R.C. Sproul

We are fellow citizens of the kingdom of God.

Here he was a Christian and he told to these other guys, he says, leave these people alone.

They're fine.

They're fellow citizens with us of the kingdom of God.

That was a wonderful taste of the mercy and grace of God.

But what he's saying is that the Gentiles now, through the ministry of Christ, have been brought into the city of God.

Now, in this metaphor, he speaks about, first of all, that this house has been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

If you ask the average Christian on the street, what is the church's foundation?

They will say the church's foundation is Jesus Christ.

Now that's usually because they've heard the hymn.

The church's one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord.

Well, the Bible teaches us that the only foundation that can be laid is the one that is laid in Christ Jesus.

But again, the main metaphor for the foundation of the church

is not that Jesus is the foundation, but the foundation is built upon the prophets and the apostles.

Now what does that mean and why is that important?

We have seen in the last 200 years a wholesale assault against the authority of the Bible.

And that assault has not come simply from unbelieving secularists, but in a main it's come from within the church, from critics of the scripture who claim to be Christians.

Speaking of the higher critics of the academic world who have leveled this assault.

the founder of the university where I did my doctoral studies, who was also the prime minister of the Netherlands,

Abraham Kuyper said at the turn of the century that biblical criticism can no longer legitimately be called biblical criticism.