From Words to Works

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I think the biggest lie that I believed as a child was that at some point you grow up and nobody tells you what to do anymore. It’s not true, is it? Some of you that are still kids probably think, I’ll get to a point where nobody tells.

. . I feel like I have more people who try to tell me what to do.

And several of them are small and look a little bit like me, but try to tell me what to do. But you think, oh, I’ve got parents, I’ve got teachers, I’ve got all these people that they tell me what to do, and one day I won’t have that. Once you get to be an adult, you realize it’s not true, because there’s always somebody in authority.

If nothing else, April 15th reminds us that there’s somebody that we have to answer to, right? We have to pay taxes. On top of that, we have to, if you think nobody tells me what to do, try zipping along at 80 miles an hour up Fort Sill Boulevard, and you’ll find out real quick, somebody can tell you what to do.

I don’t know that from experience. I’m kind of a slow driver, but they will pull me over for burnout taillights. They will do that in a hurry.

and let me know that there is somebody that does tell us what to do. It’s your job. There’s very likely somebody telling you what to do.

And so as a kid, you think, oh, I’ll own my own business. I’ll be a millionaire, which are two different things, owning your own business and being a millionaire. Those don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but even if you did own your own business, there are still people that are going to have a say in what you do, because there are laws, there are investors, there are different things.

I remember hearing recently an interview where they were talking about the president, not just this president, but any president. There’s nobody that’s, you know, the supervisor that they’re clocking in with and they’re answering to on a daily basis, but they have 330 million people all with some idea of how they ought to do the job. And I thought, you know, that’s the same for me.

There’s nobody that I’m clocking in with, you know, no direct supervisor in that sense, but there are a lot of people that have an idea about what I ought to do and sometimes will tell me. And ultimately, ultimately, all of us have one authority that we answer to. So there’s always somebody in authority over us, and that bothers us because of our human nature is marred by sin in such a way that we don’t like to be obedient.

It really goes all over me to be told what to do. It probably does for you too. It probably is a frustrating thing when somebody tries to tell you what to do.

Even as kids, we don’t like to be told what to do, and that’s why our parents have to teach us obedience, because it doesn’t come naturally. It’s something that has to be taught. Disobedience, on the other hand, doesn’t have to be taught, right?

Anybody that’s ever raised kids, you know, you never had lessons with them on, here’s how you be disobedient and disrespectful to me. It just happens. We have to be taught obedience.

And as Jesus dealt with those who were following him, specifically those that he was speaking to in the Sermon on the Plain, he had to deal with this concept of obedience and what it meant to submit to his authority as Lord. We’ve been studying through the book of Luke, if you’re just joining us today, maybe for the first time. We’ve been studying through the book of Luke, and we’re up to chapter 6 today.

We’ve been going through this, what Bible scholars call the Sermon which is different from the Sermon on the Mount, different occasion in all likelihood, but some of the same topics are covered just in a shorter form. And today we come to the end of that sermon, and it’s where Jesus really gets into this subject of obedience to His authority, specifically. And so we’re going to be in Luke chapter 6, starting in verse 46 today, if you’ll turn there with me, if you haven’t already.

And once you find it, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. And if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke 6, it’ll be on the screen for you. But follow along as we read what Jesus said to his followers.

Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like. He is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock, and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it because it had been well built.

But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation, and the torrent burst against it, and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great. You may be seated. Very short passage as Jesus ends that sermon.

But he starts off with a point that I think we can all relate to, and that’s the fact that it’s easier to call Jesus Lord than to treat him as Lord. That was a problem that these people were dealing with. I’ve mentioned to you before, he comes down off the mountain to the plain.

He’s taken the 12, we know them as apostles, sometimes we call them the 12 disciples. They’ve been up the mountain with him. He comes down and encounters the crowd on the plain.

But it refers to that crowd as disciples. These were not yet disciples in the way that we would use the word as somebody who is committed to follow Jesus. These are people who are following Jesus around, and they are listening to Him as their teacher, that may be the one they’re interested in following right now, but they haven’t at this point made a lifelong commitment.

These are disciples in the sense of we’re students, we want learn from Jesus. But they would call Him Lord, Lord, and He asked them that question to begin with, why do you call me Lord, Lord? He is surrounded by people who have come to hear His teaching.

They may have even considered Him to be their teacher. And sometimes we have this today. We will listen to somebody, and we will develop a kind of a relationship with them, even if we’ve never met them.

Now, obviously, if you’re part of this church, hopefully you consider me your pastor. People ask me, oh, you’re the pastor at Central. Well, that’s what they keep telling me. So, heard one guy say, no, I’m the guy that keeps them from having a real pastor.

I haven’t said that yet, but sometimes we follow these teachers, even if we’ve never met them, and we say, that’s my teacher. We might not say it that way, but we have that view of them. Like, he’s been dead now for 19 years and I still love to listen to Adrian Rogers.

Have I ever called him my teacher? No, but I do kind of look at him in that way. And there are some others, but he’s the first name that comes to mind.

I’ve heard some others of you. You’ll say you’ll get up on Sunday morning and you’ll listen to Charles Stanley and you’ll name other names. So we will kind of look at people and say I’m kind of following after them.

I want to hear their teaching on an ongoing basis. is, am I trying to be Adrian Rogers? No.

Although I love it when things alliterate, I can’t pull it off as often as he could. But I’m not trying to be Adrian Rogers. I just, I want to learn the things he has to say.

And there were people in this crowd who were looking at Jesus in the same way. He’s their teacher. They want to hear what he has to say, but they’re not necessarily building their life on his teachings.

They’re not necessarily trying to be like him. For Jesus, the issue here in verse 46 is not that people were calling him Lord. So when he says, why do you call me Lord, Lord?

It’s not Jesus saying, oh, it’s wrong to call me Lord. Skeptics who want to promote the idea that Jesus never claimed to be God will seize on fragments like this and say, well, Jesus even asked them, why would you call me Lord? They take it out of context.

He says, he’s not saying, why do you call me Lord? He’s saying, why do you call me Lord and not do what I say? His problem was not the fact that they called him Lord.

His problem was the disconnect between their words and their actions, because they’re calling Him Lord, but they’re not acting like He’s Lord. And the reason they’re calling Him Lord and not acting like it is because it’s so much easier to call Him Lord than it is to act like He’s Lord. Because to call Him Lord, we just have to say it, and the breath and the sound are uttered out and they’re gone.

But to act like He’s Lord requires a commitment, and it requires accountability, things that don’t necessarily please our flesh. And it wasn’t unusual for people to use this word in a less literal way, this word kurios that means Lord, the Greek word for it. They would call people that as kind of a title, and it meant something like sir, the way we would use sir today.

Sir as a title for somebody originated because somebody had a title of nobility. They were Sir Jeff Little, Sir John McMurtry. You know, they had titles like that.

And so it became a way that if you began to address somebody as sir, you were calling them a gentleman. And eventually it became used for people who didn’t have that title of nobility. I’m talking about in English.

And it just became something we applied to everybody. And so sometimes you’ll ask me a question, hey, I’ve got a question for you. And I’ll say, yes, sir.

Am I assuming you have some kind of British noble title? No, it’s just a title of respect that we use. And it was not necessarily unusual in their day for them to call somebody that they respected Lord, without necessarily intending the literal meaning of those words.

That to call somebody Lord meant master. It meant that you were submitting to them. Now, that’s not every time somebody called Jesus Lord.

When Thomas referred to him as my Lord, that’s a little different. When they referred to him, when the early Christians referred to him as the Lord, that’s a little different. But it was not unusual in addressing him just to call him Lord as a title of respect.

And you could, again, respect somebody without saying, I’m going to do everything you say and try to be exactly like you. I think we do that all the time. We hopefully respect one another.

It doesn’t mean we’re all trying to be each other. So in this sense, it was a title that indicated somebody had more authority than them and somebody that they would respect, but it didn’t mean they had submitted to him. And so his point to them is that while they were showing him respect, they really didn’t understand at this point who he was or what it meant for him to be Lord.

And it was easy for them to look at him as Lord in the sense of being somebody with authority, somebody who taught well, somebody who was close to God, somebody they should look up to. They didn’t understand that their words about Jesus were literally true. And he’s not just, sir, he is the Lord of all creation.

This is a lot like when he asked them, why do you call me good? There’s none good but God. He’s not there saying that he’s not God.

He’s saying, you don’t understand how true what you’re saying actually is about me. There was something about Jesus that they didn’t understand. And a lot of times people will treat him the same way today.

They’ll treat him as he was just a good moral teacher, somebody we should look up to. He’s somebody we should respect. He’s somebody we should have reverence for.

And that’s fine as far as it goes, but that’s not enough because there’s a big step between he’s somebody we should have reverence for and he is the God of all creation. He’s the Lord of all things. And it’s dangerous for us when we stop short and say, well, he’s this over here, and we don’t realize what it means that he’s Lord.

Because when we understand Jesus, we’re faced with a choice. Do we respond to him as Lord, or do we reject that claim altogether? And what we understand about who Jesus is, it will change our response to him.

So the question in verse 46 is, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? Ultimately, the question there is, why do you not do what I say? If you’re going to call me this, if you’re going to acknowledge me in this way, why do you not act like it’s literally true?

He asked why they called him Lord while not doing what he said. Because the way the scriptures use the term for him, the word Lord is not just a title, it’s a declaration. It’s a declaration like when Peter said, you are the Christ, you’re the Messiah, the son of the living God.

It’s like when Thomas said, my Lord and my God, my master and the one I worship. It’s a declaration. When we recognize Him as Lord, Jesus is Lord is not just a slogan.

It is a declaration of who He is, of who He is to all creation and who He is to us. When we say that Jesus is Lord, we are acknowledging that all of this belongs to Him. We are acknowledging that He made all of it, that He sustains all of it, that He gets to decide what happens with all of it, that He gets to decide what’s right and wrong in all of it.

When we say Jesus is Lord, it’s not just a title, it’s a declaration that he’s in charge. And when we say Jesus is Lord, it doesn’t apply just to creation, it applies to us as well, or it’s supposed to. That when I realize who Jesus is, when I understand who he claimed himself to be, and what the scripture said he would be when he came, what the scripture say he was when he did finally come, when I understand all of that, I’m faced with a choice.

Do I live like it’s true or do I reject the claim altogether? Because it makes no sense to say, well, he is Lord of all creation. He’s in charge.

I’m going to have to answer to him, but I’m still going to do what I want to do. We might think that for a minute, but it’s not a rational way to live. I’m going to have to answer to him and his judgment, but I won’t worry about that.

His lordship applies to us, and it doesn’t apply to us just partially either. I’m sure in some aspects of their lives, these people were doing some of the things that Jesus told them to do. But he’s pointing here to the places where they were refusing to do what he told them to do.

You’re calling me Lord, but there are places in your lives that you’re holding back on, and you’re not submitting to my lordship. There are places where you’re walking in disobedience. And this is something that can be said of us as well.

This is something that I think every Christian struggles with, that we acknowledge him as Lord, but there are parts of our lives that are harder than some others to let go and acknowledge his lordship in. That was the problem with the rich young ruler. Jesus was not telling him that his salvation would be earned by giving his money to the poor.

That’s not the plan of salvation for you. Oh, just go give all your stuff away and you’ll enter heaven. He was showing the man where his idols were because he said, oh, I’ve kept the commandments perfectly.

Oh, have you? Well, you’ve got idols. And I know that because when I tell you to let go of your money, you’re going to say no. We all have corners of our lives that are harder to submit to him than others.

There may be things that we want to hold on to control of. Things that as much as we trust him, we’re not sure if we trust him enough to be in charge of that. I’ve struggled with that with my kids.

Not because of anything they’ve done, but just very attached to my kids and had to finally realize, God, I’m going to have to give you control of that. I mean, you’ve already got it, but I’m going to have to acknowledge your control of that because you love better than I do. You love them more than I do.

And you’re a better parent than I am. So I have to just give up control of that. And it’s tough.

But for each of us, there are corners of our lives. You know, if you want to look at your heart as a building, there are rooms and there are closets that we would just rather not open up and say, Lord, it’s yours. But we can’t give him partial authority or we can’t acknowledge partial authority over our lives.

He’s either Lord or he’s not. And These people did not fully appreciate yet the truth about who Jesus is, because if they had, they’d have acted differently. And we’re faced with that choice, and if Jesus is our Lord, we must obey Him.

If we’re going to acknowledge Him as Lord, we have to act like it, and we must obey Him. Verse 47, He says, Everyone who comes to Me and hears My word and acts on them, I will show whom He is like. In this verse, Jesus is laying out what it means to treat Him as Lord, and it’s about walking in obedience.

He really says there are three things here that people are going to do if they’re treating him as Lord, and they all fall under this heading of obedience. He says they come to me. That means we seek him.

What do I mean by we seek him? I mean that who he is and what he wants is at the forefront of our thoughts and our decision making. That when we’re faced with how do I respond to this?

What do I prioritize here? How do I move forward? How do I interact in this situation?

All of the decisions we have to make. We’re not looking at what does he want as a last resort and say, well, Lord, I’ve got all these other things over here where I’ve decided really this is probably what I ought to do. But now I think I ought to ask you and see, are you okay with that?

Really the first thought should be seeking him, coming to him, looking for what is it that the Lord, my Lord, my master wants me to do. It starts out with where our focus lies as we’re trying to navigate life. Are we treating Jesus as Lord by putting obedience to Him as the very first priority in our decision-making.

He says we seek Him. He says He comes to me. He hears my words.

We listen to Him. What a novel idea. Have you ever not been listened to?

I live in a house of seven people, and I am the quietest person in my house, which is unusual for a preacher, I know, but I am the quietest person in my house, and sometimes I struggle to be heard. And it is really frustrating. I don’t think I can yell loud enough sometimes.

And so I’ll have to take a cup or something and beat it on the table. Sometimes a ring will work. But sometimes just to get a word in edgewise at dinner, it’s frustrating not to be listened to, not to be heard.

I’m not saying it’s all the time. So if my family feels like I throw them under the bus. Y’all know sometimes dad’s hard to be heard over everything.

It just happens. If you’ve ever been in a situation where you could not get anybody to listen to you. It’s frustrating.

So the question we need to ask, is that what we’re doing to our Lord? He speaks to us. He speaks to us through His Word.

But as we come to Him, are we listening? Are we hearing the words that He tells us? Are we paying attention?

Are we soaking them in? Are we taking them to heart? It does us no good to seek Him if we’re not going to listen to Him when we find Him.

And so part of obedience is that prioritization of putting him first and his will first, but actually listening after that. Once we know what his will is, listen to it. And he says, he comes to me, he hears my words and he acts on them.

It’s part of obedience, part of treating him as Lord as we do what he says. Have you ever felt heard and ignored at the same time? Like, yeah, they hear what I said and they’re going to do completely the opposite.

Have you ever had one of those friends who always comes to you for advice and then does exactly what they wanted to do all along? Have you ever been that friend? I may have friend at times, but I’ve definitely had some.

It’s frustrating. Sometimes I do that to the Lord. I think sometimes we all do that to the Lord.

But our job is not just to listen to what He says, but to actually go out and do it. Now, is this all it means to acknowledge Him as Lord? No.

If that was all there was, the Bible would be a lot shorter. But these are the three things that He outlines for us here about what it means to treat Him as Lord. We actually seek Him out, we listen to Him, and we says.

Pretty simple to wrap our minds around. Not always easy to do, but pretty simple to understand. Seek him, listen to him, and do what he says.

And what we need to understand, though, is these are not the marks of being super spiritual. These are not three steps to be more spiritual than everybody else. This is just basic entry-level discipleship of what it means to follow Jesus. And we are confronted with the question, if you’re a believer this morning, I think we’re all confronted with the question, am I doing these things?

And there may be one of these that you lack more than others. To be honest, I mean, I’ve been honest up to this point. I don’t know why people say that because it implies you weren’t being honest before.

But just to peel back the layers and let you in a little bit, I feel like I do a pretty decent job of listening to him and doing what he says. I noticed I didn’t say perfect. I said decent.

I do a pretty decent job on two and three, but I need to work on making, let’s go to him and see what he wants first. I need to work on doing better about that because I often run the risk of figuring out what is the best course of action and then just asking the Lord to bless it. Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you struggle in one of the other areas.

Maybe you say, you know, I’ll seek him out. I’ll seek out his wisdom. I have trouble listening to it.

Now, if I hear it, I’ll do it. But the listening, maybe that’s your struggle. Or maybe it’s just, I’ll seek him out and I’ll listen, but then I really struggle with wanting to go do what I want to do instead.

But these are some of the basic, basic entry-level points of what it means to treat him as Lord. Then he says at the end of this verse, I will show you whom he is like. He offers us an object lesson on the difference between obedience and disobedience.

And by doing this, he teaches us that obedience to him, obedience to Jesus is the wisest way to live. In these latter two verses, he provides this object lesson of somebody who’s in a flood. And we’ve seen how, just recently, how powerful floodwaters can be.

Somebody told me last week the amount of force that’s exerted by each foot of water. And I can’t remember the number, but it was unbelievable that, you know, they were talking about a 4,000 pound truck, how many feet of water could just wash that thing away. We’ve seen that happen.

I was reminded of it when I stepped into the baptistry last week in those waders, and it’s been a while since I’ve put on a pair of waders and gotten into water, and I couldn’t believe no deeper than the baptistry is. The pressure that that put, I was reminded just how heavy water is, but it can come with tremendous force and just wash everything away. And so he says that somebody who is obeying Jesus and treating him as Lord, He’s like somebody who built his house on a good foundation.

He went and he dug deep. Sometimes you have to dig down. You have to put in some effort to hit the bedrock.

He dug down deep. He found the rock, and he used that as the foundation for his house, and then he built on that. And so when the flood occurred, when the torrent came, all that crashing water, all of those things that would barrel through our lives and destroy everything in its path, it could not shake the house because it had been well built.

And he says, if you’re building your life on a foundation of obedience to him, that’s what it’s going to be like. Those torrents, all of those things that come crashing through are going to try to clear everything away, are going to try to destroy everything in their path, but they won’t be able to if it’s well built on a solid foundation. But he says, the one who has heard and not acted accordingly, these are the people that are hearing Jesus’s word and not obeying it.

He said, it’s like a man who built his house on the ground without any foundation, and the torrent burst against it, and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great. Sometimes you’ll see what happens if a building is not well constructed or not built on a good foundation, and the forces of nature come through and just utterly devastate what was there before. And he says, if we’re not building our lives on obedience to him and his word, then we’re like those people who built their houses on foundations made of sand.

Now, this passage is often taught in a very pragmatic way. oh, we should follow Jesus because it’s what works out best for us. And I think what some people think is, well, we won’t have the storms that come.

So we’re going to follow Jesus because it’s a good idea. It’ll make life easier. Following Jesus rarely makes life easier.

In some ways, following Jesus makes life much harder. And I think it’s good for us to be honest about that fact. Sometimes following Jesus makes life harder.

What he’s talking about here with our lives being built on a foundation and withstanding or being washed away, doesn’t mean that if we build on the good foundation, we’re going to be prosperous and everything’s going to be wonderful. But it means we are going to be doing things that last. We are going to be building things that matter in eternity. If we want our lives to count for something, if we want to be able to look back over our lives and say it mattered and it built something that lasted, it built something that glorified God, we have to be building on a foundation of obedience to Jesus Christ. Because other than that, it doesn’t matter what things we achieve, it doesn’t matter what things we collect, what things we build, they’re all going to go away someday.

Every rusted out wreck in a junkyard somewhere was somebody’s baby that they scrimped and saved for at some point in the past. Every broken down shack we’ve ever seen was something that somebody put their blood and sweat into years ago. All the things that we strive for to build on sand today eventually won’t matter, but the wisest thing that we can do with our lives as believers is to make sure we are building lives on a foundation of obedience to Jesus. What would He have me to do?

How would He have me to do it? How would He have me to prioritize things? How would He have me to react to people?

What choices would He have me do? What would He call me to give for me today. Every time we’re at a fork in the road, I don’t necessarily mean a literal fork in the road, but every time we’re at a fork in the road in life and we have a choice to make, the question should be, Lord, what do you want me to do?

How can I do this in a way that glorifies you? Only what we build on a foundation of obedience to him will last, because those are the only things that matter.

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