Let's take our Bibles and turn
to Luke chapter six. Luke chapter six. I wanna look
at verses 46 through 39. So let's read these verses together. Now you, some of you've been
here and heard the lessons that's leading up to this, so I suggest
if you haven't that you go back and read prior to these verses
all the things that our Lord was saying and who he was saying
them to and the effect of that that it had on his hearers. And so now he says in verse 46,
and why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I
say? whosoever cometh to me, and heareth
my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like. He's like a man which built an
house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock. And
when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon the house. and could not shake it, for it
was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth and doeth
not is like a man that without a foundation built in house upon
the earth, against which the stream did beat vehemently, and
immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was
great." Now, I titled the lesson this morning, The House House
on the Rock. And I have three things here
in these verses that I want us to see. I want us to see the
subject of the text. You can take bits and pieces
out of the scripture and make them say anything you want them
to say. Sometimes you can even take a
portion of a verse and teach a subject on it. And lots of
people that I know have taught on this and taught that the rock
was Christ. You build that house of faith
upon that rock. And when the storms come, that
house is not going to be shaken. And that's perfectly fine. The
text does say that. But that's not the subject of
the text. The subject of the text is obedience. Obedience. And so that's what
I want to talk about first, the subject of the text. And then
I want you to see the storm that's coming. There's coming a storm.
That's what he said. Two guys built houses. The storm
comes. The same flood came to that house
that come to this house. You're not going to build on
a rock and get out of the storm. The storm's coming. It's coming
for everybody. And then I want to talk about
the house on the rock. So the subject of the text is
obedience, and I want all of us, including myself, to be warned
there is no salvation apart from obedience. Obedience, we're not under the
law, has nothing to do with the law. It has to do with your obedience
to God. He's God, isn't He? Isn't He
sovereign of the universe? Somebody was talking to me about
Romans 8, and they were talking about the carnal mind not being
subject to the law of God. Every word that God says is law,
isn't it? You're not gonna ignore God.
You're not gonna ignore him. He requires, he demands obedience. He commands you to obey him.
So this is the subject, and I want to be warned myself, there is
no salvation apart from obedience. And the Lord has been telling
them that good treasure comes forth from a renewed heart. The
good man, he brings forth treasure out of his heart. Where'd he
get the treasure? God gave it to him. He put it
in him, that treasure. And the Lord's been telling them
about that. It's out of the heart. Of the abundance of the heart,
he said, the mouth speaketh. And his words which the Pharisees
were trying to question came forth from a good heart. A perfect
heart. A perfect man was standing before
them and in grace and mercy preaching to them. Telling them the way
of salvation. Telling them the way of life.
This was life itself standing before them. Life incarnate standing
before them. Salvation incarnate standing
before them. But they wouldn't listen to him.
Wouldn't listen to it, wouldn't obey what he said. And so he
turns and he says, why call you me Lord, Lord, and do not the
things which I say? James tells us that true faith
is justified. How do I know if I have true
faith? Well, it's justified by works.
What kind of works? Obedience, love. Huh? That's it. It justifies true faith. God's
gonna prove this faith is his. It's his gift to us. But it's
not a work done for you, it's a work done in you. And when
he gives you faith, he's gonna prove to the world that it's
his faith. How's he gonna do it? He's gonna
raise up a storm. Gonna raise up a storm. It's gonna try the house. It's
gonna try the faith. He's gonna pass it through the
fire. In James chapter two, verse 26,
he said, for as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith
without works is dead also. You go to a funeral home, you
see a corpse, and that corpse is just laying there. There's
no spirit in it. It's gone. It's nothing but a
tent. It's nothing but an abandoned tent. That's all it is, dead.
It's dead. And he said, faith without works
is just like that corpse. It did, did. A man before his conversion is
said to walk according to the course of this world, according
to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit which now
worketh in the children of disobedience. He is a disobedient rebel. That's what he is. He's known
by his disobedience. He lives in the realm of a fallen
humanity over whom Satan freely has his way. He takes him captive,
the scripture said, at his will. You think you can fight Satan?
You think you can get away from him? The only thing that'll ever
keep him away from you is the Lord. You remember the conversation
that Satan had with the Lord over Job? He said, yeah, you
do this, but he said, you've hedged him all about. I can't
touch him. And that's exactly right, he
can't without the Lord's permission. Our Lord said in Luke 11, 21,
when a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are at
peace. He's got things that he trusts in. He's got, just like
all these old castles, these old-timey castles, you see those
big towers up there and had guards in them and weapons and all this
stuff and a heavy gate to shut. Man has built a refuge and he
thinks he's safe. Satan has convinced him of it.
He's made lies his refuge and in falsehood he's hid himself.
And he feels safe in there, and that's what he's talking about.
And he's gonna, those goods are gonna, they're gonna feel like
they're at peace, like they know God, like everything is fine,
until one stronger than he comes upon him. Not something you can
do, but something God the Holy Spirit can do. Jesus Christ is Lord. And he's
not Lord because we say he is. He's Lord. He's Lord whether
you obey him or whether you don't. He's still Lord. He's still Lord. In any kingdom, there's been
a king, and he's got princes under him, and an army under
him, and some people obeyed and some people didn't, but he was
still king. He was still king. He still ruled. And Jesus Christ is Lord. Peter
said, God hath made that same Jesus whom you crucified, both
Lord and Christ. And his lordship is not just
as a sovereign. Get that through your head. It's
not just that he is a sovereign. He was a sovereign before he
become a man. He was a sovereign before he
died on the cross. He God. He thought it not robbery
to be equal with God. He was God. He's always been
sovereign. He was sovereign even as a man.
You think about that lynch mob that come to get him of them
Jews. Here they come with staves and lanterns and they come to
get him and they said, who is this man? He said, I am. What
happened? They all fell backward on the
ground. He could have consumed him in a heartbeat. Well, why'd
he do all that? To let them know who he was.
He's God come into the flesh. And he's not just a sovereign. He was sovereign before he came.
But his lordship as the God-man mediator was given to him to
give eternal life. That's what it says in John 17.
Power over all flesh was given to him to give eternal life to
as many as the Father had given to him. That's what his sovereignty
is about. His sovereign rule is to give
you life. to bring things to you that normally
could not happen, to overcome odds that you can't overcome,
to get you out of the pit that you can't climb out of. We shut
up to sovereign mercy, sovereign grace. And Christ is a sovereign,
not in the abstract sovereign, but he's sovereign as Savior
to give life to chosen sinners. Hard obedience comes when a chosen
sinner sees him engaged to save his soul. This one you've been
fighting about, this one you've been rebelling against, this
one you've been going the opposite direction for, he's engaged to
save your soul. Boy, that'll make a difference
about obedience, don't it? When you see somebody loves you,
loves you. And he sees him taking to himself
the seed of Abraham and coming into the flesh, made of a woman,
made under the law to redeem him, that he might receive the
adoption. There's no salvation apart from
obedience. Listen to this, Romans 6.16. Know you not that to whom you
yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to
whom you obey? whether of sin unto death or
obedience unto righteousness. How did he get to righteousness?
Obedience. Isn't that what that says? Now
listen, but God be thanked, you were the servants of sin, but
you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was
delivered you Huh? How'd you get it? It was delivered
to you. It was delivered to you. That form of doctrine that was
delivered to you. Then made free from sin. How? How are we made free from sin? Sin still dwells in me. How am
I free from sin? It doesn't rain anymore. Grace
reigns in Christ, and sin can't begin to even challenge that
reign. We're delivered from the reigning
power of it through the deceit of Satan. That's how he gets
hold on people, he deceives them. He tells them lies. Hath God
surely said, huh? That's always the way Satan works. Being made free from sin, you
become the servants of righteousness. Not yours, but his. His. Did you ever think about
this? Righteousness is a person. It's
not a thing. It's a person. Of God are you
in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness. What's my righteousness? Christ
is my righteousness. I have no righteousness apart
from him. I don't care what I do in this world. I still have to
walk in his righteousness. Now can I show affection? If
you know the truth, you're gonna love the truth. You're gonna
love God. He that loveth not knoweth not God. The reason he
can't do these things is because he don't know God. But when this
truth is delivered to you and you obey it from the heart, you
become free from sin. Sin doesn't reign anymore, grace
reigns. Why are you here today and not
out there? Because grace reigns. Why are
you here today while others won't hear? Why are you obeying today
while others won't obey? Why is that? Because grace reigns,
that's why. And that grace is also a person.
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm not deceived. It's all in Him. And when you
discover Him, everything in your life starts to change. Everything.
Everything. You can do things that you could
never do before. They looked at old Saul of Tarsus,
man, they knew that man was feared. He'd go seek papers, get on his
horse, come get you. Bind you up or have you stoned
on the spot like he did Stephen. Stand there and hold the coats
of those servants while they went out there and took big rocks
and bashed his brains in. They feared him. And then somebody
came one day and said, behold, he prayeth. Oh, he never wrote
a prayer in his life. Never had. He said words, but
he didn't pray. But he prayin' now. Who's he
talkin' to? Father? Abba Father. Oh, my soul. Christ is our righteousness,
and we serve him. So that's the subject of the
text, is obedience. Obedience to the means, You know,
I hate to sound like I harp on this all the time, but it's a
big issue in our day. God has ordained the means of
salvation. This doctrine's gonna be delivered
to you, it's gonna be delivered to you through a man. Through
a man. And we obey that. You don't obey
that, you just gonna keep on looking. But why, if God says,
This is where the good news is. Why do I want to go over here
somewhere and get me a book and try to figure it out? Why don't
I go over here where I know God's working and sit and listen? These are critical. It's obedience,
obedience, obedience. And he just kept telling them,
God has in these last days spoken unto you by his son. And this
was his son, and he was preaching and teaching them. This salvation
began to first be preached by the Lord, and then confirmed
unto us by them that heard him, and so on through preachers and
evangelists. But why won't people do that? They're not obedient. Obedient, you're gonna be obedient
to him. Obedience, and we're obedient
to the means, and we're obedient to the way, And we're obedient
to the word. I don't have anything else. If
you're looking for some kind of physical proof, I ain't got
any. All I got's this book. But this is sufficient. It's
sufficient. And you can build on God's word.
On God's word. If I'm not preaching to you this
morning by his word, then you come show me in his word where
I'm not, and I'll quit. I'll do something else. I'll
say something else. It's his word and we're obedient
to it. And then secondly, there's a
storm coming. I like to watch old westerns
and one I was watching the other night, the cowboy came riding
into camp and his mistress and he were in a tent and he got
a big thorn in his thumb and it all swelled up and he was
running a fever. He had a mesquite thorn in there
and it poisoned him. An old guy helped him get the
thorn out, and he told the woman, he said, I'm going to go ahead
and move you across the river before the storm comes. And she
was looking all around. The sky was as blue as it could
be. There wasn't a cloud in the sky anywhere. She didn't say
anything, but he insisted, there's a storm coming. And he said,
when you get over there, don't get under a tree. He said, this
thing's going to come with blowing sand and heavy rain and high
winds. And she just kept looking around,
she didn't see anything coming. And that's why I'm telling you
right now, and you go outside and look, it don't look like
a storm coming, but it's coming. It's coming. There's a storm
coming, and whether you believe it or not, or whether you see
it or not, there's a storm coming. And it's coming to manifest your
faith or the absence of it, one or the other. That's why it's
coming. It's coming to try your house
and discover its foundations. Listen to this, 1 Corinthians
3, 13. Every man's work, there's only one foundation. That's that
rock he's talking about. There's just one foundation.
And Paul said, it's already been laid, and every man's work shall
be made manifest, for the day shall declare it. It's gonna
be revealed by fire. That don't sound like a little
old thing, but I listen to people talk about trials, and what they're
talking about ain't trials. Trials, he likens to a storm
that's gonna demolish a house. Trials, he talks about fiery
trials. That's what Peter said, fiery
trials. But it can't destroy that true
faith. All they can do is like gold,
when it's mixed in there, they put it in a furnace. The only
thing that's dissolved is the dross. What comes out the other
side is pure gold. And that's the way it is with
faith. We're going to try every man's faith, what kind it is. The parable here describes every
man's work. It's the work of faith, obedient
faith, the faith of God's elect. It's like a man which built a
house and digged deep and laid the foundation on a rock. When
the flood come and beat on that house, that house stayed, that
house stood. And all the other types of faith
that men call faith is pictured in this, the house without a
foundation. It didn't have a foundation. I had faith like that one time.
No foundation. I had no foundation in the Word
of God. It was just a sensation, something people talked me into,
decisions. Things that, you know, you want
to do the right thing, or so you think, and you don't know
what it is. Come on down the aisle, come
up here, do this, sign this, say this, repeat after me. Now
you say, That's all pictured in this, a house with no foundation. And the storm's coming. A house with no digging has no
foundation. And it won't stand. In Isaiah
28, 15, it says, because you have said, we have made a covenant
with death. And with hell, we're at agreement.
Not what God said, what you said. When the overflowing scourge
shall pass through, it shall not come down to us. For we've
made lies our refuge, and under falsehood we hid ourselves. But judgment, God said, I'll
lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet. And the hail
shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the water shall overflow
that hiding place. Where are you going to hide?
There's a storm coming. And will you know it or not,
you've built a house. You've built a house. One which only the faith of God's
elect is gonna survive. And then thirdly, let's talk
about this before I run out of time. The house on the rock. The house on the rock is talking
about faith in Christ. He tells us in this parable,
or this simile, that we are engaged in building, all of us are. And
I know that faith is the gift of God, but faith is not a work
done for us, it's a work done in us. It's a work that continues
to be done. It's not, you don't have to go
back 20 years to prove your faith. I don't care what you did 20
years ago, what do you believe right now? Right now. Faith is a continuing work. It's
a new man, this man walks and lives and prays and worships
God. It's a living thing, faith is
living, living faith. Paul said, it's God that worketh
in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. But he
doesn't work apart from you, he works in you. There's none
that understand it, right? But he said, John said, we know
that Christ has come and given to us an understanding. You mean
he could understand? I thought there's none that understand
it. It's left to themselves, they won't. God that worketh in us. Paul
said, as a wise master builder, I've laid the foundation and
another builds thereon. And we're built upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the
true cornerstone, the chief cornerstone. And true faith, the faith of
God's elect, requires digging. The earth on which the unwise
builds must be removed. He built that house on earth
and it wouldn't stand. So we're going to get rid of
that, ain't we? We ain't going to go up. You're not just going
to drill down and find little pieces of rock. You're going
to get rid of all that junk, find something solid, and build
your house on that. So what's this digging? This
digging is getting rid of that unuseful earth. That's what it
is. The overburden, they call it.
Getting rid of it. It's got to go. He's not going
to pack it down. He's not going to use it, period.
He's got to go. And if you know anything at all
about building a house, you ain't going to go out there by yourself
and dig a foundation. We're not talking about the days
of excavators. We're talking about the day all
they had was a shovel. And probably most of them wasn't
metal. And you go out here and dig a
foundation. Well, you ain't going to do it by yourself. How you
going to dig it? The man that's building this
house, how's he going to get rid of all this overburden? Servants. Servants. Now listen to me. God said, Paul said, we preach
not ourselves, but Christ Jesus, the Lord, and ourselves, what? Your servants. Oh. Is that what preachers do? They
help you get rid of the overburden. They help you to dig that foundation.
They help you to remove all those things that's gonna be a hindrance
to your house. We're not lords over God's heritage,
we're ministers. He sent us here to dig. To dig,
help you, clear it out, get rid of it. Now, here's Christ. Here's Christ. Build on that.
Build on that. Fact is, these ministers do most
of the work. They unearth the rock. That's
what they do. How shall you hear the Holy Ghost
say it without preaching? How are you going to find the
rock? Somebody told me recently, after
listening to a message that I preached, he went away the worse for it. That's not my intention. Not
my intention at all. I'm not here to cause anybody
any pain. I'm here to help you, if I can.
I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you find a rock.
Maybe what people are experiencing is the removing of the topsoil.
That might be what it is. Might be what it is. Because
we'll go through that. When God begins to convict a
man of sin, he'll go through that. Boy, it's tough. It's tough. But whatever it is, I'm here
to minister to you and help you dig deep. Listen to this. Paul said, I have not seen or
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things
which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed
them unto us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things,
yea, the deep things of God. Which things, Paul adds, also
we speak. Not in words which man's wisdom
teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches, comparing spiritual
things with spiritual. That's what we're doing. That's
what we're doing. But he said the natural man,
he won't obey. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God. Neither can he know, because
they're spiritually understood. It's the means by which the builder
of the house digs deep, and he goes down into the hidden things
of God, and he finds that rock. When all that is earthly is removed,
then you discover the rock. Our Lord said, upon this rock,
I'll build my church and the gates of hell should not prevail
against it. The eternal Christ, the promised
redeemer, the man Christ Jesus, the victorious king of glory,
that's the rock. And the man who sees him cannot
help but obey him. There's nothing in him that leaves
us with any thought except obedience. Why wouldn't I obey him? He loves
me. He loves me. And they could threaten
me from now on, my parents could, and I wouldn't do anything. But
when I found out what he's doing for me was done out of love,
he didn't have to say another word. I loved him. I loved him. That's the key to
the obedience. It's how you see it. High and
lifted up, his train fills the temple. And all this majesty
and glory and The fullness of the Godhead bodily, it's all
there to save your soul. It's easy to obey, isn't it?
He said, my commandments ain't hard. They're not hard. If you
love me, if you love me. All right, thank you.