Worship Study Lesson 2: The Foundation of Worship | Paul Washer

Small group Bible study curriculum with lessons by:
Scott Aniol, Tom Ascol, Voddie Baucham, Josh Buice, Costi Hinn, Phil Johnson,
Steven Lawson, John MacArthur, Laramie Minga, Matthew Sikes, Paul Washer, James White

Main Point: We must build our worship on the foundation of Jesus Christ.

Main Passage: 1 Corinthians 3:9–17

Memory: “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 3:11)

Unacceptable worship is merely a symptom of a far greater problem, and if we do not deal with that problem, all the tweaking of worship will not help. We must return to the fundamentals of the faith, and those fundamentals stand upon the central doctrine of the Reformation, Sola Scriptura. In order for true reformation to take place, everything must be brought into submission to the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ, and that is only possible when a people have knowledge of his Word and fear him. We might say that we believe that the Scriptures are inerrant and infallible, that they come forth from the mouth of God, but do we really believe the Scriptures are sufficient?

If we want to truly reform worship, we must go back to the beginning and make sure that we are starting out with the correct foundation. This is what Paul emphasized in his first letter to the Corinthian church, and in chapter 3 he draws their attention to the foundation of the church and its worship.

Stewards under Authority (1 Cor 3:9)

For we are God’s fellow workers….

Paul first emphasizes that those who lead the church in its worship are God’s fellow workers. This is a privileged position, but it is also a weighty position. Later in this chapter, Paul refers to the fact that each one’s work in building Christ’s church will be tested (v. 13). Who is sufficient for these things? How can a church leader bear such a privilege? How can he have confidence that he is carrying out his responsibility in the way that Christ requires?

The only way is by knowing and submitting to Scripture.

It is important to stress that church leaders are God’s co-workers, not God’s co-owners. Church leaders are stewards of Christ’s work, and it is a requirement of a steward only to obey the decrees that have been handed to him. Church leaders do not invent new ways of worship and ministry; they submit to the ways that Christ has prescribed in his Word. 

… You are God’s field, God’s building.

After referring to the church leaders, Paul tells the entire church that they are God’s field and God’s building. Grammatically, Paul uses what is called a genitive of possession, emphasizing the fact that the entire church and its leaders are possessed by God.

The fact that God possesses the church as his field and his building is why church leaders must submit to God’s instructions regarding ministry and worship. We need not—we must not—look to the culture around us for new ways to worship; we must simply trust that what God has given us in his Word is sufficient. Anything added to God’s field is foreign seed that will produce weeds. Anything added to God’s building beyond what he has prescribed is foreign material.

Consider the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt 13:24–30). The servant asked the landowner, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?” The landowner replied, “An enemy has done this.” Whenever someone adds seed to God’s field beyond what he has prescribed, he is God’s enemy.

Or consider what God said to Moses when he was about to erect the tabernacle:

For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.”

If Moses had deviated in anything while building God’s tabernacle, it would have brought fearful judgement upon him and the people. 

What is more important to God, the shadow or the fulfilment? We are not dealing with sticks and stones and cloth now. We are dealing with the body of Christ. We must not bring in any material that is not prescribed by the Word of the living God. To do so is arrogance and foolishness. 

Now, let’s take this one step further. Even though it is not mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3, the New Testament also calls the church God’s bride. Imagine a king who loves his wife, and he dresses her all in the finest white linens. What a beauty she is, and part of that beauty is her simplicity, her purity. But the king is going to go on a long journey, and so he tells his steward, “You are in charge of my bride.” He sets forth clearly written decrees of exactly what the steward is to do with his bride. What if, after the king is gone for a long while, the steward decides to take matters in his own hands and use the king’s bride to draw the carnal men of the kingdom back into loyalty to the king?

Unfortunately, this is what many evangelical ministers are doing today to God’s bride, the church. They think they need to renovate his bride, change the worship, and modernize in order to draw in the lost. On the contrary, we must trust in the sufficiency of what God has commanded. To whom much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48).

Laying the Foundation (1 Cor 9:10–11)

Paul continues this building metaphor in verse 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.

A Foundation of Grace, Wisdom, and Power

How can we explain the ministry of the apostle Paul? The apostle ministered by grace of God and the wisdom that was given to him in God’s Word. The ministry of the Apostle Paul has no natural explanation. He explained this earlier in chapter 2:

And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, ⁴ and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵ so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Cor 2:3–5)

When we consider the apostle Paul and the abundance of fruit in his ministry, there is only this explanation: the grace of almighty God, the wisdom of almighty God’s Word, and the power of almighty God’s Spirit. This is how it has always been. Consider when God chose the craftsman who would build his tabernacle:

The Lord said to Moses, ² “See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, ³ and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship. (Exod 31:1–3)

God made a man to build his tabernacle by his grace, and he filled that man with his wisdom and his Spirit. How do we explain the fruitful ministry of men like John Calvin and Charles Spurgeon? It cannot be explained in terms of human abilities; it is the grace of God, the wisdom of God, and the power of God. Nations can be conquered by plow boys when they are trusting only in the wisdom of God and they are filled with the Spirit of God. 

Too often when we consider how churches are built, and especially the place of worship in the building of the church, we trust in human strength, human creativity, and human methods. We use the music and other elements of our worship as clever gimmicks to attract people to our message and thus build our churches.

But Paul is clear: building the foundation for our churches has nothing to do with man-made abilities; in fact, those are a hindrance to building God’s church. Rather, we must rely alone upon the grace, wisdom, and power that comes from God through his Word by his Spirit.

A Foundation of Christ

And then Paul makes the nature of this foundation of grace even more explicit in verse 11:

For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

We need nothing else to build God’s churches. We do not need clever methods or the world’s entertainment. We need only to follow God’s blueprint given to us in his all-sufficient Word. And that blueprint will always lead us to lay a foundation of Jesus Christ.

We build this foundation through teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ—the attributes of God, the depravity of man, and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. No church growth strategies here. It is as if, when Paul wanted to plant a church, he took out a big sign and wrote on it the most offensive thing to the people of his day: “I preach Christ crucified.” And then he walked down the middle of the street with that sign. As Paul says earlier in chapter 1,

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor 1:18)

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the only sure foundation upon which to build our worship. This is the foundation the apostle Peter laid on that Pentecost day when the church first began (Acts 2:14–40). God created all things to serve him. He is holy and righteous and perfect. He demands perfection. He cannot tolerate evil. But every one of us is evil. All we have to do is compare ourselves to the Ten Commandments and it is obvious that we disobey God every day of our lives. Hebrews 9:27 says that each of us is destined to die, and after that comes judgment. Why? Because God, who is perfect, cannot overlook sin; He must judge it. Romans 6:23 says that the payment for sin is death.

So the problem that each of us faces is the same problem that was so evident to Peter’s audience on that day he preached: judgment is coming for us all. There is no doubt—one day each of us will face the white-hot holy justice of the almighty God, and if we do not measure up to His standard of perfection, we will be judged. Is there any way to be saved from that judgment? Peter answered that question with one of the most hope-filled promises in all of Scripture: “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21).

Peter knew that the only sure foundation upon which to build the church was Jesus Christ. He knew that this is exactly what had been prophesied in the Old Testament:

For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
⁷ So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” ⁸ and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. (1 Pet 2:6–8)

Jesus Christ, the cornerstone, was a stumbling block to those who rejected him, but he is the foundation for all true churches.

The apostle Paul preached this same gospel of Jesus Christ as the foundation of the churches he planted. In each place he visited, Paul proclaimed the same message he gave to the Philippian jailer: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). He reasoned with people from Scripture, “explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ’” (Acts 17:3). He confronted sinners and called them to repentance, as he did in Athens when he proclaimed, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).

And Paul did the same when he came to the city of Corinth. He did not use clever methods to draw people in, he simply preached Christ:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. ² For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Cor 2:1–2)

The book of Acts tells that in Corinth, “Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus” (Acts 18:5). He stayed there a year and a half, “teaching the word of God among them” (Acts 18:11).

In those first years of the church, a foundation was laid that was nothing more and nothing less than the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it must continue to be so today. God’s Word, Jesus Christ, is the only sure foundation of the church and its worship.

Building on the Foundation
(1 Cor 3:12–15)

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. 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.

Once the foundation of Jesus Christ is laid, we continue to build upon the foundation, but Paul stresses that those who build must take care. He contrasts building materials that will one day burn up, and those that will endure.

The enduring materials—gold, silver, and precious stones—are nothing less than the continued teaching and preaching of the cross of Christ. The same Word and gospel that saved us continues to be that which will sufficiently build us up and sanctify us into the image of Jesus Christ.

Yet many churches today dress up the message of the gospel with decorations they think will attract people and draw them in. They assume we need extra-biblical ideologies and methods to encourage and equip God’s people. In reality, they are building with consumable materials—wood, hay, and straw. These are inferior materials that are not necessarily evil in themselves, but they are insufficient to build God’s church since they do not derive from his authoritative blueprint. Paul’s admonition here is striking: if we build with those materials, we might save ourselves in the judgment, but not much more.

The Word of Christ must be the foundation of all of our building: Jesus Christ crucified for our sins, raised from the dead, seated at the right hand of the Father in glory and power. This is what we must teach and preach without fail. This is how Paul planted churches; this is what we see in the book of Acts—the church built by the preaching of the Word.

But this building is not didactic only. Building upon the foundation of Christ and his gospel means that we will focus our labor on growing in holiness. It is endeavoring to make sure that every soul in the congregation is converted; it is caring for and nurturing souls until Christ is formed in them. As Paul says in Colossians 1:28,

Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

Many of the maladies in the local church would be cured if Christians understood the gospel and labored with souls in the fear of the Lord until there was evidence of sound conversion. Instead of chasing after gimmicks and strategies, instead of concerns that music be more relevant and contemporary, we simply need to do the work of ministry that the Bible commands.

If we want churches filled with people who love God deeply and want to worship him fully, then we simply need to proclaim the excellencies and beauties of Christ. The more we see of him the more we will love him, and we will worship him.

Destroying God’s Temple (1 Cor 3:16–17)

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 the remainder of the chapter, Paul makes the image of God’s building explicit by identifying it as “God’s temple,” which makes the connection to our worship even stronger. The pronouns in this passage are all plural, emphasizing that he is calling the gathered church God’s temple, not just individual Christians, as he does elsewhere (1 Cor 6:19). This building that Paul has been describing, the one built on the foundation of Christ, is the place of God’s worship—the church.

Paul uses the same language in Ephesians 2:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, ²¹ in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. ²² In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

The warning in 1 Corinthians 3 is sobering for anyone involved with building God’s temple, including leading the worship that takes place there: if you destroy God’s temple, God will destroy you. This image of destroying God’s temple is directly connected to the previous verses about the builder’s work being burnt up. In other words, Paul is saying that if we build the temple of God’s worship with materials that do not endure—materials of our own invention and creativity, then what we build will burn in the judgment, essentially destroying God’s temple.

The only solution is to build on the right foundation with the right materials. We must build our worship on the foundation of Jesus Christ, using the materials prescribed for us in God’s sufficient Word.

Prayer: O Lord God, forgive us for attempting to build our churches and our worship on any other foundation than Jesus Christ. And forgive us for building with materials that will not endure, thinking that we need more than your Word to make our churches attractive. Motivate us, we pray, to trust confidently in the sufficiency of your gospel and your Word to build and sustain the worship of your churches. In the name of Christ we pray, Amen.

For Further Study:

MacArthur, John F. Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World. 3rd ed. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2010.

Thiselton, Anthony C. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. NIGTC. Eerdmans, 2000.

Tozer, A. W. Whatever Happened to Worship. Fort Lauderdale, FL: Christian Publications, 1985.