0
Matt. 7:21-27
The passage I just read is found at the very end of what we call the Sermon on the Mount, which is the longest recorded discourse of the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the greatest and most important sermon of all time. You remember that this great sermon begins with what we call the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit…blessed are they that mourn…blessed are the meek…blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness,” and so on. Then He goes on to talk about other matters, such as adultery and divorce, making oaths, loving our neighbors, prayer and fasting, earthly riches, worry, hypocrisy, and so on and so on.
As our Lord comes to the end of this wonderful sermon, He begins to issue various warnings. Have you ever noticed how much of the New Testament is occupied with warnings? Why is that? It’s because living on this earth is such a serious matter. Our lives are so short, compared to the eternity to which we are all destined. What we do here, the choices we make, are going to have consequences that reach out far into the ages upon ages ahead. At the same time, there are so many things down here competing for our attention. Even as Christians, it is so easy to get distracted, to get our eyes off eternal matters and to only think of the here and now. And so the New Testament is full of warnings, proddings, wake-up calls. And this little illustration at the end of this great sermon is one of those warnings.
What is our Lord warning about in this little story of the two builders? Well, we’ll have to look at the context for a moment. He has just been talking about false prophets—wolves in sheep’s clothing. “Beware of them,” He says. There will be people, religious people, ministers, pastors, preachers, who will appear to be sheep because of their outward deportment, but inwardly they are wolves. “Don’t be deceived,” our Lord is saying. “Don’t trust them; don’t follow them. Beware of them.”