The rock and the sand.
Christ turns from the judgment of the teacher, in the parable of the tree and the fruit, to the judgment of the hearer, in the parable now before us. The hearer is responsible as well as the teacher.
I. LIVING IS BUILDING. Every man is building himself a house, for all life-work is the putting together of a habitation in which the worker will have to dwell. Some build feebly and set up but slight structures, mere huts and shanties. Others work with more ambitious designs, and will make themselves spacious mansions, gorgeous palaces, or massive castles. Whatever a man builds, in that he must dwell. We cannot get away from the results of our own life-work. These will either become a shelter to protect us or a ruin to fall about our heads.
II. THE SECURITY OF A BUILDING IS DETERMINED BY THE SOLIDITY OF THE FOUNDATION. Our Lord's imagery would be particularly vivid in his own country. Nazareth is built in a cleft of the hills, some of its houses perched on jutting rocks. A similar character of foundation would be found in the neighbourhood of Gennesaret, where Jesus was now teaching. If the foundation is rotten, the greater the building the more insecure will it be, and the greater will be the fall thereof when it comes down. It is vain and foolish to be bestowing care on the towers and pinnacles while the foundation is giving way. Efforts spent on mere ornamentation are quite wasted if the question of the foundation has not been first of all carefully attended to. Yet in practical life this is the last thing that many consider. They would reach the goal without entering the strait gate; they would gather the fruit without grafting in the right stock; they would complete the house without attending to the foundation. Yet the first great question is as to what we are building on.
III. THE FOUNDATION WILL BE TESTED. All is well at first. The house on the sand looks as fair and solid as that on the rock. Perhaps it is of a more pretentious character. But the calm dry weather will not last for ever. The rainy season ensues. Torrents scour the mountain-sides and sweep the loose soil from the rocks. Wind and rain beat on the house at the same time that it is being undermined by the raging flood that washes the sand from beneath its foundation. This is like the persecution and tribulation that scorch the growth on the stony ground (Matthew 13:20, Matthew 13:21). Trouble is a test of the foundation of a professedly Christian life. Death is a great final test.
IV. THE SOLID FOUNDATION IS OBEDIENCE. A careless hearer of this parable might be ready to assume that Christ is the Foundation, and that faith in him is building on that Foundation. Of course, these are truths expressed elsewhere (e.g. 1 Corinthians 3:11). But they are not the lessons of the present parable. Our Lord is distinctly warning us against a superficial profession of allegiance to himself (Matthew 7:22, Matthew 7:23). All is useless if there is not obedience. Faith without works is dead (James 2:17). In other words, the only living faith in Christ is that which proves its existence by bringing forth fruit in active service. Only they are on the rock who do what Christ teaches.—W.F.A.
HOMILIES BY P.C. BARKER
The warning in judging.
Thus, at the early beginning of the new generations of the earth, did the Author of them, foreseeing their long and ever-broadening tumultuous streams, declare this among the essential conditions of a true inheritance in them, that men fear and avoid rather than rush into the seat of the judge. It is a great condition of membership in the new society. To the soundness and health of this society many an element must contribute; and to exist it must be healthy. No fencing of it from without, no careful tending of it from without, but only its innermost sound constitution can secure this. As we now survey the complex conditions of human society, we admire that prevision of the Organizer and ultimate Lord of it. And we wonder at the sanitary provision marked so clearly by the exhortation and argument contained in these two verses. Their injunction is indeed one that easily courts superficial lip-objection, but it is also one that does not fail to draw forth a deep "Amen!" from the "good and honest" heart, warned by the disasters, unnumbered and innumerable, consequent on the neglect of it, informed by careful observation of life, and matured by experience. When we ask what it really is that is contained in it, we may at once without hesitation reply that its purport is certainly not to affront reason and common sense; it does not bid us blind our eyes, either by disuse of them, or worse, by blank contradiction of their testimony; it does not forbid or put some dread ban on our sober use of our faculty of judgment. But, plainly, it is a great direction of life, essentially practical in its significance, and not better for others and the peace of the life of the community than safe for self. Just as those most emphatic and repeated directions of Scripture to guard the use of tongue and lips with all diligence do not ban the use of them, so the words of perfect wisdom now before us guard a dangerous power, and restrain a disposition ever too willing to assert itself against the fatal abuse of it. For—
I. To UNDERTAKE TO JUDGE IS TO USURP A POSITION BETWEEN GOD AND MAN, NOT ONLY UNAUTHORIZED, BUT BOTH ELSEWHERE AND HERE IN THE MOST IMPORTANT CONNECTION ESPECIALLY FENCED OFF.
II. AMONG A THRONG OF NECESSARY AND INEVITABLE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES, IT IS TO COURT AND EVEN CHALLENGE A GRATUITOUS AND VERY DANGEROUS ADDITIONAL ONE.
III. IT HAS IT IN ITS VERY GENIUS, AND ALSO AS A NOTORIOUS FACT TO ENGENDER AN INSTINCTIVE RESENTMENT ON THE PART OF THOSE WHO ARE THE OBJECTS OF IT, AND TO PROVOKE RETORT.
IV. IT BREEDS INTRINSIC DANGER TO THE DISPOSITION OF THOSE WHO EXERCISE IT, AND OFFERS INCENTIVE, WHERE DISCOURAGEMENT IS WHAT IS SPECIALLY NEEDED.
V. IT DARES CONSEQUENTIAL VERY PRACTICAL RISKS, FOR THOSE WHO INTRUDE, STIRRING FOR THEM JUDGMENT AND JUSTICE THAT MIGHT SLEEP, AND DANGEROUSLY SUGGESTING THE SELF-ASSIGNED MEASURE OF IT. If anything might be expected to operate as a deterrent upon the habit that has proved itself to have so strong a hold on men, it might well be this dread thought.—B.