"'Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.'” - Matthew 7:24
"By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds." - 1 Corinthians 3:10
"..built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord." - Ephesians 2:20-21
“Rome wasn’t built in a day.” It is an old proverb, often repeated, and it is used to make a simple point: anything worth building is going to take time and extreme patience in order to build it properly. It flies in the face of the age of instant gratification, in which our technology has conditioned us to expect to receive what we’re seeking immediately. Smart phones keep us in instant contact with any other phone on the face of the earth, and we can even program “favorite” numbers to cut down the time of dialing the phone number. Internet is the fastest way to stay in touch with the events of the world, faster even than a cable TV set on CNN or Fox News. Keep the proper webpage up, and you can know immediately what is going on in the Russian-Ukrainian war, or the price of oil around the world. Vending machines respond immediately to the swipe of a debit or credit card. McDonald’s restaurants train us to expect to receive our hot meal in less than five minutes. Wal-Mart automatically times the check-out clerks at their stores to see who is fastest at processing customers, and promotions and other rewards are based on speedy performance. I heard recently of a certain secular child psychologist offering parenting training to help turn a rebellious teen into a cheerfully compliant one in less than five minutes! I was skeptical, to say the least. We have been trained toward impatience by our lightning quick information age.
But, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” The small village on the Tiber took three centuries to gain ascendancy over the Etruscans and the other tribes in the central Italian peninsula. Then, methodically, Rome’s might grew and grew. The city on the seven hills saw a river of building materials flowing in, and massive building projects began to reach for the sky. The Coliseum took ten years to complete, with an estimated 131,000 cubic yards of travertine stone comprising the outer wall alone. The eleven aqueducts that supplied the city’s million inhabitants with fresh mountain water year-round took almost five hundred years to complete. Each succeeding emperor had a vision not only for the advance of the empire’s boundaries, but also for the glory of the city of Rome itself. Each one hoped to build mighty structures whose stone faces would proclaim the names of their builders for millennia to come.
In like manner but for infinitely more glorious and eternal purposes, God desires to build a “city of truth” in the heart of all His adopted children. This city of truth will be erected brick by brick, precept by precept, truth by truth, over years of time spent in his word and his world. Theological truths, in all their depth and breadth, take years to develop and take root in the human heart. A mature worldview, steeped in Scripture, rooted in one rightly interpreted text after another, does not spring up overnight. The “City of Truth” erected in the believing heart becomes the increasingly mature worldview by which the Christian understands everything that happens to him in this world, and by which he lives his life. It is unspeakably precious, but as in the case of Rome, the preparation and proper placement of each brick, each dressed stone, each shaped log and crafted bronze and sculpted gemstone of truth by which the glittering “City of Truth” rises from the pages of Scripture in the heart is not built in a day.
"With every quiet time spent immersed in the word, with every passage of Scripture memorized, with every faithful sermon heard, with every good Christian book read, the Holy Spirit uses your knowledge of language (grammar and vocabulary) to mine out and dress stones of theological truth that will shape the way you view life and how you live your days."
Each of the passages cited above refers to a building project. All of them are metaphors for the growth of a Christian’s heart in sanctification. In each case, the ministry of the word of God is central to this building project. Jesus likens people who hear His words and put them into practice to a wise man building a house on a rock. Paul likens his successors in preaching and teaching the word to the people of Corinth as craftsmen who build on the foundation he laid, some building with gold, some with silver, some with costly stones, but others with wood, hay, or straw. In the Ephesians 2 passage, Paul compares the Ephesian Christians to a spiritual temple erected on the foundation of the word of God. I say that all of this “spiritual construction” goes on within our hearts as we take in the pure word of God. With every quiet time spent immersed in the word, with every passage of Scripture memorized, with every faithful sermon heard, with every good Christian book read, the Holy Spirit uses your knowledge of language (grammar and vocabulary) to mine out and dress stones of theological truth that will shape the way you view life and how you live your days. Your challenge is to accelerate the building project by increasing your hunger for the Word of God.
