chapter one verse 3 says he upholds the universe just by
the word of his power. Hebrews 13 says he is the same
yesterday, today, and forever. And in John Chapter 11 Jesus
said this. I am the resurrection and the
life. Whoever believes in me, though
he dies, yet shall he live. Everyone who believes in me
shall never die. That even if you make it through
your entire life without any storms or problems, death still
comes calling for every human being as the one final storm
that we all face. And what Jesus says is that if
you believe in him, not even death wins the final storm.
That's who Jesus is. There is nobody and nothing that
compares to Jesus. He is the type of foundation
that engineers could only dream of.
He'll never have a crack. He lasts forever.
He is strong enough to carry the weight of any of our lives
individually and all of our lives together collectively.
He is completely unique. There is nobody like him.
Why would you not want to build your life on that kind of a
foundation? Do do you want to build it on
something that at best has cracks in it and at worst is
going to result in you getting wiped out?
Or do you want to build it on a foundation that's going to make
sure your life is going to stay on the test of any storm?
You know, as a pastor, I get a front row seat to some of the
most gut wrenching, heartbreaking stories that you
can imagine. And one of the things that's
always amazed me are the people where it just seems like life
keeps piling on. Every time they turn around,
something else has happened and yet they're still standing.
I've seen this reality in so many of you in this room.
I know that in this room, so many of you have cried a million
tears. You have felt the weight of loss
and disappointment over and over again.
And yet you're still standing. So many times I've I've been at
a funeral and I've looked at a family who's in the depths of
grief and sorrow as they as they mourn the loss of someone they
love so deeply. And yes, somehow they are able
to lift their hands in praise and worship to Jesus.
Why? Because they have decided that
Jesus is the solid rock they will build their life on.
For those of you who right now you are going through some
really tough times, I want you to hear this.
If Jesus is your foundation, you are going to be all right.
You don't have to try and hold on to Him because He's the
foundation that's holding you in place.
And I know you may not feel like it right now, but He's got you.
He can carry the full weight of everything you're experiencing
and He's going to keep you standing on the other side of
the storm. I think the more important
question for us is how do we know if Jesus is really our
foundation for life? Well, from this passage there
are two questions we need to answer if Jesus is going to be
our foundation. The first one is this.
Do you believe that Jesus is Lord?
Way back in the first week of the series, we saw Jesus talking
to three groups of people in this entire sermon that we've
been studying the last number of weeks, There were the people who
couldn't stand him, who would have been enemies.
There were people who were curious about Jesus, who had not
made any commitments to him. There were people who were his
disciples, his his followers. And I know that in this room and
watching online today, there are many people who are skeptical
about Jesus. You are here just checking him
out, wanting to learn more about him and his ways.
And I want to say, welcome. We're glad you're here.
It's great, and what Jesus is ultimately calling and inviting
every person to do is to trust and believe that he is Lord.
Now, I recognize we don't use the language of Lord very often
in our culture today, so I want to help us understand what we
mean when we say, do we believe that Jesus is Lord?
All right, how many of you would confess in front of the whole
church today that you are a Downton Abbey fan?
All right, some of you men. Good for you.
I appreciate you. There is something I know we've
got some Downton Abbey fans. My wife is a Downton Abbey fan.
I have watched the movies as a sacrificial husband would do.
There are some people who are Downton Abbey fans.
There are some Harry Potter fans.
There's some Star Wars fans. Did you know that Downton Abbey,
Star Wars, and Harry Potter have one thing in common?
They all have at least one Lord in them.
But when Jesus is talking about being Lord, he's not talking
about Grantham or Darth Vader or Voldemort.
In the Bible, you will see the word Lord show up in two
different ways. When you are reading your Old
Testament, you'll quite often see the word Lord show up in all
caps. For those of you who are used to
using all caps when you're texting someone, it is not God
shouting at you when you're reading the Old Testament.
OK, when you see the word Lord show up in the Old Testament in
all caps, it is referring to God's personal name in the Old
Testament. Lord is the English translation
of Yahweh. When we get to the New Testament
and you see the word Lord, you will most often see it just with
a capital L. And when you see it in that way,
it means this. It means supreme Master who is
also good. What we're saying is when we say
Jesus is Lord, we are saying Jesus is above all things and
people. He is the final decision maker.
When you go to work or when you are in your family, a lot of
times a conversation will happen that says, well who is
ultimately the final decision maker?
When Pastor Derek and I were asked to be Co lead, people kept
saying to us, well but one of you has to make a final
decision. Who's the final decision maker?
It's a common question we ask. When we say Jesus is Lord, what
we are saying is he gets the final decision.
He's the one that gets the final say.
He is supreme in all things. When we say he is Lord, we're
saying I trust Jesus to be the foundation I build my entire
life on, that everything in my life will go through the filter
and decision making matrix of Jesus.
Whatever you decide is your final and full authority in life
is going to be your foundation. It's who or what you trust the
most to build your life on. And in Romans chapter 10, verse
9, we are told this if you confess with your mouth that
Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him
from the dead, you will be saved.
That's the promise. Anyone can come and have Jesus
as the foundation of their life. You might feel like you've made
a mess out of your life or life has made a mess out of you, but
it is not too late for you to believe that Jesus is Lord and
build a new foundation to your life.
But there's a second question that also needs to be answered
and it's this. Do you live like Jesus is Lord?
One of the great tragedies in this room right now is this.
Some of us think we have built our lives on Jesus as our
foundation, but you haven't. Look what Jesus says in verse
46. He says why do you call me Lord,
Lord, and do not do the things that I say?
And then in verse 47 he says it's only the people who hears
the words of Jesus and does them.
Those are the ones who are building their life on the
foundation of Jesus. That should stop you dead in
your tracks. See building your life on the
foundation of Jesus requires 2 things.
Hear what he says and do what he says.
I, I hear people all the time say, oh I want to go deeper with
Jesus. I want to go deeper in my
spiritual life. And 99% of the time when someone
says I want to go deeper, here's what they mean.
Give me more information. Help me to understand deeper
theology than what I already understand.
But what Jesus is teaching us here is that digging deeply
comes with a combination of both understanding His teaching and
living your life in obedience to Him as Lord of your life.
There, there are some of us who come to church every Sunday and
you sing at the top of your lungs in church.
You listen to every sermon and you take notes.
Maybe you've attended Bible studies for years.
You can even explain the hidden meaning of a whole bunch of
verses in the Bible, and you can understand all kinds of
theology. And still, when you are
operating and living outside of this little box where you kind
of do your spiritual life, when you're living in the rest of
your life in this other box, you do what you want, how you want,
when you want. You're fine with Jesus as Lord
as long as it's inside this space where it feels like it's
OK to be spiritual. When was the last time something
changed in your life because of something you read in the Bible?
And I, I know many of you in this room, you are brand new
believers and you're like Kirk, my whole life is changing
because of stuff I've read in the Bible.
But some of you, you've been Christians your entire life and
you don't remember the last time that anything in your life
changed because of something you read in the Bible.
When was the last time something changed in your life because of
something you heard in a sermon? I honestly, what happens here on
Sunday is not the main event. The main event is people like
you and me living like Jesus is Lord every single day of our
life. When we go home and we're loving
our spouses, when we're loving and raising our kids, when we
are at work and at school and in our neighborhoods throughout the
week, living like Jesus is Lord. That's the main event.
Because you know what happens when Christians live like Jesus
is Lord, the rest of the world goes.
What is wrong with those people? They are unlike anybody else on
the planet. What makes them different and
what makes us different is Jesus.
Over the last six weeks, Jesus has shown us over and over again
about how His way is different. Has anything in the last six
weeks changed anything in your life or has it all just been wah
wah wah wah wah wah wah wah when you take just Luke chapter 6
alone? You could spend the rest of this
year learning how to live the way of Jesus just from Luke
chapter 6. There are so many things where
so many of us would have things in our life done differently if
we followed everything Jesus teaches in Luke 6.
When Jesus teaches us he wants to not, He wants to impact every
part of who you are as a person. He, he wants to influence and
shape the way that you behave. I think back to some of the
things we learned in Luke 6. When people slander you or make
your life difficult because you're a Christian.
When you're at work, someone makes life difficult for you
because you're a Christian. Do you get cranky and protest
and get all upset? Or do you rejoice and dance
around like Jesus taught us to in Luke 6?
That's a change of behavior. Do you deal with the sin in your
own life before you pay attention to the sin in someone
else's life? Are are you living for money, or
do you see money as a gift to be generous to others?
Jesus is definitely going to call you to change the way you
behave, but he's also going to change the way you think too.
To live as Jesus, as Lord, is going to change the way you
think about things. Do you see yourself as blessed
no matter what you're going through?
Do you think of the people who hurt you and annoy you as
deserving mercy and forgiveness? Or do you think about how you
just want to get even with them and not only is it going to
change the way you behave and the way you think, He's
ultimately always. When Jesus is Lord, it means
stuff needs to happen in your heart and changing your heart.
Last week, Pastor Derek gave an amazing message on how the only
way to create good fruit in your life is to have healthy roots.
You know how you have healthy roots?
Allow Jesus to be Lord of your affections in your heart.
Allow Jesus to be Lord of the things that motivate you in
life. When when you don't want to
forgive someone, you know what's going on.
There's a battle in your heart. Who is Lord of your affections
and motivations in your life? Am I willing to allow Jesus to
be Lord and trust Him to deal with this whole situation, to
heal what's going on in my own heart and heal whatever needs to
be dealt with, and deal with whatever needs to be dealt with
with this person? Or do I need to take matters
into my own hands? Is Jesus really Lord of your
life or do you just know the right Christian words to say to
get by in a church setting? I say this with incredible love
for you as a church family. Some of us need to stop
listening to a different sermon or podcast every single day of
the week and start putting more energy and putting into practice
the things Jesus has already told us to do.
Some of us have gone to so many Bible studies in our life, but
you are no longer putting into practice anything that you're
learning and it needs to stop if you want Jesus to be Lord.
Some of you are really struggling in some areas of life
and one of the reasons is because you can come here and
saying Christ is my firm foundation, but in reality,
you're doing life your own way in those areas.
Almost every single situation when I'm interacting with
people, when I look at my own life, when I look at things that
are going wrong, so many times I can just look in the mirror and
go, what am I doing that's different than what Jesus would
want me to do? And you would find so many
better solutions for your life if you just submitted to Jesus
as Lord. When you surrender to Jesus as
Lord of your life, some of you are naturally more aggressive
people. You want to conquer and win at
everything in life. When you surrender to Jesus as
Lord, he's going to tame you in some areas of your life.
Some of us are more passive and we just kind of like, well,
whatever it is what it is, we'll just let life pass us by.
When you surrender to Jesus Lord, he's going to stretch you
and bring you into doing some things that are incredibly
uncomfortable. I have a friend in our church
who builds homes. I won't say his name because he
won't be happy with me talking about him in a sermon, but Ken
Summers really good at what he does.
And I, I want you to imagine that I I went to Ken and I asked
him to teach me how to build my own house.
And so Ken and I sit down. He teaches me everything I need
to know about how to build my own house.
He gives me all this information.
Now imagine after Ken gives me all this information about how
to build my own house. I said, hey, thanks Ken.
I I really appreciate everything you've done for me and invested
in my life. I want you to know I've also
watched some YouTube videos and I've got a hammer and some
nails. So don't worry about it.
I've got this spiritual information without obedience.
It's like having an expert tell you how to build a home and then
you acting like you know better than the expert and you're still
going to do it your own way. It doesn't make sense.
So let me ask you, does Jesus really get the final say in your
life? Maybe I'll let Jesus ask you why
do you call him Lord Lord, but you don't do the things he says.
Living like Jesus is Lord is, is not going to be a one time
decision in your life. You're not going to sit here
today and go, OK, today's the day I'm going to let Jesus be
Lord of my life. It is an everyday, every moment
decision that you make to say I am going to surrender to Jesus
as Lord. It's a daily dying to yourself
until the very last breath you take on this earth.
And the good news is, you'll never do it perfectly.
In fact, He doesn't even expect that you're going to do it
perfectly because He was perfect for you.
That's the truth of the cross that we celebrated and reflected
on this morning during communion, that Jesus was
perfect for us. We don't have to try and just
measure up and be perfect ourselves.
What Jesus is calling for here is a posture of life that says
yes to him. A posture of life that says I'm
willing to be corrected, I'm willing to be changed.
I'm willing to become more like Jesus.
And the great news of God's grace is that every time you
make a mistake, you call out to him and he's going to pick you
back up and say, here, let's go, let's keep going.
Let's keep moving ahead and saying yes and living with him
as Lord of our life until the very last breath you take on
this earth. You are building your life on
something. The question is, which
foundation do you want to build your life on?
The one that's going to hold you steady or the one that's
ultimately going to crumble? I want to ask you to close your
eyes, please. The good news today is that none
of us have taken our last breath in life yet, so it's not too
late to start building on the foundation of Jesus.
You might be here today and you have never placed your faith in
Jesus before and I want to invite you and say to you, today
is the day where you can surrender to Jesus as Lord of
your life. Trust in him as your Saviour.
Begin a new chapter of building a new home on the foundation of
Jesus. You just call out to him in your
heart and say, God, I have sinned against you.
I have tried to build on a different foundation, and today
I surrender to Jesus because I want him to be the foundation of
my life. Some of you, you are already
believers, but you know, as I've been talking this morning, you
know, in your heart of hearts, there are some parts in your
life right now where you are building that part of your life
on a different foundation than Jesus, where you've decided that
you're Lord of that part of that, that part of your life.
That's you. Today I'm just going to invite
you. We're just going to take a pause
here for a moment of silence, and I'm going to invite you to
confess that to God, to ask Him to forgive you and to ask for
His help to surrender to Jesus as Lord so you can know that you
are building your life on the foundation of Jesus.
Call out to Him. Father, thank you for your love
for us, that You love us so much that you care enough about our
lives being able to stand the test of time.
Lord, forgive us for the places in our life where we have failed
to surrender to Jesus as our foundation.
God, thank you for your grace that comes and meets us in these
moments that says you are faithful and just to forgive us
our sins if we just simply come and confess it to you.
Thank you for the power of Your Holy Spirit that is here to
convict us, correct us, but then also strengthen and empower us
to live like Jesus is Lord. God, help us.
Help us to live in the glorious firm foundation of Jesus.
Help us to be a people that don't just proclaim He is Lord,
but live like He is Lord. Pray this in your mighty and
powerful name. Amen.
Stand and worship Jesus in
response.