1 Corinthians 3:10-17 The Eternal Consequences of Building a Church

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches through his four -part series,

Dedicating the Church, Why It's Not About a Building. Let's listen in. Well, good morning.

Welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here. And a special welcome to those of you that are here and maybe checking things out, maybe even for the first time.

This is a new thing to you. I recognize that it can be a little uncomfortable being in a new place and around new people and trying to figure out what the culture is like here.

So I'm just glad that you're here and want to encourage you to make yourself at home if you need coffee or juice or donuts.

Those are available and those are free, so take advantage of those. I think most of you know that we've been involved in a little project out on Front Avenue for a little while now.

How many of you already knew that? Did you know that we're building a building? Most of us know that we're building a building, right? And I have a large prayer request for all of us to just please take part in this week and that is just simply that on Tuesday we are expecting, or at least between now and Tuesday, we're expecting our final inspection for occupancy.

So please be in prayer about that and yeah, go ahead and applaud. That's awesome.

Glory to God on that. If all works out as we expect, then that would mean that next

Sunday would be our last service here and then we would be packing up from here, loading it onto trailers and moving over there and then the following Sunday, which would be

Thanksgiving, would be our first service there. So that's not an announcement that the Sunday after Thursday, I mean the

Sunday after Thanksgiving is our first service there. Please pay attention to your emails.

If the inspections go as we expect, then that will be the case, but everything is dependent on those inspections.

I did just get this hot off the press by text about an hour ago from our builder that he is 90 % sure that that's the way that it's going to go.

So you can take that to the bank with your 90 % sure, but honestly we've already had the electrical inspections, we've already had the plumbing inspections, we've already had the

HVAC inspections and everything this week checked out and so now it's just a final word that we can occupy the building, which he doesn't see any problem with.

So we're going to be putting that in a prominent place on the website. When we get that occupancy, we're going to be sending out an email to anybody who has given us their email address to say, hey, this is going to be our first Sunday out there and I've mentioned before to please pay attention to that.

We are also, that first Sunday that we're not meeting here, we are going to have some people stationed here to guide those of you who didn't check your email over to the new building.

So we're going to try to do some things, put some signs up here and stuff to make sure that you know and don't end up having your own personal church service here.

I know that this is really comfortable, I know you've gotten used to those metal chairs, but the rest of us will be out there with those nice wide cushion seats that we've got out there ready to set up.

Our goal over the next couple of months as we get into this transition, so let me just kind of pastorally help guide us into that transition a little bit.

A lot of people might be wondering in your mind, like, okay, we're going to be meeting there in a couple of weeks and so are we supposed to invite all of our friends and is this going to be a big celebration?

I'm going to encourage us to just think in terms of that first Thanksgiving service to be a family service.

That doesn't mean that we don't want visits. I mean, if a next door neighbor wants to come and check us out, that'd be fine and I think it's really great, but we are going to be having a grand opening and an open house in the month of February to get past the holiday season so that you have some time to kind of resettle a little bit and then invite friends and we also have some time to get used to our new facility out there so that we can put our best foot forward to the community, have our, you know, as much as we can get the sound figured out and that type of stuff.

And so just know that that's what we're driving for is an invitation to your neighbors, invitation to your friends, let's think of it in those terms and I think that what's going to happen the week after Thanksgiving, that first Sunday in there is going to be like that, how many of you ever moved houses or moved from an apartment before or something like that and everything is in boxes that first night, do you know what

I'm talking about? Everything's in boxes. You might not even be able to get to your dining room table so where do you eat?

You eat on the floor in the living room. The kids all want to take their sleeping bags and sleep over there even if you have another place to sleep, they're like, no, let's sleep here, let's sleep here so you roll out your sleeping bags and you sleep on the floor.

It's going to be kind of like that that first few weeks so just be prepared that not everything's going to be exactly in place but it's going to be awesome to not have to set up and tear down and be in our own facility so we're just praising

God for that. So just be ready for that. God has been doing amazing things here in Matawan and I am so glad to be a part of it and I hope that you are too.

So to tie this in, I've been planning for a while to orient us during this transition to a correct view of, or a biblical view really, of dedicating the church as we move into this new phase of our church's history.

So I wanted to take the next four weeks and really go over basically a four -part series in dedicating the church and so we're going to be just looking not topically, now topically means that we're going to kind of jump around from passage to passage,

I'm going to take just chunks of scripture just like I normally do and we're going to walk through this about dedicating the church.

It's going to be in one text. We're going to let that text drive our understanding and our thoughts and so for the next few weeks we're going to be looking at various passages of scripture and considering what it means to dedicate the church and fundamental to this entire series about dedicating the church is to define what the church is.

We're not dedicating a building. I'm actually discouraging us from having a church building dedication service.

We will see in our text this morning a deep and vital and maybe even shocking level of dedication that we as a church are to have and are being called to in building a church.

There are eternal rewards at stake in the way we build this church together. But the Apostle Paul in our text is not going to be talking about steel, drywall, paint and carpet in that physical sense.

He is using building materials as a metaphor for our lives with each other.

He's using building as a metaphor for our investment in the lives of others. Here at Recast as you look around and you see

I'm not alone this morning. I'm here gathered together with the people of God in a church because what makes this church is obviously not the facility in which we meet.

I think we've been blessed, church, with the start of meeting in a storefront and blessed in the sense of meeting in a cafeteria.

Blessed in the sense of sitting in some uncomfortable chairs where we know that it's not about our own comfort. We know it's not all about us or all about the facility.

But it is all about us. It's all about the people that God is redeeming and is calling together.

That's what we're going to be looking at over the next few weeks in this series. The Apostle Paul is not just talking about the building materials in reality.

He's using that as a metaphor to simply say we are the church. And when we speak over the next few weeks about dedicating the church, we will consistently be talking about dedicating ourselves.

Dedicating ourselves to the ministry of love in his body, to the ministry of reconciliation within his body, to the ministry of shining the glory of Christ to others around us in our community.

And our hope must not be placed in brick and mortar that will fail and crumble with time.

Our hope is placed on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ, and he will never fail.

So let's open our Bibles to 1 Corinthians 3, 10 through 17. 1 Corinthians 3, 10 through 17.

If you don't have a Bible, Mike's got one back here. We just ask that you raise your hand so he can see to bring you a copy of God's Word.

But it's our desire for everybody to have the Bible in front of you so that you can see the things that we're saying are coming from the text, and you can follow along as we take in the very words of God recast, what

God desires to communicate to you and I this morning from 1 Corinthians 3, 10 through 17.

Let's listen in to what God has for us. According to the grace of God given to me, this is

Paul speaking, 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 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 though 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's pray. Father, I thank you so much for what you're doing in our midst.

We are recipients of that which we are not worthy of, that your grace, your forgiveness, your mercy poured out to us, most prevalently, most obviously on the cross of Jesus Christ, his sacrifice, that met your just requirements, where we deserved punishment, and he took it for us.

So, Father, we rejoice in that, but then we also look at the other blessings that you're giving to us around here, and they're just so consistent with your character, with your kindness, with your mercy, with your goodness, and we just thank you that we're right on the cusp of something very new and different in this community, of you establishing us in a new facility, and we rejoice in that.

And I pray that nothing in this message takes away from the joy and celebration of that, but I pray that we wouldn't celebrate in the wrong way.

I pray that you would move us to celebrate that you ultimately are moving in us to love others more and to love more.

And so, Father, I pray that that would be a reality through this transition, Father, that you would be moving in our hearts to love one another well, to build upon the foundation, which is

Jesus Christ, to build with the good stuff in the hearts and lives of those around us, that we would be a people swift to reconcile, quick to forgive, quick to show grace, quick to offer mercy, because we have been given so much mercy by you.

And I pray that our voices would be raised right now in celebration of that great mercy and grace that you have given to us.

Without your forgiveness, we would be lost, but because of your forgiveness, we've been found. In Jesus' name, amen.

You can go ahead and get seated, and I encourage you to get comfortable as you either reopen your

Bibles or just put your Bible on your lap or navigate over there to 1 Corinthians 3, 10 through 17. Again, that's going to be our text, and so I encourage you to stay open to that so that you can see the flow of the message is coming from the text of Scripture.

If at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or doughnuts, you can take advantage of that.

It's not going to distract me if you need to get up and stretch out in the back or whatever. But our goal over the next half an hour or so is to really dig into God's Word and see what

He wants to say to us. Many of you might know this. The Apostle Paul was a church planter.

He went around and planted and started new churches. He traveled around the Roman Empire and started a new church, it seems like, wherever he went.

He went into a new town, did some evangelism, shared the gospel, people believed, a church was established, and he moved on to the next place, sometimes run out of town, sometimes intentionally.

But he spent quite a long time with one particular church plant in the town, a town called

Corinth, which is in modern -day Greece. The church in Corinth was an average church, which means that it was a mess, okay?

An average church. There was division. That was meant to be somewhat humorous, but you guys were kind of like the tough crowd this morning.

There was division, quarreling, selfishness, sketchy leadership, sketchy followership, not to mention sexual sins and greed.

It was a genuine mess. Maybe in that sense, it's not quite the average church, because there were so many issues.

When you read the epistles, the letters that Paul wrote, you actually see that he really leveled a lot of things at Corinth in a way that he didn't all the other churches, and there really was a lot of problems going on there.

And I say all of that to set the tone for Paul's instructions to the church here in chapter 3 of his letter, back to, he's writing back to a church that he planted.

He's separated from them, and he's writing back to this church plant to give them instructions.

And in verse 10 of chapter 3, he reminds them of where they have come from. He's giving them a little bit of a history lesson in their own history.

Basically he's trying to snap them back to their origins. Where do they come from? What is the basis of their fellowship?

Why are they even gathering together? Paul counts it, to begin with, he says the church was established based on the grace of God.

It was grace, according to the grace of God, that Paul was able to lay a foundation of the church in Corinth.

Paul didn't take credit for starting the church, but instead gives the credit to God's grace.

And I would say the same thing here, Recast Church. I would say the same thing to all of us, that we sometimes need to be reminded of where we come from, and that ultimately it is only by God's grace that there is a church, a gathering of people here.

I would suggest to you that 100 % or somewhere near, it would be shocking if it wasn't 100 % of church planters, set out to see a church established in Christ to be honored.

That's their purpose in starting a church. That's why they want that to happen. I would say that the majority, the vast, vast majority, if not 100%, would set that as their goal.

Roughly 75 % of all church plants are no longer meeting after two years. About three -quarters of those who set out with that intention of starting a church and seeing

God glorified, two years in, it's no longer meeting. So how much is it by God's grace that we are still meeting eight years after launch?

It is all to God's grace, 100 % of it is of Him, of His goodness, of His kindness to us.

And as a church planter, by God's grace, I have laid down a foundation. I think I can say the same thing that Paul says here.

There's a foundation here at Recast. Not the foundation of poured concrete out on Front Avenue, as you see in the picture there, but a foundation of faith and trust in Jesus Christ as our only hope and help.

If there's any foundation that's worthy, it is that foundation and that alone. On the basis of that, we are called a church.

On the basis of that, we are not just merely a club of people who get together to kind of hear a motivational talk or something like that, but it is because Christ is the foundation that we can rightly call ourselves a church, a gathering for His honor and glory.

Paul, like a model church planter, loved his church. He loved Corinth. His role was to lay the foundation.

In other words, to root the church in the good news of Jesus Christ. To make really the church all about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, and to make that clear.

To preach the need and promise of the Messiah from the Old Testament. To preach the incarnation.

To preach the life of Jesus. To preach the death of Jesus for sins. To preach the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

To preach the return of Jesus Christ. To preach His eternal kingdom for all who would put their trust in Him.

The foundation of the church is Jesus Christ. Not re -rod and concrete.

Verse 11, by the way, is not saying that it's impossible for a church planter to establish a church on the wrong foundation.

I don't think that that's what he's getting at. Look at verse 11. He says, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is

Jesus Christ. So, is it possible to have a church planter out there with wrong motives?

How many of you think that that's possible? Is it possible? Well, it's not what he's exactly getting at here to say, well, that's impossible.

Every church planter has the right motives. It's more identifying that no other foundation for churches exists.

There is no such thing as another foundation for a true, real church of Jesus Christ.

If it is a true, real church of Jesus Christ, what is the foundation? Jesus. If it's true and it's real, then the foundation of it is

Jesus Christ. If Christ is not the foundation, then it ain't a church.

It's something else. What other materials can be used as the basis for building a true church?

There are none. There is nothing else to use if you want the end result to be a church.

And the foundation that is laid must be Jesus Christ. But in verses 10 and 12, it's clear that the foundation is not the end of the construction process.

How many of you knew that? Like, when they poured the concrete out there for the foundation, we were excited, but we were hoping to add something to that, right?

We were hoping for something else to happen, not just a meet in the sand in the middle of the foundation.

Verses 10 and 12 are clear about that. But in verse 10, Paul gives a warning to everyone who is in the process of building the church on that foundation of Jesus Christ to take care how you all build.

And at this point, it helps to consider who Paul was writing to. How many of you want to know, like, kind of, is he talking to me?

Is he talking to the leadership? Who does he, who's he talking to about building on the foundation of Jesus Christ?

He's writing a letter to be read to the entire church at Corinth. It is to be read in their gathering, to be read to everyone.

And everyone in a church, I suggest to you that everyone who is a part of a church is a builder.

Everyone who gathers together with the people of the church has a role in building up the church.

And Paul is talking to you and me, not just the leadership, not just the leadership, not just the elders, not just the launch team that helped get recast off the ground, but he is talking to you, he is talking to me about building.

And he's telling all of us to be careful how we build upon the foundation of Jesus Christ. How are we to build?

What materials do we use? And in verse 12, he lists out our building material options.

Some will build with gold, he says. Some of you are in the process of building up the church based on the foundation of Jesus Christ and you're building with gold, silver, and precious stones, while others maybe are building with wood, hay, or straw.

And I would suggest to you that, in all honesty, what Paul here is declaring as fairly black and white sometimes is pretty gray.

How many of you feel like some days you might be building with gold, other days you might be building with straw? Do you know what

I'm talking about? And so, for the purposes of Paul and what he's trying to accomplish here, he is indeed,

I believe, identifying for us that at the end of all of this, you are going to have been building in a certain way at certain times and there's going to be, we're going to see rewards for that.

But there's a variety of different methods for building and there's a variety of different materials to use in building.

And scripture seems to indicate that Paul didn't have any kids, so he probably wasn't familiar with Minecraft, which you just saw that slide there just a second ago.

It was up there a bit early. But you can build a whole house out of gold blocks or diamond or dirt or wood, especially in creative mode.

Yes, I've even heard of that. I have kids and I've actually tried that game for a little while. How many of you have ever played that or heard of it, at least seen it, know a little bit about it?

Okay. It's a creative game about building. But notice that the simple breakdown in this, there's a simple breakdown in this list.

There's a reason, I think, for this coupling, putting three of them together and three of them together.

The first three are things that don't burn away. They're things that don't burn away with fire.

The last three do, wood, straw, and hay. This is not, by the way, Paul giving you building 101 for your house and now you're going out looking for precious stones to build your house with or, boy,

I've got to have gold or I've got to have silver. Obviously, that's not what he's saying here. But he's using a metaphor. And we're going to see that fire is going to factor in here.

How does your building fare through the fire process? I mean, we just had a fire inspection for our fire suppression system this past week and we passed it.

But they're very interested in how well our building out there, how many of you are somewhat interested in how our building will fare if there's a fire out there?

We kind of want it to last and want it to be okay. And so, Paul's tying into a common thing that we might think about, a building on fire and what is going to remain when it's all burned up.

There's a type of service here, he's saying, that doesn't last past the judgment.

There's a way of building into his people. There's a way of working in the church. There's a way of investing in others that, at the end of the day, doesn't amount to anything and is burned up in the final judgment.

It's burned up and it's gone. You see that judgment made clear in verse 13.

Our work will be exposed. It will be made manifest. These words are significant. It will be exposed, made manifest, disclosed, and revealed on the day, says the apostle

Paul. There is a final day of judgment for all people. It's a different kind of judgment for different kinds of people, but there is a final judgment and we will all be present there.

What we're seeing here is the judgment of the rewards, judgment for the rewards for the people of God, which seems like it will occur at the same time as the judgment of all.

The day, that phrase the day that you see there in the text, is just what it sounds like. The day of all days.

The final day of justice. The final day of exposure. The final day of what is real being laid bare.

Just by the very nature of that probably gives some of us shudders. The idea of being exposed, the idea of another really seeing the things that we've done and the reasons why we've done the things that we've done.

How many of you just know that there's enough incriminating evidence to go against you right then and there? So, how many of you are grateful that this is not a judgment?

You are not going to face a judgment if you're in Christ that pertains to whether or not you're saved. That's whether your name is written in the book of life or not.

Whether or not you've been saved by the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. That's a done deal.

This is not the kind of judgment that we're looking at here. But the motives and the reasons why you do the things that you do and even just to some degree what you do, what your bedrock foundation is for the way that you work.

The image of judgment is often fire. You kind of notice that in scripture, right? And I would discourage you from seeing pain and torment in that illustration here in verse 13.

Often when we think of judgment, we think of the fires of hell. We think of pain and suffering.

But fire is not only a destroyer, but it also makes for a delicious burger from time to time, right?

So, how many of you know that sometimes you like fire? Do you sometimes like fire? Sometimes it's not a terrible thing. And further, it's a purifier.

It's an exposure of what is real. Fire can expose the purity, for example, of gold as it's melted down to reveal how much purity floats to the surface.

And that's where you get the rating system on the purity of gold is based on how much impurity is left in it and how much work do they do to refine it, to refine it, to refine it, to scoop off the dross that floats to the surface and how pure is it.

And it's in this sense that fire is used here as a metaphor for the testing of our work, of your work in building the church, our work in building his church.

Verse 13 uses so many words to identify that this fire is an exposing fire and not a consuming fire.

And the fire will test the type of work each one has done. But a special note here that ought to amaze us as we really contemplate, that could easily be lost on us because we kind of jump over to the rewards, jump over to the fire and things.

God is using each one of us to build his church, not just Zion, not the subcontractors out there.

He is using us to build up a church here. He's calling all of us to this work to do our part in building on the foundation of Jesus Christ.

As a matter of fact, each one of us will be judged in accordance to the quality of our work in his church.

I would suggest to you that this ought to slap us in the face regarding our modern American paradigm of church.

We have a tendency to primarily look at the church as Sunday morning service where we come in and we take something in and maybe we get something out of it or maybe we don't.

And there can even be a sense in which if we take it to its most ugly end in our hearts,

I think we could all be honest to doing this from time to time, it's that we might come to a church and rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 how the service went.

You might be able to do that. Don did a 3 this morning, Dave gets a 9 .5.

I guess I'll stay around next week to see if Don can get his act together and do better next week or something.

I mean, I'm being somewhat facetious, but in reality when we look at it, what is it that we are taking a part in this morning?

Is there something bigger going on here? Is there something that we are investing in? Is it something about relationships? Is it something about community, about togetherness, about doing life with one another, about supporting those who are hurting, about encouraging and being encouraged by those who are up right now and investing in others and allowing others to invest in us, which maybe sometimes is the hardest thing.

What exactly is at stake in the way that we serve one another? What exactly is at stake in the way that we build into one another's lives?

There is a type of work that will survive the fires of judgment. Remember, we're not talking about adding brick to brick, we're talking about investing in each other's lives and there is a way, a type of work that survives the fires of judgment and is worthy of a reward from your

Lord and Savior. And anyone who does work that is built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, that work survives the judgment.

The text says they will receive a reward. The reward is not spelled out in detail, but I want to be rewarded by Jesus.

Do you want to be rewarded by Jesus? Does that sound like a good prospect to you? Does it sound like a good thing? It sounds awesome to me.

And it's so very vital to understand that there is reward here for good building, but hear me carefully.

Look at the text. You can read it. You can read it. You can read it on your own later even. There's reward for good building, but there's not a punishment here in this text at all.

There's not a punishment for poor building. There's not a punishment for poor building. Believers face no punishment.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But it does say this, if anyone's work is burned up, you're on the foundation.

You're trying to build on the foundation, but you're building with just wood, straw, and hay.

You're not building with the good stuff. And we're going to talk about what that means here in just a moment. But there are some who are attempting and trying and not getting it right.

They will be saved, but only as one who barely made it out of a burning house, the text tells us.

In other words, this is not the time, the church is not the place for setting the bar low in the way that we interact with one another.

You know, is it to say, well, I'm saved so I can just skate by without lifting a finger in service for others? The words suffer loss in verse 15, you can see them there.

Suffer loss implied that there will be some who will have built with shoddy materials and that loss is the loss of reward.

There are some who will have actually done some work on the church, in the church, among the church, with the people of the church, and it proved to be bad workmanship.

And they will be sorrowful before their Lord. If future you, if future you could come back right now and sit next to you here today and talk to you about this very judgment, they would tell you to be, to put in your effort, to put in time in investing in others around you.

They would tell you of rewards worthy of your effort and your time and your energy and your resources.

I would tell you of the light and the joy of the face of your Savior and the deep kindness, healing, and provision that is there in His eternal kingdom.

I look around me at this fallen world and I acknowledge that every joy and delight that I have ever experienced or tasted, everything that you have ever experienced that brought joy or delight to your heart came through the filter of a sin -cursed world.

You ever thought about that? Every delight that you've ever experienced here is still in some sense tainted by sin.

And here Jesus is offering an eternal reward for you. I want that.

Whatever it is. He doesn't spell it out, but I trust the one, the one giving out the rewards, I want one of those.

I assume that you do as well. Don't be settled to escape the burning house with nothing but your own skin.

Build with the lasting stuff. Build with materials that will stand the final judgment.

And now to the obvious question that's probably been burning in some of your minds now for at least a couple minutes if you've been listening. How do

I build with gold, silver, and precious stones, Don? What is that? What does that look like? How do

I know that I'm not building with wood, hay, or straw? What's the difference? And I used to think that it was strictly motivation.

Strictly the way that I was motivated inside. If I do something kind out of wrong motives, then that's going to burn up.

How many of you have ever heard that kind of talk? That's just straight up motivations. If I'm helping out at the food pantry on Saturday morning because it makes me feel better about myself, then that's burned up, right?

That's no good. I have to be, have a governor and a measurement on my own motives in the way.

How many of you have ever been tricked by your own motives? It's hard to at any given time even tell yourself why you're doing what you're doing.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Three of us? I saw some heads nodding too, thanks. I know this is kind of hard, you know, to get the hand up there and stuff, so I appreciate the nodding heads.

That's good. The context of this passage brings it out broader than simply motivations.

It's more than that. I think that that's a part of it. Motivation does factor in here. Is it because you want to delight your

Lord? Is it because you're in love with Jesus that you serve others around you? Is it because of how much you've been forgiven?

There's all different kinds of reasons, but that's not the whole picture here.

Building with what is unaffected by fire is the permanence of the gospel and that which is consistent with the foundation,

Jesus Christ. Later in the same chapter, Paul will contrast the wisdom of God with the passing of temporal worldly wisdom that comes from human contrivance.

We do not want to be a church that is caught up in passing fads of the day for our substance, for what we're building on the foundation.

There's a way of doing church that is focused on worldly wisdom. There's a way of living in this body right here that is based on worldly wisdom.

I'm going to expound a little bit more on that in a moment, but I believe that that is the heart, not just merely our motivations, but why are you doing what you're doing even in the understanding in your mind?

Paul ties in with this process of building. We are called to in a vital way.

This is something that is vital to us as a body. How do you build with gold, silver, or precious stones?

Build with the wisdom of God found in the revelation of His word. Take what the word says to be true and go out and live that in community with one another.

Build with the inspired word of God on the incarnate word of God. There's a worldly wisdom that easily creeps into churches.

I think we've all experienced it. We've got to guard against it here. We've got to think about it here. It shows up in contrived preaching that refuses to cover the awkward passages.

It shows up in a church culture that sweeps issues under the rug until eventually they build and build and build and then explode, right?

Worldly wisdom seeks out teaching that makes us feel good, that puts us at the center, that makes it all about improving my life right now.

Worldly wisdom seeks preferences over substance and preferences over conviction.

Worldly wisdom is wood, hay, and straw. Nobody's going to be condemned for building a church, building on the foundation of Jesus Christ with worldly wisdom.

That's not going to condemn you. If you've got the foundation in your life of Jesus Christ, if the foundation of this church is truly

Christ, then you build on that foundation with worldly wisdom. In other words,

I'm looking out and I see a lot of churches, and we could be guilty of this at times as well, but churches that will build, they start off with a good foundation and then they get off a little bit.

Have you ever noticed that? Am I speaking about something that you're unaware of? I don't think so.

Are they going to, is that a recipe for condemnation? Absolutely not, but it is indeed a recipe for loss of reward.

But our text ends with a more stern and severe warning that you find in verses 16 and 17. In verse 16,

Paul is incredulous and even a bit sarcastic at the start of this verse. The Greek language like leads you down the road of like, he's a little upset.

He's a little bit salty here in this text. He says, don't you even know who you are?

That's what he's saying here at the start of verse 16. Don't you even know who you are, Recast? Corinth, don't you know who you are?

Don't you know the power that has been afforded you? Don't you know the grace that's been given to you? Don't you know the investment you're supposed to be giving to each other because of the role that you play on the cosmic scene?

What does it mean to be a church? It's an amazing thing. Don't you know who you are?

Wake up to the reality of your identity, Recast. You all together in this room are

God's temple. God's Holy Spirit dwells in our presence.

He's here in our gathering. He's here in our gathering. Every single you in verses 16 and 17 is plural.

It's to say you guys, y 'all if you like to speak southern, this is not about you as an individual having the

Holy Spirit inside of you and therefore don't do any damage to this temple. Don't put tattoos or piercings.

I heard this when I was a kid. Has anybody ever heard this verse used in some weird ways? Because it misunderstands the very crux of the thing.

What are we talking about? We're talking about the church. We didn't stop talking about the church at the start of verse 16. We're still talking about the church.

We're talking about our gathering being a holy, sacred thing. Not like we have to take ourselves super serious.

It's just ultimately to recognize that God is here in our midst. He's in the gathering of his people.

It's about Recast. It's about Corinth. This is about any gathering of God's people built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. The gathering of God's people is a temple and a dwelling place of the

Spirit of God. The church is his home and we are that church.

Not the building out on Front Street. It's us. God's temple is holy and we are

God's temple. So if anyone destroys that temple, it says in the text very directly, if anybody destroys that temple, what is the temple?

What did he just say the temple is? The gathering of God's people, the church. If anybody destroys that temple,

God will destroy them. Hard words. Harsh words.

Does it show how much God loves his church? Does it show how he is the defender?

How he is the avenger of his church? That's a serious threat.

And in verse 16, we've moved from the loss of reward for shoddy building to the destruction of those who would destroy the church itself.

And the threat is the very wrath of God himself. Notice that the builder who builds with shoddy materials still at least wanted to build.

Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, in one sense, I would think that this passage should be freeing to some degree to get building into one another.

Not like a terrified like, oh no, what if I build poorly? What if I don't? You're just not going to get rewards if you don't do it great.

But if you do it, those moments that God shines through you and you do it well, that's going to be rewarded.

Getting busy building into the lives of others. So yeah, there are some who will build with shoddy material, but they're at least trying.

But the one who seeks to destroy the church, the one who is intentionally opposing her, they will come under the righteous wrath of the one who is just and holy.

I found this text to be pretty powerful after the events of last Sunday. Just thinking in terms of what happened in Texas.

Terrible, terrifying event. And I'm just grateful to see all of you here. I actually did wonder, I wondered at one point, like I wondered who's not going to be here on Sunday morning because of fear.

Because I think there's a reality that probably some in this nation are terrified and are fearful to be here. And I would encourage you, if you get a chance,

I mean, what I write is obviously, if you have a choice between read anything I write or listen to me or read the

Bible, read the Bible, listen to God. But I would encourage you to read my blog this past week, if you get a minute. I'm just talking about five reasons why you should freak out about the massacre in Texas this past week.

And it's somewhat facetious because you shouldn't freak out about it. At the end of the day, it should be surprising to us that it doesn't happen more.

It should be surprising in light of what we understand about the world around us, what we read in Scripture. Again, if we let

Scripture be our guide, these things won't rattle us as much. We'll go, yeah, that's the way they treated them back then.

It's a wonder that they don't treat us that way as often, as any more than they do.

But I think as we think about this text, it's very easy to just contemplate and consider people with an AR running in and mowing down a church and leave it at that.

But one need not bring an AR to church to destroy the church. Did you know that?

Some of us have experienced that. It doesn't take a machine gun or a semi -automatic rifle to destroy a church.

Gossip, slander, back -channel division, stubbornness, a quarrelsome spirit, selfishness, and any general unwillingness to address wrongs in a

Matthew 18 kind of way are like bullets flying in a church. Sometimes just as destructive.

If you have an issue with the leadership, if you have a beef with me, with another member, you don't like something that we've done with the building, if there's something that really just gets stuck under your craw,

Jesus tells us to go and seek reconciliation with one another. And I actually believe, by the way, that in one sense, just over eight years of getting to know you and you getting to know me, and some of you

I've known longer and some of you I haven't known as long, this church has had an amazingly sweet spirit in this regard.

I've seen it. I've seen people go to one another and reconcile and make things right. I've seen people loving and caring for one another and community.

It doesn't mean we don't have room to grow. I'm not telling you you've arrived, but I'm telling you keep it up and more of that.

How many of you know that to be in relationship with one another is tough? Did you know that?

How many of you know that someone in this room, given enough time, will annoy you till you want to pull your hair out?

And how many of you know that God has not accidentally put them here? Have you ever thought about the fact that when

God forges community groups, he puts people together who wouldn't naturally be together for the sharpening of each other?

Did you know that? The person who never talks but is thinking constantly in their mind is, there's always one in the small group who's got really good things to say, but never opens their mouth, and then there's somebody who's got nothing good to say who can't shut their mouth.

And he puts them together in the same community group to go, let's see how this works. Let's do some sanctifying work in the lives of my people here.

So let's see how this works out. And I think God has got a good sense of humor and at the same time does what he does because he loves us and he cares for us.

So he puts us together. It's so much easier, by the way, and I've been through stages of this in my life where it's so much easier to walk in those doors, sneak in the back.

I'm not criticizing anybody who's in the back, but it's very easy to come in, sneak in, leave.

And how many of you know, how many of you maybe faced a stage of life where that's what you really needed? That's what you needed for a season.

But be careful with those seasons because that's not really being the church that God has called you to.

And you might find that a few weeks off stretches into months off, stretches into years of your life not investing in his church, not building as he's calling you to.

So be careful. I've recommended to even some of you sitting here that you take a season off, that you take some time to sit back and think.

But be careful. Don't let that stretch on indefinitely. God wants us investing in the lives of one another.

And he wants us close enough that we have to reconcile with one another. He wants us to be close enough together that we're offended from time to time.

He wants us to have those kind of conversations where it gets down to heart level issues, where you actually find somebody in the church that disagrees with something about you.

And then you can work through that. It's valuable. That's good. That's what it means to be the church and to do life together and to be real and authentic with each other.

This church is to be built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. And that's the way that we should roll with one another.

Jesus Christ is our foundation. Yes, Jesus Christ is the model for the way that we move forward in building.

Seeking out reconciliation within his church is like building well on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Living like he lived.

Loving like he loved. Restoring like he restored. Forgiving like he forgave. Being humble like he was humble.

Showing compassion like he showed compassion. God's temple is people work.

Building the church is people work. Recast Church is not the building out on Front Street.

Recast Church is a gathering of people who are a holy people set apart for the glory of the

Almighty God. He dwells in our gathering and he will reward anyone who builds these people up.

Look around you. Go ahead and just take a second and really like look around you. You might actually, it might get uncomfortable because you might see somebody else's eyes.

You might make eye contact. But I'm asking you to seriously look around for just a minute and consider how you're building in the lives of these people.

Oh that's got this so uncomfortable. Oh squirming. Some of you, the introverts just, I mean you, you guys just like turned red instantly.

Every introvert in the room was like bing bing bing bing bing. I asked you to turn around and look at someone and it's like I'm trying to hide here.

Let's dedicate ourselves, Recast, not dedicate the building. How many of you know that building without people sits lifeless and cold and just grows weeds and eventually breaks down and returns to the environment?

Did you know that that's all that building out there does? What is that building, what was it built for?

As an investment in people. As an investment in relationships. As a place, just strictly a place to protect the people of God from the elements so that we can meet together and do this real work of building.

Work doesn't stop when we, when we get in that building. The work starts there. It's already started before but it's, it's just another step.

Another, another step and another new start for us as a church to invest more and more in one another.

To invest more and more in our community. So let's land this message with some very obvious applications.

The first, in wrapping things up, the first application is to consider the foundation. Consider your foundation.

Consider the foundation of Recast. Jesus Christ is the foundation of the church. Have you tied your life in with that foundation?

Are you building on the foundation of Jesus Christ? Without Christ as the foundation, you are building on shifting sand.

There is only one foundation worthy of your effort and worthy of your life's work. So build on the only foundation that will ever last.

Jesus Christ came to die for you. And we will remember that sacrifice that he made by taking communion together here in just a moment.

But if you've not yet asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior, then please skip communion and come and talk with me after the service to see how you can begin to build on the right foundation.

Start with asking yourself, everyone in the room, start with asking yourself this morning, do

I have the right foundation? Do I have the right foundation? Second, is build with the right stuff.

As we dedicate ourselves during this transition of a new church over the next few weeks, this would be a great time to evaluate our own relationship to his church.

Evaluate in our own hearts, what are we building with? Some of us need to be reminded that his church matters to him.

There are some in this room right now that have been very hurt by the church. We've been through the ringer, but hopefully through this text, you get a renewed vision of God's desire for you to build his church.

Don't give up on his church. He still loves her and is calling us to build her up.

Each one of us in the unique way that he's gifted us and the unique skills that he's given us, but each one of us to be building in the lives of one another.

The second kind of thoughts or person that we could have here, some of us are building with the wrong materials. You are building and you've recognized the foundation and you are actually taking that seriously.

But are you building with the wrong materials? If we're honest, some of us have been sucked up into a culture of worldly wisdom that looks at success as numbers.

Or maybe we've slid into the view that worship is just a feeling and I don't get the feeling here, I get the feeling there and it's all about you.

Or maybe we've lost our taste for the word of God. Start by confessing that you have been building cheap.

And ask God for a renewed vision for his written word, as well as for his incarnate word, who is

Jesus Christ. Come back to studying the Bible and the life of Christ to see the way that he built while he was here and the way that he built by his spirit through the apostles in the

New Testament. Study the word, that that would be the actual material that you would use to build in the lives of others.

It would set the framework, it would be kind of like the blueprint of your life and the way that you are building on the foundation.

Lastly, I would like to identify that there's probably very few in this room, if any, but I'm going to say it anyways.

Few of us may be so far jaded with a church that we've been guilty of harboring visions of destruction. Maybe not intentionally, but we find it more comfortable to gossip than to go one -on -one when someone has offended us and go to that person and let them know that they offended us.

By the way, when we talk about worldly wisdom and spiritual wisdom, isn't that one of the places that cuts the most? At your workplace, if you work for a secular employer, is it really common for people to just go, like, kind of deal with it one -on -one and just kind of reconcile and, oh, hug it out?

Is that common? Or is it more common for you to go through back channels and backbite and insult others, which is more common in your workplace?

Isn't that a big difference in the church? Isn't that something that's so countercultural that it's even hard for us to adopt within the church?

How many of you just love confrontation? You're just like, man, sign me up for that. Man, how many people can

I confront this week? But how many of you know that early on in the process is better than later in the process, when you're both ready to explode?

How many of you know that there's a good time to reconcile with somebody that you've got frustration with, and that's right now?

Like, it's soon. The sooner the better that you can go and hammer out misunderstandings and figure things out and actually realize what he said, she said, and get rid of that whole backchannel business that complicates things so much.

Some of us are prone to gossip, and we recognize that. We need to stop before we find ourselves to be destroyers of his church.

I'm convinced that there are very few wolves in sheep's clothing that start off with a desire to destroy a church.

I don't think very many people sign up and say, you know, what I want to do this year, I've got some life goals. I want to eat healthy.

I want to work out more, and I'd like to destroy a church. So I'm looking for options.

I'm convinced that it doesn't often start that way, but often it slides that way.

Don't allow yourself to slide into gossip, into slander, into divisiveness and bitterness. If someone has offended you, go and seek reconciliation.

Build up the church with what, with the right materials, and just ask yourself this morning, what am

I building with? Recast Church, there are eternal consequences to our building.

There are eternal consequences to our building of this church. So let's dedicate ourselves to the beautiful task of honoring

Jesus Christ by building on his foundation with the things that will truly last.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your word. It's so practical and so vital and so important and so corrective to us.

Father, I pray that even in this message this morning, that we would take the correction that you desire for us, that we would take the encouragement that you desire for us.

Father, I thank you that you love the church so much, and even so much more than I do.

Father, you have love for this gathering. And that so much that you invest your spirit in our gathering and are reminding us in this text that as we gather, we are your temple.

That's wherever we are. Whether it's in an old jankety cafeteria, a storefront, fresh new building with new carpet and drywall and awesomeness.

So Father, I pray that you would help us to delight in your people. Help us to be committed to reconciling with those who have wronged us and be quick to give grace and to offer forgiveness, but also to be quick to just be gentle with those who we've offended.

And to be quick to apologize, to set things right. Thank you for the protection you've given to this church for the last eight years.

We just haven't had those big hang -ups and those big blow -ups, and I rejoice in that. I recognize that it's all of your grace, and I ask for you to continue that.