Then Solomon said, the Lord has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud. I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever. While the whole assembly of Israel was standing there, the king turned around and blessed them. Then he said, praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who with his own hand has fulfilled what he promised with his own mouth to my Father David.
But he said, since the day I brought my people Israel out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city in any tribe of Israel to have a temple built, so that my name might be there. But I have chosen David to rule my people, Israel. My Father David had it in his heart to build a temple for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel. With the Lord said to my Father David, you did well to have it in your heart to build a temple for my name.
Nevertheless, you were not the one to build the temple, but your son, your own flesh and blood. He is the one who will build the temple in my name. The Lord has kept the promise he made. I have succeeded David my Father, and now I sit on the throne of Israel just as the Lord promised, and I have built the temple for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, and then going to verse 27.
But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built? You give attention to your servants' prayer and his plea for mercy, Lord my God.
Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence this day. May your eyes be open towards the temple night and day, this place of which you said, my name shall be there, so that you will hear the prayer your servant prays towards this place. Hear this application of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place. Hear from heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.
Our second reading is from 1 Corinthians 3, starting at verse 5. What after all is a palace, and what is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to believe as the Lord has assigned each his task. I planted the seed, and opposed watered it, but God is making it grow.
So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but only God who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. But we are co-workers in God's service. You are God's field, God's building.
By the grace God has given me, I laid out a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care, for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Christ, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person's work.
If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is built up, burnt up, the builder will suffer loss, but yet will be saved, even though only as one escaping through the flames. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Well, it is a real great delight to be with you this afternoon. I have been on the journey with the parish over the last five almost six years through this process, and to be here is fantastic. We are celebrating the near completion of the renovation, the renewal of the site. The foundation of this church was laid back in 1840 by Bishop Broughton.
The original church was built over a period of seven years between 1841 and 1846. As Justin mentioned, there was a substantial redevelopment that occurred. There was an Edmund Blackett designed it. Eventually it was completed in 1878, so I forgot the dates are right.
And although not quite as substantial, there was another significant renovation in 1938, 1800 pounds in that day. So that was a significant amount of money. It was work on the hall. My point is this.
Today we are both continuing and celebrating that proud tradition of building on what has been before. It has been a church here since 1840, but it has been remodeled, extended, redeveloped over time to adapt it for the next generation of ministry. In today's passage from One Corinthians 3, Paul refers to building on work laid by another. He says, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building upon us.
That metaphor would have had a particular significance for the people in Corinth, because at that point in time, the city was in a pretty perpetual state of rebuilding and restoration. Corinth had been a major city state from the 6th century BC, but the Romans had utterly destroyed us in 146 BC, and it had been uninhabited for about a century until it was refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC. The Romans then began a program of rebuilding and restoring the old Greek city, and in many places what they were doing was restoring Greek temples based on their original Greek foundations. For example, if you go to the city of ancient Corinth today, it's dominated by the temple of Apollo.
That temple was put up probably in the 6th century BC. At the time Paul was riding the letter, that temple was being remodeled to turn it from a temple of Apollo into a temple where the emperor would be worshipped, and so they were building on a foundation already laid. So for the Corinthians, the Paul to use this metaphor, they would have immediately thought, oh yeah, kind of what's happening down the road of the temple, except that Paul picks up this idea of building on a foundation and uses it metaphorically to refer to gospel work. He's kind of making the point that we're no longer in that era that's reflected in our other reading today from one Kings.
That is an era where God is worshipped in a physical building, and the most important thing you can do for that God is to build a place where you can go and worship Him. And in a sense, I'm making the same pivot here, as Paul does in the passage. While we rightly give thanks to God for the renewal work here, and what it means for this building, this both beautiful and beautifully functional renovation project, the primary focus of today should be both giving thanks for and looking forward to what this work enables us to do, and that is gospel work. That's what Paul does in the metaphor.
Building on a foundation is about recognizing more than 180 years of faithful gospel ministry that has happened in this place, and looking forward to what God will do in the next one and two centuries before us. In the passage of 1 Corinthians 3, Paul uses two metaphors to describe both ministers and ministries. He begins by talking about sowing, seed, and then he switches to building a building. To understand why he's using these metaphors, it's probably helpful to have just a little bit of an understanding of the background, the situation in Corinth at the time.
It's clear from the beginning of this chapter that the Corinthians had been overvaluing certain leaders. The apostle Paul had planted the church there after Paul's ministry, another man called a polis had come along. Evidently, a polis had different style, different gifts, and after that, a polis left somebody else came, and the church was divided. There were factions, there was a Paul faction and a polis faction.
Paul tackles this head on in the first of our verses verse 5. What is a polis? What is Paul? He's the punchline.
Only servants through whom you came to believe. His point is that neither he nor a polis are the great ones. They are servants. It's not their ministry that was happening at the church at Corinth.
It was God's ministry. And they're just kind of bit players in this big drama. And that's true of all Christian ministry, because it's true of Christ's own ministry. Christ came not to be served, but to serve, to minister, and to give his life as a ransom.
That's what genuine ministry always looks like. We need to keep the proper perspective on God's role and ours. That's Paul's point. Paul is saying Paul can't, a polis can't boast in what's going on at the church at Corinth, because God was the one who does the actual work of growing the church.
He says in verse 7, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything but only God who makes it grow. The Corinthians were evaluating their leaders by the wrong criteria. They were looking for success and achievement and worldly sophistication. Paul on the contrary says that all of the leaders in the church are nothing more than tools in God's hands.
So we mustn't overvalue the individual, but at the same time we mustn't underrate what God does through his servants. Paul tells us verse 5, the Lord has assigned to each his task. Each one of us, not just an each one of us, has a role to play in building the church. Each one of us is called to a task of service.
Interestingly, God has chosen the weak and fallible human vessels to be his instruments to save this world. And so Paul, having kind of downplayed himself and a policy goes on to say verse 9, we are God's co-workers. I love the paradox in what's being said. Don't overrate the minister, because God does all the real work, but at the same time don't underrate them, because the ministry that we all do together is God's work.
We are partners, co-workers, we've got himself in saving a world. And so the history of this church is not told and shouldn't be told as the achievements of a succession of great rifters. We should be focusing on the ministry that God has done through his faithful servants, lay and ordained, God's faithful workers, faithfully sowing the seed of the gospel, some watering its own nurturing the first signs of growth, some providing ongoing nourishment, raising upper harvest and so on. Faithful men and women throughout the centuries, the decades and centuries.
Each doing, as Paul says, as the Lord has assigned them their task. At that point, Paul switches metaphors. In verses 9 to 15, he switches from the agricultural metaphor, you are God's field, to the construction metaphor. You are God's building.
In verses 12 to 15, Paul contrasts two different ways of building. You can either build in such a way that what is built survives when tested by fire, or you build something that will be consumed by fire. I had to smile, I didn't know this before I got here tonight, but I was talking to Graham, he said the one reason why we haven't got the construction certificate yet is because we need to put in special fire detectors to make sure that this building will survive in a fire. But in verse 12, Paul sets out two different types of building materials, imperishable materials like gold, silver and costly gemstones, and perishable materials like wood, hay and straw.
Those two sets of materials represent those two different ways of building. Let's take a moment to unpack Paul's metaphor. In verses 10 and 11, the building that he is talking about, and the literal building, he's talking about building up God's church. Paul says that the foundation of the church, that's clear, that's Jesus, that's the message about the gospel.
And he's now saying that's what he did, is he came in and he planted a message about Jesus. And other people are now coming in, they're building on that foundation, meaning they're building up the church at Corinth, building it up by bringing more people to Christ, building it numerically, but also building it up to maturity. Paul says to us, though, in verse 10, each one should be careful how he builds, because some so-called church work is of no lasting value. It's just wood, hay and straw.
And perhaps Paul has in mind some of the stuff that's happening in the church at Corinth, some of the bickering that's going on, some of the showy ministry that's just being done for show, and Paul is saying, no, each one should be careful how you build. There are all kinds of things that you can do in a church to get more people in the church building. You can put on lots of the track of your programs, you can provide first-class facilities, and hey look, we're doing that aren't we? You can have entertaining preaching each week, you can be the kind of leader that strokes people's egos and makes them feel good about being there, but at the end of the day, most of that's not going to produce real growth.
And by that I mean kingdom growth, that is something building on the foundation of Jesus, because unless what we're doing in church is bringing people to Jesus, teaching them to depend on him, to follow him, to live their lives, to begin to model him in all their things, the work that we're doing that's not that. It's nothing more than wood, hay and straw. And on the day that Jesus returns to judge the earth, all of our works will be revealed for what they were, either perishable or enduring. Paul is not saying that if we work harder now, we'll have more riches in heaven.
The reward in heaven that Paul is talking about is explained in verse 14. The reward is verse 14, if what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. So the reward in heaven is seeing the thing that we have built survive, that the fruit of your ministry is itself the reward. Suppose you use your labors faithfully to teach a Sunday school class or a scripture class or meeting up with people for coffee one by one and through that.
People come to know the Lord Jesus and grow up to faith in him. On that final day, the kids who came to faith in your SRE class or in your Sunday school class, they will be in heaven with you. They will share it with you for all eternity. That is your reward.
Paul says elsewhere, on Thessalonians 2, that the Thessalonians Christians, they are the crown in which he will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes. Paul's reward in heaven is not some special real estate, an extra mention because of all of his hard work. It's the people that he's brought his life into in this world who are there to share the next world with him. They are the gold, the silver, the gemstones that survives through the fire to the other side.
And this together with what Paul said earlier about different people in different stages of ministry, it doesn't matter whether you were the one who planted the seed or warded it or tended it or discipled it or all of that is the gospel work that builds the church. That is the thing that will be your reward in the world to come. Paul speaks to a very different alternative in verse 15. The person's life's work is nothing more than wood hay and straw.
That work is burnt up. Paul says that that person himself will be saved but only as one escaping through the flames. We live on the edge of a bushfire zone and there was a bushfire, admittedly a ways away, and we have a plan when that kind of thing happens and there are certain things that we grab, wedding photos, some financial papers, things like that. We have a go bag just in case of fire.
But nothing happened, praise God. But just imagine if you didn't even have time to grab the go bag, you literally flee from the house and everything of this world gets burnt up in the flames. Paul is saying that that will be like on the final day for the person who has invested all of their life in the things of this world, or as Jesus uses a slightly different metaphor, investing in treasures here on earth where more than rust destroy. Where they haven't bent as it were, putting their treasures in heaven where more than rust cannot destroy.
That's the case whether you spend your life pursuing the things of this world, the treasures and the trinkets of this world, or even if your ministry is so called nothing more than just padding the numbers in church. What really counts is the gospel ministry that endures all eternity. And that's why we're here today because we are both looking back at 180 years of careful building, and I don't mean the physical building, I mean gospel building, building on the foundation of Christ that's been happening here since 18th. Since that foundation stone was 18, 1840.
The people of a generation who have invested their lives in the gold, silver and costly stones of gospel ministry that means there is still a church here today and growing. But today is not primarily about looking back, it's actually about looking forward to what God will do in the next stage of this church's history through the renewal project and the extra opportunities that the gospel ministry that the facilities bring. Remember, the building itself is not the goal, the silver, the costly gemstones. I'm really looking forward to having a look, I understand it's pretty spectacular, but that's not the point.
The spectacular thing is what God will do with this building in order to grow his kingdom. Paul ends the passage, this is where I will end, with an important reminder about why this is so important. Our ministry matters because this is the means by which God grows his church, and the church is God's temple. Not the temple in Jerusalem anymore, certainly not the temple of Apollo in Corinth.
No. Paul says in verse 16, don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst. That you there is plural, that is you Corinthians, you garrison church, you are God's temple. In our individual, individual, see mine steps, sometimes we miss the significance of the plural.
God dwells amongst us by his Spirit. He is doing a spiritual work amongst us as we gather together as a church. In your Testament, the physical temple of Jerusalem was God's dwelling place on this earth. It was the place where you went to do business with God.
That's what we heard about in our reading from one Kings. But since Jesus, there has been a massive shift. The priority is no longer to build a house, a temple for God to dwell in, because the building that God dwells in is in fact people. This church, this gathering of people, not the building, is where it all happens.
This body of Christ is the place where God dwells by his Spirit, transforms them into his likeness. You are God's temple. This church is the engine room for God's growth. This renovation provides new opportunities for the building on a foundation already laid.
One Corinthians 3 encourages us to do this work, all of us as servants of the Lord, who do the tasks assigned to us, neither thinking too lowly of ourselves nor too highly of ourselves. So let us build God's temple by being spiritual builders. And as we do this, let us test the quality of each of our work to ensure that we are building on a foundation of Christ, building a building that will last into all eternity. Amen.