Better to face the truth now than to be bewildered on the Day of the Lord.
Many people who assume they are genuine Christians will be astonished on the Day of the Lord to learn they are not. On Judgment Day they will be shocked to discover they are rejected from heaven because they are not true disciples of Jesus Christ.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus spoke of this.
“I never knew you”
Jesus said, “(21) Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (22) On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ (23) And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matthew 7:21–23)
Lord, Lord
In verse 21–23, Jesus says some people who call him Lord will be rejected by him. Let that sink in deeply. These people not only acknowledge certain beliefs about Jesus, they actually call him Lord. They use the title for him that represents his authority, suggesting that they are obedient and surrendered to him.
Nevertheless, Jesus refers to them in verse 23 as “workers of lawlessness.” They were regularly and deliberately disobedient to the laws of God. They rebelled against God’s words. Therefore, they were also hypocrites because they called Jesus Lord but habitually and unrepentantly disobeyed him.
Jesus says to them: “I never knew you.” It was not as though they had started well and then drifted back into the world of sin. Jesus never knew them, not at the start of their “Christianity” nor in the middle nor at the end. They never made the decision to become a true disciple of Jesus, learning from him, confessing and repenting of sin, following him.
They assumed because they made a verbal show of following Jesus and did religious things that they were right with God and on their way to heaven. They were bewildered to find rejection in the presence of Jesus.
Jesus says in verse 21 that the one who will be accepted by him on the day of the Lord is “the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” These people obey the enduring moral laws of God the Father. They are true disciples of Jesus, meaning they learn from him and obey him.
Building a house
Immediately after this teaching, Jesus tells the parable of building a house on the rock.
“(24) Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. (25) And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. (26) And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. (27) And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24–27 ESV)
What distinguishes the house that stands in the storm from the house that is destroyed is, one person hears the Lord’s words and puts them into practice and the other person hears the words but ignores them.
One person becomes a true disciple of Jesus and the other does not. In the storm of Judgment Day, the true disciple stands the test and is received into heaven. The lawless, unrepentantly immoral person sees his life swept away.
This makes it clear that when Jesus tells the parable of the two builders, he is elaborating on the teaching of verses 21–23, where he says that some people will be shocked to find on the day of the Lord that though they call Jesus the Lord of their lives they have in fact been living in lawlessness; they have been disobeying his words; and therefore they are rejected. That is why verse 24 begins, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine….” The word then indicates that Jesus intends for verses 24–27 to build on what he said in verses 21–23.
The rejected man in verses 21–23 is the same person in verses 26–27, the “foolish man who built his house on the sand.” He never was a genuine disciple of Jesus. Only true disciples are true Christians who in the end will enter the kingdom of heaven.