Securing The Foundations

"God has already placed Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation, and no other foundation can be laid." God has already placed Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation, and no other foundation can be laid, should be laid. This foundation is the one we want and the one we must secure. No other foundat1on ought anyone attempt to lay except Jesus Christ himself.

As you and I experience this church, I am quite confident that it seems very different now from what it was only a few years ago, and for some of you, utterly unlike what it was many years ago. You have undergone considerable change.

Let me just highlight that for you out of my own admittedly limited experiences. I can attest to the degree and the rapidity of change, as I have gone through some materials here – reports, bulletins, other documents that are as recent as five and six years old – I read all kinds of names that I do not recognize. You had as leaders in this congregation only a few years ago people who are not here any longer. Some of them are in other churches, some are inactive. But it strikes me as though that bulldozer that was at work at Four Corners School came in here too and swept away lots of folks, overnight and with terrible suddenness. Change, fast and furious.

And then I have been visiting, in a small way, but some, among inactive church members. I have been listening, as best I can, to some stories. And I am struck by the fact that there are out there now a whole host of people who feel as though their church has been swept away, that the church they knew is no longer here. Oh, there is something here that carries the name of Takoma Park Baptist Church, oh there is a building here with which they are familiar, but for a host of people the church they knew is gone, and whatever is here appears to be strange and forbidding and even painful.

Now what do I say to folks like this? How can you and I who are here respond to persons who have seen only the bulldozers of change and who have not allowed themselves to experience the painstaking labors of building?

I think we have to say to them and to ourselves, God has placed Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation, and no other foundation can or will be laid. No other foundation can or will be laid other than faith in Jesus Christ, and the first lesson of my parable – if we keep and secure that foundation, even though what once was here is gone or changed, we will be ready to build whatever is right and appropriate for now. On the foundation which is still here, providing we secure it well – on the foundation of the lordship of Christ, we can still build for a new generation. No other foundation can anyone lay than the one which God has laid, even Jesus Christ himself.

Now if you know something about the Corinthian church in the first century, you know that it was a church in conflict, a church which had experienced, among other things, a crisis of leadership. Whom would they follow? Whose pattern would they adopt?