05 How to Build Your Life on a Rock, not Sand

Today's passage is one of the "See For Yourself" passages Chapter 5 of Start Strong: A New Believer’s Guide to Christianity. 

Jesus closes the Sermon on the Mount with a warning that is both sobering and hopeful: it’s possible to talk like a disciple while walking the wrong road. In Matthew 7:12–29, we learn how a God-centered worldview reshapes what “love” looks like in practice—and how the Golden Rule, true spiritual fruit, and the foundation we build on reveal whether we’re actually headed toward life.

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• How the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12) summarizes “love your neighbor as yourself” as a call to seek another person’s good—not simply to be “nice”
• Why Jesus frames the choice before us as two roads: the wide way to destruction and the narrow way to life (Matthew 7:13–14)
• What it means to “recognize them by their fruits,” and how discernment protects God’s people from false teachers (Matthew 7:15–20)
• Why calling Jesus “Lord” and even doing impressive religious works isn’t the same as doing the Father’s will (Matthew 7:21–23)
• How the images of rock and sand press the question: are we hearing Jesus’ words and living as if they’re true? (Matthew 7:24–27)
• How humility, mercy, repentance, and a longing for God’s kingdom mark the path Jesus describes throughout the sermon

After listening, you’ll come away with clearer “markers on the road” for examining your faith—not through fear or performance, but through the settled direction of a life built on Jesus’ teaching. You’ll be invited to center your worldview on God, practice love with wisdom and integrity, and choose the narrow path that leads to life. 

Series: Start Strong: A New Believer’s Podcast

Start Strong: A New Believer’s Guide to Christianity is available now wherever books are sold.

Transcript

Setting The Stakes: Matthew 7

Krisan Marotta 0:01

Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the fifth episode in the companion series to my book Start Strong, A New Believer's Guide to Christianity. Today we're going to study Matthew chapter 7, verses 12 through 29. This is one of the See for Yourself passages from chapter 5. How can you tell if you're actually on the narrow road that leads to life and not just saying Lord, Lord, without Jesus knowing who you are? In this episode, we'll learn how the Golden Rule, tree fruit, and a God-centered worldview become clear markers of the path to life. You don't need to have a copy of the book to listen to the podcast, but if you do have the book, read chapter 5 before continuing. If you're listening or reading with a friend, a group, or a book club, you might want to download the free discussion questions for every chapter. There is also a companion workbook to help you apply what you're learning, and you can find all these resources, the book and the workbook, at startstrongbook.org. Thanks so much for listening today. Everyone has a worldview, even if you've never used the word. Our worldview is the lens we use to answer life's biggest questions, like who am I, why am I here? What's the right thing to do? What's real? You can think of your worldview as a pair of glasses. It's not something we think about, it's something we think with. Just as we view the world through the glasses we wear, we view the world through our worldview. Now in chapter 5 of Start Strong, we explored what it means to see the world through a Christian lens or worldview where God is at the center and not us. That changes everything. It reshapes how we see ourselves, how we relate to others, and how we live. Well, today we're returning to the book of Matthew, looking at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. If you study this sermon in detail, you discover there are two great themes woven throughout it. And I like to summarize those themes with two verses from the Old Testament. Theme one comes from Leviticus 19, 18, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And theme two comes from Proverbs 1625. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. Now these two great commandments, to love God and to love our neighbors, flow from the worldview Jesus describes. Prior to this sermon, Matthew has only told us two things about what Jesus was teaching in his early ministry. In 417, Matthew summarized the teaching of Jesus as repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then in 423, he told us Jesus was proclaiming the gospel or the good news of the kingdom. So Jesus has been teaching that God has promised to send his Messiah, his anointed one, to establish God's rule over all the earth. And this is the kingdom of God. The Messiah will defeat sin and rebellion and rule over God's people in peace and righteousness forever. And Jesus is proclaiming this good news. The day of the Messiah's coming kingdom is upon us. However, if you want to find a place in that kingdom, you need to repent. And Jesus, the King of the kingdom, is here to tell you what you need to do to get in. And what you need to do is repent. Now, remember, Jesus preached this sermon to first century Jews. Their religious understanding of the time was largely shaped by a group called the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the primary teachers in the synagogues at the time, and they specialized in the Old Testament law. And he is calling even them to repent. So you might imagine how his audience would respond. They'd say, Wait, Jesus, we're the Jews. We're the chosen people of God. We're the descendants of Abraham. We've been taught by these great students of Scripture, the Pharisees. What do you mean we need to repent? We're ready for the kingdom right now. What do we have to repent for? And Jesus answers that question in this sermon. He describes the people who will be forgiven on judgment day and receive eternal life in his kingdom, which, if you stop to think about it, makes this sermon probably the most important sermon ever preached. So in this sermon, Jesus is answering the question, who will be forgiven on judgment day and receive eternal life in his kingdom? The entire sermon has been on this topic. Who is it that will be accepted by God? And now I'm going to read you the conclusion. This is how he wraps that sermon up, and we're going to start with Matthew 7, 12. So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. Okay, that's a very famous verse. It's also known as the Golden Rule. Throughout history, this verse has been the subject of much debate and discussion among both philosophers and theologians. Now I'm not going to get into all that debate and discussion. Instead, I want to focus on how this verse fits as a conclusion for the Sermon on the Mount. As I explain in my book, to love your neighbor is to act for your neighbor's benefit. What kind of feelings you have for your neighbor is irrelevant. It's how you act toward them, how you treat them that counts. To love your neighbor as yourself is to put yourself in your neighbor's place, figure out how you would want to be treated if the tables were turned, and then do that. Now Jesus adds this phrase, for this is the law and the prophets. Well, what does he mean by that? Essentially, he's referring to the Old Testament. Later in Matthew, in chapter 22, he defines the two great commandments. This is Matthew 22, verses 34 through 40. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. So the golden rule is just another way of stating the second great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself. And when Jesus says this is the law and the prophets, he's telling us this is of fundamental importance. This is so important that all of the Old Testament law and all of the prophets are built on this premise. Of all the things that God has told us, this is one of the two most fundamentally important concepts. Love God alone and love your neighbor as yourself. Worship God and worship God alone. Don't have any other gods alongside Him, Him alone, and love your neighbor as yourself. Put yourself in the other person's place and then treat that person as you would want to be treated. This fundamental truth is behind much of what is found in the law and the prophets. The law forbids murder, theft, vengeance, taking advantage of the poor, and those kinds of things. And all of those things are wrong because at a fundamental level, they represent a refusal to love our neighbors as ourselves. They represent a refusal to treat someone kindly or to act toward them as you would want them to act toward you. And this is the fundamental shift in the Christian worldview. We stop seeing ourselves as the most important being in the universe and the center of all creation. And we recognize that God is at the center of all creation. He is the one to be worshipped. And we human beings stand up before Him as equals. We are no more or no less important than anyone else. Jesus starts this little section, this concluding section, with therefore, or your translation might have so. He's referring back beyond the immediate previous section to the entire sermon. Based on everything he said in the sermon, therefore do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is the fundamental moral truth that we must embrace as believers. And this moral truth lies behind much of what we find in the sermon. The fundamental truth of the universe is this there is a God and you are not Him. You are no more or less important than your neighbor. God made both of you in his image. When you submit yourself to God, one of the truths you embrace is that your neighbor's welfare is just as important as your own. One of my mentors called this the principle of the mirror. When you look at your neighbor, it's like you're looking at a mirror. In some very significant way, you are seeing yourself. Now, obviously, there are differences, you're different people, but in a fundamental way, you are seeing someone who is just like you as if you were looking in a mirror. Why can't I congratulate myself as being a morally good person if I haven't murdered anyone, but I've merely hated them? Well, hatred is inconsistent with loving your neighbor as yourself. Why can't I appeal to an eye for an eye as a guide to how I get to treat people? Because taking vengeance is inconsistent with loving your neighbor as yourself and recognizing that vengeance belongs to God. Why can't I love my tribe and hate my enemies? Because hating your enemies is inconsistent with loving your neighbor as yourself. Why is it so important that we are merciful and forgiving people? Well, when we look at our neighbors, we're looking at a mirror in the sense that we're seeing another sinner just like ourselves. If we admit that we ourselves need mercy, then we understand that to condemn our neighbor also condemns us because we're in the same situation. So why don't we judge and condemn others? Because when we look into the face of someone who has sinned against us, we are looking in a mirror. We are seeing a sinner just like us. There is no standard that condemns another person that does not also condemn us. Now, all of those statements come from the Sermon on the Mount. This principle of loving our neighbors is one of the themes that runs throughout the sermon. But let me clarify two things about the Golden Rule. First, the Golden Rule is sometimes taught as a way to have good relationships with other people and an ordered society. Treat other people well and then other people will treat you well. And it's taught as a way of producing good relationships and a great society. Now, it's true, sometimes practicing the golden rule does produce good relationships, but it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you act kindly toward other people and they turn around and mock you in response. And this is not what Jesus is teaching. He's not saying be nice to others so others will be nice to you. If anything, he's saying be nice to others regardless of how they treat you in response. He's entirely focused on our own motivations. Our job is to love our neighbors as ourselves. How our neighbors respond is not the issue. They may respond well and they may not, but our responsibility is the same, and that is to act for their benefit. A big part of what it means to be a sinner is that I'm thinking about me more than I'm thinking about you. As a sinner, I naturally act in a way that benefits me the most. Economics is based on that principle, and we all know this is true. We act in our best interest, often with a selfish and sinful disregard for the needs of others. And Jesus is telling us to put ourselves in the other person's place. How would we evaluate our behavior if we were on the receiving end of it instead of the giving end? The golden rule is fundamental to living a godly life. It's one of the things that flows from the Christian worldview. Once we see God is the sinner and we are equals before Him, the Golden Rule becomes the natural way we ought to live. Now, of course, left to ourselves, none of us live this way. We need the Spirit of God to change us and make us the kind of people who first want to live this way and then increasingly can live that way. But this is a topic that we will get into in later episodes. For now, the second thing I want to say about the Golden Rule is that it's not meant to stand by itself all alone. It is a fundamental principle, but it does not tell us everything we need to know to live a wise and godly life. How do I decide what's in my neighbor's best interest? Well, that can get really complicated. Sometimes I can't even figure out what's in my own best interest, let alone someone else's. Figuring out how to act in any given situation takes wisdom. It takes the kind of wisdom Jesus spells out in the sermon. This whole sermon gives us a picture of what people look like who are trying to live by the golden rule. The golden rule itself does not give us any specific guidelines for specific situations. Instead, it's like a compass. It gives us a fundamental direction from which to approach any situation. The goal is over there in that direction. I may not know how far the destination is, but I can tell if I'm headed in the right direction. Like a compass, the golden rule always gives us a way to evaluate if we're on the right path or going the right direction, but it doesn't usually give us the specifics of how to respond in any given situation. So the golden rule summarizes the first main theme of this sermon: love your neighbor as yourself. And as I've argued, that is a fundamental shift in worldview once you become a believer. We recognize that God is at the center of the universe and we are to love him with all our hearts, and then we recognize that we are equals before him, and therefore we should love our neighbors as ourselves. The rest of the verses we're going to look at wrap up the second major theme of this sermon. I called the golden rule the principle of the mirror. I would call the second theme the two roads. Or, as it is expressed in Proverbs 16, 25, there is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way to death. Now remember, Jesus is speaking to a historical situation where the Pharisees are the teachers of Israel. The Pharisees would have agreed in principle with what Jesus is saying. There are two roads in front of us. One leads to life in the kingdom of God, and the other leads to destruction. The Pharisees called the people of Israel to obey the Old Testament law. They studied and preached the law. That's why it's kind of shocking that the Sermon on the Mount spends so much time saying, don't be like the Pharisees. Today we're used to thinking of them as the bad guys, but the Pharisees were the religious role models of the day. They were the good guys to the Jews of Jesus' day. Yet throughout this sermon, Jesus describes those who are on the right road, those who will inherit a place in the kingdom of God. And, contrary to popular belief, those people are not the Pharisees. The Pharisees are on the wrong road. God's people are poor in spirit, merciful, forgiving, and repentant, but the Pharisees were often self-righteous and judgmental. God's people seek treasures in heaven and life in the kingdom of God, but the Pharisees sought the treasures of this life, including the praise and approval of their peers. From beginning to end, Jesus has laid out two distinct paths. Blessed are the poor in spirit, but woe to those who are rich in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn over their sins, but woe to those who laugh over them. And we talked about that in the podcast on the Beatitudes. In this sermon, Jesus has been urging his listeners to take the path that leads to life and not be fooled by the piety of the Pharisees. In the section that starts in 713 to the end of the chapter, we see four variations on this theme of the two roads. First, there is the broad way and there is the narrow way. Second, there are the false prophets with bad fruit, and there are the true prophets with good fruit. Third, there are those who call Jesus Lord who will not enter the kingdom, and there are those who call Jesus Lord who will enter the kingdom. And the fourth one is there are those who build on the sand whose house will be destroyed, and those who build on the rock whose house will stand. Now I would argue that we need to understand these metaphors in light of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. This is the conclusion of the sermon. If we read these verses alone, you realize right away Jesus isn't very specific. He doesn't say how to choose the narrow gate. He doesn't say what the will of God is that the person who calls Jesus Lord should be doing. And he doesn't tell us how to find the rock to build on or how to avoid the sand. He doesn't answer those questions here in these verses because he's already answered them in the rest of the sermon. He's already told us who will inherit eternal life. He's told us what kind of righteousness we need to have, and it's not like the Pharisees. And he's told us what to have our hearts set on when we pray and warned us against the path of the hypocrites and urged us to seek treasures in heaven. So at this point in the sermon, he's impressing upon us the need to choose the right path. He's already told us the essentials of faith and how to find life, and now he's confronting his listeners with the need to make a choice. He's described those who will inherit eternal life, and now he says, choose life, and he gives us four metaphors to drive that point home. Let's look at the first one. This is in verses 13 and 14. Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Now he tells us two things here. First, one path leads to life, and one Path leads to destruction, and you want to choose the way to life. Second, those who choose the way to life are in the minority. Presumably, the reason most people don't choose the road to life is because they don't want to. They don't view it as a good option. The wide versus narrow clues us in that the road to life is not as attractive as the road to destruction. The road to life requires repentance and humbly admitting that we are sinners before a holy God. We must pursue love and mercy because we see ourselves as in the same boat as other sinners. We must endure the hostility and persecution of those who reject Jesus, and we must seek the true treasure found in the kingdom of God rather than the false treasures of the world. By nature, we don't want to see those things. We are foolish, blind people. Taking the road to life requires waking up and opening our eyes. It requires admitting that we are wrong and God is right, and it requires turning away from the lies of this world and turning back to God. That's not an easy thing to do, and it can be very costly. Choosing to follow Jesus can cost us our family and our friends and even our very life. So Jesus is reminding us: yes, the road can be difficult. It may not look attractive at first glance. It may look wrong because so few people are taking it, but it is the road to life. And if you want life, you have no other option. All right, let's look at the second metaphor. This begins in verse 15 and goes to 20. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. This image of a wolf in sheep's clothing is fairly easy to understand, but let me point out a few things anyway. Wolves are the classic enemies of sheep. One of the shepherds' main jobs was protecting sheep from wolves. Wolves are the predators, sheep are the prey. In the Gospel of John, Jesus describes himself as the shepherd who does not abandon the sheep to the wolves. Now, in this analogy, we're supposed to picture ourselves as the sheep. Someone who looks like a sheep comes among us. This person looks just like the rest of us, but under the disguise, he's a ravenous wolf who is actually there to destroy. Jesus warns his followers that people will come who claim to know the road to life. They will claim to have a message from God, yet they are not from God at all. They are not promoting the word of God, they're destroying it. Now, in one sense, this picture matches what Jesus has been saying about the Pharisees. They present themselves as teachers of the law, but in fact they are worldly and self-righteous. And he has been warning his listeners, don't be like them. Later in Matthew, Jesus uses similar and much harsher language to describe the Pharisees. This is in chapter 23, verses 13 to 15. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across the sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Well, that's not very gentle language. Seems pretty straightforward to understand the sheep as the people of God, and the wolves in sheep's clothing as the false teachers who proclaim to be teaching them truth but are in fact leading them astray. Throughout history, we've seen people who claim to be proclaiming the word of God, but are in fact destroying the people and leading them away from the gospel. So, how do you tell the difference between false prophets and true prophets? And Jesus tells us, you know them by their fruit. The true prophets will be poor in spirit, humble, merciful, peacemakers, and seeking life in the kingdom of God. All the things he's described in the sermon. The false prophets will be worldly, focused on the pleasures of this world, self-righteous, judgmental, and unloving. Now Jesus continues with one of the most terrifying passages of Scripture. This is verses 21 through 23. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Now the new thing in this passage is this language about those who call Jesus Lord. Up to this point in the sermon, Jesus has been contrasting the Pharisees and the hypocrites and the Gentiles with people who follow him. Now he zeroes in on the people who follow him and says, even among them, some of those people who claim to follow him are on the wrong path. As Jesus says in the sermon, your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees. They were pious and religious men, and yet they were on the wrong path. And their kind of religious piety is not enough. Now, I realize I haven't explained that, but I do have a whole series on the Sermon on the Mount in my series on the Gospel of Matthew, and I will link to that in the lecture notes if you want to go further into it. For now, he's saying that not even living a religious life is a guarantee. You may be able to point to many great acts of charity and compassion that you did in the name of Jesus, but that's no guarantee that you're on the right road. That's not evidence of anything significant. The real evidence is whether you are one who seeks to love God and seeks to love your neighbor as yourself. If you are one who practices lawlessness, the fact that you call Jesus Lord means nothing. Now, of course, the big terrifying question is what does Jesus mean when he says we must do the will of the Father in verse 21? And in that in 723, he also describes those who will be condemned as workers of lawlessness. What does that mean? Well, this is where I think we need to understand these verses in light of the entire sermon. He means exactly what he's been describing since chapter 5 of the Gospel of Matthew. The one who does the will of God is the one who has embraced the truth that Jesus has been laying out in the sermon, and coincidentally are the ones I tried to lay out in my book, which was heavily influenced by the Sermon on the Mount. Humbly repenting before God, being merciful, hungering for holiness, seeking first the kingdom of heaven, counting on the promises of God, seeking to follow what God says is true, to love God and our neighbors. Those are all things that mark the children of God. The lawless ones are those like the Pharisees who claim to follow the law of God, but in fact use the law to pursue their own self-righteous and worldly gain. The issue is not whether you can call on the name of Jesus and get nine out of ten questions right on a theology exam. The question is, are you the sort of person Jesus has been describing in the sermon who has saving faith and a new worldview? Now, remember, as we talked about in other podcasts, he's not describing someone who is perfectly obedient and courageous every moment of every day in every given situation. We are all still sinners, but we're honest sinners. As we go through life, we will be in situations where we confront very basic questions like, Am I counting on myself or on God? Am I hoping for the things of God or the things of this world? What do I really think is true and important? And when we face those situations, we choose God's way. We choose to follow Him. We seek to live out the truth that He has taught us. It's also important to realize that there are wolves in sheep's clothing among the teachers of Jesus, and not all of them are worth listening to. There are lots of ways to be a Christian that don't actually match up with the teaching of Jesus. The fact that a teacher runs a megachurch or has worldwide followers is not a divine stamp of approval. We are called to be wise and discerning and to look at that person's life and teaching and see whether we see the kind of thing that we see in the Sermon on the Mount. There are lots of books and self-help philosophies out there which present themselves as being Christian. Be discerning. Naming the name of Jesus and calling him Lord is not the real test. We have to mean it in a profound way. The test is whether we live like what Jesus said is true, and that includes all the things we learned in the Sermon on the Mount. It's not enough to claim to believe. You must live your life in light of what you believe. Notice that's the point he picks up on next. Everyone who hears and acts on my words. Let's look at verses 24 through 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 the 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. Well, that image is pretty vivid and clear. The poet Edna St. Vincent Millet wrote a little two-line poem that captures it quite clearly. It goes, Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand. Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand. That's the whole point. It doesn't matter how big or grand the palace is, if it's built on the sand, it's not going to last. That's how we are to picture our lives in this world. Are we building on a rock or are we building on sand? Have we founded our life on the solid, eternal truths of the gospel or not? If you have, God will ensure that you withstand all the hurricanes that come at you. And you will find life and blessing in the end. How do you build on the rock? Well, he tells us you hear the gospel and you let it change your life. You act on the kinds of things Jesus has been teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. You hear and embrace the truths of the gospel and you seek to live in light of them. To conclude, notice how much importance Jesus gives to this sermon. Listen to what he just said. If you act on what I Jesus just said, you're building on the rock and your house will stand. If you do not act on what I Jesus just said, you're building on the sand and your house will fall. That's how important this sermon is. Jesus can show us the way to the narrow gate, the road to life, and where to build our house. Even though Jesus doesn't spell out here the cross or the specifics of God's plan for salvation, he is talking about the heart of a believer and describing people who have saving faith. When we hear that Jesus is the Christ who died for our sins and was raised from the dead, why do we believe it? Because by the grace of God we have hearts that are humble. We have come to experience a major shift in worldview. We no longer see ourselves as the center of the universe and more important than everyone else. Instead, we realize that God is the center of the universe and we human beings are equal before Him. Therefore, we strive to love God with our whole being and we strive to love our neighbors as ourselves because we believe the gospel is true. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. You can find the blog version of this episode, including all the links and resources, at Wednesdayintheword.com slash Start Strong Podcast 5. You can listen to all the episodes in this series at Wednesdaytintheword.com. There is no charge, no spam, no ads, just free, trustworthy resources to help you grow in your understanding of scripture. If this podcast has blessed you, please consider following it, rating, or reviewing it on your favorite podcast platform. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. If you're reading along in the book Start Strong, read chapter 6 before the next episode. You can find it wherever books are sold or start with the free resources at StartStrongbook.org. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can hear more of Reggie's music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Murata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.