How to Build up the Church without Tearing It Down

Posted: March 3, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Bible, Christ, Church, Deconstruction, Evangelism, Growth, Jesus, Maturity, Sermons, Temple | Leave a comment

Recently our staff were doing an exercise using what is called Lego® Serious Play. Neuroscientists have taught us that using tactile play stimulates our creativity even as adults. In this particular exercise, the task was to use as many Lego® pieces as they wanted to build a tower as tall as they could. Halfway through the exercise the added requirement was to also build the tower as stable as they could. This was to teach how to adapt and stabilize. Today, we are going to learn how we as a church are to cooperate with God on how to build up the church rather than tear it down. Of course, we are not talking about the church building, but the people. The church is the people! How do we cooperate with God in building each other up? 

Now some of you here don’t feel like you are part of God’s construction project. You are deconstructing your faith because you have got your eyes on people’s failures. Could I urge you to renovate your faith instead? Don’t give up! Get your eyes back on Him. Build your life on Christ, even when all you see is difficulty before you. It reminds me of Gary Larson’s cartoon The Far Side entitled “Frog Pioneers.” There are 3 frogs carrying shovels in the desert. There is a scorpion scurrying around and cacti near them. One of the frogs says, “We will put the swamp here.” It is easy to lose sight of the vision of what God is doing to build His church when you think you are fighting a culture war or you see churches split apart by in-fighting. However, just like the frogs dreaming of turning the desert into their own paradise, God is building His Church to fill up the universe with His presence in every way (Ephesians 1:23). What we have to do is build our lives on Christ and cooperate with Him in building His church. To build your life on Christ specifically means we are trusting in Christ alone for our salvation and we live out our life as His apprentices based on His practices and teachings.

 This is what we find in 1 Corinthians 3 as we continue with our theme for the year to Live Wisely and are continuing our series called Holy Together in the Gospel. Last week we were reminded by Pastor Aaron that lasting wisdom is not found by experience, but revealed by God to those who have the Holy Spirit. Those who do not have the Holy Spirit, Paul calls them natural or unspiritual persons in 1 Corinthians 2:14. They only live by their sinful human nature. They cannot understand the things and depths of God. They may claim to be spiritual with doing their yoga and trying to find their inner self, but that road ends in a crescent or cul-de-sac. It goes nowhere upward, just inward. You won’t find God in yourself or by yourself. Pause there! When you read the Bible, does it make sense? Sure, there are some passages that are hard to interpret and understand, but when you read Scripture, do light bulbs go on? You don’t have to go to Bible College or Seminary to experience these epiphanies. You can get what the author intended and the original audience understood and you can apply to your life as well. Bible scholars call that illumination. It is better than enlightenment that is all about reason and thinking. Illumination is a direct work of the Holy Spirit. If it doesn’t make sense, then you need to ask yourself and test yourself are you truly of the faith? Are you truly born again? Have you repented of your sins and are following Jesus as one of His apprentices? 

So there are spiritual and natural people? There are those who have the Holy Spirit and there are those who do not. However, in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul implies there is a third type of person – a person who is born again through the Holy Spirit, but remains a babe in Christ. They never mature! Paul calls them carnal or fleshly Christians in verse 1. Babies are cute, but they are also selfish and demanding. Christians can be barely born again and remain selfish and demanding for a long time. If these spiritual babies rule in a church, they can tear it down rather than build it up. It is all about getting their own way. They are immature Christians who will mature in time otherwise they probably were never saved in the first place. Today is a day to allow the Holy Spirit to wisely reveal to you whether you are spiritual, natural or carnal. And this revelation by the Holy Spirit is not just for you individually. It is a test for the whole church. God is wanting to speak to us as a church today. Let’s read 1 Corinthians 3 to learn how the church is to be built up rather than tearing it down.   If you don’t have a Bible, please raise your hand and we would love to give you one. Read 1 Corinthians 3.  

The late great pastor Warren Wiersbe taught that in this passage, “Paul paints 3 pictures: the church is a family and the goal is maturity (v. 1-4), the church is a field and the goal is quantity (v. 5-9), and the church is temple and the goal is quality (v. 9-23).[1] I am going to adapt his outline because I couldn’t think of a better outline and we are going to learn how the church is built up rather than tearing it down. In order to Cooperate with God to build the church up as: 1) A family whose goal is maturity (v. 1-4).  Look again at verses 1-3, “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh.” “Paul thinks it unhelpful and dangerous to give advanced teaching to Christians who were morally and spiritually immature and proud.”[2] Today, there is a new philosophy in child-rearing called baby-led feeding. A six-month-old without teeth is given bits of bite size solid food and the baby gums the food up and swallows it. The goal of baby led feeding is to help a child be less of a picky eater. Lori and I have watched with amazement and absolute fear as our grandbaby has fed herself. She is a tremendous eater and has even eaten meat at 9 months. Paul was saying that the Corinthians were still not able to eat solid spiritual food, let alone feed themselves to discern good and evil (Hebrews 5:11-14). Babies put everything in their mouths to learn what is good and what is bad. In these first few verses, “Milk represents the easy things in the Word, while ‘meat’ represents the hard things in the Word.”[3] Paul doesn’t list out what is easy and what is hard and we probably shouldn’t either because pride can easily slip into our thinking and we often think ourselves more mature than we are. The basics could be what the writer of Hebrews, which was probably Apollos, calls in Hebrews 6:1-2, “Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.” So, the basics are repentance from leaning on your works to save you and instead having faith in God alone. The next step is to get baptized followed by knowing your calling and spiritual gifts. We should also hold fast to the future resurrection of our bodies and finally keep in mind that we will all face judgment before God someday. These are foundational teachings. We may add to these foundational teachings what we believe the Bible to be without error and that it is authoritative in our lives. Some other basic beliefs are that salvation is only through Christ by faith alone, that God exists as one in three persons, that Jesus rose from the dead and that He will come back some day for you. Sort of like the baptismal creed I recited earlier in the service. Do you believe these things? If so, great and hang on to them. Study our Affirmation of Faith at https://www.templebaptistchurch.ca/beliefs. Our goal is maturity in both our beliefs and behaviours.

Back to 1 Corinthians 3, what was stunting the growth and maturity of the Corinthians? Chasing celebrity! Letting the famous teachers called sophists spoon feed them. Isn’t this what we read in verse 4, “For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not merely human?” This is a continuation of Paul’s concern regarding divisions he wrote about back 1 Corinthians 1:12. “Paul was perhaps blamed for not giving his converts such advanced ‘knowledge’ as some subsequent teachers had given them; his reply is that they are not yet able to digest it.”[4] “The Corinthians’ jealousy and quarreling showed that they were still just like unbelievers.”[5] Of course, that is not a problem today. We feed ourselves and don’t rely on TV preachers, radio preachers, podcasts or Right Now Media to feed us, right? There is nothing wrong with getting some supplementary teaching. “The preacher I may enjoy the least may be the one I need the most.”[6]I’ll even use some things I learned from others today in this message, but we should read the Bible for ourselves first. I love that Pastor Aaron is fasting from podcasts for Lent for that reason. He doesn’t want to just add more information, but is trying to feast on Christ in solitude and silence.

Here is the expectation if you have been a follower of Christ for any significant length of time: I should be able to hand you this Bible and you should be able to understand and explain to me what it means. Of course, some passages are a lot more difficult to understand than others, but we should get the gist of a passage. Does it terrify you if I were to give you this Bible and ask you to explain to your friend? It shouldn’t. That is actually my hope every week in your family, your small group, your school or community. You get to know this by reading the Bible every day and you can be entrusted to explain it to others! And you are not doing this alone. God through the Holy Spirit will help you understand His Word. Isn’t that what we learned last week from 1 Corinthians 3:10-16, “These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit (v. 10) … And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual (v. 13) … For who has the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”

So, what is God saying to you? Do you need to start reading the Bible every day? Are you too reliant for others to spiritually feed you? I want to give God praise and report to you that there are 16-20 men who show up early Saturdays to learn how to handle and communicate God’s Word. We will teach how to spiritually feed yourselves so you can discern between good and bad. That is one of the reasons why we exist as a church family. Cooperate with God to build up the church as a family whose goal is maturity. Maturity means that we think and act more like Christ.

However, cooperating with God to build up the church is not only as a mature family but also as a 2) a field whose goal is quantity (v. 5-9). “The church is God’s husbandry, or farm, which he renders fruitful by the light of truth and the dew of His grace, and on which his servants labour.”[7] Paul goes in verses 5-9 to remind them what the role of leaders and teachers are – to cooperate with God who alone grows the church. We already learned about how the Corinthians chased celebrity. They went from “Hero worship to minister worship.”[8] But my friends, Jesus should be our only hero. My heroes growing up were my dad and Wayne Gretzky. Neither man could save my soul. Only Jesus! This is why Paul says one of the most amazing truths in verse 9. We are all now called to God’s co-workers on mission with Jesus. The leading voices in the church – Paul, Apollos and Peter. What were they according to verse 5? Servants! That’s it and gloriously, that’s it! “Ministers were not heads of schools or rival sects as were the Grecian philosophers, but mere servants, without any authority or power of their own. Ministers are one. They have one master and one work – the gospel – holy together in the gospel.”[9] To be a servant of the Most High God is the highest calling. It is not about being a vocational minister, but about being God’s servant wherever you go. To sacrifice and put others first as Jesus did. For this will be evaluated on Judgment Day. “Only the community of the church will last.”[10]“All people are accountable to God for the way they serve Christ.”[11] This is why we put on our job descriptions here for ministry positions that people are first of all accountable to God. Let’s never forget that.

Paul saw himself as a servant in verse 6, “I planted, Apollos watered.” What does that mean? Paul was the evangelist. He sowed seeds of the gospel. Apollos comes along as a strong Bible teacher and watered. We are not anti-Bible teacher; just the opposite – we are anti-Bible teacher only. Feed yourselves God’s Word. But even that does not guarantee growth by itself. Notice what Paul goes onto say in verse 6, “But God gave the growth.” I lived through the Church Growth movement in the 1990s and earlier in this millennium. We were taught that if we just copy another successful church, we too can be successful. Sure, we can learn from others, but sticking with the farm analogy, each locale is different. There are different agricultural zones based on climate and soil. We need to always remember God alone gives the growth. Just say that with me – God alone gives the growth. “Satan is busy sowing discord, lies and sin and we must be busy cultivating the soil and planting the good seed of the Word of God,”[12] but God gives the growth. Each of us has a role to work in the harvest field. We are called to multiply. Let’s not kid ourselves and be falsely humble saying that just a few believers is better. There can be an anti-big and anti-small perspective that proudly creeps into our thinking. We should want an abundant harvest because Jesus says the fields are plentiful in Luke 10:2, “And He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Picking up this theme, I am actually blown away by 1 Corinthians 3:9, “For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.” I was, like you, an enemy of God. God’s Son Jesus was sent to earth to be crucified for me. The only work I should be doing is as a prisoner doing hard labour. Instead, I am and you are God’s co-workers – harvest workers.

This leads us to the third way we cooperate with God to build up the church. Not only a family whose goal is maturity and not only as a field whose goal is quantity, but thirdly, 3) a temple whose goal is quality(v. 9-23). Paul says this in verse 10 with the qualifier that it is by God’s grace that He cooperates with God to build up the Church. The Apostle Paul and no other human alone build up the church. It is by grace, but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t use our experiences and skills. Paul was “not simply a carpenter, but one who served as both architect and chief engineer.”[13] His foundation was Jesus. What are you building your life on? The only foundation that will not crumble in life is Jesus. This is a consistent message throughout the Bible. What are we to build our lives on? Jesus Christ – the Cornerstone! 

I love how Eugene Peterson paraphrases verses 9-17, “9-15 Or, to put it another way, you are God’s house. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you’ll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won’t get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn’t, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won’t be torn out; you’ll survive—but just barely. 16-17 You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.”

We get ourselves in trouble when we forget that the church is a temple. That the Holy Spirit abides in us as collective people and He grows the church. Unlike 1 Corinthians 6:19, the Temple is a reference to us as a church and God is the one alone who grows the church. John Mark Comer in a sermon explains our problem today, “In many evangelical churches, we are taught the following formula for growth: Information + Inspiration + Will Power = Change. In charismatic churches, which is my spiritual heritage, we are taught the following formula: Encounter + Emotions + Will Power = Change.”[14] But if you have tried either Information + Inspiration + Will Power = Change Or Encounter + Emotions + Will Power = Change, you will discover neither work over the long term to be more like Christ. They only produce surface and short-term change. Jamie Kay Smith in You Are What You Love teaches, “You can’t think your way to Christlikeness.” It has to be our entire being – mind, heart, soul, spirit and body. And notice Christ isn’t even in the formula and what we have been learning so far in 1 Corinthians is that it is working in cooperation with the Holy Spirit that we are changed.

This is why the church lasts and other temples crumble. Think about “The Temple of Aphrodite in Corinth vs. God’s Temple in Corinth.”[15] (pic of Aphrodite Temple ruins) One is a tourist destination – an ode to pagan past. However, we the church house the Holy Spirit wherever we go and will for the future.. One is in ruins and one lasts. We must take care on how to cooperate with God in building His Church as verse 10 says. Then look at verse 12! Materials matter. Look at this chart to see the difference: 

Gold, Silver, Precious StonesWood, Hay, Stubble (Straw)
Permanent (indestructible)Passing (temporary)
BeautifulOrdinary, even ugly
ValuableCheap
Hard to obtainEasy to obtain

This reminds of the 3 little pigs. When a wolf came to blow down the first pig’s house of hay. It didn’t last. When a wolf came to blow down the second pig’s house of sticks, the wolf blew it down. The third house was made of bricks and the pig’s house wouldn’t go down.  1 Corinthians 3 does not describe a wolf, just fire on Judgment Day. “The fire illuminates and burns.”[16] “Fire is the constant symbol of trial and judgment.”[17]We can’t avoid the fire, but we can avoid having our work burned up. Missionary Amy Carmichael who rescued many girls from prostitution at Hindu Temples in India said, “The work will never go deeper than we have gone ourselves.” That depth has to be seeking out the Holy Spirit. Pastor Jason Elliotson and I were talking and he made this amazing statement, “Jesus can turn our wood, hay and stubble into gold, silver and precious stones.” God can make things grow, multiply and last.

So what are you building your life upon? There are a couple of warnings at the end of this chapter. If you are building on just the temporal, it will be burned up. “He is like a man who flees from a burning building and is badly frightened and saves nothing, but his life.”[18] You may barely make it to heaven. The second warning is that “There are terrible consequences for anyone who destroys God’s temple by such things as jealousy, argumentativeness, and divisiveness.”[19] “To seek honor from men whereas Christ should be all in all, is courting deadly danger.”[20]

Instead, we need to seek Christ’s affirmation and recognize how we belong to His Body. It was Augustine who said, “Christ is the Son of Man by His union with us, and we by our union with Him are the sons of God. For in our baptism, we have been incorporated into the very body of Jesus. Where the Head is, there is the Body. Where I am, there is my Church. We too are one; the Church is in me and I in her…”[21] Because we belong to Christ, so much of the striving goes away. “For those in Christ Jesus, what things were formerly tyrannical like death are now their new birthright.”[22] Most of us at least at one time dreaded death. Now death is the doorway to seeing Jesus face to face. And we no longer need to chase celebrity. It has already been found in Christ. The Corinthians were so concerned about belonging to a certain leader when in reality the leaders belong to us as the church. That is what we read in verses 21-23, “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 you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” We belong to each other because of Christ. We are holy together in the gospel. As Richard Mullholland in his book Invitation to a Journey says, “Spiritual formation is the process of being formed into the image of Christ for the sake of others.” And the Reformer Martin Luther said, “Salvation is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.”[23] We have everything in Christ. Christ’s vision for His Church is better than visionary frogs in the desert. Are you cooperating with God to build up His Church?

Cooperate with God to build up the church by praying, reading and obeying the Bible and telling others about Jesus. As I conclude, I want to give you a moment to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you whether you are spiritual, natural or carnal? 

[1] Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary – Volume 1 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1989), 577.

[2] Michael J. Wilkins, The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 2195.

[3] Wiersbe, 578.

[4] F.F. Bruce, The New Century Bible Commentary – I & II Corinthians (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1980), 42.

[5] Roger Mohrlang, The NLT Study Bible (Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 2017), 1931.

[6] Wiersbe, 581.

[7] Hodge, 53.

[8] Archibald Robertson & Alfred Plummer, The International Critical Commentary – 1 Corinthians (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1971), 55.

[9] Charles Hodge, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1964), 47.

[10] Bruce, 44.

[11] Mohrlang, 1931.

[12] Wiersbe, 579.

[13] Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistles to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1987), 138.

[14] John Mark Comer, “Spiritual Formation in the Life of the Church” sermon, https://vimeo.com/754836818/68a35bf2d5

[15] Fee, 148. 

[16] Robertson & Plummer, 63.

[17] Hodge, 57.

[18] Richard H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Columbus: Wartburg Press, 1946), 145.

[19] Mohrlang, 1932.

[20] Lenski, 145.

[21] Steve Bell, Pilgrim Year – Easter (Toronto: Novalis, 2018) on pages 60-61 quotes Deacon Keith Fournier Ascending with the Lord https://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=3328. Accessed February 26, 2024.

[22] Fee, 154.

[23] As quoted by R.C. Sproul in the sermon The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother, Ligonier Conference, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hX-ifma5-k. Accessed February 27, 2024.