Founded On Christ

God Makes It Grow. God Makes It Sacred. 

7.12.26 [1 Corinthians 3:1-17] River of Life (8th Sunday after Pentecost)

Grace and peace to you from God our faithful Father who has called us into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 

It’s a mistake we’ve all probably made at one time or another. You’re in the market for a big-ticket item—expensive technology, a car, or a house—and you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s not that you haven’t done any research. It’s just that it’s so easy to get excited about the shiny new features and overlook the concealed systems that are actually critical. It isn’t until those critical systems go wrong that we recognize that our attention was on the wrong things. 

What good is it to have all those fancy features and compartments inside your fridge if the compressor doesn’t last more than a couple of years? What good is it to have the biggest, brightest screen on your dashboard if the car breaks down on the highway? What good is it to have fancy countertops if the foundation of the home is sinking?

It’s very easy to grow enamored with features and fixtures and forget about what’s actually important, what absolutely has to be right, what is the critical foundation of it all. When that happens, we make expensive mistakes we don’t soon forget. 

As Paul was writing to the church at Corinth, he saw them making an expensive and critical mistake. They were fixating on the faces of the church instead of carefully building on the foundation.

That’s where Paul begins in this letter. He says 1 Cor. 1:10 I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. So what’s the problem? Corinth was struggling with spiritual celebrity-itis. They had been quarreling about which of the heavy hitters of the faith was more important and influential. 

Some were saying: 1 Cor. 1:12 I follow Paul. Another followed Apollos. A third followed Peter. The fourth said he followed Christ. And so on and so forth. In Corinth, they were developing spiritual rivalries. 

Like other rivalries, this doesn’t make much sense if you’re not on the inside, if you’re not invested. Celebrities feuding, British royal family drama, and sports rivalries are bizarre and confusing from afar. When try to explain to someone who doesn’t live in that world why Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, or why Prince Harry moved to California for privacy, or why you now root against a player you always loved because he left your favorite team, it all sounds silly. Childish, even. 

And that’s kind of Paul’s point. Even though the Corinthians were sophisticated and knowledgeable and eloquent, they were thinking, talking, and acting like mere infants. People who were still worldly. 

So Paul takes them to task. He scolds them for their jealousy and quarrelling. They’ve been bickering over who’s better, Paul or Apollos. Paul and Apollos weren’t competing with one another for Corinth’s affection. In fact, Paul and Apollos weren’t even in Corinth at the time. 

Paul reminds them that he and Apollos are both God’s assigned servants. They had different tasks and different purposes, but they still had the same goal. They were still serving the same God. They were each assigned to a task—planting and watering—but neither of them had the power to make the church grow numerically or spiritually. 

The Corinthians were fixating on individuals rather than the indivisible God. So again and again, Paul reminds them that God is the one in charge. The Lord assigns the servant to his own particular task. God makes it grow. You are God’s field. You are God’s building. You are God’s sacred temple. God’s in charge.  

But what purpose does an internal issue like this in a congregation we’re not a part of serve the holy Christian Church today? 

These rebukes serve congregations that have multiple pastors very well. Perhaps you’ve been at a big church where there was this kind of childish conflict. In the worst of these cases, they are created by the very men who are tasked with being co-workers in God’s service. But just as frequently, it’s happening at ground level. People like one man’s preaching better than the other. One pastor makes all the decisions; the other makes all the visits. People develop favorites and “favorites” devolves into favoritism. 

Sometimes, as happened in Corinth, this happens even when the servants don’t overlap. One group loves the old pastor, the old way of doing things, or the good ole days. Another group loves the new guy, the new music, and everything that is new and cutting edge. 

This is where God steps in with a solemn word for his bickering children. I assign the servants to the task. The planter shouldn’t be doing any of the watering. The waterer can’t be casting seeds. Don’t assume that because the work of one is right before you see a bumper crop that he was more important than his predecessor. 

For us, as a congregation, we’ve got a slightly different situation. We’ve had one pastor. I get the title of best and worst pastor of River of Life. We don’t have to face that “favoritism” struggle.

But there is still the temptation toward jealousy and quarreling. At times, we may look at other churches and ministries and long for what we remember at our favorite place. We may look at the church across town and covet their land or buildings, music or ministries, staff or success, or whatever else we admire about them. We must be reminded that God makes it grow on his timetable, not ours. God gifts the servants and the setup. God gifts the leaders and the land. The Lord is running the show. Not us. 

And that is a tremendously comforting truth. God is in charge of his church. And no one cares more about the growth and health of his Church than God himself. God invests himself personally in his field and his temple. He is patient and wise, powerful and loving. 

We’ve seen this since the very beginning. God made the world and all that is in it. He placed mankind smack dab in the middle of Eden, a fertile field of everything good. But God did not dwell on Earth. He didn’t reside in a Temple made by human hands. This world was for us, not him. Yet, when Adam and Eve rebelled against him, and tried to turn God’s creation into the home base for all that is wicked and wrong, God didn’t walk away from this earth. He didn’t go scorched earth either. He came into this world to fix his field.

That’s the point our Gospel text drives home. In the parable of the sower, Jesus isn’t just trying to show us the different responses people will have to God’s Word. He wants us to see the seed, the Word, is the same and that the sower is casting the seed open-handedly. God himself casts the saving message of his Word into this world so that it might return to the fertile field he first started with. God spares no expense in seeing to it that his field flourishes. 

God has come into this world to redeem his holy Temple. That Temple is not a building made by Solomon or Herod or any other set of human hands. Paul tells us that God’s people are God’s Temple because God has sent his Spirit to dwell in our midst.    

God’s Spirit is at work wherever God’s Word is proclaimed and put into practice. That is why God himself was passionate about the Temple in Jerusalem. During the life and ministry of Jesus, the Temple in Jerusalem was known as the 2nd Temple, or the Temple of Herod. Even though it was not as glorious as the first, Jesus remained passionate about what happened there. As a young boy, he made a point of being there, with the people in the Word of God, far longer than required for the Passover. Even though he was but 12, Jesus came to the Temple courts to teach.

When he returns to the Temple as a grown man, we see his groaning frustration with how the Temple is functioning. The outer courts, which were intended to be a place of prayer for all the people & communing with God, had become a place of profiting & commerce. Jesus drove out the money changers and flipped over their tables because God wanted his house to be a place where the great change that was made was one of spiritual repentance, not currency. God’s Temple, his people are sacred to him and he will destroy any who threaten them. 

That is why God came. He came to destroy the power of sin, death, and the devil. He did that by living perfectly—never once falling into any kind of sin. He did that by dying innocently—taking our place under the wrath of the Holy God. He did that by rising powerfully—demonstrating that the grave and the Evil One have no power over him. This is the foundation of our faith, what makes God’s field flourish, and what makes us the sacred, glorious building of God. 

Christ crucified is the foundation of our identity and our purpose. And we do well to remember that so that we build our lives and our church with great care. Men and ministry methods and musical styles and even monumental buildings come and go, but the Word of the Lord lasts forever. The work of the Lord is what truly matters. And God knows what he is doing. He has assigned the tasks and the servants to those tasks—that is what we are doing right now. He has the plan and is working out everything according to that plan and timing. He is the one who makes his field flourish and his Temple sacred. So no more boasting about human leaders or jealousy of ministries that God is growing differently. Yes, at times, we make those kinds of silly mistakes. But let us put those childish ways behind us and think, and speak, and live as those who have been matured by the Holy Spirit. 

Let us fix our eyes on Christ, the Author and Perfector of our faith, the Church’s One foundation. And let us build with great care, devoting ourselves to proclaiming and putting into practice the full counsel of God. And as we build, let us take our greatest comfort in this truth. God is in charge. God makes it grow. God dwells in our midst. Amen.