Bible Lesson 29

#3 IN A SERIES

Welcome to this third installment of our series on the foundation of our families, our churches, and our country. In the last two installments, we found that when we say foundation, what we mean is the heart and soul of what makes us what we are. Builders begin a building with a foundation, and usually, that begins by finding a firm and level and safe place to build.

Certainly, God has taught us that there are places that are not firm enough to build upon; and we can see that, in cracked foundations as a result of certain clays and sands that we sometimes build upon. We know that it’s not always safe to build on the side of a mountain or hill; because we have witnessed, on our West coast, houses sliding down hills and mountains and being destroyed. Just think about the “Leaning Tower of Pisa” there in Italy and all of the engineering that has gone into keeping that tower from falling as a result of building on an unstable foundation. I don’t think we have to spend too much time agreeing to the fact that foundations are not only important but that they are crucial.

With that in mind, let’s move on to what we know makes up a solid foundation. For the builders, those who build homes and businesses and hotels and the like, a foundation means that thing that ensures a solid foot-print for the building that we want to erect. For our families, we know that it takes marriage and strong individuals who are joined together; and who have agreed on where they want to take their family.

That means that the mother and father of the family must be able-bodied, at least to the extent that they can fulfill their responsibilities to do what is required of them. Then it takes a dedication to each other, and self-disciple, to make sure that ends are met, and things get done. How important are foundations?

It seems that God was concerned with foundations; because God uses the term foundation or foundations some 86 times in the Bible. God is concerned about foundations because unless we have a good solid foundation, we will build, only to have our buildings fall, and people mock us for our failure (Luke 14:28-29). Well, by now, I imagine that you are asking yourself, what are we going to build, and the answer is that we build our individual lives, and that plays into building our families, and that plays into our churches and our schools and our communities, and eventually our nation.

So far in this series, we have dwelt upon the foundation of our families, and we will continue in this lesson to look at our personal and family foundations. In our personal lives, we build, over the years of our life, our foundation; and that involves a personal idea of where we want to go with our lives, and what we want to do: whether we want to work for others or whether we want to start a business.

We continue to build on our foundation, as we establish a regimen that will guard our health; and we apply ourselves to gain a good education. We strive to strengthen friendships and family ties, and a myriad of other things that all go together to make our foundation strong. The same kind of thing also builds strong family foundations.

Ultimately, as we continue to mix the ingredients that make up a strong foundation, we must come to a point where we realize that the most important thing that we can have in our foundation is a strong faith in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must come to understand, first, that there is a God and He is presented to us in His Word the Holy Bible. We must cultivate a desire to know more about God and what He has said to us in His Word the Bible. If you remember, we said in the first lesson of this series on Foundations, that Jesus Christ, the God-Man, who came from heaven to the earth was willing to leave the Glory and Grace of heaven and come to the earth for a time and take on the form and flesh of man. Christ did that for a purpose and it was to demonstrate how to live the way God would have us to live while here on the earth.

Christ was God in a form that man can better understand; and as he lived here on the earth for 33 years, He made it clear that there are two routes that men will invariably follow while they live their short lives here on the earth. Some will do it like the song made popular by Frank Sinatra that goes?..”I did it my way”. We will refer to that way as the way of the flesh, and it is a way always puts man in an environment that is almost insurmountable. When man attempts to cut his trail so to speak, and he depends upon his strength and cunning to make his daily bread, he spends his days, looking behind him and always fearing what the next day will bring. This man may accumulate a few dollars in the bank, but he has no real peace and he is always fearful; because he knows that his status is always uncertain. He doesn’t have a good foundation!

Jesus warns us in His Sermon on the Mount, there in Matthew chapter seven and verses 24-27, that it is not our way that is best; but His way. Jesus explains there that the finest foundation is laid when men hear what He has said and acts according to what they hear. The word hears, means that a man must know what God has inspired holy men of old to write for us, and that comes in personal knowledge of the Bible. “Hear” there does not refer to our taking whatever another man tells us the Bible has to say. Knowledge of God comes from concerted effort, the study of the Bible as we pray and ask God to illuminate what we are reading. Jesus says in Matthew 7:24 that the man who knows the Word of God and builds upon that knowledge is a “wise” man; because He builds upon the rock. What rock was Jesus talking about there? It is evident from reading the Bible in context, that Jesus was speaking of Himself; because the Bible refers to Jesus as the Rock, in First Corinthians 10:1-6, and First Peter 2:1-8 and others.

Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, God in the flesh, is our firm foundation, and if we embrace Him and submit our lives to Him and follow His Word the Bible, we will weather the storms of this life on earth, at peace, with the sure promise of eternal life with Him in heaven. So, why won?t more people seek Him and the forgiveness of their sin? That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question, but it all goes back to the kind of foundation that we lay for our lives.

We tend to be like the religious leaders and their followers there in Jerusalem when Christ went to the Cross, we don’t know why we won’t come to Christ for salvation, we just won’t! Every person born of woman in this world, except for Christ, was born under the wrath of God! We are the children of Adam and his nature was our rule and guide, unless and until God works to bring us from death to life and we repent and follow Jesus Christ, trusting Him and Him alone to be our hope of eternal life.

I hope you all will read the scriptures that I give here in these lessons because they justify what I am telling you, and they are the voice of God to all of us. I hope you will read the first two chapters of Ephesians, and pay particular attention to what God tells you through the Apostle Paul. In the Epistle to the Ephesians God reveals to us that Paul was writing this letter to those who “measure up” there in Ephesus. He was not writing to a Church at Ephesus (because there was no church there at the time), He was writing to those as he says in verse one of chapter one, “To the “saints” who are in Ephesus, and the “faithful” in Christ Jesus.”

This was a letter to specific people, those who had been “called out by God” and saved and who acted like saints because they were faithful in Christ Jesus. Paul calls them saints in Ephesians chapter one and verses one, Then in chapter two and verse one he reminds them of where they had come from. They had been at one time “dead in trespass and sin”, their foundations were crumbling and they were obeying their father the devil and were by nature the children of wrath.

God had shown them grace and had “quickened” them, or brought them back to Spiritual life so that they could see their depravity and repent and be saved. Look on down to verse ten of chapter two and you will see that the saved person, or saint, has been made a new creature, “In Christ”, so that they could do the good works that God intended for them to do before they were ever saved. God does not come to us and patch up our foundations! Instead, God clears a new pad and puts down a new foundation, one that will stand for eternity.

Can you look back to some time in your life and see that you became a new person, a new creature, with a new desire, and a new allegiance and a new persona? I hope that you can; but if you can?t; and you diligently seek the face of God and fall at the foot of the Cross and ask God to do that new work in your life, God says that if you come to Christ the way He says to come (see Luke 14:26-33); then God won’t hold that against you. This is the need of every person in the world, nothing is more important than this because it involves, not just the “now” of our lives, but the eternity that is to be lived after our death. All of us have some kind of eternity, either an eternity that will be joyful, and delightful in the presence of the One who died for us, or an eternity of pain and terror with the one who steals our souls, as he confounds us and makes us think that we do not need God.

Right now, I would ask you to stop and think and examine your foundation! What are you building your foundation on? Is it the sand of self and self-sufficiency and self-worship? If that is the material that is going into your foundation, it will surely crumble at the least little pressure. We all know that in building houses and great buildings, that the builder uses the best high-grade steel rebar and wire and concrete as a material for building that foundation. We need the best of the best for our individual and family foundations also, and time has proven that there is only one thing that makes a good foundation for our lives and that is the Rock of Jesus Christ. If you know Jesus in the forgiveness of your sin, if you have cast your self on Him and His sacrificial death for your sins, and if you have turned from sin to follow Jesus, then and only then will your foundation stand that final inspection, the judgment of Christ.

Our families are beginning to the founder, and be destroyed and if the family goes, then our homes go and our schools go and our churches go and our nation goes. In the beginning, God made the family first, before He made the church, or government, or anything else, God made the family be the glue that holds all the other together. We have failed God in keeping our families strong and united and obedient to God. Is it too late to seek Christ for our foundation? Only God knows the answer; however, unless we begin to study our Bibles and bring our families in line with God’s will, we cannot bring them back. So, now the question becomes, what are you willing to do about it, and what am I willing to do about it. I make you this promise, I am going to continue to study God’s Word and to speak it and preach it and write it, as God gives me light. I am going to pay particular attention to my own family as well as the families around me and I will speak the truth wherever God allows me to do so. Let’s all, make the effort to do those kinds of things and be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.

Until next time,

may God bless and keep you

This is Bro. Bob