Overview:
Jesus ended with a bang in His Sermon on the Mount, the sermons of all sermons. In it, He creates a crisis of the will . . . for all of us. Each person, by the mere fact of living, builds a spiritual house. Our moral and spiritual decisions reflect the foundation. By following Jesus’ words, we build on rock. By rejecting Jesus’ words, we build on sand. When storms come—and they always do—they blast against our house revealing the foundation laid.Join Pastor Chuck Swindoll in this final sermon on Jesus’ iconic teaching, so you can live with the confidence of the wise builder—firm upon the foundation of God and strong amid the storms.
Message Summary:
In this concluding message of his series on the Sermon on the Mount, Chuck Swindoll examines Jesus’ final words in Matthew 7:24–29, which focus on the most critical component of a life: the foundation. Swindoll notes that Jesus ends the greatest sermon ever preached not with a song or an altar call, but with a compelling story about two builders.
Swindoll observes that outwardly, the two lives in the parable look identical. Both men build houses; both likely work hard; both face the exact same “life situations”—the inevitable rains, floods, and winds of adversity. The difference lies beneath the surface. One builder is “wise” because he digs down to the rock (petra), representing those who hear Jesus’ words and act on them. The other is “foolish,” building on shifting sand, representing those who hear the truth but do nothing about it.
The sermon emphasizes that storms are inescapable; we cannot prepare the road for the child, but we must prepare the child for the road. When the storm hits, the house built on sand suffers a “mega” collapse, while the house built on the rock stands firm. Swindoll concludes by challenging the listener to move beyond intellectual agreement to the “unsinkable” safety of trusting Christ, illustrating this with a moving story of a father carrying his tired son through the deep ocean waves.
Message Key Facts:
- The Power of Story: Swindoll explains that stories are powerful because they engage the intellect, emotion, and will. Quoting Dr. Reg Grant, he notes that while the intellect can argue facts, a story bypasses defenses and captures the heart, acting first as a picture, then a mirror, and finally a window into truth.
- The “Rabbit” Illustration: To illustrate how life’s best intentions can backfire, Swindoll tells the humorous story of “Frank,” who tried to clean up a neighbor’s dead rabbit to hide the fact his dog “killed” it, only to find out the rabbit had already died and been buried days prior. This highlights the unpredictable messiness of life.
- Identical Storms: Swindoll stresses that the storm hits both houses equally. Being a believer does not exempt one from “winds” and “floods”—tragedy, death, and pain are inevitable. The difference is not the absence of the storm, but the survival of the structure [16–18].
- “Great was the Fall”: Swindoll points out the Greek word used for the collapse of the foolish man’s house is megale (from which we get “mega”). It was a total, catastrophic crash, symbolizing a life that falls apart completely in judgment or crisis because it lacked a spiritual foundation.
- Bedrock vs. Sand: Drawing from a conversation with a construction engineer at the Insight for Living site, Swindoll explains that a solid foundation requires digging down to the “shelf of rock” (bedrock). Building on the surface (sand) offers no stability when the environment shifts.
- The “Teddy” Story: Swindoll concludes with a story from Frederick Buechner’s The Wizard’s Tide. A boy named Teddy swims too far out with his father and becomes afraid. His father tells him to climb on his back. Swindoll uses this to illustrate the safety of resting on the “Rock” of Christ when we are sinking.
- Hearing vs. Doing: The distinction between the wise and foolish man is not their knowledge, but their action. Both heard the words. The wise man is the one who “acts on them”.
Message References:
- Matthew 7:24–27: The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders.
- Matthew 7:28–29: The crowd’s reaction to Jesus’ authority.
- Genesis 3: Referenced as the origin of the “oldest truth”—the need for the cross.
- Job 14:1: “Man, who is born of woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil”.
- John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” referenced to establish Jesus as the only sure foundation.
- 2 Timothy 3:1: Implicit reference to “difficult times will come” in the last days.
