2004-08-30 - Our Foundation

1 Corinthians 3:18, "For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."

Amidst the busyness of Christian activities, it is easy for us to forget that our foundation is Jesus Christ. We are prone to become so involved with "doing" that we lose sight of the need to reflect upon the reason why we seek to do works of mercy. The following three paragraphs are from a sermon by the Baptist Charles Haddon Spurgeon, that seek to help us remember that the centrality and foundation is to be Jesus Christ. Christ is why we do good works, and Christ is even the basis for our gathering in our local communities as a church.

"Let us put this, our first point, in a few sentences. It is not the union of men with men that makes a church if Jesus Christ be not the center and the bond of the union. The best of men may come into bonds of amity, and they may form a league, or a federation, for good and useful purposes, but they are not a church unless Jesus Christ be the basis upon which they rest. He must be the ground and foundation of the hope of each and of all.

"Some preach experience, and they do well; but they should be exceedingly careful to keep Jesus very prominent. We have a school of brethren who preach little else than experience, and I do not condemn them; but what is the experience of a poor fellow-sinner to me? How does it help me to hear that he groans as I do, or sings as I do? It may be of some small service to me, but there are more excellent things. I want to know how Jesus felt, and what Christ can do for my brother and for me. Experience is admirable when Jesus Christ is set forth in it; but if you take up an experimental vein of things, whether of human corruption, or of human perfection, and Jesus Christ is put in the background, you are marring the gospel. Jesus is the one foundation, and there is no gospel apart from him.

"So too, with practice. By all means let us have practical preaching, and plenty of it, and let it come down sternly and faithfully on the vices of the times; but merely to preach against this and that vice, and extol this and that virtue, is a mission fit enough for Socrates or Plato, but does not well beseem a minister of Jesus Christ. Set Jesus forth, my practical brother. His example shames vice and encourages virtue. Set him up as the mirror of all perfection, and in him, men will see what they ought to be, and learn how to come at it. Jesus Christ, then, is the only gospel."

Soli Deo Gloria,
T-

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