First Corinthians 3:16-17 The local church as the temple of God

Okay, well, we're going to continue on today in 1 Corinthians. We're getting down to the end of this section, which ends up with verse 17. So I've titled this section, The Local Church is a Temple. And actually, I'm going to cover a lot more than that. I'm going to go back and kind of review what we've been doing the last several weeks. And we've been looking at a lot of interesting things about the church. So let's look at, let's just start out here. And I like Chester McCauley's outline. I'll just put it all up here. So basically the part in blue is a part we're going to talk about today. We're going to go back and remember the church at Corinth had some issues and Paul was addressing these issues. One was division in the church. And so he took them back to the basics. He took them back to the foundation of the church. And we've covered that in previous weeks in verses 10 and 11. We're going to review that slightly.

And then we're going to look at what's called the superstructure or the building on the church, building the church. And then we're going to look at the quality of in building the Church of God. He talks about certain materials that are involved in that, and that's really a very interesting topic. And we're going to look at those again. And then we're going to kind of finish up with the local church as a temple of God. So let's kind of get into it here.

So this picture I showed last week, we start with the foundation, which is talked about in chapter 3, verses 10 and 11. And then built on the foundation, we have the superstructure, which we'll talk about. And then I had some bullet points here about this. You know, there's only one kind of foundation that is possible in God's building. And we're going to talk about that. We know that already. The superstructure can only be built from certain materials. And God's going to judge those materials. The materials must be tested by fire.

And that's an interesting picture. I'm going to have some ideas about that. And then lastly, He's going to get into another name. You know, these are all word pictures we see in scripture, really beautiful word pictures. Another name for God's building is God's temple. We're going to talk about that. And he has something to say there in verses 16 and 17 about God's temple. So let's go back and kind of look at the foundation again. I think it's really kind of critical. You should have your foundation right. Any person building a building, should have his foundation right.

So we're going to look at a parable here. And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. This is a parable. And we actually in Sunday school, many times the kids sing this song about the wise man, the foolish man. So let me read in Matthew 7, 24 and 25. It says, therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and slammed against the house. Yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. So there's a whole bunch of observations. This is just kind of a jam-packed verse. And it's a parable, but boy, there's some just really gems in this verse, I think.

So first of all, the wise man here is the one, if you look carefully at the first phrase there, the wise man is the one who hears Christ's words and acts on them. And first, he has two parts there to it. First, you have to hear Christ's words. You have to understand God's word. That's the first step. The second step is that you act on that. And I take that to mean you believe and trust in God's word. So as we hear God's word, we have a choice. Do we believe it? Do we trust in what God has said? And do we act upon that?

And the acting, I believe, is the idea of believing and trusting for what he said and then by doing this you're compared in this parable to a wise man who built his house on the rock and you know it says that the the rains came and the floods came and the winds blew all this stuff happened but the house did not fall because it was founded on the rock and the rock here I believe is speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ as your foundation and So the point here is that, and we see this in the verses we studied previously, no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. So critical to your faith in God, in the Lord Jesus Christ, is that He must be your foundation. So secondly, the second part of this parable starts in verse 26 and it says, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and the slammed against the house, and it fell, and great was its fall."

So there's a bunch of observations you can make here. The foolish man here, interestingly, he hears Christ's words. Interesting. So he has some level of understanding. But the critical part here, he does not act on them. He does not believe them. He does not believe in God's word. And that's, you know, that's something that we see in our world and even ourselves. We don't believe what God has said in his word.

And that's critical, critical for the foundation. So by doing this, he's compared with a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And when all those rain and all those things came, his house fell because it was found on the sand. So what is the sand? So the question comes up, what is the sand speaking of here?

I think it's speaking of the uncertainty of trusting in man and his wisdom as your foundation. If you base your life upon the uncertainty of what man says. Boy, we can see it in this world. Man changes his mind, you know, every hour or probably every minute. It's just the shifting sands of man's wisdom. It's just, you know, you want to be found on the unchangeableness of God's Word and the person of Christ.

So I like this verse in James 4.14, it says, and it speaks of the uncertainty that we don't know. You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You're just like a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. So that's the uncertainty of putting your trust on man's wisdom, on the sand, the shifting sand of man's wisdom.

Okay, with that kind of in place, so we talked about the foundation. Let's move on to the superstructure here. So last week we talked about that. Now if any man builds on the foundation, with gold, silver, precious stones, I always say that, it's plural, 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. So there's a couple really neat pictures here. So first of all, we got these six things. We got the gold, the silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw. And then we have an interesting thing.

We've got fire. And fire doesn't mix too well with three of those. The wood, hay, and straw are not going to be around too long with the fire. And with the gold, silver, and precious stones, actually, probably will not be hurt. And sometimes, if you read in just what man does, it purifies metals. It purifies gold and silver and things like that.

But you know, I kind of was thinking about this. I'm glad I have another week to kind of contemplate this. So what is this fire representing? What's Paul trying to tell us here? And I think that if you think back to Exodus, and we're studying that with Mike on Tuesdays, or actually Wednesdays, think about Moses. Remember Moses was God appeared to him. How did he appear to him? He appeared to him as a burning bush. He appeared to him as fire.

And what did God say about the fire? He said, Moses, take off your sandals for you're on holy ground. So I kind of think that what's being pictured here is that this fire is a picture of God saying, you know, you come to me with your works. And some of them, some of them will be able to pass through the fire and some will not. And I think it is representing his holiness because of just what he said to Moses. He said, don't get too close, you're on holy ground.

So really God is very wise in doing this. He wants to test our works against his holiness. And it has to be his work. He has to have preordained it. We execute it by faith. Then he can accept it. If it comes out of our ideas and our wisdom, it's not going to go anywhere. It's going to be burned up. So I kind of think the fire speaks of God's holiness. Okay, so let's go on.

So now down to the particulars. I kind of probably got ahead and covered a bunch of things I just talked about here. So it starts off, now if any man builds on the foundation, it's assumed to be true. It's the if that's assumed to be true. anyone, including Paul, and what I found in studying this, several commentators, they wanted to limit it to Paul and Apollos' ministry there in Corinth. They said, well, this is judging. God is going to judge or give rewards speaking here to Paul and Apollos, which is certainly true. But I think it certainly has application much beyond that to the whole body of Christ, to all of us who know him and who do works, do good works and God is going to wants to judge those not in a severe way but in a way to give us a reward.

So let's go on here. Builds is the idea to erect this structure or superstructure. You know he talks about it in the word superstructure issues. It's an interesting term. We're building this superstructure by these six things. It's a pawn, So the foundation it says the foundation we're building upon the foundation pointing back again To our Lord Jesus Christ in verse from verse 11. He's he's a person of Christ.

Who's our foundation? so now we're going to move on to the quality of the found of the what we're building with and Here's the six things the six materials two categories. We kind of already covered this the the ones that are metal-based gold, silver, precious stone, wood, hay, and straw. And some have said, well, I see a lot of value in gold and silver and precious stones. And there certainly is lots of value there, and not so much value in the wood, hay, and straw.

But I think the picture here, as we've seen, is he's going to test it with fire, which speaks of his holiness, I believe. And so he's going to test it against his attributes, against who he is. And it comes down to the fact that the fire picture will be consumed by the fire or not consumed. One stands the fire test, the other does not, and that's from Macaulay.

So, and then last week, I just clicked through quickly, I kind of thought about this and thought, wow, you know, scripture tells us an awful lot about works. It tells us about good works, especially in Ephesians. And he tells us that the good works are those that he's prepared beforehand. And that's kind of pictured by the gold, silver, and precious stones that we should walk in them. And he desires that we walk in them by faith and trust in Christ to do these works. And I believe that picture is the good works that he wants to approve and give us rewards for. Or the wood, hay, and stubble is kind of the opposite picture.

There are works that God has not prepared beforehand. So he's not the source, so we're in trouble right there from the get-go, if you think about it. If he hasn't prepared those works, then how can he accept that into his heaven, if you think about it.

These works are going to be accepted into heaven, because the picture we're going to see here in a bit is that he's going to judge these works in heaven. So we're in heaven and our works are judged. So these works to be acceptable have to be acceptable in heaven.

So they have to be sourced in God. So I think it really is a cool picture here. We shouldn't be so concerned about this judgment. We should be looking forward to this judgment that God will purify and accept the works that he was the source of. We don't want any works in heaven that are not his works, that are not sourced in him. So now let's go on. So now we go on to this idea of the testing of these materials.

It says, each man's work will become evident. Work here is either to be manifest from the inner linear. Work here is labors for the kingdom, for the gospel and furthering the kingdom. It's a future tense. So a future time, like I mentioned, when we go to be with him, They'll be judged. They'll be manifest, open to sight. The true quality of each man's work will be open to sight.

You know, I'll try to picture this particular situation. Will it just be, will it be all believers standing there? Will all my brothers and sisters see this? I don't know. I'm not sure. I hadn't really studied that out to see whether that's true or not.

It's certainly going to be open to his sight and to our sight it seems like. It's a revealing of man's works, not his character. The picture here is not anything to do with salvation, nothing to do with our acceptance before God, because we're already totally accepted in Christ. This is the works we do based upon our acceptance, based upon the fact that we know Him. So we shouldn't get confused and think, well, I gotta pile up these good works to get to heaven. No, he's not asking us to do that. He's asking us to realize these are things he wants us to do based upon that we do know him, we're already accepted by him. Okay, so let's go on.

So it talks about this, the day. So there's this reference to the day or that day, and gospel says here, And I agree with this, that he believes that's the day when all believers, this is only for believers, will stand before God and give an account of the stewardship of his or her life. So this is actually, as someone said, and I think rightly so, this is a reward ceremony. So we shouldn't be, we shouldn't be, we should be concerned about this, but not fearful of this. This is a situation where he wants to reward us for the things that we trusted him for.

And this here's a verse that kind of speaks to that in 2nd Corinthians 5 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may Recompense for his deeds in the body according to what he has done whether good or bad Actually, well, I'm not really prepared to teach this whole verse but One thing one little note here. It says good or bad. I think the best translations are have the bad as worthless. So he's talking about good versus worthless. And that kind of fits the picture much better about the wood, hay, and straw.

They're not contributing work. All right, so let's go on here. OK, so basically, the works are going to be revealed with fire. They're going to be manifest, they're going to make open. And then secondly, they're going to be tested. tested us to the quality of each man's work. And this is his work, Docke Modso, and this is the one that is really wonderful.

He's testing us with a view to approval. He wants to approve the works that we have trusted him for, that he preordained and that we trusted and walked by faith. He wants to approve those, and he will. So Constable just points out, Paul's main point here is to encourage the building with quality materials that will meet God's approval and receive eternal rewards.

And there's a verse that we're going to cover here, Michael will cover here in the next part of this. And I like the last part of that verse five in chapter four says, each man's praise will come to him from God. God wants to praise us and to magnify the work that we trusted him for. key part of this. We can contribute nothing to our works because they're His works that we've trusted Him for, that we've executed with faith in Him.

That's what is worthy to be in heaven and worthy to pass through the fire. So it's actually a marvelous picture. We're going to have two sets of verses today. I've already covered verse 14 a little bit last week. So verse 14 and 15 say, And this is the receiving of the rewards aspect of this. If any man's work which he has built on remains, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he shall suffer loss. But he himself will be saved, so yet as through fire.

So that's the first two verses. And the last two, I'll read those a little bit later, but those are going to talk about The other picture of God's house, the temple of God. There's some really neat aspects there. No warning, the very last verse is a warning. So let's look at the reward verses here.

If any man's work which he has built on remains. So this is something that passes through the fire, remains. It's assumed to be true. Any man's work endures or survives. And from the previous verses we saw that those six materials Materials are revealed by fire. They're tested by fire to approve them. And some materials, the ones that gold, silver, and precious metals, precious stones are purified by fire. And some metals are burned up. So Chafer kind of shares here that the judgment of Christian service is likened to fire. And I think it's God's holiness in which the gold, silver, will stand the test and the Christian will be rewarded for that.

And he'll receive a reward. And it's a reward for a future time. We don't receive something right now, we receive it at a future time. And we saw earlier in chapter 3 where it says, talking about rewards again, now he who plants and he who waters are one. but each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.

So God is very personal here. He knows exactly where we're at. He knows what works we're trusting him for, which ones we're not. It's not a surprise to him. So it seems like this idea of rewards is to let us know and to let us glorify God that we trusted him for that. And then Macaulay says, notice that we are not, and this is interesting, we're not really told whole lot about what the rewards are. And that's what he says in this little paragraph. The reward is apparently found in the reality of one's work that lasts, that it's permanent. So if the work lasts, we get a reward for it.

But he doesn't really say, he talks about crowns, crowns are mentioned, and casting the crowns before his throne, we get crowns for different aspects of service in our Christian life and also as we're studying in Sunday school this morning we get crowns for for suffering which is which is neat too so God is a totally aware of where we're at nothing is nothing is surprising to him okay so here's the opposite side if any man's work is burned up he will suffer loss but he himself will be saved so yet as through fire So first, let's do the negative case here. Once again, it's assumed to be true.

Man's work is consumed. So he incurs loss. It's in the passive voice. He will incur the loss. And actually, what happens here is, the idea here, I think, you know, the idea is not so much, the loss is not like, I can't think of a good analogy, but the gist of it here is the idea is loss of rewards. we will have less items of rewards.

So if you can imagine you have a handful of rewards, in this situation you will not have as many because some of those works were really not of God and were not glorifying to Him and therefore you don't want them in heaven. Heaven consists of things that God has originated And man has performed from the works perspective, and God gives us rewards for that.

So if we want to lose the ones that are of no value, right? You don't want to keep those hanging around. They're not going to be worthwhile. That's the idea. So the gospel says here, the context identifies those who suffer loss as being Christians who seek to build the church with materials that fail to withstand God's assessment. And we want to be, you know, this is a good thing. We want to have God's assessment because God loves us and cares for us, you know. Anyway, that's wonderful. All right. So now, this last part here is kind of, it's to reassure us and to kind of keep us on focus here.

Because he's afraid that if we say we suffer loss, some people say, oh my goodness, What about my salvation? Can I lose my salvation? Can God, quote, boot me out of heaven? And the answer is no, he will not do that. And he wants to reassure us here. It says, but he himself will be saved. And this phrase, will be saved, this is Greek words, sozo.

And it's the idea of, this is from Vine, eternal salvation granted immediately by God to those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is one of my many favorite verses. If you listen to J. Vernon McGee, he had every other verse as one of his favorite verses. So I thought I'd just rephrase that and say this is one of my many favorite verses. I haven't defined many. Many is a big number.

Anyway, in Acts 16.30, and this is a Philippian jailer, I believe. So he brings out Paul and Silas.

It says, after he brought them out, he said, sirs, What must I do to be saved? And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. So he's saying, you know, but he himself will be saved. There's no issue here. If you lose some rewards, in a way, good riddance. They're not worthy of God's kingdom, but you will be saved.

And then he even makes another further statement, which I find challenging. So it says, yet so as through fire. And this kind of speaks of, so I went to Weiss translation here to kind of get a picture of what I thought was going on here. But being saved thus, it will be as escaping destruction in the midst of the fire, which burns up his works. So it seems like our works and our person are somewhat interrelated here.

And God is pointing out that no, This purging of these worthless works is not going to affect you. You're going to make it through just fine. I think we all have seen people trying to picture this, a guy with a suit on, his suits. either on fire or smoke, like he just made it through the fire in heaven there. I don't know whether that's accurate or not, probably not. But anyway, the fire is not going to affect our salvation because it's based upon Christ and totally secure. But the works will be lost, and in a way we want them lost because they don't glorify Him.

Okay, so let's move on here. Now, if you thought that verse was difficult, this verse is even more difficult. But actually, I think it's very explainable. So, this is the one, let me read the verse first. It says, Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? Well, something that helps tremendously in this verse is to look, and I didn't see this when I looked at it.

The you here is actually plural, it's a plural you. You know, I'm in the South we say you all It occurs three times so you could you could render this verse as follows Do you plural? I'm sorry, do you plural not know that you plural are are a temple singular of God and That the Spirit of God dwells in you plural. Well, that may sound like gibberish, but let's see if we can understand that I believe the you plural is speaking of you all in the church at Corinth or you all at Holly Hills.

You all do not know that you all are the temple of God. That's really interesting because it gives us an aspect of God's working in a body of believers. The church at Corinth is a temple, singular, but is comprised of you all and you all make it a holy temple. The spirit of God dwells in the church at Corinth. So he meant that the collective body of believers that made up the local church as is clear from the use of plural you in the Greek and the singular temple. So the temple is a holy temple and it's a temple of God.

And we're going to see that also apply. Believers are also a temple as well. So the local church, the local body made up of believers is a temple of God. Okay, so a couple more thoughts on this. So temple here is the word naos, metaphor of the Christ's body, the local church. So this verse in Ephesians is kind of helpful. having been built, and I quote this actually before, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom also being built together into a temple of God.

Okay, so now He's established the fact that the church in Corinth is a temple of God. It's a holy temple of God because it's comprised of believers. It's a holy temple of God. So now he's going to point out that we need to be careful of what happens in God's holy temple at Holly Hills or at Corinth or any gathering of true believers. So he's going to give a warning here and the warning It sounds rather dire, but it hinges upon one word, which hopefully I can explain here.

It says, if any man destroys the temple of God, which would talk about, in this context, the church at Corinth, or the church at Holly Hills, or wherever. If any man destroys, it's assumed to be true. The key part here is the definition of this word for destroy. I think, and Vine points it out, So I think a good definition here is to see that it means to destroy by means of corrupting. So he's talking about corruption of the temple of God or the local church or the church of Corinth or it could be bringing into a worse state. So that's what he's talking about. I like to look at parallel, not parallel, other verses that use the same word. So here's the same word for destroy used in a different context.

In 1 Corinthians 15.33 it says, Do not be deceived, bad company corrupts good morals. So we surrendering of this first phrase in 17 is, If, as is the case, the assumed to be true part, anyone morally corrupts the inner sanctuary or temple of God, that's the first phrase.

So that's what he's going to warn us about. He's going to say something bad's going to happen. He said it shouldn't be happening, but if it does happen, something's going to happen. Here's what's going to happen. So first of all, let me step back for a second.

How were they corrupting or destroying, corrupting, or how were they making worse the temple of God at Corinth there? So I believe they were corrupting it. As we saw earlier, and this is just a quote out of Macaulay, but it's actually just quoting these two verses.

You know, in Corinth there, and we studied this right at the very beginning of the book, you know, where they're touting, I'm of Paul, I'm of Paulus, I'm of Cephas, I'm of Christ. They all have their person that they want to focus on rather than focus upon God, they had to focus on the man that they liked, that they could understand God, understand things of God. And that caused division, that caused people not to be on the same page. People were saying, well Paul is better than Apollos, he speaks better, or Apollos speaks better, or whatever it might be. And then some would say, I'm very pious, I'm of Christ, so I'm obviously on the right page here.

And that's what was going on. So here's what Paul says, and he says, God will destroy him. And I think it's, I like the way we springs it across, trying to bring the definition of the word, the person will, the person, this person, God will bring to a place of ruin or a worse state. So actually we're going to see that down the road here. Peace.

We're going to see, as we get more into the book of first Corinthians, we see a man, a very sinful action. He was having relationships with his father's wife, apparently his stepmother, I guess it would be. And so God, the church had to leave the church. He had to be put out of the church. So we're going to see that down the road. So he's going to say, well, the motivation here is, and we saw this, for the temple of God is holy. And that is what you are. God does not want unrighteous actions going on in his church.

The temple of God is holy. Every believer is holy. And then we have a verse here that kind of speaks to the holiness of the believer. 1 Corinthians 6 19. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have from God and that you are not your own. So the temple of God is holy, the local body of believers is holy, and individual believers are holy. And that's kind of a good thing to keep in your head as you think about the interactions with our brothers and sisters at our local temple, as he says here, that we're dealing with something that God has said is holy. The word holy is to be set apart. We're set apart for a purpose, to glorify Him. So it's important to remember that individual believers and then collectively were holy as well.

Okay, then my last thought here from Chafer, and this is kind of going back to the reassurance that Paul mentioned. And Chafer says here, it cannot be too strongly emphasized that this judgment, the judgment seat of Christ, is unrelated to the problem of sin. Sin issue has been dealt with by Christ on the cross that is more for the bestowing of rewards than for rejection or failure. It is clearly asserted in 1 Corinthians 4-5, I actually quoted this earlier, that in spite of all failures, every Christian man and woman shall have praise from God. And that's at that reward ceremony. So we're going to look at that wonderful reward ceremony as something to look forward to. We'll receive praises from God for our trust and faith in Him.

I'm done for right now, so we'll just pray and then Bob's going to play a couple of songs here for us. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You so much, Lord, for this time in Your Word. Thank You for the marvelous truths that are there. We pray that the Holy Spirit would open our eyes and understanding to see the truths that we have in Your Word. In Christ's name, Amen.