Fools Made Wise

1 Corinthians 3:16-23 and the Call to Corporate Holiness

Today's text is from 1st Corinthians chapter 3 verses 16 through 23. Do you not know that you are temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you. If any man destroys the temple of God God will destroy him for the temple of God is holy and that is what you are.

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age He must become foolish so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God for it is written He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness.

And again, the Lord knows the reasonings of the wise that they are useless. So then let no one boast in men for all things belong to you. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come All things belong to you and you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.

Bow your heads with me father.

Thank you for your word, thank you for how sharp it is Lord. Lord we are foolish. We are not smart. We're not wise. We are we're just sheep Lord who need a shepherd Lord. I pray for The preaching of your word this morning, I pray that you would convict us Lord reveal any pride in our hearts Lord help us to trust you help us to see where we are foolish Lord.

I pray for wisdom for us and Lord. I pray that you would bless this time as we open your word Amen.

Retreading 1 Corinthians 3:1-15 and the Church as God's Building

On November 23rd David preached from first Corinthians 1st Corinthians 3 1 through 15. His sermon is titled casting crowns. Christ the only foundation. I'm going to retread some grounds so that we have context for today's passage.

So it'll keep us in the proper lens here. But I brothers could not address you as spiritual people. But as people of flesh as infants in Christ I fed you with milk not solid food for you are not ready for it.

And even now you're not yet 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 says I follow Apollos.

Are you not merely human? What then is Apollos? 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.

But only God who gives the growth he who plants and he who's what and he who waters are one and each will receive his Wages 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 is building upon it.

Let each one take care how he builds upon it for no one can lay a Foundation other than that which is laid which is Christ Jesus. 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. So retreading it's been it's been a while.

I was supposed to deliver this in November. So it's been a little odd. Working on this not working on it working on it. But uh something that's beautiful about this passage is it sets a proper lens for Corinthians if Anything you can you can hear the lens that Paul gives us on how he wants us to view Scripture and how he wants us to be unified in the body.

So we're gonna retread this and then I'll start my sermon so We learned that the messengers who labor are One. They are not divided factions yet Corinthians like most Greeks if you know your history they factionalize themselves into oblivion.

They could never unite unless Opposition was threatening them. Other than that, they couldn't unite and even when that happened it could only happen for so long.

What.

Christian tradition does this remind you of our guilt is shared. They not only seek the most beloved wisdom Speaking about the Corinthians, but also for people with impressive enough Rhetoric for that wisdom to even matter.

It's pretty boring watching a five-minute video on a guy talking about. I don't know communion sometimes. But if you get that tick-tock video eight seconds and BAM they hit it well. Because we like the rhetoric that comes with it.

We like the delivery and that's One of their issues that they had. One of the issues that we have. May this shame not remain on our tradition may the Lord spare us from ourselves and Mercifully deliver us into Christian unity to be the people of our prayer On earth as it is in heaven.

And loving correction Paul exhorts them. He declares the messengers as one. Pastor Josh proclaimed these passages two weeks ago. He stole my thunder. I. And the father are one. That's John later on in John that they may all be one just as you father are in me and I in you.

That they may also be in us. So that the world may believe that you have sent me. These texts magnify the importance of today's message. Paul's intention stated in his introduction. To be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus.

All are we getting the picture yet one all There is supposed to be this unity here one people of God.

One Lord.

One faith one baptism. If you derive anything from this section let it be this. Our unity reveals to the world that the Father has sent the Son and It disgraces when we're not unified. Verses 9 through 15.

We're told that the Corinthians are God's building. Paul goes on to tell us that what we build with is important. Christ is the foundation delivered by Paul himself. The church will be judged by what it builds with on that foundation.

Gold silver precious stones wood hay and straw. Kind of want to paint a picture for us to have a. Have a little bit of a understanding here so that we can be a little enveloped in this. So at your feet is laid this foundation.

It's perfect.

It's precise. It's flawless. It's beautiful. You know I talk about y 'all. Gothic cathedrals would giggle and blush if they saw this. This foundation suffers no rivals, there's nothing like it. Surrounding you are precious materials strewn about veined marble pure gold glittering gems dark walnut timbers.

Everything needed has already been provided to build this house. Yet we have our own worldly wisdom with materials the easier the better sometimes. Plus it wants to give the will the effort and the humility for the greater materials those take time.

They're hard we have to be precise with them and. They're heavy. So instead we scavenge. We gather sticks and tarps those are light. Look, there's a bungee cord over there. That'll help put this together.

We place a bucket in the corner to pee in and It's the redneck's finest looks great. We build fast cheap and lazy and Not better or not because better materials weren't available, but here's the truth.

No one really cares. How trash is used. We ordain its purposes. We define the worth of those materials. Because it's trash. We get to define it. We get to define how this house is built. We don't have to use materials that we're instructed to use.

So now we get to define how this house is built. Because we're not using the materials that are required anyway, and honestly this house compared to other trash dwellers. Well, it might be it might be the wisest bill.

It might be the nicest one. You know, you might have some hanging lights in there. We might have the best trashy mansion of them all. I hear some people. From first Corinthians, it's like an echo in my head the foundations what matters nothing else.

Christ alone. Sounds like the I follow Christ crowd except they're not following Christ because he said to use these materials. The foundation has expectations and I assure it's not rebellion and foolishness.

The trash house is built and we like it and we like that trash house. It's not nice, but it's ours and we think the goal was to just build the house however, it looks and however can stand and Then we die we die with our trash house.

Now our lifelong constructions over and this is what our church is built of. The world sees it our brothers and sisters see it and worst. God sees it. He sees the trashiest house on top of the world's most perfect foundation.

What a sight to behold it's like taking a Mercedes Bend and taking the cab off of it and Putting like a bug on top of it. What in the world are we doing here? Now our offering this offering that we've built it's in the hands of the Living God and he burns it.

The fire reveals truth and value and none of our trashy house survives and Trash is good for one thing and Jake will agree to this burning. But we survive. Praise God, but only because we're blood-soaked in the lamb.

None of our offerings make it none of the tarps. None of the bungee cords. Just the foundation. There's no condemnation for the righteous, but our worldliness is fully exposed here our legacy effort stewardship all.

Discarded.

Those of us that fit this bill for how we decide to build the house. We refuse the materials of God's choosing the work of God's demands and the humility in the process to make us wise.

Our lampstand is removed or.

We could step outside. We could hoist the marble and feel its marvelous weight. We could put the gold in the furnace feel the heat and craft it beautifully. We could place the gems and carefully dug pockets To just capture the shine of the Sun.

We can toil over the design how long we take with tempering the gold or how ornately we can carve the timber. We could build a house.

Majestic.

And we don't even have to worry if it honors the foundation. You don't have to worry. Because we are given the materials by the builder anyway. So now we grow old and die, but we present a place of beauty that honors the foundation.

The church survives the fire. We are blessed. God is honored the end Church. Our concern with this is reward not salvation as you could see by the last verse in that text. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss though.

He himself will be saved but only as through fire. So I imagine we're wondering well, what are these materials then. And Previous context explains this. Good materials are spiritual people wise people united people Faithfulness.

Bad materials are natural people foolish people divided people and the works that that comes from.

Division.

We have a preference of who is honored in the body and who is not. We glorify some gifts and we glorify some wisdom over others. And these have nothing to do with the gospel. It's all about presentation of rhetoric.

Faithfulness versus Factionalism. That's just a simple way to put that fruits of the Spirit verse fruits of the flesh Church, you must understand from the entire text today. You are polluting the church with worldliness and it stinks.

I can smell the bucket in the corner. It makes us weak and ineffective. You are not called to be creative with your faithfulness. You're not reinventing the wheel. You must become one who knows nothing and know that God already has everything.

You already have everything. So be faithful in what he has for you.

And.

Leave the bungee cords at home and church. This is milk. If some of us are thinking right now in this moment as soon as I say, this is milk. We're thinking of course, it's milk, but I'm about the meat.

May the Lord spare you of that foolish thought right now. Milk is being bottle fed to you. But you think you're at a Thanksgiving feast Marveling at the depths and intricacies of the vitamin D and the calcium and just how it swirls in its bottle.

I've been around a lot of milk lately a lot. I'm not an expert yet, but I am a connoisseur. It's nothing to write home about. You've never listened to a tourist brag about how tasty all the different milks were when they visited Thailand Brazil or communist Canada.

So truly just as the wise don't proclaim to be wise fools don't proclaim to be fools. The wise contend and evaluate themselves they are on the meat and They contend themselves. They evaluate themselves unto the Lord regardless of milk or meat.

Regardless.

If a brother tells me that I'm not kind. Although this may seem like a milk issue. This is a basic. Wouldn't you want me to seriously evaluate that? If I'm charged with being unkind you would want me to seriously evaluate that to test myself against Scripture and the Holy Spirit and with trusted brothers.

Yet if I believe myself to be only of the meat I'm past the basics. Then I will dismiss charges of unkindness because I'm concerned with Ministerial instrumentality and corporate temple identity. The meat.

But in all that I've just dismissed your charge and you just got gas lit. See these guys think they're on the meat and they can't even unify under Christ. They're too busy following Jake or following David or following Josh.

They're too busy dividing. And who cares about the best rhetoric and who do they belong to? That they forgone The milk which is needed in season and they went right to what they think is the meat. But that's a worldly wisdom.

It's foolishness. Repentance is always a gift from God no matter milk or meat. Milk is the basics and you don't get to skip them to become advanced. The wise must become fools. Then they can become wise.

So we already have the context for wisdom and foolishness. Today's objective isn't to give you an abundance of application but for you to use the wisdom of the Spirit to Illuminate what you have heard and read in these passages and trust that to give you application today.

So I have some main points. I'm finally to the sermon. Divine dwelling. True wisdom. Ownership in Christ. These are the main points of today's text. Verses 16 through 17. A sacred holy and protected Church.

The Church as the Temple of the Holy Spirit

Paul proclaims the church as the divine dwelling of God's Spirit. He says do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?

What a glorious transfer.

We go from the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem To the holiest of holies in Springdale, Arkansas. It's a glorious transfer. The blood-stained bride of Christ.

Praise God.

We are God's temple. The Spirit dwells in us personally. He does but the Spirit also manifests himself. Corporately there is a difference in his economic purposes for both. So personally the Spirit of God dwells in you to regenerate sanctify and seal you.

That's not what today's text is about. Today's text is dealing with you corporately. The Spirit unifies us. He divinely gifts us wisdom love and endurance for that purpose. Praise his name for that. He's the one who unifies you people of all levels of life.

Different hierarchies different trades different backgrounds sometimes different cultures. We got our token Persian.

Persians the Holy Spirit.

Governs.

Doctrine.

Discipline office and vision. He authorizes us for worship. Have you thought about what permits you what allows you to even be here to worship a holy God? The Holy Spirit permits you to do that. We are not worthy to worship a holy God.

We have no right to gather apart from his express permission. And finally he builds communal holiness. The good materials to build with applies to this. He will grind us into a holy body in Return of the Holy Spirit accomplishing his goals in the church eyes and minds will be guided heavenward.

So that they will know that the Father has sent the Son heavenward to the fear of the Lord and Believe me he will do this. With us or in spite of us all these aspects although commonly Realized are not commonly understood.

The Holy Spirit has a precise economic purpose in us corporately here. We need to get out of this idea that Jesus is my boyfriend. He's just with me and my own Individuality and then we come here collectively and each one of us have a Jesus boyfriend and we just make it work when we're together.

Let's dismiss that The Holy Spirit is manifest here praise his name we get to Participate in holy ordinance, which is the climax of our meeting here Holy Communion and he blesses that. Or he curses that now is this some meat.

I could it could qualify talking about the corporate economic Contributions of the Spirit Church. We are uniquely cradled in the arms of the Holy Spirit. Truly our God has shown favor and blessed us. Verse 17 a divine decree the temple his church Covered in the Holy Blood of Christ.

We are given guarantee from the Lord. We are the Holy Ones of God protected by divine decree. None will harm the Bride of Christ and not be handed into their own destruction. Now sometimes we have this idea of what destruction means.

We think it's Like napalm really that's really what we think destruction is. Destruction is used a little differently here. It has a few different meanings. It can mean corruption fracture or harm. To give you comfort here's some examples of this divine decree at work.

Ananias and Sophia from Scripture the Lord ends them they are gone so they will not corrupt the body. The sexual deviant in chapter 5 that we just went over the Lord hands him over to Satan and.

Then he restores him.

Praise God if you're a bit of a history buff if you know about Arianism in the 3rd century it looked really bleak guys. It looked really bad. Almost the whole Empire and their positions of influence denied that Jesus Christ was eternal.

But.

God conquered God restored and he purified his church. Russian Orthodox and the Russian Bolsheviks. The Russian Orthodox were so ingrained with the Russian government That the corruption was just inside and then the Russian Bolsheviks come in and they hate Christians.

They want to deny it all and they start purging the churches great martyrdoms and then after that a faithful remnant survives and They were purified and look they look much more holy. Now, let's put this in our modern context modern liberalism in the Protestant Church.

We've seen this corruption, especially in mainline churches and we see it creeping in SPC. We see people come in and they start with gentle things. They make a woman a director of communications or Director of the youth and they always hide behind director and Then soon enough they see well the works basically being done by her.

We might as well ordain her. We see that corruption happening. But here's some hope. Gay churches don't plant churches. That's a good fact of the matter. They don't. They don't have vision beyond themselves.

They only seek to subvert what already exists. That's why the gays and liberals don't need the reformed tradition so badly. Why subvert something that divides itself into irrelevancy. So let this promise be a warning to anyone on the outside.

But most importantly us on the inside because this is talking to the body. God will destroy those who harm his church. So tread carefully how you gossips. Porn users pride bearers loud women feline. Dominant men and of course false teachers behave something a little bit more gentle true wisdom.

Church, we must not be sophomoric about ourselves. God's condescension to become a man is Infinitely worse than if we were to become worms digging in the earth covered in our own slime. The Holy God becoming a man.

I Can't fathom. Coming to be a man to have all the fleshly needs that we have the temptations that we have. It's more it's more honorable that we would become worms. Do not seek to honor God build our house or live our lives under advisement from the world family.

Do we look like our godless neighbor except that we go to church on Sunday? Cast this away. Reconcile that you are indeed a worm. Only then will you have humility to grow in godly wisdom. Family, we have to take what we have learned from the world from our fleshly sin our sin nature demonic oppression.

We need to take this. Submitted to the Lord to make us fools for him. You can't be part of a building that. That beautiful house on that perfect foundation if you're an expert in trash construction. We don't use the world's advice.

To honor the Lord the world doesn't tell us how to honor the Lord. The Lord does. If you were an expert in trash construction, and then you came on Jake and Joel's worksite. They'd kick you off, and they'd leave a shoe print in your rear.

They don't need that. You don't need that. We need people who are faithful. And we're compassionate. No, we seek to honor the Lord and we seek to be patient. Some people are on milk some people are on meat, but we're always tinkering with both.

But we have to be compassionate and kind and patient with our brothers. Who are younger in the faith? But we still need to give guidance moving forward. You must become God's fool. Become before you become wise.

It's just a fact of the matter. 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 this world is folly with God.

So if you're busy reinventing the wheel in church. You might ask Who authorized you to do that? Better to deliver nails and drywall than to be the master mud hut architect. How useless? Become the fool.

Become the wise. We get to our last section here ownership in Christ. All things are his Christ since we're done boasting about useless mud hut designers. We should get some things in order. Paul assures us that all things are ours because we are Christ and he is God's.

At first glance it sounds almost like a permit or an inheritance or right it almost sounds like a Dominion mandate. This is not the Dominion mandate. It coincides, but this is not the Dominion mandate.

All these things are ours by Association only not by Dominion. If it were Dominion, it doesn't make sense that life and death would be ours. We don't have that authority. Dominion mandate is given in Genesis.

So this text is a bit of a wrecking ball to the problems that Paul addresses earlier. All rivalries factions and preferences. Are not tolerated in this because they're all one. They're all already yours.

Anyway, Paul Cephas Apollos. They're all already yours. So you don't need to belong to a faction. They're already yours because they are Christ and Christ is God's. We do this today. Vodi. John MacArthur Bethel.

No, I'm just kidding. You know we do this today. They're already God's. What gloating or boasting do we have in them. We almost act like we share in their labor. Well, I belong to Vodi and you know all the things we've done together.

That's almost how we behave. Like we have a right there. These are gifts from God. We've done nothing for it. You belong to who cares no one cares. We don't belong to anyone but Christ and not in the snob nobbery either.

Well, I will only belong to Christ. No, we we belong to Christ humbly and These are all brothers and sisters. That's why we pray for churches down the street. We're to be unified in Christ. How are they to know that God sent the Son if we're not unified.

Jesus said. How will they know that they're? Jesus said how will they know that they're mine? No, I'm an idiot. Jesus said that they will know that their mind by how they love one another. But we like to skip these steps because we're on the meat guys.

We're not permitted to be divided. We are all slaves to Christ. There are no factions unless you desire the dung heap house again. We should be done with the trash house, and we should get we should we should desire that marvelous beautiful House that's built on that perfect foundation, and it requires work and faithfulness.

This gives us a future framework when addressing the division. Exploits bragging and abuse of gifts of the Holy Spirit that you will see come later in Corinthians. It gives a lens of correction already as soon as Paul identifies it after giving this they know they have to be wrong.

All things belong to us. Only because we belong to Christ. We may have no boasting in men. This chapter and passage are explicit and vitally important to the central message Paul is commanding in this letter.

May the Lord help us keep this instruction close to our hearts as we continue through this letter. To the Corinthians a true gift to the entire Christian Church family the Corinthian Church is a gift to us.

This letter is a gift a Marvelous one. Lord have you repentant fools and make us wise. Bow your heads with me father. Thank you so much for your kindness today. Thank you for your provision Lord I ask that any failings and offering Lord that you would mercifully Mercifully cradle us in your arms and sanctify us.

Well, I thank you for the Corinthian Church, I thank you For your correction on them for your compassion and love for them Lord that you didn't just abandon them father. But that they were tenderly held and corrected.

That they were guided to build with good materials and ultimately Lord the most important that these worldly People would recognize that they must become your fool to become wise Lord. I praise you we praise you here in Jesus name.

Amen.