Both houses look the same as far as you can see. The difference lies beneath the surface, but this is hidden from the eye. The house without the foundation probably looked better: more money had been spent on the superstructure because the foundation had been left out. If you ignore God, soon your life will be valueless. You may appear to make better progress, but if you do it without God, your house is insubstantial. There is no living soul, no guidance from God, no eternal hope. The foolish person’s house is liable to settlement. In no time changes will take place – you will have to form new opinions because the old don’t match up anymore. The person building on the sand spent just as much time on it outwardly: what was the point of it? All the heartache, all the effort, and it will all pass and be swept away, some things even before death. All your years will be wasted. We have heard that God can be known and found, and yet we make no effort to seek him. What fools we are!
Some tell themselves that the storm will not come, that the floods will not rise and the wind will not blow on their little house. Somehow, they will escape all these troubles and they convince themselves that the danger of all these things is exaggerated. They will be able to hide in some little corner of existence out of reach of these searching troubles. Perhaps none of their acquaintances take this message seriously, and they are ashamed to be different. For one reason or another, they hear what Christ says, but they refuse to act on it.
Proud men will not connect with the foundation provided by God. They want to be self-sufficient, their house not dependant on anything else. They want to take the sole credit for their house. It is strong enough on its own to withstand what comes against it, they say, but of course it is not. The same trials that they have seen strike other houses will strike theirs too, for there is no one who is exempt from God’s judgment. When this house was put to the test, it fell suddenly. What looked like a robust building became a heap of rubble in an instant. When those who came afterwards investigated the disaster, they found that the work of preparation had not been done. That invisible work of repentance is something that only the individual and God knows about. It is not easy for others to see what is hidden beneath the ground.
So many imagine that in some sense they know the Lord, and are accepted. It doesn’t bother them to hear of conversions; they do not ask seriously, has that happened to me? ‘I don’t need to go through some seeking process. I ought to be able to know God as I am. I don’t need to humble myself.’ They have no consciousness of the great gulf between man and God. Some say ‘God cannot be known. I believe in a God. I can pray, he will help. But I don’t need to know him personally. Some are rather mystical. They think knowing God is having funny feelings under a strange spiritual faculty. But there is only one way to know God according to the Bible. God tells us precisely what it is to know him.
Some say, ‘I can cope with all these problems without the help of God. God is for weak people to lean on.’ But how do you cope? By gritting your teeth? By becoming hard or insensitive or bitter about life? Or by complaining to all around you, full of self-pity? Can you face trials with humility, without feeling hard done by, without becoming angry at the unfairness of life? Without God we see no lasting benefit in trials; we only have a great sense of loss. For the Christian all things work for good.