The Upbuilding of God’s Church | Rev. Hal Hall

Welcome to the podcast of Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.

Join us as we dive into this week's sermon that challenges our hearts and minds to grow closer to Christ.

We pray that your heart is inspired and transformed by God's Word.

A reading from St.

Paul's second letter to the Corinth Corinthians, chapter twelve, verses eleven through twenty-one.

I have been a fool.

You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you.

For I was not at all inferior to these super apostles, even though I am nothing.

The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.

For in what were you less favoured than the rest of the churches, except that I myself did not burden you?

Forgive me this wrong.

Here for the third time I am ready to come to you, and I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours, but you for children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.

I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.

If I love you more, am I to be loved less?

But granting that I myself did not burden you, I was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by the seat.

Did I take advantage of you through any of those whom I sent to you?

I urged Titus to go, and sent the brother with him.

Did Titus take advantage of you?

Did we not act in the same spirit?

Did we not take the same steps?

Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you?

It is in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ, and all for your upbuilding, beloved.

For I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish, that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.

I fear that when I come again my God may humble me before you, and I may have to mourn over many of those who sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and sensuality that they have practiced.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Good morning, Christ Church.

That was really bad.

We're going to try that one more time.

Good morning.

Good morning.

That was so much better.

It is so good to see everybody here this morning.

My name is Hal Hall, and I have the honor and privilege of serving as the uh care ministry pastor.

And and so before we get into the message today, I just want to say a word of thanks to Bradley and to Perry for that beautiful dual, what do you, whatever you call that, dual piano something another.

But it was so good, so good today.

So let's let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today, God, in this beautiful place that you have provided for us, God.

And we pray, Lord, as we move into this time of hearing your word, God, that our hearts and minds would be open, that we would be able to receive what you have to say to us here this day.

And Father, I pray that we would be able to lay aside all of the cares of this world.

Lord, all of the hurts, all of the failures, all of the grief that we may be carrying with us, and that we would we might be able to focus totally and completely on the word that you have prepared for our ears to hear.

God, and I pray that we won't just be hearers only of your word, but that we would leave here as doers of your word.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

In the year 1666, the city of London, England burned.

In Old St.

Paul's Cathedral, a church that was nearly 600 years old at the time, it collapsed into a heap of ashes and rubble, along with 87 other churches throughout the city of London.

And so the skyline of London for a period of time, a season, where that great cathedral once had a prominent place, was now just scorched stone and blackened timber.

And so out of the ruin of that experience, a young architect named Christopher Wren was given an almost impossible task.

And that task was to rebuild St.

Paul's Cathedral literally from nothing.

And so it took him 35 years to complete that task.

35 years.

That's longer than many careers last.

And one of the stories that came out of the building and the rebuilding of St.

Paul's Cathedral is this.

One day, Christopher Wren happened to be walking kind of incognito throughout the construction project.

And legend has it that he goes up to three different people, three different uh men, laborers who were doing the exact same thing.

They were laying bricks one on top of the other.

And he goes up and he asks each one of them the exact same question.

And the question was this What are you doing?

What are you doing?

That was the question.

And so the first laborer he comes up to, he asked that question.

He said, What are you doing?

And so without even looking up, that laborer said, I'm laying bricks.

And he just continued laying bricks, one on top of the other, without ever looking up.

He comes to another guy and he's doing the exact same thing.

And he asks him that exact same question, What are you doing?

And so this guy, he wiped the sweat off of his brow a little bit.

He did look up and he said, I'm earning five shillings a day.

And Christopher Wren walks a little bit further and he sees another laborer doing the exact same thing, and he asked him again the exact same question.

What are you doing?

And this time the man straightened up, he looked, he stood up and he looked Wren in the eye, and he said, I am helping Sir Christopher Wren build a great cathedral to the glory of God.

Three men, same bricks, same mortar, doing the exact same tasks, breathing the exact same dust in their lungs from that construction site, but three entirely different visions of what they were doing with their lives.

And that story has stuck with preachers for 300 years because it asked a question that we all have to ask ourselves from time to time, and one that we're going to ask ourselves here this day.

What are you doing?

What are you doing with your life?

What are you building?

Now, when we look at our text today, Paul has spent almost four chapters.

We've been in 2 Corinthians now for a while, and he spent four chapters defending his ministry.

In chapters 10 and 11, and now into chapter 12, he's defending himself against these what he calls super apostles, these guys who are coming into Corinth with slick talk, and they've got signs and wonders, and they've got all these kinds of things, but the one thing they don't have is the gospel.

The one thing they don't have is the message of the cross.

And so they look a lot better on the outside than they do on the inside, if you know what I'm talking about.

And so, Paul, what has he done?

He's boasted about his weakness instead of his strengths.

He's talked about that thorn in the flesh that we talked about last week, and that he begged God to remove.

And he says one of the strangest things that an apostle could actually say.

He said, When I am weak, then I am strong.

And now he br is beginning to bring this long defense of himself.

He's bringing this to a close, and Paul does something, something interesting.

He turns from defending his name, defending his ministry, to inspecting the foundation of the church.

And he stops asking this question, who gets credit for this building?

And he starts asking the question that really matters.

What builds up the church of Jesus Christ?

That's the question that really matters.

What builds up the church of Jesus Christ?

So God does not build his church through things like personalities or pride or power plays.

He builds his church through humble leaders, through sacrificial love, through spiritual integrity, through honest repentance.

And that's the things that we're going to talk about today.

And that fits right where we've been throughout this entire series.

And remember the title of this series.

The name of the series is The Prodigal Church, because this church in Corinth, the prodigal church, it keeps wandering off in search of something impressive, more impressive than the gospel.

Better platforms, bigger names, flashier gifts and signs and wonders.

And every time Paul begins to drag this church back to the unglamorous foundation of Christ crucifying.

And he brings it back to people who desire to follow him with all their heart.

So we're going to walk through these 11 verses together.

And as we do, we're going to go back to that question that Christopher Wren asked.

What are we building?

What are we doing?

What are we building?

And so that's not just Christopher Wren's question, but that's our question too.

That's Paul's question, and a question that we need to continue to ask ourselves ever so often.

And so Paul is writing this church.

He's writing them because he's trying to build a healthy church.

This is a prodigal church, remember.

And what he wants this church to be is he wants it to be a healthy church.

And for Paul, that starts with one place and it starts with humility.

And so healthy churches are built by humble leaders.

Is that on the screen for us?

So let's say that first thing.

Healthy churches are built by humble leaders.

Can we say that?

Healthy churches are built by humble leaders.

Listen to what Paul says again.

This is something I think that Paul really doesn't like writing, but listen to what he says.

He says, I have been a fool.

Now who wants to write that?

Anybody want to write that?

Anybody want to say that?

Well, I've been a fool.

But Paul writes that.

He says, I have been a fool.

You force me to it.

I was not all inferior, not at all inferior to these super apostles.

I love that term that he gives them, but even though I am nothing.

And he and he he adds that last phrase, that phrase of humility.

And I don't think the apostle Paul again likes writing these words.

I have been a fool.

You force me to it, even though I am nothing.

And those are the words of a humble pastor being forced against every instinct to talk about himself, because the people he loved to serve, he served for eighteen years, he served the or eighteen months, rather, they would not they would not go to bat for him.

And so remember the situation again.

False teachers, super apostles.

They had come to Corinth, polished speech, impressive credentials, but not one ounce of the cross in their message.

The Corinthians were dazzled by them, and they had started measuring Paul against them.

And so notice the difference, though.

Notice the difference between Paul and these superapostles.

What are the superapostles trying to build?

They are trying to build a platform unto themselves.

What is Paul trying to build?

Paul is trying to build the Church of Jesus Christ.

That's the difference.

You remember when John the Baptist was having his ministry, preaching in the wilderness, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and he and he, as he's baptizing, Jesus begins his ministry.

And he begins seeing people in his ministry following after Jesus.

And John the Baptist makes this statement, a famous statement.

He says, He must increase, talking about Jesus.

He says, He must increase and I must decrease.

And that's the whole point.

That's even what Paul is trying to say.

He, Jesus must increase, but I must decrease.

The superapostles in Correp, they were trying to increase themselves, increase their platform, increase their ministry.

And Paul was trying to increase the visibility of Christ.

He was trying to promote Christ and Him crucified and not Himself.

And he does that over and over and over again.

I think about John Wesley's prayer, a prayer that's still prayed in what's called the Wesley Covenant service.

And that service is held in Wesleyan and Methodist churches to this very day.

And maybe you've heard this prayer before.

This is a prayer of John Wesley.

He prays, Let me employ it be employed for thee or laid aside for thee.

Let me be exalted for thee or be brought low for thee.

Let me be full, let me have be empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

And that prayer is the prayer of a man who stopped keeping score, one who doesn't care about himself, but one that cares more about Christ and him crucified than anything else.

He doesn't care which bricklayer he is, but he's simply building for the glory of God.

Whether anybody notices or not, that is his main task to build for the glory of God.

Every time we start measuring a pastor or a ministry or a worship leader by how impressive they look or those kinds of things, we start building on the wrong thing.

We've started building a monument unto ourselves and calling that a cathedral to God.

And that is exactly what Paul is warning against.

That is exactly the heart of a prodigal church.

The prodigal church keeps confusing the applause of the crowd with the approval of Christ.

So back to the question: what are we building?

Healthy churches are built by humble leaders.

That means from the top down, from the pastor to the Sunday school teachers to every single person on every committee and every ministry involved.

Healthy churches are built by humble leaders.

And so one of the things that we all need to have is a humble heart.

A humble heart.

Healthy churches are built by humble leaders, but Paul didn't finish there.

Healthy churches are also built by something else.

They are built by sacrificial love.

Look again at what Paul says.

Paul says, I seek not what is yours, but you.

That's a remarkable statement.

Paul says, seek not what is yours, but you.

I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.

So I'm going to read that phrase one more time.

I seek not what is yours, but you.

That is one of the most remarkable statements I think a pastor can say, especially in the modern day, one of the most remarkable statements that a pastor could say.

I seek not what is yours but is you.

So what Paul is saying, he's not, he's saying that I'm not looking for your tithes and offerings.

That's not what I want.

He says, I want your heart.

I want you to know Jesus.

I want you to know Jesus the way I know him.

That's what he wants beyond anything else.

And if we're honest today, when we look at a lot of the churches today, megachurches and megachurch ministries, that's not what they're after.

They're wanting money and they're wanting buildings, they're wanting land, they're wanting this, that, and other things, bigger platforms and that kind of thing.

But when it comes to really wanting people's hearts, we have to ask the question: is that really what they're after?

But may it not be said of Christ Church, Memphis.

May it be said that what we really want is we want your hearts, we want you to know Jesus beyond anything else.

Many of you may be familiar with Billy Graham's most celebrated worship leader during his crusades.

His name was George Beverly Shea.

You may recognize that name.

And one of the most well-known songs that he ever sang during those early crusades was a song called I'd Rather Have Jesus.

And I think this is the exact sentiment that Paul is trying to convey here.

And just listen to the first verse in the chorus of this of this great song.

It goes like this I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold.

I'd rather be his than have riches untold.

I'd rather have Jesus than houses or land.

I'd rather be led by his nail pierced hands than to be the king of a vast domain or be held in sin's dread sway.

I'd rather have Jesus than anything this world affords today.

Paul is saying that it is not your riches that I want.

It's not your stuff, it's not your money, it's not your tithes and offerings, but I want you to know the Jesus that I know.

I want you to know him like I know him.

In verse fifteen he says, Paul writes, I will most gladly spend and be spent for your soul.

Think about that phrase.

I will most gladly spend and be spent for your soul.

Spend and be spent.

Now the language that Paul's writing in, this is what he's trying to convey.

He's not saying, he's not using the same word twice, but he's doing it this way.

He's saying, I will give until there is nothing left.

That's what Paul is saying.

He's saying, I will give, I will spend and be spent.

In other words, I will give until there's nothing left because your soul is worth it.

That's how important you are to me.

Your soul is to me, and your soul is to the kingdom.

I'm thinking about John Wesley and his and his charge to his preachers.

You know, he gave us a charge to his preachers, and it began by this.

He said to them, You have nothing to do but to save souls.

And then he used the same phrase.

So spend and be spent in this work.

Spend and be spit.

Give everything you have until there's nothing else to give, because the most important thing that there is is souls for the kingdom of God.

I mean, that was George Whitfield's prayer.

He's been he's been in the movies here recently, George Whitfield and the movie about him and Benjamin Franklin.

And one of the things that George Whitfield prayed is, Lord, give me souls or take my soul.

That was his prayer.

John Knox prayed, Lord, give me Scotland or I die.

He was more concerned about souls, about bringing people into the kingdom than they were about building an own platform for themselves.

And I pray that would be true of us as well.

Spend and be spent.

And why does he do that?

He does it because that is the faithful work of a shepherd.

Paul was trying to shepherd these people, and his example was Jesus.

And if you remember what Jesus says, he says, and he said, I am the good shepherd, and the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.

And so Paul was willing to spend and be spent, give everything that he had so that these people could know Jesus and that they would have eternity with him.

Now, what does that look like for you and me, to spend and be spent?

Now I could name a thousand things, but let me just name a few of those things.

It looks like a parent staying up late at night with a sick child, losing sleep that they'll know that they'll never get back because they love their child that much.

It looks like a faithful Sunday school teacher staying up late, working and praying over their lessons so that their class can know and understand the Word of God more clearer and that they can know Jesus better.

It's a faithful friend making a visit to a hospital in the middle of the night because they love their friend and they want their friend to be supported.

It's a church member carrying one of their fellow Sunday school uh classmates to cancer treatments.

It's a choir member showing up to rehearsal after work, working all day so that those that gathered in worship on Sunday morning can experience the presence of God through worship.

And I could name a hundred of other things or maybe a thousand other things.

But notice, though, something here.

Notice how Paul's enemies twist Paul's words or twist his actions.

In verse 16, he's he's throwing their own accusations back at them.

Listen to what he says.

He says, I was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by deceit.

So, in other words, even Paul's refusal to take their riches, their money, it got spun into a rumor that he was scheming and being deceitful in some way.

And so that's how cynical people spin true sacrificial love.

It gets reinterpreted as manipulation.

People who have never given their time, talent, and treasure for free assume that no one else has either.

So they think that they want something from them.

So here's the test for every church member, every ministry, every one of us.

Here's the here's the test.

What here's here's what we ask.

Are we asking?

What can the church do for me?

Is that the question that you're asking yourself?

What can the church do for me?

Or are you asking this question?

How can I spend myself for Christ and His people?

How can I spend and be spent for Christ and His people?

The first question.

The first question is a question that gets asked by most people, I would say.

And you know what that builds?

That builds consumers.

And how many people in church pews today are simply consumers?

They come to church for what the church can do for them.

I want to receive, I want to receive this Bible study.

I want to receive this, I want to receive that.

But the second question is this the second question builds a cathedral for the glory of God.

Sacrificial love raises a hard question of its own.

How do people know that it's real?

That's the real question.

And how do they know that it's real and it's not just a good show?

Paul answers that.

Paul answers that question with the next word that the church needs to hear, and it's the word integrity.

Integrity.

So back to the question again.

What are we building?

What are we doing?

What are we building?

So humble leaders, sacrificial love.

That's what we've talked about so far.

And so Paul adds a third piece to this puzzle, and he says, Healthy churches are built on spiritual integrity.

Now listen again to what Paul says.

He says, Did I take advantage of you?

Did Titus take advantage of you?

Did we not act in the same spirit?

Did we not take the same steps?

So here's the specific accusation that Paul was getting from the church.

So some in Corinth had claimed that Titus, that Paul had used Titus to secretly skim money off the top of the collection that he was raising for the people, the poor believers in Jerusalem.

And so Paul, he doesn't get defensive, but he asks questions.

And every one of those questions is a rhetorical question because there's a definite answer that they know the answer to.

Did I take advantage of you?

The answer?

No.

Did Titus take advantage of you?

And the answer to that question is a definitive no.

Did we not walk in the very same spirit, take the very same steps?

And the answer is yes we did.

So integrity is something that's not very complicated, but integrity is simply this.

Integrity is consistency.

Integrity is consistency.

The same spirit, the same steps Paul talks about, whether anyone's watching or not, that's integrity.

Consistency, whether anyone is watching or not.

In 1948, the young evangelist Billy Graham sat down with his team in a hotel room in Modesto, California, and he made a list of commitments in that hotel room.

And those commitments had to do with financial transparency, had to do with moral accountability, and it had to do with honest reporting of numbers and several other things.

And they did this because Billy Graham had watched other traveling evangelists not have integrity in their ministry, and he watched them have scandal after scandal and lose their ministry because of that.

And so they sat in that hotel room in Modesto, California, and came up with those things.

And they later called it the Modesto Manifesto.

I kind of like saying that, the Modesto Manifesto.

And Graham kept those commitments for the next 60 years of his ministry.

And you know his name in part today, not just because of the anointing that God gave him, but because he was true to those commitments that night in 1948 in that hotel room in Modesto, California.

Now, John Wesley kind of built the same kind of structure into early Methodism as well.

And if you're a student of early Methodism, you'll know something about John Wesley's class meetings and his society meetings and his band meetings.

And you may even also know one of the questions that they asked themselves over and over again.

And that question was this, how is it with your soul?

And so when they got into the into the into the class meeting, into the band meeting, they would ask themselves that question, how is it with your soul?

And it wasn't that John Wesley didn't trust his people, but he wanted, but he knew something that many of us need to be reminded of is that is that is that trust in and integrity is not done in isolation, but it's done in community.

In fact, John Wesley said this, and this kind of gets uh gets misinterpreted sometimes, but he says there is no holiness apart from social holiness.

Now he wasn't talking about, he wasn't talking about works of social justice, you know, feeding the hungry and and clothing the naked and visiting the prisons.

He wasn't talking about works of social justice, but he was talking about holiness in community.

There's no holiness apart from social holiness.

We need one another, and we need to ask ourselves that question: how is it with your soul?

Because that is a question that every single one of us needs to ask ourselves ever so often.

And maybe in your Sunday school class today, maybe in your small group sometime this week, that's a question that you need to bring up.

How is it with your soul?

And when we answer that question honestly, that's something about integrity.

I used to be a part of a small group when many years ago, I'm still a part of a small group, but many years ago, when I when I was a church planner back in the early 2000s, I had a group of men that we met together uh regularly every Friday morning, about six o'clock in the morning.

And we came to my office and there we met, but we kept a notebook.

We kept a notebook, and it was locked in the bottom desk drawer, bottom drawer of my desk.

And we kept that notebook, and every Friday morning we would bring out that notebook and we would go through the notebook and we would ask ourselves the question, how is it with your soul?

And we would literally say, What sins have you committed this week?

And what are you doing about it?

That's that's the Wesleyan question.

That's the Wesleyan way, right?

What sins have you committed?

What are you doing about it?

And we would go through everybody's name on the on the list and we would ask ourselves that question.

Well, here's the things that you're struggling with, here's your sins, and how have you dealt with that this week?

How have you done in this area of your life?

And that's integrity.

And we all need that kind of accountability because what that does is that breeds trust.

And when trust is broken, especially from leaders, when trust is broken, you've lost everything because trust is very hard to gain back.

And I've been a counselor long enough to know and sat enough, sat in many counseling situations with married couples when trust has been broken, to know that trust is extremely hard to build back.

And so we've got to ask ourselves that question so that we don't break trust.

How is it with your soul?

How is it with your integrity?

Are you a man?

Are you a woman of integrity?

And so we go back to that question again.

What is it that we're building?

What are you building?

Humble leaders, sacrificial love, integrity.

Those are important building blocks for a strong, healthy church, for a strong, healthy marriage, for a strong, healthy life.

If we don't have those things, then we don't have anything.

What are we building?

There's one more thing that we need to ask ourselves, one more thing, and it's this healthy churches are built through honest repentance.

I'm gonna add that word honest, through honest repentance.

A lot of us sometimes are not honest about our repentance, but we need honesty.

So listen again to what Paul says.

Paul says this it is in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ and all for your upbuilding, beloved.

Now that's that's the phrase right there.

The title of this message is the upbuilding of the church, right?

That's the title that's in your bulletin, the upbuilding of the church.

Verse 19.

So the whole sermon has been circling around this verse right here.

For your upbuilding, beloved.

Building up, not tearing down, not showing up, but building up.

Four chapters Paul has spent defending himself, all for this one phrase right here, for the upbuilding of the church.

For the upbuilding of the church.

And then Paul gets specific a little bit, and he really gets a little uncomfortable if we're honest with ourselves.

And he gets specific about the things that tear down the church, and he names them, he lists them.

In verse 20, he talks about quarreling and jealousy and anger and uh and hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, disorder.

And then in verse 21, he names these as well: impurity, sexual immorality, and sensuality.

Now, notice Paul doesn't sort these things into serious, into a serious sin bucket and a minor sin bucket, but he puts quarreling and gossip right next to sexual immorality on the list.

Why?

Because both of these things can wreck a church.

Both of these things can wreck a marriage, both of these things can wreck a life.

A congregation can be doctrinally sound and still be rotting on the inside because of gossip and jealousy just as much as sexual immorality in the church.

And so a congregation can have all of those things, but still be wrecked and rotten on the inside.

Now, there's one thing that I've noticed in all my life in the church.

I've noticed this in every church I've ever been in, before church and after church, there's congreg there's gatherings of people in hallways and parking lots after the church, you know, a small group of people.

And I like to think that a lot of times those little gatherings of people that we're talking about the church, you're talking about the sermon, you're talking about the Bible study, you're talking about the Sunday school lesson.

But I know very good and well that sometimes those little gatherings in the hallways and in the northx and out in the parking lot after church are people gossiping.

I mean, let's just be honest, right?

Did you see, did you hear about so-and-so?

And sometimes it's even beyond that.

Sometimes it's people, man, what can we do to get rid of our Sunday school teacher?

You know, we don't like the preacher.

What can we do to get rid of him?

If we're honest, that's what we would do.

A number of years ago, Renee and I, this is right around the time of COVID, just before COVID, Renee and I went to a conference at the Civic Center in Pensacola, Florida, was called Light the Fire Again.

And so back in the 90s, there was a wave of revival movements that had swept across the nation and many places around the world.

And so a lot of the leaders of those revival movements were coming together because they wanted to kind of recapture and pray for the next wave of revival that was going to hit America and the world.

And so Renee and I went and we wanted to be a part of that.

We wanted to pray into that.

We, whatever God was doing, we wanted to be a part of that.

So we went, and here's what I noticed.

So in the hallways of the Civic Center, in the stairwells of the Civic Center, in the even in the food lines and the food trucks that they were having, there were small groups of people.

But here's what I know.

I know that they weren't gossiping.

I know that they weren't quarreling.

You know what I know?

Because I saw tears on people's faces.

I saw people repenting of sin in those places.

Renee and I were a part of that group.

We saw them.

We were a part of them.

And here's what I also saw.

It was real because not only was it happening in the hallways, not only was it happening in the foyers, not only was it happening in the stairwells, but here's where else it was happening.

It was happening in the bathrooms.

People were gathered in the bathrooms praying for one another, seeking God together, weeping together in the bathrooms.

Now, Christ Church, here's my desire for Christ Church.

I want to see groups of people gathered in the hallways.

I want to see groups of people gathered in the narthex.

I want to see people gathered in the parking lots after church on Sunday mornings, but I don't want to see quarreling and bitterness and gossip and that kind of thing, but I want to see people praying.

I want to see people seeking God.

I want to see tears of repentance, and I want to see people, I want to see that happen even in the bathrooms of Christ Church.

Now, will somebody please say amen about that?

That's what I want to see.

That's my desire for Christ Church, Memphis.

That's my desire above everything else.

So every one of these four things, a humble leader, sacrificial love, integrity, and a heart that wants repentance instead of ruin, you can see all four of these things in one place.

You know where you see it above everything else?

You see it in the person of Jesus Christ.

That's where you see it.

Jesus was humble.

He did not account a quality with God, something to be exploited or grasped.

This is what Paul says in the book of Philippians, but he emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant.

Jesus spent himself.

He was spend and be spent.

He gave everything that he could, not just figuratively, but he gave it in actuality.

He laid down his life for the sheep.

He held nothing back.

And Jesus never had to manipulate anybody, anyone.

He didn't need to, because truth never needs tricks.

And Jesus is the one who makes repentance possible because he is the one that laid down his life so that he can remove our sin.

He is the greatest builder of all time.

We talked about building the we began talking about building St.

Paul's Cathedral out of ruins, Christopher Wren, but in reality Christ is the greatest builder of all time.

He is the greatest builder of all time.

So let's get back to Saint to Christopher Wren, finishing up St.

Paul's Cathedral.

He finished it in the year 1710.

He was 78 years old when he finally finished that building.

He spent 35 years of his life on that one project.

He died 13 years later in the year 1723, and he was buried there.

Where else would he be buried, right?

His life's work.

He was buried in the crypt of that very cathedral.

And if you visit St.

Paul's today, you can walk down into the crypt and find his tomb.

And there is no elaborate monument there.

There's no long list of accomplishments carved into the marble, just a plain Latin inscription composed by his son.

Now I may butcher the Latin, but I'm gonna try to do it this morning.

I worked on it for three days, but I'm probably gonna butcher it.

Lector C monumentum requirus Sir Cumspike.

That's it, Sir Cumspike.

And it says this, or means this reader, if you seek his monument, talking about Christopher Wren, this is his son doing it, writing this.

Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.

He didn't need he didn't need a statue with his name on it.

He didn't need a plaque because every dome, every brick, every stained glass window in that place, it was a cathedral that he built for one purpose, for the glory of God.

That was his legacy, and three hundred years later, people are still gathering in that place to worship the living God.

That's exactly what Paul is saying to the church at Corinth in these eleven verses.

He's saying, This was not about me.

It's not about me.

He plainly says, I seek not what is yours, but I seek you.

And everything he did, in Paul's words, was for their upbuilding, for their upbuilding.

And let me end with this.

Before I started storing all of my sermons and Bible studies and everything electronically, I used to print everything out and I'd have a three-hole punch and I would punch it and then I would put it in and store it in all of these black binders.

And I had tons of black binders in my library that had all my old sermons and all my old Bible studies in, and I would title everything.

I would put a scripture reference and I'd have the date.

And every so often I would pull out one of those black binders if I was kind of stumped on something, or if I knew that I had preached on a particular passage in the past, I would go back and find that passage and look at the research that I did for that particular moment.

Well, about seven or eight years ago, I was, I had pulled out, I was I had pulled out one of those binders because I was needing a little extra inspiration, you know, and I pulled out a sermon that I had preached in 1995.

Now I was 27 years old in 1995.

I hadn't even finished seminary yet.

And so I remember going back and reading that sermon, and you know, it wasn't particularly polished.

It wasn't theologically sharp or anything like that.

But get choked up.

Here's what I noticed about it.

And several others that I had read through that day.

And it was this.

That was it.

And 31 years later, a kid preacher isn't 27 years old anymore.

But he still wants the exact same thing.

I still want you to know Jesus.

I still want that with all my heart.

I want you to know the Jesus that I know.

So if you're looking for my monument, it's not in a binder on a shelf, it's not in a diploma on the wall or a title in front of my name or anything like that, but it's whether the people who have sat in front of me from 1995 to today, this morning, if you walk away knowing Jesus a little bit better than you did when you walked in.

That's the only cathedral that I ever want to build.

So here's Christopher Wren's question.

And here's Paul's question, and here's my question to you.

It's now your question.

What are you building?

What are you building?

Are you laying bricks?

Just going through the motions of the church, just showing up, checking a box?

Are you earning wages here for what you can get out of it?

What this church can do for you?

Or are you building a cathedral for the glory of God?

Spending yourself, your time, your love, your integrity, your very life for the upbuilding of the people who need Jesus just as much as you do.

Because in the end, every one of us is laying bricks of some sort.

We're building all building something.

And so we have to ask ourselves the question Who are we building it for?

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

And we pray.

Father, we thank you that you have given us your Son, Jesus.

And I pray, God, that this morning that we would know him like never before.

And that not only would we know him, but we would have a desire to know him better.

And that we would realize that we're all building something one brick at a time.

And Lord, and I pray that we just wouldn't be laying bricks.

I pray that we just wouldn't be buying our time, earning a shilling, five shillings a day, just getting what we can out of the church.

But Lord, I pray that we would be building something to the glory of God, building a church, building our lives, building our family, building our marriage, all to the glory of God.

May that be what we do because we love Jesus and we love what he has done for us, and we want other people to know him as well.

And I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the podcast for Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.

We pray that today's message has inspired and encouraged you in your walk with Christ.

To stay connected with our church community, visit us online at ChristchurchMemphis.org.

We hope to see you this upcoming Sunday for worship as we seek to glorify God and make disciples of Jesus Christ among all peoples.