Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 6:46-49, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 15
- Date: Sunday, May 4, 2025 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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The Myth of Outgrowing Authority
One of the biggest lies I believed as a child was that, at some point, you grow up and no one tells you what to do anymore. It’s not true, is it? Some of you who are still children may think, “One day no one will tell me what to do.” I feel as though more people try to tell me what to do now than ever before.
Several of them are small, look a little like me, and still try to tell me what to do. As a child, you think, “I have parents, teachers, and all these people telling me what to do, but one day that will end.” Once you become an adult, you realize that is not true because someone is always in authority.
If nothing else, April 15 reminds us that we still answer to someone. We have to pay taxes. If you think no one can tell you what to do, try driving eighty miles per hour on Fort Sill Boulevard. You will quickly discover otherwise.
I do not know that from speeding. I am generally a slow driver, but they will stop you quickly for a burned-out taillight.
That is another reminder that someone still has authority. At work, there is also very likely someone telling you what to do.
As a child, you may think, “I will own my own business. I will be a millionaire.” Those are two different things, of course. Owning a business and becoming a millionaire do not necessarily go together. Even business owners answer to laws, investors, customers, and other authorities.
I recently heard an interview discussing the presidency—not merely one particular president, but the office itself. The president has no ordinary supervisor to clock in with each day, but hundreds of millions of people have opinions about how the job should be done. I thought that, in a much smaller way, the same is true for me.
I do not clock in with a direct supervisor, but many people still have ideas about what I should do and sometimes tell me. And ultimately, ultimately, all of us have one authority that we answer to. Someone is always in authority over us, and that bothers us because our sin-marred nature resists obedience.
I do not enjoy being 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 children, we resist being told what to do. That is why parents must teach obedience; it does not come naturally. It’s something that has to be taught. Disobedience, on the other hand, doesn’t have to be taught, right?
Anyone who has raised children knows that no one must teach them how to be disobedient or disrespectful. It just happens. We have to be taught obedience.
As Jesus addressed those listening to the Sermon on the Plain, He confronted the issue of obedience and what it meant to submit to His authority as Lord. We have been studying through the book of Luke. We’ve been studying through the book of Luke, and we’re up to chapter 6 today.
We have been examining what Bible scholars call the Sermon on the Plain, likely delivered on a different occasion from the Sermon on the Mount but covering some of the same subjects in a shorter form. Here we come to the sermon’s conclusion, where Jesus directly addresses obedience to His authority. We come to Luke 6:46–49, where Jesus concludes the sermon with these words:
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. . It is a short passage, but it brings the sermon to a forceful conclusion.
Jesus begins with a point we can all understand: it is easier to call Him Lord than to treat Him as Lord. That was a problem that these people were dealing with. As we have seen, Jesus came down from the mountain to the plain.
He had called the twelve apostles, whom we also often call the twelve 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 listeners were not necessarily disciples in the modern sense of committed followers of Jesus. They were following Jesus, listening to Him as a teacher, and considering whether they would commit themselves fully to Him.
They were disciples in the sense of being students who wanted to 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 regarded Him as their teacher. We do something similar today. We may listen regularly to a teacher and develop a sense of connection even without ever meeting that person.
If you are part of this church, I hope you consider me your pastor. People ask, “Are you the pastor at Central?” I answer, “That is what they keep telling me.” I once heard a pastor joke, “No, I am the man keeping 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. Adrian Rogers has been dead for years, yet I still love listening to his sermons.
Have I ever called him my teacher? No, but I do kind of look at him in that way. There are others, but he is the first name that comes to mind.
Some of you have mentioned listening to Charles Stanley or other teachers on Sunday mornings. We may regard such teachers as people whose teaching we follow.
I want to hear their teaching on an ongoing basis. Am I trying to become Adrian Rogers? No.
Although I love alliteration, I cannot use it as naturally or effectively as he did. But I’m not trying to be Adrian Rogers. I simply want to learn from what he taught.
And there were people in this crowd who were looking at Jesus in the same way. He’s their teacher. They wanted to hear what Jesus had to say without necessarily building their lives upon His teaching.
They’re not necessarily trying to be like him. In verse 46, Jesus’ concern is not that people call Him Lord. So when he says, why do you call me Lord, Lord?
He is not saying it is wrong to address Him that way. Skeptics who argue that Jesus never claimed deity may isolate this phrase and say, “Jesus Himself questioned why anyone would call Him Lord.” But that removes His words from their context.
He does not merely ask, “Why do you call Me Lord?” He asks, “Why do you call Me Lord and not do what I say?” His problem was not the fact that they called him Lord.
The problem was the disconnect between their words and actions. They called Him Lord without acting as though He were Lord. It is far easier to use the title than to live in submission to the reality behind it. Calling Him Lord requires only words that vanish as soon as they are spoken.
Treating Him as Lord requires commitment and accountability, neither of which naturally pleases the flesh. The Greek word kyrios, translated Lord, could also be used in a less literal sense. It could function as a respectful title, much like sir in English.
In English, Sir originally marked a title of nobility. Someone might be called Sir Jeff or Sir John. Those were formal titles.
Over time, addressing someone as sir became a broader way of showing respect. Eventually, the term was applied even to those without a title of nobility. I’m talking about in English.
And it just became something we applied to everybody. Someone may say, “I have a question,” and I may answer, “Yes, sir.”
I am not assuming the person holds a British noble title. No, it’s just a title of respect that we use. Likewise, people in Jesus’ day could address someone they respected as lord without intending the fullest possible meaning.
In its literal sense, however, calling someone Lord meant acknowledging that person as master and submitting to his authority. Now, that’s not every time somebody called Jesus Lord.
When Thomas called Jesus “my Lord,” the meaning was much stronger. Likewise, when the early Christians called Him “the Lord,” they were making a profound confession. But it was not unusual in addressing him just to call him Lord as a title of respect.
A person may respect someone without promising total obedience or imitation. 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. Jesus’ point is that although they showed Him respect, they did not yet understand who He truly was or what His lordship meant.
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 did not understand how literally true their words were. He is not merely “sir”; He is Lord of all creation.
This is similar to His question, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.” He was not denying His deity.
He was saying, in effect, “You do not understand how true your words about Me really are.” There was something about Jesus that they didn’t understand. People often treat Jesus similarly today.
They regard Him merely as a good moral teacher worthy of admiration. He’s somebody we should respect. He’s somebody we should have reverence for.
That may sound respectful, but it falls far short of confessing Him as 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.
Lordship Is a Declaration
When we understand who Jesus is, we face 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.
Verse 46 asks, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” The heart of the question is, “Why do you not obey Me?” 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 confronts the contradiction between confession and conduct. In Scripture, calling Jesus Lord is not merely using a title; it is making a declaration. It is like Peter’s confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
It is like Thomas saying, “My Lord and my God.” It’s a declaration. When we recognize Him as Lord, “Jesus is Lord” is not merely 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 confess Jesus as Lord, we acknowledge that everything 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.
The confession declares that He is in charge. His lordship applies not only to creation but also to us. When I understand who Jesus claimed to be, what Scripture foretold about Him, and what Scripture says about Him after He came, I must choose how to respond.
Will I live as though His claim is true, or reject it altogether? It makes no sense to say, “He is Lord of all creation. He is in charge,”
and then insist, “I will still do whatever I want.” We might think that for a minute, but it’s not a rational way to live. It is irrational to admit that we will answer to Him while living as though His judgment does not matter.
His lordship applies to every part of our lives. These people likely obeyed some of Jesus’ teachings in certain areas. But He points to the areas where they refused His commands.
“You call Me Lord, but you are holding back areas of your life and refusing My authority.” There are places where you’re walking in disobedience. The same can be said of us.
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 we want to keep under our own control. Although we claim to trust Him, we may hesitate to entrust certain things fully to Him. I have struggled with that regarding my children.
Not because of anything they have done, but because I am deeply attached to them. I finally had to pray, “God, I must acknowledge Your control here.” “You already possess that control, and You love them better than I do.” You love them more than I do.
“You are a better Father than I could ever be.” So I have to surrender my illusion of control. And it’s tough.
But for each of us, there are corners of our lives. If we picture the heart as a building, there may be rooms and closets we would rather not open and say, “Lord, this is Yours.” We cannot grant or acknowledge only partial authority over our lives.
He’s either Lord or he’s not. These people did not yet fully grasp who Jesus was. If they had, they would have responded 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. In verse 47, He says, “Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will show you 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.
Jesus identifies three actions that characterize those who truly treat Him as Lord, and all three fall under obedience. He says they come to me. That means we seek him.
What does it mean to seek Him? It means placing who He is and what He desires at the forefront of our thinking and decision-making. When we ask, “How should I respond?”
“What should I prioritize?” “How should I move forward?” “How should I act in this situation?”
All of the decisions we have to make. We should not seek His will only as a last resort after deciding what we already want to do. “Lord, I have already made my plan. Are You willing to approve it?”
Our first response should be to seek Him and ask what our Lord and Master wants us to do. Obedience begins with where our focus lies as we navigate life. Are we treating Jesus as Lord by making obedience to Him the first priority in our decisions?
He says we seek Him. He says He comes to me. He hears my words.
We listen to Him. That sounds obvious, but it is often neglected. Have you ever not been listened to?
I live in a household of seven people, and I am the quietest one—which may seem unusual for a preacher. Sometimes I struggle to be heard. And it is really frustrating. Sometimes I do not think I can speak loudly enough.
I may tap a cup or my ring on the table simply to get everyone’s attention. It is frustrating to struggle for a chance to speak at dinner and feel unheard.
I’m not saying it’s all the time. I am not trying to throw my family under the bus. They know that sometimes Dad has difficulty being heard over everything else.
It just happens. If you’ve ever been in a situation where you could not get anybody to listen to you. It’s frustrating.
The question is whether we treat our Lord that way. He speaks to us. He speaks 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 absorbing His words? Are we taking them to heart? Seeking Him does no good if we refuse to listen when He speaks.
Obedience means putting Him and His will first and then truly listening. Once we know His will, we must receive 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 that someone heard your words but ignored them? They understood exactly what you said and still chose the opposite.
Have you ever had a friend who repeatedly asks for advice and then does exactly what was already planned? Have you ever been that friend? I may have been that friend at times, and I have certainly known others like that.
It’s frustrating. Sometimes I do the same thing to the Lord, and I suspect we all do.
But our job is not just to listen to what He says, but to actually go out and do it. Is this everything involved in acknowledging 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 seek Him, listen to Him, and do what He says.
The pattern is simple to understand. It is not always easy to practice. Seek him, listen to him, and do what he says.
These are not marks of unusual spiritual maturity. They are not three steps for becoming more spiritual than everyone else. They are the basic elements of discipleship. Every believer must ask, “Am I doing these things?”
One of these areas may be weaker than the others. To be transparent, people often say that phrase even though it can imply they were not honest before.
I think I do a reasonably good job of listening to Him and doing what He says. I did not say perfect; I said reasonably good.
But I need to improve at going to Him first and asking what He wants. I often risk deciding the best course of action myself and then merely asking the Lord to bless it. Perhaps you struggle in the same way. 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 perhaps you seek Him and listen, but still struggle to do what you want instead of what He commands.
But these are some of the basic, basic entry-level points of what it means to treat him as Lord. At the end of the verse, Jesus says, “I will show you whom he is like.” He offers us an object lesson on the difference between obedience and disobedience.
Through this object lesson, He teaches that obedience to Jesus is the wisest way to live. In the final two verses, Jesus gives the picture of two houses facing a flood. We have recently seen how powerful floodwaters can be.
Someone recently told me how much force each foot of floodwater exerts. I do not remember the exact figure, but even a few feet of moving water can carry away a four-thousand-pound truck. We’ve seen that happen.
I was reminded of that force when I stepped into the baptistry wearing waders. Even in relatively shallow water, the pressure was noticeable. Water is heavy, and when it moves with force, it can wash almost anything away. Jesus says that the person who obeys Him and treats Him as Lord is like someone who builds on a solid foundation.
The builder dug deep. Reaching bedrock sometimes requires effort.
He dug down deep. He found rock, laid the foundation there, and built the house upon it. When the flood came and the torrent struck, the house stood because it had been well built.
Jesus says that a life built on obedience to Him is like that house. The storms of life may strike with tremendous force, but what is built on the right foundation will stand. By contrast, the one who hears and does not act is the person who receives Jesus’ words without obeying them.
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. We have seen how quickly natural forces can destroy a structure built poorly or without a foundation. Jesus says that a life not built on obedience to Him is like a house resting on unstable ground.
Obedience Builds What Lasts
This passage is often interpreted in a purely pragmatic way. “We should follow Jesus because doing so makes life work out better.” Some people assume obedience means the storms will never come.
“Following Jesus is a good idea because it will make life easier.” Following Jesus does not necessarily make life easier.
In some ways, it makes life much harder. And I think it’s good for us to be honest about that fact. Sometimes following Jesus makes life harder.
Jesus is not promising that those who build on the right foundation will become prosperous or avoid hardship. He is teaching that obedience produces work with lasting value. We are going to be building things that matter in eternity. If we want our lives to matter, to build something lasting, and to glorify God, we must build on obedience to Jesus Christ. Apart from that foundation, every achievement, possession, and human accomplishment will eventually disappear.
Every rusted wreck in a junkyard was once someone’s prized possession, purchased through sacrifice and saving. Every broken-down structure once represented someone’s labor and sacrifice. Everything built on sand will eventually lose its value. The wisest thing believers can do is build their lives on 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 choice would He have me make? What would He call me to surrender today? Whenever we reach a fork in life’s road and must make a choice, 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 only those things matter eternally.
