So here is the sum of it.  Jesus has been describing a way to live governed by God’s principles, life God’s way, a heart being filled with God.  This happens early in Luke’s account: we’re told the principles; over the remaining chapters we see these principles in practice.  Jesus has asked us to consider what fills the heart.  If we’re going to be honest, although we like a lot of what we hear Jesus saying, we also have reservations.  Jesus can say some things, beloved!  Jesus has a way of telling it like it is.  Even now, we prefer our fantastic fantasies, faith our way.  But Jesus is Lord, my sweet Lord, really want to know you, really want to see you Lord, but it takes so long my Lord.  But wait—George Harrison was singing about Krishna, not Jesus.  Oh well.

Jesus is Lord: that is the earliest confession of Christian faith.  Both Lord and Son of God were titles also used for the Roman emperor.  Lord meant supreme and final authority—the one to be obeyed at all times at all costs.  Jesus is Lord.  Where that was the case, the emperor could not be Lord.  Unless you had two lords.  Oh, but who has two lords?  What fills the heart?  We all struggle with at least two lords.  To live devotion to Christ is to be in the world’s crosshairs.  The Tempter takes special note of those striving to live their devotion to Christ.

Everyone obeys his or her lord.  Jesus asks, “Now why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (6:46).  I don’t think we’re in an age of Christian lip service.  There aren’t many people attending churches who call Jesus their Lord, there, but outside church don’t want anything to do with Jesus.  But we all have moments when we’ve proclaimed Jesus is Lord even as we deliberately, knowingly have not done what we remember Jesus told us to do, and done what we know Jesus tells us not do to.  We’ve all thrown a little allegiance, here and there, now and again, to other lords.  Let’s now be diligent and watchful that we don’t make a habit of allegiance to any other lord.  If it looks like such a habit may be forming, or feels like it’s already in place, don’t let yourself helplessly fall further away or curl up isolated in yourself: ask for prayer, get on your knees as often as you must, fall on your face before the Lord, and trust that, though the way be rough sure enough, there is salvation for those who have faith.  Obedience comes with a cost, just as there is a price to be paid for disobedience.

“What do you think?  There was a man who had two sons.  He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’  ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.  Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing.  He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go” (Mt 21:28-30).  We know which did the will of the father.  Saying you will but then not doing it—yes, it’s disobedience, but it’s also dishonesty: worse, it’s a failure of love.  Better to say you won’t and then have a change of mind, a change of heart—a reassignment of allegiance—better to think better of your refusal, than to say you will just to get the Old Man off your back, with no intention of following through.  Oh, there’s always an excuse, even, sometimes, a plausible excuse, but never an exonerating excuse.  “I just got so busy with those other lords, Lord.”  What fills the heart shows; it shows in what we do, what we choose to do.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 7:21).  This may sound a little harsher than we like to hear Jesus, our soft, gentle lovey-lamb, but consider, he is telling us in advance: Jesus is Lord truly and only for those who do God’s will.  There’s nothing so surprising about that.  Our devotion is demonstrated in our living: what fills our heart will spill over, will show.  Let’s keep working on getting our living in line with our avowed devotion, filling ourselves with all the good God makes available.  It’s not as if this is hopeless and we helpless!  Words are substantiated by choices, decisions, actions, daily, hourly: Oh, I need Thee every hour!  We need help; we all need help.  Help is available.  We know where to go for help—we ought to know.  But knowing there is help and truly wanting the help are not the same.  Alcoholics know about AA.  Homeless people know there are shelters, programs.  When we truly want the help, we will go to the true help.  The trouble with any bad habit is that we want help to be rid of it, and we don’t.

Let us always be resolved to live up to the Father’s love.  We joke and groan about resolutions.  We know God wants a certain way of life for us, a way that reflects rather than obscures Him, a way that helps others to see His glory and glorify Him.  That comes as we listen and show we have heard by doing as the Spirit directs.  When the Spirit urges and we go another way entirely, we’re only grieving the Spirit.  Our sanctification is a very long, drawn out process, with what feel like many setbacks and delays along the way.  Our comfort, consolation, and constant encouragement is that the Spirit will accomplish God’s purpose in us.  Our resolve, our follow-through, our prayers in success and in failure—these are all from the Spirit.

There is no wisdom without listening.  Listening requires effort and attention, shifting focus away from ourselves and our preoccupations.  Scripture is plain that genuine listening results in action, that right action is the fruit of true listening.  “Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when there was a flood, the river burst against that house and yet it could not shake it, because it had been well built” (6:47-48).  A foundation on the rock.  There’s deep digging involved in that.  Though it cooled off for a year and more, the building boom in Columbia Lakes is back, if on a more modest scale.  Take a look at the sites, and you will notice that, once the framing is up, the houses come together in relatively short order.  You’ll also notice it seems to take a long while, from when the dozers first clear the site to when the framing goes up.  Getting the foundation right takes a long time, and should, for what seem obvious reasons.  Anyone here needed foundation repair?  You know the best way to fix a bad foundation?  Replace it with a good foundation, a firm foundation.  Oh, but that’s so expensive!  Yes, it is costly.

It’s not if the flood comes but when.  Around here, we know.  Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians that whatever is built on the foundation will be tested, even with fire.  Some structures will hold up.  All that will be left of others is an ash heap.  That sounds kind of sad, but Paul’s point is that, even if terrible storms, terrible trials come, so long as the foundation is good, hope remains.  We’ve got to see to it that the foundation is right, good, true.  What is the foundation?  Jesus, certainly, and what Jesus teaches: life God’s way, filling our hearts.  This is certainly, in part, a matter of kindness, charity, compassion.  It’s also, and very much, a matter of faith: who can preserve us in any and all disaster?  God.  Faith, however, is not a matter only of trusting God, trusting that God loves us and will help us—because we need help, just as we need love.  Faith is also a matter of devotion to God: actively, conscientiously, continually putting God first, permitting our hearts to be filled with God.  Faith is giving as well as receiving.  This is why it is so closely connected with love and why breaking faith is akin to violating love.  To put God first in our hearts, we must know God rightly.  Knowing God rightly relies upon the Spirit, at work through several channels: prayer and time with God’s Word being two main channels.  Living our ministry for Christ is another.  Only get the Holy Spirit, and God will do the rest.

When the storms come—and we know, we’ve seen, they come, meteorological and otherwise—we need the right foundation: trust and devotion.  Faith and love look like something, applied to life.  As these are applied to life, they shape our life.  Trust and devotion help shape lives around us, which is why the love and faith of one another is so vital for a Christian community, and for a Christian community reaching out into the wider community.  No one can be a church unto himself, a congregation unto herself.  It isn’t possible and isn’t what God wants.

I can describe and discuss the principles; the application is up to each of us.  We each have only so much time.  Let us use it wisely, which means faithfully, being guided by faith, putting faith first, each day.  But how?  With attention, decision, and a lot of prayer.  Prayer, in part, is for attention, and decision.  We can become better aware of where and how faith is and is not guiding our daily living.  There are areas of our life where true, saving faith is firmly guiding us.  There are also some other areas.  The one who acts on Christ’s teaching, relying upon the strength and reliability of God’s Word, God’s Spirit, is secure, despite the storms, despite the weak points and sub-par materials of the structure.

“But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation; and the river burst against it and it immediately collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great” (6:49).  Who would be so stupid?  If you’re building near a river, that floods, surely you’re going to want a foundation.  It’s got to be a good one.  Unless you’re building a shack or some structure meant only to be temporary, as if why put a lot into it?  Or maybe the builder believes he has built far enough from the river so that there’s no danger.  Any Bar X people, here?  They’re building high, now.  And why?

You know, I’m a little concerned about this mini building boom in Columbia Lakes, especially the houses being built along Twin Lakes Boulevard.  Oh, it’s a nice location, as those of you who live on that street already know: right by the water, seeing the morning sun over the water, the mist, the quiet, is just beautiful.  If you live on that street, you also know that when it rains, the rainwater doesn’t have anywhere to go: the soil along the lakes is near saturation as it is.  Rainwater sits there for days; the ground stays muddy long after.  You can slosh through the grass and sink down in the mud at almost any time of year, there on Twin Lakes.  Around here, it doesn’t take long to find swamp land.

So, the foundation slab can be a good slab, poured right, level, thick—whatever makes for a good slab—and still, there on Twin Lakes, crack crack!  Getting the foundation right isn’t a matter only of a good slab.  It’s also a matter of getting the site properly prepared, doing that site work, improving the drainage, thinking about elevation, soil composition; knowing what you are building on, getting a handle on what you’re working with.  The site needs to be properly amended.  A good slab on an unprepared site isn’t going to help.  A bad slab on a good site is just a crying shame.  Either way, there’s no foundation worth talking about.

But we’re eager to build, in a hurry to build, move in.  We want things, even good things, and we want them now.  Christ is one of those wise, exasperating builders who knows the value of patience, perspective, and proper preparation.  He knows things will come up; he knows to expect delays.  Do you know the Kingdom has already been at least seven thousand years in the making—much longer, actually!  Jesus is in no rush—we don’t always like that about Jesus, don’t always appreciate it or see the sacred wisdom in it.  Just make it happen now, Jesus!  Jesus is trying to teach us, remind us, show us, that what we really need is to make sure we give ourselves the best foundation we can on a site improved as much as possible.  He asks us to ask ourselves if we’re giving ourselves the best we can get.  He wants the best for us.  He will give his time and his labor for us, to help us have it.  He will give his life, to give it to us.