>> Jen: Hey guys, welcome to the Bible explained podcast. Today we are in the book of first Corinthians, and we are going to be discussing the idea of purgatory and also the judgment seat of Christ. So we're going to be reading first corinthians, chapter three, verses ten through 15 today. So let's go ahead and grab our bibles and also our beverage of choice, our hot beverage of
choice, and let's read this together. As always, I'll be reading from the w e b. According to the grace of God, which was given to me as a wise master builder, I laid a foundation and another builds on, um, it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it. For no one can lay any other foundation than that which
has been laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble, each man's work will be revealed for the day, will declare it because it is revealed in fire, and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man's work is. If any man's work remains which he built on it, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, but as through fire.
So today's portion of scripture is talking about what the Catholics think of as purgatory. So we'll get into that. But let's start in verse ten. Here it says, according to the grace of God, which was given to me as a wise master builder, I laid a foundation and another builds on it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it. So Paul calls himself a master builder, or a wise master builder, rather. He gives himself this really nice title, actually. Um, but he doesn't give himself this
title based upon anything that he did. In fact, he once again gives glory to God. He says, according to the grace of God, which was given to me. So because God gave me grace and gave me the tools I needed, I have been able to become a wise master builder, to lay a foundation. Now, Paul, of course, here is talking about planting churches, but he's using an analogy that the people of Corinth would be able to understand.
A master builder is the one who is able to lay the foundation before the building is built and then is able to give the plans to somebody else so that they can continue to build on that foundation. So he uses this analogy and he says, you know, I laid the foundation as the master builder, but somebody else now has to come in and build on that foundation. He says another person will build on the foundation that
I laid. However, no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ. So the church cannot have any other foundation than Jesus. Otherwise, that church will not be a stable church. There are many churches that have risen and fallen very quickly over the years because their foundation was not Jesus Christ, unfortunately. So there can only be one foundation that each church is built on. It has to be the gospel message in its entirety. It
cannot be anything else. And so we need to make sure that our churches are built on that solid foundation of the gospel that has stood the test of time and still remains to this day. Which, by the way, that is the entire point of my ministry. If you go to my website, you'll see that, um, my catchphrase is, build your foundation. The only way you can be successful spiritually moving forward is if you have the correct
foundation. So Paul laid the floor plans, I suppose, and the foundation for the next person to build on that foundation. And that's where Apollos comes in and the other disciples that came into Corinth and built upon what Paul had already established. So there's two types of people that, uh, Paul talks about here. The first one being the layer of the foundation and the second person being the builder. Earlier on, actually, in this chapter, Paul called it a sower and a waterer.
So Paul would have been the sower, right? He sowed the seed, and then another person would come and water the seed, make that little seed grow. But Paul says, anyone who builds on that foundation must be careful how he builds on it. Then he says in verse twelve, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble, each man's work will be revealed.
Now, what Paul is talking about here is that even if a church has the solid foundation of Jesus Christ and the gospel message, people can come in and build garbage on top of that beautiful foundation. And unfortunately, we see that all the time in churches, uh, across America to this day, don't we? We see churches that are truly built on the foundation of Jesus. But then corruption comes in and cowardice comes in and pride comes in, and all these issues come into the church that cause people
to fall away from the church. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Mars Hill. I listened to that podcast, the rise and fall of Mars Hill. Um, I don't know how, you know, useful. It was really, it kind of was just airing dirty laundry of the church. But it was an interesting podcast in the fact that it talked about how this megachurch got so big, and then all of these problems that were associated with this mega church. And then eventually it ended up falling
very quickly. But the church in general was not solidly built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. That is how a church is going to stand the test of time. Because even though that foundation is there and that foundation is good, what people have built on that foundation is not so good. And right now, I'm personally thinking of the Southern Baptist convention. The Southern Baptist convention has a pretty solid and decent foundation.
But unfortunately, in recent years, corruption has been coming in and, uh, just greed. And so the people who run the Southern Baptist convention are beginning to step away from some of the principal messages of the gospel and are moving towards other things that are just more popular in our culture right now. And we see that happening with churches all the time across America. The foundation is good, but what has been built on that foundation is not so good.
But Paul mentions several building materials here. He says if anyone builds on the foundation with gold or with silver or with costly stones or with wood, hay or stubble, each man's work will be revealed. Now, obviously, the hay and the stubble would be not such good building materials, right? But the gold and the silver and the costly stones. Now, this would not be like precious stones, you know, like, uh, diamonds or something like that.
This would be like marble or granite, you know, like nice stones that cost some money to get. That's what Paul's talking about here. Those would be better building materials to use for a structure that is going to last on this beautiful foundation, right? And not only that, these items, gold, silver, and costly stones like marble, they're more beautiful to look at also than wood, hay or stubble
is. And of course, Paul, when he mentions all this, he's probably thinking of Herod's temple when he's talking about this, because Herod's temple was made with all of these beautiful, uh, building materials. It was made with gold and silver and marble and granite. I believe there were parts of the temple that were so white because of the granite or the marble or something, the stone that was on it, that it looked like the temple was covered in
snow. That is how beautiful it was. And I'm sure Paul was thinking of that when talking about these building materials. But he has a point here. He says some of these building materials are better because on the day and the word day is capitalized, he says these building materials are going to be revealed in fire. And the fire itself will test what sort of work each man's work is, if any man's work remains, which he built on it, he will receive
a reward. So, going back to the idea of the building materials that are being used, you know, certain buildings are pretty fire resistant. You know, if they're made out of stone or precious metals, those are going to be far more resistant to fire than something like wood, hay, or stubble. You know, we know that hay and stubble go up in flames extremely quickly. I know this because we have both a wood fire heater and also a fire pit outside.
And, uh, we will throw all sorts of stuff in the fire, fire pit, especially. We sometimes throw dried grass or hay or whatever else in the fire, and it goes up extremely quickly. It's like, it's. It takes seconds before it is completely consumed in the fire. Now, wood takes a little bit longer. It's a better material, but it is going to be burned up eventually, right.
However, granite, silver, and gold, if I threw those in my fire pit outside or in my wood fire heater, those are not going to be burned up. They might melt a little bit, especially maybe the gold and the silver might melt. Maybe if my wood fire heater gets hot enough, which it almost never does, I don't think. But otherwise, pretty much nothing is going to happen to those types of building materials in fire.
And apparently, on this day that Paul is talking about here, which is the judgment seat of Christ, we're going to have to experience some kind of fire. The judgment seat of Christ is the judgment that each and every person is going to have to experience at some point after we die. So let's read about the judgment seat of Christ a little bit more. In two corinthians 5810, I'll read this out of the amp, actually, because the amp gives a lot
of good context. It says, we are, as I was saying, of good courage and confident hope, and prefer, rather, to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore, whether we are at home on earth or away from home, and with him, it is our constant ambition to be pleasing to him. For we believers will be called to account, and must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each 1 may be repaid for what has been done in the body, whether good or
bad. That is, each person will be held responsible for his actions, purposes, goals, and motives, the use or misuse of his time, opportunities, and abilities. That is what the judgment seat of Christ is. It is after we die, we. It says, go and meet God.
We go to meet God. But at some point in time after that, we are going to experience a judgment of our actions, where we are going to have to stand before God and give an account for everything that we did or did not do with his time and with his gifts that he gave us on earth. So going back to first corinthians, chapter three, that is what Paul is talking about here. He is talking about the judgment seat of
Christ. He says, on that day, our work is going to be revealed in fire, and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man's work is. Notice that it does not say that we are going to be in the fire. Instead, it says that the fire is going to reveal our works, meaning the work itself is going to be in this fire that we don't really understand. This is a fire that we cannot exactly comprehend. But we do know that the Holy Spirit is often associated
with fire. And there's been times in scripture where a fire has appeared that wasn't hot. For example, Moses at the burning bush. You know, the bush was burning, but when Moses stuck his hand into the flames, the flames were cold. There was no heat with these flames. So whatever this fire is, it's something that we just can't comprehend. It is something that is a part of God. And so we're going to experience this kind of fire that is testing our
works specifically. Now, this portion of scripture is actually where the Catholics get their idea of purgatory. And for those of you who are not Catholic, I'll explain purgatory a little bit more. From my understanding, I am not Catholic myself, but my mom was raised Catholic, and my husband was raised Catholic. And basically all my family members were raised Catholic except for me. But from my understanding of purgatory, purgatory is a place that each person has to go in order to be
refined. They go through this fire for however long it takes for them to burn away all of the bad things that they did on earth to get to heaven after that. So every single person that dies does experience some form of purgatory, but eventually gets out and is able to go to heaven. And this is where the Catholics get that idea is from. One corinthians, chapter three. But I do want to say here that it does not say in scripture that
we Christians are going to go through a fire. In one Corinthians three, it specifically says, our works are going to go through that fire. And then in two Corinthians chapter five, the verses that I just read to you in verse eight, we don't go to some sort of, like, fiery purgatory. We go to God, let me read that to you again. Second Corinthians five eight. We are, as I was saying, of good courage and confident hope, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the
Lord. Therefore, whether we are at home on earth or away from home and with him, it is our constant ambition to be pleasing to him. These verses are specifically stating that after we die, we are absent from our body, and we are at home with the Lord. We don't go
through any kind of purgatory. But it says that after we are at home with the Lord, it says, we believers will be called to account and must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each 1 may be repaid for what has been done in the
body, whether good or bad. So we're going to be in heaven, and eventually our day is going to come, our day of standing before the judgment seat of Christ, where God is going to be up there judging us for each and every thing that we did, whether we built on that foundation with gold and silver and precious stones, or rather marble and granite and nice stones, or whether we built on that foundation with hay and garbage and mud and stubble and wood even God is going to test all of our
works to see which ones were good and which ones were evil. And some of those works are going to be burned up with that fire. So let me go back to first corinthians chapter three and finish reading. It says, if any man's work remains which he built on it, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will
be saved, but as through fire. So whatever this fire is that we are going to experience, it's going to be a fire that tests each one of our works and either burns it all up and it becomes literally nothing, and we have nothing to show for the time we spent here on earth in front of God the father. Or these works are going to remain, and when they remain, we'll have something to show. We'll be like God. Look, we were able to do something with the time that you gave us and the resources that you
gave us here on earth. This all kind of reminds me of the parable that Jesus spoke about, the talents, if you remember that one. There was a man who had several servants, and this man was going away on a long journey, and he decided to give talents, which was a piece of money, a, uh, year's wage, to each one of his servants. And so this man goes on his trip and expects his servants to do good things with his money, to build businesses and to gain more wealth for
him. Well, when he comes back a while later, he meets his servants, and this servant is like, look, I doubled your money. And the man says, well done, good and faithful servant, you are blessed with little. Now I'm going to give you much. Then he calls the second servant, look, I doubled your money. And so the man says, well done, good and faithful servant, I blessed you with very little, and now I'm going to bless you with much. And then he calls the last
servant. And the servant comes up to the master and he's like, here's your talent back. I didn't do anything with it. In fact, I went and buried it because you're a mean master. I don't really like you very much, and, uh, I was scared of you, and so I didn't want to lose your money. And here it is back. And the master gets very angry, and he's like, you couldn't have at least put this money in the bank so I could gain interest from it. You went and buried it and did
literally nothing with it. You are a wicked servant. Get out of my sight. And first corinthians three is exactly what this parable reminds me of, that each one of us are going to stand before God, and even though we're already saved, we've already been blessed with salvation from Jesus blood. We are still going to stand before God the Father, and we're going to have to give an account of everything we did here
on earth. Whether we did evil things during our time, whether we were lazy like the servant with the one talent, or whether we did good things with the time and money and resources that God gave us. Each one of us is going to stand before God the father, and it's going to be a scary thing. Hebrews chapter ten talks about how scary it's going to be. I'm going to turn there and read verses 26 and 27 real quick to conclude.
For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries. And I believe those verses in Hebrews are talking about the judgment seat of Christ. Once again, that fire is mentioned. So that testing fire is either going to be something good or it's going to be something terrible.
If you continue reading in Hebrews chapter ten and go down to verse 31, it actually says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Faithful listeners, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. It was both a terrifying episode and also an encouraging one. Terrifying in the fact that each and every Christian, each one of us listening to this podcast, is in fact going to stand before God the Father someday, and we are going to have to give an account for everything that we've done,
and that truly is terrifying. But it is also encouraging that we don't have to be as afraid of that moment if we take what God has given us now and use it to the best of our ability to worship him. It's not about taking God's stuff so that we can gain more for ourselves. It's about taking what God has given us so that we can worship him more fully and so that we can also minister to other people. So, once again, encouraging and also terrifying. But I hope you enjoyed the episode nonetheless.
If you did, please share it on your social media, uh, platforms. Faithful listeners, I hope you have a fantastic and wonderful rest of your day. I will see you all tomorrow for an episode from first kings. Happy listening and God bless.