Co-laborers with God [A]

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Transcript:

1 Corinthians chapter 3. Paul was writing to the church at Corinth in this letter because of a great number of problems that they had, and I don’t have time this morning to go into all the problems that they had because he spent the entire book of 1 Corinthians. Now there were some good things going on in the church as well, but there were some things that needed to be corrected, and one of the problems that needed to be corrected was that they were divided over who they were working for and who they were working with.

And Paul explains to them that we’re all on the same team. We’re all working toward the same goal, and ultimately we are working with God. We are co-workers with God.

He uses the term fellow laborers or co-laborers, depending on what translation you’re looking at, or laborers together. But he says we are co-workers with God. Now that doesn’t mean that you and I are equal to God, but it means that we have the privilege of being part of the work that God is doing.

And I know that I oftentimes don’t like to let people work with me. It’s a weakness I have. If you’re that way like I am, it’s not a strength saying I can do it myself.

It’s actually a weakness of saying I have to be so in control that I can only do it myself. When I do yard work, the kids always want to help. When I do work in the garden or mow in the yard or whatever it is.

Now, there are some things that they can’t do. I really don’t want to take a child to Ada with a bloody stump of a foot because they chopped it off in the lawnmower. So they don’t mow the lawn yet.

But they’ll ask me, can I help with the garden? And in my mind, there’s always some reason not to let them help me. There’s always some reason why I need to do it myself.

Whether I’m planting and I want to make sure it gets planted in the right spot, or I want to make sure it gets planted to the right depth, or whether it’s picking weeds and I’m afraid they won’t recognize what’s a weed and wants a plant and no you can’t help me not today there will be something. I just can’t let go of that. I don’t want somebody to work with me because well I guess it’s insecurity on my part.

I just have to be in control. Has God called you to preach too? Sometimes you do work with me but it’s really hard on me to let that happen.

I’m trying to teach them how to clean the bathrooms and sometimes I go and do it behind them because they don’t I like it clean a certain way. Charla will let them fold laundry and then fight the urge to refold it. You know it’s some of y’all have some of y’all have experienced this.

Some of you said I don’t care as long as my kids were helping I don’t care what it looked like. Others of us are not that are not that easygoing. We don’t want help we just want to do it ourselves.

Okay that that’s not just That’s not just at home. I mean, that extends to everything I do. That’s just part of my personality.

I don’t want to let go of things and let people work with me. Now, I do it, especially in ministry, because God says we’re to work together for the furtherance of the gospel. It’s not supposed to be just me doing all the ministry.

And it can’t be just me doing all the ministry, or a lot of ministry won’t get done. Because I only have 24 hours in the day and got to sleep sometime. It can’t be just you doing all the work of the ministry.

God put us together to work together. And we’re to train and be trained by each other and work together for the forgiveness of the gospel. But when I look at something like this, I look at my own life and see how difficult it is for me to allow somebody else to work with me, it’s that much more incredible that God would look at us and say, come work with me.

That God would say, you are my fellow laborers. Now, please let me give you this disclaimer at the beginning. So there’s no misunderstanding, and I don’t have to come back and correct it and give the disclaimer every time.

When I say things like we are co-laborers with God, we are co-workers, we’re workers together, laborers together, this is terminology from the Bible. And I am not saying, and it is not saying, that we are equal to God in any way, shape, or form. So please just understand that for the rest of the message.

If I talk about working together with God, I still believe He is sovereign. I still believe we are utterly dependent on Him. I still believe that the work of the ministry does not, you know, no matter how hard we work, the work of the ministry does not get done.

Nothing gets accomplished. No lives are changed. No souls are saved apart from the working of God.

Okay? Are we clear that that’s what I mean? And yet God chooses to use us as His tools.

God chooses to use us as His co-laborers. God chooses to, God could save everybody on His own. God doesn’t need us, and yet God chooses to use us as his co-laborers.

And that’s incredible. Because if you think I’m a perfectionist when it comes to cleaning the bathroom, God is not only a perfectionist, but God is perfect, and I will never be. So if a perfect God can say, come work with me, then I should get over my perfectionism as an imperfect person and let others have a part in the ministry and work together with you and with God.

But Paul writes to the people at Corinth and in chapter 3, verse 1, he starts and says, And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. He said, Even as I write you, even as I do find some things to commend you for, he said, I can’t really write to you as spiritually mature people. He said, I write to you as carnal. That word carnal means fleshly or worldly. I think in this context, it means people who are just driven by the flesh more than they are the spirit.

And he says, I couldn’t write to you as though you’re spiritually mature people. I write to you as though you’re carnal. He says, unto babes in Christ, he says, you’re still little children in the faith. You have not progressed beyond the point of salvation.

We all start out as believers at the same point. Where we are babes in Christ and we know very little. We’re spiritually immature.

We haven’t learned much. And that’s okay. That’s nothing to feel bad about.

But we are not supposed to stay that way. We are supposed to learn and grow and be challenged and progress beyond that. But the church at Corinth was sort of spiritually stunted.

And he said, I’m writing to you because you have not progressed beyond this point. You haven’t grown. You’re content to just stay little children in the faith.

He said, I have fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto you were not able to bear it. Neither yet now are ye able. He says, I’ve been having to just give you the little bits and pieces of truth that you could digest at a time.

And apparently there was some disagreement with them. They thought, well, no, we are spiritually mature. And he’s arguing, no, you’re not.

He says in verse 3, for ye are yet carnal, for whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions, are you not carnal and walk as men? He says, how can you claim that you’re spiritually mature when your church is divided and you’re squabbling with each other and there are factions and you’re following after different teachers instead of following after the Lord Jesus Christ? He says in verse 4, for while one saith, I am of Paul and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal?

And the natural human inclination would be for Paul to say, you know, to those who are following him, who are following Paul, here’s why you’re right, and those who are following after Apollos, here’s why you’re not quite so much right. But instead, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says, wait a minute, it’s okay to like one teacher. It’s okay to like one teacher over another.

There are Bible teachers, and I’m not talking about crazy televangelists who tell you that they can control the weather and make God give you money. I’m talking about actual Bible teachers on the radio. You know what?

There are some that I like better than others, and it’s nothing personal. They’re teaching style or whatever. It just, you know, attracts me. Some attract me more than others.

That’s okay. I asked Charla last week how the, with the time change, she was getting out of church as I was on my way to church, and I said, well, how was the service? And she said, oh, brother, Heath was great.

He was so different from you or something along those lines. and I’m okay. And she said, well, I didn’t mean it like that.

No, I understand. I’m the first to say sometimes it’s nice to have a change and hear from somebody else and hear somebody else’s perspective. But you can like one teacher and it might hurt my feelings if she said she liked him better, but it’s okay.

It’s not sinful to say, well, I liked his preaching better than yours. Okay, there are some preachers I know personally that I’d rather listen to more than some other that I know personally. But we’re not choosing up teams and saying I’m with him and I’m with him and we can’t be on the same side because I’m part of the Apollos group.

I’m part of the Paul group and then we split into factions and the Paul group doesn’t like the Apollos group and vice versa. And this group won’t work with this group in ministry because we don’t follow the same guy. It’s ridiculous.

Some of y’all read what I wrote about accidentally ending up at the Independent Baptist Church last Sunday morning. And I grew up for a while an independent Baptist. I have background in independent and missionary and southern Baptist churches, so I understand as well as anybody the animosity, the hostility that sometimes exists between different groups of Baptists. Why?

Because we’re part of different associations? And I just tell you, that’s stupid. We may not agree.

I’m not saying that there are people who look at some secondary issues and say, this is important to me, and we do it too. I’m not saying we all have to go to the same church, but do we have to divide up and fight? If we believe the gospel, if we’re faithful to the word, do we have to fight because we’re part of different associations?

I’m going to break my own rule with the kids and say, well, that’s stupid. To divide up over human organizations. To divide up over human teachers, over men.

Paul says, don’t do that. Even though Paul was one of the men that they were following. Paul could have used this opportunity to build his following.

And instead he said it doesn’t matter who Paul is or who Apollos is. He goes on in verse 5 to say who then is Paul and who is Apollos. He says who are we?

I’m nobody. And that really should be our attitude in ministry. And by ministry I don’t mean just pastors.

I mean if you as a believer realize this morning that you’re in ministry. And you are in ministry and you should realize it. That really we’re not the main focus.

We’re not that important. Early on in my ministry, I had people that would try to call me Pastor Byrns. I was in my early 20s at the time.

I didn’t feel like I had earned that much deference. And I had one lady, I told her, and I was very nice about it, and she said, Pastor Byrns, we’re so glad you’ve come to our church. I said, you can call me Jared, Brother Jared.

I said, I don’t care. If you want to call me Brother Jared, that’s fine. You can also call me Jared.

I appreciate the respect, but I’m nobody special. and sometimes as a pastor that’s hard to remember but we need to remind ourselves I’m really nobody special I appreciate the respect for the office but I’m really nobody special it’s Jesus that we need to be focused on not brother so and so and doctor whoever Jesus who am I? I’m nobody that important a hundred years from now nobody may even remember my name if they remember Jesus that’s what’s important and Paul said who is Paul? who is Apollos?

We’re nobody. We’re ministers by whom you believed even as the Lord gave to every man. He said yes we’re the ministers who led you to faith in Christ but God gave but everywhere there are ministers it’s because God gave them.

And he says in verse 6 I planted Apollos watered but God gave the increase. Being out of town I had to I had to ease up on my dislike of letting other people help. And Charla had to ease up on her commitment to never ever help me with yard work.

She watered the garden every night. Now she told me when I, is that okay that I tell him that? You probably told most of him that.

When we got married, she said, I will never ever help you in the garden. She does not like to get dirty. That’s okay.

We have a garden and it’s just starting to blossom. She went out there every night faithfully and watered the garden and picked it. I have help this morning.

Went out there and watered and harvested and did all this. And they ate a huge crop of cucumbers while I was gone. And we’ve got some more that I’m looking forward to tearing into later today.

You know what? She didn’t do a thing to help plant that garden. And I didn’t do a thing this week to help cultivate that garden.

and neither one of us made those seeds or those plants grow and bear fruit. I planted the plants, charla watered them, but God still made the plants grow. I didn’t have control over making that seed into a cucumber plant or that seed into a zucchini plant.

Believe me, if I could control that, my okra would be blooming already. If I had control over that, we would be eating okra every night. No, I planted, charla watered, and God gave the increase.

That’s what Paul says here about him and Apollos. He said, I planted, Apollos watered, God gave the increase. And he’s not talking about a garden there, he’s talking about their spiritual life.

He’s saying, I came through Corinth and I started the church, I planted the seed of the gospel, and Apollos has been through there, and he has taught, and he has made disciples, and that seed of the gospel that was planted, he nurtured it, and he cultivated it, but it was still God who brought people to faith in Jesus Christ. it is still God who built people up in the faith. The fact that somebody has grown to maturity in Jesus Christ, because somebody is a better disciple and a better follower of Jesus Christ today than they were yesterday, is not because they sat under the teaching of Paul, or because they sat under the teaching of Apollos. If that happens to you during my time here, that you end up as a better follower of Jesus Christ than you were when I came, it’s not because you sat under my teaching, it’s because God used that teaching and God gave the increase.

And God could have worked in your life through anybody else as much as He worked through me or more. Because it’s God who gives the increase. We’re just, we get to be God’s co-workers, but we also need to realize we’re just tools in God’s hands.

He said in verse 7, So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. He wants to make sure we understand this. He wanted to make sure they understood this and wants to make sure we understand it today so he repeats himself.

There are many times that Paul repeats himself and it’s not because he’s so forgetful that he doesn’t realize that he just said that in the previous verse. In Galatians chapter 1, he tells him, anybody who preaches any other gospel, let them be accursed. And it’d be real easy to think, well, Paul just got carried away.

He didn’t really mean that. So he says it again, I think two verses later. If any man preaches any other gospel than what you’ve received, he said it could be me, it could be another teacher, it could be an angel from heaven, but if anybody comes and preaches a gospel contrary to what you’ve heard, if it’s different at all, let that man be accursed.

Oh, okay, he said it twice. He didn’t just get carried away. He meant that.

So Paul does this again here. Okay, God gives the increase. Okay, Paul’s just getting carried away with this modesty thing.

Now, he says it again for us because he wants to make sure that we understand he really does mean that. Yes, I planted. Yes, somebody else watered.

Yes, we’ve all had a part in cultivating people as disciples of Jesus Christ, but ultimately it’s God who does the heavy lifting. It’s God who gave the increase, and it doesn’t work without him. Now, he that planteth and he that watereth are one, verse 8, and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor.

So God does notice, though, the things that we do to work alongside him. Because God chooses to use us in his purposes, and it’s God that works in and through us, that God still recognizes our faithfulness and will reward for that. He said, for we are laborers together with God.

He said, in other words, he’s gone to all this saying, we really don’t matter. I, as the minister, I’m just a mouthpiece. I really don’t matter.

None of us really matter in the sense that, hey, look at what I’ve done for God. But then he goes to remind us, but you do matter. Because God sees everything that you do.

God rewards your obedience. And God chooses to use you. So there’s a balance for us to find here this morning.

In our ministry. And mark my words. If you are a believer, if you’ve been born again, if you’ve been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, you are supposed to have a ministry.

God has enlisted you into ministry and it’s not optional. I don’t know what your ministry is. It’s probably not the same as mine. And it’s probably not the same as the person sitting next to you in the pew.

Folks, we’ve all got a ministry that God has given us. You may say, well, I’ve never been called to preach. You don’t have to preach.

Do you have people in your world that God has placed you in proximity to whether in your workplace, in your school, in your neighborhood, in your family, in the places that you go every day? Has God placed you in proximity to people that you can reach out to with the love of Jesus Christ? Well, there’s your ministry.

There’s your ministry. Well, it’s not as big as it. There’s no such thing.

You heard the old phrase, there are no small parts, only small actors. There are no small ministries. Everything you do for the kingdom is important, and God sees it and recognizes it.

So when I said there’s this balance defined and, oh, you don’t matter, we don’t matter in the sense of personalities and God needs me and God can only use me, but what you do for the kingdom matters and God sees it and rewards it. I said, for we are laborers together with God. And I still think that that’s cool.

I mean, that’s amazing that God would look at, I know me, I’m not that great. I tell you that all the time and then somebody inevitably says, oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re wonderful.

Thank you. I think you’re wonderful too. I’m not trying to be down on myself.

I’m just saying from God’s perspective, I realize I’m not that great. I see me when I wake up first thing in the morning. It’s not a pretty picture.

I know how cranky I can be. I know how much I’ve complained this week. I know how much I complain on a normal week when I’m not having an alternator break in the desert.

I tell Charla all the time, neither one of us are the easiest people in the world to live with, and yet we get along. I’m just telling you, I know from God’s perspective, he’s up here and I’m not that great. And that makes it all the more incredible to me that God would choose to use me in any way, shape, or form.

And if you’re honest, you probably would say the same thing about yourself. That you see your flaws and you see the shortcomings and you see, I really need to work on this area. I really need to work on that.

I wish God would help me change this. God sees those flaws and shortcomings. God sees our sin.

God knows who we really are that nobody else knows, and he chooses to use us anyway. I think that’s amazing. I think that’s absolutely amazing that God would redeem us, that he would purchase us back from sin, from Satan’s clutches, that he would purchase us with the blood of Jesus, not just to save us, but to make us his co-workers.

He says you’re God’s husbandry. That’s like a field that God has planted and takes care of. You’re God’s building.

God’s building us up he’s shaping us into what he wants us to be according to the grace of God which is given unto me as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation and another buildeth thereon he’s talking about the work of the ministry he says I do something over here and you do something over here and we may never see how they come together we may never see what the building looks like that’s built on the foundation that we started or we may come along and see a foundation See, he switches from the farming metaphor to the building metaphor. We may come along and see a foundation, and we may put up a wood frame and move along, and somebody else comes and puts up some plumbing and electrical. We may never see what’s built on the foundation, but he says, let every man take heed how he buildeth there upon.

We have a responsibility to build where we can and to build the right way where we can. You know, I was thinking this week of Benjamin’s profession of faith, And he’s had some faithful Sunday school teachers throughout the years, up to and including here. And I’ve tried to teach him about Jesus.

He’s had people from birth teaching him about Jesus. People who may not today see what the end, well, it’s not the end, but see what the result has been thus far. But they were no less a part of him coming to faith in Jesus Christ than I was, forgetting to be the one who was there when he prayed and asked forgiveness.

This week while I was in Phoenix, I didn’t realize it was going on. I thought I had my dates wrong. I thought it was about two weeks later.

There was a harvest crusade that was conducted with Greg Laurie’s ministry in conjunction with NAMM, I think, the North American Mission Board. All told, 3,500 people made professions of faith. I was talking to a lady there in Phoenix, and I said, if even half of these are genuine, this could be a game changer for your city.

if they can get them involved in a local church and get them discipled. It set the city on fire. Now, I don’t think for a minute that the one who preached that night at that Harvest Crusade was the only one who played a role in those 3,500 people making professions of faith.

I’m sure that there were godly parents or grandparents who prayed for some of these people from the time that they were children. I’m sure some of them attended Sunday school when they were children and had some faithful teacher sharing God’s word with them week in, week out, not knowing if they would ever see the end result. We don’t know how many lives were affected in previous times and in what ways that led them to that moment where they would trust Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone for their salvation.

But folks, God knows every seed that was planted, every drop of water that was watered on those seeds. God knows everyone who laid a brick in the foundation. And what you do matters for the kingdom, even if you don’t see the end results.

Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the foundation. Jesus Christ is what we build on.

Jesus Christ is what we set our hope on. And folks, as long as you work from that foundation, As long as what you’re doing is not planting seeds of your opinion or people leaving from there and thinking, oh, he was such a nice guy, he was so wonderful. But instead they leave there having been impacted by Jesus.

As long as what you do has an impact on people pushing them toward Jesus, you may never see them come to faith in Jesus yourself. But as long as you have even a small impact on pushing them in the right direction, nudging them closer to Jesus, folks, then what you’re doing matters for the kingdom. You may never ever see the results.

You may never see how it turns out. But know this, God has chosen you to be his co-worker. God has chosen you for a place in his ministry.

And God sees every little thing you do that points someone to faith in Jesus Christ. And he remembers, and he’s going to reward it one day. It’s easy to get discouraged. And I’m almost finished.

I have notes here I haven’t even looked at them this morning, and we’re not going to go through them. Sometimes the Holy Spirit leads us in a different direction. It’s easy to get discouraged when you work and work and work and work and minister to people for years, and you don’t see the results you think you ought to.

Right here he reminds us that it’s God who does the heavy lifting, and we may never see the end result. But don’t let Satan convince you that you’re not having an impact on the world. God sees and remembers every little thing you do for the kingdom to nudge somebody toward Jesus Christ.