More than one, but less than a dozen, people have asked me to do something different with my blog. Or start a new one. But maintaining two seems like an awful lot of work. So for the simple acedia of it all, I will just mix it up. Make a salad of posts, as it were.
And as an inauguration of this split-purpose writing exercise, I offer this:
If you read the book of Matthew from the beginning, you read early on (4:23) that Jesus went teaching and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. I wondered what it would be like to hear one of those sermons....yeah, I'm that dull. Because, clearly, the sermon on the mount is that same sermon He taught and proclaimed everywhere. And it is such a light-endowing, amplification of God's heart toward His people message. Quite deeper and harder than what the old testament prophets would have said.
And Jesus wraps it up with a perfectly stunning application. 'If you hear these words and do them, you are like the man who built his house on the rock and no amount of rivers or flooding can knock you down.'
Building your 'house' on the sand of ignoring God's ways, or of making yourself king is easy house building. Choose your house design, move a little sand out of the way and 'presto' the house is built. And just like you wanted it made.
Building your 'house' on the rock, is difficult house building. You have to adapt yourself to the rock. You have to let the shape of the rock affect your shape. It is a lifetime of having God's word and ways change you. But the secure and sure foundation, which is Christ Himself!, keeps you from crumbling in the inevitable floods and storms. God knows that our sturdiest position is allowing ourselves to be conformed to Himself. And He also knows well what a weak foundation our own desires and changing wants are.
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