Coworkers with God
Notes
Transcript
Introduction (You)
So, the other day, I was walking out of my house to go to to a typical day of work, when I almost stepped on a caterpillar on my front porch. Being the nature guys I am, of course I looked up what kind of caterpillar this was, and as it turned out, it eventually turns into a really beautiful butterfly.
So, I looked up what kind of food this bug eats, which ended up being wispy herbs like dill, and I scoured the yard, foraging for this plant. Finally, I found this dill plant by crawling under a pine tree.
I got this habitat in a jar ready, and placed the caterpillar in it’s favorite food with some water and it started eating. I then gave it to my son, assuming it would take off and eventually spin a cocoon.
Well, sure enough, a few days later it was suddenly in a cocoon at the bottom of the jar. The grim part of this story, is that was about 4 weeks ago now.
And it’s still in the cocoon. I’m not bugologist, but I’m not gonna put any money on him waking up as a beautiful butterfly at this point.
To me, everything was perfect. I made the perfect habitat for this little bug that would have died on my steps, but no, I rescued it. I deserved to see that transformation, and to see the project through.
But, like many things in our life, it just didn’t pan out. That caterpillar’s life was in my hands, and I took the credit for it, but the results weren’t what I expected.
You Need
And I think this is how we live our lives with most of the things we do.
We get comfortable with giving ourselves the credit for anything we “accomplish”. We want to see the results, earn the promotions, earn the successes that come our way because of our hard work.
And then we apply this to the kingdom of God, to the work of God.
See, we have this intrinsic need, this desire to produce the results in our life that people expect. We have this need to draw battle lines and take sides, claiming one side is good and the opposing side is evil.
We need to feel the validation inside ourselves by taking a step back and looking at all the good works we’ve done, at all the fruit we’ve produced.
You Go
So we try to constantly do more, hurry hurry hurry, out perform where we ought to be at our age, or position, or whatever.
We try to produce the results, to produce the growth that we’re craving, but what it results in is weariness, and bitterness toward the people in our way.
It causes burdensome living, it results in relying on our own works. Constantly looking inward to produce outward results.
It causes us to replicate the our idols instead of replicating the image of God like we’re designed.
It results in a constant battle to put my name in lights, to get everyone to praise me for all the thing’s I’ve accomplished.
But Kingdom Living is different. And Paul addresses it in 1 Cor 3:5-9 which will be our passage today. If you have your Bibles, please turn to 1 Cor 3:5-9, if you don’t have a Bible, please go grab one on the back table and take it home with you.
Scripture Reading
Now, what’s going on here in our passage is the apostle Paul is writing a letter to the church in Corinth, near Athens in Greece. It was a hotbed for Greek mythology and logical debates over many intellectual issues.
And it was really common in that day to side with a specific camp, led primarily by the ideals of a specific person.
The Jews did this with their rabbis, for example. Marcus Aurelius was a person that the Roman and Greek stoics took after. They would pick a side and stick with that person.
Well, Paul and Apollos are two major influences in the Jewish, and now Christian convert, circles. Paul was obviously a well-written man, as the NT can attest. He was zealous, fiery, extremely intelligent, and highly influential.
Apollos was not slouch either, and I quote from Acts, he was “an eloquent man who was competent in the use of the Scriptures”.
So, this new church plant in Corinth, the Christian started taking sides. Some took the “Paul” camp, others took the “Apollos” camp. In fact, the people were saying they belonged to one side or the other.
Paul, of course, had a major problem with this.
Again, just like us in today’s age, the Corinthian Christians we’re trying to side with the best person who was doing the most work. The person that was really getting the results.
And it’s because they were searching for something they that was missing inside their hearts.
They thought following Christ was through a particular ideal, a particular man, a specific theology, but they constantly came up short.
And we do the exact same thing.
Our Desire for Good Results Often Comes Up Short
Our Desire for Good Results Often Comes Up Short
I don’t know about you, but I often go into things head on. It’s really unnatural for me to stop and consider the implications, or to pray and ask the Spirit what He wants.
And this may result in the outcome I want - I may complete the project at hand.
But let me tell you, the journey there is not great. I have roadblocks, I get beat up. When I finish the task I often look back and realize all the places I messed up, and if I would’ve just stopped to pray and pause, it would have been 10x easier.
You know what I’m talking about?
This is just like the Israelites traveling int he wilderness.
See, after the Israelites escaped the Egyptians, God led them to the promised land. However, their route was a bit longer than it should’ve been.
2 It is an eleven-day journey from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea by way of Mount Seir. 3 In the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first of the month, Moses told the Israelites everything the Lord had commanded him to say to them.
Because of the Israelites lack of faith in God, constant selfishness and bickering, trying to find the path on their own - trying to produce the good work without God, they wandered for 40 years on a path that should have taken 11 days.
Boy, if that doesn’t describe my home remodeling projects.
But I think that’s how we try to do everything in life, isn’t it?
Without God, without his word in our life. We follow someone else, putting our faith in their work. We trust our own intuition and our gut. Only to continue wandering around for 40 years instead of 11 days.
You Find
Eventually, your get your butt kicked enough times. In my case, there was a point in my life, especially leading up to this very church plant, where I just looked back after working so hard on getting it off the ground, and I realized I didn’t do any of the good things that came together.
I didn’t find this building. I didn’t find any of you people. I didn’t discover connections with the community. I didn’t buy any of this stuff you see. And this is just like God to do this, to completely ignore my pride. It’s just like the parable of the growing seed:
26 “The kingdom of God is like this,” he said. “A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day; the seed sprouts and grows, although he doesn’t know how. 28 The soil produces a crop by itself—first the blade, then the head, and then the full grain on the head. 29 As soon as the crop is ready, he sends for the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
And I guess not to downplay myself too much, but I realized all the good results here we’re divine works of God. They came together for literally nothing that I did intentionally.
And I bet you’ve had a similar experience, or will some day in your life.
Because
Growth and Results Comes From God
Growth and Results Comes From God
You Take
See, Paul could have easily taken all the credit for planting the church in Corinth. He could’ve said - hey, I know yall are fighting over who’s the best between me and Apollos and Peter. I’ll settle the debate, it’s me, Paul. Listen to me only, no one else, I established this church, you’re here because of me!
But he didn’t. Because this is the same guy that took his Jewish faith so seriously that he led campaigns around Israel slaughtering Christians. This is the man who took pride in squashing rebellion in the name of God.
But then Paul encountered Jesus in a frankly frightening way. He was struck blind and confronted by Jesus directly, face to face.
He was removed from his high position in the Jewish temple, in the Sanhedrin. And now, Paul has the opportunity to a mass a following all to himself. Again, Paul is intelligent, a great speaker, highly influential. If anyone deserved it, it was Paul.
But instead of seizing power, instead of acquiring a sect of followers, Paul chooses to write a letter to the Corinthians that says “What is Paul?”. He writes a letter telling these Christians how insignificant he is compared to the risen Christ.
He’s saying that the names Paul and Apollos only refer to these men who shared the gospel with you and set up a church. Paul planted and Apollos watered.
But the real difference, the difference in Corinth because of the growing church, and the massive amount of converts, and truly changing live, and families that are serving Christ - that comes only from God. That growth is not possible my human hands, only by divine intervention.
Paul writes “We are God’s coworkers, you are God’s field, His building”.
And surely Paul has this Psalm in mind when he writes this to the believers:
1 Unless the Lord builds a house, its builders labor over it in vain; unless the Lord watches over a city, the watchman stays alert in vain. 2 In vain you get up early and stay up late, working hard to have enough food— yes, he gives sleep to the one he loves.
See, everything we do, all of this trying to create good results and growth from our own hands, Scripture says it’s in vain. We labor in vain.
Anyone out there feel like you labor in vain a lot of the times? I do.
Let me tell you, even in this very sermon I wrote, God provided the answer. I was listening to my Dwell app on Friday morning, which is like a Bible reading app, and the devotional was about that very Psalm I just read, Psalm 127.
And this was the main line:
“We are free to rest because God is a good builder”.
Listen, I didn’t even get the best line of this sermon from my own brain, it came out of coincidence, I believe ordained by God.
God is the good builder. I know that because in Genesis, God took 6 days of hard work to create everything, then on the 7th day, He rested.
And when He rested, God rested with us, with humanity, in perfect relationship. Now, there was still work to do, but it was good work. It was Godly work.
And that 7th day was considered the day of rest, or the Jewish Sabbath. But here’s the thing, there wasn’t another day. There are no other recorded days, because the 7th day was supposed to be unending. Perpetual.
We were supposed to live the Sabbath life with God in eternity. But, of course, it wasn’t good enough for us. And we ruined it.
And now, if you remember back, the punishment:
16 He said to the woman: I will intensify your labor pains; you will bear children with painful effort.
17 And he said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’: The ground is cursed because of you. You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
The punishment for sin, for disobeying God, was literally to labor in vain. From that point on, we were not only kicked out of the perfect garden, but we were separated from truly entering that sabbath rest ever again.
We would spend the rest of our days toiling. That’s why our efforts are never enough, why we can’t complete good work, why we feel unaccomplished, never enough, anxious. Toil.
But. We have a recourse. The good news is Jesus Christ is the gateway to new rest. Because
Jesus is Rest
Jesus is Rest
You Return
28 “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
The reason why Jesus is the answer to all our problems, is because he is the only person to ever offer true rest. He is the embodiment of the Garden of Eden, of the Sabbath day.
Jesus can offer this because he alone is the good builder.
Paul writes that we are God’s coworkers. That’s incredible in and of itself.
But look at what Jesus is, completley in tandem.
Jesus says yoke up with me. He says come here, we’ll work together, except my yoke is easy, and the burden is light.
What Paul and Jesus are calling us to, as the church, is to simply bring ourselves to Jesus’s yoke. We are to bring our work, our labors, our money, our time, everything we have to leverage ourselves for the Kingdom - we are to take ourselves and lay what we have on the altar of God.
And then we step back and watch God multiply our labors ten,100, 1000 fold. Because He alone can produce something good out of the pidly dirty rags we have to offer.
See, what we’re doing is joining into what God is already doing, into the work God already is cropping up.
We could have come into this city of Clinton as the savior, as the church was going to change the religious landscape.
But God has been here for an eternity. Jesus was on the cross thinking of the people here in Clinton.
And then we show up for 5 minutes and claim to be the changers? That would be insane. Because God alone can change minds and hearts, and the Spirit alone convicts and draws people to our Savior.
This is heart of multiplication. This is why Valley Church doesn’t rely on numbers, or growth, or what’s in our bank account to govern what we do. Because the more we try to manipulate, and force, and tug and pull God’s plan around, the less He can do with us because our hearts are not pointed toward him, and our faith slowlys starts coming from ourselves and what we can do.
You Change
What we do, then, is work. Not in vain, not toiling. We plant seed, we water, we tend to the soil, and God brings the growth. And even if we could produce some kind of growth on our own, how much sweeter is God’s growth than ours?
So, we have to learn how to work, how to give all worship and responsibility to our God, how to yoke up with Christ.
We must be careful, because it’s so easy to slip right back into that toil mentality. Friends, we must live a life of faith and rest. We must be like Jesus, lowly and humble in heart. Restful souls.
Because we don’t belong to and ideology, or a person, or a group, or an identity. We belong to a creator God who is our foundation. We are coworkers of God, his field, his building.
And I could stand here and end this sermon with some big mic drop, but let’s be honest, what the Word of God says is so much better so I’ll end with this verse:
23 Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people, 24 knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord. You serve the Lord Christ.
