If you'll turn your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 3, a brief reminder, I am seeking to give an overview of this letter to the church at Corinth in the context of living and working in the kingdom. And I understand there will be some passages I will not be exhaustive about as I do that, but I'm trying to give us a context for living and working in the kingdom after the Olivet Discourse, the Lord teaching us of his death and burial and resurrection and of his second coming and what will take place there. In the meantime, what are we to be doing? And we're looking at that in proper context. Also, I want you to remember that last week, letter B, our main point, Corinth needed unity according to the work of the Spirit. Corinth needed unity according to the work of the Spirit. And under that, number one, the gospel applied is always according to the work of the Spirit. The gospel applied is always according to the work of the Spirit. We spent time considering that and looking at that thoughtfully for a little bit. And then number two, we'll begin this morning, the gospel applied is always founded upon Christ. The gospel applied is always founded upon Christ. The very last phrase of chapter 2 verse 16 says, but we have the mind of Christ. But we have the mind of Christ. And then Paul begins to outline some important thoughts in verse 1. And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly? Are you not walking like mere men? For when one says, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are you not mere men? What then is Apollos and what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but God who causes the growth. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder, I laid a foundation and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built on, which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so is through fire. Do you not know that you are a temple of God, that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are. Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God, for it is written, he is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the reasonings of the wise that they are useless. So then, let no one boast in men, for all things belong to you, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come. All things belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. The gospel applied is always founded upon Christ. If we are to think properly about these verses, we have to start with foundations. And Scott has done such a good job of building us up in that thinking in our Bible study. Foundations, that which is of first importance. If we don't have that which is of first importance, we won't be able to work through those things that are secondary or those things that might even be indifferent. And so we come to a place to understand those things which are of most importance and how they impact the whole of kingdom life. If we are to think properly, we are to think properly about the work of the Spirit, that the gospel is applied according to the very work of the Spirit, and the gospel is always founded upon Christ. If we have not Christ, we have nothing. If we think we have everything, even though we have not Christ, we have nothing. Christ is the foundation for everything in our lives. In that foundation, we will seek to understand the context of the rest of our lives. From this point forward, Paul will begin to build a context for kingdom living. He's been giving us those foundations. Christ is of utmost importance. The only one that can give us Christ properly is God himself according to the word, and the only one that applies that word properly is the Holy Spirit himself. This has built a foundation of the one God in three persons, and yet each of the three persons has been shown to be distinct. They are distinct in the context of role, not essence. There is but one essence, one God, and of that one God, the three persons work according to their distinct persons. When we see this distinct personhood we will recognize the greatest importance of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is why Paul wants to point the church in Corinth to think rightly about who Christ is because they've already gone in some odd directions. He's going to unfold some of those first odd directions here in chapter three and he's furthermore going to discuss that as he moves into later chapters. Under number two, proper gospel growth points to progress and not pacification. Proper gospel growth points to progress and not pacification. The spirit-changed person grows in the nurture of biblical truth. Here it is, we see in just an illustration that the people in Corinth were not really growing in the strength of biblical truth. They were not growing in this nurturing context of biblical truth. He says, and I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. Now notice, he's not okaying here a doctrine of carnality. He's not saying to them you can be a carnal Christian. No, there's no such thing. You are either in Christ or you are not. He's saying to them the way you are acting, you are acting as if you are just mere men here, fleshly men. He even refers to them in a sense to say you are infants in Christ. He's noting this is an issue of maturity. Now, we're not developing a doctrine here that every person that associated with the church at Corinth was a believer. We don't know the souls of every single individual. Yet at the same time, he's saying you as a local gathered body are to be recognized in the context of Christ and you are to be growing spiritually. You're not to be acting as mere men of flesh. And he said, the only reason you can be acting this way at this time is because you're a young church. You're acting as though you're infants. He says, so I gave you milk to drink. You've been infants. I gave you milk to drink. That's what you do with an infant, right? We might love steak and potatoes, but that's not the first thing our parents gave us to eat. We didn't start at a few days old cutting our steak and eating our baked potato with lots of butter. Right? That's not how we started. No, we started with milk. And so Paul says, this is what I've done with you. And so you need to be growing in the context of this because I've been giving you the milk. And the spirit-changed person grows in the nurture of this biblical truth. Notice here, Paul is not pacifying those in the church. He could be patting them on the head, pacifying them, saying, it's okay, don't worry about it. You're not acting in accordance with the truth of scripture and walking in the things of Christ applied by the Holy Spirit himself, but don't worry about it, it's okay. No, he calls them out properly, kindly, thoughtfully, but he does so. And he says, look, you're not to be pacified in this. He does not tell them their thinking and actions are correct. He does not tell them their thinking and actions are best. In other words, Paul is not keeping the pacifier in their mouth. He tells them, it is time to grow up. It is time to grow up. As he tells them this, he's reminding them, this is striving against the things of the flesh. So the spirit-changed person grows in the nurture of biblical truth. They're not pacified in their infancy in Christ or in those fleshly things that still remain. But the spirit-changed person strives against carnality. He's not teaching them to be carnal Christians. He's saying, no, you need to move on from this carnality. It's still there, yes, there's some of it remains, but you need to be striving against it. You need to be putting it to death. When Paul begins to set up this foundation, especially from verse 11 onward, that Christ is the foundation of all these things, Paul is teaching them Christ is either Lord of your life or He is not. We have to understand something very plainly. There is no way for you and I to be able to say Christ is my Savior but not my Lord. That goes against the whole of New Testament teaching. I mean, I could just sit here for an hour and point out to you one scripture after another that goes against that kind of thinking. And yet, in the last 30 or 40 years, there have been those who have taught that there are those who are carnal Christians. Well, that's just not the case. If Christ is your Lord, you will hate sin, you will hate carnality, and you will seek to repent of it and to strive against it. You will seek to repent of it and strive against it. This is what the spirit-changed person does. They strive against carnality. And here is what Paul is informing these young believers in Christ to do. Stop acting fleshly. Now, he gives an example of this acting fleshly as he walks through this. He wants them to see part of it is in the context of contentment. The spirit-changed person works in Christian contentment. The spirit-changed person works in Christian contentment. Now, this is a little bit of a summary of verses 3 through 10, and we'll also go back to some of these verses as we move onward, too. But, you know, he's trying to get them to say, don't you see what you're doing here? You're reducing Christianity to who taught you Christ or who baptized you. Well, that's not Christianity. Don't reduce it to that level. That's what fleshly people do. They try to make arguments based on some type of hierarchy or who taught them this or who told them this. That's how the world works. Somebody says, well, I went to college. Yes, but I went to Cambridge. I went to college. Yes, but I went to Oxford. But to some degree, fine, fair enough. You may have gotten something at Oxford that I didn't get at Middle Georgia State. That's not the point. Paul's saying, be careful not to reduce Christianity to those mere things like men do. He's saying to them, the teacher is not as important today as the scriptural truth. It doesn't necessarily matter who the teacher was as much as the scriptural truth. Nothing against Dr. MacArthur, but if someone comes in here and says, well, I have been a member of Dr. MacArthur's church, fine. Be around a while, join us and be a member here, but your standing with Dr. MacArthur doesn't make you a senior member of this church. We don't have senior members here. You've heard people do such, well, I went to Dr. Sproul's this and that, the other. Do you know the scriptural truth? That's what matters. Are you seeking to understand it in the local church that God gave you? Nothing wrong with those men. I'm thankful for them. Much of our introduction to certain things has been because of men like that, and we're thankful for them. But if those men begin to overshadow everything in the Christian community, then what will local churches be? In one sentence, we decry someone like Andy Stanley who is hologrammed in to a church in Senoia, Georgia, or some campus in North Atlanta, we decry that and we say, that's silliness. And yet in another sense, we don't have proper context of the importance of the local church in the life of the kingdom. Well, if Dr. MacArthur or Doctor so-and-so or doctor this or doctor that is more important. Well, you don't need elders in your local church. Just gather and put a screen up there and put whatever doctor you want to listen to, put him on the wall. But Paul is recognizing here that it's not about the teacher as much as it is about the scriptural truth. Don't name the name of the particular teacher. Even Paul, who's one of the foremost apostles, who could have made himself of the greatest of importance, is narrowing himself down, is putting himself down onto a level to say, that's not the issue, whether it's Paul or Apollos. The baptizer is not as important as recognizing God's use of means and people. We have to have some sense of understanding here that Paul is laying out the means of use and the means of people or the use of people in those means. He says, I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. Even in our own local church, we want to be aware that God can use each of us thoughtfully and carefully in the lives of another Christian. You may have learned something important from another member in this church. As long as it checks up with Scripture. Now, I wouldn't take one member and say, I'm only gonna listen to that one member. That would be unwise. It's another good reason to have a plurality of elders. We have to see that he's saying God has his people and they are of use to him in the various means that he set up. God does provide people to serve himself in his purpose. Now, we have to understand he calls himself and Apollos and these other servants, and the same is true of each and every believer. Every believer ought to be a servant of Christ. If you're here today and you're only here to get out of it whatever you want, I'm not sure what that would be, but whatever you want, and that's your purpose for being here today, and you don't see yourself as a servant of Christ, then you've not understood what it means to live in the kingdom of God. To live in the kingdom of God is to serve God. Now, He may outline in Scripture, and we'll deal with a little bit of it here, it won't be in totality, but there are ways that God has given us to specifically serve Him. if you are a parent of children. When you're parenting your children, do you see that as a service to God, an obedience to Him, how you raise your children? That's how you serve Him. Those of you who are married, how you work with your spouse, do you see that as a service to God through His Son Christ according to the work of the Spirit? according to the truth of God's Word? Or do you just see that as, well, that's my relationship with my spouse, I'll do that the way I think I need to? So they're very down to earth practical things in the context of everyday life that God tells us we are his servants. We're serving him in everything we do as employees, as employers. It's noted in other letters that Paul writes, we are serving God. This is how we live in the kingdom. The one another passages of the New Testament, how we serve one another and love one another. That's why we encourage each of us to pray for one another in the church. When there's a known need, pray for one another. That's how we serve God, by lifting one another up in the body of Christ. There's also specifics in the context of people that are used to serve God. there are characters in that context or characteristics. Those who are called to serve God are to be trustworthy servants, In specific, Paul here is speaking of those who are apostles and those who are being called to be elders or gifted brothers in the preaching and teaching of the word. He says they are to be trustworthy servants. This is what he says in verse 5 of chapter 3 and also how he begins to outline chapter 4 in verses 1 and 2. They are to be trustworthy servants. They are to be good stewards of that which God has given them. Don't look at Paul and say, well, Paul said this and Apollos said this, but I'll hear it more from Paul because of who Paul is. No, the question is, is it biblical truth? Have both men been trustworthy to the scripture? Now, at times that becomes difficult. Scott used a good illustration in Bible study this morning. You have a man like Dr. John MacArthur and a man like Dr. R.C. Spruill, who's now with the Lord. They differed on some things. So we have to work through things in context to say, well, maybe some things are more or most important. Sometimes we have to look at them and say, it's not just about who said it, it's what the scripture says. There's an example of this in the book of Acts, it's the Bereans. The Bereans were told and they were ones who would search the scriptures to see what the word of God said. And that's how we need to be. And it's certainly the servants need to be that way. These servants are those who are examined by the Lord according to God's truth in the church. And ultimately, they will be examined at the second coming of Christ. All things will be examined at the second coming of Christ. And now we tease sometimes, you know, I've heard people say, well, Dr. Sproul's with the Lord now and he's a Baptist. You know, we can tease about those things, but there's a serious side to that. Dr. MacArthur, Dr. Sproul. Dr. Renahan, Dr. White, Lowley, Peon, Little Brandon will all stand before the Lord one day and those things which we have said will be examined upon the second coming of Christ. What Scott says, what Robin says. The servants of Christ in a particular manner, those who are to preach and teach the word to you, everything will be examined. And thankfully in Christ all my errors will be dealt with. Don't go looking for a celebrity pastor or to have celebrity status. Make sure you're in a local church seeking the truth of God's Word. according to the context of the local church that God gives you in his grace. I have at times stepped away from saying things like that to you all because I don't ever want you to think that I would set myself or the elders up as though we're some great authority over all of you and we're perfect. We're not. But Paul is making a real case here. And I think the Christian world in modern day has really turned against the idea of the importance of the local church. And it's happened in reformed circles too. The internet's been great for a lot of things. TV in its day was great for a lot of things. We're glad that the gospel got to go out in certain circumstances on the TV or even the radio. Years ago, the gospel went out on the radio. But there's always been this place where people set a certain person or group of people up into some high standard as somehow they're going to be the ones to teach the whole of the church. This is the kind of ideology that developed over the last 100 years of technology led a man like Andy Stanley to simply say all pastors of small churches need to quit and let the rest of us who are big church pastors take over. Now thankfully he came back at some point and kind of recanted that and massaged it a little bit. I wish he would have been a little more clear in his statement afterwards. But that kind of ideology through technology is the kind of idea that Paul is fighting against here. He's writing a letter to a local church telling these local church people, don't set up these individuals, not even myself or Apollos. It's about one single foremost foundation, which is Jesus Christ. Well, to continue under this heading, God does provide all means necessary to please himself. Who provided Paul? God did. Who provided Apollos? God did. Who provided Timothy? Timothy is mentioned over in chapter 4 verse 17. Who provided Timothy? God did. This is how Paul can get to the end of chapter three and say, all of these things, the wisdom of this life, from whether it's Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come, all things belong to you, church. But you know what? You belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God. So, if all of these things belong to God, then we have to look to God to provide all necessary means to please Himself. And He does that by those that He gives to the church. Here, specifically, Paul and Apollos and Timothy have been given to the church in this particular context of the letter. But notice, Timothy is not an apostle. Timothy was only left to be an elder. Apollos is not an apostle. He was one who was used to take the word out. We know more about Timothy than we do Apollos. We don't have a sense that Apollos was necessarily one who was set out as an officer. And yet the context of what Paul is giving us here is that these three individuals were put forward by God. God brought about the necessary means and the necessary people to please Himself. Not only are these necessary means in the context of the people, but even as churches are being ordered, He's telling them how to worship. It's why we need to be very careful in the church not to take things in or bring things into the church that the scripture doesn't give us. If we're going to say we're going to worship God, wouldn't we want to say, well, God, you're holy, you're perfect in all your ways. You tell us how you want to be worshiped. You give us the information we need to worship you. And you've given examples in your word of those who brought strange fire into worship and they were killed. So therefore, Lord, we don't want to be like that. Paul is saying, be very careful. Ordering yourselves like the world would order themselves. How do we celebrate July the 4th? We all sit around on the ground with our legs crossed. Is that how we do it? No. We have cookouts and fireworks and there's music playing. It's a big deal, right? Nothing wrong with that. It's July the 4th. God wasn't setting out to tell the American nation whether or not it could use fireworks to celebrate its Declaration of Independence or its Constitution or its Second Amendment right. But He did tell His people of all nations, tribes, and tongues how He desires to be worshiped. So we order ourselves according to God's Word. not according to the mere thoughts of men." God does provide His church with order within the means and people. God said that there are to be local churches. There is His people all over the world, true enough, but He's told us there's multiple letters that are written to the churches. Some places their church is plural, some places their church is singular, and yet it's written to a local church so that other local churches would know how to form themselves and order themselves, that those people in those particular vicinities could gather and order themselves. And he says, when you do it, don't do it with the wisdom of this world. Do it with the wisdom of God's truth. He tells us who are the officers in a local church. He tells us how to look at them and how to distinguish them. He tells us clearly when those men are to be used and how they're to be used and the purpose of their use. He tells us that the officers in his local church are only to be of the male gender. Wow, that's a tough one for the world today, isn't it? egalitarianism and equality. You think it was because God hated women? No, no, it's not that at all. There are purposes and reasons in the context of the local church that men are to be leading the local church. It's the idea of shepherding local church. It's teaching men how to shepherd their own homes. Should a man shepherd his own home apart from a local church? No. There's no such thing as starting your own home church with you and your wife and your three or four kids or six kids or however many, one or two or nine or 25. That's not a church. That's a family. He says, you guys have got to grow up and you've got to start acting like fleshly men and start looking at these things rightly and making the foundation Christ. In our modern day idea, it would be the steeple is not as important as the foundation. Wouldn't it be great to have a Just a muddy dirt floor with a steeple and tell everybody we got the greatest steeple around? It'd be wonderful, wouldn't it? We have the most beautiful steeple ever. Now that's an Americanism, that's a European Western idea of a steeple, I get it. I know there are churches that meet in other circumstances, but in our Western American idea, we wouldn't say, look at our great steeple. We would hope that the building itself would have a foundation to it, that it would have something strong and structurally sound that we could meet in it safely come rain or shine or snow on occasion or whatever it might be. Now does the Bible tell us we have to have an actual building like this? No, I'm just using it as an illustration. We need the foundation in the church and Paul outlines what that foundation is. He says proper gospel growth points to Christ and not mere men. He's just plainly telling us people are not to be worshiped. That's a big problem in the world. You really do need to realize there's an important distinction that's made there. It's all the political divisions are often over persons and personalities. Very few American people really know ideas anymore. Very few American people are meeting at a town square and discussing great huge societal ideas. Blog posts of, you know, five or six paragraphs don't suffice for these great huge societal issues. You can't sum up the argument against or for abortion on Twitter. What ends up happening is we become, as an old rock band once said, a cult of personality. It happens in churches too, sure. That's why Paul's warning against it. But where does it come from? It comes from the world. Paul outlines here very carefully that the wisdom of the world is the problem, it's foolishness. That wisdom is what's driving the carnality of the world. That wisdom is what's driving continually and feeding the depravity of the sinful nature of man. That kind of wisdom, it comes from the sinful nature and it perpetuates the sinful nature and it drives sinful men forward. And what do we begin to do? We begin to have worship of people. There's some people you couldn't say one negative thing about former President Trump or they would just cancel you out of culture. Well, there needs to be some negative things said about him. And Christians need to understand there are negative things about him. He stated very clearly he didn't need to repent. He didn't have anything to repent for. Now what does that mean? Does that mean I don't vote for him? No, that means I pray for him. That means I understand there's a difference between a pastor and a president. See, that takes some thinking. But if I'm just gonna worship a candidate, no matter who it is, Rand Paul or his dad, the bastions for our modern libertarian thinking. Well, if you worship those individuals, you're going to end up with a problem, especially as a Christian. Paul is saying people are not to be worshipped. They're not to be worshipped outside of the church, and they're not to be worshipped inside the church. Paul says don't worship The Caesar and don't worship me. Even in the book of Acts, there's a point at which people are beginning to try to worship Paul in the context of miracles that he performs. And he says, no, don't do that. I'm not worthy of that worship. They start to treat him like he's a Roman God of some type. And he goes against it and says, no, don't do that. You say, Brandon, why are you spending so much time developing this kind of thinking? Well, when we get to chapter five and you're talking about accountability for sin and church discipline, if you don't have that founded in Christ, either A, you won't do it at all, or B, you won't do it correctly. If you're in a church that worships more the individuals in the church, then you'll have so many factions, you'll never actually do anything as a local church. You'll never actually deal with sin unless Christ himself is the foundation. Paul says, for no man, verse 11, can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. That foundation founds everything for every local church. Everything is in the context of the chief cornerstone. Since people are not to be worshipped, Christ alone is to be worshipped. When you come to the Lord's table today, that is a specific place. We're not just sitting there going through rote motions. We are actually taking time as a corporate body to worship the Lord Jesus Christ for who he is and what he did. If for some reason you have gotten stuck in rote motion, I'm encouraging you to get out of it. When you come to the Lord's supper table, you are worshiping Christ. And it's commanded of us to worship him in that way, remembering him properly at the table. Christ alone is the foundation of the church. Why? Because he's the prophet, priest, and king of the church. Certainly, he's king of all creation. We cannot deny that because the scripture says it plainly in multiple places. The Scripture teaches us plainly that He and the Father and the Spirit were there at creation because they existed before all time, which they created time in and of itself. And yet, how is that authority of Christ revealed? It is most revealed in and through the church. Because when we meet here on the Lord's Day, we are exercising, we are exercising not just a right in our country to worship freely, that's important in one sense, but we are actually exercising the truth of God's word in action by showing and claiming Christ as prophet, priest, and king. We listen to His Word. We are here only by His work as the High Priest. And we are recognizing Him as our King, and we will bow to no other but Him alone. We have to know Christ is ruler of all creation. For it founds everything for us in the work in the local church. And yet at the same time we are the only ones gathering believers all over this world. We are the only ones stopping our day and saying we give it to him to worship him and him alone. The rest of the world goes on about its business, not acknowledging the kingship of Christ. The rest of the world goes on about its business, not bowing the knee to Christ. But believers in local churches all over this world stop and bow the knee. Why do we do it? Because from our very core we have been changed. Paul says, we need to note that if a man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy and that is what you are. When believers gather, it's not this building that matters, it matters that believers come together in the corporate sense of understanding who they are as those who have been made new in Christ Jesus and our bodies are temples unto Him. That we are putting aside all those former things and we are striving forward in the context of giving our bodies over as living sacrifices to God. We are worshiping and bowing at the throne of the one King. And in doing so, we are recognizing that we are a means for God to grow His kingdom. When you and I bow and say, we will serve you and you alone, We will serve according to the work of the Spirit, by the truth of God's Word, that we will give praise and honor to the one Lord and King, Jesus Christ, that God the Father may be honored in all things. When we stop and do that, we are saying, we recognize, we are a means for God to grow his kingdom. Paul establishes this in these later verses by saying, you know what? The work that is built on Christ will remain. The work that is built on man will smolder. Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish so that he may become wise. Don't look after the craftiness of the world, but look after the truth of God. Why? Because if your work is based on anything else but Christ, it will fall and fail and suffer loss. Verses 14 and 15 give us this picture all the way down through verses to verse 20. He points them in this place to say to them very plainly, If you were to have any wisdom in this life, that wisdom is of God. And he makes a great distinction here. The unbeliever loves the wisdom of the world. Why do so many people, millions upon millions, pack in stadiums all over this world to follow some particular entertainer? because they really think this in some way is going to make their life better. It's not to say to go to a concert is a bad thing. It's to say, what is your purpose in going to the concert? Whose concert is it? What's it going to be about? Thinking through the context of the concert. That's not the point here. That's a whole other discussion. The discussion Paul is having here is about what is our focus? What is our purpose in this life? Is it the wisdom of the world? If you're a reader and you love all types of literature writing and all types of prose and poetry and all these kinds of things, you have to dissect some of that and say, at some point I can read a good piece of literature and go, you know what, this piece of literature points to the wisdom of the world. This is the reason that unbelievers write. poetry, the literature, the songs that they write. This is why political candidates think the way they do. It's based on the wisdom of the world. Paul is making a distinction that those who lead the world in the wisdom of the world are the worldly. And we as believers are not to be that way. We're supposed to have our foundation and all we do is Christ Jesus alone and nothing else. Because the believer learns the wisdom of the world is foolishness. And Paul's already said, what does he preach? He preaches Christ, and when he preaches Christ, what is that to the world? It's foolishness to the world, but to those who are being saved, it is what? In that second letter to the church at Corinth, he makes it clear, Christ alone and nothing else. So it tells us very, very clearly two observations. Number one, Christian maturity never separates from the chief cornerstone. Christian maturity never separates from the chief cornerstone. You know what I've noticed in church history? Churches often go astray, often go astray when their focus gets off of the chief cornerstone, who is Christ Jesus. Denominations do the same. Why did you have denominations started in America, or some that came over from England into America, that during the height of the Enlightenment period, by the time you get to the end of the 1700s, they're Unitarian. Why do you have churches after the turn of the 20th century that move to a social gospel that everything about Jesus is only feeding the poor? It's not a bad thing to feed the poor and help people. That's not the problem. But that's the only thing you do. And that's how we know Jesus is real, is because you feed the poor. No. What did they start doing? They started doing away with sin. They started doing away with the context of the need of our salvation. They started making their God either the people that they wanted to serve, or they started making their God the ideas they wanted to serve. But Paul says that that is the foolishness of the world, and Christian maturity never separates from the chief cornerstone. If you want to grow in the truth of the scripture, you're going to grow in Christ. You're going to understand who Christ is and what he did. You're going to apply that in the context of the whole of your life. The problem for many local churches today is that many local churches are starting to either move away from the truth and the foundation of Christ, or they are distorting the truth and the foundation of Christ. When Christ is not the son of God, you've fashioned your own God. When Christ is not the son of man, you've fashioned your own God. When Christ teaches plainly that breaking the law of God is sin and you no longer want to teach against breaking God's law, you've fashioned your own God. When Christ is diminished, and people are lifted up to be worshiped. You fashioned your own God. Christian maturity never separates from the chief cornerstone. Secondly, Christian maturity never segregates fellow members arbitrarily. Christian maturity never segregates fellow members arbitrarily. Now remember, chapter 3, he's building a case here for everything he's going to say in the rest of this letter. So, you know, some of those things we've already pulled back a little bit and shown, even in some of the discussion this morning, and yet at the same time, further things are going to be developed along the way. But what you're going to see is this is a problem for the church at Corinth. He's only established one instance here in chapter three where what they've done is they've segregated fellow members in the church and they've done it arbitrarily. And first of all, what they've done here is they've started to separate them or segregate them by saying, well, you're of Paul and you're of Apollos. Or someone saying, I'm of Paul and you're of Apollos. Doesn't matter. That's not the issue. Christian maturity never segregates fellow members arbitrarily. It doesn't do that in any way. So we have to guard against the idea, you weren't baptized by this person, so you are less in the kingdom. That's what he's saying to them here. Now that sounds silly to you and I in a way, doesn't it? And yet at the same time, that's the kind of ideology that works itself out among a group of people. to hold one person in higher esteem in some context we created. Jesus never gave us an indication that who baptized us would make us greater or lesser in the kingdom. So we shouldn't do that to one another. Or maybe you don't fully understand the complexities of this doctrine, so you're less in the kingdom. No, we need to be very careful with that. We may say someone is immature in their understanding of things, but to make them less in the kingdom, if they're Christ's child, they're Christ's child. You weren't taught by this professor, so you're less in the kingdom. No, Christian maturity never segregates fellow members that way. You don't have this degree or level of education so you're less in the kingdom. You don't make this much money, so you're less in the kingdom. Nope, nope. Paul's trying to give warnings against all of those things. Matter of fact, when we come to the chapter and deal with the issue of the Lord's Supper Table, that's exactly what he's dealing with. Some of those folks who had a little more money were looking down on those who had less, and that's how they were functioning in the working of the Lord's Supper Table. There's even some instances where you begin to see Paul and some of his letters going against some of the philosophy of the day. It gives the idea that there were some believers saying, well, I studied this person or under that person. No, that's not how the kingdom is realized in the local church. The foundation is always Christ. The question is, have you repented and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ alone to save you from the dead and the guilt of your sin? Or are you trusting in something else? And if you're trusting anything else to save you from the dead and the guilt of your sin, then your foundation is busted. Your foundation is busted. If your foundation is in Christ Jesus alone, Then be thankful, be encouraged. But you know what? Keep growing and building on that foundation. Don't start with another one. Paul says, look, even I and Apollos have to be careful that we understand we're building on that building of God. He's saying every one of you who is converted is converted by God's grace alone, through His work alone, according to the work of Christ alone, by the Spirit, nothing else. And so all I'm doing is building on that, that which God did, and I have to be very careful, Paul says, and it's a warning and a caution to any elder or any preacher and teacher to understand we are building on that foundation of Christ alone. There's a woe to us in the Old Testament sense. Woe to us who thinks we are building our own worshipers. No. The goal of the local church is to build biblical, godly, Christ worshipers. Worshiping him alone. Amen? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, your mercy to us is great. Your grace is beyond compare. We praise you for the work of your son, the Lord Jesus, according to his holy person. And ask your mercies upon us now as we come to your table, that we would worship him rightly, giving thanks and honor and glory unto him alone, according to the work of the Spirit in our souls, in connection and conjunction with the truth of your word. May all glory and honor be given to you. And Lord, we ask that this local church, as long as you have purposed it to exist, May our firm foundation be on your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and nothing else. For future generations of this church, Lord, please, will you protect them and keep them from leaving the foundation? Keep them near these great truths of your word. We pray this in the name of Christ, amen.