“Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like” (Luke 6:47). There follows the story of a man carefully building a house and digging deep to find rock for the foundations. When it was finished “a flood arose, the stream broke against that house, and could not shake it because it had been well built” (Luke 6:48).

This parable begins with Jesus saying, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, lord’ and not do the things that I tell you?” (Luke 6:46). We must ask ourselves, what do the teachings of Jesus mean to me? Do I live in a way that shows I believe in them? We are buffet by the storms of Godless behaviour as never before, but look at the difference between the natural and the spiritual. We might be frightened by violent weather but when it comes to a flood of immoral behaviour, many seem to welcome it, and perhaps even enjoy splashing in the shallows, ignoring the awesome flood of God’s judgments that is coming.

Ancient Israel fooled themselves thinking God is in our midst. We go to the Temple to worship, “we lean on the Lord”. The prophet Micah told them, you “detest justice and make crooked all that is straight” (Micah 5:9) yet you then “lean on the LORD and say, ‘is not the LORD in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us’. Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; and Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins …” (Micah 5:11,12).

These people fooled themselves. The Lord was not with them because their personal spiritual houses were not built upon a spiritual rock. History is set to repeat itself – the same call goes out now as is it did then! Note the message God sent through the Zephaniah. “Seek the LORD all you humble of the land who do his just commands; seek righteousness; seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden in the day of the anger of the LORD” (Zephaniah 2:3).