FOUNDATION: Why Jesus is what we build our lives on.

0:00Easter is coming, which is called the Resurrection Celebration on the 17th. Don't forget those are different times and invite your friends. Invite your loved ones, invite people you don't even like, because maybe Jesus can help. But that's coming up different times. If you're going to be on campus, the first three services are on campus and live. All the other ones are premieres. We found that's very effective for reaching new people who are seeking something on Resurrection Celebration Sunday. Also, a couple of things that are happening here on campus. We're a church that supports the foster care thing that's going on. And there's somebody here today out in the atrium. If you're interested in foster care, maybe what we do, you can go out and visit and talk to them. And also, men, our boot camp is coming up. We do this once a year. So for all the guys, and we're going to be going up to Cascade. It starts Thursday night, May 19th, and you're done before noon on May 22nd, which is Sunday.

1:03I'm going to be up there, Pastor Harbs going to be up there, everybody's going to be up there. So guys, get on there. You can register if you want more info. There's a little booth out in the atrium. If you're watching online, you can just click on the link on our phone app or on our website. It'll take you right to the registration. Just kind of carve that date out and have a great time. It is the place to be. Now, we're in a new series, and this new series is called Foundation. And the reason why is because the foundation you choose to build your life on makes all the difference. Now, if you've been a follower of Christ for a long, long time, this is going to sound familiar, but I just want to do a refresher course for you for all the rest of us. We're going to talk about how do you know what foundation you built your life on, and how to strengthen and improve that foundation. Because you can build a great life. Absolutely great life. But if it's on the wrong foundation, it comes crashing down. Back in 2015, there were some, a small subdivision up in the Boise, Flood Hills.

2:04They were selling million-dollar locks with million-dollar views. And I've been up there visiting some people, some social events, and men, the views up there of the city during the day and at night are just absolutely spectacular. And so, they put in all their applications. They did it all, the engineering, soils testing, and they built these massive million-dollar homes. And unfortunately, before people were even able to move into some of them, this happened. You might remember this on via Appia Court. And that is, is that the road you'll notice in the sidewalk, the hillside started to slide out. And so, you see these massive million-dollar homes built with these beautiful views. And the next one, you'll see the next picture. They didn't do so good. And what's interesting about these million-dollar homes is that they had the highest finishes in them.

3:06Beautiful wood floors, marble bathrooms, a trim, all this kind of stuff. And these things, because the foundations were non-anchored, started to slide when the foundation kind of cracked and started to move. Guess what? It destroyed the entire house. You could look at the sidewalk, you could look at everything going on. All of these homes were condemned. They even closed the street, and then they came in, and they bulldozed all of them. That's what happens. You could build a really great life. But if it's built on the wrong foundation, it always comes crashing down. Which reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 7, where he just finishes one of the longest recorded messages that he ever preached. It starts in Matthew chapter 5, it's all of chapter 6 and all of chapter 7. And at the very end of it, this is what he says, verse 24. Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice

4:10is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house. Yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practices like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. The rain came, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house. And it fell with a mighty or great crash. Boy, you can build a high end house with a million dollar view on a million dollar lot. But if the foundation isn't good, guess what? When the storms come, it will crash in a mighty way.

5:14What we learned from this teaching of Jesus is that your foundation really matters. Where you build your house really matters, especially number two, when the storms hit. I think one of the biggest lessons that came from COVID that hit two years ago is that everybody had built a lot of really great lives. You know, we had a lot of really great stuff going on in our lives. But boy, when that hit, so many people in our society discovered that their house, their life house was built upon sinking sand. The other thing that we learned in this is that the stronger your foundation, the stronger your life. So my question for you is what is your foundation? And what this really means is what is it that you believe that you're building your future life on? Because what you believe is one of the most important things about you. And oftentimes in our society, and I want to speak generally here, is that our society overlooks the importance of strong foundations

6:16in some really important areas of our lives. For instance, in your marriage or your romantic life, people are overlooking the need to build a strong foundation on which to build a lifelong marriage. We see the struggle that marriages are having today, don't we? I mean, marriage is very difficult, and we see the statistics of what's going on. And one of the reasons I believe for this is because there are such differing core values in our society today, and there are different backgrounds. You have two people that can come from two totally different backgrounds. Their family of origins can be so diverse in America today. Our society then, because there's no foundation of commonality, common values, common principles, common morals, common backgrounds, healthy family of origin, guess what?

7:18Our society has decided that the best way for two people to get married is to base it solely on sexual chemistry, right? It's like, wow, she's so hot. Wow, he's got a six pack ab and a chisel jawline. He must be a good person. And so our society does that. It's that chemistry, you know, that ceremonial response when you meet somebody that, wow, the sparks are flying, the bells ringing, this has got to be the one. But is that really any way to build a healthy marriage? Is that a foundation? You know, is that really the foundation? Because you know what they say about a six pack ab? You usually drink it up pretty quick, right? And so the real foundation of a great marriage life

8:20are things like communication, conflict, resolution, partnership in problem solving, kindness, and the biggest one of all, forgiveness. These are the rocks or the stones that make for a powerful and strong foundation. But when you rely purely on sexual chemistry to determine who you should be married to or what's going to make a great marriage, guess what? That relationship is built on sand because the stones of a strong foundation are never put in place. You gotta put those things in place. And this is what's so interesting is in today's world, the most common thing that I hear is this. And I think on the surface, it kind of makes sense. And it goes like this, here's the kind of the reasoning. And that is, well, you know, the Bible said that two people should not be sexually active because before they're married, because when it talks about one flesh, you know, that means a baby, you know, obviously.

9:21But since birth control has come along, it's removed all that outcome and that risk. And so now something so pleasurable can be explored before there's any commitment, right? So that's kind of the reasoning. Of course, that's not a real good reading of what the New Testament teaches on it because the admonition against immorality, you know, it is not about a baby that includes it, but that's not really what it's about. What it's really about is that when you move to sexual intimacy, it interferes with foundation building in the areas of communication conflict resolution, building a partnership kindness and forgiveness. It gets in the way all that. It gives you a false notion that that stuff exists. But then once that stuff kind of goes to the way side, it's not as exciting as it was, none of those things exist because they were never taken the time. As a matter of fact, research points this out to be true now. And that is, they say that the longer that people wait to be sexually intimate in a dating relationship,

10:23moving towards marriage, the longer they wait, guess what, the healthier and stronger their marriage will be. But because our society has gotten away from that, guess what? There's a lot of married people who have built their marriages on sand and not the rock. Another place that we see that we overlook the need in our society for a good foundation is with our children. And in the 70s, I don't think people are really aware that in the 70s, there was this massive ideological shift in how we are to raise children. There was all of these social theorists and child psychology in the 60s and the 70s exploded as this entire new area or discipline of research and study. And so what happened is they decided to make this massive shift built on the definition of a human being that is false. You see, what happened is in our universities,

11:24in the higher areas of elitist learning, they changed the definition of what it meant to be a human being. And therefore, all of the psychology, all of the research for how children are best raised was built upon a false premise. And that false premise was Rousseauian in nature. Now, I know this gets a little philosophy for you, but bear with me, I like this stuff a lot, so I can't help but share it. But Rousseau's notion was that all human beings are pure. It's society that corrupts them, which in and of itself is kind of illogical because society's just made up of people. And so how could you be pure and yet be a part of society that corrupts you? I never really understood that logical loop myself, but nonetheless. So what happened is there was this big huge shift is that children were these pure and innocent, wonderful flowers that you just needed to stand back and let them unfold. And so there was this very permissive standback,

12:25no structure approach to parenting, and that was the biggest disaster our society has ever experienced. Our parenting needs a foundation. All parents need a solid, strong foundation on a guiding principle and core values of how they're going to parent. And you can build it on sinking sand or you can build it on a rock. That's your choice as a parent. Our society has lost that capacity and that is why young people today have grown up and struggled so much in this world. You see children need discipline in the earlier you start, the better. Children need structure. The earlier you start, the better. Children need routine. They need boundaries. They need guidance. They need teaching.

13:28The earlier you start, the better. Another big area that our society has abandoned the notion of adequate foundation building before you start is in the area of our careers and what we do with our life. Our society has just gone off and excuse me for my strong language off the deep end by telling people that you should pursue your dreams and pursue your passion. I think this idea has produced more unhappy people than ever before is blatantly absurd. Passion is an emotion and it is the most fickle emotion of all. Just think about being married, right? You will be so passionate about the person you're married to your spouse, right? You're just so passionate. I can't wait to be with them. I can't wait to touch them and to kiss them and to embrace them and hug them and done it all. And then you'll have this. I can't stand this person I'm married to. They are annoying me to death.

14:28I need to get away from them. And all of that emotion will happen within the same five minute conversation. Am I speaking truth or what? So how in the world would you use passing to determine what you're going to do for the rest of your life? That's ridiculous. Follow your purpose, not your passion, meaning and fulfillment, happiness always comes from purpose. It doesn't come from passion. That's why discovering your spiritual gift, knowing what your aptitude is and then developing character traits, character tools like discipline and hard work and self-control is probably one of the best ways you'll find to do what you love. And you know what they say when you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. You'll never get there pursuing passion. You get there by pursuing purpose. But the biggest place in our society,

15:30the biggest area that we have neglected foundation building and ignored it is in our spiritual lives. In our American society today, the most important thing for people, the biggest ethic is that you should live a secular life. The biggest deception propagated on people in today's world is that faith is the problem of society's ills. It's the cause of all of our issues. The people who propagate this notion can flate it with various religions. And then when you do that, when you can flake the issue, you can convince young people, the non-thinker and the non-self-aware person really quite easily. This is the whole point of the Pied Piper in Pinocchio.

16:31Is people are easily misled. The truth of the matter is you cannot live as a secular person and discover any meaning in your life. No one ever talks about this when they say, well, faith is a problem and be a secular person and don't care about it, just live your life. It's no big deal. But what they don't tell you, the brutal truth is you will never find any meaning or purpose in your life as a secular person. Every philosopher that writes about secularism, atheism, scientific materialism, agnosticism, every philosophy, the philosopher and author who writes about it all says the very same thing over and over and over again, is that there is no meaning in life. There was never meant to be any meaning in life. So searching for meaning in life is a waste of your time. It's called nihilism and that is the outgrowth of it. But you never hear that. You see, you'll never experience any sense of value or rightness about your life if you live secularly.

17:34Because it is the most empty pursuit you can ever imagine. Now, I know these are broad brush things but these are the biggest things about our lives, right? Our love life, our children and family, what we do for a career and what we believe about ourselves. Isn't that really 99% of the life that we live and think about each and every day and without a foundation, without a strong foundation, when the storms hit, that's when you find out, does your house crash or does it stand? Well, let's start with the most important foundation of all that we need to go back and review and build and that is our spiritual foundation because when we build our spiritual foundation, guess what? All of these other things, it's possible to build a strong foundation as well. Now, we've all heard this and that is Jesus saves.

18:36Jesus is the savior of the world. Jesus has come to save us. But everybody in the first century, everybody who heard him preach his message, they all knew something else is we know exactly what he's coming to save us from. What is Jesus actually save you from? What is it? That is a foundational rock of the church and of who Jesus Christ is. Jesus Christ came to save you from something called self-justification. And Paul talks about this extensively and one of the most specific places is in Philippians chapter three and let me read it to you real quick. And this is how we start building our foundational spiritual life. Beginning with chapter three, starting with verse seven, three, seven.

19:40Whatever gains to me, I now consider the loss for the sake of Christ. So what gains is he talking about? He's talking about all the things that he's accomplished in his life, all of his education, all of his business success, all of his political success. He has talked, this is what he's saying, all of these things that I've achieved, guess what? They did not make me feel right about my life. These were things that I achieved so that I would feel like a man and I'd feel like I was a success and I was accomplished, but guess what? Didn't deliver, I was empty as I ever was before. He says, look, I consider all of that as a waste of my time, verse eight. What is more, I consider everything that I do from this point forward a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, Jesus, my Lord, whose sake I have lost all things, but it doesn't matter because I consider them garbage that I may gain Jesus and be found in him,

20:43and here you go. This is what Jesus comes to save us from. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law. Not having a life where I have to prove to myself by what I do and all my success over and over and over again that I'm good enough that I matter and I have value. That's what I don't want anymore. He says, I do not want a righteousness of my own, my own effort that comes from the law. He goes, no, I want that which is through faith in Christ. And then this is what he says. The righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Jesus, yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings. I want to be like him in his death and somehow attain to the resurrection from the dead.

21:44You see what he's saying is that Jesus came to save us but save us from what? He came to save us not from our own selves trying to make our own selves right about our own lives. But the rightness about my life comes from Jesus. It doesn't come from me. And this principle is so powerful. It impacts all of the areas of your life. What's this stone is put in place and I stand on it, I'm not here to make my life right. I'm not going to give myself value. It doesn't matter how many mourning affirmations I put on sticky notes and put them on the mirror when I get up in the morning. I can say them all day long, but I know deep in my soul they come from me and me alone. I need something that tells my life I have value that I have rightness that I have been made right and it doesn't come from me. It comes from God Himself because of what He did on the cross

22:44and when He rose from the dead. You see, marriage is changed when you enter into it and you're living it with the notion that I am not here to try to make my marriage work perfectly because I'm always right. Did you catch that? Yeah. See, when you live a life of self-rightness it's also called self-justification, guess what? If you're married, then every time you have a conflict you have to have a bad guy and that requires blame. One of the signs that you're living a self-justification life is when you live life constantly blaming other people for what's going on in your own life. This is one of the core things that happens when people who are struggling with addictions

23:45that they have to come face to face with. This is why 12 steps, AA, a lot of these things, a lot of parents do such a great job. It's because they say, look, until you take responsibility for that and stop blaming everybody else for why you do what you do, you're never gonna be set free. It's, that's just a shadow of this important principle that comes from scripture. And that is when you live a self-justifying life you tend to have more conflict, not less. You have more division, not less. You have more hatred, not less because it requires blame. So once you get this spiritual principle down you move over here and you go, look, how in the world can two imperfect people get married and stay married? How can two imperfect people get married and stay in love with all of the conflict and the flaws and the idiosyncrasies and how does that happen? Well, it happens because you're living in a way that says, I'm not here to make this right, Jesus is.

24:47So I will follow his advice, not my own. I will follow his guidance, not the world. I will follow what he has to say about how to fix this, not the world. You know the biggest place that I see this apply in people's lives is this, forgiveness. I can't tell you how many times I've heard over the last 35 years being in the ministry full time, people come to me and they'll say, you know what? I should forgive, I know it's the right thing to do but I just can't do it. Give me a break. What? It's not hard. It really isn't that hard, right? But the reason why Jesus said, if you don't forgive, I won't forgive you. I mean, think about that for a second. If we don't forgive, then we will not experience a forgiveness in the righteousness of God. Well, that's a pretty hard-hitting statement from Jesus, isn't it?

25:48So what does that mean? Well, I'll tell you what it means is that I can't live in a world where I self-justify myself all the time and no one walk with God. I just can't do it. It's oil and water. It's light and dark. But if I live under a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ, guess what? Then I can do it. See, there's a dramatic difference there. Conflict resolution. It only happens in your marriage when you leave self-justification and move over into justified by righteousness through faith. That's the only time conflict resolution in a marriage really takes off and happens. Let's talk about how this principle of self-justification versus righteousness from God applies in our parenting, you know? The first thing is that if you're justifying yourself, then what happens is you go, I'm gonna be the best person, best parent there ever is. I'm gonna know everything there is to be about parent.

26:48I'm gonna read every book. I'm gonna Google every topic and I'm gonna write out a spreadsheet of how I'm gonna do this at every three month incremental stage of my child's life and I'm gonna be on top of it. I'm gonna set reminders and notifications on my calendar that go to my phone and then they pop over with a proverb of the day on my Apple Watch. I'm gonna be a power parent and I'm gonna make sure I do everything perfectly and that parent does that and what kind of a kid do they raise? Yeah, you know the truth of that. What happens though is in my righteousness comes from God on the basis of faith. That means, look, I don't know God how I is an imperfect person with all my baggage are gonna raise really great kids. I'm not sure how I'm gonna do that but I do know this. I'm gonna align my expectations with reality. And so I know God that you've told me that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There's something wrong with us that there's a tank that of sin that needs to be dealt with

27:50and so that means my child is not this perfect individual that is going to as a flower unfold in the light of the sun but I need to teach my kid character because character is developed. They aren't born with it. Values are learned. Values are taught. They aren't born with it. And if rightness comes from Jesus and not me, then my goal is to follow his guidance, not my own and to do it his way, not my way. And so that allows him to work with my flaws and my weaknesses to achieve the outcome that he desires through my life. I hope you're kinda feeling how this principle works out. When you pick the spiritual principle that I'm not here to self justify, I'm here to live that I've been made righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ, then my career will be totally changed. You see, rightness that comes from God on the basis of faith

28:50says that my life has purpose to it now. And purpose is all about discovering how I'm wired, what my aptitude is, my spiritual gifts are, these things that God has given to me uniquely that's different than everybody else. So passion, if I try to pursue my passion, what I'm actually saying is that passion is a completely self-centered emotion. It's whatever makes me feel good at that particular moment. But purpose is God-centered. This is why passion is a self-justification orientation and this is why purpose is a God-centered orientation. Now, some of you might be thinking, well, yeah, I get that. I think you're talking about something that's happened in my life and that's why I'm single. You might be thinking, yeah, my kids are now grown and they're not doing so hot. I wish I would have heard this 30 years ago. Well, let me tell you something.

29:52Any foundation, any foundation can be repaired, rebuilt or replaced when your spiritual foundation is built upon the rock. Sometimes your foundation is kind of like this, right here in this picture. Sometimes what they have to do is they have to dig a trench around your house, right? And then they gotta come in and fix some of the cracks and put a new membrane out of it to keep the water from leaking in and undermining your foundation. And some of you might be thinking, wow, that'd be awesome if my mistake was little but my mistake was massive. Well, guess what they can do today? Sometimes they just jack your whole house up and pour you a brand new foundation, right? When your foundation is built upon the rock, the spiritual rock of Jesus Christ, any house, any foundation can be rebuilt, repaired or replaced. All you have to do is say, I don't want to have

30:56a justification that comes from the law based on my own ideas and effort. My life is gonna be made right by the one and only thing that can make it right. And that is that which comes through faith in Christ and Christ alone.