Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do what I tell you?

Today we come to one of the most, what I believe, convicting passages of Scripture for professing believers.  It is found here, and in Matthew 7:24-27 at the end of the sermon on the mount.  Except here in Luke, it begins with the question:

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?”  In other words, why do you confess Jesus as Lord of your life, come to church, hear his Word, but live as if you rule your own life?  Live as if your work, or your money, or your tradition, or your image is master?  Why even call me Lord, then?  If I am really the owner of your life, and if you really belong to me body and soul, both in life and death, then what difference does it really make in your life?

The previous passage is the key here; a good tree will bear good fruit, and a bad tree will bear bad fruit.  Your real everyday life and the way you live, and interact with those outside the church and inside the church, are the things that make your faith real or not.  

Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do what I tell you?

1. The differences between the two
2. The similarities between the two
3. The end of the two

 

The differences between the two

So, let’s look at the difference here between the two different kinds of Christians.  The first Jesus says is, “Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them.”  And the second in verse 49, “But the one who hears does not do them”.   They both hear the Word.   This is just where it starts.  Without the hearing of the Word there is no obedience.  You must hear the call of the gospel.  Paul says in Romans 1:5, “through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.”  And Paul then very clearly says in the same letter, this faith comes by the preaching of the Word (Romans 10:17). 

The fact that you hear the Word is massively important.  Praise God that you have the privilege to sit under the preaching of the Word of Christ!  Every true follower of Jesus is thirsty for the living waters of the Word, for the Bread of life.  Without it they starve, shrivel up, and dry out as a deer pants in the desert.

But hearing is not enough.  In fact, there are many who hear, but have never really drank it, never really eaten it, it has just kind of washed over them, without really affecting life too much.  Sure, they say the right words, they say Lord, Lord.  But they do not live as if God in the flesh has come to lay down his life for them and has taken it up. They do not live as if they have been resurrected from the dead, and given a new life.

That is the difference between a disciple and a fan.  Both hear, and sit under the preaching – hearing the voice of the Shepherd, but only one comes and is changed.  The one big massive glaring difference.  They live different lives.  They act differently.

So the first big difference is:  One hears the Word and acts on it; the sermon might be great, but if it does not lead to change it means nothing.  We as elders rejoice when the Word of God through the preaching  truly affects your heart, and changes you so that you are truly different when you walk out.

Because the more you hear the preaching the gospel of Christ the more your life will be changed, the more you will seek your identity in Him.  And you will become less and less anxious about what people think about you, what they say about you.  Those who truly hear are transformed.  They will want to please their master as Lord in EVERYTHING!  Your life, also from Monday through Saturday, belongs to Him.  In the living room, office, bedroom, and classroom.

And the deeper you dive into the truths of Gods Word the more you will be grounded.  This takes effort and work.  You can’t live on automatic.  Just go as you have always done. 

Because notice the other big difference, the one who hears and does the word is like a man “building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.”  The other man just “built his house on the ground without a foundation.” So how are you building today?  Are you digging deep to lay the foundation or is your life on shallow ground?  Are you building a foundation on solid rock?  As the song goes, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is shifting sand.”  Is Christ the sure and steady anchor of your life, or does your life feel more like a ship at sea without engine or rudder, at the mercy of the waves and wind, and you are just hoping for the best, that somehow and someway you will land in safe harbor?

Dear brother and sister, don’t wait any longer.  Start digging – deeper into Chist.  He is enough.  The more you grow in love for your wife, the more you want to serve.  The more you serve her, the more you love her.  The more you grow to love a sport, the more you work at it, and the more you work at it, the more you love.  It is a beautiful cycle.

It is only by going deeper that you will really grow and flourish.  That you will feel more and more of the peace of Christ, the overwhelming grace of forgiveness.  As you sit under the preaching your faith and love will increase for God and for each other, and the storms and struggles of life will not overcome you.  As Paul says, “We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.”

 

The similarities between the two

So we have already seen one similarity: they both hear the Word.  But there are more similarities.  And this is what happens to them in life.  Suffering, heartache, betrayal, and loss happen to both.

This is the one great similarity between the two.  And if this passage speaks to anyone today it is especially to those that think because you are part of this church, everything should go well, and life should be a breeze.  This version of Christianity teaches if you believe then good things will happen you, more than to others.  God wants to bless you, and by bless they don’t mean having more and more intimate relationship with God, having God, but having stuff, and having happiness.

It is a movement in Christianity that grew out of “New Thought”, a late-19th-century ripening of ideas about the power of the mind: Positive thoughts yielded positive circumstances, and negative thoughts negative circumstances.  The pastor that popularized it around the turn of the 10th century said, Christians must avoid words and ideas that create sickness and poverty; instead, they should repeat: “God is in me.  God’s ability is mine.  God’s strength is mine.  God’s health is mine.  His success is mine.  I am a winner. I am a conqueror.”  Or, as prosperity believers summarize it, “I am blessed.”

Blessed has been highjacked to mean that God is blessing me when I am wealthy, healthy, and happy.  But I am not blessed when this is not the case.

It is the humble brag of the stars.  #Blessed is the caption suitable for viral images of Alpine vacations and family yachting, or downhill skiing.  #Blessed is what American idol stars have tattooed on their chest.  It says: “I totally get it.  I am down-to-earth enough to know that this is crazy.”  But it also says: “God gave this to me.  Mostly because I am that kind of person that God gives things to.  Don’t blame me, I’m blessed.”

Bowling, a posterity gospel historian, wrote after she got cancer,

"The [prosperity] movement has perfected a rarefied form of [our] addiction to self-rule, which denies much of our humanity: our fragile bodies, our finitude, our need to stare down our deaths (at least once in a while) and be filled with dread and wonder.  At some point, we must say to ourselves, “I’m going to need to let go.”

She goes on and says: CANCER has kicked down the walls of my life.  I cannot be certain I will walk my son to his elementary school someday or subject his love interests to cheerful scrutiny.  I struggle to buy books for academic projects I fear I can’t finish for a perfect job I may be unable to keep.  I have surrendered my favorite manifestoes about having it all, managing work-life balance and maximizing my potential….  Cancer requires that I stumble around in the debris of dreams I thought I was entitled to and plans I didn’t realize I had made.

But cancer has also ushered in new ways of being alive….  Everything feels as if it is painted in bright colors.  In my vulnerability, I am seeing my world without the Instagrammed filter of breezy certainties and perfectible moments.  I can’t help noticing the brittleness of the walls that keep most people fed, sheltered and whole.  I find myself returning to the same thoughts again and again: Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.

Yet it is not only poverty and loss that can be  a storm, but wealth, and prosperity has caused just as many to abandon the faith.  The storms are those things which come at our house to test on what it is built.

Jesus is clear for both the believer and the unbeliever, “The flood rose and the stream broke against that house” (v. 48), and, “when the stream broke against it” (v. 49).  Suffering and hardship will come to us all.

The end of the two

The flood rises and the stream breaks.  It will either smash our life to pieces, or cast us back on the rock.  We read about the one who built his house on the shallow ground, “when the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”  Immediately it falls.  It crumbles like a house of cards, like a sandcastle on the edge of the ocean.  One breaker crashes over it and it is gone.  

What is your refuge and strength?  Who is it?  Upon what are you staking your life?  There is the ground of materialism.  Stuff.   Money.  We only feel secure when there is enough money in the bank.  Or in our health.  We feel happy, secure, and build our identity on how we look and feel.  Maybe the ground that we are building on is our productivity – we feel like we contribute to society.  We are what we do.  The ground that we build is if people like us.  We build our live on the concept of being totally free.  Only doing what I want.

Dear church, one financial storm can take your security in finances away.  Storm of age and sickness will slowly take your health away.  The storm sickness and tragedy can take you from productive to unproductive in a moment.  People are fickle, and it only takes a week to take you from being crowned a king to being crucified on a cross.  Just ask Jesus.  The storm of death and Gods judgement will leave you stripped of anything on this earth. If this is the ground you’re building on the storms will destroy your life.

But we read about the man who built his house upon the rock, “when the flood rose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it has been well built.”  The Lord is our refuge and tower and ever present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1)!  Be still and know that He is God!  Dear church, are you digging deep in the words of this text, or selling all you have for the pearl of great prices, or denying yourself, taking up your cross and following Jesus?  What is your only comfort in life and death?  If it is Christ, then the storms will not only not have lasting damage on your life, but will help grow and show the strength of the house.

Suffering, and the trials of life are the furnace in which our faith is tried and tested, and shines forth.  In the words of the apostle Peter, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

As Spurgeon says, “I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.”  Or in the words of the apostle Paul, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

It is one thing to say “Lord, Lord!”; it is another thing to actually build your house on the Rock.

The love and approval of God in Christ is something that one can stake a life upon, and be assured no storm will wash that house away.  
For the life is hidden with Christ in God.

Amen.