Beware Where You Build // How To (Still) Survive A Horror Movie // Read
Randy Meeks, the horror film fanatic from the movie Scream, declared that “The horror genre was destroyed by sequels.” And while he may have a point (we’re looking at you, Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan), we beg to differ! Because sometimes a horror movie sequel breaks new territory, pushes its story into uncharted places, and, on rare occasions, is superior to the original. And that’s why this #SpookySZN, we’re creeping into our own scary sequel; once again learning what to do when we find out the movie of our life has become a horror flick. So grab some popcorn, turn off all the lights, and join us as we find out how following Jesus can help us survive the deadly mistakes and wrong turns that have taken the lives of so many others.
Almost every other haunted house movie has the same premise. A house was built on a cemetery or a sacred burial ground. Which begs the question: “What in the world were the builders thinking?” We all know that the foundation of a house is it’s most crucial component...Speaking of which—where are you building the house of your life? Are you building on a solid foundation, or one that will lead to hauntings and “horror movie moments” of your own?
From that, man, thank you, Matt, for sharing your testimony today there. There are so many good pieces of truth in that. But one thing that I really want us to hold on to and talk about today is what Matt said right there at the end, he said a phrase that we've talked about a lot here at Cornerstone pastor Brenda has kind of popularized this, this phrase, this idea of the best time to plant a seed being 20 years ago, and second-best time being today. So I want us to kind of hone in as we start today's sermon on this idea of planting seeds. We're going to be reading from Matthew chapter 13. And if you have a Bible want to follow along, and actually what we're gonna do is we start today for people on-site, if you're physically able, if you would go ahead and stand in honor of the reading of God's Word today, let's stand to our feet. Sometimes it's good for us to just physically posture ourselves out of respect for God and who he is. So let's do that this morning. As we read this is what Scripture tells us in Matthew 13. That same day, Jesus went out of the house and he sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, but all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parable saying a farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on the rocky places where it did not have much soil, it sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seeds fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. But still, Other seeds fell on good soil, were produced a crop 160 or 30 times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear while you guys are standing. Before we pray and hop into the rest of the sermon, I just want to point out two things that jumped out to me as I was studying this piece of scripture this week. The first is that the seed that is scattered, it's the same seed. Scripture makes no delineation, no separation between the seed that is scattered, one seed isn't better than the other. One seed isn't more capable of producing a crop than any other seed, they're all the same. This brings me to the second point, the seed doesn't matter for success, but the soil does. The soil determines success. And so what I want to say to you today is if you find yourself in a horror movie moment right now, if you find yourself in a period of life where things are hard, things are difficult and you're feeling pushed in pressed on. I want to let you know that your soil if you are planting yourself if your foundation is in the right place, no matter what life brings your way, no matter how hard it may seem, you can overcome if the soil is good. With that, let's bow our heads, and let's pray the real quick father, God help us today to plant ourselves in good soil. Help us today to build ourselves upon the right firm foundation, the foundation of your Son Jesus Christ, there is no other foundation, but his nothing that can hold up our life like he can help us to make that decision today. God allows us to hear Your word and for it to transform our hearts, our minds in our souls so that we would become more like Jesus and everything we do. We love you. We pray all this in your name, amen. Amen. You guys can grab a seat and as you do, we're still you know, the pandemic still going on. And some people kind of weird about physical touch, I was gonna have you high five somebody next to you. But since some people might be weirded out about that, just give the person next to you a bro nod just one of these as a right, just acknowledge a tip of the cap, if you will just acknowledge it here. I tip my cat everybody watching online as well. So we're talking about seeds. We're talking about planting seeds. If you've spent any time at Cornerstone, you know, I love my lawn. I'm a big lawn care guy, right? I'm a big, big lawn care guy. It's no secret.
My lawn, I try to take good care of it. And there's one patch of grass. That is not grass. It's been driving me crazy out in my backyard by my one tree. There's a patch of just dirt. It's been like that pretty much since we've moved in. And it's driven me nuts because I don't like it. I want grass and I want it to be lush and green and look good. And so this has been driving me crazy. So after last year I was determined like this. This will be the year I'm going to plant my flag in the ground and it's going to be a beautiful lawn from start to finish. Like I'm going to get this done. So I bought the right kind of seed right lots of like heavy shade seed mix, I went over and I, you know, raked up the soil a little bit and I laid the seed down and I put a little bit of hay over different parts of it just to make sure during the first couple days that it would be okay. Made sure it was watered, did everything right, and lo and behold, about a week and a half, two weeks later, I go outside and there's little like seedlings popping through like there are little sprouts in it looks glorious. There's just greenery like sprouting through all this dirt. It's green. And I'm so excited. I told Jessica and the kids to come out and I'd look, look at this. And the kids get ready to run on it. I'm like, No, look, don't touch it. Don't even look at it wrong, like just leaving me. So I'm so excited. Sadly, that excitement came to an end about a month when all of this grass and started to grow. And it looked good man like it was green like the dirt was gone. It looked great out there. But it like withered a month down the road started the weather. And it kept getting thinner and thinner. And I'm like, What am I doing? Right? Like we're watering it, we're doing all the right things. But weathered, it went away. And right now today, it looks as bad as it did at the start of spring. Like it just looks like a big dirt patch again. And I was so frustrated. I'm like, What did I do wrong? And so I was looking into it, I'm like, man, what would have caused that. And the thing that I neglected to do was mix in with the current soil, new topsoil. So the one thing I forgot to do, I got the right kind of seed. I was watering it, I used hay to help keep the moisture and I was doing all of the right things. But the foundation that I was building on the soil that I was planting in was robbed of its nutrients. It was a bad base. And because of that the seeds that I planted, withered, and hide, I say all of that to say foundations matter. Foundations matter. When I and Jessica moved up to Cleveland, one of the first places I wanted us to go to this is kind of weird. One of the first places I want us to go to is a place called City View Center. Has anyone ever heard of Cindy View Center in Cleveland, Garfield Heights, specifically?
To what I thought Absolutely. Anybody online and anybody doesn't do a Google search first I want to know. Yeah, chances are you haven't heard of it. And this is why you have it. So this place, whenever we've driven up to Cleveland, I've always seen it, I see it off the highway. It's just across the 480 bridge on the other side of the valley. And I've seen it and I'm like, oh, it looks like there's a shopping complex over there. I wonder what else is over there. And I've always thought it'd be cool to go check this place out and see what's over there. But every time we're driving up to Cleveland, it's for a concert or a movie or a gamer show something like that. So we never have time to just stop off and check this place out. But whenever we moved up there, I'm like, Oh, this perfect. One of these times. We'll just drive by and see what's going on over there. So we did that. We go pulling in this place is a ghost town. A literal Ghost Town City View Center is now what they call a dead Mall. A lot like rolling acres, right how rolling acres just became a ghost town. This place is a ghost town, but they became ghost towns for different reasons. Rolling acres, the economy in that area just shriveled up in the mall it wasn't really visited as much this place though City View Center. Whenever it was built man retailers were like lining up to get in there was built in 2006 there was a Best Buy there. There was a Walmart a giant eagle, a Marshalls, Ruby Tuesday, chick, Chick-fil was gonna go in there Starbucks, all this different stuff is going to be a big shopping center, right there outside of Cleveland. And within two years, two years of this place opening up. So from 2006 to 2008. It had closed down. And it wasn't an economic downturn or anything like that. Whenever you drive in, it's so weird, because you got this strip mall that's just empty and across the street, there are businesses, everything's fine, everything's looking good. But what happened? What happened here? What happened is they built on a landfill. What happened was they didn't do proper surveys. And there were gas leaks and methane gas pouring through compromising the structural integrity of the building. So one by one, all of these retailers pulled out. They didn't want to be there anymore. They couldn't be there anymore. So now today, and only two years, two, only two years after this place opened. Out of all of those national retailers the only place it's still there is because they're all the way down at the end where it's still safe to be his giant eagle. That's it. Other than that ghost town.
I say all of that to say foundations matter. Foundations matter. Now, what does any of this have to do with horror movies? What does any of this have to do with horror movies? Because that is what we're talking about right? How to still survive a horror movie. The connection is that pretty commonly when you watch horror movies, you are seeing characters walk in and purchase or move into these houses that are Built on shaky foundations. We talked about this a little bit last week, these people walk into this house and they buy it and they move in. And Little do they know where this house was built. I'm pretty sure we can. We can be honest with ourselves and say that a lot of us in here have seen the movie Poltergeist, you know what I'm talking about? Don't clutch your pearls. And oh, I'm unfamiliar with the term. I don't know what you're talking about. poltergeists, it's this movie. And I'll give you the real quick plot. The plot of the movie is this family moves into this house, they move in and after they're there for a while, some strange things start happening, right stuff starts moving around, the TVs flickering lights are flickering. It's, it's crazy. And you come to find out this house that this family has moved in, is haunted. And the reason taunted is because it was built by housing developers who had bought this piece of land that just so happened to be a cemetery. And what they did is they removed all the headstones, put them somewhere else, but didn't move the bodies just left the bodies there. And so the spirits are angry, my friends and they seek retribution and revenge. And so they start attacking this community and attacking this family and their house and things are going crazy. And the whole reason, the whole reason is that they built on a shaky foundation they built where they should not have been building. Now it leads me to think when I'm watching this movie, like what, what in the world were the builders thinking? Like, what was your thought process here? I don't care if you don't believe in the supernatural. I don't care if you don't believe in any of that. There are some things that you still just don't do. Like, I don't understand it. Why build over dead bodies, that's just not a good idea. It doesn't take too much sense to realize this ain't a solid foundation. This is shaky. We could be messing with something bad by doing this by building here. Because foundations matter. Foundations matter if you are trying to plant a garden. Foundations matter if you're trying to build a shopping complex foundations matter when you're buying a house. And yes, foundations matter when it comes to building a life where you are building the foundation of your life. It matters. So what I want to ask you today and this is kind of our thesis question for the entire sermon is where are you building your life? Where are you building your life? today's sermon title you've heard mentioned a few times is b Where were you build the Where were you build. The idea for this series comes from First Corinthians chapter three. Listen to what the Apostle Paul says, starting in verse 10, by the grace of God has given me I laid a foundation as a wise builder and someone else is building on it, then here listen to this phrase, but each one should build with care.
Each one should build with care. Each one should be where, where they build, for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, their work will be shown for what it is because the day will bring it to light, it will be revealed with fire and the fire will test the quality of each person's work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward if it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved, even though only as one escaping through the flames. Paul wants us to know if you are building something if you are building a building and you know the foundation matters. How much more so with your life. So when you're building your life, build with care, build with care, lay your life on the only foundation that matters, Jesus, Paul is echoing something we hear in real estate all the time, location, location, location, that's what matters. Where are you located? Where are you building your life on your location matters because your house is only as good as its location? You know that to be true. If you've ever house hunted, you go around and you see a house available online and you see the asking price and you go How could it be so low? Then you go to drive and look at it you go oh, this is why that's that's why I'm not in the middle of nowhere. There's no one around like now I understand why the price is so low because a house is only as good as its location. A seed is only as good as the soil that it's planted in. Our property here Cornerstone is right here where we are located at 2445 South Arlington. This is an outdated building. It is I love this building. This is a great place for us to be able to get together and meet worship Jesus learn more about him. Have community with each other. That's awesome, but this is an outdated building man. Have you been in the restroom, the men's room? The thing dates to like the Carter administration like it needs help. It needs work because this is an outdated building. But guess what, we didn't buy this piece of property. Because of this building. This building was not the selling point to us. This is an outdated building, but a perfect location. This location is fantastic. The church consultants that we've been working with and talking with when they came for their first visit, to see our building, told us, hey, we want to let you know, we don't blow smoke out. So we were straight shooters we tell it like it is we want to let you know, your location is one of the best out of any of the churches that we've worked with your location, your proximity to the highway, your beer proximity on this major road, you've got the bus line where people who may not have cars are still able to get to your church. Man, your location here is fantastic. And we knew that we knew that whenever our staff had walked through here, whenever our board of directors looked into purchasing this building, that's what we were all saying, like, yeah, yeah, the buildings are nice. But man, this location, if there's room to build, it may be an outdated building. But it is a perfect location, location matters. location matters. In a similar way, in our life, our location matters because God can look at us and he can look at the things in our life. And we can look at ourselves and look at the things in our life, our brokenness, the places where we still have yet to heal, the areas where we've let people down, the bad habits, the dysfunctions that still are in our life, all of those things can be there. But if we are trying to submit ourselves to the authority of Jesus, if we are trying, despite all those flaws, to say, You know what, I'm still going to try to set Jesus up as the foundation of my life, the location that I'm building on, God says exactly what we said about this place, I can work with that. I can work with that. Just like we can work with this building. Because of the location, God looks at you and says, if you are just willing to humble yourself before me, I can work with that, because of where you're placing yourself because of the location that you are putting yourself in. So what I want to tell you today is to position yourself. Position yourself in a location where you'll produce, position yourself where you will produce listen again, to what Jesus said here in Matthew, chapter 13. And verse eight, when he talks about the seeds, he says Still other seed fell on good soil where it produced a crop, the seed was positioned somewhere where it could produce the seed where it was positioned in the rocky road, and in the thorny place, it couldn't do anything. But when the seed was positioned where it could produce, it did just that it produced, it produced a crop 3060, even 100 times what was originally there, position yourself where you will grow, position yourself where you will produce location matters, foundation matters. So with that in mind, ask yourself today, where are you positioned?
Where are you positioned that right now? Can I ask a little bit of a probing question? Don't yell out, just answer it to yourself. What's your friend group look like? What is your friend group look like? Are you the best person you know? You're the best person you hang out with. Because if you are, if you are, May, I wager you are not positioning yourself somewhere where you'll produce. If you're the best person, you know because this is what happens. That means your ceiling is here. I don't need to be any better than this. I'm the best man you should see my buddies, you should see the people that I hang out with, you should see my co-workers you should see the people that I'm around. They're all they're down here. But I'm up here, man, I'm doing great. You're positioning yourself somewhere where you don't need to produce where just doing the bottom level is going to be good and people are going to praise you and say hey, awesome way, way to go. Because look at all your friends, man. You're the best out of all of them. are you positioning yourself somewhere where you'll actually produce? Where are you positioned? are you positioning yourself on social media constantly? are you positioning yourself just the endless scroll and the endless swipe on Tik Tok and on Instagram and on Facebook? Where are you positioning yourself? you position yourself there, all you're doing is fueling insecurity. All you're doing is fueling comparison. Where are you positioning yourself? Is it somewhere where you can produce if you are positioning yourself if the location of your life is in those kinds of areas? Don't be surprised when the foundation of your life cracks. Because it will because those things were never intended to be the foundation for any of us. The seed will wither the house will fall so position yourself where you will produce, get yourself, godly friends. Make sure you're not always the smartest person in the room, or the godliest person in the room have people that you look at and you go, man, I want to be where they're at, man, I want to love God like that. I want to be around people who after you're done talking or hanging out with them, just feel on fire. You're like, Man, I want to, I want to be a better person, I want to be a better husband. I want to be a better friend. I want to work harder at my job. I want to live with more purpose be around people like that. People who push you get yourself some healthy habits. Position yourself around some spiritual discipline, some healthy habits that will help you grow that will help you produce do what Matt did. We just heard his testimony, get your butt into a group, start serving become a ministry partner, you saw what it did for him how his faith has grown exponentially. Because he has positioned himself somewhere where God can produce things in his life. Position yourself, where you can produce position yourself on a solid foundation, the production in your life is completely determined by your position by your location. Now your foundation. So again, where are you building?
Where are you building your life be? Where were you built, and this is what I'll tell you. If you find yourself in places in your life, where you're seeing decay, where you're seeing relationships kind of fall apart and crumble, where you're seeing your passion for things kind of wither away. If you're seeing the decay in your life. Don't be surprised if it's because you're building on dead things. If you are building the foundation, your life on stuff that is dead on stuff that was supposed to be nailed to the cross, and you're trying to have that be the foundation of your life. Don't be shocked when your life starts to see decay. Don't be shocked and everything starts to fall apart. Whenever you see cracks in the foundation and you see the house, start to till one way, don't be shocked. Don't be surprised if you're building your life around broken relationships over and over again, even if they have a different name. But it's the same pattern, the same mindsets over and over again, don't be shocked. Don't be shocked. Don't be shocked whenever you are building your life around sexual addiction around substance abuse around a dysfunctional mindset. Jesus told us as much. We just read it, Matthew 13, four through seven, Jesus is talking about all of these different kind of soil and all these different locations where people are trying to scatter seed where they're trying to build their life and it doesn't work. It just doesn't work. It's eaten up, it's choked out. Those things were never meant to be our foundation, nothing can be built there. So no wonder our lives can seem so haunted. If we're building on a cemetery, no wonder our life seems to haunt us we're building around things that were supposed to be hanging on the cross. When Jesus got up out of the grave, Scripture tells us he left his grave clothes there. We're supposed to do the same thing, leave all of those things, all those old ways of thinking those old ways of living behind us not bring them out of the grave and try to build a life around those. And Jesus. Well, my bad relationship plus Jesus, my negative way of thinking about things, and Jesus, my dysfunctional mindsets, and Jesus, no, those are supposed to stay in the grave. You're not supposed to bring those out and try to build on them. Nothing can be built. They're the only foundation literally the only foundation life is supposed to have is Jesus. That's it. He's the only foundation nothing else our identity in him that is supposed to be the core of where we build our life around. Again, this is what Paul says, we already read at First Corinthians three, verse 11, for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. He is it. He's it nothing else. Because Paul goes on to tell us in the next verses, this is why he this is what's so great about God, he doesn't just give us a command and then knows the reasoning behind it. He gives us commands and it says and this is why because it's for your good. Paul tells us to build our life on Jesus. He is the only firm foundation. And then he goes on to tell us in verses 12 1314 This is why because days of testing are coming. Bad diagnoses are coming down the road for you. You're going to get things that you didn't want to hear from a doctor, you're going to have fights with your spouse, you weren't expecting to have financial failures are going to happen. Money is going to be tight. People are going to die people that you love are going to move away and you're not gonna have that same connection. This kind of stuff is coming and if the foundation of your life has been built on anything other than me when the storms of life come when the test of life comes as Paul says the fire will test the quality of each person's work. The fire will test the quality Of what you've been building on, if you are building on anything other than Jesus, it will fail. The tests of life will show and will expose the weak points of your foundation and it will make it crumble. It'll make it crumble. So if you have been building on those dead things like dysfunctional mindsets or broken relationships, when life brings a test your way, when the fire comes, when the killer is at the front door, your foundation will crumble. It will crumble. And I'm telling you, I could preach an entire sermon on what we're about to talk about. It's not even just building on dead things. That's not worth it. It's building on decent things. Because I'm looking around the room. And I know who I know, a lot of people who watch online are a family, you're good people. I don't think there's a lot of people in here who are constantly building over the same broken relationships. I think there's a lot of people in here who are building on substance abuse and not being able to handle their alcohol or anything like that. I don't think that's the majority of us there. Probably some of us, but not the majority, a lot of us, what we're doing is we're building our life on the foundation of Not Dead things, but decent things. And we think that that's good.
But it's not. It's not, it's not going to work. It's not going to give us the life that we want to have. It's not going to lead us to a fulfilling future. We can only build on Jesus. He's the only firm foundation, he's the only one that will hold it up. So that's what that means. This your work, no matter how much you love it, no matter how much you feel life from your career, and you feel like Man, this, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. That's wonderful. That's decent. That's amazing. It's not supposed to be your foundation. Because one day you won't work there. One day, that job won't be there for you. One day, you'll step away, maybe they have to have layoffs, maybe something will change, and you won't be there anymore. And that foundation that you've been counting on is gone. Life brought a killer to your door. And your foundation isn't strong enough. Can I? Can I say this? Your family is not supposed to be your foundation. It's not. We hear it all the time. Families, everything. Oh, families, everything family over everything like family is just if I didn't have a man if I didn't have my family, I don't know what I do. Well, you better find out. Because guess what? How much you love your mom, she will die at some point. She will, how much you love your dad, he will be gone at some point how much you love your siblings. They may not always be here. My pastor Brenda, she's experienced the loss of her sister. She's experienced the loss of both of her parents. She's experienced the loss of her husband. If the family was everything, families everything to me, where do you think she'd be right now? A shell of who she used to be. Family is not supposed to be everything. Nothing except Jesus should be our foundation because nothing but Jesus can actually support us. Everything, even the good things, even the decent things, even the worthwhile things they were never meant to be God. They weren't, don't place anything in the place of Jesus. Nothing else except him is supposed to be our foundation because nothing but him is load-bearing. He's the only thing that's load-bearing, he's the only thing that can support. He's the only foundation Do not waste your time building on dead things or even decent things because it won't hold up. The foundation will crack and it will crumble and you will find yourself in a terrible place. I've been there. I've talked to those people. I've talked to the people whose family is everything. I don't know what I'll do if my mom's not here. And then their mom's not here and their world falls apart. Don't be that person. Don't build your life on the wrong things. Jesus is the only load-bearing thing. Don't build on decent things don't build on dead things foundation matters. I was studying for this sermon. And it's that's just how my mind works. started thinking of the movie monster house. Has anyone seen this movie?
It's like an animated kid's movie. But the material you're like, Well, maybe it's like a kid's movie, but not like little kids movie because some of the stuff is kind of dark. Right? So if you haven't seen it, let me just give you the real quick plot of it. So the plot is just a little neighborhood. It's Halloween night. There's a house it's like the scary house in the neighborhood. It's an old man never crackers house like it's this creepy looking house. This means an old man lives there who like scares off all the kids whenever they come. He's always telling him like, Get off my lawn. Don't come over here. He's super mean to all of them. Well, one day, he seemingly has a heart attack. Like he passes out. The ambulance takes him already. You're like this is a kid's movie. Holy cow. The ambulance takes him and at that moment the house seems to come alive. It house seems to come alive and the kids are seeing this as the house. Like it makes movements and everything like that. And it's like trying to attack kids as they walk by Like, the carpet comes out of the door like it's a tongue trying to grab the kids and stuff. It's crazy, right? It's absolutely crazy. And so what you come to find out as the movie plays out, is that old man never cracker, bought the property years, like decades ago, bought the property, built this house for him and his wife. And as they were building the house, again, this is a kid's movie. As they're building the house an accident happens, caused by some little kids accident happens that causes his wife to fall into the foundation of the house as the concrete is getting poured, and she meets her untimely demise. Mr. nutcracker wants to honor her, says that she would have wanted it this way, continues to build the house with her as the foundation underneath, right. And so as this happens, he starts to realize he says, like, constants, my wife, she was gone. But she wasn't really gone. Like I started to notice the house like, she became the house like she like possessed the house almost. It's crazy. And so for years, he has been living, isolated and alone, trying to protect the children that come by because his wife, who is now in this house, wants to get revenge. The kids are the thing that led to her demise. And so she's wanting revenge. And so he's trying to protect all these kids by telling them to stay away and get out of here. And so they realize, you know what, you're actually nice, let us help you. And so the climax of the movie is they blow up the house, got to the climax, they put an end to it. the house gets blown up his wife, Constance, she set free. And at this moment, they're walking out of like the remains of the fire all this rubble, and Mr. nutcracker, he's got all over him smelling like smoke. And he's like 52 years, 52 years, and I'm finally free. I'm free. Like he's so excited at this moment. And like I said, your pastors messed up because as I'm reading first Corinthians three, all I can think of is Monster House. Because I think about Paul's words. And I think about how Paul's talking about Be careful where you build be where you build, because if you build on the wrong foundation, you may still make it. Right. He says, if it is burned up the house, the thing that's being built if it's burned up, the builder will suffer loss, yet will be saved, even only as one escaping through the flames. And all I can think about is Mr. Never cracker. This guy who did not be where, where he built. And because of that, because of the poor foundation of his house of where he built, he spent 52 years lonely, isolated, miserable a shell of his self, to find himself years later, after the help of these kids saying I'm free. I'm free. And that's awesome. That's great. That's fantastic. The movie is happy. He's free. He made it. And he smells like smoke. And his house is destroyed. And he's had decades of loneliness of crippling loneliness. But he's free now. I don't want that to be my story. When I get to heaven, I want to hear well done. Not you made it as a close one. You don't want to come to Heaven smelling like smoke. You don't want to get to heaven saying like, man, we were worried about you. But you did. You trusted in me just enough to get here. You did the bare minimum to get here. Hey, you made it. I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear that I don't want to be someone who has Paul says escapes, even only as one escaping through the flames. I don't want that from my life.
Like in horror movies, I don't want to be the survivor at the end who is cut up, bloodied, and bruised, and has been through all kinds of terrible things. But hey, they survived. And here is the fact of the matter if you are building your life on the wrong foundation, that is your future. That is the end of your movie. You may survive. You may survive the horror movie, but in the end, you have scars and bruises and all this crap that you could have avoided that didn't need to be a part of your story. Didn't need to be a plot point in the movie. You didn't need to have this house that you were stuck in for 52 years. That doesn't need to be there. But if you are not careful where you build, that's exactly where you're going to be. Where are you building? Where are you building I If we haven't gotten morbid enough, right talking about dead dead women being the foundation of a house and a kids movie? Let's get a little bit more morbid. Alright, let's take it up a notch from here. I want you in these next moments. I want you to think about your own death. Like actually think about like the picture, picture, you passing away and being able to be a fly on the wall for the moments to come in the next week really, really picture this for a moment. I know, we say that you know, it's a big pastor thing almost every pastor at a funeral has the moment where they say, Now most of us don't think about our own death until a day like today. That's not true. Most of us don't even think about death at funerals, not our own, at least, we push that thing off forever. We just never want to think about it. But I want you to think about it right now. I want you to think about being a fly on the wall and the week to come after your death. Think about being able to read your own obituary, what does it say? Think about being at your memorial service. What are the people share about you? What are family and friends? What is the pastor say about you? Will it be true? Will it be short? Will your family be scrambling trying to come up with something to say about you anything that actually matters? I mean, he really liked fishing. He's really into fishing. I remember I remember that about Dad. I'm telling you right now. The legacy that you leave the legacy, you are building it right now, moment by moment, day by day, choice by choice, you are making it right now. And you're making it by where you are choosing to build your life. I can tell you, and it's heartbreaking. I've been that pastor, where I am meeting with family, and I am just doing everything I can to try to pull something out to fit in the service, to try to have this thing be longer than five minutes because there is nothing that matters. Because the person has built their life on a shaky foundation, that doesn't actually matter. So when the test of life comes when the fire comes and burns up all the stuff that doesn't matter, there's nothing left. There's nothing left. And all the things that seemed worthwhile and seem decent during life suddenly don't seem as important anymore. And they're all blown away. And all that's left in that final moment is I don't really know, I don't really know. I'm not sure what to say here. Where are you building? Are you building on dead things? And trying to have them be the foundation of your life? Are you building on decent things? If I can just get so personal real quick. And please don't feel like I'm condemning anybody? Are you building your life around your kid's sports activities? Are you building your life around your kid's extracurricular activities? Let me say there's nothing wrong with those. My kids are in multiple activities. They're great. They teach them a lot of lessons to help them get confidence in new ways. Those are all amazing things. And they were never intended to be the foundation of their life. Ever. Because if that's the foundation of their life, what happens when high school is over? If all they've been told is man how well you do at basketball, how well you do football? How will you do it cheer? That's where your identity is. And we will move heaven and earth to make sure that we build this foundation. And then the second it comes we wonder why kids have an identity crisis. We wonder why they look for their identity and just about anything else because suddenly it's been taken away from them. Their Foundation has been taken away. No wonder they're at a loss.
It can't be the foundation, even something good and fun and worthwhile. Kids sports, your career, your finances, your family, your friends, these things were never intended to be the God of your life. They make terrible gods. They always fall through they never deliver on their promises. There's only one foundation we're supposed to build on only one foundation that is Jesus. And here's the thing when whenever we have Jesus as our foundation, our only Foundation, not Jesus plus, but just Jesus, when He is the foundation, we find out that all those other things, all those things that are fun, and worthwhile and decent, they actually come to their fullness. When Jesus is the foundation. They're not any less, they actually become the full picture of what they're supposed to be. You see, I was studying home foundations for this sermon. One of the things I learned is that whenever you build a house if you build the foundation, right, if it's if people come out and do a good survey on your property if they dig up the way they're supposed to, they lay the concrete and the rebar and everything the way that they're supposed to with the strength that they're supposed to in the way that they need to that if you do that, you can take a house that's a single story and you can actually add second story living space to that house. and not compromise the foundation, you can add on to what's already there. Because the foundation is strong, and the foundation is stable, and the foundation can support it. Are you tracking with me when Jesus is the foundation of your life whenever he is where he is supposed to be, and everything else is where it's supposed to be? That's when life gets good. That's whenever things get fulfilling because then you can add those things on. You can add on kids' extracurriculars, you can add on friendships and relationships and family and work and finances, you can add all these things on to Jesus because he has a foundation that can support it, he can actually support it. And on the flip side, this is the other thing I learned about foundations, a lot of the houses that end up having structural integrity issues or water leaking into the basement or anything like that. The reason they have that, you know why is because they have more than one foundation. Almost every house that has a basement ends up having cracks in it and, and water leaking. And the reason is, is because the house has two foundations, especially if there's an attached Raj, you have the house where the foundation is the basement, and it's underneath there. But then you have the attached garage, which has a concrete slab as its foundation. And because you have these two competing foundations, it actually adversely affects the structural integrity of the entire house. You can't have more than one foundation, you try to have Jesus plus, it's going to lead to cracks, it's going to lead to things that you don't want to happen to your house, it may take a while for them to show up. But eventually, they will hotter will leak in the house will start to tell and things will start to go bad. You cannot have more than one foundation. And when you have one foundation, Jesus as you realize that's the only one you need. That's the only one you need the only one that you can build on. I'm going to ask the worship team to come back up if they would in these closing moments. I want to read just one more piece of scripture today as we close out this is what it says in Psalm 127 verse one. Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord builds the house, unless God Himself is the chief contractor, unless God Himself is the architect, unless God Himself is the actual foundation of your life, everything that you do is in vain. It's just for naught. It won't last it won't hold up. If Jesus is not the foundation of your life, your life is gonna look a whole lot like City View Center up in Cleveland. This beautiful building this thing was so much potential for life and for fun and for joy. And it's a ghost town. Because the foundation wasn't set, right? Don't build your life on a poor foundation. You do that you build your life on decent things are dead things. Don't be shocked when you're haunted by despair, and regret, and bitterness and dysfunction, and sin. Build your life on Jesus. He's the only foundation that can hold you up. Heavenly Father, we thank you today for being our foundation.
We thank you for the fact that you and you alone can hold us up. That whatever life brings our way. If we try to build on anything but you we will see failure, we'll see regret. But if we build on you, if we build our life on you on the firm foundation of Jesus, we will see victory will overcome. We'll see power, we'll see the purpose. And God that's what we asked for today. Help us as we make the commitment to start building our life on you, centering our life on you the only firm foundation that will hold us up through life's every trial. We love you father and we ask all this.
