11 May 2024
The Parable of Two Builders shows up at the end of the Sermon the Mount (Matthew 7:24-27) -- noting that most commentators relegate this to a children's fable because it is overused in children's teaching -- but it also appears at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:46-49). Bailey looks at the latter because it's less well know.
The rhetorical format is ABCABC.
A. Hear and do
B. House built with foundation
C. Not shaken
A. Hear and not do
B. House built without foundation
C. House falls
Matthew's version centers on whether the builder is wise or foolish, but Luke's account is more about the foundation itself. Most western readers cannot connect to the story. We know how hard the work is building a house, but they are often finished in weeks. For those in Jesus' day, it was more like a year, and nothing came pre-made like our concrete, framing boards, floor sheets and sheetrock (plaster board), trusses, and roofing materials, nor any of our powered building machinery.
In Palestine, nobody builds in winter if they can avoid it. Construction is a summer-only business. Where there is open ground, it tends to be hard clay, but not so hard in the wet season. It's easy to picture some lazy lout thinking the hard clay could make a firm foundation, until the weather turns. The carefully stacked rocks will shift and collapse.
Thus, the universal building code is that, whether the soil is just a finger depth or several feet, they must dig down to the rock for a foundation. The words Jesus used echoed from Isaiah 28, "I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone." Bailey waxes lyrical about how the passage in Isaiah is such a perfect example of the ABCDCBA format. We all should have been told that Isaiah was royal family with an exceedingly good classical Hebrew education, and very talented at writing it.
The prophet rebukes the Judean leadership for trusting Egypt to come to their rescue when Assyria gets around to marching into the land. God's construction is a whole lot better than anything man could fashion. Isaiah's comment about making a pact with "death" reminds us that Egypt's religion was based on worshiping deities that controlled death. Isaiah also mentions the coming storm. God's promise is a future kingdom built so solid no man could imagine.
Isaiah's grand Hebrew imagery echoes in the Qumran writings, too, as a depiction of righteous men forming a wall to protect the community. But they compared it to the walls they built near the Dead Sea. Bailey describes a small raised platform "three fingers in height" in the Second Temple on which the firepan with incense was placed; it was called "the foundation", though no one can remember why. Speculation suggests that it was some echo of Isaiah's prophecy of a "tried stone" on which the Messianic Kingdom would be founded.
Thus, when Jesus came along, He contended that it was His teaching that was the foundation of that Kingdom. He was that foundation stone in the Temple. He knew that during the lifetime of many in His audience, the Zealots would rise up and provoke Rome to destroy the Temple. They would need something they could trust, something that no man could destroy; Paul wrote about it later in 1 Corinthians 3:16.
Bailey tries to connect it with Ezekiel 33:29-33, warning about people who hear but do not listen to God's Word. He suggests this is where Jesus got the warning about hearing and not doing.
At any rate, the storms are entirely natural, a part of our existence in this world. The difference is whether your life is built on what you can do, or what God can do.
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