Grow Up, Look Up, Build Up

Date: 18 May 2025, 9.30 am

Speaker: Ps Luwin Wong Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 3:1-17

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TRANSCRIPT

One of the most entertaining aspects of every general elections, are undoubtedly the campaign rally speeches delivered by the various candidates.

Every now and again, they put up these ex-generals, you know, guys who has been serving in the army for 30 odd years, speaking exclusively to soldiers, and now they have to address the general public for the first time in their lives, and you can see them trying their level best not to open their speech with “good morning gennermen”. Good evening, residents of so-and-so GRC.

Hearing them takes me back to my NS days. When I was training to be a sergeant, there was this guy in my platoon, I don’t remember his name, everyone just called him sotong. Why? Because he sotong lah. Blur like anything.

I remember one time, we were outfield, and he lost his rifle magazine – the container where we store our ammunition. I told him, “You better tell sergeant”. He went, “Sergeant I lost my magazine.” Sergeant said, “You lost your magazine? Congratulations. What magazine? For your sake, I hope it was 8 days.”

Not only does he frequently misplaces things, he seemed unable to do the most basic of military tasks. Like, assembling his rifle properly. “Luwin my rifle is faulty” “Huh? Let me see. It’s not faulty lah, you didn’t put in the firing pin. Where’s your firing pin?” “Uh, hey guys, anyone saw my firing pin.”

And we lost track of the number of times we said to him, “Sotong, when you enlist they didn’t send you to BMT ah? All these things we learnt in BMT what? Few weeks time you’re going to be 3rd sergeant leh. You still behaving like recruit”.

And it’s not just the army where we meet such people isn’t it? We meet them in the office too. Not in mine, obviously. But perhaps in yours. People who behave beneath expectations. Who ought to know better by now.

We find these people at home as well. We tell the kids, you’re 7 year old now, you’re in primary school, you’re no longer a baby, don’t behave like a baby, feed yourself, dress yourself, learn to do things by yourself.

It also applies to the adults in the home. Wives will tell their husbands. Can you behave like an adult, the kids are watching, they’re picking up from you.

And friends, we find them in the church as well. This happens in the church as well.

1 CORINTHIANS 3:1-4 1 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?

He calls them infants. Why? Because they are behaving like people of the flesh, they are of the flesh, behaving in human way, being merely human.

What are they supposed to be, if not human? How are they supposed to be behaving, if not like people of the flesh? Instead of infants what should they be?

He told them, just a few verses prior:

1 CORINTHIANS 2:6-7, 13 6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

Instead of infants, they were to be mature. Instead of merely human, they were supposed to be spiritual people, people who obey the Holy Spirit and not the sinful flesh. Spiritual people, who live above their fallen nature, who transcends the flesh, for they are now, spirit-filled, spirit-led, spiri-tual.

We are Christians, not Adamians. We do not live on the level of our base instincts, and natural desires. On the contrary, we deny ourselves, our flesh, and walk in step with a Crucified Christ.

What does it look like, when Christians behave as though they were of the flesh and mere humans?

In this instance, it is seen in jealously and strife, brought about by the pride of life.

For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?

Jealously and strife, owing to the pride of life.

So tell me friends, is there jealously in your life? Is there strife with others in your life? And does it boil down to the pride within you?

Because there’s where jealousy comes from. All your comparing, and competing, stems from a desire to win, to be better, not a better version of yourself, just better than the people around you.

With social media, that’s becoming a more of a problem than ever, comparing and competing with the images and experiences of your friends that you see online – their birthday parties, their wedding celebrations, their vacations to exotic locations. You feel you need them all as well.

You don’t want to feel left out. You don’t want to be lesser than, you don’t want to lose out. And for no other reason than your pride telling you, “you deserve it, you ought to have it, why not you”. You, you, you.

And that mentality, naturally, inevitably, lends itself to strife. Because pride is essential competitive.

And on this point, I can do no better than to read to us what CS Lewis has to say about pride. I quote:

“We say that people are proud that they are rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud that they are richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.

It is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.”

So pride, which inevitably leads to jealousy, also issues forth in strife and enmity.

It happens at home between husbands and wives, each trying to jostle to be at the top of the family hierarchy, it happens between siblings. And it happens between Christians.

The Pharisees as a sect may have died out. But their spirit remains in Christians, whenever we imagine that our law-keeping, our good behavour, the percentage we tithe, the number of hours we serve, the sacrifices we make, the measure of our fervour and our zeal, somehow makes us better than others.

If today, as a Christian, you have jealousy and strife in your life, whether at work, or at home or in church. Paul says, “grow up”. Grow up!

How do we grow up? There’s only one way. We grow up into Christ. Christians grow up by becoming more like Christ. And the good news, Paul says, in v16,.

 16b we have the mind of Christ.

You grow up by putting on the mind of Christ – the mind of Christ, Paul says, that led him to the cross. This means we grow up by resolving to know nothing but Christ and him crucified, as we heard about last week.

The mind of Christ is one of humility. Of self-emptying, of self-denial, self-sacrifice.

PHILIPPIANS 2:6-8 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

So the cross, where God took the form of a servant, where the immortal is cloaked with mortality, where our Great Shepherd became our sacrificial lamb, that cross on Calvary is the ultimate symbol of humility.

Growing up is about becoming more humble, as you resolve to put on the mind of Christ. How often have you seen genuinely humble persons, arguing and fighting?

How many humble people do you know, whose heart harbours resentment, and withholds forgiveness from his neighbour?

If there is fleshly pride within you, if there is strife amongst you, grow up. Grow up into the crucified Christ.

And something happens when you do so. When you focus less on yourself, and less on the people around you, and more on Christ, just like having bought a new car, you begin to see him more and more, you begin to see him everywhere. Christ becomes bigger and more important in your understanding the world.

Which brings us to our second point: Look up.

Paul uses the agricultural analogy.

1 CORINTHIANS 3:5-9 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.

Believe it or not, I used to have a full, thick head of hair back in the day. When I went to the barber, I had to ask them to cut it thinner to make it more manageable. These days, I want to ask, “uncle can cut thicker?”

Occasionally, someone would say to me, “Hey, you got a nice head of hair”, and I would reply, “Thanks! I grew it all by myself.”

Which is true, obviously, who else grew it, if not me. But it is a silly thing to say. Because it’s silly to take credit for the growth of your hair. I can no more take credit for the thickness of my hair when I was young than I can be blamed for the male pattern baldness developing at my age. Yes, I eat my vegetables, I drink my water, but the hair does what it does.

And so, in primary school, they give our awards for good grades, don’t they? Merit awards for the top student, for the most improved student, but they don’t give awards for the tallest student.

Maybe they did, I just wasn’t invited, wasn’t informed. Lenith, you know anything about it?

Growing tall may be a good thing, but it is not a meritorious activity. You can’t take credit for it.

And that’s the point that Paul is trying to make:

5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? He asks. Are you guys looking to us as the reason for salvation and maturity? Are you giving us credit for it

Who are we?

7 neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

If you want to follow anyone, if you want to honor and glorify anyone, don’t look at us. Don’t look around; look up! Look to God.

He assigns the work. He gives the growth, he gives the growth, he pays the wages, he owns the field.

Friends, look to Jesus, not to man, for your significance, your self-esteem, for your salvation, your standing in the church, your sanctification in your walk.

Don’t look around and be beholden to your fellow men. Look up and glorify God for his work in your life instead.

His love is your significance, his sacrifice your self-esteem, his resurrection your salvation, his grace your standing place, his truth your sanctification.

Look to Christ, look to God, and not to man. Grow up and have the mind of Christ, Look up, and magnify the work of Christ.

And he concludes his planting analogy with another analogy.

9 For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.

The Taj Mahal is an white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. In 2007, it was named one of the New 7 Wonders of the world and it attracts more than 5 million visitors a year to its gates.

The building of the Taj Mahal was motivated by love. Shah Jahan commissioned its construction in memory of his beloved wife who had died while giving birth to their 14th child.   

Because the Taj Mahal stands as a testament to his great love for his wife, Shah Jahan ensured that only the best and finest materials when into its construction.

It’s iconic whiteness comes from the makaran marble sourced from Rajasthan, the primary material of the building.

It is also inlaid with precious stones like the Lapis Lazuli from Afghanistan, Turquoise from Tibet, Jade from China, Carnelian from Arabia, Jasper from Punjab and other gemstones from other parts of India and Central Asia.

The minarets, the four towers surrounding the main building, are not build vertically upright, they actually lean outwards. Why? Because that way, if they happen to fall, they will fall outwards and avoiding destroying the building.

In total

• 22,000: Architects, laborers, stone cutters and artisans

• 1,000: Elephants to transport construction materials

• 28: Types of gemstones used in construction and ornamentation

• 17: Years to build the marble mausoleum upon being commissioned

• 22: Years to complete the entire complex
  

But perhaps the most impressive of the Taj Mahal’s construction is its foundations, wells were dug, the river was diverted, logs were driven into the riverbed, cylinders were made and filled with limestone and mortar. It took years simply to lay the foundations of the Taj Mahal, before a single stone was build upon it.

Why all the trouble, but like all things that involves love, it is built to last.

Now, Paul speaks of the church as a building.

1 CORINTHIANS 3:9 9 For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.

1 CORINTHIANS 3:10-13 10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

Paul says he has laid the foundation. What is that foundation? It is the Jesus Christ, the gospel of Christ, the word of the Cross. That is the foundation that has been laid for the church.

This is a building commissioned in love, and must be constructed with care, because it is built to last. It is built to survive even the purifying fire that comes on the Day of the Lord.

So Paul says, “let each one take care how he builds upon the foundation of Christ”.

You might say, Luwin, what has this got to do with us. We’re not the teachers of the church. We are not apostles and pastors. We are just ordinary members.

And it precisely the members of the body that is tasked to speak the truth to each other so that body grows up and the church is build up.

Paul writes in Ephesians.

EPHESIANS 5:15-16 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

We speak the truth in love to build ourselves in love. That is the job of everyone.

So, what Paul says next applies to us. To me, as well as to you.

“Let each one take care how he builds upon it.11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”

Like the Taj Mahal, you can build this building, this church, with valuable and lasting materials – gold, silver and precious stones.

Or, alternatively, you can build like the first two little pigs did, with wood and hay and straw.

And the material we use matters, because there will come a day of reckoning. On that day, 13 each one's work will become manifest, the Day will disclose it, it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

In 2016, an earthquake with a 6.4 magnitude rocked the region of Tainan in Taiwan. And a high rise building collapsed. Killing dozens of people who were in it. A tragedy.

And when the Taiwanese government ordered an investigation into the building’s collapse, images emerged showing tin cans built into the walls of the toppled complex.

If there had not been an earthquake, it might not have mattered, but if an earthquake is coming to test the structural integrity of the building, then the materials with which it is build, matters. It matters greatly.

When you visit a country, how do you select your hotel, if money were not an issue? The most immediate answer is how it looks, its aesthetic, its service, its location, the amenities, the dining options.

Well, the Standard Hotel in Bangkok has it all. The Standard Hotel is known for its world class service, luxurious accommodations, plentiful amenities, Michelin starred dining options and its prime city centre location. And it looks incredible.

Nope, this is not publicity for our next church camp.

Thailand suffered from the aftershock of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in March. Many people, who had planned a holiday to Thailand in June, my friend, Kelvin, included, only one question when choosing their accommodation.

Is it safe. Is it sturdy, can it withstand an earthquake? Can it survive a test of its structural integrity?

Framed in that perspective, all of a sudden, when you look at The Standard Hotel in Bangkok, perhaps all you can think about when you look at it, is “Eh, how come got like so many gaps ah?” “Look like Jenga, dunno how safe sia.”

Your service, amenities, dining, location, all of that fades into the distance when you are conscious of the building will have to face a test of structural integrity.

So take care then, how you build. Christ, the rock is our firm foundation. And his truth, his gospel, the word of the cross, is gold, and silver and precious stones with which we must build up this church.

Earlier this year, in and Instagram post, Ps Yang, Senior pastor of Cornerstone Community says he takes the Holy Communion everyday, 365 days a year. He says does this, I quote

“Because there is something every powerful about communion. I connect myself to the greater eternal purposes of God. And there are so many amazing benefits of communion. One of them is healing. When we partake of communion, there is something about healing that’s released. You know, I’ve not been ill for a long time. God has kept me in divine health, and I believe that it is because of communion.”

There are so many benefits to communion, which is true. But the one and only benefit he singles out, is the one that is simply not there in the sacrament of holy communion.

Of all of Holy Communions benefits to believers, healing is not one of them.

Hay. This is hay. This wood, this is straw. This is teaching that does not build up the church, this is teaching that will not survive the Day of the Lord. This is not teaching that is built upon the foundation which has been laid.

He could have spoken of our communion with Christ, and the forgiveness offer to us when his body was broken and his blood was shed at the Cross. He could have spoken the word of the cross. But jumped straight into fantasy land and spoke of healing.

Why? Because healing gets attention from the world. Because healing sounds like power and wisdom to the world. Because healing draws a crowd, and seemingly builds up and grows a church.

But the question the reader of the 1 Cortinthians must ask, is not whether the teaching is attractive, or whether the church looks good, and seats are comfortable and the youth are engaged and entertained – the question the Christian must ask is simply this: will our theology survive the fire. Will our gospel save from the flames? Is our ministry of the word built upon, sticks to, and exalts Christ and him crucified?

That message is less attractive to the world, more offensive to the world, less intelligible to the world. But for those who are being saved, it is wisdom and the power of God.

So friends, let us take care how we built – on the word of the cross. Not what feels good to our friends, not what sounds right to culture, not what accords with the wisdom of the world. But solely and truly the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Take care how we build, for what we are building is not a memorial mausoleum like the Taj Mahal, but the Holy Temple of God.

1 CORINTHIANS 3:14-17 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. 16 Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

In November last year, a tourist was arrested in Japan for using his fingernails to etching letters onto a piece of wood in Tokyo. You wouldn’t think scratching wood with your fingernails would get you arrested by the police would you? Normally it wouldn’t.

But it in this case, that piece of wood happened to be part of a traditional wooden gate of a famous shrine in Tokyo. Which meant that defacing at particular wood was not simply an act of vandalism, it was sacrilege. It is desecrating that which is sacred and hallowed and holy. Accordingly, it brings with it a greater punishment.

The same goes for this building, the church. God’s holy temple.

16 Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him.

For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Paul impresses upon us that what we do here, with one another, the words we say, the truths we speak, the degree to which we are centred on the word of the cross, and the extent to which we are built upon the foundation of Christ, is of eternal significance and consequence.

If you build with gold and silver and precious stones, and your work survives you will receive a reward.

If you build with hay and wood and straw, and your work is burned up, you will be saved, you will enter the pearly gates, with your back feeling hot.

But there is a line that can be crossed, where your words and behaviour are actively undermining the cross of Christ, perhaps causing disunity within the body, or strife within the church, divisions between the family because of pride. If that is you, stop. Repent. Return to the foundation which is Christ, and take care how you built. If anyone destroys the temple, God will destroy him. But a rewards awaits those who build well.

In summary, let us:

Grow up – put on the Mind of Christ.

Look up – and magnify the Work of Christ.

Build up – the temple with the Word of Christ.

Before I close, I would like to address the non-Christians amongst us.

The crucified Christ is risen to life, and the risen Christ will return on that Judgement Day, bringing his purifying fire to test the works done on earth.

Disclosing all our deeds, exposing all our works. The question is, will your works survive the test, or will all that you have built come crashing down?

How we build is of eternal significance. And only one foundation will stand. Build your life on Christ. Build on the only firm foundation that will withstand the storms of Today and the fire of of That Day.

Come to know him and the salvation he brings. Come and know him as your firm foundation, your saviour and your king.

Reflection Questions: 

1. Which area(s) in our lives are we prone to live “spiritual infants” rather than “as mature Christians”? What are some steps you can take to live more spiritually in Christ?
   

2. For those in formal teaching ministries, how can you ensure that you keep Christ central in your teaching, even if it seems “weak” or “foolish”?
   

3. As a church, we build one another up in Christ by speaking the truth of the gospel to each other, how can you do more of it, and to whom can you reach out to today?