R.C. Sproul

It must be called, to be accurate, biblical vandalism, that the attacks upon biblical authority have been so severe it betrays the work of vandals.

Now,

to say that the church is built on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles is to say that the foundation of the church is based upon the truth that is revealed by God through his agents of revelation.

Those agents of revelation in the Old Testament were the prophets.

In the New Testament, they are the apostles.

We see that same imagery found in the book of Revelation, for example.

And again, when the Psalmist wrote, he raised the question, if the foundation of the house be shaken, how can the building stand?

And the foundation of the church is the teaching, the words of the prophets and the apostles.

But in another way, the church is built on the word of God.

And when that foundation is shaken,

building cannot possibly stand.

But again, the prophets and the apostles do not serve merely on their own power and even on their delegated authority as the whole of the foundation of the church, but that foundation in order to be able to support the building and

has to be neatly fit together and built upon a sound basis, and that which knits it together is the cornerstone, without which the building will not be unified.

And so that foundational imagery of the prophets and the apostles is seen to be knit together and unified by the

the Lord, Christ himself, being the chief cornerstone.

And a chief cornerstone to a builder in the first century was that stone without which the building could not stand, in whom the whole building, being fitted together,

Again, it's in Christ that the whole building is knit together through and by the cornerstone.

So this image now, we've gone beyond citizen, the family, to the building, which is knit together by Christ Himself.

And it grows.

Here the building is organic, but it grows