The Greater Work |09.08.24| Dream BIGGER pt.4
1 Corinthians 3:5-11
Pastor Erik Anderson
We are going to open up to the first letter to the Corinthians chapter 3. That should be page 128. So we’re in the New Testament. It’s toward the back right at the end page 128 there at the end. We’re gonna be in chapter 3 verses 5 through 11, and this is what we hear this morning.
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“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants, through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together. You are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it, for no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid.” And that foundation is Jesus Christ. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.(…) Here at the church office, Caitlin, who is our administrative assistant, she works right here in her office. In her office, there’s an ornament hanging up, a little decoration, and this is what it looks like.(…) You may not be able to read it up on the screen, so I’m going to read it for you. It says this, “A job made us co-workers, but our sarcasm and inappropriate conversations made us friends.” I don’t know if you have co-workers, people that you work with, that have become friends to you, but this can happen. When we are close to people, and we co-labor, we work alongside them shoulder to shoulder. Oftentimes, those people become like friends or even like family to us, and it is oftentimes that sarcasm and teasing and inappropriate comments is what makes us feel like friends and family, and we certainly have that here at the church. But we know this is true, that having co-workers is immensely rewarding, and the people that we work alongside can become some of our closest friends and even like family to us. And in fact, we’re actually designed biologically for this to happen. When we work with other people toward a common goal, it rewires our brain. It changes how we think about the world, and it draws us close to other people, and we see this most acutely, most intensely, in those who have served in the military. Going through boot camp together, going through combat together, these are the things that drive people to one another, and it creates a bond that for those of us who don’t serve in the military, we simply can’t understand. But we do get a little taste of it with our co-workers, with some of our close friends, with people that we do community service with, and even people here in our church. As we work shoulder to shoulder with people, we are drawn closer together. We know that this is true. This is immensely rewarding.(…) And in the scripture that we’re reading today, from the first letter to the Corinthians, it’s a letter that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. We hear this phrase in chapter 3, verse 9. Paul says that we are God’s servants working together, and you are God’s field, God’s building. He’s addressing the church, the congregation in Corinth, and he says that we all are God’s servants, specifically working together. And I don’t quite know, in this translation, it’s called the New Revised Standard Version. It’s the one that we use all the time. And I don’t quite know why they include the word “servants” because that isn’t really there in the original language. In the original language, which is Greek, it simply means “coworkers.” And so there are lots of translations that just say, “For we are God’s co-workers.” That word is, it just describes two people who work together toward some sort of common goal, some sort of shared goal that they have, and they are working side by side. And Paul here says that him and the other leaders, and also everyone in the church, are God’s co-workers, that they work alongside of God. I don’t know if you knew this, but God is a God who works. He’s busy at work. He was busy at work when he created all things with his voice. He spoke and the worlds were formed. And then he made man and woman out of the dirt, and then he gave them a job to do. He told them to work in the garden, to do their work, to participate in with him as they help the garden flourish. He assigned this work for people to do, that they could help fulfill everything that God wanted for his world, that it would be fruitful and multiply and grow and abound, and humans got to work with God on that. And of course, humans were disobedient. They betrayed God. They rebelled against him. They wanted to be God. They wanted to be like him. And so they cheated God. They betrayed him. And that’s how sin entered the world. And we’re still feeling the effects of sin, and we still sin ourselves. And so then God got busy to work redeeming us, saving us. He got busy rescuing us from the consequences of the things that our ancestors have done and the things that even we do yet to this day. And the way that we see God at work most chiefly is in Jesus. Jesus is God. And he took on flesh and became a human to show us what humans are supposed to be like, how humans should be and how eventually we will be. In Jesus’s life and in his death and in his resurrection, he paves the way for us to become like Jesus, to become like him and how he was human. And ultimately we hear at the end of scripture that God is going to remake the heavens and he’s going to remake the earth and they’re going to overlap. So where God lives and where human lives is going to be the same place. And he’s going to resurrect us into our bodies and he’s going to change them and glorify them and make them able to live forever with him. And we’re going to live forever on earth alongside of God, working with him, continuing to cultivate the land and to help it abound and help the earth be everything that it can be. God is at work. He has a purpose that he’s working toward and he’s inviting the church and all those who would answer his call, he’s inviting them to join him in that work. And that includes you and me. That also includes the church in Corinth, the church that Paul is writing to. But something happened in Corinth with the church.(…) Paul went there and he proclaimed the gospel. He healed people. He showed people the kingdom and then he started gathering believers in Jesus Christ. He planted the church about 18 months later. He left and then he was followed up by other pastors, other leaders who came through. And there began to be these divisions in the church where some people really liked Paul and some people really liked this guy named Apollos and some people really liked Cephas. And there are some people who are just like, “Hey, I’m just following Christ. I don’t really know what to make of all these politics, these church politics.” And so this letter that Paul wrote is in response to these divisions that were coming up. As Paul had taught them to work with God, to be his co-workers, as he raised up these leaders to be co-workers with God, something was happening in this church where it wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t operating the way that it should, which is why if we go back up to the top of this section, this is what Paul writes. “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? They’re just servants through whom you came to believe as the Lord assigned to each.”(…) He points out that all these different groups and people and all these kinds of things, it doesn’t really matter that much. And the reason it doesn’t matter is because
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even though Paul planted and Apollos watered, it was actually God doing all the work.
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Even though each one was assigned a certain part, that Paul started the church, that Apollos came, and he watered the plants, it was actually God doing the work.(…) And every one of those men who led had a different part to play. We hear in Acts chapter 18 that Apollos was a really great preacher, that he preached with fervor and he was able to convert a lot of people. And in this letter that we read, we read that Paul wasn’t good at preaching, that he kind of stumbled and mumbled and he didn’t come with wise words, he couldn’t really preach very well. And so maybe that’s why some people like Apollos more than Paul. They’re like, “Paul’s nice, he’s good at relationships with a man. Apollos, he can preach.” But what Paul’s pointing out here is he’s saying none of this actually matters. Because whether or not you can preach well or if you preach poorly or whether or not you can serve well in this area or not, it doesn’t really matter because it’s all God’s work anyway. That whether you’re planting or you’re watering, it’s the work of God that’s being done.
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And the people who are doing that work, they’re just assigned that work. But it’s God’s work the whole way.(…) And in fact, we’re told that this is true for not just leaders, but for all believers, that all of us have work that’s assigned to us, that we get to do. And there is no greater or lesser work in that. In a different letter that Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, this is what we read. This is from Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10. Paul says that, “For we are what God has made us. We are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” A few weeks ago, a pastor Drew shared an image that I thought was really nice of a mother laying out school clothes for their child. So when the child wakes up in the morning, the only thing they have to do is put on the clothes that mom chose for them. And in that way, we have work to do. We participate in ministry here in the church and out in the community. We participate in all kinds of ways, but whatever way we participate in the work of the church and in the work of Jesus Christ, it’s assigned to us. It’s given to us by God.(…) And so it doesn’t really matter if it seems like it’s a small thing that’s being done, dusting or vacuuming, cleaning chairs. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small thing that seems as being done like cooking or knitting. All the work that we do is laid out before us to do.(…) Everybody has a role, and every role is different. Last week, pastor Drew shared that there are lots of different types of gifts,(…) apostles and prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers. There’s all different things that we can do, all different ways that God asks us to work, but we all have the same goal, to raise up the church and our community to the maturity of Jesus Christ and ultimately toward this new creation, this preferred future that God has for us. But the work is laid out for us. So there is no better work. There is no lesser work because it’s the work that God gave for you to do. So these seemingly small things,
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being kind to somebody, reminding them of the hope they have in Jesus Christ when they’re suffering or when they’re sad, encouraging them when they’re lonely,(…) bringing them a meal when they’re mourning, these seemingly small things are actually moving us toward this desired future that God has. And it’s participating in the work of God, and it’s laid out for you to do. And our work is brought together then, all these little bits and pieces that we all do in different ways, whether it’s dusting, vacuuming, bringing a meal, or simply tithing, all this work is brought together by the Spirit to build the ministry of Jesus Christ. It’s brought together by the Spirit to do the work of God in our church and in the Sauk Valley.(…) It’s important for us to do that, but we all play a different role and no two roles are exactly the same.(…) But it goes beyond just our bits and pieces all fitting together because actually not only is it God’s work being done through us, but we see that God has worked before us. And there are people that God has called and assigned before us that we oh that we are indebted to. And that’s how Paul switches then. He changes his metaphors here, his images. He first of all talks about the Corinthians as a field, and then he talks about them as a building. And this is what he says in verse 10 of chapter 3 of the first letter to the Corinthians. He says this, “According to the grace that God has given me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and somebody else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care(…) how to build it.”(…) You see, our work is always built off of somebody else’s work.
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And we don’t see those people and their work because they have gone before us. We’re building a building. We are doing ministry that is on the backs of others who have done ministry, which is on the backs of others who have done ministry, going all the way back to Jesus Christ and the apostles, the very first day of Pentecost. We don’t see the work that our parents and grandparents did to pass on the faith to us if we had parents who did that. But we also don’t see the work that others did to proclaim the good news, to proclaim the gospel, and to disciple those who taught us about the faith. If we have somebody who brought us to the faith, we don’t know who brought that person to the faith. Usually, sometimes we do. But you know your Sunday school teachers or your confirmation teachers that taught you about the faith, but you probably don’t know their Sunday school teacher.(…) You don’t know them.(…) We don’t see the work that others did before we got assigned our work, which is why Paul says that each builder must choose with care how to build because we’re building on top of something that somebody else has laid down.
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And there are those who will come after us. There are those who will come after us who will carry on the mantle of ministry here in New Life and in the Sauk Valley that we don’t even know yet. And in fact, we have an example of this. There are some of you in here who were part of New Life way back at the beginning, 14 years ago when it was started. There are some of you in here who have family ties to this church and to the churches that this church was birthed out of. But there are many of you who probably don’t know any or very many of the founding families of this church. There are some of you who don’t even know when it was founded, how long ago, and who the names and the faces were that was founded. There were people before you that did work that now you’re building on top of. And a lot of those people, some of them are in here, but a lot of them go to first service and they don’t know your faces and your names. And they don’t know. They don’t see the work that you’re doing and the impact that you’re having on young people, the impact that you’re having on families, the impact that you’re having on your neighbors. Just a few weeks ago we had Vacation Bible School. We had 150 kids come through that program. We had we got to preach the gospel to 150 kids.
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And for many of the founders of our church, they don’t know any of those kids. They don’t know their faces. They don’t know the dozens of families that made up that group. You see,(…) there’s always going to be somebody who comes after us, who builds on what we do. And if we think about this further down the road, in a hundred years, nobody is going to remember the founders of this church. They won’t know the names or the faces. In a hundred years, nobody will remember even those of us in this room right now.(…) In a hundred years, no one’s going to remember Pastor Drew or Pastor Eric. In a hundred years, there are going to be people who are being blessed by this church, blessed by this ministry, who will not know those who laid the foundation. They just won’t know them.(…) Some plant, others water,(…) and yet others harvest.(…) This is part of the nature of our work. And so this is the truth that we see today, that your faithful work now blesses people you will never know more than it blesses you.(…) Your faithful work now is going to be a blessing in a hundred years to generations that you can’t even imagine.(…) To a vast number of people that you can’t even picture. People that you will never know and that will never know you.(…) Because you are faithfully co-laboring with God. You are faithfully co-working with Him.
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And your impact is going to be felt in generations to come.(…) Your faithful work now blesses people you will never know more than it even blesses you.(…) And so God lays out the work for us. But the work that He assigns to us isn’t for us. It’s actually for the good of others. We may not benefit from the work that God has done to us. We may not or that God gives to us. We may not benefit from the work that God assigns to us. We may not benefit from the dusting and the vacuuming and the cooking and the knitting and the giving that we do now. We are not the beneficiaries of that. We may not even get to see how it impacts others.(…) It may take a hundred years for that impact to be felt. It may take 150 years for that impact to be felt.
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But our faithfulness to do the things that God has laid out for us produces a harvest of 10, 100, and even a thousand fold. It produces God’s desired outcome. That those that we don’t even know will know Him.(…) Will be invited to be part of His family and ultimately be able to be part of His new creation. Living with Him forever and working with Him forever. This is the gift of working with God. It’s that we get to take our the little things that God hands to us. We get to give them to Him and say, “Lord, I trust in you. I trust in the work that you’re doing through me. Thank you for assigning even this small part to me. I’ll do it faithfully.” And we trust that that impact is going to reach those that we’ll never know. And it’s going to reach those that’ll reach those that’ll reach those that 200 years from now.(…) Generations will be called blessed simply because
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we do the work of the Lord with Him.(…) We stand shoulder to shoulder with Him. And we trust in Him to bring out His desired future.(…) Amen.(…) Amen.(…) We are going to take a time of reflection now. We’ve been doing this practice of reflecting on two questions based on the Scripture that we’ve been studying, based on the sermon that we’ve heard. And these are the two questions. What is God saying to me?(…) And what is God inviting me to do about it?(…) So the Spirit works in lots of different ways. So I don’t know what the Spirit is saying to you, but you reflect on that. Listen to the Holy Spirit and then ask Him, “What do you want me to do next? What’s my next step?(…) What should I do now that you have told me this?” We’ll take a minute here in silence.