As I have prayed for what to share with you today, my heart has settled upon this passage of Scripture, 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and more specifically with verse 10 down to verse And my proposal is that in this first session this morning, I will be dealing with laying the foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ in our individual lives and collectively as a body of God's people. And then the Lord willing, this evening, I hope to deal with building on the foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ again in our lives as individuals and then collectively together as a Christian church. The book of 1 Corinthians in many ways can be put at the same level as that glorious epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans. The main difference being that the Book of Romans is definitely majestic in its display of the height and depth and breadth and length of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Book of 1 Corinthians does the same, but it does it in the trenches of the battlefield. In other words, when you are making your way across the book of Romans, it's not until you get into chapter 14 and 15 that you begin to sense that there was something wrong in the church in Corinth that needed to be addressed. And it's the Jewish and Gentile question, as the church was battling with those issues, and yet it needed to be one church. And consequently, the Apostle Paul applies everything he has dealt with in the previous chapters to that question. 1 Corinthians begins with sweat and smoke already as the issue of the disunity of the church there is being addressed. And yet, at the same time, it's the same blessed gospel that is brought to bear upon that question. And by the time we're getting to chapter 3, into chapter 4, the Apostle Paul is tying together the loose ends of this whole question. How can we ensure that there is true biblical unity in the Christian Church? Well, we'll be looking at the first few verses of this chapter a little later, but let me read verse 10 down to verse 15 because that will be the passage of scripture that I want us to look at together. 1 Corinthians chapter 3, beginning with verse 10. 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, 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 burnt up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." Basically, these words were being written to a church that was suffering from serious disunity. In the very first chapter, the Apostle Paul speaks about how there were factions in the church that were pitted against each other based on the different teachers that they had had in the history of this congregation. You had some that were saying they were followers of Apollos, others were saying they were followers of Cephas or Peter, and others were saying they were followers of Paul and others were saying they were followers of Christ. And you ask yourself, why would a church end up in this kind of atmosphere? Well, it might be a little different with us here in the United States, but in those days, the people were essentially followers of great teachers, followers in the community of great philosophers, great orators. That's how the entire Greek culture came together. And so that atmosphere out there invariably was coming into the context of the church as well. Partly because the people were converted from that culture as they came into the context of the church. And it's very difficult for a church to be completely divorced from the culture in which it dwells. And so, invariably, as people out there were aligning themselves to great teachers, great orators, great philosophers, the Christian church was also ending up being the same thing in its own context. This was a negative for the Christian Church and the Apostle Paul begins this epistle immediately saying that he was very displeased with what was taking place. And yet as he begins to wrestle with the matter and brings it to a conclusion, the Apostle Paul seems to be very clear that the primary problem in the context of the Corinthian church ultimately was worldliness. They were thinking the way in which the world thinks and not the way in which God would have them to think. And so he says at the beginning of chapter 3, But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual, but as people of the flesh. In other words, worldly people. He says there in verse 3, for you are still of the flesh, you are still worldly. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh? Are you not thinking like mere men? I think the New International Version puts it, and behaving only in a human way. That's the way the people of the world think. And so for when one says, I follow Paul, another I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human? And he's saying that's not the way the Christian Church ought to think. How should the Christian Church think? Well, basically in verse 5 down to verse 9, he says the Christian Church must think primarily about God and His sovereignty. That ultimately, all is about God. He is the one who is to be worshipped. He is the one whose grand purpose across history is being accomplished. He is the one who is at work even in the church and through these same servants that you are now pitting one against the other. Look at the way he puts it there. He says, what then is Apollos, verse 5, and what is Paul? Servants through whom you believe, and here's the point, as the Lord assigned to it. It's the Lord! Again, he says in verse 6, I planted, Apollos watered, but listen to this, but God gave the grass. It's God! It's not so much Paul or Apollos, we are simply instruments in his hands. And so he makes the point in verse 7, so neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the grass. So ultimately, it's about God. And even in terms of fruit, verse 8, he who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labors. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. And I think it's crucial that the church in Corinth needed to lift its eyes beyond the teachers and fix its eyes upon God, that ultimately it is the Lord and what He is doing among us. And brethren, it is crucial for the health of the church, it is crucial for our individual health as believers, to do the same, to learn that the church is about God, worshipping God, what God is doing, and consequently fixing our eyes upon Him and His glory. When we take our attention away from Him and begin to think primarily in terms of ourselves and individuals and so on, we become worldly. We begin to think the way in which the world does. Well, in verse 9, the Apostle Paul transitions to begin to deal with this whole issue of the foundation. And that's where we find ourselves. And it's amazing how he shifts from the illustration, the imagery of in the realm of agriculture and he shifts to the picture, the imagery in the realm of engineering, in the realm of architecture, in the realm of construction. And the shift is almost subtle, you almost miss it at the end of verse 9 when he says, you are God's building, I mean you are God's field, God's building. And that's the shift that he makes. He's continuing to argue. And it's very clear that in the shift, he is going from the aspect of God's sovereignty to the aspect of human responsibility, but still keeping God central. And so, with respect to a field, all you need to do is scatter the seed. You hardly think in terms of measurements. You simply throw the seed onto the ground and God does the rest. You don't do that with a building. You don't simply take a few blocks and throw them around and before long you have a wonderful building like this. You don't. You need expertise. You need individuals that are trained, well trained. that can understand what construction is all about for them to begin building. And so, the Apostle Paul is a very balanced teacher. He begins in the right place, God, but doesn't end there. He comes on to say, we also, as God's servants, must do things in the right way. And so in dealing with that, he first of all deals with the laying of the foundation, which I will deal with very briefly in the remaining time. And then he also goes on to deal with the building on this foundation, which I will deal with later. What's the first thing that he tells us in terms of the laying of the foundation? Well, first of all, it is the fact that there is need for God's grace. Even when we are thinking in terms of expertise, there is need for God's grace if people are to have Jesus Christ as a foundation in their lives. So he puts it this way in verse 10, According to the grace of God given me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation. The point he's making there is, yes, I'm about to speak about mastery and skillfulness, but we still shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it is according to God's grace. In other words, even in that area, let's not forget the primary operative principle. God who is doing this by His grace. And it speaks about this foundation. Foundations are important. They are important primarily because they provide stability to buildings. The Lord Jesus many years prior to this while he was teaching the famous Simon on the Mount, referred to individuals that listen but don't do what God's Word says. And in trying to teach that, he specifically uses an illustration and it's exactly in this same context. He speaks about individuals who are in a hurry. to have their structure up, so they immediately sort of just dig a little bit in a very superficial way and are immediately putting up the four walls and the structure and moving in. They can't be bothered. They want the building up, but they forget that the world is real. It has storms. It has hurricanes. It has downpouring of rain. And he speaks about these individuals having their little structures raised to the ground by the realities of the elements around. And then he imagines others who dig deep until they hit the rock down under the soil. And that's where they lay their foundation. And then they put up their superstructure, clearly taking longer, being more costly. But the advantage is when the elements begin to frown and the winds blow, the rains come down, the waves beat against that structure. It's still intact because it's built upon the foundation. And for those who are lay people, we don't think about foundations. I doubt that if any of you has bought any house here that you ever really bothered to say, let me find out what's under the ground here. I mean, you sort of looked and said, wow, darling, let's get this. And you paid a dear price for it. But at the point when that structure was being put up, you can be sure that your municipality and the contractors and the engineers and the architects were, first of all, very concerned about that foundation. Many years ago, I worked as a mining engineer, and we were laying a crusher in the next stage of the mining enterprise, about one and a half kilometers into the earth. And I was part of a team that was involved in getting that crusher into place. And I've never forgotten how when the foundation was laid, for that structure and consequently cubicles, cubes of the foundation were taken for testing and there was pressure that was being brought onto those cubes. I've never forgotten how the contractor had his eyes on the measurements as the pressure was being brought to bear upon these cubes. And when they passed the test, the minimum, and were still intact, I've never forgotten how, out of excitement, they hugged one another. You'd almost think the crusher has already been put into place. It was just the foundation. And when I got back to the office afterwards, I found some bottles of wine that had been given to all of us by the contractor as part of the celebration here. And I went and exchanged them. I was a bachelor in those days. I went to a local shop and exchanged them for chickens. I thought for me that's what would make real celebration. But it was the joy of knowing that the foundation has passed the test, the rest is simply a mopping up operation. And that's what we have here. The Apostle Paul is speaking about the fact that the Christian church must have a foundation, individual believers must have a foundation, and that foundation is Christ. And he's saying that he, when he went into Corinth, deliberately made sure that he went about his work as an expert builder. And he did so by the grace of God. And that's what he's talking about here. Why speak about God's grace here? Well, I think the bottom line is this. If God's grace is not involved, preachers will not really appreciate that there is only one foundation that matters, Christ. Because you see, the world out there doesn't think so. And so when we are sharing the gospel, people think, when you're speaking about Jesus Christ, that you are being irrelevant to the world. They've got other philosophies and other issues that they think should be at center stage at the shop floor of the interchange of human ideas. So you arrive there and you want to speak about the person and work of Christ, hey, this man is irrelevant. And the Apostle Paul spoke about it in chapter 1, if you remember. He says there in chapter 1 and verse 22, For Jews demand sons, and Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified. And notice, a stumbling block to Jews, and folly to Gentiles. If it is not for the grace of God opening the eyes of preachers to the glory of the person and work of Christ, it is very easy for preachers to go off with something else. And in today's world, a lot of preachers have gone off at a tangent. They've become motivational speakers in giving people what it is that they want to hear at purely a human level. You listen to them and there is precious little in their messages. concerning the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Clearly, they are giving to the Jews what they want to hear, to the Gentiles what they want to hear. And clearly, it's because the grace of God is missing in the hearts of the preachers themselves. Completely missing. We need God's grace to open our eyes to the preciousness, the relevance of Jesus Christ. So that whatever winds might be blowing in our town, in our nation, we will keep playing the one-stringed banjo, Christ, Christ, Christ. And that's what we have here. But we also need the grace of God in the hearts of the hearers. Paul is not saying, according to the grace of God given me, like a skilled master builder, I tried to lay a foundation. He says, I laid a foundation. He did so effectively. He did so effectually. Why? Because of the grace of God that attended his ministry and consequently lives were transformed and built. on that same foundation of Christ. You notice it now in the passage we read earlier on in chapter 1. Verse 22 says, For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and folly to Gentiles. Listen to verse 24, But to those who are cold. That's the grace of God. to those who are called by grace, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. God, by His grace, doesn't just convince the preacher that Christ is all in all, He also convinces the hearers that they need Christ and consequently they call upon Christ and are saved by Him. That's what Paul is referring to in chapter 2. Listen to this, verse 1 to verse 5, And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not proclaim to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, in other words, with the oratory of a lot of the philosophical teachings in Corinth, For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." In other words, whatever the demands were from Jews and Gentiles, I looked, I fixed, I riveted my heart and mind and eyes on Christ, His person and His work. That's what I proclaim to you. And it says there, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified and then He says I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and power now that's the grace of God working in your hearts as I was proclaiming Christ What was the result of that? Your faith not resting in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. So as Paul looks back, he is saying, you know what? I can see the foundation was laid. It was laid because of the grace of God. In my heart, it was laid because of the grace of God at work in yours. it was laid, the grace of God. But also, the point that Paul is making in this passage is, remember, a movement from God's sovereign working to human responsibility. And he puts it this way, according to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation. The point is, that grace of God working in me made me a skilled master builder. So I'm not getting credit for the abilities that you saw in me. The fruit that came from me, it's from His grace. However, notice, it made him a skilled master builder. And these two must go together. Where there is healthy Christian living, you always have these two in healthy tension. On one hand, it is God in sovereignty at work We seek Him. We pray to Him. We are amazed at what He does. And then on the other, we are responsible. We are accountable. We must pray. We must study. We must plan. We must be the best we possibly can be to His glory. That's responsible Christian living. That's a balance. Christian faith. It's not simply we are looking to Him that revival might come and consequently we may see fruit, but it's also, am I walking in holiness? Am I seeking to be a person who is living in my life, in my family life, what this book says? Am I, together with my fellow leaders, praying and planning and moving the troops into ensuring that the cross of Christ, the flag of Christ, is planted into human hearts, into new regions? Are we doing that? So there is a combination of the two. God's sovereignty and human responsibility. It's vital that we keep that in balance. You see, the human heart is subtle. It always has these nooks and crannies in which it's constantly hiding intellectual empty arguments against the knowledge And it is our responsibility, not simply to make sure that we get God's Word to them, but that we use arguments, we use reasoning, as the Apostle Paul often did, in order to show the world the emptiness, the fallacy in which they dwell, and their need of an all-sufficient Savior in Christ. And you see that throughout Paul's preaching ministry. Yes, it was God, but you hear about Paul reasoning in the synagogues, reasoning in the temple, reasoning wherever he had opportunity to be with the people that he was meeting there. in order that they might be argued out of their hiding places. See, when we are addressing the unbeliever, we don't just scream at the top of our voices, hitting them on the head with Jesus. We show them almost as though it was simple human argument that would win them through. While in our hearts we know God by His Spirit must open their eyes. But it's not only in terms of the way they hide away from Christ. The unbelieving heart also often will accept Christ but with only one hand, and then hung on to something else with the other. It's always Jesus and... I remember an illustration I saw many years ago of an individual. It was actually three little pictures, kind of comic strip. In the first picture, somebody was falling off the edge of a cliff. In the second, He's hanging on to a twig, a kind of outcrop from the side of the cliff, and then shouting, saying, is there anybody up there to help me? And then the last clip shows one balloon with words saying, I am here. I will help you. Let go of that twig. And then the guy who is sparring downwards, who's holding on to the twig, speaks and says, is there anybody else up there who can help me? In other words, I am willing to be helped, but not by letting go of this. And that's the way most individuals are. They'll accept your Jesus, no problem. But really, if you begin to ask them a lot of hard questions, you discover they are still actually relying on their moral upbringing. They're relying on the fact that they were brought up by Christian parents. They're relying upon the fact that they've been baptized. They're relying upon the fact they've got so many other things. And Jesus, of course, we need him too. And we need to be skillful in our evangelism, skillful, in our evangelistic preaching, in order to make them see that Jesus must be all or nothing. To have Jesus and this, Jesus and this, is not to have Jesus at all. And so there are possible in laying this foundation does so as a master builder. And the illustration is easy to understand. When this building was being put on top of the foundation, you can be sure that each of these walls is specifically put exactly where the foundation is. Move it a little out, and that foundation is useless the building still collapses that's where you need the master builder and oh how we need that to show the world the desperate state in which they are their need for Christ and for Christ alone not Jesus plus whatever else there might be. And sadly, again, we have too many preachers that are giving up Jesus almost like just a painkiller. So many other things and then Jesus is an addition. And that's not Jesus. To come to Christ You must come saying, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. I'm naked, I come to thee for dress. I'm helpless, I look to thee for grace. I'm foul, I'm dirty, I fly to the fountain, wash me, Savior, or I die. And we need to so teach and evangelize that people will see that that's the only way to come to Christ. Well, let's hurry on, because ultimately, the point that Paul is making is Christ being the only foundation. And after we skip the next few words at the end of verse 10, which we will deal with this evening, where he says, and someone is building upon it, let each one take care how he builds upon it, Paul makes the point, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now that's crucial. By saying Jesus is the foundation, he's talking about the person and work of Christ. Remember, in chapter 1, he said we preach Christ crucified? At the beginning of chapter 2, he said, when I came among you, I was determined to only know Christ and Him crucified? That's what he really means here, by Jesus being the only foundation. basically saying that for a person to be saved and for a church to be in robust health, our lives must be based on the person and work of Christ, full stop, or as you say in America, period. That's what he's saying. And that's where the problem was in Corinth. It's not so much that they never heard about Jesus, it's that now it's like, okay, yes, thank you for Jesus, but what really matters if we're going to have real success and go forward properly is what this teacher is teaching or that other teacher. And Paul is saying, no! Bring yourself and your thinking and your hearts, your everything upon Christ and Christ alone. Look at the way he ends his entire argument at the end of chapter 3. He puts it this way, verse 21. So, let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or the present, or the future, all are yours, and here is the reason why. You are Christ's, and Christ is God's. So it's foolish to be fighting over which bedroom in the house is the best bedroom when you're being offered the entire house. That's what he's saying. When you build your life on the person and work of Christ, then all things are there to be a blessing to you. And not just the positives, by the way, even the negatives. Look at what he adds there. He even adds death. It's yours. Because through Christ you are reconciled to God. And the sovereign Lord of the universe works all things for your good. Both the positives and the negatives. And yours is to concentrate on this blessed person. and His work, Jesus, His love, His death, His resurrection, His session at the right hand of the Father, and His return in due season, to worship God through Him, to live for Him, to love Him, and everything else falls into place. So let me ask, are you trusting in Christ for your salvation? And are you offering Him and nothing else, offering Him to all others? Because you have come to see in Him the altogether lovely One. You've come to see in His work all that human beings need in this world with all its difficulties and trials. That is Jesus and Jesus alone that we all desperately need. We need to see this today if we are going to have truly saved souls and if we are going to have healthy churches. Sadly, too many Christians and too many churches are busy chasing rabbits while lions devour the land. Occupied with little petty things that can never give stability to any soul, can never rescue a soul from sin and hell, can never help a soul to really handle all the negative realities of life. instead of Christ, Christ, Christ. So I plead with you, because to do that is to deny who Jesus is and His sufficiency when we get preoccupied with all these secondary matters. In fact, we so shift the emphasis that Jesus becomes irrelevant. His worship becomes maybe the final end of everything else when he ought to be the preamble, the main body and indeed the conclusion with God's glory being the ultimate goal. So, here is what I have to say as I close. Let's pray for God's grace. to open our eyes to the beauty of Christ, to the glory of Christ, until we are so mesmerized by Him that all we want is Christ, Christ, Christ in all His person and all His work. Let's pray. that He might be our ultimate good, summum bonum for us. A failure to realize that shows that we are sick spiritually, if not dead spiritually. And hence the plea to pray for that. so that we can say, Thou, O Christ, art all I want, more than all in Thee I find. And then also, let's labor hard to be skilled at sharing this Jesus with the young and old in our own generation. so that we may lay this foundation in many hearts and see something of the wisdom of God and the power of God in our own day. Oh, may God help us to do that. Let's pray. Our dear Heavenly Father, Thank You for Jesus. Thank You that by Your Holy Spirit You opened our eyes to behold His blessed person and to behold His glorious work. O Father, how we pray that now that the baton has been passed on to us, by a previous generation of spiritual stalwarts of the faith, that you might indeed raise us up to fit into their shoes, that we ourselves might be mesmerized by this Jesus and seek to share Him with all around us. that they too might know Him, that they might love Him, that they might submit to Him, that they might begin to live for Him to your glory and praise by the power of your Spirit. Oh, that we might see this foundation laid in many hearts and in many churches. For Jesus' sake, Amen.