Pastor's Page: Discipleship and Building on the Rock

The parable is unforgettable; we’ve known it since our Sunday School days. Building a house on sand might be easy, and building on rock might be hard, but houses are more likely to last if built on rock. Final, end-time judgment is implied in the parable, one that is evident even in that children’s song: the house on the sand went splat!

Often overlooked in the parable is that one’s wisdom or foolishness is predicated on whether the individual who hears Jesus’ words put them into practice. If you hear the words but don’t put them into practice, you’re a fool who will experience a final, end-time judgment that is catastrophic. If you hear the words and, in fact, put them into practice, you’re a wise person who will stand firm and unscathed, despite the wrath that floods the earth at the final end-time judgment.

Matthew’s Gospel regularly alludes to this end-time judgment, and the parable is thoroughly contexted by judgment themes. Theologians refer to this end-time judgment with the pregnant term “eschatological judgment.” It conjures up both Noahic deluge imagery and fiery apocalyptic imagery as God brings this age to a climactic end under his reign. Thus, even at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, we see John urgently preaching repentance to prepare for eschatological judgment: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance…. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. [Jesus’s] winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matt 3).

 The theme of judgment extends into the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus repeatedly warns of the fires of hell (5:22, 29, 30; 7:19), and eschatological rewards (5:12, 19, 20, 47; 6:1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 33; 7:13, 14, 21, 23). And the theme continues immediately after the parable in chapters 8-10, where, for example, Jesus warns his disciples, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (10:28).
Jesus levels these warnings of end-time judgment even at his own disciples. While elsewhere in the Bible, especially in Paul, we are taught that we are saved by grace through faith, Jesus explains that faith is not merely intellectual assent, but a shift of one’s allegiance to Christ that is accompanied by true repentance. Thus, the believer is a disciple who produces fruit in keeping with repentance; fruit-producing is not optional, nor is keeping Jesus’s commandments.

 Let us then be true and wise disciples who are diligent not only to hear but practice Jesus’ teaching so that we may stand when the eschatological waters rise and beat upon our rock-built houses.