Bill Walton cut his hair and his beard and learned how to play ball like few men before or since. And to this day, he calls coach Wooden, who is now more than 90 years old, every week just to tell him how much he loves him. Wooden, you see, was much more than a coach to his players. He became their father figure. Of the 188 or so players that he coached during his career, he knows the whereabouts of 172.
Coach Wooden was committed to the basics. He taught his players the importance of building a solid foundation for success — in basketball and in life.
There is great opportunity today to complicate our lives and to miss out on the basics. Yet it is my belief that Jesus wants us to focus on the basics as we seek to build our lives on the rock-solid truth revealed to us in His life and in God's word.
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Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is the most significant sermon ever delivered. Recorded in Matthew's fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters, it is a masterful exposition of the law, a potent assault on religious legalism, and a clarion call to true faith and salvation.
Those who heard Jesus deliver the Sermon on the Mount were amazed with its relevance. In fact, the crowd's response to this incredible teaching is recorded in the last sentence of Matthew 7: "And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."2
The scribes quoted others to establish the authority of their teaching, but Jesus was His own authority.3 He taught with such force and clarity that it was obvious to all He was the source of the truth He taught.
Among the many things Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount is the absolute need to build our faith on a sound foundation. He offers us a simple yet powerful illustration of two home builders to drive home His point. The houses in His illustration represent religious life, and the wind and rain are divine judgment:
Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.4
Two men. Two houses. One founded on rock. The other built on sand. Both buffeted by wind and pelted with rain. The house with a solid foundation remains standing. The other collapses.