“Live It!”
You are a preacher.[1]
A preacher is someone who proclaims the Word of God, and you do that more often than you probably realize. In fact, most people are inadvertent preachers, even some atheists. What we know about God has become so interwoven into our culture we spout out sayings from the Bible without even realizing it. Some are pretty obvious. “Man cannot live on bread alone.” That one comes from Matthew 4 where Jesus is being tempted by the devil. Having “a thorn in my flesh” is how Paul describes his weaknesses in 2 Corinthians 12. And Jesus proclaims a new way to look at “an eye for an eye” in the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5. But there are others that are less obvious. For example, if you’ve ever said, “A little bird told me” you’re paraphrasing a quote from Ecclesiastes 10:20 – “Do not revile the king even in your thoughts, or curse the rich in your bedroom, because a bird of the air may carry your words, and a bird on the wing may report what you say.” If you’ve ever said someone was “nothing but skin and bones?” or that you “escaped by the skin of your teeth” you’d be quoting from Job 19:19-20 – “All my intimate friends detest me; those I love have turned against me. I am nothing but skin and bones. I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.” And if you ever “saw the writing on the wall” you would be paraphrasing from Daniel 5:5-6 – “Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way.” The Bible is such an ingrained part of our culture and our language that it seeps into our lives in bunches of different ways. These little grains of wisdom that guide us and give us direction are part of God’s Word, but the most important quote from the Bible that we should constantly ask ourselves is do we practice what we preach? Matthew 23:2-3 – “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.”
This has LONG been a problem for Jesus and continues to be problem for us today.
One of the reasons non-Christians and former Christians say they don’t want anything to do with organized religion today is because they think we are hypocritical.[2] Too often we DON’T practice what we preach. And while it creates problems for our church and for Christianity in general, Christ worries about what it does for US. Because when we fail to practice what we preach, when we fail to live up to the standards we say we believe in, it affects our faith. It creates a separation between us and God that puts our relationship with him at risk. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today, the strained relationship between us and God when we don’t practice what we preach. In the passage below, another large group has gathered in hopes of being healed and to hear what Jesus has to say. He shares with them many lessons about how to live life. He told them to love their enemies, to turn the other cheek, and not to judge others. He talked about bearing fruit and then he told them how important it is to follow what he is saying, to put his words to use. And this is where we pick up the Gospel message this morning.
46“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? 47I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. 48He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. 49But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.” – Luke 6:46-49
Living in California makes it easy to relate to this parable.
With all the earthquakes, mudslides and homes falling off mountains, we can appreciate the need for a good foundation. When I was at UCLA, I lived in the dorms and I loved it. It was close to campus and close to Westwood where they had tons of first-rate movie theaters, pizza places, and even a Tommy’s Hamburger. The only bad part was the dorms were all built on a GREAT BIG hill, so going to and from campus everyday was like hiking a mountain. In my third year, I was living on the 7th floor of Hedrick Hall, literally the highest place on campus. And that’s where I was when the Malibu Earthquake hit back in 1989 – at the top of a seven-story building at the top of a big hill at the top of the UCLA campus. The whole building rocked and swayed a LOT! That was because it was built on rollers to absorb the impact of a major quake, so it moved back and forth like a carnival ride. But I wasn’t worried. Being from California, even a quake this big wasn’t that unusual. My roommate and I walked calmly to the doorway and just hung out waiting for it to finish. My friend Amy, however, BOLTED out of her room shouting, “Oh my God! What do we do?! What do we DO?!” She was from Michigan and this was her first earthquake. No wonder she was panicking! She didn’t know what we knew that the foundation was solid even if it didn’t seem like it. We could trust in it.
And that’s the message Jesus is trying to tell us.
When you build a firm foundation for your relationship with God, you don’t have to worry about the storms or the earthquakes or the disasters that happen in your life because you TRUST God is there – even in the trauma. But when you don’t have that foundation, when you don’t know if you can trust it, you end up being like my friend Amy – worried, panicked, and unsure. The good news is you don’t have to live life that way. You CAN know the peace that comes with knowing Christ. And if you haven’t built it already, it’s never too late. You can begin building that foundation even now. All you need to do is learn about God’s Word and put it into practice. And that’s the key, to “put it into practice.” Our passage today highlights that as Jesus himself tells us the difference between a solid foundation and no foundation at all is putting what you hear and what you read into practice in your everyday lives. The man who does that can weather the storm because his foundation is so solid that it cannot shake the house loose. But if you notice the other guy whose house was destroyed, he came and heard the Word, too, but he never put it into practice. And that was the difference. It gives a new spin on the saying, “Practice makes perfect.”
Listen, it’s great if you come to church and listen to the sermon.
It’s great if you listen to Christian music. It’s great if you pop open a Bible now and then. But if you don’t put what you hear into practice it’ll be for nothing. You’re simply building a straw house without a foundation. You probably know what I’m about to say because I think I say it at least once a year. Being in church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than being in a garage makes you a car. You need to act. You need to do something with what you hear and with what you read. Because if you don’t, your faith will come crumbling down when you need it the most. So, remember these words, “Action creates traction.” When you act on what you hear, when you take what you know about Christ and apply it to your life, you will create traction for your faith. You will get it moving and slowly but surely, you’ll build that foundation that will last an eternity. Layer by layer, you’ll keep increasing the strength of your beliefs so that when the hard times come as they most certainly will, you’ll be able to weather the storm.
About 10 years ago, I heard one of the most amazing stories of faith.
I had just started the process to become a minister when someone told me about a phenomenal lady at our church named Pat Monzo. I knew Pat but not well. I had seen her and maybe talked to her once or twice. She was one of the office volunteers and everyone loved her dearly. Thing is she found out she had terminal cancer. They did all the normal work you do when you discover you have cancer, but I guess she had a particularly aggressive form of it and the doctors told her there was little they could do. She only had about 6 months to live. I think most of us would have been sad, mad, frustrated, hurt, or fearful, but not her. She still came in to volunteer at the church like normal, still with a smile on her face. When someone asked how she was able to keep in such good spirits all the time, Pat said, “What do I have to be sad about? Soon I’ll be with the Lord, and I’ll get to be with my daughter again.” Her daughter had died some years before. I don’t know from what, but I think it was also from cancer. For her, death wasn’t something to be afraid of or bitter about. It was a new opportunity. She wasn’t afraid because her faith was so strong she KNEW what would follow even though she hadn’t ever seen it. But she was the kind of person who lived out her faith everyday and because she did that, when she got the news that would have made most of us react differently, she approached it with the peace that only Christ can give. That’s what it means to live your faith. As you live it, your faith becomes stronger and stronger, and it doesn’t just change how you look at life, but it becomes a stunning reminder to the people around you of the strength we have because of Christ. It did for me. Pat’s story is an inspiration for me, and I hope my faith is as strong as hers. Take what you hear from week to week and apply it in your everyday life. Find ways to incorporate God’s Word into everything you do and if you don’t already, you’ll find you have that peace that God promises us. The peace that only he can bring.
[1] http://www.squidoo.com/everyday-sayings-that-come-from-the-bible ; http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bible-phrases-sayings.html/fly-in-the-ointment.html
[2] David Kinnaman, unChristian, p.27. 85% of non-Christians say this is their perception of Christians.
Craig's Corner 