Building on the True Foundation
I have thought of this as an introductory batch of these diagrams and in a more or less devotional approach. Each diagram will be looked at first foundationally, then super-structurally. Each discussion might well be contemplated for a day’s devotional time, together with the Scripture identified.
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In the two-part diagrams, there would be two days’ devotions; in the three-part diagrams, there would be three days’ devotions. This is merely a suggestion. These diagrams, together with those to follow in the series, would also make excellent Sunday School materials, for use with either adults or teens.
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My hope is simply that they will be a blessing to anyone who reads, or uses them.
Table of Contents
Click the title of the section you want to jump to.
Who He Is/What He Does
The concept of foundational/superstructural diagrams for expressing the relationship between biblical truths came, for me, from the Bible teaching ministry of Frank Sells, many years ago. He would simply draw his diagram on the board. For years he and I were quite close. His ministry centered me upon the Lord Jesus Christ, primarily for Who He is, then for what He does. In a very real sense, this would be the foundational diagram for this entire approach to understanding biblical truth.
The overall way of understanding the relationship between the truths in each diagram is simple and built into the structure of the diagram. The truth in the bottom “layer” [the foundation] is foundational to a right understanding of the truth expressed in the “superstructure” in the upper layer. Apart from rightly holding the truth expressed in the foundation, we cannot be rightly embracing the truth expressed in the superstructure above.
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So much of our focus in contemporary Christianity, at least here in America, seems to be more about us than about Him. Even when we speak of Him, far too often it is about what He does for, or means to, us. He enables us to do this or that or to alter our behavior so as to be more “successful” as a Christian parent, or whatever.
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Mr. Sells definitely saw this back then, and was very good at conveying it. These diagrams, for me, help to sustain that kind of a right focus, upon what is foundational in our life and labor in fellowship with Him. In each case, whatever two [or sometimes three] basic truths are being considered, we must never find ourselves merely living in the superstructural area of truth being identified.
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The Lord lead me to begin a Bible-study work in our living room in 1980. Eventually we became "a church." One of the main reasons we [those who were there when it took place] decided on the name “Foundation Baptist Church” was because of 1 Corinthians 3:11. Christ is the only Foundation for everything that honors God. May these devotional diagrams simply assist us to keep a rightly-prioritized understanding of biblical truth.
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I am sure that many of these diagrams come directly from Mr. Sells himself. Others are my own. I am not going to make any attempt to identify which is which because, frankly, I would have difficulty remembering which ones were directly his and which ones I have developed myself over many years of teaching the Bible.
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I feel that it is enough that I have plainly identified my indebtedness to his teaching in my life, and have only sought to build upon the foundation of truth the Lord used him to lay in my thinking and in my heart so many years ago.
In this passage, the Lord Jesus Christ is expressing the reality of the life of every Christian. In the 15th chapter as a whole, the Lord is teaching us that it pleases God to work powerfully in the lives of His servants so that their lives bring forth “much fruit.” We need not be in doubt as to what this “fruit” is that God delights in bringing out in the lives of His servants, for Galatians 5:22-23 makes it plain. In that wonderful passage we are told, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
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Now, when the Lord says to us that apart from Him we can do nothing, He is simply teaching us that no one can produce these beautiful fruits unless he is in living, obedient fellowship with Christ.
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We must remember that Jesus spoke these words to a group of men, most of whom were quite probably "saved" men. They were men who had confessed their sins before God, asking for forgiveness and had been washed in the blood of the Lamb of God. It is to redeemed men that our Lord speaks these words. He tells us that it is only as we abide in Him that we can expect to bring forth such beautiful fruit. Apart from abiding in Him we can do no such thing.
Now then, we must ask what it means to abide in Him. There are two questions really. [1] How may I know that I am abiding in Him? And [2] How do I go about abiding in Him? Let us take them in order.
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How may I know that I am abiding in Him? The answer to this question is quite simple, really, and self-evident. If a man is abiding in the Lord Jesus Christ the fruit of the Spirit, spoken of earlier, will be more and more evident in his life. Those around him in his life will not be surprised when they encounter love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, or temperance in him. It will be what they expect, rather than something they vainly wish for in him. So then the clear evidence that a man is abiding in Christ is “much fruit.”
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But what about the second question, “How do I go about abiding in Him?” This may seem hard at first. It sounds so spiritual or maybe even mystical. But it really is not so. There are two main elements of abiding in Him.
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First, in order to abide in Him we must see Him as He is, and delight ourselves in what we see in Him. As we see these wonderful fruits in Him we desire to be made like Him. If we have no desire to become more and more like Him, we may be sure that we will not do so. For to become more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ demands the release of miraculous power in our lives, something we must desire and cry out for to God.
Then, we must take the time and make the effort to associate ourselves with Him. This we can do by regular attendance upon sound Bible preaching and teaching in our church, and by earnest Bible study at home. But, such things must be accompanied by a heartfelt desire to be in complete agreement with Him in our everyday lives. [Compare John 14:21-24.] It is one thing to "go to church all the time," and read my Bible frequently at home. It is another thing to really care about God working in me personally so that I am really being conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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It is quite possible to be very religious without exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit we are considering. We encounter such religious people all the time. To abide in Christ, I must clearly desire to know Him through His Word, and to be made like Him as I read and hear it.
The top portion of our diagram is a portion of the verse found in Philippians 4:13, which says, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” It is true that the Christian can do many things that he never dreamed possible when his life is lived in fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and committed to His worldwide redemptive purposes.
In the context of Philippians, we can understand the true meaning of this great statement. Outside of that context, we are likely to completely misinterpret it. Let us look for a few moments at that context.
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This letter is written by Paul, a man who was imprisoned at the time he wrote the letter. He was in prison for the terrible crime of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was certainly unjust and unfair for him to be thus imprisoned. But a prevailing note of incredible joy characterizes the letter. The words “joy,” “rejoice,” and “rejoicing” occur thirteen times in these four short chapters. The rate of occurrence for these same words in the rest of the New Testament Epistles is about fifty-five times in one hundred seventeen chapters, or about once every three chapters. These statistics serve to reveal the focus upon true joy in Philippians.
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By the time we come to this fourth chapter, we are in awe of how a man can be treated so unjustly, and yet manifest such genuine rejoicing. We have seen his description of the Christian life as a life of Joyous Confidence (Chapter 1), Joyous Humility (Chapter 2), Joyous Purpose (Chapter 3), and now Joyous Strength (Chapter 4).
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All of this is revealing when we see it built upon the foundation we discussed together in our last meditation: the fact that apart from Christ we can do nothing.
Apart from Christ, we cannot live a life of Joyous Confidence. Apart from Christ, we cannot consistently exhibit Joyous Humility. Apart from Christ, we cannot sustain any kind of Joyous Purpose in our lives. And, apart from Christ we certainly will not find this Joyous Strength…the enabling to do all things with joy.
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Look for a few moments at the “all things” Paul is speaking of being able to do. Verses 10-16 help us to rightly understand what he is speaking of. In those verses, he reveals that in his ministry of the Gospel, he has encountered all kinds of circumstances. He has been abased (v.12), knowing how to “abound” even then. He has been hungry (v.12) but enjoyed fullness even then. He has suffered need (v.12), but has been overflowing even then. How is this possible? How can he write such things, even from a prison where he is wrongly incarcerated? The answer is found in our verse.
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It is when a man is in living union with the Lord Jesus Christ that he is strengthened so as to be able to live this kind of life. And, such living union is sustained as that man is given over to the purpose for which he has been redeemed by the blood of Christ to begin with. Philippians three delineates this redemptive purpose in a man’s life.
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I may expect, then to be empowered to live a miraculously overflowing life to the extent that I, like the apostle Paul, surrender my life to Christ for the outworking of His redemptive purposes through me. This is truly a life of doing “all things.”
Within the Veil/Without the Camp
The phrase in the top of our diagram is taken from Hebrews 13:13, where it says, “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.” The verse preceding this one speaks of the Lord Jesus having gone outside the gates of Jerusalem to suffer death there for our sins. The verse immediately following our verse reminds us that we have no continuing city here in this life to cling to.
So there are two strong things that ought to persuade each one of us to examine what we are living for. [1] The Son of God did not live unto Himself, but gladly suffered being utterly outcast for us, dying for our sins without the gate. And, [2] There is really nothing in this world that should hold us back, since it has no lasting quality of any kind.
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Therefore, we ought to look closely at our lives to determine whether or not we are gladly going forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. Some of the common “camps” we are certainly called upon to leave would be the following:
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Any peer group which demands a sinful attitude or sinful behavior from us to be a part of it.
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The ordinary “life under the sun” camp, that has as its focus the pursuit of all the commonplace goals of life, and not centered upon Christ.
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The camp that encourages us to put our comforts and pleasures ahead of all else.
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Any religious camp that focuses upon ceremony and ritual apart from a genuine personal relationship with God through Christ.
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The shallow lifestyle camp that considers the looks, or the intelligence, or the dynamic personality of a person as having a role to play in God’s redemptive purposes.
The foundation of our diagram contains a phrase derived from Hebrews 6:19, where it says, “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil.” This contains the key to our being able to go forth unto Jesus without the camp as an ongoing choice in our lives.
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We can only continually choose to live without all the comfortable and easy “camps” of life under the sun to the extent that we delight in our new life within the veil. The veil in the Temple in Jerusalem was between the Holy place and the Holy of Holies. It was huge, weighing something like 450 pounds and requiring many men to move it at all. It represented all that separated all Israel from the personal presence of God. The High Priest could pass within this veil only once each year, on the Day of Atonement. Were he, or any other person, to attempt to do so at any time other than this would mean certain death.
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Yet we are told in Hebrews 6:20 that Christ has gone within the true veil that separates us from God, as our Forerunner. Indeed, when He died on the cross outside Jerusalem, we are told that the veil in the Temple was rent from top to bottom.
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It is as we delight in living in real personal fellowship with God, within the veil, that we are enabled to continually go forth unto Jesus, without the camp, bearing His reproach.
Getting the Message In/Getting the Message Out
A great deal of time, energy, and resources are expended in seeking to fulfill the first portion of the commission the Lord gave to His churches in Matthew 28:19-20. It was there that He said:
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
These underlined words have historically been understood to mean that Christian churches have been given the Lord’s clear command to evangelize, getting the message of the precious Gospel of Jesus Christ out to all the world.
This is very important, in light of comparing this passage with others in the gospels. In the last chapter of Mark’s gospel, for example, the Lord commanded His disciples to “preach the gospel to every creature.” Apart from this process, the world has no hope of being brought into a relationship of being at peace with God through Christ.
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The early churches exercised themselves enormously in the fulfillment of this responsibility. Early in Acts we find Philip baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch, a servant in the royal family of that African nation. By the time we come completely through the book of Acts, which covers a period of somewhere around thirty years of time, we find that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has reached all the way to Rome. There are even converts in Caesar’s own household.
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One of the main things God used to push His churches more fully into evangelizing the Roman world was persecution. By the seventh chapter of Acts, Stephen, one of the first deacons in the church in Jerusalem, has been martyred for his preaching of Christ. This set off terrible persecution at the hands of Saul of Tarsus. But the early Christians did not flee quietly. Everywhere they went, they went preaching the Gospel of Christ.
But, the foundation of our diagram emphasizes another vital aspect of the Great Commission given by Christ to His churches. If Christians are going to get the message out, it is critical that messengers of God exercise themselves in local churches getting the full message of the Gospel in. God’s people are to gather themselves into local assemblies with the intention of having their lives deeply saturated with the fullness of God’s truth.
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This is brought out from the very same portion of Matthew mentioned earlier. The Greek word translated “teach” at the beginning of verse 19 is the word meaning “make disciples of.” Following this command, the Lord used another word in verse 20, “teaching them.” This Greek word, though translated “teaching” is quite a different word. Whereas the first word means “seek to bring them to follow what you are,” the second one means “seek to bring them to follow all that you say,” or more fully, as the Lord continues to say, “seek to bring them to follow all that I have said."
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So then, in the two words translated with one form or the other of the English verb “teach” we have two very different aspects of the Lord’s commission to His churches. On the one hand, we are to seek to see people converted to an entirely new manner of life through the Gospel of Christ. On the other, we are to long to see them grow into the very likeness of Christ through systematic study of the Lord's, and the apostles’ doctrine.
Thus, we see that getting the message in is a very important aspect of getting the message out. Far too often, in the modern western world, there has been too much emphasis on the former, and far too little on the latter. May the Lord help us to long for both!
A person may think of his own life as a house to be built, as Jesus Himself suggests in Matthew 7, when He speaks of the wise man and the foolish man, each building his respective “house.” If a man’s life is seen under the metaphor of a house being built, it is easy to see how this Scripture would apply. Scripture certainly teaches that no man can build a life that will please God apart from Christ.
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But the application certainly goes farther than this. Any significant relationship among the sons and daughters of Adam may be viewed also as a “house” that must be built. No one knows the meaning of deep, genuine friendship apart from Christ. Even the relationships within the natural family circle fail to attain to the highest levels of preciousness unless they are rooted in Christ. And, no genuine Christian would argue with the statement that unless the Lord builds the house of marriage, they labor in vain that build it. Even the best of marriages built without Christ certainly fall short of all that God intended for them.
The building of a family demands far more than any man and woman can hope to accomplish, however sincere and dedicated the two of them may be. The culture of late twentieth century America exudes a very powerful eroding influence upon the best of intentions in any family. It is sad to have to report that even well-meaning churches often contribute to the breakdown of the family by splintering it into “special interest” groups. Many serious-minded Christian parents have been forced to lament their failure to understand just how to look to the Lord to build the house of their family.
But, as the top portion of our diagram suggests, perhaps the greatest application of the verse from Psalm 127 is in relation to the Church. In Matthew 16:18 the Lord Jesus Christ says, “I will build my church.” Surely there is no greater task to which any man may put his hand than that of participating in the building of the church of Jesus Christ on the earth.
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The fulfillment of this charge entails evangelism, local church order and polity, and an ongoing commitment to discipleship. It will demand hard work in reaching out, and hard work in grounding new converts in the whole counsel of God. There will be hours of door-knocking, and visitation of all kinds. There will be endless Sunday school lessons to be prepared, and sermons to be preached, and Bible book studies to be developed. There will be enormous strains exerted upon the longsuffering patience and compassion of all workers involved.
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Beyond these things, there will be the difficulty of such hard work being done beneath the noses of some who will not lift a finger to lighten the burden. There will be opposition to every forward step, and the slandering of the reputations of those most active in the work. And many being sought out for Christ will be utterly insensitive to all efforts on their behalf, sometimes even misusing those who labor to reach them.
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Truly, except the Lord build this house, they labor in vain that build it.