First Corinthians 3:5-9 Fellow workers with God
1 Corinthians 3:5-9 · Mike Doyle · Jun 28, 2020
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 14
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261919216763

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We are going to continue on in kind of the same vein, where Paul has been speaking about three kinds of men. There's the natural man, which is everybody. Born of Adam is a natural man. I got to thinking this morning. One of the problems that we have in our society today is that people think that men are good. Not according to the Bible, they're not. They're evil. The nuns seek after God, not a single one.

And I've always been struck by the fact that God destroyed the planet, destroyed the people on the planet in Noah's Ark because he could only find, the only reason he didn't just wipe humanity off the earth is because he found one righteous man, one, out of how many that lived on the earth at that time. So to start with the premise that man is basically good is to miss what the gospel message is all about. If you're basically good, why do you need a savior? Why do you need all of the other things that God offers us?

Anyway, three men, natural man, carnal man, which we talked a lot about last week, and the spiritual man. The spiritual man is the man who has come to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, has believed it, has been baptized into Christ by the Holy Spirit through the cross. And we call him a believer. Now he may or may not function as a believer, which makes him carnal, because you're either going to function out of one of two sources, either the natural man or the spiritual man.

Those are the only two choices you have. You don't get to live on the yellow line. You're either spiritual, 100% on. I remember Hal did that thing about spirituality and carnality. You're either 100% spiritual or 100% carnal at any given time. Spiritual growth is a line that goes like this through those up and down bar graphs, but you're either one or the other at any given time.

So we spent time last week in chapter 3 verses 1 through 4 where we talked about Paul said to the brethren, I couldn't speak to you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as infants in Christ. These are men who are believers. They have the Spirit of God, but they function on a conditional basis, fleshly. He gave them milk to drink and not solid food, the milk of the word. And you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you can't receive anything more than the milk of the word.

Why? Because you're still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly? Are you not walking as mere men? One says, I'm another of Apollos. Are you not mere men? My translation uses this really cool word, mere men. Now, you will say, well, what's wrong with being a mere man? What's wrong with being a man? Well, there's nothing wrong with it, except you and I as believers in Christ are more than mere men. And so to act and function as though you were a mere man, when in fact you're positioned in Christ, isn't living up to the standard of what God has called you to be.

Also, Roger and I were having a discussion yesterday, and sometimes I use material I've gotten from other people, and I always forget to give them credit. So I said, Roger, why don't I do this? Why don't I just mention a few guys' names and say somewhere in this talk, I'm going to reference or I'm going to say something that somebody else wrote and look it up. So anyway, that's my disclaimer. Anyway, so notice that Paul here doesn't talk about Carnot or Fleshly.

It really means that the flesh is what attracts you. It's what you're taken up with. You may be spiritual positionally, but your focus is on the flesh. And it's one of those things that the principle of it, if it isn't detected and judged and actually hated to some degree or another, you're going to live in it and walk in it because you don't think it's all that bad.

These people still valued what was of man, of his wisdom, of his ability, of his eloquence, all that kind of stuff. The problem was that they didn't have an adequate sense of the worthlessness of the natural man when it comes to understanding divine things. So Carno or Fleshly doesn't describe a man or a person who's dead in their sins, but those It does describe a man who has been quickened by the Spirit and is either stuck under a lost system somewhere or totally influenced by man in some way or the other. The old nature that he came from isn't evaluated. We were talking a little bit earlier before we got started that if you don't know anything about two men, crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection, our participation in it. And you don't know that there are these two natures. How do you deal with this issue? How do you deal with these verses? I don't think you can. Because they don't make any sense to the natural man.

The Corinthians were babes in Christ. They weren't spiritual. They were fleshly. Why? Because they were Christians, but they weren't living out of the Spirit of Christ. It kind of blows their self complacency when they discovered from Paul that they were babes in Christ. The food that he had to feed them, the spiritual food, had to be milk because they couldn't ingest anything stronger than that.

One of the problems they had was that they had a hankering after, or an admiration for, for the things of the world, and especially the wisdom of the world. The political conversations that we have today, we really engage in the wisdom of the world. That's what we're doing. We're trying to figure out, well, wisdom from this group, or wisdom from that group, and if, you know, well, they can't get together, and on and on you go.

It's endless. And yet, God's in charge of all of it. And He's very clear about what He's doing. And that's his wisdom. And that's what Paul's trying to tell these Corinthians. That the flesh delights in what man is. The Spirit gives the Lord Jesus Christ and God and what He delights in to you and me. And that's where we are to find our delight. Same place.

So it's important, I think, moreover, to see that it's not a question of morality. A lot of times when we talk about fleshly men, right away we think, well, they're morally inept somehow. according to law, but what suits and pleases and magnifies Christ, that is why the Holy Spirit is here.

The issue is what suits you as a believer, what pleases you as a believer, and does it magnify Christ? Does it do that or does it magnify me? I think most believers think that God exists for their to fix whatever they don't like or whatever's wrong and to bless them all the time, that they're to be the center of attention, and that's not right, because Christ is to be the center.

So, Paul's going to scold, really, scold these believers for not walking, not as bad men, merely, but according to man. You see the difference there? According to a mere man, I'm walking, or according to Christ. They align themselves under their new favorites in forgetfulness of Christ and abuse of their own mercies through his servants. And so he says to them, are you not men or mere men? He's kind of indignant about that, protesting against such a condition. For Paul to say to the saints, you're just mere men. That's how you're acting. goes against all of who they are as saints, as resurrected in Christ. And their walk didn't line up with that. So if your glory in men is carnal, self-assertion is carnality, they're offshoots of the same tree. What's the tree? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is the old man, which represents sin.

In Greece there were heads of schools and typical of the Greeks and I got to thinking about this too this week about well if you're Greek if you live in like Corinth and there are schools for Aristotle, schools for Plato, schools for Socrates, Republican, Democrat, Independent, something You line up with one of those, and they become your identity.

You know, I've got the Socrates flag, and that's what I'm carrying. And don't tell me about Plato, I don't want to listen. I'm Socrates' man. Well, the schools in Greece wouldn't tolerate other people's positions, and they followed whatever one they agreed with. And they took that mindset and moved it into the body of Christ.

So he says to these people, well, what is Apollos? And what is Paul? He could have said, well, what is Aristotle? And what is Plato? What's the answer? The answer is they're servants. They're servants through whom the Corinthian saints believed, he says to them, look, God's wisdom corrects the workings of an unevaluated nature, and this is simply a statement of truth. Who is George? Who is Roger? Who is Mike? Who is Hal?

We're servants. That's all we are. We're servants. So, to correct the abuse of gifts, and the apostle first presents some of the important truths of service, and what were they? What was Apollos? What was he? He was just a guy. Who was Paul? He was just a man.

But they're servants, at best, in the proclamation of the gospel and the truth in general. That's what they were. And they were servants by whom the Corinthian saints had come to Christ, who they had believed through. The place of Paul and Apollos in relationship to the Corinthians, each servant was assigned a position. Notice the positions are different. They were God's instruments to bring the Corinthians to faith.

The believing referred here not only to the initial faith in the gospel, but also to faith that brought them growth in spiritual life. That's what the water does. Paul was primarily responsible for the planting. Apollos was responsible for the watering. And they're gifted by the Holy Spirit to do this job.

The Corinthians assembly had been exalting into false positions as leaders of parties where after all these men were ministering spirits. That's all they were. servants, by whom the Corinthians had believed. These gifted men held their position as servants, not according to man's appointment. They didn't get appointed to that job by men, but it was God that gave to each one of them.

Notice in the verse, your Bible may say that at the end of that verse, even the Lord gave opportunity to each. Opportunity isn't there. It's not in the Greek. It should read Even as the Lord gave to each one, what did He give to them? He gave them a gift to be a planter or a waterer. He did not give them opportunity to be that. He gifted them. So, you and I, as readers of the Word, we can supply whatever we want there in terms of who is this man? What did God give him? not opportunity, what did he give him?

What does this fact have to do with the discord in the church? Well, it is when the vehicle or the instrument of grace, waterer and planter, are idolized that the church starts to become fragmented. Paul and apostles did not compete with one another, they complemented one another. So was there no difference between these two? The difference was what the Lord gave them. That's what the difference was.

So in verse 6, in verse 6 he begins to lay out the principle that's stated. He says, I planted a pollis water, but here's the key phrase. It was God causing the growth. It states a real simple fact here. The results are entirely God's work. It's really important for us to understand that the results are entirely God's work.

When you're somebody like Roger and I and others, when you are counseling people or talking to them or sharing the gospel with them, you want results. Show me some results. Did we get anywhere? How did it go? It's God who's in charge of the results, not the water work. First we have the human part of the service.

Paul planted Apollos water. Paul was the first to proclaim the gospel in Corinth. The historical account you can read in Acts 18, 1-11, and Acts 18 in the New American Standard, 11 says, And he settled there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. Paul was doing his job. Apollos nurtured what Paul had planted. That was his job. So the historical account of Apollos is found in Acts 18, 27, 28, and 19.1. See what Apollos' role was.

Each man's work was distinct, but at the same time inseparable from one another. You see that? A planter and a waterer, the work is different, but they're together. They're not separate. And then you have the divine part. And the divine part is God was giving the increase. Now, what's interesting is you have three verbs here. You have planted, watered, and causing increase. Planted and watered are in the aorist tense, which means a completed action or a fact. That means that Paul came on the scene, he did his job, and he left. And by left, I mean he went home to be with the Lord. Same thing with Apollos. Or Paul went to another town.

But when you take a look at the verb causing the increase, it's in the imperfect tense, which means that's completed action in the past, but it keeps going. God's giving the increase goes on forever. It never stops. So the most important person in this trio of verbs is the one who gives the increase. It's continuous action that God does.

So what does that mean when it comes down to practicality? This means that Paul believed there was a sufficient circumstance in Corinth to know what to supply, to give him the gospel. And verse 6 and 7 will tell us more about what God gave to Paul and Apollos. He planted the word, he went his way, but the results continued to come in after he planted.

That means the planting and the watering came to an end, but the increase was continuous. Everybody at Holly Hills Bible Church at some point was met by a planter, and they planted Christ in you. And you've met through your life waterers. And most of the ones I've known have gone home by now. I wish they were still here so I could call them once in a while.

But God continues to give the increase to every one of us, because He's the one who increases. So the fact is that the Lord gave nothing that isn't going to work out for good for the use of edifying believers. He doesn't do anything in vain. He doesn't do anything without specific results and goals in mind. One of the things that we're studying on Wednesday night, Genesis and now into Exodus, is that God has specific goals, things that he's going to do, and he carries them out through these totally dysfunctional people.

I mean the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I wouldn't have trusted any of those guys to carry out anything. But at the end of the day, it gets accomplished. Why? Because God worked through these men to accomplish what he decided to do. And he increased them and worked circumstances so that his goal was met. Same thing with Joseph. Joseph even told his brothers, you know what you guys did to me, you met for evil, but God meant it for good. All of the stories that we're discovering in Genesis and Exodus, God has a plan, and he gets his plan done in spite of how incompetent the people he works through are. He just does it.

So, as it is in the work of a field or a farm, where labor is expended in one form or another, but God can also cause the crops to grow. I can't cause a crop to grow. My son was over yesterday and he was admiring Donna's tomatoes and why his aren't growing as fast as ours. And I said, because God has given an increase at our house. So these two servants had not only been given kind of the same service, but in a field, one plants another tens of plants, but God alone causes the plants to grow.

So in the service of the Lord, Paul may be used to obtain converts, Apollos be used to care for the converts, but God alone gives life and spiritual growth. We should never get that out of our mind. It's God who does it. How significant is any instrument God works through is irrelevant. The sufficiency and the efficiency is God alone.

So what then is Paul and Apollos? What are they? They're servants. Going the wrong way again. So then, neither the one who plants or the one who waters is anything but God who gives the increase. So here we are with Paul as minister or ministers together, they're one thing. Now hew plants and hew waters are one thing. I got kind of going on this one thing. What are they?

Because to be honest with you, when you're a Bible teacher, or you're doing what Roger and I do, or any role involved in the Lord's work, for someone to tell you that you're nothing, It goes against every fleshly desire I have. I want somebody to tell me I'm doing a good job, right? Except when you begin to realize that being united with another person or persons, and you all share the same thing, that you're nothing, is the perfect place to be.

Because then you don't have any ego about it, You recognize that it's God who's doing the work, and so that you don't have to have... You can focus on what God is doing, and never have to focus on how you're doing it. You're focused on what God is doing, and the fact that you are just there to be involved. Do you ever think about it? God doesn't have anybody in His body that sits in the bleachers.

Everybody's in the game. And every single human being has somebody in their life that they are watering, or they're ministering to, or somebody in their life that they're giving the gospel to, or they're walking beside. You know, in Hebrews it talks about this great marathon that we're all running to glory, to Christ, the author and finisher of our faith. And if we see someone slowing down or running out of gas, we come beside them. No one gets to sit in the stands and watch this happen. Nobody gets to turn on the TV and watch this marathon to Christ. We're all in it. Recognizing that all of us are in it and that God is the one who gets the glory and we are nothing is a really cool place to be. So God alone is seen to be of any prominence in these verses.

The very thought that we're one thing rebukes the pedestal work of the flatterers. If you're going to put somebody up on a pedestal, this kind of idea from God to us that we are nothing keeps you off the pedestal. A friend of mine, maybe it might have been Miles, said, boy you don't want to be on a pedestal because when they knock you off it really hurts when you hit the ground. So the one thing, again just to repeat, the one thing that planters and waterers are is their ministering servants. The consequence is that God alone is seen to be of importance, but this consideration they are one thing. It criticizes the party spirit that the Greeks had. It takes away the idea of flattering someone who is a waterer or a planter.

The fact is, his own reward is his own work to be received by and by, by the Lord Jesus himself. You know, every one of us will go to the beam of judgment, and the great thing about the beam of judgment, it's not a place of criticism. It's a place of rewards, and everybody's going to be rewarded. It's going to be a really cool time. There won't be any When I look out at the beam of judgment and I see someone out there I know really well and they are just rewarded way more than I ever thought, my attitude to them isn't going to be, oh gee, he got more than I got. My attitude is going to be, hallelujah, look at that. God is just magnificent in His grace because everybody in this place gets rewarded to the fullest of their capacity.

For doing what? For being nothing. For watering, for planting. Because it's God who gives the increase. Now think about this deal, so to speak, that God has offered us. You work as a ministering servant under my direction. You plant, you water, you're nothing, I give the increase, but I'm going to reward you for the increase. How's that? I'll take that deal anytime. Anytime. That God's going to reward everybody in this room for what he did. He did it. Verse 8 and 9 says that we will be rewarded on an individual basis, individual effort.

The difference vanishes into nothingness before God who graciously consents to use us for blessing. The reward will not be according to the position that men say that gave you, nor according to man's thoughts of his service, but according to God's estimate of your labors and my labors. So he's the only one we have to answer to.

And he's gracious. God is never going to say that he didn't work hard enough this week. Because if you live under grace, working hard is not the issue. Receiving is the issue. For we are God's fellow workers. What's interesting here is that the differences vanish into nothingness before God when He graciously consents that each shall receive a reward.

And it's not according to your personal qualities or my personal qualities. However, somebody may yell, oh, you're doing a great job. or even according to a particular gift that the Lord may bestow on you, or according to the present results before the eyes of men. In no case able to discern as God does and will manifest by and by according to your labor. What the great thing is, is that God can discern not only the work, but the motive in your heart for doing it. How cool is that? So, each receiving a reward will not be according to the position that man may have given a servant, and not according to man's thoughts or service, but according to God's estimate.

Now, for we are God's fellow workers, and you are God's field, and you are God's building. We are reminded that the servants are God's fellow workmen. What's interesting is that this does not imply that we are laborers together with God and we're kind of working in partnership. It means that we work under the direction of God.

We were talking this morning at Sunday school and we're studying Romans chapter 13. And you know, how do you obey authorities and authorities within the church and And in our class, I think we came to somewhat of an agreement. In Courtney's class, you're never quite sure. No, I'm kidding. An agreement that every believer has this intimacy with the Lord Jesus.

And it's important for us to go to him and say, what would you have me do? I don't care what it is. What would you have me do? And especially When you're faced with adverse circumstances, what would you have me do? And as we're studying in Philippians, you know, Paul said, well, it'd be cool for me if I could leave the planet and go home. That's great. But God doesn't want me to do that. So I'm glad to stay. For me to die is gain. But I'm going to stay because God wants me to.

I think he lets his servants know, here's what I want you to do. We work together, I say, under the direction of God. We are not rivals, as men would make them, but we are fellow companions. We are fellow laborers. The labor is given of Him, and we are involved in His work. We are responsible to Him, and we will give Him an account. The emphasis rests on God. They were God's fellow workers together, not rivals. as flesh and others or ourselves might make them, but companions in work under God who employed them as such.

Besides evidencing a misapprehension of the gospel itself, the Corinthian slogans indicate the totally inadequate perception of the church and its ministry. What room is there in these verses we are studying for boasting? There are many. Why not boasting of the Lord who gave to each? That's where we should boast. We should boast of the Lord. Of this viewpoint, the Corinthians didn't think much about this, and that's why Paul was reminding them. What we find is that under God's economy, the most uniting thing there is, is grace. We are all recipients of grace.

The flesh always divides and scatters. Always does. The flesh is preoccupied with man, or this man, or that man, or this certain viewpoint, or that viewpoint. And you can't really find within the confines of the flesh a place where you're absolutely, totally comfortable.

It just isn't there. purposely heap upon ourselves teachers and leaders that we want to follow because they agree with us. Either way, there's ever learning, but there is actually no coming to the knowledge of the truth. The truth is the most important. So how cheering to the despised but faithful and self-denying are these graceless laborers. How humbling to the Corinthians. vanity, which never took into account the one principle the Spirit here gives for divine and enduring reward.

For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field. You are His building. Right here there is going to be a transition, starting next week with Roger, because the focus now is going to go into what does it mean to be a building? It's really cool stuff.

So whatever the servants may be, they are God's direct responsibility. Not in a sense the churches, and still less a sect or a party or someone who really likes so and so. The reason, the more they preach not themselves but Jesus Christ, the more they are bondmen of the saints for his sake. What you find out as you grow, is that you are a willing bondservant to the Lord Jesus Christ to do whatever He would have you do, even if you don't agree with it. Because you want to do His will.

That's all you care about. So, God's field and God's building. That's what you are. The saints are God's building and field. No one should think the meaning of, with a view to your being God's field or building, Paul says, you already are. Notice it. We think, the flesh mind thinks, well, you're trying to be or you're coming to be God's field or building. Paul says, here you already are, which goes a lot further than the idea that, well, this is my goal. I already am in the building. I already am this field. I'm surprised that any of them should think with a view to your being God's view.

Duty is ever grounded on and shaped by the measure of the relationship. The relationship each one of us has with the Lord Jesus is intimacy with Him being God who gave His life for us and us being servants and nothing. Everything is God's. The church, the ministry, and all its servants, Paul, Apollos, everything is God's. Everything.

Therefore, it isn't permissible to say, I belong to Paul. It isn't permissible to say, oh, I'm a fan of Miles Stanford, or Hal Malloy, or Any of these other guys that are around, you know, there's no question that when you study the Word of God, you have people that you refer to who you admire because they really are men who've done their homework. But it doesn't mean you agree with all of them or you agree with everything.

What was it that somebody... I think it might have been Roger in a conversation this week. Oh, yeah. We were talking and he said, well, so-and-so said this. No, it wasn't you. It was my friend in California. He said, so-and-so said that Paul wrote Hebrews. I said, well, how do you know that? He said, well, you read the scripture and it sounds like Paul. I said, did it ever dawn on you that maybe God didn't want you to know who wrote Hebrews? He said, I never thought of that. I said, yeah, that's interesting. If he wanted us to know, he'd have had the guy's name in there.

So just let it go. Go and look at what the words have to say. Forget about who wrote it. God wrote it. He said, OK. But he was, you know, he was trying to, he read a person who said, well, Paul didn't write it. And he thought he did. Well, you know, that's one of those arguments where up on a pedestal goes somebody that neither one of them belong up there. You go to God and say, well, what's the deal here? Well, God says, real simple, if I wanted you to know who wrote it, I'd have told you.

Oh, OK. I'm so I'm comfortable with that. So therefore, it's absolutely not permissible to say I'm a Paul. The only legitimate slogan is. We all belong to God, all of us do. Now, I'm going to close with kind of a I found this from and I'm going to give this guy credit constable. I found in his works a contemporary sermon about this text, which focuses on the attitudes of preachers and congregations about one another as they relate to the gospel of the cross. Peruse this brief sermon sketch. I belong to Paul. I belong to Apollos.

Familiar cries in a world of high-tech religion Do you see the huge crowds squint under the glare of the spotlights as their preachers dazzle millions of electronic viewers with wisdom and rhetoric charm? Over here, the Christian public admired TV evangelist and the big time clergy. Oh, I like to listen to X. Well, he's okay, but I like to listen to why better.

So you fill in the blank. Yes, everyone has their favorite preacher nowadays. In spite of all the notorious hucksters, preacher religion is in. What's the results? An increasingly fragmented church. I belong to Paul and you don't. It's enough to make Corinth look tame in comparison to us. Let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your word and how careful you are to teach us that we belong to you and we serve under you. And you are so gracious. Your grace pours out on us every second of every day. that we might continue to grow in that grace and the knowledge of your dear son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his name. Amen.