The Foundation of God — Gaius Goff

The Foundation of God and the Call to Serve

We're going to read again back in Timothy, 2nd Timothy, just a verse, and then we will be going on to the subject of the foundation of God. We have spoken yesterday of the will of God, which is our call to service, and the gift of God, which is the ability to serve, and the power of God, which is the power to serve, and then this morning on the Word of God, which gives us the knowledge to serve God.

But I do have a question, and so you won't mind if I just ask Mr. Harvey a personal question for a minute. But the reason I'm asking it publicly is because I think probably most of you would have sometimes the same problem, so, and I've known him for a long time, so he won't mind.

But you talked about being down from time to time. Is there a difference between, and you don't have to answer if you don't want, but you can nod or shake your head or something. Is there a difference between down and being discouraged?

So he thinks there's a difference. So my thinking was kind of along that line, but I'm getting another opinion. The reason is because I have in my mind that discouragement is sin. Now that's one for you to think about, and you can talk to me about it later.

But there is a sin that does so easily beset God's people, and that's unbelief. And oftentimes our discouragement comes because we have not trusted in the one that we have committed ourselves to, and who's committed himself to us.

And so that was one of the reasons why Paul was writing this final letter to a young believer who had influence on other people. And you have influence. Every person here makes ripples around them. You do have influence, so don't think that you are getting by without anybody knowing what's happening.

We all have a certain degree of influence. And so this young man was living in days like ours, where there was government uncertainty, where there was a lot of counterfeit Christianity that was on the go, and people were taking it for the real thing.

There were people coming along who were fakes, although they had the right words. They would be like people today, sometimes use born again in the wrong way. I saw one time in a car lot, they had the big sign up, all of our cars are born again.

Well now, born again cars is not born again in the Bible. So we're going to read today about these words down here in verse number 15 of chapter 2 of 2nd Timothy, as a way of introduction. And I would like you to just hear these words.

Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and vain babblings, for they will increase unto more ungodliness.

And their word will eat as doth a canker, of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus, who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already. And overthrow the faith of some. But the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

The Foundations of Gospel Truth

So we're going to speak about the foundation of God, and this is the message that we serve. We have been given a message by God, and when it comes to foundations, there's a verse in the Psalms that says that if the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?

So I'm going to briefly read with you the places in the New Testament where we read about these foundations, or the different foundation places where it's mentioned, first in Ephesians. So you can turn to Ephesians chapter 2, and we'll read a verse in Ephesians 2 and verse, let me see.

I'm using a loose-leaf Bible, so I turn twice as many pages as I need to. Notice verse 19. Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.

So we have there the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and that is linked with the body of Christ, which I would believe, and I'm going to speak of it in this way, that that is the foundation of gospel preaching, the truth of the gospel.

Now turn to 1st Corinthians chapter 3, 1st Corinthians chapter 3, and reading at verse 9, for we are laborers together with God, ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building, according to the grace of God, which is given unto me as a wise master builder.

I have laid the foundation, and let another build thereon, but let every man take heed, how he buildeth thereon, for other foundation can no man lay, than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. And so we do have the foundation of the apostles and prophets, which I believe is gospel truth, gospel preaching.

Here we have the foundation of a church, which is basic Bible teaching, very important to maintain basic Bible teaching. Now where we already read in the book of 2nd Timothy chapter 2 and verse 19, we read about the foundation of God, and I believe that's the apostles doctrine, that that's truth that is learned by study.

Now just turn back a page or two to 1st Timothy chapter 6, 1st Timothy chapter 6, and notice the verse 17, Charge them that are rich in the world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy, that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to communicate, or ready to distribute, distribute, that's what called a senior moment, and four in the afternoon, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life, and this is the beginning of a full and fruitful future that begins now.

We began with eternal life when we were saved, and it will continue. Actually, I would hope, as we heard earlier today in connection with heaven, I would hope that when the Lord comes, it wouldn't be a real startling thing for me to go from what I'm doing to what I will be doing when he comes.

I hope I would in no way be embarrassed to step from what I'm doing here or anywhere into the presence of the Lord. I would like my life to think that my life can go on. Now that's not of a pride's sake, but it is one of the reasons why you and I are here.

The problems of life are allowed by God so that we are ready for what he has up in the future. This is our learning time. The foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, and this is to do with the beginning of a work.

Our brother, Mr. Harvey, has mentioned that, and some of us have had the privilege of being involved in new work for quite a while, and the the foundation of a thing is the bulwark and the undergirding of a work.

The beginning of a thing. Anybody that builds knows that there's a lot of dirt that has to be moved before you can get to a solid place where you can start to build. And that happens in gospel preaching.

Defining Sin and Proclaiming the Gospel

We must maintain a clear presentation of the gospel wherever we testify to God's saving grace. We do have to preach sin. I think the older people one time used to say that we have to preach man's ruin, God's remedy, and man's responsibility, and I think that's a good little phrase for you all to remember.

Man's ruin, God's remedy, man's responsibility. That's what we do when we preach the gospel, and so we have to not only preach about sin, but we have to point those things out from the Bible. First time I was ever confronted with that, I had a Sunday school class at my home assembly when I was going to university and you know, you preach, you teach your children, and I had some early teens.

I was in well along in my end of my teen years in early 20s. I was just about 20 and one Sunday morning after the class was over, we were going up to be dismissed and a young girl about 14 stayed sitting.

She said, Gaius, I'd like to talk to you. I said, sure, you know, I'd given the message. She said, I'd like to talk to you. I said, what about? She said, I'm not saved. Now, she didn't come from a Christian home, and she said, and then she started to cry.

Now, a crying teenage girl shakes up a guy who's just out of his, in the end of his teens, you know, and I hardly knew what to do, and here's this girl crying. She said, and she says, I'm going to hell, and I don't want to be there.

Can you help me? I felt like a young fellow that we had with us, but I won't mention that because he wasn't from too far away from here, and he he was visiting one day, and a lady came out and said, you've got to come in quick, and so they went to the house, and he said to her, what can I do?

She said, my husband is dying, and he's not ready, and he came back to, after about a half an hour, 45 minutes talk, and he said, you know, I think I had a child almost to birth, and I didn't know what to do.

But you know how to lead a person to Christ? We can't avoid sin, but don't embellish things that God doesn't say in the Bible. You learn carefully, clearly, words from the Bible that define the problem of sin.

What is the problem of sin? The wages of sin is death. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Get verses that clearly define, and let people read them from the Bible.

That's what we do in gospel preaching. It's not what we say that saves people, it's what God has to say, and they're saved through grace, by God's grace, through faith in Christ, and we have to point them to the Bible.

And once people are aware of the problem, that's what we do when we preach the gospel. That's the foundation that the apostles and prophets built the whole body of Christ on. Christ was the cornerstone, and in that foundation, then learn the remedy for sin, whose own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree.

Christ also has suffered for sins, that just for the unjust to bring us to God. Get used to having about eight or ten verses on the subject of sin. That's a foundation of gospel work. Then get used to having, and memorize, a number of scriptures that have to do with the solution.

Sin is the problem. Those who serve God, whether in Sunday schools, or gospel work, or in your own family, the problem has to be defined. But then go to the solution. What is the solution? Christ died for our sins.

When we were without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. Start presenting this solution, and the solution is the person of Christ. It's not a funny feeling in the back of the legs. It's not a talk with a preacher.

It's not a talk with a Sunday school teacher. It is the Word of God. Let them read it, even if they're young children who can hardly read. I sat with a little child one time, and she said, I don't know how to read very well.

That's okay. I said, dear, you read the words you can, and I'll help you with the ones you can't. But you just remember that this is God's way of talking to you, today. I'm only me, but God talks to you here, and it'll be the same tomorrow, and when you're 20, and when you're old person like, older person like me.

Let people get that foundation right from God, and then bring it into focus, and then urge them to act on what they know. That's gospel work. Define the problem. Give the solution. Bring it into focus, and then urge them to act.

I read one time in a book about, I think it was Moody, was preaching down in Chicago, time of that Chicago fire, and he'd said to people after finishing his message, now you go home and think about this, and and come back tomorrow night.

And that night, the city of Chicago caught on fire, and there was people all over that city that had been in his meeting that died. Don't buttonhole people, or wrap your arm around them, and squeeze them too tight, but let them know that if they want to be saved, there's somebody who knows the gospel, and that's you.

That's our privilege in this dark world. You'll find it sitting on an airplane, or you might find it sitting in an airport waiting, or sometimes in a restaurant. Somebody come over and say, did you pray before you ate?

You know, there's all kinds of doors that open. I don't know whether they're here today, but Mr. Henry, or Harry Schmidt and his wife Eloise just gave me a little packet yesterday of, you know, how those calendars come out with pictures on the front.

Well, they had them, but they also had a verse of scripture and a little way of salvation on the back instead of a calendar. That's a good thing to lay on the table before you leave. Get used to gospel preaching.

Basic Bible Teaching and the Nature of the Assembly

It isn't always done here. The second foundation is the foundation of a church. That's basic Bible teaching. You know, the church is mentioned 150 times in the New Testament, and so it must be really important in God's eyes.

To be convinced of what an assembly is, is to understand God's purpose of an assembly. But you have to know what it is. It is, we're not another church. There's all kinds of denominations. We don't have a headquarters off somewhere.

This assembly that meets here in Garneville, Iowa is a unique, independent group of people who gather in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ under the person of Christ. And those that have come from other places are simply because we have common interests, and we found each other out.

Your assembly is a unique thing, and it's planted by God. When we come Sunday morning, we don't walk into the Lord's Supper and say, all right, Lord, we're all here. Now you can come and join us. No, we have been seated with Christ in the heavenlies.

You get the picture of what an assembly is, and you'll need to read some of those New Testament truths and find that the application of God's truth and obedience to it is necessary. Spirit-called and Spirit-directed people who gather in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ unto the person of Christ is the basis of our Bible teaching when it comes to the foundation that is laid.

Paul said, I laid the foundation and others build thereon. Let everybody that teaches make sure that you build on that foundation with good gold and silver and precious stones. And men and women with ability and willingness to carry out meetings are what the work of God needs.

The foundation is a beginning. Our assembly has been there for 113 years. Not very big anymore. It used to be they started with eight, went up to probably 80 for a while, and now it's probably back down to about 10.

We have a, I told you before, but we have this ramp that goes into our hall, and it's the most used part of the thing because people walk up there with walkers. But we have almost a hundred percent participation in every meeting.

The ladies are all there, and the man that's there, we're only small. But they come there early before the prayer meeting. What's going on in the gospel? What's happening in Mexico? And so we go over it with people.

They break out their pens and papers and start writing down meetings in San Luis. How do you say the last part is? Sing it out loud. Colorado River. Ah, yeah. San, it's St. Louis of Colorado River. That's the best way you can do it because you don't need to learn Spanish.

That's why I wanted you to get that. Pray for that man. And what's the name of the place you're working? Okay, the Barrel. But get those names and start thinking about this because that's what an assembly is for.

To participate with God and what's going on in the world. Our brethren and sisters need us, and we let them know what's happening in Iowa. We do. Or Newfoundland and Labrador, or India, wherever we can find.

And those people want 15 or 20 minutes before the meeting to find out about that. And when that meeting comes, maybe one or two men are there, but the sisters are all there, heads bowed and pads out, and when we hear of people getting saved, we let them know.

That's what an assembly is like. I mean, it comes alive to those poor old people. We got one lady, 96. It's only just a couple of weeks ago that she couldn't come out anymore for probably never get back.

But she would scoop her way out to that Bible reading, and that prayer meeting, and the Sunday morning meeting, and the gospel meeting Sunday night, and she would look around. Who's here not saved? Always involved.

The Apostles' Doctrine Must Be Learned and Practiced

That's basic Bible teaching, the foundation of a church. Then we read in 2nd Timothy about the foundation of God. That's the Apostles' Doctrine. And the Apostles' Doctrine are things that you learn yourself.

If you don't learn it, you won't have it. There's things that we have to apply ourselves to, and in a few minutes I want to try and help you a little bit with that. But these are truths that don't change, that started out right at the beginning, and we heard about them in the beginning of this conference meeting, so I'm not going back there.

But those truths withstand all the error of Hymenaeus and Philetus, and all the people that preach a prosperity gospel that's a counterfeit, and all these other things that people are preaching. The foundation of God is the Apostles' Doctrine.

Error undermines believers. But the foundation still stands solid, and our position in Christ and our participation with Christ is part of that foundation of the Apostles' Doctrine. We mentioned earlier today what a doctrine is, what doctrines are mentioned in the Scriptures.

But doctrine is not known until it's practiced. A person can go to a university and learn to be an engineer. Picking on you, Jonathan, but learn to be an engineer. But you can't make a machine to harvest a forest until you get somewhere where you make the machine.

You've got to get your hands into it. You've got to take what you learn and apply it, and about four or five years down the road, then you'll start realizing, I begin to know something about those things that I learned.

I have a son-in-law who's a geophysicist, and you know, the dirt. They know all the things about the dirt, ground, and oil, and all that stuff. And he looks for oil down there, and he's good at it. He said, you know, all that I learned four years of university to be a geophysicist, he said, all it did was help me think.

It didn't help me to be a successful geophysicist. It helped me to learn how to think. So when you open your Bible, we're going to have to learn how to think. And from there, I am going to have you turn with me to a few places how to learn to think.

Meditation on Scripture as the Key to Understanding

Turn with me to Psalm 49. Psalm 49. In order to make all this yours, you have got to learn how to think. And think God thoughts, I mean, not just about the things around you. And behind all this is in this day, which you and I live, God is expecting us to be loyal to Him, to His Word, to the body of Christ, to the assembly that you are a part of, to the Savior, to the Lord's people.

And in His name, we've got to be loyal to the unsaved as well. Notice 45, Psalm 49 and verse 3. My mouth shall speak of wisdom, and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding. Now turn with me further back to the book of Joshua chapter 1.

Joshua chapter 1. Moses had died and Joshua was taken over and God was talking to him and giving him his marching orders in Joshua chapter 1. And he was probably a bit nervous. So God told him in verse 7, only be, verse 6, be strong and of a good courage, for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them.

Only be thou strong and very courageous that thou mightest observe to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded thee. Turn not from the right hand or to the left, that whatsoever thou doest, whithersoever thou mayest prosper, whithersoever thou goest.

Now, here's how that works, how you be strong and very courageous. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.

For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success. Now I want you to turn with me back to 1st Timothy chapter 4 for one more reading. 1st Timothy chapter 4. And we read this before, but I'm going to read it again at verse 13.

Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee which was given thee by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things and give thyself wholly to them that thy profiting may appear unto all.

Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine. Continue thou in them, for in doing this thou shall both save thyself and them that hear thee. Whoa, this sounds like a good case of the flu. Well, it's not flu.

It's a good thing, not a bad thing. So what do we have here to talk about? What's what's he speaking about here? He's speaking about how to make the Word of God come alive and how that this foundation of God becomes the message that we serve.

I'm just going to give you a seven little headings about meditation, which is the key, the whole key to understanding. It's the key to understanding our times. It's key to understanding the Bible. You've got to meditate.

And the first thing that I want to just mention briefly is it's sanctioned. It's endorsed. We'll come to that back. It's significance, the subjects of meditation, the strengths of meditation, the seasons of meditation, the secrets of meditation, and the system.

You've got to have a system. Don't panic. I'll be back over them in a minute, just briefly. The sanction of meditation is because it's taught in the Bible. That's why we read in Psalm 49 and Joshua and in Timothy.

It's endorsed by the examples of people like David, who wrote the psalm, or people like Joshua, who led God's people through terrible times and difficulties, and now he's got to lead them by himself. He was an assistant.

He was one of the brethren being trained, we might say, to lead the Lord's people. And now the older folks are gone. Moses, my servant, is dead, God told him. So he said, now it's your turn. Meditate upon this day and night.

You say, how can you do that? I mean, well, it doesn't mean you go around and you're, instead of reading your school books, doing your courses the way you're supposed to, that you don't bother, or the same when it comes to the job of work you do, but you get used to taking something in, in the early part of your day, a phrase, a word, a person's name, like David or Joshua or Ruth or Mary or Timothy or Paul, get used to that and you'll find that before long you have impressed in your mind something that will stay in you all day.

Don't go too far and try to get too much, because you'll end up with nothing. We were just over in Gangtok, in Sikkim. It's a little hump in India, way up in the north. Bhutan on the one side, Nepal on the other, China on the other, and the brethren there are new believers for the most part.

I think there was a brother there from Ireland. He was younger than I am, but most of them were new believers, and the Spirit of God led us, who took part of that five-day conference, and it wasn't planned.

It was God's way, but I thought, Lord, you really do a good job when you organize a thing. Because there is a brother named Benjamin Alexander. He was an Indian from Delhi, 41 years old and very dignified and well-versed in the Scripture, and for five days he took 1 Corinthians 15, verse by verse, three to four times a day, 1 Corinthians 15.

Spirit of God led me to take 1 Timothy, chapter by chapter, five days. Spirit of God led brother Charles Davison to take the subject of prophecy for five days, and God's people all got an understanding of the variety of ways that God speaks to us, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, subject by subject, and they seemed to feel, boy, they never realized how all of this comes together so well.

It's because when you apply the Word of God to yourself, you'll find it's sanctioned by God Himself, and the Scripture really does endorse meditation by command. Meditate on these things. Do this. The significance of meditation is simply, think about it, study it, think it over, reflect on it, turn it over in your mind, dwell intently on it, chew the cut on it.

That's what it really means. Like a cow, you know, you see them grazing in the field. Cows are different than horses. Horses will go and stop in one spot and eat grass all around them, and then they'll go to another spot while a cow will just keep walking.

They only got teeth in the bottom, so they keep walking and keep pushing, and when they've got enough, they lie down and up it comes, and they start going back over what they've taken in, over and over and over and over until it comes out nourishing, blessing to other people, and that's the idea of meditation.

Meditation is to our mind what chewing our food is to our body. It's like a natural skill. You put a little bit of food to a baby, and before long they eat. I've known since I came here, I watched the natural skill of eating by all of us as we sat down.

You give thanks for the food, you pick it up, and you sit there and draw pictures, right? No. We pick up the food and we eat, because it's natural to do that, and that's the way it is to be with the Word of God.

Don't overkill. We had a young guy with us one time, and he wrote in the front of his Bible, almost in the form of a vow, he said, I vow to read ten chapters a day, and he told me about it. He said, what do you think?

I said, I don't think much of that. Well, he said, you've got to do that to get through the Bible every year. I said, so what are you going to do if you get through the Bible every year? Well, you know, that's how you, I said, no.

The entrance of God's Word gives light. It's not the reading of it, it's got to get inside, and that comes by inspiration, by the foundation of God, by the meditation. The subjects, you know, Christian meditation has content.

We don't sit cross-legged with your upside down against the wall like they do in some of the classes around, or TM or MT or whatever, TSM or whatever it is that people do, trying to get themselves feeling holy and empty and good.

That's a, that kind of meditation, and they sit there and they hum, you know, on and on. That's not meditation the God way. Meditation in the Bible has content. Psalm 103, verse 34, my meditation of Him shall be sweet.

I would suggest to you that every day you make a special point, even if you have to write it on your piece of paper, or like a woman wanted to remember something we've been saying here, she picks up a pen before she left, she wrote it on the palm of her hand.

I thought, well boy, that's pretty good. You, so driving home from here, she's got this on the palm of her hand. Well, you don't have to write it on your hand, but you put something about the Lord in your meditation every day.

And then meditate on the Word of God. You'll read through Psalm 119, and you'll find that that foundation of God will become real to you, as not only you meditate on the person of Christ, but on the Word of God.

And not only that, Psalm 77, verse 12, I will meditate also on thy work. Through the Word of God, and thinking about it, and meditating on it, and going over it, we can understand creation, as opposed to evolution.

Meditation, Creation, and Spiritual Discernment

People are always trying to conflict our young people with the contrast. There's no nothing alike in evolution or creation. There is nothing that compares at all. But a lot of times people don't bother to think enough, and so they're waiting for somebody to come and have a series of meetings on creation before they start to think.

And then they get so much in a weekend that they don't remember. So my suggestion to you is, you find a Bible that may have some notes in it, or a column down the center where you can find words that connect, and you start finding out for yourself who made all this, and why, and how, and why the silly idea of something coming from nothing without any authority or power behind it is totally irrelevant to human thinking.

Thoughtful people don't really pick that up. There's an area of life that people around us can't seem to get their head on, and that is that, and the reason they dodge it, is because they're afraid of God.

If there's a God, like one prophet said, he said he taught evolution because he said the alternative is unthinkable. I had a problem when I went to university, so this is nothing new. One day, there was a class of probably, it was 250, about this size, maybe, and but we were sitting like up in a gallery like this, and the prof was down here looking up at us, and and he he was wanting to know who of us were Christians.

So there's a number of us in that class, put our hands up, claimed to be Christian. He said, well, he said, very interesting, he said, I suppose you all believe in God, and nobody else said anything. Well, I said, I do, sir.

I do believe in God. I know there's a God. I trusted him a few years, a couple of years ago, as my Savior. Well, he said, you know, I really believe in God, too. He's kind of a buddy of mine. He said he and I have a lot of fun together, and then he went on with his lecture.

So what am I going to do? After the lecture, I made my way down, and I went to him. I said, sir, I hope I didn't interrupt your class much. No, no, no. He said, I was glad you spoke up. I said, it's just that your God and mine are obviously different.

Somebody that's a buddy of yours, that would mean that he, well, he said, I'm just using sort of a sarcastic term. Well, I said, my God made the world with a word. He maintains it by the word of his power.

He loved me. He gave his Son to die for me. He bore my sins on the cross. He gave me forgiveness of my sins. And he said, I said, I live with him and experience him every day. He's not my buddy. He's my father.

The Strengths and Seasons of Biblical Meditation

He put his hand out. He said, thank you very much for coming to me and talking to me. Now, it isn't always a put-down. Sometimes we got people that teach us that really don't know. The strengths of meditation, when spiritual darkness will go out, when spiritual light comes in.

There'll be food for your mind and your heart. It'll be refreshment to your soul. And the times that you need it most are as if you're going to make a change in your life. If you're going to make a move, or you're called to serve in a special work, like Joshua chapter 1, or when one is being tempted from without, Psalm number 1.

Or for a person who's been unjustly criticized, and you're wondering what to do. And you know people have criticized you, and you say, what am I going to do about that? No, that's what meditation does.

It's one of the times you need to stop and go no further and say nothing more until you've thought it over good in the presence of God. And when you do, God will give you exactly what to say. And normally, he would say when you're unjustly criticized, say nothing.

The secrets, yes, it takes silence. It takes solitude. It takes people to be serious. When you're dealing with God, it is not just fun and games. It's good, holy, glad fellowship. And you need a system.