Matthew 7:24-27

| Matt 7 |

Build Your House on the Rock

24 z “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 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. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 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.”

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Matt. 5:1–7:29 The Authoritative Message of the Messiah: Kingdom Life for His Disciples. This is the first of five major discourses in Matthew (chs. 5–7; 10; 13; 18–20; 24–25). Speaking to his disciples (5:1), Jesus expounds the reality of discipleship lived in the presence and power of the kingdom of God but within the everyday world. Some interpreters have thought the purpose of this sermon was to describe a moral standard so impossibly high that it is relevant only for a future millennial kingdom. Others have thought its primary purpose was to portray the absoluteness of God's moral perfection and thereby to drive people to despair of their own righteousness, so they will trust in the imputed righteousness of Christ. Both views fail to recognize that these teachings, rightly understood, form a challenging but practical ethic that Jesus expects his followers to live by in this present age. The sermon, commonly called the “Sermon on the Mount,” is probably a summary of a longer message, but the structure is a unified whole. It has similarities to the “Sermon on the Plain” in Luke 6:17–49, but there are also significant differences. The three main theories about their relationship are: (1) they record the same sermon but Matthew and Luke give summaries that report different sections and emphases; (2) they record two different sermons, given on different occasions but repeating much of the same content, as itinerant preachers often do; and (3) either Matthew or Luke, or both, have collected sayings that Jesus gave on different occasions and put them together in a sermon format. View (3) seems to make Matthew's presentation of this as a single historical event untruthful (cf. Matt. 5:1–2 with 7:28–29; 8:1; and Luke 6:17, 20 with Luke 7:1), and evangelical commentators have not generally adopted it. Views (1) and (2) are both possible, and it is difficult to decide between them.

Matt. 7:13–29 Warning! With Jesus or Against Him? Jesus concludes the Sermon on the Mount by giving the disciples, the crowd, and the religious leaders four basic warnings: they must choose between two gates and roads (vv. 13–14), two kinds of prophets (vv. 15–20), two kinds of disciples (vv. 21–23), and two foundations (vv. 24–27). They are either with Jesus or against him.

Matt. 7:24–27 hears these words of mine and does them. A parable brings the Sermon on the Mount to a close as Jesus calls for his audience to decide between himself and the religious establishment, drawing a dividing line between himself and any other foundation for life. The evidence of whether one is truly a believer is in whether one does the words of Jesus (cf. James 1:22–23 and 2:20–22 and notes on these verses). wise man. Disciples who build their lives on the bedrock of Jesus and his message of the kingdom of heaven are truly wise, regardless of the shifting cultural or religious fashions.

Matt. 7:25 the rain fell, and the floods came. During the hot summer months, the sand around the Sea of Galilee was hard on the surface. But a wise builder knew that he needed to dig several feet below the surface to the bedrock in order to establish the foundation for his house.

Matt. 7:26–27 on the sand. The religious establishment had embraced a mere surface righteousness built on an unstable foundation of religious pretense.