The Whole Point of the Point

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR Matthew 7:24–27 NIV “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.” CONSIDER As a kid (and still as an adult), I loved playing the little game we used to see in newspapers called Hocus Focus. There would be two square frames side by side. In the frame was a simple drawing of some scene; perhaps of a kitchen or living room or a backyard—only in the second frame several small details from the first frame would be missing. The challenge was to pick out all the things that disappeared or were different from frame one to frame two.  Today's text offers us perhaps the most consequential Hocus Focus challenges ever invented. You see the text broken into two frames. There are six differences between them. Can you find them?  The wise person and the foolish person have three things in common. 1. They both hear the words of Jesus. 2. They both build houses, and 3. They both face the same harrowing storm.  The wise person and the foolish person have two major differences. One builds their house on the rock and the other on the sand. These two major differences lead to two very different outcomes. The wise person's house survives the storm. The foolish person's house succumbs to the storm. When we sift through the commonalities and sort out the differences we find a singular separator between the wise person and the foolish person. Now, back to our Hocus Focus framework.  In the first frame we see this phrase: puts them into practice. In the second frame we see this phrase: does not put them into practice. Just so we are clear—the "them" in these two frames is a direct reference to, these words of mine.  What if all of life comes down to this one difference? “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man . . .   But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man . . . And so ends the Sermon on the Mount. I don't know about you, but my impulse is to rewind the tape and hear these last three chapters of Matthew's Gospel again. That would be to miss the point. And what's the point, you ask? The point is to pick one of the points and put it into practice.  Let's give Jesus's brother the last word today: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says" (James 1:22). PRAY Father, thank you for being so clear with us that the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. Lord Jesus, thank you for the comprehensive and catastrophic clarity of this promise you are making us here. Awaken us with the sobriety of this guarantee to the end of our becoming intoxicated by the Holy Spirit who alone frees us for the lifelong adventure of joyful obedience. Praying in Jesus's name, amen.