10:05 Adult Worship—June 16, 2002
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
A few years ago, I had an experience that I have never had before. We had the second floor home in our house completely gutted out down to the studs. All the walls, floors, ceilings, doors, plumbing, and wiring were ripped out.
When we got onto our deck looking out over the bay, we found that the decks were unsafe. So we ripped the decks off too.
To tell the truth, I didn’t actually gut the house and rebuilt it. We had a talented Curtis Poon and a group of skilled workers rebuild our house. After all of the debris was hauled away, we slowly started to see our house returning to form, one room after another.
When they got to the deck, we had a problem. To replace the decks the same way the house was originally built with cantilevers would have been too expensive. So the decks needed tall posts that were anchored in concrete foundations. One of the persons who helped with our deck was Nick Lam. Trenches were dug and steel rebar stakes inserted for strength. The concrete was poured all around giving the foundations for the decks firmness in the possible wake of an earthquake.
Much of the work in renovating an old house, including the pouring of a concrete foundation for the decks is no small tasks. Not only is our lot a steeply sloping patch of earth, but it was also covered with over-grown weeds and trees. All of which have to be removed in order to lay a good foundation.
Our contractor warned us, “You lay a bad foundation, and the house is doomed forever.” Although you don’t see it, doing all the inside the walls work and digging the footings for the foundation are some of the most important tasks in good construction.
Building Our Houses
In the Bible, there are over 400 references that relate to building and construction. Ecclesiastes 3:3 speaks of a “time to build.” Yet building only by our selves is considered foolish. In Psalms 127, we read “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” And in Isaiah 48, God is a builder too, “My hand laid the foundation of the earth.”
In today’s gospel, Matthew 7, Jesus at the end of the Sermon on the Mount discussed home construction. Jesus gives choices for us to make—to choose the way of the world or to choose his way of the kingdom of God. Even though the builder of all things is God, God has graciously given each of us a hand in the construction of that building that is our soul.
Each of us is busy building a life, brick by brick, board by board, one experience after another. Every experience that we have, all of the good and bad that happen to us, becomes part of us. Brick by brick, stone by stone.
After the renovations were completed and we moved into our beautifully designed home, I was left with the same steeply sloping patch of earth filled with overgrown weeds and wild blackberry vines. I needed landscaping!
To hold back the earth from the winter rains, I needed ground covering plants and retaining walls. At Home Depot, you can get these concrete retaining wall bricks that once lay down, they lock together. I bought a skid. When I needed more, I loaded up what my Camry can take. I eventually built two retaining walls. But most likely the hernia that I got last year was the scar of my efforts.
You have scars too, maybe not on your body, but in your soul, from the various misfortunes that may have come your way. Perhaps these misfortunes have not left you bleeding and broken, but they have left you a bit bruised. “Sadder but wiser,” we sometimes say after we have recovered from some bad experience. The scars are beneath the surface. Most people never see them in you, but they are part of your foundation, at the base of who you are.
One of the challenges of renovating a house is making hundreds of big and small decisions: paint colors, bathroom fixtures, carpet, and light fixtures. Some of the decisions are rather frightening because you know that you must live with these decisions for years to come.
Some construction decisions look different when we move from the blueprints to the actual house. We thought, when we were deciding, that things would turn out one way. But then, after the decision has been made, things turn out quite differently and we are filled with regret. Building construction is like that. Our lives, too, become the sum of our decisions.
Building Wisely
Sometimes we don’t realize how dumb some of our decisions were until it is too late. I have heard more than one parent lament, ”I was working so hard, while our children were young, to provide for them. Then I woke up one day and the children were grown and gone. I was foolish to have missed so much of their young lives with all of my work.”
There’s another man who spent much of his life accumulating enough money to build one of the largest homes ever built in his town. He worked hard, spent much of his life on the road. Finally, they started to build his house, a mansion, on the edge of town. Three years later, when that huge house was finally finished, his marriage was over, ended in a bitter divorce. He was alienated from his adult children. His first Christmas in his new home was spent in a large house fully decorated for Christmas, and alone.
Jesus tells about a man who wisely built his house on a solid rock foundation. Another man unwisely built his house on a foundation of shifting sand. When the rain came and rivers rose, the foolish man’s house was quickly destroyed.
“Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand,” (Matt. 7:26) says Jesus.
Christ is the cornerstone to our building construction. Christ is the sure and firm foundation. He is the solid, dependable foundation upon which to build a life—the example, the life and the teachings of Jesus.
After 40 years of full-time ministry at FCBC and still going strong, after __ years of marriage, after raising four children and now their children are nurturing another generation, James and Marie Chuck have built a firm foundation. Year after year, they have been faithful and dedicated to the cause of Christ. It’s no wonder that the OYYAs and many others have seen in James and Marie’s household built on the life, and teachings of Jesus.
I know that James and Marie are not perfect. We are not too. But what we see that is long lasting is the sustain building of moral resources to deal with the inevitable demands of life. When the rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew, our houses did not fall because they were built on the rock of Jesus.
Why Go to Church?
A church-goer wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday. “I’ve gone for 30 years now,” he wrote, “and in that time I have heard something like 3000 sermons. But for the life of me, I can’t remember a single one of them. So I think I’m wasting my time and the pastors are wasting theirs by giving sermons at all.”
This started a real controversy in the “Letters to the Editor” column, much to the delight of the editor. It went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher:
“I’ve been married for 30 years now. In that time my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But for the life of me, I can’t recall the entire menu for a single one of those meals. But I do know this: They all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not given me these meals, I would be physically dead today. Likewise, if I had not gone to church for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today!”
As we live through our decisions, our experiences, the people who serve as our pastors, like Dr. Chuck, and the people whom we minister, like the people in Mexicali, the students at Friday Night School, the kids at Day Camp, the visitors who come through these doors to be in worship with us, we are amassing the moral resources to deal with the demands of life. We are building, brick by brick, a solid and firm foundation.
My Father’s Faith
Like many of your fathers, my father immigrated to the United States when he was merely a teenager in 1930. Like his father, my father believed that a better life might be found in Gold Mountain. After serving in the U.S. Army in Germany, he settled in Boston and went to the First Baptist Church where there was a Chinese Sunday School. He learned his broken English by reading the Bible and singing hymns.
When we were born, he brought us to church so that we can attend Sunday School and morning worship too. After the hand-washed laundry business gave way to the laundromats, he worked in a Chinese restaurant that prevented him from attending church. Although he couldn’t attend church himself, he never discouraged us from going. He was endeared to Mrs. Mildred Davis who gave him his English name, Joseph as well as naming all of us kids.
My father lived through his decisions, created a life for us in Boston, met people at church and perhaps befriended others about the importance of going to church. He was amassing the moral resources to eventually deal with the demands of life. When he came to America, he was building a new life, brick by brick, a solid and firm foundation.
When life comes to the end, there are those who appear to have been carefully constructing their souls in preparation for the final battle. When it comes time for the winds and the rain to beat against their lives, their foundation remains secure.
A pastor shared a story of a man who is in the middle of a tough battle with a severe neurological disorder. Much of the day he is in great pain. He has endured a dozen surgeries.
In his conversation with him, the pastor marveled at his positive disposition. Despite it all, he continues to fight, continues to live with dignity and grace. How?
He said, “It’s like I prepared for this 50 years ago. My mother took me to church every Sunday. We had a difficult time, by most people’s standards. But at church, I was told that God loved me, that God had plans for me, that God would stand beside me no matter what. I never really needed to draw on any of that until now. I’m so grateful that, when it came time for me to reach down and show what I was made of, I had something to show for it.”
This man is a very wise person.
My prayer for all the fathers and mothers in this church is to build a firm foundation by trusting God and making Christ as your cornerstone. Begin setting an example for your children by coming to church every Sunday and giving thanks for every meal. Read the Bible at home and show your love for each other.
It may not sound like a lot, but after 30 years, 40 years, perhaps 50 years, you too may look back and discover that when the rain come, the rivers overflow, and the wind beat against your house, you will have the moral resources to weather the demands of life.
We are building, brick by brick, a solid and firm foundation in the Lord.
Let us pray. We thank you, God for Jesus Christ, the firm foundation for life in this world, and our certain hope for life in the next. We thank you, God, that we may be confident and secure when winds blow and storms come, for Christ is our rock in whom we shall endure and prevail. We thank you, God, for the church of Jesus Christ that has stood the test of time, and for the saints whose building we have inherited. Amen.