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Sermon: No Foundation But Jesus Christ Date: January 16, 2022, Morning Text: 1 Corinthians 3:10–15 Series: Maturity In Christ Preacher: Josh Sheldon Audio: https://storage.googleapis.com/pbc-ca-sermons/2022/220116-NoFoundationButJesusChrist.aac
Well, our scripture for the preaching this morning is in 1 Corinthians 3, verses 10 -15.
As we have been, I'll read verses 1 -23, which is the entire chapter, but we'll preach just those six
verses, 10 -15.
And here you'll find the Apostle Paul continues his exhortation to the church that he should grow in
maturity and grow in strength in the stature of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And he uses a series of metaphorical figures in order to exhort them towards this and to
confront them with their true progress and where they had been stymied in that progress.
They were called people of the flesh.
They were called not spiritual people.
They were called infants in Christ.
And the proof of this was in their tendency to align themselves with men.
I follow Apollos.
I follow Cephas.
I follow Paul.
I follow.
And they preferred the passing pleasure of the perceived status that they had.
They preferred that over and against unity that they should have had in Christ Jesus, the one who we are supposed to
follow.
And in this, they were just being merely human.
Paul has likened himself to a planter.
Apollos, who was one of the favored figures, likened to a waterer.
And both of them as mere servants appointed by Christ, who alone can give growth to
his church into his image.
Only he can bring good from one man's planting, from another's watering.
Only Christ can bring good from any of our works.
And the final word of verse 9, which I'll read through in a moment.
He uses another metaphor, calling the church God's building, which he develops in our verses for
this morning.
So please stand as we honor God's word and his word to us in 1 Corinthians 3.
Again, I'll read the entire chapter, and then we'll just preach from those verses 10 -15.
But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.
I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you are not ready for it.
And even now you are not ready for it, for you are still of the flesh.
For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
For when one says, I follow Paul, and another, I follow Apollos, are you not of being merely human?
What then is Apollos?
What is Paul?
Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.
For we are God's fellow workers, you are God's field, God's building.
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation, and someone else
is building upon it.
Let each one take care of how he builds upon it.
For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work
will become manifest, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of
work each one has done.
If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.
If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?
If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him, for God's temple is holy and you are that temple.
Let no one deceive himself.
If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise, for the wisdom of this
world is folly with God.
For it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness, and again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise that they
are futile.
So let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, whether Paulus or Cephas,
or the world or life or death, or the present or the future, all are yours, and you are Christ's, and
Christ is God's.
Please be seated.
Let us pray and ask God's blessing upon now his proclamation and the hearing of his word.
Our Heavenly Father, we now come to you the word of God given to us to instruct us, given to us
that we may know ourselves, that we may know Christ Jesus, that we may know you, Father, by our faith in him.
So bless the words of my mouth, Father, bless the preparations that have been made to declare your word to this people who have come here
prepared to hear it, and may it have the effect that you, Father, by your Holy Spirit who inspired this word,
may it have that effect in all of us.
For we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.
One of those few verses, verses 10 through 15 that I just read, you know, the big
idea there is really pretty simple, isn't it?
The church is likened to a building, another one of Paul's metaphors, and it begins like any building,
like your house, if you live in a house, if you live in apartments, it's like that apartment building began.
It begins in that same way, in this metaphor, with a foundation, and everything
that's added to it, everything that comes up from that foundation, whether it's timbers or walls or stucco, as you
see the construction behind me, all consistent with what that foundation was meant to support,
what the original designer meant it to support, meant everything that comes up later off that foundation to look like,
and how it's to function.
Everything begins with a foundation, it has to be consistent, everything that comes after has to be consistent with
the design and the intention of that foundation.
So the church as a building is, of course, a metaphor, and like any metaphor in Scripture, it is
infallibly true, and that said, the church as Paul sees it here, well, it's not
really a building at all.
I mean, this church where we've come together, where we are members, Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church, what is the
church?
Well, someone might walk into our parking lot and say, there it is, and point to the building.
And sure enough, God has given us a wonderful building, and we are enjoying the heater this cold day, and in the
warm days, we have an air conditioner, but what is the church?
Paul says, you are the building, God's building, what does he mean?
The stucco, the brick, the mortar, of course not.
He means us together as a body, united together, committed to each other, and more importantly, committed to each
other because in this place, committed to the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's a metaphor, but of course, a metaphor in the Bible has
infallible and complete truth.
The building that we are is in other places called a body, another metaphor that Paul uses,
most particularly in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, where we're likened to a body.
And as a body, there's this idea of growth, and that is pretty easy for us.
A building seems static in our mind's eye, there's the building, okay, we are a building, so there we are, we exist, and we're
done, right?
Well, no.
Building a literal building can be remodeled, it can be expanded, but it doesn't really grow like a body.
What Paul speaks of here, he has this dynamic language.
He speaks in verse 10 of someone else who is building, that's a dynamic process, somebody's building upon the foundation that he
laid.
He says, let each one take care of how he builds, another dynamic verb, something happening,
something's growing, something's expanding, something's going on with this building.
In verse 12, he says, if anyone builds, again, a dynamic verb of speaking of this
constant growth and expansion.
And think about a foundation, the title of my message was No Foundation but Jesus Christ.
We sang hymn number 80, How Firm a Foundation, we sang hymn number 270, The Church's Only Foundation,
obviously you can see where I go.
But think about foundation, you come into a housing tract that's being built, and you see the
foundations that have been poured, they've got the rebar sticking out of them, they're ready for the planks to be laid down, and that's about all I know
about construction right there.
I have to stop there because I can't go very much further with my knowledge.
But I do know this, that a foundation is just laid out there, and nothing is put
upon it, is not very useful.
I mean, a foundation's meant to do something, isn't it?
A foundation's meant to support a structure, a building.
If you're a shipbuilder, the foundation's the keel, it's meant to support a certain kind of a boat.
A foundation all by itself is just laying there if you don't build upon it.
It needs wood to make for a framework, it needs stucco for the walls, it needs brick for fireplaces, glass for windows.
Now once the foundation's laid, if anything's going to happen, if there's going to be any structure, if
there's going to be a house to live in, building upon that structure, building upon that foundation, I should
say, is not an option.
It's not an option.
Otherwise, all you have is cement laying on the ground, really, no matter how well that foundation was built or
designed.
Now, there's no choice but to build upon the foundation of the building that
is God's building.
In Luke chapter 14, verse 28, our Lord Jesus Christ said, For which of you desiring to build a
tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it.
Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying,
This man began to build and was not able to finish.
What is the foundation of this building that is us here in this place?
Well, Paul made it very clear we don't have to dig down very deep.
It's Jesus Christ.
And from chapter 2, verse 2 of this same letter that we're in, the previous chapter, Jesus Christ and him
crucified.
If we can add just a couple of words to what he says here in our passage.
Christ is the foundation.
And we all, in our different roles, in our different settings, are the builders.
And build we must.
What Paul says here is Jesus, in a day, the day,
is going to look at our works.
He's going to examine our works.
He's going to see what we added and see if what we added to this place or tried to add to this place, this building,
either caused it to grow or maybe put a crack in the mortar.
Maybe weaken the foundation or something like that.
So, Christ, the foundation, we the builders, and we the ones who will stand before the
foundation itself, which is Jesus Christ, and our works will be assessed.
Some will receive reward, others will bring some loss to us.
This is the passage of force this morning.
As Paul gives this other metaphor, the church is a building.
As we see here, our responsibility to be builders upon it, not optional.
Do you know what it is to build the church?
Do you know your responsibility to pick up your hammer, if we can continue that metaphor, and nail
the timbers together, to put up the sheetrock, to do all you can to build this body up,
yourself and others around you?
It's what this passage is about here this morning.
There's some very difficult parts of this to figure out, some things I really had to wrestle with, and we'll come to those as we go
through these few verses.
Some of this is scary for people, or for some people, as we think of our works being burned up.
They talk about those who get into heaven, but they have, have you ever heard this, where they got the smell of smoke on their clothes,
because they just got in, by the hair on their chinny chin chin, or something like that.
And other times, we look at this, and we fear the reward, we fear the loss,
that we won't get the reward, if the loss is going to be something terrible.
We have to go through this, portion by portion, and see what the Apostle Paul is really saying here, and what your
responsibility is, what my responsibility as a pastor, Conley, as your pastor, was our
responsibility of building upon this foundation, staying true to that foundation, the only
foundation, which is Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
That's church's one and only foundation, that's verses 10 through 11, there's nothing else upon which we can build, there's nothing else
that is meant to support the church, the true church.
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation, and someone else is building
upon it, let each one takes care how he builds upon it.
Now here in these verses, who is building upon this foundation that the Apostle Paul laid, we're talking about leaders of the
church.
We're talking about, perhaps, an Apollos, though it's probably not Apollos himself who's in view here, who's building upon that foundation,
he wasn't there at the time.
But someone, not named, is building upon this foundation that Paul laid, which is Jesus
Christ and Him crucified.
A foundation, of course, is designed to support something in particular.
Each foundation is meant for a particular kind of structure.
For physical structures like houses, we've already talked about buildings, it's made of cement, it's made of rebar,
skyscrapers are supported by pilings that are driven deep into the ground, a ship's
foundation is a keel, and so forth.
So it's really very obvious, we don't have to know a lot about construction to know that whatever is built on the foundation
needs to correspond to the purpose and the intent of that foundation.
Doesn't that make sense to all of us, even if you don't know how to swing a hammer?
I'm one of those people who, I could spend more time trying to figure out what tool to grab
by the time somebody knows what they're doing, would actually finish the project.
But you don't have to know a lot about construction to agree with this, that a foundation is meant to
support a particular thing.
Again, a keel of a ship, you wouldn't build a house upon it, you'd build a ship upon it.
So Paul's use of the metaphorical language here has to be pretty easy for us to grasp.
I mean, we use this kind of language of a foundation all the time.
We speak of founding principles as those upon which, without which you cannot proceed.
We talk about the founding principles of our nation, the founding principles of algebra or geometry and that sort of thing.
You have to start at the beginning and then build from there.
Paul calls himself a wise master builder.
That would almost be presumptuous, except that he was exactly that, a wise master builder.
It was a phrase that was actually used in those times in contracts, what we today would call the general contractor,
someone you'd look upon Angie's list or find recommendations.
We have that, the list of the certified and the best vendors in
Sunnyvale, I've got that list on my desk.
You would look there and you'd say, okay, who's that one who could build my house?
Where's my money well spent?
Who's that wise master builder, if you will, that licensed contractor who has a good reputation?
Well Paul calls himself that, he's a wise master builder.
He has experience, he's got a resume of founding churches, laying that foundation,
but what's his qualification?
To be a general contractor, you have to pass exams, they're pretty rigorous in almost every
state.
I know in California, they're pretty tough before you can say you're a licensed contractor.
You have to have a lot of experience, pretty good resume.
Well Paul's qualification is given in the first few words of verse 10, according to the grace of God
given to me.
According to the grace of God given to him, he's the wise master builder.
Now what is this grace of God?
Well it starts with conversion.
Was Paul a builder of the church when he was Saul the Pharisee?
No, he was tearing the church down.
He was trying to destroy the church.
He was on his way, you can read of this in Acts chapter 9, into Damascus to again go in and destroy and tear down the
church, all that he could.
He was a wise master destructor at the time.
He caused great havoc in the church, but now by the grace of God,
on his way to Damascus to destroy the church, Christ comes upon him.
You can read about that in Acts chapter 9, it says, you're going to be my servant, you're going to be
my master builder, you're going to be my wise master builder.
Why wise?
Because Paul is going to lay a foundation which is Jesus Christ and him crucified and nothing else.
And this is by the grace of God given to him.
You know we cannot enter into this process of building the church up, building one another
up, except by the grace of God.
And for whom is the grace of God available?
It's you whose faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Because upon faith you come to repentance for your sin.
And how do we do that?
It's because God by his grace gives you the Holy Spirit who changes your heart and makes you able to believe and to
repent.
And that grace of God within is what makes anyone a master builder.
Now we're not all as good at things as everyone else, but it's according to the grace of God given to me.
It's according to God's elective grace given to a people.
And this idea of being a master builder because of the grace of God given, not something Paul
learned, not something he figured out because he worked on a lot of construction projects.
It was given to him as he went to destroy the church.
As I said, you can read it in Acts chapter 9.
But this idea of the grace of God given to him that takes us all the way back to Exodus and the building of the tabernacle in
the wilderness.
Over and over in the book of Exodus we read how everything was done according to God's
design and direction.
They did according to the word of God.
You read that over and over there.
How did that happen?
How are they able to know how to do this?
Well God told them in some detail so they had the instruction.
They could check off the boxes, right?
They could go get the right material over here and put it up in the correct way over there.
No.
Exodus 35 .30 tells us exactly how it is that mere humans were able to do
anything that was pleasing to God.
So under inspiration Moses could write that over and over again, they did according to the word of God.
Exodus 35 verse 30, Then Moses said to the people of Israel, See, the Lord is called by the name of Bezalel,
the son of Uri, the son of Ur of the tribe of Judah.
And he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge and with all craftsmanship to
devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for settings
and in carving wood for work in every skilled craft.
And he has inspired us, God has inspired him to teach both him and Aholiab, the son of Ashimah
of the tribe of Dan.
He has filled him with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in
blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen or by a weaver, by any sort
of workman or skilled designer.
So how was the tabernacle built and everything done according to the word of God?
In a way that was pleasing to God?
Well they followed directions, yes, but I would argue that's not why it was pleasing to
God.
It was because God put his Spirit upon the craftsmen.
Because God put his Spirit, you can read about this later in Exodus 35, upon the people to contribute to the
tabernacle.
It was all done by God's Spirit, the grace of God given to them, the leaders,
which would be Aholiab and the other craftsmen, and the people themselves as they contributed to it.
So how was Paul the wise master builder?
Well it's pretty obvious, isn't it?
By the grace of God given to him.
Except by that grace of God we dare not proceed, because only by the grace of God can we
build this place up.
How was he a master builder?
Because he laid a foundation from which he never wavered, which is Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Here's the foundation of the church.
Here's what we stand for.
Oh, there's doctrines and there's points of theology.
There's practices that we need to have here that flow from that, but they must flow from that
foundation.
Everything comes back to that one thing, that foundation upon which we stand.
Jesus Christ, him crucified.
Paul never wavered from that one foundation again.
1 Corinthians 2, verse 2, I
knew nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
This is what the foundation was, this is what the foundation has always been of the true church.
Paul preached Christ to all people so they could understand the gospel in their own frame of reference.
He spoke their language.
He used their symbols and their cultures.
You can read about that in Acts chapter 17.
He spoke to Jews as those who were under the law.
He spoke to Gentiles as those who didn't know the law.
He spoke to all as being without excuse before God.
He spoke to all about faith in Christ Jesus and him crucified.
There's no other foundation.
And it's just that simple.
We don't need to complicate it.
It's deep enough already, isn't it?
And we can spend our lifetime digging into that one thing, Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Never come to the end of it, but in its outset, it's quite simple.
Christ Jesus and him crucified.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the name given to him in time and space, Christ the Messiah, Christ the eternal son of God,
always designed by God, decreed by God to die for your sins.
Jesus Christ and him crucified.
He went to the cross to pay the penalty for your sins before God.
And by crucified, of course, Paul would have us to know crucified, dead, and on the third day,
risen again.
Paul was wise by being foolish enough to take no credit by giving all the credit and the
glory to God for what he had done for people in Christ Jesus and him
That's our foundation.
That's what we stand on.
That's that which upon we must build in this growing and dynamic way.
Verse 11, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
I thought about this for a while, I thought, well, actually, they can, can't they?
The Mormons have laid a foundation on a claimed special revelation to Joseph Smith.
The Roman Catholics are founded on a papacy drawn with invisible ink back to Peter.
Oneness Pentecostal's foundation is a denial of the triune personhood of God.
And the list goes on, and it goes sadly on and on and on.
So there's all kinds of foundations out there, aren't there?
There are many foundations, but there's only one true foundation of the true church.
There's only one foundation that brings glory to God.
There's only one foundation that grows us into the stature and the image of
Christ Jesus.
That's this, Jesus Christ and him crucified.
No one can lay a foundation from which will spring a true church on anything other than this.
So there's many foundations out there, but only one foundation that is the true church.
And I'm not saying we are THE true church with all capital letters and emphasis on THE and WE.
No, not at all.
As Paul says elsewhere, by the grace of God, I am what I am.
We can all say that.
By the grace of God, we are what we are.
This is the one church -founding message.
This is that upon which we are built.
As much as the Apostle Paul, 2 ,000 years ago, laid a foundation for the Corinthian
church on Jesus Christ and him crucified, so church -founders through time
have, when they humbly go before God and lay this foundation wherever they are to
plant a church, it is on this, Jesus Christ and him crucified.
So according to the grace of God given to him, all by the grace of God, all for his glory,
Paul laid the only foundation upon which we can proceed.
And additions to this are going to be divinely assessed.
Christ one day is going to look at what we have built here and he's going to assess it.
He's going to give rewards and he's going to give some demerits, if you will.
It will be divinely assessed and that's in verses 12 and 13.
Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become
manifest for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each
one has done.
Now where verse 10 is about Paul, the foundation layer, and verse 11 gives warning to those who take positions of
leadership.
Now these two verses are about all the rest of us.
Every church member is bringing something to the project.
I should say every church member.
Every member of this building, this body must bring something to the project
because you're either building up or you are tearing down.
Neutrality here is not an option.
Your employment was decided when God chose you before the foundation of the world and you were hired when the
Holy Spirit came upon you and gave you faith to believe and by the grace of God you are what you
are.
You may be the one who puts the mud on the stucco as it's happening behind us.
You may be the one who swings the hammer at the nails.
You may be all sorts of different functions, but we all have a part to play here.
If we're all building up together, now if anyone builds on the foundation,
the six materials here we have, the gold, silver, precious stones, the wood, hay, straw,
oh I so wish there was a semicolon between them, three in one group, the gold, the silver, the
precious metal, semicolon, and now the lesser ones.
But Paul didn't do that way.
He gives us just this one list.
Well, it does divide nicely into two groups.
One impervious to destruction by flame, that's the gold, silver, the stones.
The other vulnerable to a single match, the wood, the hay, the stubble.
We need to deal with these and then we need to see how they're revealed for what they are.
So what are these additions?
What does it mean that you're building on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw?
Well, these are not common building materials either now or then.
You build back then with mud, you would build up with bricks and such, and today it would be the two
-by -fours and the sheetrock and all those sorts of things.
So what does Paul mean if anyone builds, by which he's assuming building is
going to take place?
Well, he doesn't specify, but it's clear he expected the Corinthians to know and no less than we must
know.
The church in its distinct local assemblies is elsewhere likened to a body, 1 Corinthians 12 being the most
profound of those passages.
A body that is growing, a body that is dynamically expanding as each member looks out for all the other members
and looks to add new members by proclaiming Jesus Christ and him crucified, by building each other up into the stature of
Christ.
Again, that's 1 Corinthians 12, 12 to 31, we're all members of this body.
You might be the eye, you might be the hand, you might be the foot, and so forth.
But all bringing contributions to this place.
In Ephesians 2 and Colossians 1, the church is likened to being
Christ's body.
Ephesians 2, verses 20 -22 express the dynamic nature of this, that we all must be
doing something.
He says, we are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the
whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple.
Note the word, grows into a holy temple.
Well, next week we're going to talk about you are the temple of the living God.
But the idea of growth is so important here.
In our passage of 1 Corinthians 3, 10 -15, building up, builds, building.
Something happening all the time.
In him, in Christ, you're also being built together into the dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
What does it mean to be growing together, being joined together, being growing into this holy temple?
It's 1 Thessalonians 5, 11, for example.
And build one another up, just as you are doing.
So I might ask you, what's the most common way that we deal with each other?
These are very relational things that Paul's talking about here, that he wrote about here.
Build one another up.
This is relationship.
Growing together, this is relationship.
This is us together dealing with one another.
What's the most common way we deal with one another?
I would argue that it's our words.
Isn't conversation, speaking, the most common way that we deal with each other in
this body?
Words can build up.
Words can tear down.
Words can heal, and words can tear flesh apart.
Your words can encourage a brother or cause a sister to retract, make people act like a tortoise pulling into
a shell and trying to hide itself from anything outside of itself.
Encourage one another, he says in Thessalonians, with what?
With these words.
What are the words you speak?
Do you ever think of it that way, that if Jesus Christ, or if Paul is saying on this foundation of Jesus
Christ, you're to be building this place up, building this house of God up and up and up.
What does he mean?
Taller?
Like the Tower of Babel?
Of course not.
He means each other.
He means all of us together growing in holiness, growing in sanctification, growing in our knowledge of Jesus Christ.
And we do this primarily with words.
We preach with words.
We speak with words.
We argue with words.
It's how we speak to one another.
There's many other ways we can deal with each other.
I'm just going to focus on this one because it's the most common.
Do your words build up?
Or it's like, you went to Warm Tongue.
I haven't used the Lord of the Rings illustration in a long time.
And actually I got one, so I'm going to be sent to, what do they call that, an encounter group to help me over it?
And I got that after I only used two.
But she said to Warm Tongue, your words are poison to me.
Your words are poison to me.
Are your words poison?
Do they tear down?
Do they bring somebody into a position where they want to retract from you?
Where they want to hide themselves?
Or are they apples of gold and settings of silver like Proverbs 25, 11 describes a word fitly spoken?
You need to think about this.
The way we think about someone is the way we speak about them.
We're all built on this foundation that is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
And when you speak to a brother or sister in the Lord, you're looking at one who has been saved by faith in what?
Jesus Christ and Him crucified by the grace of God given to them and the same grace of God given to you.
Believe in them.
Do you see them that way?
Do you realize that the primary way we build up this place is
in our dealings with each other?
And our primary dealings are in our words to each other.
Dear sister, how can I pray for you?
There, you've just added, I would argue, a gold plating to a wall.
This is gold building on this foundation with gold.
A cup of water to a thirsty person in the name of Jesus Christ, is that not a precious gem that will withstand
a refiner's fire?
Think carefully here of how we deal with each other.
Think of how you think of each other because I
would argue that this is the way we build one another up, by speaking to one another of
Jesus Christ, by showing a Christ -like care and concern for one another, by
considering others' needs as more important than our own, as looking at that person
as one who needs encouragement, perhaps rebuke, perhaps to be admonished.
We build each other up that way also.
You know, if we can admonish, we can rebuke, we can show someone their error, their sin, if you like,
without ripping them to pieces because what did Jesus Christ do?
When he gave you, by his Spirit, faith to believe in him, did he shred you?
No, he shows you your sin, which is not always an easy thing.
But then what does he do?
He picks you up by the Spirit and shows you that your sin has been forgiven by
him because he's Jesus Christ and him crucified.
There will be gains and losses depending upon what has been added here.
There will be gains and losses, there will be reward and there will be loss.
Verse 14, if the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.
So Jesus is going to one day look at
these works that we have done.
And I failed to say something, so I need to backtrack myself a little bit.
Each one's work will become manifest, back on verse 13, for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire and the
fire will test what sort of work each one has done.
Each one's work becomes manifest, each one's work is going to be tested.
Your words, as I was saying before, spoken to one another, are one day going to be brought up before you
and they're going to receive Jesus' assessment of them.
This will happen in the day, this is the day of his return, the day with a capital D.
The day will disclose it because the day itself will be revealed by fire and that same Christ
revealing fire is the one that will test our works.
The gold, the silver, the precious gems, or the wood, hay, and stubble.
The works that we add to this building.
If you think about this as the two groups, the inflammables and the flammables, the three that won't be burned up in the fire
and the three that will.
Sometimes we think, okay, so you're going to have a group of people who've got their works there, the gold,
the silver, the precious gems, and they're going to get that reward from Jesus Christ.
And then you've got the ones with the wood, the hay, the stubble, and they're the ones who can come in and get to heaven.
They're going to be saved, but only as through fire.
That's that image that we sometimes hear often of someone who gets into heaven, but their clothes smell
like smoke.
When I was talking before, I'm sorry, I got things a little bit out of order here.
I want that semicolon to divide the group into three, two groups of three.
Well, I think all six of those are each of us at any given time.
Sometimes we speak that word in due season, that word fitly spoken,
that apple of gold in the setting of silver.
And then we're going to see that gold, that silver, that precious gem that will survive Jesus' assessment.
And other times, you and I alike put forth some stubble, put
forth some wood.
Now, it's going to take a little fire to burn up the wood, but it's going to go, right?
Not as quick as a stubble, maybe.
You see, none of us are perfectly consistent.
And that was the point I wanted to make there.
And again, I apologize for getting a little bit out of order.
But I want us to understand that, that any time we are dealing with a brother or sister in the Lord, any time we're looking to build someone
up, it's the motive of the heart.
It's that grace of God within from which the words that we speak proceed.
It's looking to that foundation that's Christ and Him crucified, saying, is what I'm saying, is what I'm doing, is what I'm
speaking consistent with that?
Is it from the grace of God?
Any one of us at any one time, because of the grace of God in us, can speak forth gold, silver, and precious
gems to someone and build this place up, build this building up greater and greater into the image of
And any one of us, we forget to remember that we're standing on Christ Jesus and Him crucified as a
foundation, and don't speak by the grace of God given,
can speak a word that is not going to survive that fire.
He says at the end of verse 15, that those whose work is burned up, that work that we do, that
part of it that'll be burned up and God willing to be part of it that won't, will be saved, but only as through fire.
I fear sometimes when you see something like that, people say, okay, well, let's see.
I can not work, I can not build up, I can give some wood, hay, stubble, lots
of stubble, and more stubble, but I'm going to be saved.
So eventually I'm going to be before Jesus, and there'll be no more tears, and there'll be no more sorrow, and everything is going to be okay.
In this life, I don't have to do much, and I'll still get that, because I'll be saved, but only
as through fire.
But if the fire won't consume me, I'm okay.
Therefore, I'm just going to cruise, and let other people do the work.
Take care, Deuteronomy 15 .9 says, take care, lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart,
and you say the seventh year, the year of release is near, and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother,
and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin.
And I use that to point out to you, that that would be sheer presumption.
To look and say, well, if I don't work, I'm still saved.
If all I give is stubble to this place, and it doesn't build the place up, and it all gets consumed by the fire,
I say that that's the evil thought of Deuteronomy 25, to presume upon God's grace given to you.
Take care, lest you unworthily say, as long as I believe, I'm saved, and so I needn't take my trowel and work on the
building.
And so the seventh year, the year of release, is a prophetic law of the resurrection, the year of our final release.
And dare not be, let it never be, that we look to that day of salvation, and say,
if I know Christ is going to save me, and all my works get burnt up, because I'm lazy in this life, because I
don't want to guard my tongue, because I don't want to deal with each other, I don't want to do the hard work of
building one another up into this place, but I'm still saved.
No, the day is inextricably linked to Jesus' return,
and that's tied inextricably to our resurrection.
And let this thought not enter into anybody's mind, that because I know I will be resurrected and see Jesus as he is,
therefore I needn't put my shoulder to the plow, or my hand to the
till, or my spirit to the work of God by the grace of God in
this place.
Houses today are bolted to their foundations, or at least it's recommended they are.
And why is that?
Well, it's because the foundation on which they stand is no more solid than the earth beneath.
And the earth beneath is not going to stand up to a major earthquake, is it?
And the house could come right off, so they bolt to that foundation.
What happens if the whole foundation gets knocked down?
I think it's pretty obvious.
If you look at old pictures of San Francisco Bay and compare them to recent ones, you're going to notice something.
I noticed this at the Lakewood Village Neighborhood Association meetings.
I used to attend just a couple blocks from here, and on the wall, they have these pictures, these aerial pictures of San Francisco Bay,
going all the way back to, I think, the 40s.
The 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and so forth.
And if you look at it, you can see that the bay is shrinking.
It's getting less and less water.
And you notice being built where the water used to be?
Houses.
There's something called liquification that's a real danger in earthquakes.
These houses are being built on a foundation, on earth that could turn into jelly.
It's not very stable.
It's not a solid foundation.
We are not bolted to a foundation that's simply laid deep in the ground, that the earth and the most solid
place were found.
We're on the foundation of Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Our foundation is Jesus Christ and him crucified, and Jesus Christ is saying, yesterday, today, and forever,
as he says through Malachi, I am the Lord.
I do not change.
This is a solid rock on which we stand.
This is the foundation upon which we can never waver.
This is the one thing that must inform all our words and all our works and everything we do here, which is
Psalm 11 asks that the foundations are destroyed.
What can the righteous do?
Well, the foundations that men can destroy have been destroyed, and the rest are under attack.
Constant, determined attack.
There's same -sex marriage.
There's the demand that we normalize men who perceive themselves as women and the other way around, and
we're supposed to celebrate that.
That foundation of God made them man and woman.
He made them.
He made them to be different, and he made them to be what he made them, and we're supposed to celebrate something that
calls that a lie.
Foundations are under attack.
Many of us see it.
All you have to do is listen to the news, which I hardly ever do anymore.
What foundation do we look to?
Well, not the foundation that men have laid, not the foundation of this country, which is the Constitution that we have,
which I think was a magnificent work of men, but nothing compared to the foundation upon which we
stand.
As all this shakes around us,
our one foundation is Christ and him crucified.
Everything we do must be built up upon that.
This is the foundation that will never move, never shake, never totter at all.
This is the foundation upon which we must build.
This is the foundation which informs everything we do, and all the foundations of the world around us, everything
we thought we believed in, society in which we've been raised, those can all collapse completely.
And if the foundations come apart, what can the righteous do if the foundation is destroyed?
Remember the foundation upon which we do stand, a foundation that will never change, which is Jesus Christ
and him crucified.
Look down at your foundation.
Is it Christ and him crucified?
If it is, you will never be much shaken.
And so now add to our building, do the work of building this place up,
put forth as much gold as by the grace of God you're able.
When the stubble comes, go to God in repentance, because we're all able to do all of this,
I believe.
Sometimes you're going to speak gold, and sometimes you're going to speak hay, but let this place be one that
looks always to the foundation of Christ and him crucified.
Let that inform all that we do to build this place up.
Amen?