“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)
The parable of the houses Matthew's gospel chapter 7 is a very familiar Sunday school story for the children that I still remember from the early times. There is a childrens' song, that goes: "the rains came down and the floods came up."
Jesus said this Parable to his disciples. It is a Parable for all of us.
Just before this Parable, Jesus said "Not everyone who says
to me, Lord. Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. But only the one who does
the will of my Father in heaven." Then he said, "Everyone who listens
to those words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built the
house on the rock."
There is a geographic area in the Pacific Ocean called the Pacific Ring of Fire. I don't know how many of you are familiar with that. It's an orca around the Pacific Ocean and all of the United States and the American continents in South America. All the western coast is on that range. And then it goes around the top and comes around through the Philippines and the Japanese islands and it kind of borders Australia. So it's like an arc on the Pacific where they call it the Ring of Fire. It has 90% of the words earthquakes and 81% of the largest earthquakes occur in this area called The Ring of Fire. In this area, people are well prepared mostly for the earthquakes that happen regularly, particularly in the Philippines and Hong Kong in the nation and those places they have a frequent earthquake, and their buildings and structures are built to withstand these kinds of earthquakes and forces of nature when they build those buildings there. The important thing that they note, when they do construction, is to make sure that they have a good foundation. The foundation of the building is very important in times of powerful winds and earthquakes. People who live in these areas know the importance of having a stable foundation.
Sometimes, we feel like we are in the Ring of Fire. We have experienced
episodes in our lives where they were threatening and scary. That so many
forces are here beating against us that things are going to
be falling apart. We feel like there is no end to certain things that we don't
like to see in our lives. It could be a breakup of a relationship the death of a family member a sudden job loss or other major life-changing
events that happen in our lives. Sometimes it can seem
to be the end of the world as we know it. We are going through an experience
like that or we have gone through an
experience like that in our life. And felt like
there was an earthquake or even an earthquake going on. Today's message will be
something that we will be able to relate it
personally.
Jesus said "Not everyone who says to me Lord Lord
will enter the kingdom of heaven but the one who does the will of my
father. and listen to my words and act on
them. He will be like a wise man who builds. the house on a
rocky foundation.
The first point This Parable taught me is that there is no shortcut in life.
A lot of times maybe this Builder who built the house on the sand maybe took some
easy shortcuts. He thought he could get by with it. That becoming
easy and cheap, you know have to spend a lot of time
and money on this and in the beginning it was standing. That's all he thought
in the beginning.
But when the winds came and the rains poured down and the wind started beating
against the house, it did not stand those forces because it didn't have a good
foundation.
So there is no shortcut in life. One
of the things that you probably hear about the story of Wendy's restaurant, you
know, is
that
their hamburgers are in the shape of a square. That's the reason that I
read. I don't know if you read that because the founder Tomas, said
that his mom taught him when he was young never to cut corners. That means you
don't take shortcuts and don't cut corners in life. That's what he was told
when he was saying boy when he started business so he decided not to cut the
corners of the burgers. That's why you get the square burgers that's what
I read. There are no real shortcuts in life. Whenever
we take shortcuts in our regular life in our spiritual life we end up paying for it
sometime along the way.
The word of God the scripture is
given to us as the foundation on to build our lives so that we
will be stable when the storms of life come he does hard. We believe that the
Bible is the inspired word of God. When we say that is the inspired word of God it is the word that is
breathed by God inspiration inspired is breathed
by God. That's what the meaning of it is. The same breath of God that gave man
life when God created man. He breathed the life into Adam. He made the body out
of clay, but when God breathed his life into his nostrils, he became a living
being that's what we read and we believe. The same breath is
inspired by the scripture that God has given us to be. Living every day. That
is the foundation that we build. our faith in
the Bible is our sacred Canon. And that is what our church our doctrines and it is the
unique testimony of God's revelation to this world. And that is the basic
foundation for our faith.
So the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in the scripture and John Wesley who founded the Methodist Church said "I
am a man of one book and that's it." And we believe that one book is the foundation
of everything that we believe and every doctrine that we make is based on that one book.
So Jesus said anyone who actually listens to my words and obeys them in
their lives is like the wise man and let us build our lives our church our doctrines and continue to build on that
scripture that God has given us as a foundation a choice
and a great preacher said like this, "A Bible which is falling apart
usually belongs to somebody who is not."
When we feel like we are going to be falling apart, go
to the Bible; go to the Scripture. It is therefore us for our strength therefore
us for our power. When we are we feel powerless and weak God gives us the scripture as our
foundation to build our lives and let us build our families. Let
us build our doctrines our schools our society or on that Foundation that God
has given us to find our lives on.
You may be familiar with the term 'The Wesleyan quadrilateral'. Those are the four pillars of
the Wesleyan Doctrine. The basic doctrine is the scripture that I told you the other three
are tradition, reason, and experience. Scripture is the foundation but tradition is also important for us. It is not that
tradition will bring Salvation. It's not that tradition is something that we
stand upon the forefathers the founding fathers
of the church who build the foundation of our
faith. We were studying the scripture today from Acts chapters 5 and 6 how the apostles actually witnessed powerful those times giving even their lives at the risk of their lives.
And they were the apostles were actually taken into the prison and beaten up
and they were in very bad
shape in the prison and all of a sudden the at night the doors of
the prison doors opened up.
And they actually went out and and
nobody knew they were going out and the next day they were
looking for them and you know where they found
them.
They found them in the city streets preaching the same thing that they were locked up for. I was
thinking if I was there in the prison, I would have run
off and hit somewhere at least for a couple of days so they would not catch me
again. But those pioneers of Faith are possessed. They gave us some traditions
to follow. Those traditions are not there to bring Salvation to anybody but those are the ones that gave
us some foundations to follow and build upon so we know their pressure
understanding of the power of the Gospel.
We gather together as a church every Sunday. Some people believe that you
have to be in church to worship God. I mean it's up to
them. The
Bible teaches us that as we gather together as a church to worship we become stronger. We have a bond that we
build together the bond of love and we care for
each other and give us strength in times of pressure of those winds that blow
against us. We go to church every Sunday and studying the word of God
together gives us strength.
And then when the rain comes down and the
floods come up and the storms, he does heavily the
body of Believers become our strength.
And also we believe in some of the
practices of that that our tradition has
given us baptism and Holy Communion. These are all things that scripture says that to practice they
are there for a reason that you found to be a foundation of Our faith.
Then the other one that the third one is the reason. We are not following a
blind faith. Our faith is not a blind faith. It is based reason on reason. We
use our recent in reading and understanding the scripture. We use it to relate
the scripture and tradition to over experience and in organizing
our theological doctrines. We use our reasons to express our faith to others.
So reason has a place in our faith.
It is not something that we blindly do.
Reason however is not a mere human
invention. It is a creation of God and we use
it. It is given to us by God and we use it to establish our faith.
Especially for our children in school systems and prayers are not allowed or not allowed to speak boldly about faith. It
is not that we are having a blind faith. It is something that God
gave us to reason out. So that we can reason with others how we have our fake.
Faith produces salvation and reason. When we put Christ's words into
practice, we are building upon the foundation Forum foundations that those are
prophets and Jesus Christ himself has been in this world
That last one I wanted to
preach about his
experience, so scripture, tradition, experience, and reason. We
mean the new life that we experience in Christ, which is given to us when we
accept Christ.
In our lives as a Grace that God's grace of God. We experience the power of
Faith through prayer. We believe in the power of prayer because we experience
that in our daily lives. Praying for ourselves praying for
others. We believe that God answers our prayers and he
listens to our prayers every time we pray and call upon God.
We experience the Christian experience of Holiness and happiness. So these
are all the foundations that we as a church Methodist Church believed to
establish our doctrines and then together take on we build our
life on Integrity of character. John Wesley is to call it holiness. Building a
life of Integrity is the key to finding our lives on a foundation. That is
solid.
In First Corinthians chapter 3, Paul says like this by the grace of God has
given to me. I laid a foundation as a voice Builder. And someone else is
building on it. But each one should be built with care. For no one
can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, which is Christ Jesus. If
anyone Builds on this Foundation using Gold Silver and costly stones that will show
up in fire when hit with the fire. But if you build with good hay and straw that will not withstand the
heat of the fire. the fire will test the quality of
each person's world. Surviving, the Builder will be rewarded with a fruitful
life. If it is burned up he will build his suffer
loss. So today I want all of us to reflect on
our lives. What we believe and why we believe are
both important. Once we are grounded on that, we are established on a firm
foundation so that when the storms of doubt and fear assail us, we will be standing firm on the solid
rock. When the power of Darkness will be beat up against our lives. You will be
solidly standing and not falling down and falling apart.
And one more thing that Paul teaches us about the rock is the foundation
that we build on. He says that Jesus Christ is the solid rock, the spiritual rock that followed right from the
beginning of creation. The Rock was Christ. He refers to the rock
that gave the people of Israel water while they traveled in the wilderness.
"For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock
was Christ (1 Cor .10:verses 3-5)". Psalm 95:2 says God is the Rock of our
Salvation. Our salvation is only through Christ, the rock of salvation, by
grace through faith.
He is our Rock of salvation. Only in Christ and Christ Alone that we can find a stable and
solid foundation. Peter says in First Peter chapter 2 that we are living
stones. You are being built up in your spiritual house to be a
Priestly inheritance. We have a Holy priest Hood offering spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God. Jesus Christ is the Cornerstone. So all these
thoughts together build the church of God. Will be very
solid when we stand together as a church as God's people that we can withstand
the pressure. So this world.
And one of the Christian writers says like this,
" There are many angles that you can fall down when he hit by a stone. But
there is only one angle that you can stand straight."
As we depart from the service today, let us be firm on our faith. That we
can stand strong in times of wind that blows against us. In Isaiah chapter 28
scriptures. We read like this. I lay a Stone in Zion, A tested Zone a precious Cornerstone for a
short Foundation the one who trusts will never be
dismayed. May the good Lord bless us with this word so
that we can be strong in times of tests trials and tribulations.
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