He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. Luke 6:48
The farm had a good many buildings on it, barns and sheds and other structures, filled with animals, fodder, and machinery for the operation. The farmer had discovered that the land was very rich, and crops were abundant, and he had prospered very quickly, enabling him to expand his farm rapidly. Because of the need for speed in building new barns and sheds, he had built them with very little foundation. The area seemed dry, with no likelihood of a flood, so little foundation was required. Or so he thought. What he failed to grasp was the reason for the richness of his soil. A few years before he arrived, the area had been a flood zone, inundated every spring by a large river. But the river had been diverted upstream, and now ran in a different channel, well away from the farm. It had left rich, silt-laden soil that was ideal for farming. But one spring, the river burst out of its new channel into the old one, and bore down on the big new farm with a vengeance. When the water receded, the only building left standing on the farm was the well house, which the farmer had built on a rock foundation. Most people’s lives are like that farm, built on no expectation of a flood that will always come.
Every one of us enters into times of disaster and loss, and if we don’t experience these times now, we will do so when our mortal frames reach their deadline. The world enjoys the blessings of God in the bounty that He spreads for all, with little thought that the bountiful times will be replaced with the floods. And like the farmer who skimped on foundations, they will lose everything. That’s why the foundations are needed, why the Lord Jesus speaks in our text of a man whose house was wisely situated on a rock. There is a Rock that will withstand the floods, a Rock that can be depended on to allow us to prevail despite the height of the flood and the ferocity of the storm. The Lord Jesus identifies the Rock in the previous verse: whosoever cometh to Me and heareth My words and doeth them.
We apply this parable in the Gospel, and well we should, because it is a clear and simple explanation for the Gospel message. But it goes beyond that and is to be applied to the life of the Christian, too. In fact, it can be applied to each day of our Christian walk, and to each situation we encounter during the day. There are floods just waiting to overwhelm us if we are not prepared, if our foundation is not in place. Step One is coming to Him. Yielding ourselves each day to His lordship and direction is critical to a foundation that will survive. So is Step Two, hearing His words. Only in the Scriptures will we find the wisdom and direction that will support us in the world’s turmoils. Step three, doing His words, refers to obedience. If we obey Him, we will always be right.
The foundation for everything we need for surviving every storm that comes is simply trusting and obeying our Lord. -Jim MacIntosh