The Key to the Sermon on the Mount (or … What Psalty Got Wrong)

When I was little, I listened to cassette tapes of Psalty the Singing Songbook. This fictitious come-to-life songbook sang praise songs with kids. I particularly remember a song called “Sandyland.” It was based on Jesus’s parable of the wise man and the foolish man in Matthew 7:24-27 (also see Luke 6:46-49). The lyrics went like this:

Don’t build your house on the sandyland,
Don’t build it too near the shore.
Well, it might be kind of nice,
But you’ll have to build it twice,
Oh, you’ll have to build your house once more

Psalty’s song taught children to take the words of Jesus and obey them. But there’s one thing that “Sandyland” got wrong. The lyrics of this catchy song miss a critical point that Jesus makes in this parable.

An important detail in the parable is the fact that the wise man and the foolish man are building houses. After all, Jesus could have told a story about building a wall or a tower (see, for example, Luke 14:28). It’s a crucial element of the parable that the structures being built are dwellings.

Let me illustrate by recalling an event that was on the news in 2021. 

On the morning of June 24, 2021, my wife and I were watching the news about the Champlain Towers South, a condominium complex in Surfside, Florida. At 1:21 am that morning, the beachfront tower collapsed.

“An important detail in the parable is the fact that the wise man and the foolish man are building houses. ”

I remember my daughter seeing the news with us. She remarked, “it must be sad to come home and see that your house fell down.”

After looking at each other, my wife and I addressed our daughter in a somber tone.

 “Oh, kiddo. It’s really tragic. Most of the people were home at the time. Lots of people died.”

Like Champlain Towers, the structures in Jesus’s parable are buildings in which people lived. As the disciples and the crowds hear the story, they probably aren’t picturing the foolish man outside his house, shrugging about having to rebuild it. They probably envision the man inside his house as it collapses, perishing.

The woeful finality of the foolish man’s fate is consistent with the content preceding the parable. Leading up to it, Jesus gives three units of teaching as the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) draws to a close. Each episode contains a dire warning about eternity:

• The narrow gate leads to life, and the wide gate leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14)

• False prophets are like bad trees that will be thrown into the fire (Matthew 7:15-20)

• The Lord will say to false disciples: “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (Matthew 7:21-23)

“Jesus, however, compassionately offers clear instructions for preventing tragedy when the Day of Judgment comes: put his words into practice.”

See, the Sermon ends with consecutive eschatological warnings. Therefore, it wouldn’t fit with the context for Jesus to shift to an innocuous message like “by golly, you’ll just have to try again!” Rather, he concludes the Sermon with a weighty summons: putting these words into action leads to life. Not putting them into action leads to death. 

Sorry, Psalty. You got it wrong. The foolish man won’t get another chance.

The incident in Surfside left many people wondering what could have prevented such a tragedy. Jesus, however, compassionately offers clear instructions for preventing tragedy when the Day of Judgment comes: put his words into practice. This is the key to the Sermon on the Mount.

Without Jesus, none of us would be on the path to life. The outlook for eternity would be grim. But Jesus graciously invites his hearers to join his kingdom, receive forgiveness, and have eternal life. The teachings of Jesus aren’t merely good advice. The consequences of whether we act on them are eternal.