Daily Devotional

January 13

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

He built his house on the sand (ii)
(continued from January 11)

Finally, it is a mentality that never thinks things right through; it never stops to envisage and consider possibilities and eventualities. The foolish man who built his house without a foundation and on the sand did not stop to think or to ask himself, "'Now what may happen? Is it possible that the river which is so pleasant to look at in the summer may in the winter suddenly become very swollen as the result of heavy rain or snow and I may be flooded out?" He did not stop to think of that; he just wanted a pleasant house in that particular position, and he put it up without considering any one of these things.

And if someone had come along and said, "Look here, my friend, it is no use putting up a house like that on the sand. Don't you realize what may happen in this locality? You don't know what that river is capable of doing. I have seen it like a veritable cataract. I have known storms here that bring down the best-built houses. My friend, I suggest that you dig.deep. Get down to the rock"—the foolish man would have dismissed it all and persisted in doing what he considered best for him.

In a spiritual sense, he is not interested in learning from Church history; he is not interested in what the Bible has to say; he wants to do something, and he believes it can be done in his way, and away he goes and does it. He does not consult the plans and the specifications; he does not try to look to the future and envisage certain tests that must inevitably come upon the house that is being built.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, p. 299