In House Business / We got a ways to grow

1 Corinthians 3:1–9 ESV

1 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

Introduction

Thank you Jack for sharing the reading for today. You may have noticed that we have moved on to yet another of the letters of the New Testament, the book of 1 Corinthians. You might remember that we covered this text just a few months back in our “Ekklessia” study where we were looking at the growth and development of the early church.

The focus of that message was maturing in Christ, which certainly is a major them of this chapter but this morning we are going to go a little further than just the “spiritual adulting” that we were called to back then. Instead we are going to draw out what God would have us learn about division in the Church.

Tension

Many people in our world today have said that the Christian Church is more divided right not than ever before. That the aftermath of the Pandemic, the racial tensions, and political turmoil left a rift in the Body of Christ that continues to do damage.

I am so thankful for how God led us through that here at Friendship Church, but as I talk with pastor friends of mine many of them are struggling deeply with the tensions that I would say were “uncovered” by the events of the last couple of years.

I say “uncovered” because I can’t believe that these things just suddenly appeared, but more that the circumstances surrounding these events uncovered something that was there unseen beneath the surface of our Churches. And it got me thinking, What is at the root of all of this division?

It can’t just be politics, Christians have never been unified around a single political party.

It can’t just be health concerns, Christians have never all been unified in our practice and responses to the best ways to take care of our physical bodies.

It can’t just be racial tensions, because as we have seen looking all the way back to the early Church...those have been present all the way back to Bible times?

So what is it? What have these recent struggles uncovered in the Church. Because certainly all these things were realities in our lives and each one of them have served at least in part to bringing divisions in the Church to light… but they are not really new areas of division…are they?

And if they are not new areas of division, then we should be able to look back and ask ourselves some questions.

How have Christians engaged in thoughtful and meaningful disagreements on these and other issues in the past? How has the Church remained intact and even thrived despite times when these issues and others have brought either the potential or the reality of division into the Church?

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A great place to look into questions like this are here in 1 Corinthians, because you can’t get very far into the book before you recognize that they clearly had some serious divisions there in the Church.

And remember these book were letters, so they are really meant to be read from the beginning to the end. They are not organized like one of our reference books or text books today. So to understand what Paul is saying here in chapter three, we have to know at least something of what he has said so far.

And the issue of divisions of the Church come up very early in the letter. Back in chapter 1 Paul says to the Church in Corinth:

1 Corinthians 1:10–12 (ESV) 10 I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. 11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.

12 What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.”

This is very similar to what we find here in chapter 3 with one striking difference…here Paul puts “I follow Christ” as one of the options. As if following “Christ” had become just one of the many options that Christians have available to them. And the ridiculousness of that idea is exactly Paul’s point. He continues to say:

1 Corinthians 1:13 (ESV)

13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

I can’t help but think that Paul intended to write this to be read dripping with sarcastic tone - especially because he refers to himself in the third person. He wanted them to truly see how foolish they had become in their divisions. Had they somehow forgotten that Christianity was, is and must always be about Christ and here they are aligning themselves under a select few of his teachers.

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It’s easy to see where this idea could have come from because the practice of aligning yourself with a particular teacher was common place in their day and time. Corinth was greatly influenced by the great Greek Philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and in that system your reputation was directly related to the strength of the person who you studied under and you would fight for their honor above others. Something close to how different IVY league-rs fight for the prestige of their particular school.

That was the way of the world in Corinth...and that is why Paul was so disappointed that the Church had been sucked in to that kind of thinking, especially since he intentionally showed them the better way. He says in Chapter 2

1 Corinthians 2:1–5 (ESV)

1 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling,

4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Back when we followed Paul on his missionary journeys we often found him using logical arguments to persuade people to consider Jesus, but here he says he did not do that in Corinth. Since they lived in a world steeped in the Socratic method of presenting logical arguments and positioning themselves under different teachers, Paul intentionally went a very different way. He wanted to show them…as it says in verse 14…that...

1 Corinthians 2:14 (ESV)

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

He didn’t just explain it to them with lofty arguments and elegant speech like the traveling orators of their day did, he showed them the supernatural power of God. He showed them the spiritual things of the Kingdom of God. Things that couldn’t be reasoned or reasoned away but were from a more transcendent place.

But now, many years later, the report was that they had turned from all they had seen, known and experienced of God’s supernatural presence and they were instead quarreling, lining up under different teachers and trying to advance their position instead of standing together to advance the Gospel.

This is the root of it. This is what divided and destroys a Church. It isn’t just about where different people in the Church land on some controversial issues, it is about allowing the process of debating those issues to distract us from the supernatural mission of the Church.

So lets take a look at how Paul instructs us to have thoughtful and meaningful disagreements on divisive topics while not allowing it to divide a local Church.

This brings us back to what Jack read for us. Again it is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, page 953, I invite you to turn there as I pray and ask God to give us the grace of spiritual discernment this morning.

Truth

The first thing that we see Paul emphasize is that...

A Church can be destroyed by wordly wisdom (1 Corinthians 3:1-4, 18-20)

Depending on your translation you may find the word “carnal” or “fleshly” used, but I chose “wordly” in light of the end of this chapter where in the ESV we hear Paul saying:

1 Corinthians 3:18–20 (ESV)

18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”

We find Paul once again doing what he did in the book of Romans. Where here in the New Testament he quotes the Old Testament to show how God is still working through His Word to accomplish His will.

And in this summary statement, Paul is emphasizing that God’s ways are not our ways. This has always been and it will always be. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His wisdom is on a whole different plane than man’s wisdom…so much so that those who are limited to only understanding the wisdom of this world will often see God’s wisdom to be foolish or folly.

That brings up an interesting question for us individually. When was the last time you made a decision that only made sense because you were a follow Jesus? Like anyone else, who wasn’t following Jesus would look at you and be like”…uh…that doesn’t not seem smart.” Has that ever happened to you? And if it has, did you do it anyway?

Because as Paul said earlier, God’s wisdom cannot be arrived at from merely an intellectual position. It is “spiritually discerned” and Paul’s concern is that the evidence that has been reported to him shows a lack of “spiritual discernment” and smells more like they had just blended their new found faith into their old way of doing life. That never works.

Let’s start back at the beginning of Chapter 3 then where Paul says:

1 Corinthians 3:1–4 (ESV)

1 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?

Obviously Paul is not rebuking them for being human, they can’t help that, but they had become more than that. They were no longer “merely human” they had been born again, they were new creations in Christ…but they were not acting like it.

And it wasn’t just that they had moved back to living in the wisdom of the world, it was worse than that. They had moved the “wisdom of the world” into the Church! They were trying to do God’s Church with the wisdom of the world.

And the primary evidence of this was how they had attached themselves to human teachers in the same way that the world around them did. And then this was causing quarreling, “jealousy and strife ” and Paul knew that this would destroy the Church in Corinth if it was not dealt with.

Even today, we are still prone to taking our eyes off of God and becoming divided by human leaders. Sometimes this happens on a larger scale in our day. We have instant access to endless teachings of our favorite Christian preacher, teacher, author, or pod-caster. And if we are not careful to use that person’s teaching to become better disciples of God, we may end up becoming disciples of that teacher. That’s idolatry

But it doesn’t have to be just “big name” teachers. It can happen in a local church too where Church members attach themselves to one particular church leaders instead of cooperating together with the whole Church to grow together in unity, they allow their devotion to an individual to tear the church apart.

In both cases, the division is brought on by people trying to do God’s Church by the wisdom of the World. At the end of the day, the famous, book-publishing, blog-writing Christian teacher and the lesser known local church leader are merely servants of our much greater God.

God causes God’s church to grow, and if it is growing any other way then it is headed for trouble.

A Church can be destroyed by worldly wisdom, but...

A Church can be secured in it’s Gospel foundation (1 Corinthians 3:5-11)

Paul continues his instruction with...

1 Corinthians 3:5–9 (ESV)

5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

The Apostle Paul is talking about himself here. Do you here that? He is saying that “I am nothing, only God matters”. I play my role under His designed plan for me as does Apollos and Peter (Cephas) but that doesn’t make us worthy of your allegiance. It is all about Him.

8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

Do you hear in this the ethos of Paul’s teaching here…anything good that you have received from any of us is because God gave it to you, not because we did anything so great. And this is how it worked.

1 Corinthians 3:10–11 (ESV)

10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

The foundation of the Christian faith is set in Jesus CHRIST. We follow Jesus.

As the old Christian Hymn sings: “On Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand” That is what being a “Christ-ian” is all about.

We aren’t “Paul-ians”, “Peter-ians” or “Apollo-ians” or followers of any other teacher alone. (God forbid we certainly aren’t “Dan Normians”…Lord have mercy that would be awful.) We are followers of Christ. To the degree that different leaders and teachers help us to follow Christ, we follow them in that, but our allegiance in never to stop at an earthly leader. And we need to be careful because we may be doing that and not even realize it. I don’t doubt that this is what was happening here in Corinth, that is why Paul is writing them to help them return to their foundation in Christ alone.

And just because we are secure in our foundation, does not give us an excuse to just stay there. The very persence of a foundation means that something is intended to be built upon it, just Let each one take care how he builds upon it. That is a caution aimed at how it is done, not the cancellation of the idea.

Lastly this morning...

A Church will grow under spiritually-discerning leaders (1 Corinthians 3:9b-15)

1 Corinthians 3:12–15 (ESV)

12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

It is certain that the integrity of the foundation is of most importance, but Paul is just as clear that God holds the builders responsible for what they build upon that foundation. When a teachers faithfully guides their hearers to the truth of God’s Word—that would be like building with “gold, silver, [and] precious stones”. When a teacher throws out a lot of pop psychology and worldly wisdom that is not reconcilable with God’s Word then they are building with “wood, hay, [and] straw”

What concerns me about what Paul says here is that it appears that some if not much of the quality of what is built on the foundation won’t be revealed until “the Day”. In other words, when Jesus returns. At that point God will hold all teachers accountable and the faithful teachers will receive a reward, but the unfaithful ones will barely scrape by. But how do we know if we what we are building now will survive on that day? It can only be spiritually discerned. That is a weighty task and probably why James says that:

James 3:1 (ESV)

1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

God holds our teachers, pastors, and leaders accountable and He has given them the responsibility to shepherd us and to help us grow and mature. And He cares about how well they perform this responsibility because He cares so much about his church.

Gospel Application

Back to 1 Corinthians 3 and verse 16 where it says...

1 Corinthians 3:16–17 (ESV)

16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

The word “you” in this verse is plural, like you-all, or y’all. So Paul is saying that the Church is God’s temple, not the building but the many people that make up the Church. You plural are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells with us as the Church. Which is really encouraging…until you read the next verse:

17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Yikes! There is a happy note to end on, especially at a time when people say that the Church is more divided then ever before.

Because there are many ways to destroy the church. There are threats from the outside where false teacher can make their way in to lead people away from the Gospel with their false teaching, but there can be threats from the inside too. In an ironic twist, we who are being built up into the Church can be the very source of it’s destruction.

We can destroy the church’s unity by dividing into factions that follow only our favorite Christian leaders or teachers.

We can destroy the church’s purity by willfully engaging in and celebrating behaviors that are not reconcilable with God’s Word…in a word: sin.

We can destroy the church’s mission by becoming so isolated, insulated and inward-focused that we no longer engage with the world around us, and condemn those who do. Even though it was Jesus who commissioned us to share the Gospel with them.

These things can destroy the Church, and we need to be careful.

Landing

You know, this is what I really believe the last couple of years has uncovered about the Christian Church. I am concerned that we may not have been building on the right foundation. Because it is not just that we found that we have disagreements with other believers, we have always had disagreements, but I keep seeing people in the Christian Church engaging in them so poorly.

We know that the point at which things get out of control in any disagreement is when someone says something that threatens something that the other person feels is foundational to them. But as Christians, we share our foundation is the good news of Jesus Christ. And with the strength of that identity firmly in place, then we should be better equipped to handle disagreements than anyone else on earth.

But it doesn’t appear to be that way.

Some of you are hearing me say that you should just back down and not engage in any disagreements at Church, but actually I am saying the exact opposite. I mean, I am not saying “go look for a fight” or anything....I am just saying that ultimately the design of God’s Church is such that we are uniquely position to be the kind of place where disagreements can be some of the productive things that we do here.

But they won’t be if we aren’t secure in our foundation in Christ. When we are then we won’t feel threatened so that we have to prove ourselves “right” and them “wrong”. Instead we can expect that this and other disagreements will grow both of us to become more like Jesus Christ.

Because that is what being a “Christ-ian” is all about? We are fellow servants of Christ, His disciples and He has given us everything we need to know and become like him. Even our disagreemnts.

Chapter 3 ends with this”

1 Corinthians 3:21–23 (ESV)

21 So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

And that is the only thing worth boasting in.

Lets pray.