Building on the Rock
Ig deep, and lay youp foundation well, is our earnest advice to every awakened soul. Almost every revival brings into the Church more or less of what may be called “shaky professors.” Their religious life is frail, ill-built, tottering, and liable to come down in the first stiff gale of temptation. The simple reason is, that there was no underlying godliness based on Jesus Christ. When you see a huge crack in the third-storey room of a tall mansion, you may at once suppose that there is something wrong in the foundation. So with a religious profession that is not bottomed on the Lord Jesus Christ. Sooner or later the crack appears in the daily life; or else the flimsy structure leans over from the perpendicular “like a bowing wall and a tottering fence.” Even if it manage to hold itself up until the dying hour, the tremendous surge of death tumbles the whole edifice of presumption and falsehood into utter, irretrieveable ruin. When the last storm descends, and the floods beat upon it, it falls; and “great will be the fall of it,” for eternity can bring no repair of the wreck.
Christ, in his searching Sermon on the Mount, spoke of two classes of builders. The one built o the sandj and the other buill on Ni toO«., lO Heart’ Life.
the hour of trial came upon both alike, the quicksand upset the one, and the rock-bed upheld the other. The one stood because it had 2. foundation; the other fell for want of one. Now, just here is the vital point with every anxious seeker after salvation; for it will be a terrible thing for you to find out at last that you have been building on the sand!
In building for eternity there is but one sure foundation. God is rich in resources, but he has provided only one plan of salvation. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.’* What is meant by this? We believe it means, that when sinful man had no righteousness of his own to stand upon, Christ” becomes to him righteousness.” When he has no strength, Jesus offers to put His infinite arm beneath him. When the sinful soul has no inward principle to base a godly life upon, Jesus implants one through regeneration. When he has no pattern to live by, Jesus furnishes a perfect model. And when any penitent man sincerely embraces Christ Jesus as his Saviour, rests on His atonement for pardon, looks to Jesus for guidance, leans on Jesus for support, and is united to Jesus in heart and in daily life, then may he be said to have built on Jesus as his spiritual foundation. When a man thus embraces Christ, he has a rock-bed infinite and immovable beneath him. If you ask such a man why he expects to be saved, his simple answer is, ‘’Christ died for me, and His blood deanseth from all sin” If you ask laim tK^ ^oMnd of his assurance, he answers with Paul, “I know whom I have believed” If you inquire of him whence he derives strength for the strain of daily life, its wrenching trials, its wrestling temptations, and its toils, he can humbly testify that down in the depths of his soul there is an underlying grace which Christ doth furnish. This work of Christ for him and within him is his foundation. It underlies his religion, just as the granite underlies the heaven-kissing hills. If you take away the divine Jesus from this man, you take away his faith, his hope, his peace, his strength, his character, his all.
Now, my friend, here is a Rock for your soul — the Rock of Ages. If you build on an5rthing else — on your prayers or your professions, on your morality or your philanthropy, on your ceremonies or your church-membership — you are building on the sand. Morality is a very beautiful part of a Christian’s superstructure, but it is not 2l foundation, “Other foundation,*’ remember, “no man can lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” We have seen some melancholy crashes in the moral career of men; we have heard some terrible falls in dying chambers. They were the down-tumblings of a false hope that was bottomed on the sand. When the floods came and the winds smote on it, it fell, and great was the fall thereof!
But when a penitent soul has committed itself to Jesus, and the new heart, the new principle, and the new purpose, have come to it through conversion thea on this sure foundation whal a liawpiipi. sA io life may be built! A well-built life is just the laying up of one grace and good deed upon another; of faith, and patience, and temperance, and benevolence, and courage, and self-denial, and brotherly love. It is growing in grace. It is the sacred architecture of the Holy Spirit. “Ye are God’s building.”
A well-built Christian is harmonious in all his parts. He is not a jumble of opposites and inconsistencies — to-day devout and to-morrow frivolous, to-day liberal and to-morrow stingy, to-day fluent in prayer and to-morrow fluent in falsehoods. He does not keep the fourth commandment on Sunday and break the eighth commandment by cunning frauds on Monday. His philanthropy does not outrun his conscientiousness, nor do his spiritual fervours outrun his inward faith and self-denials. Some professed Christians are as unfinished as the cathedral at Cologne, where vast towers have risen no higher than mere stumps, and where ugly wooden cranes conceal an exquisite Gothic tracery. Do not expect to reach absolute Christian perfection; but that is no reason why you should settle down content with a wilful and wretched imperfection.
As we close, we point you to the Rock of Ages — Christ Jesus. You never can be saved but through Him. Every hour is worse than lost that you spend away from Christ. There is a dying-bed spreading for you somewhere, my friend; there is a shroud somewhere weaving. There is a storm coming that wJ22 strain and try your spiritual hope to .Vve Mtmot,
See to it that you are well founded. The way to avoid the sand is to strike for the rock. Dig deep, and lay your foundation well. He that heareth the voice of Christ, and doeth His will, he is the wise man who buildeth his house upon the rock. Steadily the structure rises, stone on stone. Sometimes in tears and trials the builder buildeth; sometimes through storms of persecution and reproach. But he builds for eternity. And it shall be of such as he that the celestial chant shall yet be heard: “Here is the patience of the saints; here are they that kept the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”