Jesus Christ: The Foundation — Bryan Anthony

Thank you, Lord. 1 Corinthians, chapter 3. Let's pray. Great God in heaven, we bless you this evening. We thank you for so great a salvation. We thank you for the kind intention of God, which is manifested to us through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We ask, Lord, that that which is foolishness in the eyes of men would be exalted this evening, and that which is wisdom and cleverness in the eyes of men would be abased and broken. We ask that the man Christ Jesus would be exalted in this gathering and in the hearts of every soul in this room.

We ask, Lord, that you would deliver a word from heaven and speak to us something that will be foundational, not merely for a ministry, not merely for some new theological idea, but for the reality of our lives.

So we trust in the great Holy Spirit to perform that work through a word this evening. We ask that you would come, Lord. Glorify the Son in our midst, in Jesus' name. Good. Well, this evening is meant to be an evening of opening up the scriptures with regard to the man Christ Jesus and the gospel of the cross.

Christ as the Church’s Only Foundation

So we're going right to the heart of foundation here. I'm going to read a whole portion here, 11 verses, so just follow along with me if you would. Paul speaking to the church at Corinth. And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ.

I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?

For when one says, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are you not mere men? What then is Apollos, and what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one.

I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but God who causes the growth. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor, for we are God's fellow workers.

You are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder, I laid a foundation, and another is building on it, but each man must be careful how he builds on it.

And then here's our principal verse. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. We've called these evenings of Recovering the Foundation, and I've said that it's not new revelations and new teachings and new ideas that we need so much as a recovery of the true foundation, which is the man Christ Jesus himself.

What does that mean? What is Paul getting at in this passage when he says no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ? Well, here's a question that we need to ask.

What is the foundation being laid in or what is it being laid for? Anyone have an idea? What's the foundation? If Paul is speaking metaphorically with this wise master builder metaphor, what is he speaking about?

Obviously, he's not speaking about buying a building or building a building. So what is he speaking of? Don't be shy. It's okay. What is the foundation being laid for? What is Paul building?

Are you speaking more in terms of the foundation for the church, for the body, for the expression of Jesus Christ in the earth?

I'm asking specifically what is the apostle saying? He's been set apart as a master builder to build. So it's to the glory of God. But what is the it itself that he's building? The church. Yeah, the church.

So what is the church then? If it's not a building, it's a people. So what then does it mean for Jesus Christ himself to be the foundation of a people? There's a there's an awesome insight that needs to be recovered here in the church because we have ministries that have been built on so many other foundations, so many other with with so many other emphases.

But where is that house where Jesus Christ himself has the preeminence and the supremacy and the central reality, not only in two or three meetings a week where he's the main subject, but in a people where he himself is the foundation of that people, of that church.

This is the apostle's vision. Paul's vision is for the building of a house which God himself will inhabit. Speaking of something so much more than the building of a ministry where we have meetings and God's presence is felt and known a few times a week.

Precious though that is, he's speaking of a vision that he has through the gospel, which is a people who have been founded upon the reality of Jesus Christ himself. And here's something I would say. The majority of the church has not even been founded on the subject of Jesus Christ himself.

And even more of a remnant could be said to have been founded on the man, Christ Jesus himself. But yet this is what the apostle burns for. This is his vision. This is his ultimate jealousy to see a people in the earth who are the very expression of the man, Christ Jesus.

Not only in a ministry, but in the reality of life. The apostle has a vision for a people who are marked by the spirit of Jesus Christ. They've been founded upon him. In one sense, I would say, as Gordon Fee has noted, that the foundation is not proper doctrine, but the gospel itself.

He intends them to hear Jesus Christ and him crucified. So, remarkable New Testament scholar, Gordon Fee, has said that the foundation is not just the apostle striving for right doctrine, though he would contend for that.

It's that the community would hear the gospel itself. And I would take it a step further, not to undermine what he has said, but to say it's even further than the hearing of the gospel itself, but the founding of a community upon the person himself, Jesus Christ.

He himself is the foundation. So, this scholar by the last name of Weiss has noted that when Paul reaches verse 11 and says, For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

You know, Paul's working with this metaphor. I am like a wise master builder. I'm not a wise master builder, I'm like one, who's building with the right tools and the right timing, being sure that the cement that has been laid has set properly before another portion is added.

So, he's like a wise master builder, Paul is. He's working with a metaphor, but this scholar says that when Paul hits verse 11, he's no longer dealing with a metaphor, but with a reality. He says, Paul is no longer thinking metaphorically in verse 11, but has in mind the thing in itself.

When he says Jesus Christ is the foundation, the only one that can be laid, which has already been laid. He said, this scholar has said, Paul is no longer saying, this is a metaphor, I'm saying literally, Jesus Christ is the foundation.

If we haven't got the life of Christ moving through our own congregations and our own personal lives, we have not the church. If we have not the wisdom of Christ, and particularly the wisdom of Christ and Him crucified, then we don't have church.

So, what does that mean then for a community like us in the early phases of our existence, and the Lord is just breathing upon us in these early phases and saying, build rightly, build wisely, and even speaking things out of His own heart.

Hey brother, for the building of this particular Antiochal vision that we have, if Antioch itself becomes the vision, then we've lost it already. You can't have church without the foundation being Christ Himself.

And so this is something more than using language that Christ is the center, Christ is the foundation, Christ has the preeminence. It has to have the corresponding reality of the Spirit. Bearing witness with the community that Christ Himself is the foundation, and that if we would operate on any grounds other than the grounds of His atoning mercy, then we cannot see the church built.

We cannot see the gospel have an effectual impact upon the society. We cannot see the flourishing of a praying community of believers, except that we are building upon the revelation of Jesus Christ Himself.

Some of you might be thinking, okay, big deal, now let's get on to the more meaty subject. But there is not one. Christ crucified is the pinnacle of the revelation of the fullness of the nature of God.

Demonstrated in history, making a permanent mockery of the principalities and powers of darkness, and all of their faulty wisdom. There's not something else to move on to. It's only the increase of Christ, the increase of Christ, the increase of Christ, in the community, in the life of prayer, in the scriptures, and in our mode of being as the church.

That and that alone will move the Jew to jealousy in these last days. That and that alone will be a demonstration of His wisdom to the principalities and powers of darkness. You know, Paul in chapter 3 is coming out of this awesome statement that he delivers in chapters 1 and 2, of the contrast between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of men.

The wisdom of the cross and the wisdom of power as men pursue power. So that Jewish man hanging on the cross, Paul is saying, is the full revelation of the nature and wisdom of God. Which is foolishness to the Greek and a stumbling block to the Jew.

But to us who are being saved, it is Christ, the power of God Himself. What am I getting at? What is Paul getting at? That's the greater question. How can a man like Paul make the statement that Jesus Christ Himself is the foundation of the church, and the only foundation that can be laid.

But elsewhere in his writings, Ephesians 2 for instance, make a statement like this, the apostles and prophets are the foundation of the church. Oh wait a minute Paul, you're contradicting yourself. How can Christ be the only foundation of the church, and elsewhere you're saying the apostle and the prophet is the foundation of the church.

Have you ever thought of that? Have you ever thought of that, that Paul uses the same word and description of foundational servant leaders in the church as the foundation. He uses the same word foundation as he uses of the Lord Himself.

Either he's contradictory, he's forgetful, he's got a mixed up idea of things, or he's speaking something flat out of heaven that needs to be considered by the church, which would be a foundational people in the last days for the salvation of Israel and a resurrection witness to the nations.

What's the statement that Paul is making? The apostle and the prophet, or might we say the apostolic and prophetic church, has so died to the wisdom of men, and the pursuit of worldly power, that the resurrection life is demonstrated in its being to such a degree that as our brother used to always say, you can't tell where Christ begins and the apostle ends, or where the apostle begins and Christ ends.

They become one, they become a demonstration of the same wisdom, and the powers of darkness would then equate a man like Paul with Jesus Himself when they speak through the demoniac, Jesus we know and Paul we know, but who are you?

How can the powers of darkness look upon a man, a fallen man, and be threatened by them and put Paul's name in the same sentence as the threat that Jesus Himself posed in their lives, in the life of the powers of darkness, and that whole demonic governmental structure in the heavens that plays upon nations and manipulates kings and inserts lusts and temptations in the hearts of men and presses men to strive for power in this life to the negation of any consideration of the wisdom of God?

How can they be so threatened by what tradition would call a five foot something tall, bald-headed, bow-legged, disfigured Jewish man named Shaul? And when the demon speaks up, when the sons of Sceva are attempting to cast the demon out, the demon speaks up and says, Jesus, the resurrected Christ we know.

Well, that doesn't affect us to hear that. Of course they're threatened by Him. He's the one, the preeminent one. He's the resurrected one, the ascended one. He's the one who's existed from before history even commenced.

He's always been their great foe and enemy and threat to their false wisdom and their false kingdoms. Jesus we know, that poses no surprise to us. But that they would say, Paul we know, is a remarkable statement.

But here's the larger question in this day. Since now we've romanticized and put Paul on a pedestal. Though he himself would be the first to labor to be sure the saints knew that he was not the foundation in and of himself.

We've put him on a pedestal. But listen to this, Paul's vision was not that he would say, I'm an apostle and therefore I'm the foundation of the church and you need to recognize my foundational quality and exalt me.

Paul's vision was that through his own blood, sweat and tears, in a radical and intimate identification with the cross of Christ, that a people would be birthed in the earth and nurtured in the earth, whose very lives, whose very mode of being, whose thinking, whose theology, whose speech, whose prayers, whose service, whose mundane activity, would demonstrate the wisdom of God to their false kingdom and actually pose a threat to what they have been seeking to set up from of age old.

Do you believe that in the midst of working at a home health care agency, or recovering an air conditioning system, or changing a diaper, or sweeping the floor, or some other noted, some other activity that we would consider mundane, that you have the capacity to demonstrate to the principalities and powers of darkness and heavenly places, the very wisdom of God?

Guess what? That's your high calling in Christ Jesus. And Paul was laboring for that reality. And that is precisely why Paul was unwilling to build on any other foundation than the man Christ Jesus. It's not by accident that the saints, that the faith, and Jesus himself were called in the book of Acts, the way.

If you look it up in the scholars, why were they called, why was the faith, why was Christianity called the way in the book of Acts? You have mixed opinions and responses. Some would say, well, it must have something to do with the fact that Jesus was called the way, the truth, and the life.

So when it speaks of the way, it's speaking of Christ. And in some passages in Acts it clearly is. But there are other passages where it would seem they are calling the community of believers the way, that way.

Well, what is it? Is it one or the other? It's both. In the same way that the apostle and the prophet are the foundation of the church, with Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone, and Jesus himself, Paul would say, is the only foundation, in the same way the church is the way as Jesus Christ himself is the way.

In fact, the church is only the way because it's that one entity in the earth in which Christ himself abides and is demonstrated. Isn't that awesome? Your life, not your ministry, but your life is the one avenue in the earth by which the wisdom of God has liberty to roll freely and be paraded amongst Israel and the nations and before the powers of darkness.

Your life. In fact, Paul magnified his ministry, not because he wanted his face on a magazine or he wanted his name on a billboard. He says, I magnify my ministry. Why? So that some of my own kinsmen might be moved to jealousy.

What does it mean that he magnified his ministry? One brother has said, one British scholar has said, that Paul magnified his ministry meant that he poured his blood and his tears and the whole of his being into the setting forth of Jesus Christ amongst the Gentiles so that some would be wrenched loose from Greek wisdom and brought into a Hebraic and heavenly wisdom and thereby move some of his kinsmen to jealousy.

Paul magnified his ministry. What does that mean? It doesn't mean he magnified his position. It means he magnified what was the natural outflow of his life in Christ. Paul's ministry was what it was, not because he was an eloquent preacher.

As a matter of fact, part of the divisions in Corinth that were festering that he had to address in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians had to do with the fact that men in Corinth were comparing the apostles one with another and some were even clinging more to Apollos because he happened to be more of an eloquent speaker.

So some of the saints in Corinth were actually saying we prefer Apollos because of his speaking. And Paul says, when I came to you, I came to you with much weakness and trembling so that your faith would rest on the power of God and not on the wisdom of men.

The Wisdom of the Cross Versus the Wisdom of the World

So what ground then is the church operating upon? If we're speaking this evening on the man Christ Jesus and the gospel of the cross, what is the gospel of the cross? What does it represent? What does it effect in the earth?

Karl Barth said, years ago actually in 1919, he made a declaration that I think is one of the greatest statements I've ever heard about the gospel. He said the gospel is not a truth amongst other truths.

The gospel is the truth which sets a question mark against all other truths. Can we add another element to that and say the man Christ Jesus therefore is not a man amongst other men. He is a man who sets a question mark against all other men.

The greatest of Greek philosophers and intellectuals, the wisest of atheists in the earth, was Adiel Moody who said that the atheist on his tiptoes sees less than the saint on his knees. The wisdom of God turns the wisdom of men upon its head.

The cross which was the most foolish of demonstrations in the minds of men, a mangled Jewish man hanging on a cross. His flesh opened up. His own followers, every one of them having betrayed him, and ashamed to call him their own brother, hanging in between two criminals.

But not only a great teacher hanging there, not only even a great prophet hanging there, as much foolishness as that would seem. You're a great prophet to Israel and you're being crucified? With your own kinsmen agreeing to it?

And Rome carrying it out? You're a great prophet? How foolish is that? Not foolish enough. The full wisdom of God could not be demonstrated until God himself was hanging on the cross. Fathom that, dear saints.

What can be said then of the gospel? It is ultimate wisdom. It is the highest wisdom. It is a wisdom which sets a question mark against all other wisdoms. You tracking with me? The apostle, the great calling of the sent one, is then to go into the nations where all of the other wisdoms prevail and to set forth the one supreme and true wisdom.

The one wisdom which will counteract all other wisdoms that have had full influence and sway in the earth. Full liberty to influence the minds of men. Principalities and powers of darkness playing in the lives of men.

Pulling and jerking men like puppets to fight with their wives. To waste their money and their resources on trivial things. To give themselves over to the lusts of the flesh. To be bound and gripped in pornography.

And for businessmen, distinguished men to be sneaking behind their wives' backs to pick up prostitutes and to destroy their lives and the lives of the woman giving herself to that pitiful occupation. Powers of darkness are playing upon men with all kinds of false wisdoms.

Disfiguring the human race. Moving upon the nations and upon Israel herself. And there's one entity in the earth by which the one true wisdom can be set forth. And it can't be set forth only verbally.

It has to be set forth as the reality of the condition of her life. And that one entity is the church. So to what degree then are we still moving along on the basis of the wisdom of this world? Which is the pursuit of power.

The pursuit of glory outside of the wisdom and glory of the cross. The apostle has the responsibility to set forth Jesus Christ and him crucified. Paul wanted the saints to have a life and a mode of being that was not based on the wisdom of men but was based on the very power and life flow resurrection reality of God himself.

So how does he go about then laboring amongst the saints? He says, I made it my desire and my supreme passion to know nothing among you save Christ and him crucified. The wisdom of the cross is the wisdom of God himself.

And that mangled Jewish body with open wounds innumerable that we cannot even count with the cat of nine tails having whipped him dozens and dozens of times. His body ripped to shreds. What is left of the fluid in his body pouring out through his pores and dripping into the open wounds so he is covered with stinging and burning.

And not only that, the internal anguish of the cross the betrayal of his own brethren the bearing up of the sins of all humanity which even the created order cannot bear. As it says in the little apocalypse of Isaiah I believe it's in Isaiah 24 -27, it's somewhere in there where the prophet says that at the end of the age the entire created order will be teetering and tottering underneath the weight of the sin of mankind.

At the time of Jesus' return the earth itself will be tottering as a drunken man under the weight of the sins of history all of Hitler's abominations all of Mussolini's violence and arrogance all of the arrogance of wealthy kings and even the arrogance of the homeless man who would say I can get along just fine without mercy.

The sins of the nations have accumulated and at the end of the age the world itself and the whole created order will be tottering as a drunken man. Fathom this you saints all of that sin was laid upon one six foot tall Jewish frame at the cross.

He bore all our iniquities and all our sins and infirmities. All of that was being demonstrated at the cross and it's the highest wisdom that we need to drink in as our very life bread. It produces resurrection in the church.

The Cross, Atonement, and Resurrection Life

So how does this touch nuts and bolts? What can be said of a church in the earth? Whose labors are predicated on a wisdom that is other than the wisdom of the cross. When we have ministries that have been built and even church functions which are built for the sake of appeasing to men and even across our own nation we may have a great multitude attending meetings on Sundays who have not yet met once with the wisdom of the cross.

Who have not yet had their own wisdom and their own self-possessed manhood questioned by the reality of the gospel of the cross. Having only heard a message that they were to come and be a part of this ministry the ministry exists for you our music is being performed for you the coffee shop in the foyer is for you and our greatest hope is that you will continue to come and maybe even a good percentage of you will give tithe so that we can maintain the air condition bill and the salaries of the ministers.

And the whole thing in many places has been based on a wisdom which is beneath the glory of God in the cross. I'm not saying that only for the sake of criticism but I'm saying that sometimes to get to the true foundation you've got to unearth and uncover the faulty foundations that we've been laying upon it in an attempt at building his house in a slipshod way that is devoid of his own wisdom.

If it's devoid of his wisdom it cannot lead to his glorification. And if it doesn't lead to his glorification it does not lead to deliverance for men. Paul knew that the one gospel which would deliver men from the spirit of this age was the gospel of the cross.

We need again to hear it. We need again to see it. We need again to feel the blow of that wisdom and let it lay low that which remains in our own lives in our own ambitions after a well-known name and let it lay us low into the ground so that we can experience the glories and the wonders of resurrection life which will produce in the earth a people not merely a ministry but a people whose very day-to-day mode of being demonstrates his wisdom to the powers of darkness and actually has the authority the life upon it to set men free to cause them, as Paul said to the church at Thessalonica to set down their idols and turn to serve the living God.

Paul is no longer thinking metaphorically when he speaks of Christ as the foundation he is speaking of the thing in itself or maybe we should say he is speaking of the man Christ Jesus in himself. One brother says that Paul consistently refuses to allow that he himself can be regarded as the foundation.

He will not allow that. In the first chapter he lists off the apostles that the saints are identifying with and even one of that group of saints within Corinth the church at Corinth some of them are saying I'm of Paul.

Others are saying I'm of Apollos. Others are saying I'm of Cephas, I'm of Peter so you've got then some saying I'm of Paul because he's the first one that preached here so we're the original Corinthian fellowship.

You've got others that are saying I'm of Apollos because his eloquence he's so moving the way that he speaks and we want to glorify that attribute we're of Apollos. Others are saying well we're of Cephas we're of Peter because he's the one that actually lived with Jesus and in fact Jesus said upon that rock he would build his church so we're with him.

And then some of them even have the audacity to say we are of Christ but to the negation of the other saints. So there's a superiority complex that's moving throughout the saints throughout this church and Paul is saying you guys have totally missed it.

It is about the glory of Christ and him crucified. It is all about his glorification in the reality of your life. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid which is Jesus Christ.

Paul is jealous for the government of God to have its outworking in the lives of the saints. What is his government? We hear often of his kingdom but we don't often hear of his government. But they're one and the same.

The kingdom of God is not just a hyped up mode of ministry. It's not just a we're going to do the kingdom things. The kingdom of God is the infiltration in the earth of his own government and way Paul defines the kingdom of God and the government of God as righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. And there shall be no end to the increase of his government. This is good. I want to read briefly from a brother named Juergen Moltmann in his book The Crucified God.

We need to see the glory of the cross not as an aspect of the Christian faith or of theology but as the center of the church itself. It takes one who sees that reality to proclaim that reality. It takes one who has known that reality even in the dying of his own life to set that forth.

And it will take a church which has come into the experience of the cross and which is now abiding in the resurrection life and glory of Christ to set that forth in the earth. You know when I stood shoulder to shoulder with 80 Muslims a few weeks ago and saw their prayers and their religious service and believe it or not I had the same sense in my spirit that I have when I go to synagogues where there are a group of Jewish men and women who have not yet found Yeshua as their Messiah.

The same feeling I had in my inner man that here is a striving after truth and a striving even after righteousness and a striving after God without one drop of the reality of His mercy. I felt a demonic pressure in my inner man while being there looking for open doors of witness amongst the Muslim community here in our own neighborhood which I did have and had lunch later with one of the teachers was able to share the testimony of my own salvation experience.

But listen it's going to take something more than being able to trot out a few phrases about the gospel. It's going to take a people who have come into a mode of being that's resurrection. This brother Juergen Moltmann has said the cross is not and cannot be loved yet only the crucified Christ can bring the freedom which changes the world because it is no longer afraid of death.

In his time the crucified Christ was regarded as a scandal and as foolishness today too it is considered old fashioned to put him in the center of Christian faith and of theology. Can you see why we're without foundation as the church.

Can you see why pornography prevails. Why a recent statistic said that over 50 of ordained ministers in America confess to a secret consistent struggle with pornography. Can you see why there are self-centered ministries being built.

Why well-known and esteemed leaders even many who have had gifts of the spirit that we cannot say on any other basis were false. They were truly gifted in the spirit as were the saints at Corinth and yet they were lacking in a foundation of the cross and therefore have fallen into all kinds of sins and other issues of embezzlement and alcoholism before the public eye that is the witness that's being set forth.

Can I address a question?

What do you think the alchemy is by the cross?

Yeah well I think he's speaking on the basis of human wisdom that it cannot be loved the old precious hymn so I'll cling to the old rugged cross even then. I think there's a danger amongst many believers of sentimentalizing the cross.

So it's not a real rose for sure. Yeah it's covered with roses and Jesus is on the cross looking almost like a ballerina in the old European paintings. But I think what he's saying is the cross cannot be loved that Jesus himself even took up the cross.

It was for the joy set before him that he endured it but he despised the shame. So even Jesus himself didn't love the cross but he knew that the wisdom of God demonstrated in the earth would require it.

Which I think that very question is the root of our discussion today because we have, we do love when we ought to be loving the broken Jewish man on the cross who came down off the cross so it kind of speaks to that very thing.

That's a good word.

The only reason Paul would preach the cross is because it's upon that cross that Christ was crucified. The only thing which makes the millennial kingdom glorious is that Christ himself will be present in Jerusalem and his government will be flowing out from that reality.

The only thing that makes the church the church is that Christ, by the Holy Spirit, is present in her midst. Yes and there's even a movement of saints who would place an emphasis on the cross as the central reality which is right.

But they only do it subjectively. And therefore the cross itself eclipses the glory of the one who hung upon the cross. So may the Lord have for himself a community of saints in the earth who can say out of the depths of who they are as could Paul I desire to know nothing among you save Christ and him crucified.

Every labor in eschatology every labor in theology every labor in ecclesiology. Eschatology is a study of the end of the age the last things. Theology is the study of God of who God is what he's like what the scriptures have set him forth as being.

And ecclesiology is a study of the church. And every single one of those if not approached through the lens of Christ and him crucified will lead to something lesser than the glory of God. So it's not by accident that he's called the way he's not only the intercessor in the sense that he yearns for the salvation of his kinsmen.

Or that as John Hyde used to say remember dear saints our Lord still agonizes over souls. I believe that's true. But that's not the only sense in which he's the intercessor. He's the intercessor in that he is the bridge and the way by which the saints come into any inkling of the knowledge of God as God.

In reality he's the way he's the door. He himself coined these phrases about himself. Isn't it wonderful that we can open the gospels and hear Jesus preaching Jesus. Has there ever been a better proclamation?

Even the tradition is said of Da Vinci that when he was it Da Vinci who did the Lord's Supper? Leonardo Da Vinci when he did the famous the Lord's Supper that he had painted the other apostles. But he had spent reportedly some time in prayer before.

And when he got to painting the face of Jesus Christ his hand began to tremble. And we ought to approach any proclamation of this glorious man with the same sense of trepidation. Yet you've got to step out of the boat and realize that if the church cannot speak of Christ then no one can speak of Christ.

But the church only has the ability to speak of Christ because Christ himself is in her midst see by him through him and to him all things. Even the creation of the entire cosmos Paul said was created through Christ.

So when the Lord said let us make man in our own image the participation of Christ and the activity of the Spirit was in full function. The Godhead was demonstrating the Lord's creative capacity and giftedness.

But it all happened by the Spirit from the Father but through the Son. And perhaps one of the greatest issues about the Millennial Kingdom and the fact that we're not going to be whisked away and to be playing instruments harps and blowing shofars on a little cloud and we'll all be little fat babies with wings you know.

And some kind of ridiculous vision of heaven that the age to come is actually our abiding with the man Christ Jesus himself in this created order having been made new by the full release of redemption in the earth.

What am I saying by that? That the created order which was created by the Father through the Son and because of the work of the Spirit when the Spirit brooded over the waters and land was made when the formation when a rib was moved when Adam's body was moved upon by the Spirit of God and a bone was taken out to form Eve.