Teachers tell every high school student to prepare for the future. Prepare for college, or the military, or trade school. Then college arrives and the message repeats, prepare for your career. Make decisions today that shape your tomorrow. In Matthew 7:24-29, Jesus says the same thing about your soul, which is why Pastor Carey titled this message Prepare for the Future Today.
Jesus tells it as a story about two builders. Both build a house. A storm comes for both. What separates them is where they built.
What Does It Mean to Build on the Rock?
Verse 24 says everyone who hears these words of Jesus and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
Start with everyone. The tens of thousands on that mountainside. The disciples sitting at His feet. Everyone in the room on a Sunday morning. Nobody sits outside that word.
Then come two steps. Hear His words. Do His words. Jesus is not speaking to speak, and He is not letting us in on how much wisdom He has. He teaches so we will take Him at His word. The wise, by the definition verse 24 supplies, are simply the ones who hear and do.
Pastor Carey broke the metaphor into three pieces. The wise man takes Jesus seriously enough to put His teaching into practice. The house is your life, meaning your faith, your values, your priorities, your decisions, your conduct. The rock is building that life on the authority of Jesus rather than on your own understanding.
What Happens When the Storm Hits?
Verse 25. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
Rain, floods and winds add up to the storms of life. Storms are not a matter of if. They are a matter of when. They are generous, they never ask permission, and they give no heads up. Some are small, like a car that will not start, which happened to Pastor Carey the day before on a battery less than a year old. Others are not small at all. Cancer. A job loss. The death of someone you love.
Notice the verb. The storm beat on that house. Storms do not beat politely. Some leave us stressed, some bring immense sorrow, some drop us into a deep bout of depression. The foundation has to be sure before the weather turns.
Where Did Job’s Confidence Rest?
Pastor Carey walked through Job’s story as a picture of a house that held. Job was blameless, a man of complete integrity who feared God, wealthy beyond Jeff Bezos money, with seven sons and three daughters.
Then the storm. Raiders stole his three thousand camels and killed the servants caring for them. Camels carried goods and people across hard terrain, so cars are the old school camels. Job did not lose one car, he lost a fleet, and the drivers were murdered. Not long after, all of his children died in a natural disaster on the same day.
Look at his response. He tore his robe, shaved his head, fell on the ground and worshiped, saying that naked he came from his mother’s womb and naked he would return, that the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Two things sit side by side. Job grieved, and the torn robe and shaved head are outward signs of sorrow. He did not pretend or numb himself, but he did not live there either. He also worshiped. His grief was real and his trust in God was real. His confidence was not in his wealth, his children or his marriage. It rested in the one true living God.
Slow down on that rock. No wind tears it down, no flood overcomes it. Pastor Carey called this a divinity detection. The one describing it is not an ordinary teacher giving an ordinary sermon. Jesus is telling the crowd He is one with the Father and completely dependable, which is why you can lose your job and not lose Jesus.
What Does It Look Like to Build on Sand?
Verse 26 gives the second option. Everyone who hears these words and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
Jesus names this one foolish. The teaching goes in one ear and out the other. It is foolish to treat His words as just another sermon, or as good content. He expects them treated as a command, because that is what they are.
So what is the source of your confidence when the storm comes? When the job goes? When someone you love forsakes you? Pastor Carey put it in one line. All sources of confidence outside of Jesus are sand.
He gave examples. Self-reliance, trusting yourself more than you trust God. Handling anger your way instead of the way of Jesus. Doing divorce the culture’s way. Retaliating the way the world retaliates. Looking to anxiety as a god that predicts the future.
Why Does Jesus Give Such a Vivid Warning?
Verse 27 repeats the storm, but the ending changes. The house fell, and great was its fall.
Great is the word to sit with. This is not a minor fall that patchwork repairs. Pastor Carey reached for a phrase a younger person had to teach him. A crash out. The moment you do the unthinkable, because what you built on was supposed to hold and it did not.
Read verses 26 and 27 together and you see why Jesus is this explicit. He says will be, pointing at the future, and verse 27 names what that future holds. Everyone has an expiration date, as Pastor Carey put it, and what follows death is more serious than death itself. The repercussion here is the judgment of God, where every person stands one at a time. Pastor Jonathan pictured it as a long line last week. You could say you never murdered anyone, and hear that hatred in the heart is murder. The end of that rope is the sentence depart from me, I never knew you.
There is beauty in the warning. Once you realize the house sits on sand, tear it down and make a U-turn. Guilt will say do not demolish it. Shame will scream to keep it standing. The security Jesus provides carries more power than either one, and He has a family of people ready to walk anyone through it.
How Do You Prepare for the Future Today?
Verse 28 records the reaction. The crowds were astonished at His teaching. There are two kinds of astonishment, though. One looks at a painting, calls it beautiful, and thinks about visiting it again sometime. The other says I want to follow the person who made this. Jesus is after the astonishment that moves your feet.
Verse 29 explains it. He was teaching as one who had authority, and not as the scribes, who studied and taught Scripture as a Monday through Friday job. The authority of Jesus comes from the lips of God. So the question is whether that authority is an add-on, one more good idea stirred into a custom religious soup, or the final word.
Noah faced the same decision. Not the storybook version with a smiling man and friendly animals, but a man told a flood was coming when no such thing had ever happened. He could take God at His word or disregard it, knowing people might mock him for building a boat under a clear sky. He trusted God enough to obey. He did not only hear, he acted.
You are building right now, and later you will see the results of what you choose today. Faith is not admiring the words of Jesus. It is putting them into practice, even on the days you dislike what He says.
If you are not sure what your house is built on, that is worth settling alongside people who will walk through it with you. Plan your visit or find a life group and take that next step.