Now, to build on the Rock, Jesus Christ Himself explains to us as being
the same thing as to hear and do His sayings. The one representation is
plain fact, the other is metaphor which points precisely in the same
direction. It is scarcely a digression if I pause for a moment, and
point you to the singular and unique attitude which this Carpenter's Son
of Nazareth takes up here, fronting the whole race with that
'whosoever,' and alleging that _His_ sayings are an infallible law
for conduct, and that _He_ has the right absolutely to command
every man, woman, and child of the sons and daughters of Adam. And the
strange thing is that the best men have admitted His claim, have
recognised that He had the right, and have seen that His precepts are
the very ideal of human conduct, and, if they have ventured to criticise
at all, their criticism has only been that the precepts are too good to
be obeyed, and contemplate an ideal that is unreachable in human
society. Be that as it may, there stands the fact that this Man, in this
Sermon on the Mount, which so many people say has no doctrinal teaching
in it, assumes an attitude which nothing can warrant and nothing explain
except the full-toned belief that in Him we have God manifest in the
flesh.
But what I desire to point to now is the significance of this demand
that He makes, that we shall take His sayings as the foundation of our
lives. The metaphor is a very plain one, by which the principles that
underlie or dominate and mould our conduct are regarded as the
foundation upon which we build the structure of our lives. But the
Sermon on the Mount is not all of these 'sayings of Mine.' It is
fashionable in certain quarters to-day to isolate these precepts, and to
regard them as being the part of Christian Revelation by which men who
set little store by theological subtleties, and reject the mysteries of
the Incarnation and the Atonement, may still abide. But I would have you
notice that it is absurd to isolate this Sermon on the Mount, or to deal
with it as if it were the very centre of the Christian Revelation. It is
nothing of the sort. Beautiful as it is, wonderful as it is as a high
ideal of human conduct, it is a law still, though it is a perfect law;
and it has all the impotences and all the deficiencies that attach to a
law, if you take it and rend it out of its place, and insist upon
dealing with it as if it stood alone. There is not a word in it that
tells you how to keep its precepts. There is no power in it, or raying
from it, to make a man obey any one of its commandments. It comes
radiant and beautiful, but imperative, and just because no man keeps it
to the full, its very beauty becomes menacing, and it stands there over
against us, showing us what we ought to be, and, by consequence, what we
are not. And is that all that Jesus Christ came into the world to do?
God forbid! If He had only spoken this Sermon on the Mount--which some
of you take for the _Alpha_ and the _Omega_ of Christianity as far as
you are concerned--He would not have been different in essence from
other teachers,--though high above them in degree,--who speak to us of
the shining heights of duty that we are to scale, but leave us
grovelling in the mire.
The Sermon on the Mount, with its stringent requirements, absolutely
demands to be completed by other thoughts and other 'sayings of Mine.'
And so I remind you, not only that there are other 'sayings of Mine' to
be kept than it, but also that there is no keeping of it without keeping
other sayings first. For the highest of Christ's commandments is
'Believe also in Me,' and you have to take Him as your Redeemer and
Saviour from death before you will ever thoroughly accept Him as your
Guide and Pattern for life. We must first draw near to Him in humble
penitence and lowly faith, and then there comes into our hearts a power
which makes it possible and delightsome to keep even the loftiest, and
in other aspects the hardest, of 'those sayings of Mine.' So, brethren,
the obedience of which this text speaks is second, and the building of
ourselves on Jesus Christ Himself, by faith in Him, is first. Only when
we build on Him as our Saviour shall we build our lives upon Him in
obedience to His commands.
'Behold! I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried corner-stone,
a sure foundation, and he that believeth shall not make haste'; and long
after the prophet said that, the Apostle catches up the same thought
when he says, 'Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid. Let
every man take heed how he buildeth thereon.' Jesus Christ is the
foundation of our lives, if we have any true life at all. He ought to be
the foundation of all our thinking. His word should be the absolute
truth, His life the final all-satisfying, perfect revelation of God, to
our hearts. 'In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.'
The facts of His Incarnation, earthly life, Death, Resurrection,
Ascension, and present Sovereignty--these facts, with the truths that
are deduced from them, and the great glimpses which they afford into the
heart of God and the depths of things, are the foundations of all true
thinking on moral and social and religious questions, and on not a few
other questions besides. Christ in His Revelation gives us the ultimate
truth on which we have to build.
He is also the foundation of all our hope, the foundation of all our
security, the foundation of all our effort and aspiration. His Cross
goes before the nations and leads them, His Cross stands by the
individual, and anodynes the sense of guilt, and breaks the bondage and
captivity of sin, and stirs to all lofty emotions and holy living, and
moves ever in the van like the pillar of cloud and fire, the Pattern of
our lives and the Guide of our pilgrimage. It is Christ Himself who is
the foundation, and His death and sacrifice which are the sure basis of
our hope, safety, and blessedness; and it is only because He Himself is
the Foundation, and what He has done for us is the basis of hope and
blessedness, that He has the right to come to us and say, 'Take My
commandments as the foundation on which you build your lives.'
The Rock of Ages cleft for us, is the Rock on which we build if we are
Christians; the other man built his house upon the sand. That is to say,
shifting inclinations, short-lived appetites, transitory aims, varying
judgments of men, the fashions of the day in morality, the changing
judgments of our own consciences--these are the things on which men
build, if they are not building upon Jesus Christ. Like a vessel that
has a raw hand at the helm, you sometimes head one way, and then the
puff of wind that fills your sails dies down, or the sails that were
flat as a board belly out a little, or you are caught in some current,
and round goes the bowsprit on another tack altogether. How many of us
are pursuing the objects which we pursued five-and-twenty years ago, if
we have numbered so many years? What has become of aims that were
everything to us then? We have won some of them, and they have turned
out not half as good as we thought they would be. The hare is never so
big when it is in the bag as when it is hurrying across the fields. We
have missed some of them, and we scarcely remember that we once wanted
them. We have outlived a great many, and they lie away behind us, hull
down on the horizon, and we are making for some other point that, in
like manner, if we reach it, will be left behind and be lost. There is
nothing that lasts but God and Christ, and the people that build their
lives upon them.
I press upon all your hearts that one simple thought--what an absurdity
it is for us to choose for our life's object anything that is
shorter-lived than ourselves!--and how long-lived you are you know. They
tell us that sand makes a very good foundation under certain
circumstances. I believe it does, but what if the water gets in? What
about it then? But in regard to all these transitory aims and
short-lived purposes on which some of you are building your lives, there
is a certainty that the water will come in some day. So, friend, dig
deeper down, even to the Eternal Rock. That is the only foundation on
which an immortal man or woman like you is wise to build your life. Are
you doing it?