Building Upon the Foundation - GraceLife Church of Pineville

How to Honor a Foundation

The main idea of this sermon is simple. But it is often the simple that is overlooked, glossed over.

I’m going to give you the opportunity first to come to the idea yourself by asking you this question: What is the only way to honor a foundation?

To honor anything, it helps to understand its purpose; therefore, when you honor a thing, in a sense, you honor its purpose. So the only way to honor a foundation is to build upon it.

The purpose of the foundation is to support further building.

The purpose of the foundation is to support further building.

I told you it was simple.

The laying of a foundation is an exciting moment, but that is because it’s understood that it marks the beginning of a process that, if successful, will actually cover up the foundation. If there lies exposed a flat, stone slab years after it was first laid, we conclude that either progress was halted or that something has gone terribly wrong.

Speaking of something going terribly wrong, this past week marked 19 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast of the United States. My wife, Elizabeth, and I lived in Mississippi when that storm hit. Although we were almost 300 miles from landfall, we experienced hurricane-force winds, because the eye of the storm rode the entire length of the state and spawned multiple tornados.

My aunt and uncle lived on the coast, and I’ll never forget later visiting the site of their former home. As we approached the site, we looked out over the bay where there was once a bridge, and the bridge was gone. We then stood in the midst of the footprint of what was once their house, now nothing but a gray slab, wiped clean.

If you looked down the street, all you could see was foundations with no superstructure. It was a neighborhood of empty, gray slabs, where houses once stood—serving no purpose but a sad reminder of what should have been.

The imagery of a foundation is used often in Scripture:

Christ warns against building without a foundation as an illustration of the one who fails to obey His words.¹
In another instance, He tells the story of someone who failed to calculate the cost of an entire building project and was left to be ridiculed when he could not build upon that foundation he laid.²
In the book of Romans and again in 1 Corinthians, preaching the gospel is likened unto laying a foundation.³
In Ephesians, the church is described as that which is built upon the foundation of Christ, the apostles, and the prophets.⁴

I shared in the last sermon the first of four principles for pastoring a free grace church. Principle #1 was to celebrate what we’re for, not what we’re against. In this sermon, I share with you principle #2:

Build upon the foundation, which is the only way to honor its purpose.

Let me explain what I mean by this foundation and why we specifically might neglect to honor it.

As a reminder, this list of four principles is one I originally wrote four years ago, and they were shaped by the concerns I had in becoming pastor. That I would pastor a free grace church was a non-negotiable. But I needed to think through ways a free grace church could lose focus on the goal.

Another reminder: Free grace is the idea that eternal salvation offered to you by God may be received freely through believing His Son for the gift.

Within this sermon (and the series as a whole), it might sound, at times, like I’m disparaging the free grace position or other free grace churches or the state of this church before my time as pastor of GraceLife. I’m not seeking to do any of those things. I understand the risk here: when I critique (or seemingly critique) the movement, it comes at the cost of people possibly mistakenly claiming, “Well, that guy’s not even free grace.” Not true.

We critique what we care about. We’re concerned over losing the things that we care about most deeply. The assessment of church is a biblical exercise, especially considering my calling as pastor.

Hey, I thought you said in the last sermon we’re to always be positive? That’s not what I said. If that’s what you heard, go back to that sermon again.

Here’s what I mean by intentionally building upon the foundation while pastoring a free grace church.

Building on the Foundation of a Free Grace Church

Free grace theology will hold as its foundation that the gospel of Jesus must be accurately understood and clearly proclaimed. And I must say, if there’s only one message I could give, it would probably be that one: You can be eternally saved, eternally secure by believing in Jesus.

But GraceLife hasn’t called me to preach one message; I’ve served now for four years. That’s a total of around 200 messages. I have not offered 200 messages on how to get to heaven, because my role as pastor isn’t to be an evangelist in the church. The church, by necessity, includes those who have already believed the gospel. If my focus is evangelism, then either I or those in my congregation have failed somewhere in the process.

That gospel foundation is important: Everything we do as a New Testament church is based on the foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But foundations exist so that more than the foundation can exist.

Foundations exist so that more than the foundation can exist.

Here’s the summary of this entire sermon: The proclamation of the gospel is essential. Scripture teaches, “How will they hear without a preacher?”⁵ But although the hallmark of the free grace church is its adherence to the proclamation of the gospel accurately and clearly, yet we are called to proclaim more than this in church.

The tendency of a free grace church can be to promote free grace week-in and week-out rather than encouraging the congregation to conformity with Christ as they live in this world and encounter the culture and the enemy on a weekly basis.

The foundation must be protected, but its purpose is to uphold a superstructure.

The foundation must be protected, but its purpose is to uphold a superstructure.

In light of this purpose, we’ll consider two areas regarding foundations:

The responsibility of protecting a foundation
The work of honoring a foundation

The Responsibility of Protecting a Foundation

I thank God for the foundation of grace theology that was laid at GraceLife before I became its pastor. It was and is my goal to protect that foundation and to add to it—to build on it.

Over the past four years since I became pastor, our larger sermon series have taken notice of the work of protecting and building upon foundations:

Who Builds a Church?
Who Destroys a Church?
The Elementary Principles (i.e., Foundations) of the Oracles of God⁶

Why these messages? I thought our church needed them. I didn’t come here as an outsider—I was and am one of you; I thought and still think these are the messages we needed.

Inspecting the Foundation

Foundations do need revisiting at times. Foundations require inspection. Foundations sometimes require repair.

Why do we inspect the foundation? There are several reasons.

Reason #1: Sometimes we inspect the foundation for the sake of the ignorant.

I do not use this word in a condescending way but to refer to those who simply don’t know the foundation, they need to be taught about it for the first time. In addition, the Bible talks about doing things in a certain way because unbelievers will sometimes be among us.⁷ Our assembly might include those who are not yet believers and are unfamiliar with the gospel of Jesus Christ. For that reason alone, it’s worth revisiting and proclaiming the foundation proclaiming the gospel.

Reason #2: Sometimes we inspect the foundation for the sake of the misguided.

There are those who know that a foundation exists, but whose understanding of it is unclear. Perhaps they haven’t been taught it correctly. We see instances of this in Scripture—with Timothy in Ephesus and Paul writing to Galatia, for example. There have always been Christians who promote and accept a twisted gospel, one that mixes works in to the message of free grace.

Reason #3: Sometimes we inspect the foundation because the building is in question.

There is a sense in which this was literally true on multiple levels when I came to pastor at GraceLife. The gospel was not in question here, but foundational church life was. The year was 2020. Not just GraceLife but churches everywhere were facing the question of authority and assembly. Would our government be able to dictate how, when, and where we worshipped? Would we concede the right to enter our own building?

We were also $4 million in debt to a building, which (at the time) we couldn’t use, for a vision we could no longer clearly pursue, with a congregation I wasn’t sure would return. (We’re still in debt, by the way.)

In all of this, it became abundantly clear that devotion to a clear gospel message is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for church vitality.

Devotion to a clear gospel message is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for church vitality.

Toward the end of my first year as pastor, in June 2021, we talked—in the context of a sermon on the church in Ephesus (based on Revelation 2:1–7)—about how doctrinal integrity is not enough to live out the life of service to which we’re called. Is doctrinal integrity important? You bet. But it is not enough. Here are Jesus’s words (through the apostle John) to the Ephesian church:

To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:

The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this:

“I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.” (Revelation 2:1–5)

Church, we can’t be guilty of foundation infatuation.

So let’s transition from this idea of protecting the foundation to the role of progressing beyond the foundation

The Work of Honoring (i.e., Progressing Beyond) a Foundation

The early stages of progress in a free grace church (generally speaking—I wasn’t at GraceLife when its specific foundations were laid) usually look like a newfound devotion to Bible study, with a particular focus on careful methodology and disciplined exegesis. Those are wonderful things. And there’s usually this lightbulb moment when individuals come to realize the meaning of justification and sanctification and glorification. Let me give you an example from Paul’s letter to the Romans:

… that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness [justification], and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation [a sanctification]. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed” [justification again]. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him [sanctification again]; for “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:9–13)

Next, Paul backs up; he wants people to call on the name of the Lord, but who is it that calls on them, and how will they do so?

How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!” (Romans 10:14–15)

And what a what a blessing it is to be able to open the Scriptures and say, Okay, I see now what the Bible is saying about being declared righteous before God; I see now what the Bible is saying about the possibility of holy living in this lifetime; I see now what the Bible says about the promise of having all of those things actually realized one day when I’m face to face with my Maker and in the presence of other saints. But the possible shortcoming is this: you become satisfied with merely being able to notice those differences among phases of salvation in Scripture, and then you view identifying the differences as your main job. Your main job is to live the difference.

Paul, after spilling out his theological guts for 11 chapters, gets to chapter 12 of Romans and says, I beg you—live it out! His exact words:

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living and holy sacrifices to God; that is your reasonable service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1–2)

I direct this sermon to myself as a free grace pastor.

I want any believer to be able to think about the Scripture in that categorial fashion—able to say “This is about justification” or “This is about sanctification” or “This is about glorification” or “This is about all of them wrapped up together in one.” I’m so serious about this that I’m devoting the first class of GraceLife University (an offering Wednesday evenings this fall, starting September 25) to these issues and am making it the only class available for our launch. It will be something that anyone who serves as an elder or deacon or in other position of significant leadership will have to take it—because, again, we must protect the foundation.

But if all you do is identify the distinction between justification and sanctification, and you never live the distinction, then shame to us and shame to me.

If all you do is identify the distinction between justification and sanctification, and you never live the distinction, then shame to us and shame to me.

We’re not where I want us to be as a church. I’m not where I want to be. (I’m speaking in terms of progress, not in terms of physical place.) Are we on our way there? Possibly. Some of the progress is through pruning. (Christ prunes us—He told us so, and He told us our pruning is for our joy.⁸) But although some progress comes through pruning, most of it will come through persistence.

Although some progress comes through pruning, most of it will come through persistence.

As stated, what a free grace church must do in addition to proclaiming clearly the way to heaven, is to encourage the congregation to conformity with Christ as they live in the world and encounter the culture and the enemy on a weekly basis. So let me be persistent in reminding you of some of the things we’ve established for the purpose of building upon the foundation.

I’m speaking of encouragement in the faith that takes place here⁹ so that you might go out there and express a confidence in the faith. Because internal encouragement leads to external confidence.

Internal Encouragement

It begins each week at GraceLife with an opportunity for a shared meal. You can take advantage of breakfast like the gospel—it’s free.

After breakfast, the encouragement continues in purposeful worship that features Scripture, prayer, giving, and singing. We’ve made a purposeful effort to involve as many of our members as possible in that process. So I encourage those who are asked to read or pray, do it—it’s good for your soul, and it’s good for the soul of a church.

After the worship service, we flow into the unique opportunity of what we call Bible Fellowship. Its purpose is sermon discussion.¹⁰ And during Bible Fellowship (as well as other times), I even invite anyone to argue against anything I have preached in a sermon. However, I ask those attending Bible Fellowship to remember this time is not primarily an academic exercise in sermon analysis. It’s a time for, collectively, encouraging one another by saying, “This is the way in which I gained appreciation about who God is; here is how I will apply this to my life this week; here is how I’ve failed to apply it in the past; and here’s how God’s Word has empowered me to think differently.” So the purpose of Bible Fellowship—beyond sermon discussion—is really to encourage and equip fellow believers in their awareness and appreciation of God’s goodness and the application of God’s Word.

I said that much of this sermon in this series is directed to myself as a pastor of a free grace church; but here’s where I am talking less to myself and more to those attending GraceLife: Our worship service and Bible Fellowship offer no encouragement to those who aren’t here.

We’re in the political season in which people always ask, “Are you better off now?” So let me ask (for those who attend GraceLife):

Are you better off for not being in Bible Fellowship?
Are your children better off for missing Bible Fellowship?
Are you better off for not having gathered at some point in the middle of the week?
Will you be better off not gathering for our potluck on September 18?
Will you be better off not gathering for GraceLife University (GLU) on September 25?
Were you better off for not participating in our 24 hours of prayer at Easter?

You might be. I don’t know your schedule. Life is hard. Some weeks, maybe the best decision is to stay home, to go see sick family, to attend to someone God is calling you to visit. But you should at least ask the question.

There’s more work to be done on the internal encouragement side, but I will address external confidence now.

External Confidence

We work on conformity to Christ, each of us individually and all of us collectively, but we do so not in a monastery. We have our haven here, but we live in the world and encounter the culture and the enemy on a weekly basis. Our goal is not to build a brash, worldly swagger, but to have assurance in our faith—boldness in the Word and its effectiveness for our lives.

As to our culture and our enemy, look at where we are. If you’re a parent, especially, take note: The battle isn’t out there; it is in your home. And we’ll do very little out there if we can’t win the battle in our own homes.

The battle isn’t out there; it is in your home. And we’ll do very little out there if we can’t win the battle in our own homes.

I beg you, says Paul. I beg you, says Scripture. I beg you, as your pastor: There is a physical and spiritual calling upon you. It’s a calling upon the whole of you—you in your entirety, submitted to God. It’s not a lifeless sacrifice but a living one.

Closing Questions

Here are some closing questions to ask to determine whether you’re building upon the foundation:

In what ways am I committed to growing in my faith? In particular, in what ways are you committed to the following:

Engaging the Bible?
Fellowship with other Christians?
Prayer?
Becoming more knowledgeable about your faith?
Helping someone else?
- Would the kids in your church—whether GraceLife or another—recognize your face as someone who serves in this church?
- Who are you serving—what are their names?
- Who is in church because of you? (I am not speaking merely of adding attenders to GraceLife but of those who have a closer walk with Christ because of you. Who did not know Christ but now does because of you?)

What’s your level of community engagement?

Are you merely a consumer in the community? Are your relationships purely transactional? Or is the Spirit of God so alive in you that even your interaction with the cashier is a sacred moment? (Remember what C.S. Lewis said in his essay The Weight of Glory: “You have never talked to a mere mortal.”)
If you’re a consumer out there, you’ll probably be a consumer in here (at GraceLife or whatever church you attend). And although it’s better to be a consumer than absent, for your sake, I hope you’ll join in whatever work God gives you and us.¹¹ It’s why we’re created.

We are saved by grace through faith. That’s the foundation. We can’t save ourselves; it’s a gift we receive from God, “not as a result of works,” as Ephesians 2:8–9 says.

But building upon that idea is this one: You are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand [a long time ago] so that [you] would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

I don’t know what the will of God is for GraceLife, or the good works that He has ahead. I don’t know how many more measures of four years he will give me, or any of us for that matter. But the good news is that there is growth to be had ahead of us, and it will come because of our commitment to our foundation. We can grow in Christ and on Christ¹² when we choose to honor that foundation.

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