Mat 7:24-27 "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it." ESV
Do you know what Jesus said while He was here? It's important to know what He said because He knows things that you and I do not know. He knows what is really important.
Even more important than knowing what Jesus said is doing what He told us to do. There are disastrous consequences for not hearing and doing what Jesus has said. He likened it to building a house on sand.
My grandfather owned a few houses in his lifetime. He even had a house on Cape Cod. But he knew not to buy a house near the ocean because on Cape Cod all the land near the ocean is sand. He'd seen too many houses near the water which after winter storms were severely damaged or gone altogether.
Sand isn't solid or steady. Torrential rains and wind can wash it away along with anything built on it.
So it is with what we build our lives on. Jesus is the one who made everything that is made and knows the purpose of everything. He knows how we are supposed to live and how we are to relate to Him and to one another. We might think somebody else knows better because he or she sounds so smart. Or we might think that we ourselves are smarter than Jesus, so we'll just go and do whatever we think is best.
But just as a hurricanes come and wreck havoc on buildings and property, so there will come storms that can do eternal devastation to ourselves if we don't heed what the Son of God says.
Do you know what Jesus has said? You can find what He said in the Bible. Read it. But don't just be content to just learn what He has said because that is not enough. We need to both hear and then do what He has said.
When we believe who Jesus is, and seek to obey what He says for us to do, and yet fail at it, we can still obey His command to repent. The more we honestly seek to obey Him, and yet not ever perfectly succeed, the more we can and should repent. That, too, is hearing and doing what Jesus has told us.
Get prepared for the various kinds of storms that will come. Know that the only way to prepare for some of those storms is by hearing and doing what Jesus says,
