The true foundation for all permanent spiritual building (Luke 6:46-49). The great sermon concludes with a parable. Two men built houses near a watercourse. One dug deep and reached the rock, the other built upon the sand (i.e. the alluvial deposit of the watercourse). In the winter there was a flood, and the house built on the sand collapsed. The rock is Christ's own person and teaching, the only foundation for stable, spiritual and social building. Whatever is built upon that rock, lasts. Personal character built up on Christ, i.e. on faith in Him and loyal obedience to His commands, is stable. Men can count upon it, for they feel its strength as well as its gentleness. Societies or states, based on the supremacy of Christ's moral law, last. They have in them the elements of stability, prosperity, and progress. The Christian Church itself is the greatest example of this permanence and progress. Established originally by men who had dug down to the rock and based themselves on faith in Christ's divinity and absolute self-surrender to His service (see Matthew 16:18), it became a spiritual fabric which has outlasted the fall of empires, has spread to the most distant lands, and bids fair to fulfil the promise of its Founder that the gates of hell (i.e. of death or destruction) shall not prevail against it.
Related Commentaries of Matthew 7:24
Matthew 7:24-27
24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.