177. The Scorpions - "We Built This House"

A very young Rudolf Schenker founded Scorpions in the provincial, post-war Hannover in 1965. Fifty years on, the German rockers released Return To Forever to coincide with the band's golden anniversary. This song finds the band reflecting on their long career. Vocalist Klaus Meine said: "In the end, it tells our story. We've built this house called Scorpions brick by brick and often quite arduously. From the first days in Hannover, the first concerts abroad, until this very day." "We've weathered severe storms, but the house withstood everything, turned out to be weatherproof and stable," he continued. "However, building the house was never just cumbersome, but joyful as well. The joy of music, the joy of having experienced and still experiencing it all, the joy of — and the thankfulness for — the fans' affection. We have been working hard for this dream, but we're thankful as well for having been able to live it, and for still being able to live it today."


Love is the glue that holds us together
Faith and believing is the key, this door of forever
Baby You and I
We're every reason on earth
Now and again it's always us against the world
Against the world

When the rain fell
And the flood came
And the wind blew hard like a hammer on these walls
We didn't crack, or break or fall
We built this house on a rock (ooh)
This house on a rock (ooh)

And there is a time to face stormy weather
But we are always standing strong, a lifetime together
Baby You and I
We don't regret anything
Now it's the two of us again against the wind
Against the wind

When the rain fell
And the flood came
And the wind blew hard like a hammer on these walls
We didn't crack or break or fall
We built this house on a rock (ooh)
This house on a rock (ooh)

Brick by brick we have set it up
Oh man if these walls could talk
Bit by bit based it on trust
We gave it all we got

When the rain fell
and the flood came
and the wind blew hard like a hammer on these walls
We didn't crack or break or fall
We built this house on a rock (ooh)
This house on a rock (ooh)
We built this house on a rock (ooh) 

This song could have been lifted straight out of the New Testament. In Matthew 7:24-27 these is found the parable of the wise and foolish builders. this is exactly what The Scorpions are on about in their song "We Built this House"

The words in Matthew 7:24-27 conclude one of the greatest sermons ever preached. Jesus Christ brings to a close the great Sermon on the Mount, and he does so with a poignant truth about two men. These two men raise the question, what kind of foundation are we building on? These two men can be seen in terms of a comparison, a contrast, leading us to a clear conclusion.

Same Vision.
Note first of all the comparisons between these two men. These two men had the same vision. They both wanted to build a house. Their dreams were the same. Their longings were the same. Their desires were the same. What makes these two men alike is that their view of the future was on par. They both wanted to build a house. The concept of building a house—in its most immediate interpretation—would be to erect a life, to build a life worth living, to build a life that's significant, to build a life that is going somewhere. You could relate it to building a family, since families live in homes. And you could say both men wanted to have vibrant, dynamic, strong households. Of course the church of Jesus Christ is called the household of faith, so we could apply it to building a ministry. You are probably building all three. You're building a life. You want a life that you are proud of, that God is proud of, and that when you look back on it you are glad. You want a family that's strong and stable and vibrant and alive and committed. And you want a ministry that will stand the test of time. All of us fit into this brief story. Both men had the same vision.

Divine Truth.
Not only did both have the same vision, they both went to the same theological college so to speak, because it says both men "heard these words of mine." Both men went to the same class and had the same lecturer. You don't get any better than this, because in this case, the written word was communicated by the living Word. Jesus himself was the lecturer. Both men were oriented to listening to divine truth. Both men were bible students Both men were committed to making themselves available to divine input. We're not talking about one man having a love for hearing the truth, and another man a total distain for it. We're talking about both men availing themselves to Scripture. So the comparison between these two men is they have the same vision. They want to see things rise from the ground and go higher—a life, a family, a ministry, or all three. And they have the same instruction, the same instructor, as they avail themselves of divine truth.

Same Storm.
There's a third comparison. These men lived in the same community. I know what you're saying. You're thinking, I've read this story, and I don't see anything about the location of the houses. They lived in the same community because they were both affected by the same storm. The description of the storm is precisely the same in both cases, and affected both men. Both men were subject to the same storm, which meant they were in reasonable proximity to one another. Everybody is affected by storms. Everybody here is affected by the negative realities of life or ministry or family. It may not be the same, but one thing is true of us all—we do get rained on. Life is not always sunshine. Life is not always exciting. Life has its moments of tears. We all share the same vision—we want to build something; same training—we want to hear something; and same storms—we all have to face something.

Different Character.
Those comparisons in this story are paralleled by some contrasts, some things that made these men different from one another. First of all, these men possessed two different characters. Jesus calls the first man a wise man. He calls the second man a moron. The Greek word for "foolish" is where we get our word moron from. One is viewed as wise, a wise man who wants to build something, a wise man who gets spiritual training, and a wise man in the storm. The other man is a foolish man who wants to build something, a foolish man who exposes himself to divine truth, a foolish man in a storm. Wisdom, in Scripture, is the ability to take divine truth and apply it to life. The fool in Scripture is not necessarily the person who lacks information. It is the person who does little or nothing with the information received. Proverbs is full of the fool who hears but does not respond. So these two men were fundamentally different. Don't get me wrong. They both had dreams. They both had training. They both had storms. On the outside they would have looked like Siamese twins, but in the description given by the Lord, it says they were fundamentally different men.

Different Foundations.
What contrast demonstrated the fundamental difference between these two men? It's all about foundations. It says that the wise man built his house upon the rock, and it says the foolish man built his house upon the sand. While both men have the same vision, while both men have the same dream, the same training, and the same storm, they did not have the same foundation. The under girding and underpinning of their dreams, of their training, and of their trials were not the same. What's the difference between building on a foundation of rock and building on a foundation of sand? What were the two thinking that made one a fool and one a wise man? When Luke tells the story in Luke 6:48, it says the wise man dug deep. It costs to build on rock. You can build on sand fairly cheaply. To build on rock is hard work; to build on sand takes little time. It costs time and energy and effort and additional funds if you're going to go deep. You can be cursory if you want to stay on top of the shifting realities. You can be quick about it on sand; you can't go too fast on rock. This difference between the two men is fundamentally rooted in the fact that the second man, the foolish man, was building a house for show. The man building his house on rock was building a house to last. The second man was not concerned about how long the house would be there. He just wanted to make sure for however long it was there people would want to drive by and look at it. It was for a public persona, not for depth.

Different Results.
The biggest contrast of them all is the results, because it says one house stood and another house fell. Not only did it fall, "it fell greatly." It was a total collapse. What does the Lord want us to learn? What is his fundamental point? You have to notice something in the text. If you were to drive by both men's homes, you would not discover there was a difference. If you were to talk to the men, you would not know that there was a fundamental difference. The only time you would discover there was a difference between these two men and the lives, homes, or ministries they erected was during the storm. Only the storm reveals the nature of your foundation. As long as the sun is shining, you won't think about what you're built on, you may not care about what you're built on, but the storm has a way of letting you know what kind of foundation you're resting on. Notice the language. In both cases "rain descended," "floods came," "winds blew, and burst against that house." Whenever you have rain, floods, winds, and houses being knocked down, that's a hurricane. Hurricane season came on both of them. I wish following Jesus was really like the way some American televangelists declare it to be—come to Jesus and it's all sunshine; come to Jesus, he has keys waiting for you for your new BMW; come to Jesus and he's got the house in the suburbs and he's got the healing for your every disease. You can build a great show house with that kind of preaching. But according to this text there was a hurricane. Nature was unleashed, and rain and winds blew.

Foundations Formed.
You have to understand something about foundations. You can't pour them when it's raining. You can pour a foundation before it rains. You can pour a foundation after it rains. But what you can't do is pour a foundation when it is raining. Whatever foundation you're going to have, you need to get solidified before the storm, so when the storm comes you're not in crisis.  I love the story in Mark 4 where Jesus tells the disciples "let us go over to the other side." Jesus lay down in the boat and went to sleep. The boat was filling with water because they ran into a storm. The wind coming across the hills surrounding the Sea of Galilee created an upheaval on the sea. It is was fierce gale. It was slapping the water all around, which was slapping the boat all around, and the water was descending into the boat, and they were in jeopardy. They were in a storm, and Jesus was asleep. What good is having a God who will go to sleep on you? When you need him most, he's snoring. When you need him most, he's chilling.  The key isn't that Jesus was asleep. The text says Jesus was asleep "on a cushion."  I was on the plane coming back from Australia on a long haul flight in 2012. The stewardess said, "Sir, would you like a pillow?" Being interpreted, "Are you planning to go to sleep?" Jesus didn't fall off. He was on a cushion. That meant he planned to sleep on them. This was intentional snoozing. Their theology was in an uproar, because they said, "Don't you care if we perish"  Don't you feel that way when you're in a storm? Don't you care? How could heaven be this quiet now? When I didn't want to listen to you, you were out preaching. Now I want to listen to you, and you're sleeping. "Don't you care that we perish?" Jesus awakened from his sleep and asked what sounds to me a very insensitive question: Why are you so timid and so easily ruffled?

Do you forget the truth of God?

Jesus, we're getting ready to drown. That's why we're so easily ruffled. What kind of question is that? Jesus comes to the front of the ship and says, "Peace, be still." That's an interesting term. I would have thought Jesus would have said, storm, be still. He said, "Peace, be still." Why would he say that? Because, you see, he had told them when they left the dock: Gentlemen, we, all of us, are going to the other side. We are going to leave here, and we are going to wind up at the other side. Storms have a way of causing you to forget what the Lord has said. Storms have a way of causing you to forget the truth of God. Storms have a way of keeping you from applying in a storm what you learn in the sunshine. Their problem was not hearing the truth. They heard Jesus say, "Let us go to the other side." Their problem was applying the truth in a bad situation. I like how that story ends. After Jesus quelled the storm, it says, "they became very much afraid." They were scared of the storm, and then they saw the Lord, and then they got really scared. "What manner of man is this?"

If your foundation is sure?

Why does God give you a storm? Because it lets you know what kind of foundation you're on. Only in a hurricane will you discover whether you're really resting on the truth of God or whether you're merely listening to it. There's a lot of difference between saying amen on Sunday and saying amen on Monday in a storm. There's a lot of difference in worshiping God when all is well and worshiping God when all is wrong. But if your foundation is sure, then it will be the application, and not merely the information, of divine truth that will hold you steady.  The goal of biblical preaching is not merely to inform the church of the menu of the truth of God's Word. It is to bring us all to the place of partaking of the meal. It is not merely to tell people, what Jesus says. It is to bring everyone to a change of action based on the truth of God. In other words, every time you have a hurricane, God has given you a new opportunity to demonstrate you are resting on a sure foundation. I don't know what storms, hurricanes, or tornadoes you will face. You're either just coming out one or you're in one, and if not, one is around the corner waiting on you. I do know this. This Jesus is your foundation, which involves the truth of God applied in the realities of life. Foundations are not merely the information to stand on. The Word of God is not simply to have a Bible under your arm or on your coffee table. It is to have the truth of God as the modus operandi of decision-making. What differentiated these two men? Both heard, but only one did.  I wish I could tell you that hearing God's Word means no storms, but that's a lie. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I can tell you is that adhering to God's Word means whatever storms there are won't have the last word.

When the rain fell
And the flood came
And the wind blew hard like a hammer on these walls
We didn't crack or break or fall
We built this house on a rock (ooh)
This house on a rock (ooh)