No building is better than its foundation. When my wife and I were in Alaska several years ago, our friend Don Nelson took us up to the area of the permafrost and explained that unless the builders drive their pilings down below the permafrost, the buildings will not remain firm. Some buildings have settled unevenly because the builders were not careful to lay a good foundation by driving the pilings below the frost line.
In my hometown of Midland, Michigan, the Consumer Power Company was constructing a building to house their nuclear plant, but they discovered that the ground below the building was not firm enough. It kept settling. The people of the community became aroused because, if the building was going to be that unsure, then the nuclear plant might very well be a community hazard. They finally abandoned that building for a nuclear plant and followed another application. We can learn from them. We need a solid foundation.
We could learn something from the ancients who lived before Christ. For example, to build the pyramids of Egypt, a solid foundation was needed. The great pyramid of Giza was built around 2,500 years before Christ, and it still stands today. It covers 13 acres of ground and contains 2,300,000 blocks of granite and limestone, some weighing up to 5,000 pounds each. We have not yet learned how they built the pyramids with rocks of that size. As far as we know, the builders had no heavy equipment to handle such building stones. With that foundation, the pyramid still stands. So the foundation and the material tell their own story.
Life is something like that. It too needs a strong foundation. It requires more than human wisdom to be stable. Human wisdom is too unstable to base your life on. In I Corinthians 2:1-5 we read about THE FOUNDATION OF TRUE FAITH:
1 And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.
2 For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
3 And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.
4 And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:
5 That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
In Paul’s words, I find three solid ROCKS upon which to build your life if you want it to stand.
The first rock is:
1 And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.
The apostle Paul calls the first rock the testimony or the mystery of God. Paul cast aside the wisdom of men and the excellency of speech. That does not mean he could not have used them, because having attended, no doubt, the Greek University in Tarsus, he would have been trained in rhetoric. He could have used the wisdom of men and the excellency of speech. Instead, he used one theme Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
On the surface, that may sound really simple, but it is extremely complex. It is so complex that no human wisdom could develop it. It was conceived in the mind of God, the magnificent mind of God, that the sin of the human race required the death of the Son of God. No human wisdom could work that out. It took divine wisdom. It took the mind of God to work that out.
AND IT WORKS!
When Paul’s missionary party was put in jail at Philippi, the Bible tells us in Acts 16 that Paul and Silas began to sing and praise the...
