James Merritt - Built to Last
Hey, I’m so glad you came. Thanks for being here today. It was intended to be a one of the most beautiful developments in the Canadian province of British Columbia. They call it the SeaWatch subdivision, It was going to be this exclusive community of beautiful homes built on what they call the Sunshine Coast. These houses would be overlooking some of the most pure, pristine water anywhere in the world. The minimum price for 14 homes, every home, would be over a million dollars. Fantastic to look at, great to live in, would be awesome investments.
As a matter of fact, here’s a picture of this sparkling paradise. I mean, that’s just breathtaking. Well, after these dreams, homes were finished. On the outside, it was everything the homeowners and the developers dreamed it would be. It was a beautiful, magnificent subdivision with breathtaking views. But then winter came and snow fell and winds began to blow. And all of a sudden, first one house and then another house began literally to collapse and sink into cavernous holes that you could bury an elephant in. Tenants of these 14 properties were forced to evacuate their homes. They couldn’t figure out what in the world happened?
Well, it was discovered by both the builders that the developer had built these homes over gigantic sinkholes. And when one snowstorm, these million dollar homes collapsed like a house of cards. And I thought about that and I thought they had to learn a very sad and expensive lesson that all home builders and home buyers better remember. And here’s the lesson. If you want a house built to last, make sure you take care of the part of the house that no one will ever see before you take care of the part of the house that everyone will see.
You see, this would have never happened. This should have never happened if those builders and those developers and maybe even those buyers had learned a lesson that Jesus actually taught 2,000 years ago on the side of a hill in Galilee. If you are visiting with us today for the first time or you’re watching online for the first time or watching somewhere on television around the world for the first time, we’ve been in a series we started in September on the Sermon on the Mount we’ve been calling Get Used to Different. It’s the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest spiritual leader who ever lived. And Jesus has been sharing some spiritual truths that was totally different from anything these people had ever heard.
As a matter of fact, when Jesus got through preaching this 18 minute sermon, this is what we read. «When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at His teaching because He taught His one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law». When Jesus got through teaching, they were slack-jawed. They looked at each other and they said, we’ve never heard a teacher like this. We’ve never heard teaching like this. We’ve never heard truth like this. We’ve never heard anyone that could touch your head and your heart at the same time. This sermon is the largest body of the teachings of Jesus recorded consecutively in all of the Bible. But if this sermon had been the only sermon we ever had from Jesus, it would still go down as the greatest sermon ever preached.
And as Jesus concludes His sermon, He does it with one of His favorite ways to teach, and that is with a parable. And He tells a story. It’s a simple story. Two home builders. Two men build a home. In fact, they probably were next door to each other. Well, a storm hit and it caused blinding rain and hurricane-like winds and massive flooding. And when the storm finally passed, one home was still standing. One home sank like a house of cards because only one home was built to last. So, here’s what the parable teaches. The most important part of a home is not what you build. It’s not how you build. It’s where you build.
Let me give you a great example. You will be a lot better off building a log cabin on a rock than a mansion in a swamp. It’s not what you build. It’s not how you build. It is where you build. I want you to notice as we study this story, the difference was not in the builders. They both knew how to build. The difference was not in the buildings. They built the same house. The difference was in the base. So, I want you to keep in mind the context of this story. Remember what Jesus has been teaching. He’s been teaching how if you are a Christian, you ought to walk differently and talk differently and sound differently and act differently and live differently and think differently than the rest of the world.
So, this parable really isn’t about building a house. It’s really about building a life. That’s what Jesus is talking about. See, we’re all in the building business. One of my buddies is here today. He’s a builder. But we’re not talking about building homes. Jesus is talking about building a life, and we’re all in the life building business. You’re building a life. I’m building a life. Every day we go to work building our life. Every day you go to work. I go to work. We’re building a life. And Jesus said there are only two kinds of builders. There are wise builders, and there are foolish builders.
Now, on the outside, here’s the strange thing. Your life may look just like the life of your next door neighbor. Maybe your kids go to the same school. Maybe you both work at the same company. You both pay your taxes. You both are known as good neighbors. You might even both attend the same church. And on the outside, you just say, well, their life just looks alike. On the outside, it looks just the same. But then a storm hits, and the blinding rain, and the hurricane-like winds, and the massive flooding comes. And when the storm finally passed, one home still standing, the other home collapsed like a house of cards. On the outside, you look the same. But only one of the houses is built to life. Only one has a life that is built to last.
So as we look at the conclusion of this fantastic message that Jesus taught, here’s the truth I want you to remember. If you don’t remember anything else I say, I want you to remember this. A life built on a faulty foundation will end as a foolish failure. I want to get some love. It took me an hour to come up with that, okay? A life built on a faulty foundation will end as a foolish failure. Now you may sit there and you say, well, pastor, how do you know whether or not your life is built? How do I know if it’s built on solid rock, not on shifting sand? Jesus said, there’s one way you’ll always know where your house is built, where your life is built. When the storm hits, then you’ll know. You can run, but you can’t hide. We’re going to learn today how you can build a life that will last not just here, not just now, but forever and ever.
So if you’re like me and you say, you know what, I want to build a life that will last not just here, but there, not just now, but forever, then you might want to write down three things to remember. Number one, get real. You will see storms. Get real. You will see storms. Now we’re going to read the whole story. It’s real short in its entirety. You ready? Here we go. Therefore, Jesus said, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew, beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew, beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.
Now one of the things I love about Jesus, and one of the reasons why little children love Jesus, one of the reasons why common people, minimum wage workers love to hear Jesus. He was simple. He didn’t use $30,000 words. He didn’t talk over the heads of the people. He just told simple stuff. He tells a simple story. He says, hey, there were two men. They built two houses. They both built with the same purpose. They wanted to build a house where their families could live. They used similar plans. Almost every home back in New Testament days were very similar and very simple in design. They were both built in the same place. They probably actually built next door to each other.
Jesus said, but more than that, they had one thing in common. Both houses were hit with a storm. Now what was Jesus telling us? Storms are inevitable to every house and to every life. Now, I know some of us wish that Jesus was going to tell us, hey, let me tell you how to build a life that will always be comfortable, that will always be safe, where you’ll never have any rainfall, any winds blow, any storms that will come. Let me tell you how you can build that kind of life, where the sun always shines, the clouds never rain, the wind never blows, but that place doesn’t exist. As a matter of fact, I got to thinking about this. Has it ever occurred to you that it does it matter where you live in the United States of America, you’re going to have weather problems? Have you ever thought about that? For example, you live out west, say California.
Now, if you live out west, you need therapy, but let’s just say you live out west. You’re going to suffer earthquakes. You say, okay, I’m going to leave the west, I’m going to move to the south. You’re going to suffer tornadoes. You say, okay, I’m going to leave the south, I’m going to move up north. You’re going to face floods. All right, I’m going to leave the north and I’m going to go to the east. You’re going to face hurricanes. Because there’s one thing that we know about storms. Storms don’t play favorites with places. And storms don’t play favorites with people. Jesus said, you better get real. You will see storms. Now notice something. Jesus says, one builder was a wise, godly person. One builder was a worldly, foolish person. But it didn’t make any difference. The rain fell on both houses. And the wind blew on both houses. And the storm hit both houses.
See, the rain of troubles falls on the homes of the just and the unjust. And the winds of tribulation blow against the homes of the just and the unjust. And the floods of trials rise against the homes of the just and the unjust. Listen, I hate to burst your bubble. And you won’t hear a lot of preachers tell you this, but let me just be honest. Just because you love Jesus doesn’t mean life’s going to be a bed of roses. Just because you love Jesus doesn’t mean it’s going to be all sunshine and no rain and all joy and no pain.
As a matter of fact, we need to be careful. You’ve got to be very careful you don’t go to one or two extremes because we all tend to do this. On the one hand, there are some of you that think like this. I go to church. I read my Bible. I pray. I give money. I give to charity. I pay my taxes. I’m faithful to my spouse. I’m a good parent. No storm is going to come into my life because I’m so good I don’t deserve it. Which is why people get mad at God. I’ve heard people all my life. I’m so mad at God I don’t understand it. This is what I get. I go to church. I dot the I. I cross the T. I keep my life clean and now I’m going through this. Now you’re giving me cancer.
Now I’ve got a problem with my child. And they get mad at God. They go to that one extreme. I’m so good I don’t deserve this. And then we go to the other extreme. So we look at something that happens to somebody that doesn’t go to church and they’re not like us and they don’t live a very good life. And so we tend to think, well, I know why that’s happening to them. They’re so bad they do deserve it. So we go to these two extremes. I’m so good I don’t deserve it. He’s so bad they do deserve it. Don’t do that.
Years ago, there was a Kansas preacher who decided to go visit the northeast and New England and he went by train. He’d been gone for a week. When he got back, there was a man waiting on him at the train station. His name was Sam. And he was wondering why he was doing there. Sam was a man that never went to church. This pastor tried to get this guy to go to church for 10 years. Never darkened the door of the church. He didn’t have any time for God. Jesus was not even on his radar screen. Always blew the pastor off. And this guy’s waiting for him when he gets off the train. And he walks up to him and he says, «Sam, what are you doing here»?
And he said, «Pastor. Pastor,» he says, «it’s just so sad. I need you to help me». And he said, «Well, what happened»? He said, «A tornado came and wiped out my house. I’ve lost everything». He was kind of looking for some sympathy. Not from this pastor. He said, «Well, I’m not surprised». He said, «You know, I’ve been trying to get you to come to church for 10 years. I’ve been warning you about the way you’ve been living. I’ve been telling you God was going to get you. I’ve been telling you something’s going to happen. And sure enough, it did». And the man looked at him and said, «Well, pastor, it blew your house down too».
Now, it doesn’t matter how much you love Jesus. It doesn’t matter how devoted you are to your church. How much you read your Bible. How much you pray. Jesus said, you better get real. You are going to see storms. And that’s why you better learn early and you better learn well. You’ve got to trust God when the sun is shining, but you also have to trust God when the storms are howling. Because I’m going to tell you another thing you don’t hear a lot of preachers tell you. Faith is not getting from God what you want. It is accepting from God the things that He gives. That’s what faith is. It’s not getting from God what you want. It’s accepting from God the things that He gives.
So, you’re good or you’re not. You believe or you don’t. You go to church or you don’t ever darken the door. It doesn’t matter. Get real. You’re going to see storms. But then Jesus tightens the screws. He said, you want to make sure you’re ready for the storms? All right, number one, get real. You will see storms. But then Jesus says, get ready, you will suffer storms. And you know this to be true. I live over the lake and so I see this quite a bit in my house. There are times that I look out down my cove and I can see a storm.
Okay, I see the storm out in the distance. But after I watch it for a while, I breathe a sigh of relief because I can tell either it’s headed in that direction or it’s headed in some direction where I know it’s going to pass by my house. It’s going to go around me. It’s going to miss me. But I’ll tell you something else. That’s not always the way it works. Sometimes I see this storm and after about five minutes I say, it’s not going that way. It’s coming this way. And it’s not going to pass around me. It’s going to pass right over me. So, you better batten down the hatches because you’re about to suffer in the storm. I’ve told you this before but I’m going to tell you again.
There are three types of people in this room right now listening to me. There are three types of people watching me online. There are three types of people watching me on TV right now. You’re either A, coming just out of a storm, you’re just coming out of a storm. B, you’re right in the middle of a storm. Or C, you’re about to get into a storm. You’re in one of three positions right now. You’re either in one, coming out of one, or about to get into one. We’re all going to suffer storms because Jesus says the same storm hit both houses.
So, what happened to the house of the wise builder? Here’s what Jesus said. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house. What about the house of the foolish guy? Well, Jesus said, the rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house. It hit the house of the wise builder, hit the house of the foolish builder. Now let me remind you, both houses were built with the same materials. Both houses were built with the same floor plan. Both houses had to provide the same type of function, shelter, warmth, a place to sleep, a place to rest, a place to live.
What’s the point? Even though all of our lives are different, in some ways they’re all the same. We all have to build a life. You all have to do the same thing to build your life that I’ve got to do to build mine. We work. We eat. We drink. We sleep. We play. We make friends. We take trips. We use cell phones. We watch TV. We get on the computer. We surf the internet. So the characteristics of most lives, when you look at the average person, really around the world, most lives generally look the same. And as long as you only see the storm but you never suffer the storm, nobody knows any different but when you suffer the storm, the storm becomes very revealing. Because here’s what storms will always do. They will always reveal whether your house is built on a firm foundation or not. They will always reveal whether your life is built on solid rock or shifting sands.
Now here’s the difference. If your life is built on the rock, the solid rock, the storm may pass but your house will not. But if your house is built on shifting sand, when the storm passes, your house will go with it. So what I’m going to do is I want you to buckle your imaginary seat belt because the ride’s going to get a little bumpy for about five minutes. I want to get very personal. I want to get very practical. Now some of you are going to think I’m getting political. I’m not. I don’t do that here but just so you’ll know. It’s not my intent. We’re going to take what Jesus said. I’m going to show you exactly how you’re watching it play out right now in our very eyes.
Think about what you’ve been seeing on our college campuses over the last several months. Just put that in your mind. Think about what you’re seeing in our homes today. Think about what you’re seeing in our culture. Think about what you’re seeing in our government. Think about what you’re seeing in our society. Let me tell you the problem. What you’re seeing is the result of building on shifting sand. Rather than building our culture and rather than building our country on the solid rock of the truth of the Word of God, we are built on the shifting sands of personal opinion, political correctness, and progressive ideology. I’m going to just give you some examples. We have built our educational system on shifting sands.
So because of that, here’s what we now have. We now have shifting minds. Lemme give you an example. There was a day we used to value what we would call liberal education. And what we meant by that was in high school and in undergraduate college, there was a teaching approach that valued the marketplace of ideas, vigorous debate and discussion, critical thinking, developing skills for a productive life, how to be a good citizen, how to have a productive life, how to acquire knowledge, how to think logically and rationally and reasonably. But you know what we’ve done since 1960? We’ve minimized the education part. We’ve maximized the liberal part. Don’t take my word for it.
One scholar, who by the way is a liberal admitted this. Here’s what he said.Okay. «At American colleges, incoming students are twice as likely to say that they’re liberals than to say they’re conservative. Faculty are even more likely to lean left than the students, professors are six times more likely to say they’re liberal than to say they’re conservatives. Administrators are 12 times more likely to call themselves liberal than they are to call themselves conservative». So what we’re seeing happen right before our very eyes are some of the finest educational institutions that were built in this country. They are collapsing under the radical weight, under the weight of radical left-wing elite liberalism. But not only does shifting sands lead to shifting minds, they lead to shifting manners. Shifting manners.
I mean, think about this. Homes are now built on sand that are caving in. So what do you mean? Simple question. Why are parents now caving into children? Why are universities now caving into students? Why do politicians cave into polls? Because when you throw cold water on God-given authority in the home and the school and the government, you feed the fire for anarchy in the streets. So we’ve got these shifting minds, shifting morals. There was a day when I went to school, you simply said to your teachers, yes ma’am, no ma’am, yes sir, no sir.
Now you know what they hear? The F word. And nobody does anything about it. Why? Well, one last reason. Shifting sins have led to shifting minds, shifting manners, and they’ve led to shifting morals. When the storm of the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s hit, what happened? We started accepting sexual promiscuity, legalized abortion, no-fault divorce, and now today the LGBTQI, and I’m going to run out of letters, revolution, that has resulted in the complete rejection of gender, sexual morality, and even the concept of marriage. When you build a culture and you build a country on shifting sands, you finally get to the point where you can’t even answer a simple question, what makes a woman a woman and what makes a woman a man?
I want to tell you something. I don’t need a PhD in biology to answer that question. And I don’t need a PhD in theology to answer that question. When you’ve got certain anatomical accouterments, you’re a man, and if you don’t, you’re a woman, it ain’t hard to figure that out. But we’re living in a country today, because we’ve got all these shifting sands, what blows my mind is not where we are, what blows my mind is that we’re surprised about where we are. Really? What do you think you’re going to get when you build on shifting sands?
And by the way, what’s been the result of the storm that’s hit, the storm that’s still raging? What’s been the result of all those people 60 years ago, 50 years ago, 40, 30, 20, 10, and even still today, trying to tell us, man, we’re building utopia, we’re making progress, we’re really becoming what we ought to be. What’s been all the result? Well, Theo Hobson, who’s not a conservative, wrote a book called «Reinventing Liberal Christianity». He said, here’s the three marks of this moral revolution, and he’s right. What was universally condemned is now celebrated. What was universally celebrated is now condemned. And those who refuse to celebrate, are condemned. No wonder. What do you get when you build on shifting sands? A house that collapses like a house of cards.
So, nobody can deny we’re in a storm right now. We’re more divided than we’ve ever been as a nation in my lifetime. And you know what we’re seeing? So much of what we thought on the outside, so strong, so sturdy, it’s collapsing everywhere, because it was built on shifting sands. Get real. You’re going to see something storms. Get ready. You will suffer storms. Now, here’s the good news. I know so far, I have sounded like Negative Nick. So, let me turn and be Positive Pete. Okay? Jesus does end on a very positive note. Jesus says, yes, get real. You will see storms. Get ready. You will suffer storms. But then Jesus says, get right. You can survive storms. Get right. You can survive storms.
Now, remember the difference between two houses. Remember the difference? The house that sank, what was the difference? It was built on a sandy foundation. The house that stood, it was built on a solid foundation. So, that raises the question. So, hey, Pastor, where’s this solid foundation? Where do I find that thing? That’s what I want to build my life on. Where is it? Jesus tells us. You ready? «Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew, beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock».
What made the difference? What made one foundation solid rock? And what made one foundation shifting sand? Okay, everybody get ready. And by the way, just for those in the audience that may need to hear this, I did not have anybody in mind when I prepared this sermon. So, if you get here today and I say some things that make you uncomfortable, that’s on you, not on me. Here was the difference. The difference was how both builders related to the Word of God. That’s the difference. That’s where we need to all now draw up and pay close attention.
Some of you are not going to like what I’m going to say. I understand that. When Jesus was talking about these words of mine, he was hearing these words of mine, he was talking about what he just taught, what he had just been preaching, what we had been talking about since last September. He said, here were two men. Both men had the Word. Both men heard the Word, but only one man heeded the Word. Both men looked at the Word, both men listened to the Word, but only one man lived the Word. So, a lot of people walk into churches every Sunday just like ours. They sing the same songs, they listen to the same sermons, they engage in the same fellowship, but they don’t put into practice what they hear. They don’t live what they just learned. They don’t heed what they just heard.
And James' brother warned about this when he said in James 1, do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves, do what it says. I want you to listen to me. What I’m about to say grieves me. I take no joy in it. I’m not pointing fingers. I’m not throwing rocks. What I’m about to say haunts me after four and a half decades of being a pastor. It haunts me. But how many times have you come in this church and you’ve heard me preach the truth about God and about giving? And you walk in this church and you don’t give a dime to this church and you walk out and you still don’t give a dime to this church even though you hear what God’s Word says. You hear it, you have it, but you don’t heed it. It doesn’t change a thing in your life. Or, you walk in here and I keep talking about who’s your one.
Who’s that one person you know that’s going to hell? Who’s that one person you know that needs Jesus? Who’s that one person you know that needs to be saved? It’s a neighbor. It’s a relative. It’s a friend. It’s that one person. And you know what Jesus said, if you follow me, I will make you fishers of men. And you say you’re a follower of Jesus, but you never go fish. You don’t have one person you’re praying for. You hear the Word. You have the Word. You don’t heed the Word. How many of you walk in here and you know what God’s Word says about sexual purity? And you know what God’s Word says about fornication? And you know what God’s Word says about adultery?
And you walk in here sleeping with somebody you’re not married to and you walk out and go sleep with that person you’re not married to, but then you try to tell people how much you love Jesus. Cut it out. Stop it. You’re building your life on shifting sands and you’ve got to hear it. And when you do that, you’re giving the finger to Jesus, and I don’t like it, and neither does He. And you walk out thinking, this is the sad thing. You think your house is built on solid rock, but it’s not. It’s not built on the solid rock of obeying the word of God. It’s built on the shifting sand of just hearing it.
When I was in college, there was a class I thought about auditing. And I really wanted to take the class, but I was taking so many hours, I couldn’t take it. So I thought, you know what, I’ll go audit the class. I had to go three days a week, an hour. That was three extra hours. I really didn’t have it. I wanted to do it. The Latin word for audit is listen. And so, you know, you may have noticed, I didn’t know this at first. I had to learn the hard way a little bit. So I go to this class, and I start auditing this class. Well, then I found out the good news and the bad news. Here’s the good news. When you audit a class, you don’t have to do the homework.
When you audit the class, you don’t have to turn in a paper. When you audit the class, you don’t have to take one note. You don’t have to turn in one thing. But then you know what I found out later? You don’t get any credit. You know what I did? I dropped out. I cut that thing out. Because auditing doesn’t do any good. And I’m just asking an honest question. How many of you come into this church on Sunday, you don’t come to hear the word of God, you just come to audit it. You’re not going to do the homework that I give you to do. You’re not going to write the paper you ought to write. You’re not going to read the book you ought to read. You’re not going to do what this book says.
You just audit it. You have no intent of changing your life. You have no intent of changing the way you live. You have no intent of changing the way you handle your finances. You’ve got no intent of changing your sex life. You’ve got no intent on changing the way you walk out of here and put your Bible on the shelf and let it gather dust till next Sunday morning. Again, I’m not trying to make anybody mad. And I’m not mad. I’m actually in a great mood. I feel great. God’s good. 48 years of marriage, more in love today than I’ve ever been. And she told me again today, I’m not going to leave you, so it’s all good. But I don’t want to be misunderstood here.
I’m not standing up here and telling you you’re saved by faith and works. Because that’s not what we believe, that’s not what we teach. You are not saved by faith and works. You are saved by faith that works. And so those of you who are sitting here right now and you claim, you tell me, oh, I’ve got faith in Jesus. Is it working? I could just say, how’s your blank life? Is it working? Are you on shifting sand or are you on solid rock? Now I’m going to say something right now you’ve never heard before. You may at first disagree with it, but I think if you’ll think about it, you’ll say, you know, I think you’re right. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I was working on this sermon, and I believe I’m right.
You are better off disbelieving in Jesus than you are disobeying Jesus. I’d rather you not even believe in Jesus than to say that you do and then go out and live like you don’t. You say, well, why? Because if you don’t believe in Jesus, there’s hope for you. Maybe I can get you to believe in Jesus. Maybe I can share with you the word of God. Maybe I can share the gospel. Maybe God will open your eyes. There’s hope for you. But if you’re one of those people that with hubris, oh, I believe in Jesus. I love Jesus. I do this. I do that. I don’t do this. I don’t do that. But you really don’t obey Him in those big areas of your life. Your house is built on solid rock, but I’ll never convince you that it is.
Peter Marshall was the former chaplain of the United States Senate, still a legend by those who knew him. He said these words, and I want you to listen to them very carefully. They’re just some of the… He said these words almost 70 years ago. They’re as fresh as if He said them this morning. Here’s what He said. «I wonder what would happen if we all agreed to read one of the Gospels until we came to a place that told us to do something, then went out to do it. And then only after we had done it, began reading again. There are aspects of the Gospel that are puzzling and difficult to understand. But our problems are not centered around the things we don’t understand, but rather the things that we do understand, the things that we could not possibly misunderstand.
This, after all, is but an illustration of the fact that our problem is not so much that we don’t know what we should do, we know perfectly well we don’t want to do it». We know deep down that a baby that is born in certain ways of man and a baby that’s born in certain ways of woman, we know that deep down. We know deep down that we should treat each other with kindness and dignity and civility. We know deep down no political party and no political candidate can solve our problems. We know that deep down. We know deep down you cannot turn away from God and get away with it. We know deep down. We know deep down God is not marked. And we know deep down that the motto on our tags that says, in God we trust, no we don’t.
And we certainly aren’t living like it. We know deep down that that unborn child is a life. We know that deep down. This country knows what to do, they just don’t want to do it. We’ve got people that come to church. You know what to do. You just don’t want to do it. I’ve told you this before and I’ll tell you this and I’m going to tell you the story and I’ll be done. I told you how I counsel people. I told you, you’ve heard this right? I’m not a good counselor. I’m not. I’m not a good… I’m ADDDDDDDDDD. I’m just… Listening is hard to me. I told you if you come to me depressed you’re going to leave suicidal. You don’t want to come to me. I do my counseling here.
But let me tell you how I counsel and it’s worked for 40 something years. 99% of the people that come in to see me, they already know what they need to do before they come in, I’m not Albert Einstein. They know what they need to do. And you know what’s real funny? They play a game. I know they know what they need to do. They know they know what they need to do. And they know that I know that they know what they need to do. They come anyway. Do you know what I say when people come in to me for counseling? You’ve heard this before. People come in and I’ll say, «What’s your problem»? And they’ll tell me. I say, «Okay. What do you think you ought to do about it»? And they’ll tell me. And I’ll say, «You know what? You’re right. Let’s pray. Next». It’s not hard. «Well what’s your problem»? «Man I beat my wife». «What do you think you ought to do about it»? «Stop». «I agree».
It’s not hard. It’s not rocket science. We know what to do. We know we shouldn’t sleep with that woman we’re not married to. We know that. We know we should not use foul language. We know we should not look at pornography. We know we ought to be in church. We know we ought to be engaged. We know we ought to be in the Word of God. We know we ought to pray. We know we ought to share Jesus. We know we ought to give our tithes and offerings. We just don’t want to do it. And Jesus said that’s okay. I’ll give you the freedom and the right not to do it. Just understand. Don’t fool yourself. You’re building your life on shifting sand.
So I’ll tell you this story and we’ll be done. September the 21st. True story. 1938. Terrible hurricane struck the East Coast of the United States. It struck New York City. It really hit New York City. Let me tell you how powerful this storm was. It was so powerful, its impact registered on a seismograph in Sitka, Alaska. The spray of the rain was so strong it went northward at 100 miles an hour and whitened windows in Montpelier, Vermont. From New York City. Well, as this torrential 40 foot wave approached Long Island, many people jumped into their cars. They raced inland. But a lot of people lost their lives because they couldn’t outrun the storm. True story. Listen to this. But there was one man on Long Island. Two weeks before that he heard about this new contraption that had been invented called a barometer. And it said it could predict the weather.
So this man ordered this barometer. Well on that very morning, September the 21st, guess what came in the mail? The barometer. He opened it up. It was working. But the needle was pointed below 29 and he looked at the dial and it said, hurricanes and tornadoes coming. You know what that guy did? He shook it. He banged it against the wall. He thought to himself, just my luck. I buy the one barometer, it doesn’t work. Gets in his car, takes it down to the post office to mail it back, asking for a refund. And by the time he got back home, his home had blown down. What was the problem? The barometer was right. He just didn’t believe it. And he just didn’t live it.
Ladies and gentlemen, this book is God’s barometer. There’s a storm coming. We’re in a storm. We better check the barometer. We better find out just what it is. And what you better do with this Bible is not leave it on your shelf. You better not put it in a drawer. I tell you what you better do. You better open it. You better read it. You better believe it. But you better obey it. Because that’s the only way you will build a life that will last.
Would you pray with me? With heads bowed and eyes closed. There are some of you in this room. You know who you are. Say whatever you want to say. Talk whatever you want to talk. Your house is built on shifting sands. You know it. I know it. God knows it. And when that storm finally comes, your house is going to collapse like a house of cards. It breaks my heart. It crushes me to think about the people I preached to my entire ministry who thought they were going to heaven, but they didn’t get there. But I heard your preaching. But I believe what you said. I thought it was all true. But you didn’t live like it. Jesus said, He hears these words and practices them. They are the ones whose house is built on the rock.
And there are some of you in this room right now. There are some of you listening to me right now online and on television. Your house is built on shifting sands. You know it. Your life is built on shifting sands. Why don’t today you say, you know what, enough of this. I’m going to build my house where it belongs. Because it doesn’t matter how much your house costs. It doesn’t matter what kind of house you live in. It doesn’t matter how many square feet. It doesn’t matter how expensive it was. It won’t matter if it was built in a swamp. There are some of you in this room right now. Some of you listening right now. You need to pray this with me right now. You need to give your life to Christ. You need to say, Lord Jesus, I realize now my life’s been built in the wrong place.
So Lord Jesus, I want to ask you to come into my heart today. I want to ask you to truly save me. I am repenting of my sins. I’m turning away from my old way of life. I trust you as my Savior. I receive you as my Lord. I give everything that I am to everything that you are. Thank you for hearing my prayer. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for forgiving me today.