The Church Built Up (5) - Don't You Know?
The Church Built Up • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Have you ever watched someone do something and you just thought they should have known better? Didn’t you know that was going to happen? Parents with teenagers know what I’m talking about.
Actually, anyone who’s been a teenager knows what I’m talking about.
I get the sense from our passage today that Paul was a bit frustrated with having to repeat himself to the church at Corinth. He spent several years with them and taught them all about Jesus and how to follow Him.
Yet, Paul finds himself going back to some of the basics with them.
I’ve pulled today’s sermon title from verse 16 of 1 Corinthians 3:
16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?
I’ve divided chapter 3 up into 4 different “Don’t You Know?” statements. The first comes from the first 4 verses. of chapter 3...
Don’t You Know
1. How to mature in Christ?
This entire chapter is for the believers in Christ. Specifically for the believer in Corinth, but also for believers in the church today. In Corinth, this church had been taught by Paul, led to Christ and then others taught about Jesus and they still were not maturing in their walk.
1 Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ.
In verse 1, he calls them out for not living by the Spirit. If we are not living by the Spirit, we will not grow in maturity. They were not living by the Spirit and as a result, they were not growing in maturity.
He labels them as infants in Christ.
2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.
He started them with milk - with the basics about the Gospel and how to live, hoping to wean them and get them on solids, but they did not mature. They were still stuck in gratifying their worldly, fleshly or selfish needs.
Here is what they did:
3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans?
Jealousy and quarreling are the signs of an immature church.
Jealousy and quarreling cause disunity.
A couple of weeks ago, when we covered the latter part of chapter 1, we talked about unity. Without unity in the church around the Gospel of Jesus, we will never make an impact in the community around us.
If we want to see people come to Jesus, we have to be one in Jesus. Unified in love and in the message of the Gospel.
Division in the church is toxic, immature and will require baby food and spiritual diapers. I don’t think that is the case at Crossroads, but let these verses be a warning.
4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?
Following people will get us into trouble. Let’s commit to making Christ the one we follow.
A reason for the Corinthian church’s immaturity was there willingness to make following people more important than following Jesus. Let this never be so at Crossroads!
Don’t You Know
1. How to mature in Christ?
2. How the church is served (led)?
Jesus modelled a completely new type of leadership. He was a servant leader. This meant that while he was leading, he was also serving those he led. This is the posture of Paul and the others as they led.
Unfortunately, the church at Corinth place an improper amount of both responsibility and credit onto the disciples. Paul sets them straight:
5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.
The word used for servants is the word we use for deacons. The position of deacons was created to take care of the physical needs of the church so that the apostles could devote themselves to teaching and prayer.
Paul, although an apostle, wants them to understand that they are just servants. Servants who serve according to the tasks that have been given. These tasks were handed down by the Lord.
The important part of all of this is not the tasks, it’s not the servants as the Corinthians made it, it is the Lord who assigns. He is the most important. We are all just merely servants. Paul is saying stop elevating us beyond our position.
He goes on to say:
6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.
I just love this analogy. I planted a garden this year. I did water it a couple of times, but the last few weeks I’ve ignored it. I went out there on Friday and found a horde of cucumbers.
If it were up to me and my efforts in the garden, the plants would have died long ago. Instead there is this bounty of cucumbers that God has been making grow.
It is the same in the church. I hear of growth in some of you from time to time. Not to say there isn’t growth in all of you, I only hear some of it.
You might tell me that it’s because I said something in a sermon or in another conversation, but that’s not it. What I say is just a seed or a little bit of water.
The growth comes when the Spirit does His work in you. I can’t do that.
7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
This verse helps me a lot. It helps me to see my place in all of this. Paul was trying to get the church to see his role - as a seed planter or a waterer, but not only that - God’s role in making things grow.
Give God the credit for your growth. Not a person - God deserves that credit.
8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor.
I love this. My credit, my reward…your credit, your reward is not based on the growth, it is based on your planting and watering.
That’s our labor. We together plant the seeds of the Gospel in those we interact with. Where the seeds are planted, we also water together.
This happens with encouraging words, loving acts, graciousness, speaking the truth of God’s Word and however else the Spirit leads.
We may never see the results of what grows, but that part is up to the Lord.
9 For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.
All of us together are co-workers. You, the church is God’s field and building. There is not one of us that is above or better than any other. We are all His servants. When we make the church about following Him and not a person, we put ourselves in a position for the growth that God gives to His people.
Don’t You Know
1. How to mature in Christ?
2. How the church is served (led)?
3. How the church is built?
Paul transitions from using a garden or field as the metaphor to a building. He makes clear that church must be built well on a foundation of Jesus.
10 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care.
The foundation is the Gospel of Jesus. Paul preached this every where he went. It didn’t matter to him that the church was then taught and guided by someone else as they put different parts of the church in place.
It did matter to him who the foundation was.
11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Any church that does not have Jesus as the foundation is not God’s church. If anyone every tries to make the foundation at Crossroads anything but Jesus, speak up. If they won’t listen, run and find a church that has Jesus as the foundation.
12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.
As we work together to build Crossroads as a church that follows Jesus, there will be some things that will turn out to be hay or straw and other things that are gold, silver and costly stones.
When the day of judgement comes, we’ll know what is what. We’ll see the quality of the work.
14 If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. 15 If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.
As we all work to build God’s church, we first build on a good foundation of Jesus. Then we each grab our spiritual hammers and saws and we build as God leads.
Some of that work will stand the test, some of that work will not. The key is that we built.
It says the builder will receive a reward or the builder will suffer loss, but yet will be saved.
We are all on the building the church team. Be active together as we follow Jesus and build on the foundation of the Gospel. That is how the church is built.
Don’t You Know
1. How to mature in Christ?
2. How the church is served (led)?
3. How the church is built?
4. You are God’s temple and God’s Spirit dwells in you!
16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?
Remember this is a letter to the entire church. Every time the word ‘you’ is used, it means the church. Plural…all of us.
Together we are God’s temple and God dwells among us together.
It is true that individually we are God’s temple and that God dwells in each of us, but Paul’s emphasis here is the church.
The church at Corinth needed to come together in maturity, in unity, as a body and see these truths together as a church.
This is important as we keep reading:
17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.
We together are God’s sacred temple. God dwells in us and among us. Don’t you know this?
Jealousy, envy, strife, division. These are all things that have the capacity to destroy this sacred temple God has brought together in us.
There is a certain destiny for those that divide and destroy a church. May that never be at Crossroads.
If you think you won’t be found out, look what the next few verses say:
18 Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”; 20 and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”
The people in the divided and destroyed church may not know exactly what happened, but God will.
Let’s finish this chapter:
21 So then, no more boasting about human leaders! 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 of Christ, and Christ is of God.
What a great way to end. Don’t boast in people. We are all at the same level. We all belong to each other because we all belong to Christ.
Don’t You Know
1. How to mature in Christ?
2. How the church is served (led)?
3. How the church is built?
4. You are God’s temple and God’s Spirit dwells in you!
We are all meant to know how to mature in Christ by living by the Spirit.
We are all meant to know how to serve one another in the church, all as servants.
We are all meant to know how to build the church on the foundation of Jesus.
And we are meant to know that we are God’s Temple and that God dwells in you!
Don’t you Know?
Let us be a church that reflects Jesus in all that we do and say!