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26 But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: 27 and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall. 28 And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, 29 for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. ~ Matthew 7:26-29
Today, we conclude our study of the Sermon on the Mount. For three chapters the Lord Jesus has provided a contrast between His teaching and that of the religious Jewish leaders. We are reminded in today's passage the ultimate idea is that if we hear Christ's words and do them, we can expect to continue our eternity in the kingdom of heaven. The key is that we hear before we do. Hearing is so important in the kingdom of God. This type of hearing is done not with just our ears but also with our hearts.
In v.26-27 of today's passage we read, "26 But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: 27 and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall."
When we hear the words of the Lord Jesus and we do not follow up by doing them, we prove we really didn't hear in the first place. In this case we are deemed by the Lord Jesus to be foolish. According to Psalm 14:1 the fool is the one who concludes in his heart there is no God. Each time we hear the words of the Lord Jesus and ignore them, we undermine the strengthening of our faith in Him. Again, all of this magnifies the heart of the problem and that is the lack of heart involvement in this process. The Lord Jesus came to this earth to be our Savior. He didn't come just to settle our eternity, He also came to grant us His wisdom. This is why the Lord Jesus warned us about the foundation of our lives. He warned that when we build on sand, we must expect destruction.
In James 1:23-24 we read, "For if anyone is a hearer of the
word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently
at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself
and goes away and at once forgets what he was like."
James, one of the four half brothers of the Lord Jesus, reminds us that when we hear God's Word and do not obey Him, it reveals we have been deceived. Lacking the wisdom of God and being deceived are synonymous. According to the Scriptures, the believer in Christ has been born again through the Word of truth which gave us new life. God not only used His Word to wake us up spiritually, He used it to grant to us His wisdom. It is through His Word that we understand to a greater degree our identity in Christ. When we hear the words of the Lord Jesus without obeying Him, we demonstrate that we have forgotten our identity.
The teaching of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 7:25 and in Matthew 7:26 end differently from each other. The first ends with: "but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock." The second ended with: "and it fell. And great was its fall." Those who hear the words of the Lord Jesus and resist application of His words set themselves up for a great fall. For those who are defined by the Lord Jesus, they will not fall. In the end, our response to the Lord has everything to do with our hearts, not just our obedience because we can obey Him and yet our hearts will have not been given to Him.
In v.28-29 of today's passage we read, "28 And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, 29 for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."
The Lord Jesus taught with authority because He is God. This means His teaching brought about transformational change in the lives of His hearers. His teaching was rooted in God’s Word. According to Mark 1:22, "He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." When the scribes taught in the synagogue, they just quoted one expert after another, one opinion after another, one tradition after another. While the Jewish religious leaders taught the letter of the law, the Lord Jesus taught in the Spirit of the law. The Lord Jesus was filled with and led by the Holy Spirit and the religious leaders were not. This is why their teaching had no life to it.
When the Lord Jesus burst on the scene there hadn’t been a prophet in Israel for 500 years. Due to this, the religious leaders had become the spokesmen for God to the people. Their duty was to memorize God's Word and also to memorize what the rabbis had written about it. Their job was to pass that knowledge onto the common people. Sadly, they spent far more time studying the commentaries than they did on the Scripture itself! When the Lord Jesus taught, those who heard Him were "astonished" or "knocked out of their minds" by what they heard. They were shocked. They were dazed. They knew that the Lord Jesus was just a carpenter’s son and yet He taught with such authority. He taught with such authority because He taught the Word of God which is alive and has the ability to bring life to the willing heart.
