Biblical Landmarks

Who is the wise man?

As a young boy in a small Baptist church in rural Australia, I was taught to sing:

The wise man built his house upon the rock,
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
And the rains came tumbling down.

The rains came down and the floods came up,
The rains came down and the floods came up,
The rains came down and the floods came up,
And the house on the rock stood firm.

We would love to do the actions illustrating the wise man, the rains coming down, and the floods coming up.

Then we would sing the second verse about the foolish man who built on the sand and when the rains came down and the floods came up, “the house on the sand went crash.” And with great enthusiasm we would clap our hands as loud as we could to imitate the crashing sound of the collapsing house.

No one ever really explained what this song really meant — until I was introduced to the third verse some years later: “So build your life on the Lord Jesus Christ, (repeat, repeat), And the blessings will come down.” The blessings, I learned to sing, would come down as the prayers went up.

Now that’s a nice sentiment, but it really is not quite what the original passage to this song is talking about.

It was not until many years later that I understood what I sang about as a child. For if you look at the context of Matt. 7 where this story is told by Jesus, it is very clear to see that the man who built on the rock was the person who obeyed and kept the law of God. The foolish man, on the other hand, was the person who disobeyed (i.e. built on the sand) and his house — that is, his life — was a failure because it had the wrong foundation.

This story is told by Jesus to illustrate an earlier point: that even if people claimed to have prophesied in his name, performed miracles in his name, and done many wonders in his name, this was not enough. He would tell them, “depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness,” that is, disobedience to the law (Matt. 7:23; cf. I John 3:4). Notice Jesus did not dispute their claims; presumably they did these things. But something was missing, the most important thing, even more important than prophesying, miracles and signs and wonders: obedience to the Law of God.

It doesn’t matter where you turn in the Bible, there is a consistent theme that you have to be blind not to see. It is the theme of right living — righteousness. That is what God requires. It is because of the failure of right living that Jesus came to live on earth, died and rose again. It is because of the failure of right living that we never quite enter into His rest (Heb. 3:18,19), and so we struggle through life making excuses about that which really worries us most: the necessity to keep the law of God. Every jot and tittle of it.

Maybe the truth is this: we don’t really like this requirement. It restricts us. It binds us. It takes away our autonomy. And this is our great confrontation with God (Gen. 3:5). We want to be “free” to determine for ourselves what is right or wrong.

For some reason, the main theme of the Bible remains unnoticed in a large number of Christian circles today. Is this the ultimate conspiracy?

God bless you this week.