1 Corinthians 3, With What Are You Building?

1st Corinthians chapter 3 be reading the entire chapter hear the word of the Lord 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 were not ready for it and even now you are not ready 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 merely human? What then this

Apollos and 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's building upon it that each one take care how he builds upon it

For no one could 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 receive him. Don't let no one deceive himself If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age

Let him become a fool that he may become wise for the wisdom of the 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 For the Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future all are yours and you are

Christ and Christ is God's May the

Lord add his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word But when I was young running track,

I developed some habits I really laid out a foundation for the rest life for one

Exercise really a lot more than exercise. I Worked out I trained athletically a lot

I still exercise Some still a habit. I have just yesterday. I missed my the time the pool was available

But it come like three of an afternoon. Uh, no, I gotta have a workout So I drove to the Y and I did something.

This is part of my Routine now, it's part of who I am. I also ate a lot

I could eat a large pizza all by myself and be hungry another an hour later. You know, what's next?

I'm gonna eat something more I saw that I saw that Michael Phelps ate 12 ,000 calories a day when he was training 12 ,000 it's about what average person's die is about 2 ,000 a day

So imagine that's like six times more food than normally person eats I don't think I ate quite that much

But I was getting close and usually not the best of foods a lot of coke and pizza and ice cream and I could get away with it because I was burning so many calories, but when

I stopped athletics, I Continued eating the same way and I had laid a foundation of eating habits that depended on an extremely active lifestyle

Which I was no longer living eventually it caught up with me And so I had to go through the process painful process of changing my eating habits

With the ongoing struggle, you know not to go back to the old ways Which I've been losing a little bit lately

It's it's hard, you know, it's hard when you've laid a bad foundation to start all over and rebuild

If you want to do something you have to have a good foundation No matter what it is athletics almost all the big stars in any sport basketball football

They are probably that way because they almost not even just probably almost certainly that way because they had years and conditioning it

Probably a childhood that was full of practices and workouts and you know Maybe a father taking them to training and going in the backyard throwing balls with them with that kind of thing

Which made them the true star they are now to beat in the Olympics or to play professionally or whatever they're doing

We have to have a foundation intellectually If you've not studied a language as a child, it's very difficult to learn it as an adult

Is this maybe some of you are different than that but for most of us mortal people

That's that's the way it is haven't been exposed to it as a child It's almost impossible at least for me to learn it later on often

We find that our education affects our career later on that the thousands of little decisions we made, you know, whether to study

Or not play video games result in us being able to have the careers that we want to go for or not our education our

Childhood our early adulthood decisions will affect the foundation will affect the career

We can have later on we build a foundation financially People who have no thought for of tomorrow with their money

Who splurge at all maybe on eating out at expensive places or whatever luxury catches their eye whatever thing they want to have

Instead of saving it for the future often found find that the foundation that they failed to lay

When they were young and they were making money things that they refused to deny themselves Means that they are now

When they be when they're retired and they're old they're just squeaking by on the barest of Social Security They have no choice now

They wouldn't deny themselves when they were young and they had money coming in and now they're old and they don't have much coming in They have no choice now but to deny themselves the things they wish they could have that the life of immediate gravity gratification that they gave into When they were younger means that when they're older they have so many other things now they can't have

You know our foundations Matter Well, what are you building your life on?

What foundation? Are you laying here? Paul prescribes for us three things each beginning with the letter

M With which to build to lay that foundation first meat second the maker and third metal and masonry

Well, our foundations matter with what are you building? Are you building yourself with meat or just milk?

Paul begins this chapter with it with a stinging rebuke You notice that just I couldn't even talk to you as spiritual people but as fleshly as carnal

It's kind of strong. Isn't it? Come on like that, but he doesn't do it to hurt them

But to heal not because he doesn't care but because he does and we see that he does care and how he first addresses them

Not with you know, you knuckleheads you you carnal So -and -so scoundrels, but with a gentle brothers

Brothers by which he also means sisters. I'm related to you. I'm connected to you. We are part of the same family together

That's why I'm distressed that You're not spiritual You're not walking in the spirit

You're all you were all not living like people who believe that there is a spiritual realm that spiritual things matter most of all in life

The way you live the way you handle your money is as if as if you don't believe the spiritual things are more important than the material things you can buy how to handle your sexual needs and Desires as if you believe that self -control was was not worth the short -term

Sacrifices how you how you use your time who to date or how you react to insults to slights what what you love

What you seek? It doesn't look very spiritual policies. It's carnal.

It's like the world It's like fleshly people. That's what it what it means to be spiritual is as you seek the things that are from the

Lord There are eternal but instead Paul says to them brothers you are carnal you live as if your body was all there was to you as if The few decades you have on earth were all that matters.

This life is all there is nothing beyond our five senses No, no judgment beyond what's what's here and now and that's what it means to be fleshly

Somebody say someone's fleshly it doesn't necessarily mean they're just obsessed with sex or there are glutton There are some people probably like some of these

Corinthians here Who practice self -control when it comes to sex or there at all their other appetites, but are still very there's still fleshly

They might they might just conclude Very reasonably, they're smart people that their life would be better off not sleeping around and so they don't do that Because their life here is better off, you know, we disrupt their marriage if they did so they think they're better off not doing that That their health would be better if they don't give they don't get a beast or they don't get drunk

And so they abstain from those things but all for fleshly reasons that going to church They might think is a good thing to do, especially if they can be recognized as somebody

They can get a title get a name that the long -term pleasures in this life Are better than the short -term pleasures in this life

But it's still all about this life. It's all about themselves right here right now that's being fleshly

Paul says that his dear brothers are like that They had been apparently complaining we saw in chapter 2 that they were not getting the really deep stuff

Where's the profound things this philosophy that we want they were complaining. They're kind of like a young teenager

Treat me like a you treat me like a child. Oh, yeah, because you are Showing by their complaints so loudly demanding be treated like an adult that they're

Not ready to be treated like an adult. They were complaining that Paul kept giving them the simple stuff about Christ crucified

You kind of name kind of thing. Yeah, we know that already. He was crucified Okay, get on to the profound theology that we want.

They wanted deeper things They thought they probably wanted to be able to impress their pagan neighbors with all the profound philosophy

They were learning in the church meetings. You should have heard what they told us in church today, but you know, oh homo ousian and Super lapsarian ism, you know throw around terms like that boy.

It sounds sophisticated, doesn't it? I think some reform people like to be throw around these sophisticated theological terms so they can impress people with how educated they are

That's fleshly you understand that's fleshly soaring oratory sophisticated vocabulary

Erudite quotations of some of the greatest Philosophers or renowned poets they had heard that Paul had done that to the philosophers in Athens He had quoted their philosophers their own poets to them, you know, they're probably thinking why what do you do that here?

Why don't we impress us with his learning? But here Paul here first with the sincere brothers To sort of numb the pain

And then a quick jab of the needle says your infants you're too immature to handle the deeper things and besides You haven't you've heard it a lot, but you even haven't learned what it means to worship

Christ crucified You see in chapter 2 verse 6. He says that he did teach them.

He did teach deep things to the mature But what are deep things?

They being fleshly thought that deep things are impressive to the world like their philosophy

Maybe like perform theology But the true deep things were still things That the world the pagan neighbors so so proud of being

Greek the inheritors of the culture of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle So proud of their learning and culture that they were so proud of it that Alexander the

Great Saw to impose it on the rest of the world to export it that Missionary with an imperialistic impulse to bring it to other people those deep things

Offended the Paul's deep things offended the world that Culture of the

Greeks it was still the deep things were still all about Christ crucified

It gets deeper Sure, it does a simple person may only only need to know the great truth

You know that nothing can take away my sin Nothing, but the blood of Jesus that were saved by grace only through faith only in Christ only that Christ plus nothing equals salvation

That's a simple thing That's what you need the simplest person can understand that the simplest person who understands that great truth is better off Than the greatest theologian who can lecture with this this is vocabulary

You know super lap Syrian this or that with high -flown terms, but does not cherish the old rugged cross

And yet for those who learn those great simple but not simplistic Simple but not simplistic truths those who learn them.

There are still greater depth. Sure They can learn about the substitutionary atonement that Christ died in our place about the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us about propitiation

That the sinless Christ needed to bear the just anger of God at our sin So that God could no longer be angry at at us who had so abundantly earned his anger they can learn the mature truths of total depravity of unconditional election a particular atonement of Irresistible saving grace and the preservation of the

Saints that though we are saved by saved through faith alone faith that saves is never alone The saving faith produces works

But not legalism. There's a never -ending depth To the gospel to satisfy the greatest minds, but that never gets away from the foundational simple truth

Christ crucified He gave him like a patient parent and with a baby that truth

Keep spoon -feeding it to them. They were asking for meat crying out for meat

Without not really knowing what meat was I like immature people who don't know themselves very well

They don't they don't really know they want they should say they don't know that they don't want what they're asking for They didn't know they really wouldn't like meat

Even if it was served to them at least not yet They didn't know they weren't ready for it.

We have the same today with those I've heard people you say loudly is preach the word brother and Then when they hear it preached they don't like it so much

It's it's true that some preachers try to show off their learning by using terms that they should know

That other people don't know how many of you know what super lapsarianism means? I wonder how many of you care

Fewer fluffy but sometimes the problem is it with the preacher preaching over people's heads It's with the listeners still being infants just fat little babies.

They want their bottles, but they don't mean maybe They they don't want to learn they don't want to grow

They demand their milk not meat Although they say they want meat, but they don't really know what they want if we're talking about real babies in Christ That is people who have been have been converted maybe into this past couple years.

That's understandable No one criticizes a baby for acting like a baby Well, we expect babies act like babies like, you know,

I don't I don't mind We have babies in the service here if they cry we just ignore it and we expect babies to cry You know, but if you're 40 years old you start to cry.

That's a different thing Okay, you know babies acting like babies is okay but if they get to be 10 like Raymond or 16 or 21 or 40 or 65 and They're still wearing diapers and crying out for the similac and sucking their thumbs and grabbing the little fake butterflies over their car seats

Well, you know, you got a problem with him either something has stunted their growth as We see here with these people

That they've never been able to move out of their comfort zone of their play pens and infant formula or as Paul suggests near the end of his other letter to the same group of people 2nd

Corinthians chapter 13 verse 5 is some of them may not be really in the faith at all Otherwise, they may not be saved at all.

Maybe that's why they're not growing. Maybe they're still dead But for here he's dealing with with the first kind those who have been saved but whose growth is stunted

For whatever reason who have stopped growing and even with the loving address brothers. He still scolds them

You are still fleshly They've been building with just milk

And so we're still immature Are you still immature?

You know the height of immaturity. I think the definition of immaturity Is just only seeing yourself

The immature person is a self -absorbed person. He only thinks about his own desires his own wishes about himself the person who's been going to church all his life and then in his mid -30s

Says he thought church was all about what's in it for him. What's entertaining him? He's immature

Do you still think it's all about you? Like a crying baby when a baby's cry because they're only thinking about themselves you kind of expect that of a baby

It's okay. I have a baby But are you if you go older and you're still like that? You got a problem when you like a crying baby you do you feel only feel your own needs?

Or have you grown past it the past the assumption that just life is just all about you

And now you are looking out and thinking About others and about the kingdom of God Now you still immature

With what are you building? With just whatever sweet and easy to digest, you know meat

Takes work. It takes work for your body to digest it. It takes chewing first of all Milk, you don't have to chew meat you do

The body doesn't absorb it immediately does it go right into your bloodstream with with sugar? It's complex.

And so it is not immediately converted into energy and nutrition You know if you need a quick jolt don't eat a steak.

That's not what it's for won't do that But it can eventually build you up with what are you?

With what are you building yourself? with the word Well, sometimes it's it's not as tasty.

It's not as immediately satisfying as maybe it's a sweet you can get elsewhere. Maybe like on TV This is why we have on Wednesday night evenings been trying to break down passages like this to chew on it

Now that may not be as entertaining as a carefully prepared Message where you passively sit back like you are now and I'm trying to spoon -feed it to you

But it trains you to feed yourself to build yourself up to move to solid food

You can lay you can't lay a foundation of maturity on just milk

You can't if you're if you're a fat little baby. He's just because you've been only having milk you need meat

Well, what are you building on men or on their maker

The Corinthian church we see beginning of verse 4 we've seen this already earlier in the earlier chapters had had two big factions

It's few that say they like Peter Beth and a few that were said or above it all we want Christ but but they have mainly there's two big factions one that followed

Paul and The other that followed Apollos a powerful preacher from Alexandria Egypt and all they could see

Were these men? the great Apostle Paul Who brought the gospel here or the fiery a preacher

Apollos so eloquent he is they could not see beyond the men To the

God who used Paul in that church to plant it in Apollos to build it up That they felt the blessing they got from Paul when he spoke to them or they loved how

Apollos inspired them how stirring he was and That's all they could see men

Not their maker So often mega churches today are built around men.

I guess small churches can be built around men too. Maybe I guess But particularly a lot of the mega churches are when the man but what happens when the man dies or retires or Leaves for somewhere else what well in almost inevitably the church dwindles as many of those people who came for that man

Go looking for another man to follow but Paul asked What are these men? What is

Paul what is Apollos he even says what instead of who that's in the Greek It's like he's just demeaning both himself and Apollos or what's we're tools we're not even

People are but he's demeaning himself What are we Nothing, he says just servants like servers

Like waitresses at the restaurant, you know, hi, my name is John. I'll be taking care of you today Now, what would you like to drink?

milk Hopefully more than that The waiter or waitress doesn't even make the food here.

She just serves it God gives the increase You know, it's that famous famous saying increase of what though What's being increased?

Well faith, I think clearly Faith, is it what we muster up from ourself by choosing to make the right decision

God gives the increase of faith and He usually does that through men to people who share the word with us faith comes by through hearing the

Word of Christ And they need a preacher a teacher or somebody to share it it comes but it comes from It comes through the word, but it comes from God the men are those who

God uses to bring you the faith, but he's Corinthians Instead of seeing the true giver

Like someone who thinks that you know, they're check in the mail. I don't know if Wayne ever gets this they think it comes from the mailman

Thanks for sending my money in the mail no, it comes from whoever sent it but the mailman is important got to deliver it but He's the server that they thought these

Corinthians thought that their life their blessings came from the men From the mailman from Paul from Apollos They can't see the supreme importance of God the maker the one who makes the seed he makes the seed even makes the water

He makes the seed grow. He makes life. He makes Paul He makes Apollos who makes faith and he brings it to them brings it to us through men

But they only see the men First at the end of verse 5 it is

God who gave to Paul and Apollos the task of planting and watering Notice that according to their task in verse 5

God gave us our own Paul says God gave me my task to plant the church God gave Apollo the task of watering it of building it up and they didn't do that even their own tasks.

They didn't Manufacture themselves they didn't do that on their own then notice in verse 6 It is God who makes the seed that is from God the seed itself is from God that Paul planted and Apollos watered as a sign by God and to grow and The growth itself came from God everything is coming from God getting that point

God may use a few key people in our lives To teach us to build us up.

You may all may think some key people in your life Maybe someone you know personally maybe someone you've heard on whatever in TV or the

Internet or whatever God use them. That's great But I hope you can see the God behind it at the bottom of it all

He was God working. It is God who was supremely important. It is God who is the ultimate source without whom anything else matters

That's why Paul says in verse 7 that the one planting himself and the one watering

Apollos are nothing They're replaceable God could have used someone else to do that.

He's means, you know, they say the graveyards are full of indispensable men That is men who thought they were indispensable Now life has gone on without them

Paul here asserts that he is not indispensable that he is nothing only a servant a tool that God made a channel that God used

To give them faith a channel not a spring a source

No, not a source, but especially people all they could see was the tool The channel thinking that he was the source

Paul was the source Apollos was a source like they were Springs No, they could only see the man

Not the maker It's easy as we seek to build a church to get distracted all the things we think are indispensable Maybe a building a right preacher the right programs and personalities how to greet visitors at the door the parking

I Saw one church today. He's gonna have a seminar on how to do the visitor greeting and parking and okay

Yeah, I guess that I guess that's helpful Maybe but that's not the indispensable part without God without making the seed to grow.

We will have nothing This is why prayer is one of the most vital things that we can do

We depend on God Giving us the increase and how do we make him increase?

We can't make him increase We can ask him to do it and we need to do that in prayer And verse 8

Paul says that he and Apollos that that all servants that God uses They are we are he says one

That is they have the same purpose. They're used by the same one God and God will reward each servant

Not by how many followers each one has You know what way a lot of some churches set their pastors pay about how big the church is the more money he gets

But how faithful they are to the purpose that God gave them to plant water to build up the church God gave them that purpose are they faithful to do it and God will reward them if they're faithful those who can only see men now

Only care about numbers now about how big the church is about how many converts they can report as having it So how many much more money coming in the offering so if people get discouraged that's if they look at that at that Numbers only they'll get discouraged

They'll quit if success as defined by numbers more people more money pouring in if it doesn't come quickly But the one who looks beyond this age beyond people that he can see and count now

Who sees a reward from God? knowing that Growing a new life in Christ, you know, it's not something

We can do that. I can do that you can do or that we can manage we can We can do it like a assembly line if we put all the pieces together and out will come a believer

Like a factory no, it doesn't work like that It's God who gives the increase such a person can continue if you if you see that that God is

Calling and God is will give the increase or maybe there will be lean times in which he seems to get very little increase

You can remain faithful if your eye is on the maker and not on men looking always to God when he knows reward

Whom he knows and God who rewards he keeps building He keeps building his own soul with meat he was giving and working

Working here. He's Paul says Paul he himself and Apollos or or fellow workers.

I think he means or God's fellow workers He means we're working for God and we're working with each other

Working for God with other people like Apollos freely admitting. He needs fellow workers

Working for a church where God is supreme The church here in verse 9 is

God's he calls you. He says you're God's field Talk about the supremacy of God and all things.

You notice how everything is God's here. Everything is from God Supremacy of God and all things people say he supplies the seed

He makes the men to work. He gives them the task to work. He gives the growth gives the seed

He gives the water even the field is his And he's saying the church is a church

You're like God's field. You have a field you plant the crop in it and you hope there will be growth The church is where God has chosen to work where he expects a crop a field into which he sends people perhaps you

To plant or to water Hoping that God will make it grow The church is that is that field like his farm?

Right you working in it Church he also says it's God's building He put it together.

It belongs to him. And if we are to work with him to build it We better use good materials

With what are you building? With meat yourself or just milk with the maker

Or just men With what are you building yourself? the sturdy things metal and masonry

All correct all Christians are to some degree building the church you may think well, that's building the church You're talking about you're talking about two pastors not to me.

I'm not in the call for that no, really all Christians are called to build the church because you are at least building yourself and you are part of the church and You are all by your choice of which church to support and how to support it building a church

You're all taking some part of this. So those who build churches on Whatever, whatever the customer wants, you know like a business or entertaining the kids teaching them morals and how to keep how to keep out of trouble or on On being a social meeting and get together with friends again every

Sunday morning Maybe maybe a group for for our kind of people. I like to be with those kind of people

So that's why I go there on Sunday morning committed. Maybe it's about committed to preserving the good old days You know when everyone was moral whenever that was

I don't know when that was or just making themselves feel good. I Like to go in the music.

I'll do that for you today want it or to politics? I want to go where we mobilize to change the government or for whatever social change

They can see and measure here and now because They cannot see anything beyond here and now because they're fleshly people who build churches like that Are choosing to build on other foundations they may use

Christian talk while they're doing it But their their foundation is something else Let each one each of us he says be careful

How you build? at the end of verse 10 Notice that command.

There's a command there each of us must be careful How we build?

We might think we can build a church on anything else Maybe on social change on political action

Now we got it. We got to save the country So we'll use the church for that our own

Teaching the kids on family -friendly entertainment on morality on a man.

I'll just love that Preacher, so we'll support him on preserving an old -time religion or on preserving our culture get together

The people of our kind our kind of people will stay with him We might think we can build churches on that but we can't there is only one foundation he says

Jesus Christ and we had better be careful how we build on that foundation

If you're a Christian You are building the church

With what are you building it? with precious things You know things that can stand

The test of a fire Of judgment things that come out through do the test shining

On that or are you building with temporary things? flammable things

Things that will burn up and leave you with nothing If we look at life like mere men

Reflection like people who think that What we can see and touch now

It's really all that matters. We might build we might be building our lives on what we think is sturdy enough

We might have a long -term view of life, but it's still just this life a good solid wood frame house, you know

It can look Good looking look solid. It couldn't we can stand for a long time probably for longer than we live

But it can but it but when it's tested by fire, it'll burn Perhaps some are building their lives and want to build their churches with the stuff of what looks sturdy

But it won't stand the test of time of fire Maybe a morality conservatism old -fashioned values things that people have cherished for generations at least at least a name

Others build their lives so shabbily You know on with stubble like a straw kind of things left over in the field after it's been harvested

So they make a little hut with it Wouldn't be a bunch of a house, but what it's not gonna catch on fire easily.

Everyone can see how Dilapidated it is how flammable it is that it won't stand the test even in this life

It won't last for very long. They keep you out of the rain for a little while But you know, it's not gonna last for long the moralistic conservative life might

I look down on such people You know their lives their churches These conservative ones supposedly they may look sturdy like a wood -framed house made with the best lumber

It might look good to us All the way to the judgment, but then the fire will come

God's judgment will come and it will burn Now for years we first moved in our house,

I thought our house was sturdy There was a brick house the plaster walls

I thought we don't need one. We need insurance. It can't catch on fire. I mean, right. It's a brick house with plaster walls

There's you know, I'm sure it has wood floors. But what's what else is gonna what could else could burn? then on a

Sunday morning in February of 2013 a lot of smoke and the house caught fire and To my surprise between the brick and the plaster

Is a wood frame it's a wood frame house with a with a brick exterior and plaster on the inside and it could very

Came very close to the whole thing burning down Some lives

And some churches are like that. They look solid It looks like brick looks like on the outside plaster on the inside doesn't look like there's anything there there will burn

But there is it's just facade Underneath they're made of the stuff that Will be burned

Here he is speaking even of Christians of people who should have known better, but They built their lives out of the dead wood of this world and suffered loss for it in the end they couldn't see that their refusal to believe and to build on the metal and the

Masonry of God's Word to look beyond their traditions or their morality or their culture or whatever it is

They're familiar with they couldn't see that what they built with was going to burn in the judgment

This is what we are building Our lives and our lives together as a church.

We had better be careful there were building with the right Stuff that each one be careful with what he builds

And verse 16 pockets ominous you That's us

Talking put you plural. We are it says you all are a God's temple.

God's Spirit is in us That you there again is plural. It's a good southern y 'all

I would say y 'all are God's temple, but the temple is singular you all

Are God's one temple? The church is

God's temple his house on earth his courts I'll be saying about what is one day in your courts where it's the place where he where God dwells

Every Christian is a part a stone in that temple That's not the ominous part.

That's the promise. That's that's the reality the ominous part comes Next if church is

God's temple, then what is God going to do to those who hurt his temple? I've heard individualistic modern

Christians say that they don't believe in the church, you know You church is like a gas station you go here and there wherever you want to get your gas

It's just you know, like a restaurant you go to the one that you feel like having at the moment They don't believe in the church they say it's just God in themselves in relationship

They think that they are a temple like how later in this letter He will talk about how our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit but here he is speaking about the church corporately as the temp together is

God's temple to Disintegrate it to tear it down into its separate parts to say, you know

It's just me and two sets of footprints on the sand walking together. Just me and Jesus Rest of the church who cares to do that is to destroy

God's temple and the one who destroys God's temple by building it with shoddy stuff

You know concrete mixed with too much sand that eventually crumbles the one who separates the stones so that they don't hold together

Telling them that they you're not really connected into a church anyway So you just kind of fall apart who builds it on personalities and egos and maybe on silent power brokers who won't stand

For certain biblical doctrines to be taught or applied people who love to be first or people who just refuse to acknowledge the church

That they're supposed to be connected to that's that it's just themselves that matter they think such people

Paul says in verse 17 Here's the ominous part such people

Who destroy God's church? God's Paul says God will destroy

Looking at this life only at this world here and now You have a carnal view of things we can see that such people appear to succeed for a time

Maybe they usurp churches Maybe they drive off true believers while the hypocrites seem to seem to triumph or maybe some seem to have fun floating from here and there

And they're not tied down. Yeah, but the Apostle Paul here tells us that such people will be destroyed perhaps in this life

They will see their own children turn away from the faith and turn away and from the church the church is that they hollowed out

They made me basically in the meaningless little Customer centered businesses the children were in the lesson that their parents taught them by example

The church is kind of like a Chuck E. Cheese. That's where you go to for for fun and games and cheap pizza and Now that I'm growing up.

Why do I need any of that anymore? That's the way they'll think Parents taught them by example to approach the church like any other consumer good and when they

Realize they don't want that consumer good anymore They'll go elsewhere or perhaps not until the Judgment Day will they be exposed where if they survive at all?

It will be through fire and ashes such people in this age. We see in verse 18 think that they they are something

They thought they were smart They're so smug. They've been guiding a church like you would a fast -food restaurant all about the numbers giving the customer what he wants as if you know because he's they're fleshly because they're carnal as if God's not looking on And to whom one day a

God to whom one day they will have to give an account Avoid at all costs the worldly attitude the carnal attitude the fleshly attitude.

I hear that see success here and now as vindication for what we do

That feels wise when the world says he's successful That imagines that numbers prove that we must have done something right instead

Paul says to humble ourselves Let's acknowledge that as natural people we are by nature foolish only then

Only then after you admit, you know, but left to myself I'm a fool Only then will he give us his wisdom

The metal and the masonry of his ways What are you building?

Make sure it's the right stuff the metal and masonry of God's Word not just milk

But meat not on men but on the maker You are the church

God's people You are God's temple and so all things are yours, you know

Paul or Apollos or Peter or John MacArthur or John Piper or Mark Dever or Myself or Joe or whoever else is called into your life to build you up.

They are yours. There's your your servants their servants of God Serving you by giving you meat by building your life with the metal and masonry of God's Word you are the church where God himself lives on earth

So why fight over which man is better When all of them are yours, they're all yours when you are

God's residents on earth So that even life and death everything now

Anything coming will be yours all of it will serve you

Will all of it will bring you closer to the Lord Even death

You know, you're rich when even death serves you

You are the church if you have had God do that miracle in your heart to give life to give the increase to give faith in you

You are the church You're not some shoddy building of wood or hay or straw is destined to be burned up They could be knocked down by a strong wind.

You are the church built on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ with all things

Yours all things are yours But don't forget you are

Christ and Christ is God's and he is supreme over all things

He made the field and the seed and the water and the workers.