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's 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 visit. 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. And so 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, 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 donuts, 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.

And so, 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 three 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 three, 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. 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 is 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's 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.

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, 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 fired.

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 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.