Building the Church

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Building the Church

1 Corinthians 3:10-15

In Washington, D. C., a business closed down. A sign hung on the front door for passersby to read: “Going Out of Business. Didn’t Know What Our Business Was.”

Man to D. L. Moody, “Mind your business!” Moody, “Sir, this is my business.”

I want to talk to you about our business as believers, our business as servants of Christ. Our business is to build the church of Jesus Christ. That’s our business.

Read with me in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. [Read text.]

 

In this passage, Paul provided a word of warning and encouragement to those responsible for building the church. Did you know that God’s call on your life is to build His kingdom by building the local church? Whereever you serve and whatever you do, your purpose in ministry, ultimately, is to strengthen and build the local church. That’s how God’s kingdom grows, through churches. Today, as God-called ministers—we share a responsibility for faithfully and fruitfully building the church. So, how are we to build the church? This text suggests three requirements. First,

 

1. You must build on the foundation of Christ.

 

In verse ten, Paul compared himself to a “wise master builder.” He had established the church in Corinth. He had laid the groundwork of the gospel there. He wrote, “I laid the foundation.” And who was that foundation? Very clearly, the foundation was Jesus Christ. Paul came to Corinth and found it a wasteland of sin. Paul came to Corinth with a saving and transforming message. That message was Jesus Christ and him crucified—nothing more and nothing less. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:1-2,

And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Verse 11 of our text says that the foundation for the Corinthian church and for every church is Jesus Christ. To build a church, you must build on the foundation of Christ.

In a town in Tuscany, Italy, some folks decided that they needed a new bell tower for their church. The church was big and beautiful, and it needed a tower to match. So they hired a good architect, and he designed a magnificent tower. “We’ll build it of solid marble,” the architect announced to the building committee. “We’ll build it 179 feet high, so people can see it everywhere in the city. We’ll build the walls 13 feet thick at the bottom so that it will stand forever.”

The building committee congratulated their architect. They couldn’t wait for construction to begin. Their bell tower would be the envy of every church in the country. The workmen began to build the tower, cutting the stone with expert skill and putting each piece in place, all according to the architect’s specifications. Everything was going smoothly, when someone on the building committee stopped by to look at the progress of the tower. It was going up. But it wasn’t going up straight. The architect had made a mistake. The foundation wasn’t deep enough and the ground underneath wasn’t firm enough. So the bell tower in Pisa, Italy began to lean. Today we even call it the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Each year it leans a little more. Eventually, the tower will crumble to the ground. Engineers have suggested only one viable means of saving the tower: taking it apart and putting it back together on a new foundation.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has a foundation problem. But a man who tries to build a church on a foundation other than Jesus Christ has an even bigger problem.  The Bible says in verse 11, “For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”  In other words, no one can build a church on anything other than Jesus Christ. Jesus and Jesus alone is the foundation for the church.

An organization that calls itself a church, and yet is built on something or someone other than Jesus is not indeed a church. Without the foundation of Jesus, you may have a sermon tasting club, but not a church. Without the foundation of Jesus, you may have a gospel music appreciation society, but not a church. The only foundation for the church is Jesus Christ.

The story is told of a tiny English chapel whose stone walls were covered by ivy. Over an arch was inscribed the words: WE PREACH CHRIST CRUCIFIED. For many years a generation of godly men did exactly that: they preached Christ crucified. But times changed. The ivy grew and pretty soon covered the last word. The inscription now read: WE PREACH CHRIST. Other men came and they did preach Christ: Christ the example, Christ the humanitarian, Christ the ideal teacher. As the years passed, the ivy continued to grow until finally the inscription read: WE PREACH. The generation that came along then did just that: they preached economics, social gospel, book reviews, just about anything.

I don’t know if that story is true. But I know this true: We will be tempted to build a church on something other than Jesus Christ. It’s easier to build a church on something else. It’s safer to build a church on something else. It’s less offensive to build a church on something other than Jesus Christ crucified. But build a church on Jesus plus something else or Jesus instead of something else, and you won’t have a church. The Bible is clear that only Jesus is the foundation for the church. Preach Christ and him crucified. To build a church, you must build on the foundation of Jesus Christ.

There’s a second requirement for building a church:

You must build with the material of eternity.

After Paul reminded the church that he had laid the foundation of Jesus Christ, he gave a word of warning at the end of verse ten: “But let each one take heed how he builds on it.” Take heed, Paul says. That means be careful. Watch out. Don’t build on the foundation of Jesus with just anything. Don’t try to build a church with just anything. In verse twelve, Paul talks about how you could try to build a church: with “gold, silver, precious stones” or with “wood, hay, or straw.” That’s the division: permanent things like gold, silver, and precious stones, or temporary things like wood, hay, and straw.

You can build with the material of shacks and huts. Or you can build with the material of palaces and temples. You can build with worthless material, or you can build with priceless material. You can build with trash, or you can build with treasure. You can build with stuff you can find in your backyard, or you can build with stuff you have to work for and dig for. To build a church to the glory of God, you must build with the material of eternity.

You say, “That’s all good and well. It’s obvious that gold, silver, and precious stones are preferable to wood, hay, and straw in this analogy that Paul is making. But what does it really mean? How do you go about building a church with the material of eternity?” Here’s the answer: The material of eternity is that which lines up with the foundation. The material of eternity is that which has the character of Christ crucified and risen.

My wife and I met in the nursery at church. I had a crush on her when I was five. I waited until I was seven to really get serious about her. My first memory of Michele was when we were in Mrs. Crutchfield’s four and five year old Sunday school class. There was a kid in the class named Gene. He took karate lessons, and his dad took him to see all the Bruce Lee and Billy Jack movies. So the net result was, Gene went around kicking everybody. In order to prevent being kicked, the other boys in the class would stack up wooden blocks, and Gene would kick them over. There we were in Sunday school, playing with the wood blocks. We’d stack ’em up. He’d kick ’em over. We’d stack ’em up. He’d kick ’em over. We’d stack ’em up. He’d kick ’em over.

Mrs. Crutchfield stopped us and said, “Look boys, this little girl over here is stacking up her blocks really high.” We looked over and there was Michele, with her long blond hair and her light blue eyes, standing beside a stack of blocks that towered over her head. “She’s stacking one right on top of the other,” Mrs. Crutchfield said. “That’s why she can stack them so high.” And I thought in my heart, “This is the girl for me.” (You see, that was my fleece. I had prayed, “Lord, if a girl stacks her blocks up high and straight, I’ll know she is the one You haven chosen for me.) We admired the blocks for a moment. Went back to our blocks. And we’d stack ’em up and he’d kick ’em over.

Michele stacked her blocks up high because she kept the blocks on top in line with the foundation block. In the same way, ministry that stands for eternity is ministry that lines up with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s the goal of ministry: to glorify Jesus Christ, to bring lost people to Jesus Christ, and to help believers become more like Jesus Christ. Ephesians 4:11-13 makes it clear:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the statures which belongs to the fulness of Christ.

 

Now, as a Christian minister, I can choose to major on other things. I can choose to major on dispensing human wisdom. I can choose to preach messages that offer helpful information about how to run your business or how to wash your car. I can do that. I can choose to major on management techniques. I can choose to try to generate good feelings among the people to whom I minister. I can make those things my goal. And those things may be good and helpful in this life, but I’m not sure how long they will last. If those things are all I do, to the neglect of the main thing I’m called to do, I’ve failed. Building a church requires building with the materials of eternity. So, if I want to test the effectiveness of my Christian life, I can ask myself a few questions: Am I becoming more like Christ? Am I glorifying Christ? Am I leading others to Christ? Am I helping other Christians become more like Christ? That’s gold, silver, and precious stones. That’s building with the material of eternity.

So, we’ve seen that to build a church, you must build on the foundation of Jesus Christ and you must build with the material of eternity. There’s another requirement:

You must build with the expectation of judgment.

Paul concluded this passage by reminding his readers of the certainty of God’s judgment. In verse thirteen, he wrote: “Each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire.” Sometimes fire is used in the Bible to signify destruction. Sometimes fire is used to signify purification. But here, the fire is a fire of testing. One day, the wood, hay, and straw will be shown for what they are, and the gold, silver, and precious stones will be shown for what they are. One day, every believer will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And he will reveal who has built his church and who hasn’t.

On that day, Jesus will see everything. He will see some things we won’t want Him to see. He will see through the facade of empty impressiveness, to the unfaithfulness that characterizes so many Christians. He will see through the veneer of respectability and religion, to the structure of worldliness and sin that dominates the lives of many believers. But He will see some beautiful things that we’ve never seen. He will see the quiet Christian who prayed for the souls of her neighbors and her friends and her children. He will see the faithful servant who worked for no recognition, scant praise, and little money. He will see it all. We must build with an expectation of His judgment.

When I was a senior in high school, I was selected to represent my high school choir in the state honors chorus. The honors chorus people sent me a thick stack of sheet music, all of which I had to learn by the first rehearsal. The songs were the most difficult I had ever tried to sing. I had to learn Latin songs, and French songs, and German songs. All these impossible languages that I knew I would never see again in my life. I practiced pronouncing every word and singing every note right up until the first rehearsal.

On the day of the first rehearsal, they took all of us kids to the basement of First Baptist Church in Winston Salem. They organized us into our sections—soprano, alto, tenor, and bass— and lined us up in rows, leaving enough space in front of each us for the judges to walk past. Then they began the first song. As we sang those impossible German lyrics, the judges walked by, listening to each of us as we sang together. If someone seemed to be missing his notes or fumbling her German, they took you by the arm, led you out of the choir, took you into the side room, and made you sing solo. If you hadn’t prepared, if you couldn’t sing the songs, you went home.

You know something? You can fake your part throughout your life. You can masquerade at ministry. You can go through the motions. You can mouth the words. And no one may notice. But one day, you will have to sing solo before Jesus Christ. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:10:

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

 

Imagine that a man built a house.  He began with a solid foundation.  But he built the house with wood:  wood siding, wood framework, wood shingles.  All the furniture inside the house was made of wood, as well.  Then imagine lightening striking that wood-framed house and catching it on fire.  The wood shingles, the frame, the siding, all the wood furnishings burn up.  When the fire has run its course, the man who built the house has nothing.  All of his work in building that house has been wasted.  The only thing left is the foundation. He himself is saved, but the fire has consumed everything he spent his life doing. On that day of judgment, the timber and hay will go up in smoke and die down in black ashes. Empty sermons. Wasted hours. Career pursuits. None of these things will survive the fiery inspection of Christ.

But here’s the encouragement Paul gives. Look in verse 14: “If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward.” The gold and silver will not lose one atom of their weight. Instead, they will gleam more brightly after the fire. And that faithful worker will receive a reward from Christ. Be careful how you build God’s church, the Bible says. That’s what you’ve been called to do. So build it on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Build it with the material of eternity. And build with the expectation of the Lord’s judgment.

I met a man in Hickory, North Carolina. His name was Phil. He had been visiting a church where I was preaching that week. Phil was Lutheran. He told me that Hickory is the only city in North Carolina where the Lutherans outnumber the Baptists. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and so was his grandfather. He took me out to dinner and was telling me about his family. How his grandfather had preached each Sunday in German at one church, then in English at another church there in Hickory. He said to me, “Not long ago, I was going through my grandfather’s old sermon notes. I found a manuscript that began with a question I just can’t get away from. It said, “Now that God has done everything for you, what are you going to do?”

My friend, now that God has done everything for you, what are you going to do? He saved you. He called you to build His church. He gifted you for ministry and service. What are you going to do? My prayer for you today is that you will devote every ounce of your energy to building the church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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