Co-laborers with God [B]

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 tonight. 1 Corinthians chapter 3. And as I told you this morning, I wanted to come back and revisit this passage.

I preached on this passage last Sunday morning. And if you’ll recall, I didn’t even end up touching on my notes at all. And I hate when that happens because I spend a lot of time.

. . You know, God has a sense of humor.

I spend a lot of time each week preparing messages. You may not believe that, but I do. spent a lot of time preparing messages, and then sometimes the Holy Spirit, you know, I pray beforehand every time for God to give me words, and sometimes the words He gives me are not the words that I had planned, and I hate that because I like to know where I’m going, but sometimes God gives us other ideas, but I still wanted to come back and revisit this because when I talked to you last week, I ended up going in the direction of talking about what matters, and how while personalities don’t matter, and we shouldn’t get full of ourselves and think, well, I’m so-and-so, and I’ve done this, and God needs me, and isn’t God lucky to have me.

We should never fall into that trap, and yet what we do for the kingdom matters. And because as we look through this passage, and I talked with you about it, Paul says, hey, neither Apollos nor I matter. We’re not a big deal. And yet he talks about how important it is the planting and the watering and God giving the increase.

And so we talked about those things are important, that even the small things you do in life to nudge somebody along toward faith in Jesus, or to nudge somebody along in their Christian walk toward being a better disciple, any little thing you do to pull somebody else closer to Jesus Christ matters. And you may never see the end result of it. You may never think to yourself, hey, I’ve done amazing things.

Look at everything God has done through my ministry. You may never get to that point where you see the finished result, and yet don’t delude yourself into thinking God doesn’t see every little thing you do, and it matters in the kingdom. And that’s the direction I went with it last week.

Now I want to go back and look at it from the standpoint of, so what is our responsibility, and look at each of these things. And since I’ve already given you a lot of background on the passage, hopefully we’ll keep it short and sweet tonight. That’s never a guarantee, because the times I think, oh, it won’t run long.

It somehow miraculously does. But 1 Corinthians chapter 3, starting in verse 1, he says, And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. And again, he tells them, hey, I would, you know, there are some good things about you. He’s found some praiseworthy things about the church at Corinth in the letter.

But he says, overall, you are spiritually immature. He said, I’m writing to you like your little children in Christ. And he says, part of the reason I know you’re little children in Christ, part of the reason I know you’re not spiritually mature, is because you have this need to choose up teams, choose up sides. It’s a very junior high way to do church.

Think back those years ago to when you were in junior high and high school, and there’d be two girls or two guys or a guy and a girl, two people fighting, and then suddenly other people would jump in and take one side. And then so to defend their friend, other people would jump in and defend the other one. Suddenly you’ve got two big groups of people fighting and drama and people hating each other, and everybody’s mad at them and they’re not talking to them.

And meanwhile, the two people that it started with have made up, but there’s this whole holy war thing going on in the background because everybody felt the junior high need to choose up sides. Well, Paul is talking about that kind of thing, he says, you tried to choose up sides. And he goes on to describe it as, you know, some of them are saying, well, I’m a follower of Paul.

Big deal. Some are saying, I’m a follower of Apollos. I don’t see any record where Paul or Apollos ever fought. But it was sort of this, this is my favorite guy, this is my favorite guy, and so, well, you don’t like my guy as much.

It’s junior high nonsense, okay? And Paul gets on to him for that and says, you are children. You are children.

There’s nothing spiritually mature about you. And he says, I fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto you were not able to bear it, neither now are ye able. He said, when I’ve come in the past, I haven’t been able to teach you the deep truths of God’s word because you weren’t in a place where you were able to handle it.

And he said, you’re still not there. For ye are yet carnal, for whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions, are ye not carnal and walk as men? He said, there’s the proof for you.

Your whole group is divided. There’s this envying and strife and fighting and hair pulling, and it’s ridiculous. He said it’s proof right there.

It’s proof right there that you’re not spiritually mature. For while one saith, verse 4, for while one saith, I am of Paul and another, I am of Apollos, he said, are you not carnal? In other words, while you’re playing this division politics stuff, how can you say, well, we’re not worldly.

We’re not spiritually immature. He said, how can you say that when your actions say something else? And he goes on in verse 5, who then is Paul?

Now this is Paul writing this. Paul’s saying, who am I? I’m not a big deal. I’m nobody special. And who is Apollos?

Now it’s a lot easier to say that about the other guy when you’ve just said it about yourself. It’s easy for me to say, well, who’s Ken Jackson? Big deal. It probably sounds a lot better if I preface it with, who is Jared Byrns?

What’s the big deal with him? And Paul does that. He says, who’s Paul?

What’s the big deal about Paul? And what’s the big deal about Apollos. Who are they?

He says, but ministers by whom you believed. He said, we’re just the ministers, and I know we think of that as a lofty term. Oh, he’s a minister.

And he’s talking about being a servant. He said, we’re just servants. We just work for Jesus.

We’re just the hired hands here that work for Jesus. Not the hired hands of the church, by the way, the hired hands of Jesus. The ministers by whom you believed, even as the Lord gave to every man.

He said, everybody’s got somebody, everybody who believes has somebody who led them to faith in Jesus Christ. So what he’s saying here, essentially I take it as, he’s putting himself on the same even playing field with my mother who led me to faith in Jesus Christ. She’s not the only one who nudged me along in that direction or did some planting and did some watering, but she’s the one who harvested. Okay? And same thing with Benjamin.

I used his example last week, that many planted and many watered, and I got to be the one who was there who harvested. And Paul’s saying, everybody has somebody that led them to Jesus Christ. He said, that doesn’t make us supermen. That doesn’t make us anybody that you choose up teams over.

No, he goes and he gives all the glory to God. For what growth there had been in these people’s spiritual lives, he gives the glory to God. He said, I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.

Paul came through Corinth. He led some people to Christ. He started the church there. Apollos was somebody they met along the way who was a believer in Jesus Christ, but didn’t fully understand the gospel.

But they recognized his potential in ministry. They had to bring him along and train him up and disciple him. And then they turned him loose on the churches to strengthen them as well.

And so while Paul started these churches, and Paul led some of these people to faith in Jesus Christ, then Apollos came in and served, and he preached the word, and he taught them, and he invested his time with them so that others came to know Christ, and those who were Christians were strengthened in the faith and in the word, and they began ministering as well. And so he says, what spiritual, after he’s just, I don’t know that I would want to take credit for Corinth either, after he just tells them how spiritually immature they were, but what growth there had been, what discipleship there had been, he says, hey, I planted a polished water. We both had a role here.

We each did our little part, he says, but it was God who gave the increase. And I’ve given you the example over and over again about I can plant a seed and I can cultivate that seed and now I’ve worked it out where my wife will even help me. I’ve tricked her into helping me in the garden.

Except now she says, you need to go out there and water, don’t let that die. Okay, I should have never let you get involved. But I can plant the seed and she can water and I can weed and she can go out and harvest things, it’s still God that gives the increase.

I didn’t tell that cucumber seed, hey, get bigger. Yeah, I might have tried, but it didn’t work. Now I’ve got squash and cucumbers coming out of my ears and I’m telling the okra plants, get bigger!

They’re not. They don’t listen to me. It’s got to be God that gives the increase and He will at His time.

Same thing with us spiritually. I can preach the word to you night after night after night. And somebody years ago started you on the journey of telling you about Jesus Christ and led you to faith, and there have been people who planted.

There have been people who watered along the way. I can come along and water for a while and cultivate the field and try to make you, just by force of will, grow closer to Jesus as a follower of His. I can try to make you, but I’m not going to make you.

I can preach the Word, and I can invest time in you, but it’s still God who gives the increase. Otherwise, there is no increase. So I think Paul’s got the right attitude about this.

He said, so then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. So he’s saying neither one of us are all that important. It’s ultimately God who does the heavy lifting.

Now, he that planteth and he that watereth are one. He says, you could look at us and say that we’re different personalities, we’re different ministries. He said, but we’re working here on the same team.

We’re one. We’re working for the same purpose. And every man shall receive his own reward according to his labor.

It just means God sees all the work that we do to lead others closer to Christ, and he doesn’t forget and he rewards. And since I went so heavy on that last time, I’m not going to focus in too much on that tonight. But he says, For we are laborers together with God, for ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building, 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. but let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay when that is laid, which is Jesus Christ, which is what we talked about this morning.

So you’ve now heard this passage explained twice, and hopefully I’ve done justice to it in one or both explanations. But now we look at this passage and say, now that we understand what he’s talking about, what are our responsibilities? And if you’re a believer, which just based on our church culture, most people in Sunday night crowds are, or claim to be.

So I’m going to assume, I’m assuming that I’m speaking to a room primarily of believers tonight, already born again, trusted Christ as their Savior. We should come into any time that we study God’s Word, whether it’s on our own studying at home, whether we’re in a Bible study group, whether we’re in Sunday school, whether we’re in a worship service studying it together, we should always come to God’s Word saying, what does God expect from me because of this? What is God trying to teach me and what does He expect from me because of this?

So we come now to what are our responsibilities? And I see at least four of them here in this passage tonight. First of all, our responsibility is to plant readily.

He talks in verse 6 about I’ve planted. He makes a big deal about I came through here and I planted. He planted the seed.

Paul was the first recorded missionary to that part of the world. He was the first missionary that the Bible records going to Europe. This was in a time when the early Christians were still on the fence, some of them, about whether or not they ought to be preaching the gospel to the Gentiles.

And God sent Paul. God wouldn’t let Paul, as a matter of fact, stay in part of Asia Minor in the area that we talked about tonight with the churches in Revelation. That God said, no, no, I need you to turn west, and he sent him over into Greece.

and that’s where the church at Corinth was. And Paul went through on one of these missionary journeys and he began planting churches in Greece. Now, he didn’t plant churches by going and building a building.

He went and planted churches by reaching people with the gospel in places where they had never heard the name of Jesus Christ. So Paul went through and he looked everywhere he went. He looked for opportunities to plant the seed. He was looking for opportunities.

Now, I don’t have an example for that when it comes to planting. I can give you a fishing example years ago I was a church planter in Norman and talked about a tough field but one of the guys I was working with talked about a he had seen on the highway a man who had his boots somehow tethered to the back of his truck and he had his fishing pole back there and it was flapping in the wind on the highway and he had all of his he said that guy I don’t know if he was going to work or what but that man was looking for a fishing spot it’s not just me about, you know, I think maybe I’d like to go fishing this weekend, and I start thinking a few days in advance about a place to go fishing. This man had the stuff in his truck, and he was looking for a place to pull off the side of the road any time and fish.

Well, we could do the same thing with the gospel. We could be out looking for opportunities to go fishing. We could be looking for opportunities to plant the seed of the gospel.

All of this comes down to looking for opportunities, being intentional about opportunities to share the gospel. And I will confess to you, I am not as often as intentional as I ought to be. And I realize that with all the qualifiers on that, that sounded very much like a politician.

I don’t mean it that way. I’m not as good at this as I should be. But I’m telling you, this is what the Bible tells us we ought to be doing.

Planting readily. He says, I’ve planted. He went throughout the Roman Empire and he planted the gospel wherever he went.

He went into a town looking for opportunities. when is the last time that you woke up in the morning and thought where can I go and tell somebody about Jesus today it’s been a long time for me too yeah sometimes I’ll see the opportunities and I’ll take them but how often do I go looking for the opportunities and I don’t mean that you have to go knock on everybody’s door and irritate the fire out of them or stand on the street corner with a megaphone but when’s the last time that we started our day saying Lord send me to somebody that I can tell about Jesus. When have we looked for the opportunity to plant?

But it’s not just that. We may not see a harvest the first time we put a seed in the ground. As a matter of fact, sometimes it takes days or weeks with a literal seed.

Sometimes it can take years of prayerful cultivation to lead somebody to faith in Jesus Christ. We need to water often. You may not be the first person that’s talked to that person about Jesus Christ. You may not be the one who first planted the seed, but you might come along and water. And sometimes there are people in our world, friends and family members that we talk to about Jesus Christ one time and they don’t want to hear it and so we stop.

What happens if you put the seed in the ground and then you never water it? What happens when you put the seed in the ground and you never pull the weeds around it? It doesn’t grow or it doesn’t grow healthy.

We need to water often. Just because somebody shoots you down one time doesn’t mean you never talk to them about it again. You might have to be sensitive to the leadings of the Holy Spirit because there might be times that he says, no, not right now.

And there might be times where we’re thinking, no, not right now. And he says, go, go. We need to be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

But we’re too quick to give up sometimes. We’re too quick to give up. And some in this room even might think back on the life you lived years ago before you came to faith in Christ. Did you come to faith the first time somebody talked to you about him?

Or were there people there faithfully watering all along the way? Were there people praying for you for years? Were there people who talked to you?

Excuse me. Was there a parent or a grandparent or a neighbor who talked to you about Jesus so many times it drove you nuts before you finally came to faith in Jesus Christ? For most people, it’s not the first time.

I know even as a five-year-old when I came to faith in Jesus Christ, I know it was not the first time I ever heard. They started telling me about Jesus from the time I was in the nursery. And it took me five years.

Some people take a lot longer. we have a responsibility to water the seed that’s been planted and not just leave it say well I planted a seed I did my job come back and check after that seed third of all we have a responsibility to diligently seek God’s increase we’ve got to pray that God can that God will do what only he can do I mean Paul makes it very clear it’s God who did the heavy lifting here and he just did what God told him to do I’m just I’m just the tool that God uses God did the heavy lifting we need to be prayerful that God will do what only He can do. Ask Him to guide our efforts.

Ask Him to bless our efforts. Ask Him to prepare the hearts of the people. Prepare the soil to receive the message of Jesus Christ. We’ve got to diligently seek God’s increase.

If you go out and you try to evangelize on your own, and I know that word has a scary connotation. When I say evangelize, I’m not, again, if God leads you to go knock on doors, God bless you. Go do it.

I will admit it’s not my comfort zone. I have done it and will do it in the future, but it’s not the most comfortable thing for me ever. I feel like I do much better in a one-on-one, although that’s fraught with its own challenges too.

But this idea of evangelism gets a scary connotation because we think, oh, it’s knocking on strangers’ doors or standing on the street corner with a megaphone. No, evangelism is simply talking to people about Jesus Christ. You can do that over a cup of coffee. You can do that with your hairdresser.

Well, she’s got you in the chair and you’ve got a captive audience because where’s she going to go? She wants you to pay her. You can do that.

God puts people in our lives every day that we have relationships with and we talk to about stuff. Why not talk to him about Jesus? But pray for God to do what only he can do.

As we’re out evangelizing, if we try to do it under our own power, we will accomplish very little. And I wish I’d realized this earlier. First but I probably would have been a lot more successful in evangelism.

I remember in high school and early on in college I thought it was all about arguing people into heaven. And I’ve never seen that work not once. It might have worked for somebody somewhere in the world but it hadn’t been me.

I thought if I just had all the arguments and could logic people in circles make them finally admit Jesus is Lord. I never saw it work. Or if I could just say just the right words or if I could use just the right illustration that I might be able to convince somebody and it was very I, I, I the pressure’s on me to do this.

You know what? The pressure’s on us to step up and open our mouths but the pressure’s off of us when it comes to change in our hearts. I’m ashamed of how long it took me to realize the role that the Holy Spirit plays in evangelism.

It is still, I believe in free will but it is still the Holy Spirit of God who draws people to Jesus Christ. And we need to pray for God to do what only He can do. We need to diligently seek God’s increase. And finally, we need to work together in the harvest. We need to cooperate and enlist others in the work.

Paul here talks about the oneness between himself and Apollos. Yeah, we might have a different ministry. We might have a different approach.

We might have a different outlook. But if it’s the same gospel, we’re working toward the same goal. And we’re on the same team. And I think God puts different people together for a reason.

I tell Charla this all the time, that God put us together for a reason. We kind of balance each other out. Now, I’ve never been the easygoing one, but Charla brings an almost German approach to organization to our household.

And I’ve kind of backed off of being Mr. Organization and Mr. We have to do this at such and such time.

And I say all the time, we don’t have to see eye to eye on this one little issue about how we’re going to deal with this misbehavior or that. There are going to be times we disagree, and that’s okay, because God put us together to balance each other out, knowing what the kids needed. Because I might never realize they’re in the bathroom playing with the water.

I can be oblivious to things sometimes. And she might have them duct taped to the wall so that they can never get into it. Not really.

We kind of balance each other out. God put us together to accomplish different aspects of the work. And you know what?

God puts us together to accomplish different aspects of the work. And I’ve given the example before many times. How many of you want to stand up and talk in front of a group of people?

Anybody? Maybe a couple of you, Greg. I know you do that some.

Go to Ken. I know some of the ladies are going, don’t you look at me. My wife would be one of them.

Don’t you look at me. There are some of you in here who enjoy working with children. And I’ve told you before, I don’t understand that.

I love my own. I like the others that are related to me. It kind of goes downhill from there.

I think if you’re not old enough to understand sarcasm, I can’t communicate with you. You know, thank God that I’m not here having to do all the work of the ministry by myself because the Sunday school for children, I don’t know how Sharon does it. I’ve seen it in working with Greg sometimes when we have visitors come in and wanting health in the church.

And Greg takes a very, I hope you don’t mind me telling this, Greg takes a very analytical, well, how did you get into this problem? What steps are you taking to correct it? And I’m just, oh, I’m so sorry here.

Can we write you two checks? And God uses us to balance each other out so that we’re not giving away the church and yet we’re showing compassion. And I don’t like it when you’re not around and I have to be good cop and bad cop.

Oh, I was bad cop last time. Felt really good. God puts us together to balance each other out.

Because there are people that you have a door into their world. God has given you an open door into their world that I don’t have. And God’s given me an open door into the lives of some people in the community that you don’t have.

We need to be working together. Not just saying, hey, we pay the preacher. He can go out and reach everybody.

I can’t reach everybody. I don’t have enough hours in the day and not everybody’s going to like me can’t like everybody and same thing goes with you, you can’t do it all by yourself and you’re not going to connect with everybody, now the Holy Spirit can do amazing things, but I think God wires us a certain way and puts us together that’s why Paul said hey Apollos and I are one on this thing we’re working together here folks we have a responsibility to work together in the harvest not just to take it all on ourselves and not a responsibility to make sure the preacher gets it done, but a responsibility that we are all doing our part, big or small, full-time, part-time, volunteer, preaching in front of dozens of people or talking one-on-one in the coffee shop.

We all have a responsibility to do our part to nudge people closer to Jesus Christ, to plant and to water and to seek God’s increase as He gives it.

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