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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Heidi Carpenter

A Sure Foundation

I'm the literature ministries director over in Southern California Conference and so I have the privilege of working with young people year-round in ministry.

How many of you have done knocking on doors as a form of ministry?

Alright, so you know kind of what I go through on a daily basis.

It's really a blessing to be able to see God at work in all ministries, isn't it?

It's awesome to see Him at work, and I'm thankful to be here today to share with you a really close to my heart message that I believe is specific for this time that we're living in in Earth's history.

And I believe that Jesus is coming soon and because of it there are a lot of things that are trying to pull us away from our sure foundation.

And so today we'll be talking specifically on that topic, a sure foundation.

So before we begin, let's just open with a word of prayer.

So if you'd open or close your eyes with me we'll begin.

Father in heaven we thank you that we can open your word.

Lord we're grateful that we are able to in freedom open the Bible and study its concepts, its beautiful principles, and its life-giving truth.

And Lord, we just pray that your Holy Spirit would be here this morning, that as we have a little collective Bible study together, that your presence would be among us, and that we would sense you speaking to our hearts individually and personally.

As a young girl, I'll never forget my father coming home with the large cardboard refrigerator box.

He walked in and he had this huge, tall, cardboard refrigerator box and he said, this is your new home.

I decided to pick the neighborhood of the basement.

And as I began, you know, using stencils to make a window and a door, and using X-Acto knives to cut out my windows and my doors, and getting paint to paint the outside of my walls.

I even painted little flowers down the bottom, pretending like I had landscaped my house.

And I remember how much fun it was to play house with all my friends.

They'd come over and there we were in the basement, playing in my cardboard refrigerator box.

But, you know, I got kind of discontented with my cardboard box as I got older, and I decided I need something more.

So I remember doing a lot of things outside as a kid.

I lived in the country, loved living in the country.

And in the back of our property there was a barn that my dad had.

It was kind of like a shed slash barn, and it had all of our firewood in it that we'd use during the winter.

But it also had this big section of bricks.

And I got really excited because I had a cool idea 1 day.

I was like, you know, I'm going to take those bricks and I'm going to make a house right now.

I embarked upon it a part of our backyard.

I just decided I was going to start building a house.

And I took these bricks And I started lining them up in a square.

I left room for a door, because you always need a door into a house.

And I had taken my mud, and I mixed it with water.

And that was what I was going to use for mortar in between my bricks.

And even as I was doing the first layer, my bricks were not standing straight.

They were falling over, and I tried putting them back up and putting the mud on top of them and putting the next brick, but without fail, I couldn't get much higher than 2 or 3 layers of brick because my bricks kept falling over.

And I realized it was because the ground was flat.

I've been thinking about the importance of a foundation here recently.

And I looked it up on Yahoo, answers.yahoo.com, and it answers the question, why build a foundation under a house?

And I'm not in construction, if there's someone that's here today that is, forgive me.

But it says here, in some locations people put up buildings, usually a shed or a barn, but not normally a house on concrete blocks or other stones that are intended to keep the wood off the ground.

They usually settle unevenly and while that's not too much of a problem for a barn, settling in a house can be a real annoyance when doors and windows won't open and sheetrock cracks, etc.

There's a reason for a foundation, right?

We wouldn't build a house without a foundation.

Today we're going to look at an illustration in the Bible of the importance of a solid foundation.

And so if you want to turn with me to Matthew chapter 7, we're going to look at Matthew chapter 7 today and a couple other passages in Scripture, an illustration that Jesus gave of the importance of a solid foundation.

When you're there, you can say, praise the Lord.

And it says, Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on a rock.

And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house and it did not fall for it was founded on the what?

But everyone who hears these things of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house and it fell and great was its fall.

So how many different types of men are there here in this story?

The wise man built his house upon the rock.

Okay, sorry, I just had that running through my mind all day.

There's the wise man that built his house on the rock, and there is the foolish man who built his house on the sand.

Maybe they built an identical house, but on 2 types of foundations, right?

It's interesting, I guess, around the Sea of Galilee, you know, I've never been there and if anyone's been to the Holy Land, again, I apologize.

But from my understanding, there are hills and mountains in the area and there are valleys that come down to the Sea of Galilee.

That there would be valleys that in the summer would be dry, but during the winter there would be raging torrents of water coming down from the mountains into the sea.

And yet during the summer the peasants would build a hovel, some small dwelling place, there, right there in the valley of the riverbed when it's dry.

And yet in the winter, when that water would rush through, their hava would be carried away with it.

And here Jesus is giving this illustration as he's sitting at the end of the Sermon on the Mountain.

So everyone can see this, you know, they're looking at it, they're remembering, oh yeah, just this last winter, you know, I saw 5 houses being swept away.

You know, So they're really connecting it with something that they had even seen.

But it's interesting, Matthew gives a picture that is good and powerful, but Luke seems to take it even deeper.

So let's go to Luke chapter 6 and see the differences between Luke's depiction of this illustration and Matthew's.

And when you're there, you can say hallelujah.

Alright, Luke 6, we're looking at verse 46.

It says, But why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do the things which I say?

Whoever comes to me and hears my sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like.

He's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.

And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock.

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A Sure Foundation

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