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Matthew 7:24-27  Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.  But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

This well-known graphic illustration at the end of Jesus’ ‘Sermon on the Mount’ has a very relevant and challenging message for us in post-Christian Australia.  Modernism and militant Humanism have already hi-jacked our culture, and we are building our ‘acceptable’ worldviews on very unstable shifting sand where there is no place for the concept of absolute truth.  The forces that are rapidly re-shaping our legislation are actively opposed to the basic teaching of the Bible to the point where Christians are being prosecuted for simply upholding basic biblical truth in the marketplace.

The saddest part about this is that the solid Rock of biblical Truth (God’s revelation to his creatures of the most effective, productive and harmonious way to both live in, and to care for, hid world) is being deliberately replaced by the constantly shifting sand of relativism.

In support of Jesus’ firm warning about where all this would lead, all the Creeds that came out of the 17^th Century give primary importance to the inspiration and authority of Scripture (cf Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter one), and the Apostle Paul warned Timothy (perhaps prophetically referring to our own day): “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power.  Have nothing to do with such people. … … But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the HOLY SCRIPTURES, which are able to make you WISE for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is God-breathed, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:1-5, 14-17).

As a child in Sunday School I used to love singing, “The wise man built his house upon the rock … the foolish man built his house upon the sand …” with all the dramatic accompanying actions, but I don’t think I realised back then just how important its message would be for the whole of the rest of my life in these ‘last days’!

– Bruce Christian