Building on Christ
1 Corinthians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 8 viewsNotes
Transcript
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as 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.
Welcome - continuing in 1 Corinthians
We are picking up right where we left off last week. And this is where breaking a letter down into small chunks becomes a little challenging. What we will consider today is not a completely new thought, just a different metaphor being used, and a different application of the same point Paul has been making.
This passage is special to me. I actually consider this the first passage I ever preached on, even though I only preached it to one person and it happened in my living room. Very early on in my walk with Christ, I had a friend from the church over, and he was struggling with assurance of his salvation.
Now, we attended a very hyper-fundamentalist church where grace was preached, but the practice of those in the church was a little different. Because for all the talk about grace and salvation apart from works, there were a lot of unwritten rules Christians had to follow.
So if a person had a beer, they probably weren’t saved because Christians don’t do that. Or if he smoked a cigarette. Or if a person watched certain kinds of TV shows or movies, he probably didn’t know Christ. Or if a man had an earring...
And, of course, the big rule was that if you missed church more than every once in a while, you probably weren’t really saved because Christians didn’t do that.
And so my friend was doubting his salvation because he felt like he broke too many of the rules.
So I brought him to this passage, and I really got going. I was moving my hands around and I was talking really fast - which I used to do when I got really excited.
And I explained that while it is very important to live out our faith as Christians, God’s grace was truly free, and while we might be building on the foundation of Christ with the wrong things at times, and we will not be rewarded for those, yet nothing can take us out of the hands of God.
And that is what Paul is saying here. Like we saw last week, Paul never insinuates that these Corinthians are not truly Christians. His rebuke is for how they were living because they were Christians.
And if you follow his train of thought, he is really telling the Corinthians that the unregenerate can’t even do what he is encouraging them to do. Because they don’t have wisdom or power from on high.
So the very fact that he is telling them to shape up means he believes they are, in fact, born again, and they needed to start living like it.
That’s actually what a good portion of our Bible is about. The Law was not about salvation - it was given to those God had just saved from Egypt. It was about how Israel was to live out their calling as the people God saved.
The prophets of the Old Testament preached to call Israel back to living like they were supposed to.
Christ came, according to His own words, to the lost sheep of Israel to call them back to God - to rightly understand Him and His salvation and their calling.
The epistles are largely about how we are to live out our calling as Christians.
That’s our Bible. It is about knowing God because we have been saved by God.
And it’s about we need to live like it.
We saw last week that Paul used the agricultural metaphor of planting and watering and growth. And he ended by saying this:
For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
The Corinthians were God’s field, and their actions - the jealousy and strife that existed in this church - that was stopping the field from growing. They were not yielding fruit. They were stuck as infants in Christ and they lacked the maturity that came with living according to Spiritual wisdom.
But he also says that they are God’s building.
And this metaphor is what we will look at today.
Now, Paul is still admonishing them for exalting him or Apollos or anyone other than Christ. And he is explaining to them that he and Apollos are mere servants of Christ, and it is God that does the real work.
He now uses this building metaphor to further his point:
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.
Note where Paul starts. The grace of God. It is according to the grace of God that he is used by God as an instrument of salvation. You know from the account of Paul’s conversion that that was solely by the grace of God - Paul certainly hadn’t earned anything.
We read throughout the book of Acts that it was by the grace of God the church spread and souls were saved.
It was by the grace of God that there was a church in Corinth, planted by Paul. It was by the grace of God that he preached the Gospel to them.
And, according to the grace of God given to Paul, he was like a skilled master builder. Paul may have helped plant the church. He may have helped them come to faith. But it is God and His grace that really made it happen.
And Paul is staying on point here.
Because Paul doesn’t say “skilled” master builder. This is the only place in the ESV that this word is translated as “skilled.” Everywhere else it is translated as “wise.”
In fact, Paul has used this same word five times in this letter already. He told the Corinthians that God destroys the wisdom of those wise according to the world. He asked “where is the one who is wise?” He said:
1 Corinthians 1:25–27 (ESV)
For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;
Paul is still talking about wisdom from God as opposed to worldly wisdom. He is really hammering this idea home. Why? Because it was so tempting for the Corinthians to live according to worldly wisdom, especially given their Greek context.
And I think we can relate. Because of the context in which we live, it is easy to live by the wisdom of the world. It is that wisdom that is drilled into our heads by the world - through many public schools, through universities, through the news media, social media, TV and movies - there is a wisdom that is championed through all of these.
And most of the people we come across champion that same wisdom. They really can’t do anything else.
So, let’s be honest, living according to God’s wisdom in our day and age here in northern Jersey is not easy.
But it’s what we’re called to.
And remember, Paul said that it is among the mature that he and Apollos and Peter imparted Spiritual wisdom.
And Spiritual wisdom - lived out by those mature in Christ - means living out the faith God has given us.
And Paul and Apollos did that, by the grace of God:
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.
Just like Paul planted and Apollos watered, Paul says that he laid a foundation and Apollos built upon it. But Paul laid that foundation like a wise master builder. He did it according to Spiritual wisdom.
That is the wisdom that does not seek its own glory. That is the wisdom that understands that he who plants and he who waters are one, that they are nothing because God gives the growth.
So here, Paul is likening planting to laying a foundation and watering to building on that foundation.
But as I said last week: we all have a part in the planting and the watering. We are all called to spiritual maturity, because we all have a role to play. We all need to seek to be instruments in our Redeemer’s hands.
Because once the foundation is laid for us - and once the Spirit gives us faith and He takes up residence in our heart - that foundation is meant to be built upon.
That’s what Paul says again here.
Let each one take care how he builds upon the foundation. This is for everyone who lives on the foundation of what Christ has done.
“Each one” is to take care - he literally says that each of us have to “watch closely” - how he or she builds upon the foundation. Because everyone is called to build upon it.
And we are called to build upon it things like spiritual maturity. Knowledge of God according to spiritual wisdom. Service to God and the church. Evangelizing those around us. And this is what the Corinthians were not doing. They were staying immature. They were arguing with each other instead of serving each other.
Why?
Because, once again, their idea of Christ was wrong. They sought their own glory and the glory of other men.
They confused ends and means.
They were not building on the foundation.
Because the foundation Paul talks about here, is Christ.
For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
There is no other foundation but Christ. When Paul preached the Gospel to them, he was laying the foundation of Christ and Him alone. Christ was supposed to be the object of the Corinthians faith.
But instead, for some, the object of their faith in this case was Paul or Apollos.
These men were part of the building, but they were sure not the foundation. Christ is.
We see here how though the servants of Christ do the work, it is Christ Who does the work. Paul laid the foundation, but it is a foundation that has already been laid. Christ is the foundation that Paul says he laid - but Christ made Himself our foundation.
Paul could only lay the foundation for the Corinthians because Christ already did the work!
And when Paul says “a foundation other than that which has been laid” - the grammar here means that this is the exclusive and only foundation there is.
And it has already been laid. Christ laid the foundation when He came as one of us and took on our sin and died on the cross for our sin. Christ laid the foundation when He rose on the third day and when He ascended back to heaven.
This is why Christ is the only way. There is no other way. God has already made the way. He will not make another way.
There is but one foundation that can be built on. It is Christ. That is the foundation on which we are to build. God gives us no other foundation.
Jesus said:
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
Building on the foundation of Christ means what? Hearing His words and doing them. Building on Christ means living out our faith. That’s what it means to have Him as our foundation.
Oh, we can try and build on other foundations. But if we build on anything or anyone other than Christ, we will find out eventually that we are building on sinking sand.
And that is what some in the church at Corinth were doing. They were building on Paul and his ministry, or Apollos and his ministry. They were building on a desire for spiritual gifts.
They were building in getting their own way.
They were building on sinking sand.
For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Christ is the foundation that is to be built on. Paul laid that foundation for the Corinthians when he preached to them and told them what Christ had already done. Apollos came and built on it by continuing to preach to them.
And what did they do? Some tried building on the wrong foundation. Others tried building on the right foundation, but with all the wrong things.
They tried building on the foundation by forming factions. They tried building on the foundation because of jealousy. They tried building on the foundation by getting their way.
They tried building on the only firm foundation with wood, hay, and straw.
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.
And this is where we need to be careful, because there are two ways we can go wrong as Christians. First, we can try to build on the wrong foundation.
Maybe we have built ourselves and our life on our career. Maybe, like some of the Corinthians, on another person. Maybe on a particular talent.
Maybe on our self - which is self-exaltation.
Maybe we try to build on the foundation of our assets.
Maybe we try to build on the foundation of worldly wisdom - maybe we take what the world has as their basis for success, and we build on that.
And like I said, it’s easy to fall into that trap.
What is the foundation we are building our lives on? What is the foundation we are building our ministries on? What is the foundation we are building our spiritual maturity on?
We need to make sure we are building on the right foundation. Otherwise, whatever we have built is going to fall.
But there is another way we can go wrong. We can have the right foundation. We can have faith in Christ. And then we can try to build upon that the wrong way, with the wrong things.
We can start with the foundation of Christ and try to build prestige or influence on that foundation.
We can try to build wealth. As a pastor, I need to be especially careful. I can start with Christ as my foundation, and then I can build upon that a career. There are plenty of men that do that.
We can start with the foundation of Christ, any of us, and try to build our own little kingdom on it. You know, when we put time into this or that ministry and start to think of it as ours.
We can start with the right foundation, then try to build our own way on that. You know, we exalt our opinions or preferences, and we start arguments when others don’t exalt them, too.
If that’s the case, not only will what we build eventually fall, but we’ll have to answer for how we built on the foundation.
That’s what Paul says here. What we build will be made manifest, and it will be tested by fire.
Paul here is actually pulling from the prophet Malachi using this testing by fire language:
It’s a reference to:
“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years. “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
We all know the beginning of this prophecy because Jesus applies it to John the Baptist when He came the first time. But there is yet a fulfillment of this prophecy to come.
Christ will return. He will come suddenly to His Temple - which Paul says is the church, as we will see - and He will judge with His refining fire and will find things pleasing to Him, and things not so pleasing.
This is what Paul is talking about:
Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—
Note that in the Malachi prophecy, the Levites - God’s servants - those who tend to the Temple - are those refined like gold and silver. As we saw last week, we are all called to be servants of the Lord, and when we serve Christ we grow in spiritual maturity - we are refined.
Because when we serve Him and live out our faith as we are called, we are building on the foundation of Christ with gold, silver, and precious stones. Valuable materials.
But when we are not - like the Corinthians were not - we are building with wood, hay, and stubble.
And the precious and valuable things? They are refined by fire. The other things are destroyed by fire.
What are we building with?
Whatever it is, we will be judged for it:
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.
The Day Paul is talking about is the return of Christ. The Bible is clear that on that day, everyone will answer for everything they’ve done.
Now for Christians, when it comes to our sin, Christ is our answer.
By the grace of God, we will not be judged for our sin because God’s justice is too perfect to judge sin twice - and if we believe in Christ, then He was judged for our sin. That is not what Paul is talking about.
Yet, there will be answers we have to give. Our building - our work - will yet be tested. Christ will not ask us to answer for our sin. We’ve already been saved from our sin.
But we will have to answer for what we’ve done with that salvation.
We need to always ask ourselves: what am I doing with the salvation God has given me? What am I building on the foundation of Christ?
And this is the heart of the problem for the Corinthians. Remember, they had mistaken ends for means and exalted man instead of Christ, so they weren’t living out their faith like they should have as people whose sin has been paid for.
They were building on the foundation of Christ with wood, hay, and stubble.
They were saved, but they weren’t doing anything with it.
And this is where we need to make sure we have things straight in our own hearts and minds. Because I am not talking about salvation by works. We are not saved by our own good works.
But we are saved unto good works.
As Paul said elsewhere:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
God saved us for a purpose greater than “I get to go to heaven someday.” No. That’s just being given the foundation. And you don’t lay a foundation unless you intend to build something on it.
As we have seen, we are given the Spirit of God. We now know things the unregenerate not only do not, but cannot know. We have the mind of Christ to understand and to live out the things we understand. We have the power of the Spirit in us to make us able to live pleasing to God.
Why would God in His grace give us all of that?
Not to sit by and wait for our train to heaven to leave. But to build on the foundation of Christ. To plant and water. To be instruments of salvation in His hands.
To carry out the good works that God prepared beforehand for us to do - before He saved us by grace through faith. To walk in those good works now that we can.
Because:
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.
What kind of works has God prepared for us to do? Good works. He has made everything ready for us to build with gold, silver, and precious stones.
Because:
If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.
If what we build with survives - which it will if we live in those works God prepared for us to do - we will receive a reward.
And again, this is a bad translation. Because the word translated “reward” here is the same word Paul used in verse 8:
1 Corinthians 3:8 (ESV)
He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.
The word for “reward” is the word for “wages.”
Paul is talking more about those wages we will receive if we are surrendered to God enough to be instruments of His salvation. If we do that - if we build with the precious things - we will receive our wages:
If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.
We will receive our wage.
I want us to stop and think about this for a moment. Paul very shrewdly uses the metaphor of precious metals and stones to talk about the good work we do for God. Why? Because these are things of value that men tend to seek in this world.
I know plenty of people who strive for more money - which in America used to actually be backed by gold. I know people who love jewelry and hoard such things of value. I don’t know and have never heard of any straw collectors. I have never heard of anyone with a wall safe full of hay.
Paul knows that this is how the natural man thinks. He wants what’s valuable.
With Spiritual wisdom, we understand that real value is in how we build on the foundation of Christ. That’s what Paul is saying. And he’s saying that at the return of Christ, those things survive and mean a reward for us.
Have you ever heard people say of worldly wealth: “you can’t take it with you?” As in, when you die all of that stays here.
Well they’re right. But Paul says that the things of true value - we do take those with us.
Brothers and sisters, you can take it with you. But you have to seek those things.
Because when we pass through the purifying fire (metaphorically speaking) and into glory, our works will pass through with us and everything we have done for Christ will pass through with us - and we will receive a reward.
We will hear those words: “well done good and faithful servant.” And to everyone who has, even more will be given.
We say as Christians that what matters are the things we do to affect eternal matters. Well that isn’t just a platitude. Paul says that here. What really matters - what’s really valuable - is how we build on the foundation Christ has laid for us.
And Paul is explaining this in the context of what the Corinthians were doing wrong. That includes exalting Paul and exalting Apollos instead of Christ. And he has referred to himself and Apollos as the ones who plant and water, or the one who laid the foundation and the one who built on it.
So Paul is not excluding himself and Apollos from what he is saying here.
And I think he is laying an even heavier responsibility on those who lead the church and teach the church. In part, he is trying to get the Corinthians to stop exalting one over the other because he is saying that God will be the judge and reward them.
We will see this in the next chapter:
Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.
Part of this misplaced exaltation of the self and of man was because the Corinthians wanted earthly rewards. They wanted earthly commendation.
But living according to spiritual wisdom means seeking rewards from God and Him alone, and commendation from Him alone.
What rewards do we seek?
Because, remember, like Paul warned the Corinthians:
If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
When we pass through that purifying fire, anything we did that was of no value to Christ, the church, His kingdom, or done for the glory of anyone but Christ - all of that will burn away. So like earthly, material goods, commendations by man, any earthly glory we may enjoy - you can’t take them with you.
They will be destroyed by fire.
Even though, as I reassured my friend all those years ago as we sat in my living room, we will yet be saved through the fire.
This is like when Paul called them “infants in Christ” - they were believers, but they were stuck. They weren’t growing. And in their divisiveness and their jealousy and their arguing - because they sought earthly praise and earthly glory: they were building with wood, hay, and straw.
Again, Paul is telling them what they should be doing, and if they did not belong to Christ, they couldn’t do it. They only deserve this rebuke because they can, but they weren’t.
So don’t wonder about your salvation if you aren’t living the way you want. You wouldn’t want to if you weren’t born again.
Don’t wonder about your salvation if you struggle with sin. Struggle with sin is a good thing. The unsaved don’t have any struggle with sin. They embrace it. It’s no struggle for them.
This isn’t about whether or not you know Christ. It is about what you’re doing with that knowledge.
It is about growing in holiness. Living as you’re called. Growing in wisdom from above.
It is about building on the foundation of Christ Who has called you.
We are all to build on the foundation. Because we are all part of what is being built.
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.
Before I knew Christ, when my oldest daughter was about 3 or 4, she used to insist that I read her the story of the Three Little Pigs every night. I read that story a hundred times, easy. So now, every time I read this passage about the wood, hay, and stubble, I think of that story.
You know the story: the pigs used different materials to build their houses. The first two used straw and sticks. What happens to straw and sticks in fire?
And because they built with those, what happened when worldly opposition came - when the enemy came knocking? What they built was worthless. It did not stand.
If we use such things to build on the foundation of Christ, what can we expect when the world comes against us? What can we expect when the enemy uses his fiery darts against us?
See, this isn’t just about the world to come.
But it seems like an incomplete comparison. Because the third little pig used what? He didn’t use gold or silver. He used brick. There’s no brick in Paul’s metaphor. Or is there?
Now, brick isn’t a precious metal that is purified by fire. It isn’t straw and sticks that are destroyed by fire. Bricks are made by fire.
What do we do when worldly opposition comes or the enemy attacks or sin rears its ugly head?
You see, that is when how we are building is revealed. And if we are building on the foundation of Christ with the right things, that is when we are made even stronger.
There are the bricks in Paul’s metaphor. It’s there.
It’s us.
He says:
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
Again, like we saw previously, the “you” is plural.
The church - all of us together - is God’s Temple. That makes each of us a brick in the structure. We are the spiritual stones that the one spiritual Temple is made of.
And I have traced this before in detail, which I won’t do right now, but the idea of stones or building materials being people is evident throughout the Bible.
Which is why, when Christ came to Israel to call them to repentance, and they did not, He told them they were being rejected. When His disciples were so impressed with the physical aspects of the Temple, Jesus told them every stone would be thrown down. He meant more than the Temple. He meant those who worshiped in an earthly way - who did not worship in Spirit and truth.
Which is why when He drew near to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus said He wanted them to understand, but that the day was coming that they would be removed from the land, and that not one stone would be left upon another.
And why would that happen? Because the builders rejected the cornerstone of God’s true Temple.
And those who reject Christ are torn down.
And all of those who build on Christ are stones added to the spiritual Temple.
As the Apostle Peter said:
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
We are God’s Temple. We, the church, are the real dwelling place of God.
Each of us, are another brick in the wall that makes the structure of His dwelling place - if we build on the foundation of Christ as we are called.
So Paul gives a warning to the Corinthians:
If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
Those who teach and lead the church are in view, here. This word for destroy is used primarily of false teachers in the New Testament.
Paul is calling out the leaders of the church in Corinth here. He is putting responsibility on them to lead the believers there to build on the foundation of Christ with the precious things - with the things that matter.
And we will see later in the letter than Paul lays out some rules for church order and the worship service and those kinds of things.
But for now, Paul is calling the elders of the church to straighten this out.
And he is calling for the church to be wary. To be sure that their leaders are leading them to build on the foundation of Christ.
Because like the little pigs who built using straw and sticks, nothing destroys what they have quite as easily as a wolf, especially one in sheep’s clothing.
So as we can see, leaders in the church are not exempt from Paul’s warnings here. We are all called to build upon the foundation of Christ. And we are called to do it together.
We are all called to be a stone in the spiritual Temple by building on the firm foundation of Christ with precious things - things that will matter both now and in eternity. We are called to live out our calling that we may withstand the battering of the world, the fiery darts of the evil one, and the big bad wolf of false teaching.
We are commanded to live out our calling, that we may enter into glory and take with us all we have done for the sake of Christ, for His glory, and for His kingdom.
So I ask you: Christian, what are you doing to build on that foundation? What are you trying to use to build on Christ Who has called you?
Seek the precious things - spiritual maturity, spiritual wisdom, knowing God, serving Him and His church, reaching out to those around you - these are what will pass through the fire and earn you not only your reward, but a commendation from our Lord.
Is that what we’re seeking?
And if you don’t know Christ, I ask you: What foundation are you building on? Worldly possessions? Other people? Your reputation?
Wood, hay, and straw, in the end.
This morning, Christ holds out to you something so much more precious than any of those things and all of those things.
He holds out Himself to you. Turn your back on those other things and turn to the precious Savior of the world.
Pray
Now, as I said, Paul is taking pains to point out that he and Apollos and Peter are not above these admonishments he is giving. All called by Christ are called to live out our faith and build upon the foundation of Christ with what matters.
For some, that may mean that you will start reading your Bible regularly this week.
For others, it may mean you start serving in a ministry.
For others still, maybe it means you finally join that small group you’ve been thinking about joining.
For others - like those that are tasked with leading the church - it means making sure we are always seeking Christ and His will and His power to lead as we are called.
And for one of us, it means taking the step of ordination this morning and taking on the role of elder...
Heed Paul’s warning. We will answer for how we build as leaders of His church. God’s Temple is holy, and you have been called to guide the Temple of MCC in building upon Christ
Laying on of hand
Taken as a prisoner
Symbolic of the Holy Spirit working through His people, like with miraculous healings
This is both
God has laid His hand upon you - He has called you - He is the One Who has ordained you - He has taken a hold of you and made you separated unto Christ as an elder of His church
As we lay hands on you, it is a symbol of how the Holy Spirit has gifted you, and how we have recognized that gifting in you, and how He will work through all of us together as elders
