"If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

That means that right from the outset we have to give very special attention to the matter of having God's foundation. That foundation will become impregnable and indestructible once it is established, but it is of importance beyond any other importance - for you and for me - that we have God's foundation ... and that foundation well and truly laid. The whole situation is entirely hopeless unless that is so.

Has God laid a foundation? We may lay foundations and find that they are no good. The question is: Has God laid a foundation? The Word of God tells us quite clearly that He has.

Does God lay a foundation without intending a super-structure? Surely that would be folly, and who would charge God with folly? Then if God has laid a foundation and His foundation is indestructible, He intends that foundation to be built upon; He intends to have a building upon it.

Can God's intention eventually and ultimately be frustrated by the enemy? No more than His foundation can be destroyed! He will have His object.

What is God's foundation? It is Jesus Christ. He is now beyond the reach of all the forces of destruction. What is God's superstructure? It is Christ. Call it by other names if you like: the church which is His Body, the company conformed to the image of His son; but whatever you may term it, it is - in the intention of God - Christ developed to fullness in the saints. That can never be destroyed. That can never be overthrown. God will have it.

If we are thinking of the superstructure as some movement, some organisation, some formulated system of Christian work and enterprise ... well, we have a wrong conception of God's superstructure. God's superstructure is saints growing into the image of His Son; and while Christ remains, the purpose of God concerning those who are Christ's remains. God's purpose can never be defeated.

If we have abandoned ourselves to seeing something achieved on the earth, something accomplished successfully - then we shall come to the place where we shall be very unwise to hold on to it. But if we have abandoned ourselves to presenting every man perfect in Christ, we are not on a hopeless line. That is God's intention - fixed and settled before ever this world, with all its changes and it's devil, came into being.

You and I have got to be founded upon God's objective. The thing that has got to determine all our life ... and all our activity ... is God's end. And what is God's end? Let it be settled once and for all that God's end is not to have something anchored to this earth, even with His Name upon it. Everything anchored to this earth will go with the earth.

"Let us be careful in thinking we can join a fellowship. Fellowship is a thing that is; It is a result of something inward."

God's object is to have a spiritual thing in the life of His people - something which relates them to His Son in a growing and increasing way - the increase of Christ. It matters nothing about all the rest. All the merely temporary aspects of the work are of very little importance at all. The thing that matters is that men and woman are being perfected in Christ.

We are not here to put something down and then try to get men and woman to join it -to attach themselves to it. Let us be careful that we start at the right end. We are not here on this earth to set up a teaching and then try to get people to come into that teaching. If you go to your New Testament, you will find that people came together because they were in it already. They did not come to join it. The testimony is not something that you join. You are already joined by being in the testimony. Do you get that? That is a tremendously important thing in connection with this whole matter. We shall be disappointed - we shall have a hard time - if we try to get people to adopt something, to take it on, to accept it. Let us allow the Lord to do work in our hearts; and when He does His work in our hearts, we will cleave to one another.

You will have the expression of the Church here on the earth as a result of the work done inside and not in something you have bought together ... even in a teaching, a testimony or a system called a "fellowship." Let us be careful in thinking that we can join a fellowship. Fellowship is a thing that is; It is the result of something inward.

The objective is to have an inward life in God. If we are on that line, we are on something that can never be destroyed. If our objective is anything else - to have some form or order - we are on a line that will be destroyed; it will suffer, it will be broken up. That is why we find so much splitting up. Here is a pure thing which has been wrought into a few lives; and because the same thing has been done in the members of that little company, they are together in a beautiful oneness and represent there something very much of God. But then others begin to join it - to attach themselves to it or to accept it's teaching. Later another generation comes along and takes up the teaching of the first generation; but the work has not been done in those who adhere or succeed, so you get the carrying on of a teaching or a tradition without the inward work.

What happens? Before long the thing is divided.., and the divisions are endless. You cannot divide that which is THE one thing of Christ in each heart. That makes for fellowship; that is indestructible. But if it is anything merely external - historical, traditional, doctrinal - it can be split into as many fragments as there are people in it.

The foundation is Jesus Christ. . and Jesus Christ in the heart - growing, developing, being fully formed in the saints - that is an indestructible line: Christ as the foundation within us.

I think we want to be far more concerned with the spiritual growth of one another. Everything must come within that object - the spiritual growth of one another. Everything else will come that is good and right; any kind of outward expression will be a result of it. But this is the basic thing: our mutual spiritual development - the increase of Christ. That all hell's activities and treacheries can never destroy. It is God's foundation in us which stands.

In the first letter to the Corinthians, we have a way in which foundations are virtually destroyed ... at least in a very real measure. It is by way is put on them - the building that is placed upon them. Not utterly and altogether and finally are they destroyed by this means, but they are robbed of their supreme value; and thus they are in their main virtue destroyed.

From the Apostle's words you will see what I mean: "I laid a foundation; and another built upon it. But let each man take heed how he builds upon it." And then Paul proposes that some build with certain materials ("wood, hay and stubble") and others build with other materials ("gold, silver, and precious stones"). Then a testing fire from God comes to try out that super-structure, and the wood, hay and stubble material goes up m smoke. When it has all gone, the question is: Well, what was the value of that foundation if, when all is said and done, nothing is on it? In that way the foundation, in its supreme significance and value, is destroyed.

The Apostle tells us that those who do that sort of thing may be saved people; because they have Christ, the foundation is there. They themselves may not lose their salvation; nevertheless, they were not saved just to be saved. Christ did not come into them just to be there. He did not become the foundation just to remain the foundation. A foundation presupposes a superstructure. The superstructure is the justification of a foundation.

"I think we want to be far more concerned with the spiritual growth of one another."

What would you think of a builder who went around everywhere just puffing down foundations, so that all you saw as you went around the earth was a lot of foundations ... foundations put in year after year, but nothing more than foundations to be seen as you passed by. You would say, "Well, that fellow did not justify his existence; he did not justify his labour. The only justification for puffing in those foundations is that he put something on them."

The justification of our salvation is that there is a building is up. God is justified in saving us when He has His building. That is the justification of the grace of God. So the Apostle goes on with the language about God's temple: "You are God's building." God's building. Now what we are putting upon our salvation - what we are building - is either going to justify the foundation or, virtually ... for all Divine intents and purposes ... to destroy it; that is, render it vain in the full purpose of God. That is plain. There is a way of rendering even the Divine foundation well nigh valueless. ..and robbing it of its real virtue ... by putting up something not according to Christ. Now that is very simple and elementary, but it will help us on a little.

The superstructure has to be in keeping with the foundation. It has to be spiritually and morally of a piece - they have to be. The building has to take character from the foundation. The foundation is said to be Jesus Christ, and the whole building has to take its character and nature from its foundation.

Think how deep-rooted was the foundation after an excavation down to the bottom-most depths of hell; for that is where Christ laid the foundation. He excavated down to the most bottom-most depths of sin; He touched rock bottom to lay the foundation of our salvation. Deeper He could not go. He ploughed through hell to lay the foundations of our eternal redemption. Now think of putting up a flimsy wood, hay, and stubble building upon that. Does that justify such a foundation? Something worthy of Christ is required - something worthy of work that He has accomplished - something which will speak of the greatness of His grace and His glory. That is God's building.

Putting Chains on the Holy Spirit The constant and persistant tendency of man - and effort of the enemy is to bring back again the yoke of bondage, imprisoning the Holy Spirit in some set, crystallised system of things - A church system, an ecclesistical system, a man-made religious order, a formality, an organisation, and all such things as so often commence with a divine idea; and men take charge of that divine idea and make it to serve them instead of everything serving it ... If we hamper Him, put chains on Him, we shall lose His values. He demands that we shall never allow ourselves to be brought into any fixed form and economy and limit of any kind; Then we shall be God's free people. - T. Austin Sparks