Keith Battle - Rock Solid - Part 3

All right, we’re ready to get into the Word of God today. Are you ready? All right, I’ll take that! This is part three of a series called «Rock Solid: Building and Remodeling Our Homes God’s Way.» Let me shout out the digital media team for these cool graphics—that’s really cool right there! Each week we’ve been building on this series. We started off with framing, then moved to drywall, and I think this week we have a picture that shows they moved into the house, and you can see the boxes. They replicated it on—ain’t that cool how they did that little replication situation? Amen! What number does that cost? I’m so grateful for the creatives in our church who make these things possible. That is a picture of a family, a marriage, a home, or a life that is constantly being built. You’ve got to build it; you’ve got to keep building it and working on it, or it will atrophy and dissipate. That is our role and responsibility.

I want to go back to Matthew chapter 7, which has been our foundational passage for this series, and I want to read it one more time into your hearing. As has become our custom, we stand for this part of the service as we honor God’s Word and His voice through the reading of His Word. If you are physically able to stand, please join us in standing at this time. If you’re not, that’s okay; you don’t have to stand. But we stand to say, «Lord, ” as Samuel was told by Eli to say to God when God spoke to him, „Speak, Lord; your servant is listening.“ That’s the posture we should take before God’s Word—“Speak, Lord; your servant is listening.» Because if I understand I’m your servant, I listen differently. I’m not listening just to be entertained; I’m listening to be instructed about my life. «Speak, Lord; your servant is listening.» Not just a guest at church, but your servant is listening. Speak to me, Lord!

Verse 24 says, «Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise, and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock.» Verse 26: «But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand.» And verse 27 says, «When the rains and floods come, and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.» Amen. You may be seated.

The March 15, 1911 edition of The New York Times had a very interesting article about a church on Barclay Street in Manhattan. What was interesting about this story, about Saint Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, is that it talked about how this church had stood for 73 years in the community: a beautiful edifice, strong and vibrant, with granite walls that didn’t even have a crack in them. However, when a skyscraper was built next door, this building, which had stood for 73 years without any signs of distress, immediately began to show signs of distress throughout the entire structure. They started to see cracks, and I don’t mean hairline cracks—I mean cracks that were one inch thick and stretched ten feet in some places. On certain parts of the building, the cracks would go all the way up the wall. There was a transom at one of the entrances of the building that was cracked and literally about to collapse, and there were window sills that were made of concrete that were literally crumbling—all because of the weight of what came next to it.

Here’s a building that stood for 73 years, and now the southwest side of the building was literally bulging. It was bulging, and I don’t just mean a little bump like a pimple on a building; I’m talking about bulges that were six feet in diameter. The trauma to the building was so astonishing that the New York City Department of Facilities closed it down, considering it unsafe for occupancy. A building that had been open for 73 years without any incident had to be closed and shut down because, even though it looked strong, when something big came next to it, it began to crumble.

Now what is interesting about the story, as research reveals, is going to blow your mind: the inspectors found out—you won’t believe this—that Saint Peter’s Roman Catholic Church had been built on sand. They took the research further, because when inspectors check a building, when they see a crack on the seventh floor, they don’t spackle and patch the crack; they go into the basement. Cracks may show up on the third floor, but the problem lies in the foundation. This is what we do: we cover and spackle the cracks in our lives and paint over them, but we’re not getting to what’s causing the crack. When they went into the foundation, they found nothing but sand under the building. Then they researched the skyscraper, and the skyscraper developers said they had to remove an immense amount of sand from the area before they could start building and laying the foundation. This thing had stood for 73۔۔۔۔