Ravi Zacharias told of a visit to Ohio State University to speak. He said, “As I was being driven to the lecture, we passed the new Wexner Art Center. The driver said, ‘This is a new art building for the university. It is a fascinating building designed in the post-modern view of reality.’” Zacharias reported that the building had no pattern. The staircases went nowhere. There were pillars that supported nothing. The architect had designed the building to reflect how he saw life. It went nowhere and it was mindless and senseless. The lecturer asked his driver, “Did they do the same thing with the foundation?” The driver laughed and answered, “Oh, you can’t do THAT with a foundation.”
A building is only as good as its foundation. If the foundation is faulty, the building is doomed; but, if the foundation is solid, the building will stand a long time. If a religion is built on a doctrine, a man, or a particular method, it will not stand. The church is built on the foundation which is Jesus Christ, and individual Christians stand there as well.
We are builders. Our work of building starts when we are born. As babies, we spend our energy and effort building bodies and vocabularies. As young adults, we build knowledge, skills, and relationships with others. We may even build a marriage, and, together, with a spouse, we will build a house, a home, and a family. More building involves businesses, bank accounts, and estates. We all build because we are builders.
I don’t know what you are concentrating on right now, but you are building something. And you are one of two different kinds of builders. If you are not already, let me encourage you to build your “house” on the rock. Even in the rains, and floods, and winds, it will not fall, “because it had been founded on the rock” (Matt. 7:24). Great will be the fall of the foolish man who builds his “house” on the sand (Matt. 7:26, 27).
On the foundation that is the Christ, we do more than build our own lives. We also help to build the lives of others. That work may be compared to gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and straw (cf. 1 Cor. 3:10-15). Some of them will endure, and some of them will perish, but we can still be saved if our “house” endures the “fires” of life.
God is a builder. He told Noah to build an ark, Moses to build a tabernacle, David to build a nation, Solomon to build a temple, and Nehemiah to build a wall. Could God be building you and using you as a “living stone” (1 Pet. 2:5) to build up His church? Be with the Salem church of Christ next week as we study “The Builders” and see how we can build on the foundation “which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11).
–Andy