Verse 23 is an important verse that every person wants to hear. Many people are so preoccupied with self-fulfillment that they do not care about this now, but there will come a day when they will wish they could hear that they belong to Christ.
There are countless false religions that teach their people that they are Christ’s when in fact they are not. Week after week these false religions misquote and misapply God’s Word to keep the gullible in their clutches. The good news is that God is greater than the devil and He is working in the heart of every person to draw each person to Christ.
In verse 10 of our text, Paul was directed by God to remind the reader that he was functioning under the grace of God. That grace is that necessary strength to do what is right. Paul was saved by grace and he was chosen to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. He could never do that in his own strength. He needed God to teach him and to equip him to do the work of an apostle. Jesus Christ took the apostle Paul into the desert of Arabia for three years and taught him there. Then Paul began his public ministry and he was able to preach the Gospel of Christ in many places because he was a true born again Christian. He suffered the consequences of being born again. Everywhere he went, he faced enemies of God. That is not an easy thing for the flesh to handle. Paul was able to deal with this because he was drawing on the grace of God.
Paul was also directed to remind the readers that he was a wise masterbuilder. He could make that claim because he was drawing on the grace of God. He was not boastful. He had the necessary backing to be able to make that statement and prove it.
The apostle Paul stated that he had laid the foundation. Notice he did not say he had laid “a” foundation. He had laid “the” foundation. There is only One foundation that can be laid with regard to being a wise masterbuilder. Verse 11 declares this plainly. The right foundation is critical. Paul understood that others would be called of God to build upon that foundation. The challenge before us is to be careful how we build on that foundation. This is where most people get it wrong. We will look further into this.
As mentioned, verse 10 makes it clear that Jesus Christ is the only foundation. Man is not designing the foundation. The foundation is Jesus Christ. He revealed Himself to man in the Gospels. He spent three and half years declaring Who He is and then He went to the cross and laid down His life there for all. He shed His blood on that cross. He cried out “it is finished” and He gave up the ghost. He died on that cross, having completed all that His Father demanded as the only means of removing the curse of sin from the repentant sinner. Jesus’ dead body was removed from the cross by faithful men, and laid in a tomb. His body remained in that tomb for three days and three nights. Then He arose, victorious over death and demonstrating that He was also victorious over sin with that act. Forty days after that He ascended back up to heaven to be seated next to His Father. He is the only Foundation and He is the only Mediator between God and men.
In my life as a Christian, I get questions about what I believe and why. I get suggestions that I am missing something and some believe they have a more perfect understanding of God’s Word. That is quite possible. However, the only way to prove that is to demonstrate it from the Word of God.
The Bible declares that every born again Christian receives the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation. That is an indisputable fact. The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Godhead. He is of no less importance that the Father or the Son. He has His duty and He is faithfully fulfilling that duty, just as the Son is fulfilling His duty.
Since the Holy Spirit indwells every true child of God from the moment of salvation, He will work to bring the true child of God to the place of perfection. No born again Christian can declare that they have arrived, but every born again Christian must build accurately on the only true foundation, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I was saved at the age of 20. God, the Holy Spirit, began His work in my heart from that moment on. I desired to tell others what God had done in my heart. My aunt and uncle were the first to hear. Then my parents were told. Then other family members were told and others as well. God immediately started to show me that changes needed to take place in my life. As a new believer, I was obedient in many things that God was showing me. There was one particular area I was very hesitant to follow God on. That was on the matter of being properly trained for what He wanted me to do after I was saved.
When I was saved, all I knew of was New Evangelical churches. I did not know that term at that time, but that is what they were. Every New Evangelical church is greatly lacking in what God wants in a true church. That, sadly, is the nature of New Evangelicalism. Since the Holy Spirit was living inside of me, I knew there was something lacking in the churches I knew of. This is not a statement of arrogance. It is a statement that shows that my spirit was desiring things that I was not being given in any of the New Evangelical churches that I attended after I was saved. I spent 15 years going from church to church looking for that which was missing. I could not put my finger on what was missing, because I did not know exactly what was missing. After 15 years of arguing with God, I submitted to what I knew God wanted of me. I was a married man with three children by that time. It was no longer just me that was involved. With the counsel of my New Evangelical pastor, I began to search for a Bible School to attend where I could study God’s Word in a more concentrated manner.
There were a couple of things that God had impressed upon me as being important in a Bible School. There were many others I needed to learn yet. It is amazing to me to see how God works with a willing servant.
We moved off our farm and off to Bible school when I was 35 years old. Over the next three years, I would find there were many things that were lacking in that school. The one thing that was essential and not lacking was that I had a Bible. I could examine everything I was learning by the Word of God.
The school I attended is still in existence today, but it has moved so far away from the truth that I would not recommend it to anyone. During my years at that school, I was taught the importance of consulting different writers on many topics. I had to write many papers. Since I had the Bible, and God had impressed upon me the importance of His Word, I examined what I read in the many books there, in the light of God’s Word. I was often docked marks on my papers because I did not include enough sources in my bibliography. I did not include many of them because they did not agree with what the Bible declared. I told my instructors that, but they did not like that. New Evangelicalism is designed to weaken the faith of the saints and to keep many from ever becoming saints. New Evangelicalism is heavy on human opinion and extremely light on Bible truth.
There was one particular weekend during that three year period that was especially important for me. The school had invited a guest speaker to come and teach us on Bible prophecy. One of the things that God opened my understanding on in that weekend was a phrase that man used in his teaching. He stressed that it is important to pay attention to the foundation that a man lays when he is teaching. If the man does not lay a proper foundation, everything he builds will be built wrong.
I found out through that weekend that this guest speaker was from an Independent Baptist church in the U.S. His beliefs were far different than those of the school I was attending. The school did not interfere in what he was teaching us, at least not as far as I know. That key statement that he made has helped me from that time on. The foundation is essential. If we do not have the right foundation, we will build wrong. We will continue to look at our text in the coming days.
God knew what I needed in my life at that time, and by His grace, He arranged for that man to come to the school I was at to help me to understand the importance of a right foundation. As we noted in our text, God’s Word declares that. The Bible also tells us that we need a preacher to help us to see the importance of what God has already declared. This man was not giving me anything I could not have seen in God’s Word. He was not a New Evangelical. He was simply declaring what God had already stated. That man helped me in my studies then and since that time.
As with the apostle Paul, I have discovered that building on the One true Foundation, the Lord Jesus Christ is not the popular place to be. It is the right place to build, but there will be consequences. I do not consider myself to be an apostle, because I am not. I am a born again Christian and thus the same Holy Spirit indwells me that indwelt the apostle Paul and every other true born again child of God. The key is for the true child of God to listen to the Holy Spirit as He reveals the truth from God’s Word. We cannot build wisely if we ignore the truth. Those who reject the truth demonstrate they have never been born again. We will continue to look at the importance of the right foundation over the next couple of days.
Pastor Bartel