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It's a great blessing to be with
you all this evening. Look to God's Word. Let's open
in our Bibles to the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 3. All right, we'll be in 1 Corinthians
chapter 3 this evening. First, let me ask you a question. Do you perhaps enjoy the Food
Network or any shows that you've seen on the Food Network? Perhaps
some of you do. There's been an interesting kind
of rise in the past several years in a foodie culture in our in
our country it seems and some of this I think has been because
of shows like Iron Chef or Chopped if you've ever seen Chopped that's
one that my wife and I enjoy watching together sometimes and
It is it is funny to see this. It's it's probably not just because
of the food network, but also perhaps because of the rise in
more ingredients that are available to us. Quinoa, or quinoa as I
first called it when it first showed up. But yes, all these
different things. But it is interesting as this
foodie culture has come about and we're more interested in
food, part of this I think is just a human tendency. It's a
tendency that we have because we like to compare things and
critique things And that can be well and good, that can be
harmless in many ways, even fun or productive if you want to
find the best of the foods, good eats. But that tendency can also
be, and us sinners can transform into something unkind, ungrateful,
and ultimately unhelpful, especially when that tendency comes out
within the local church. as far as how we interact with
one another in the church. What Paul, in our passage this
evening, is going to refer to as God's temple. We're going
to see that Paul was dealing with an immature group of Christians,
and they were busy with this spirit of criticism, lobbying
criticisms, voicing their sophisticated opinions, they thought it was
quite sophisticated, their preferences, lobbing these things out while
completely missing opportunities to participate in things in the
church that actually matter and that actually build up the church
body. Paul was dealing with, we might
say, a proliferation of critics in the church at Corinth and
a lack or a dearth of workers or craftsmen within the Corinthian
church. And as we think of church life
today, this is still a temptation, isn't it? Still a temptation
to be a critic rather than a craftsman in God's church. Well, let's
turn to the reading of God's word in 1 Corinthians chapter
3. I'm going to just read the whole chapter because it does
in many ways hang together. Here now God's word. But I, brothers, could not address
you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants
in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid
food, for you were not ready for it, and even now you are
not yet ready. 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? For when one says, I follow Paul,
and another, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human?
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through
whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted,
Apollos watered, but God gave me. growth. So neither he who
plants nor he who waters is anything but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters
are one and each will receive his wages according to his labor.
For we are God's fellow workers. 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 upon it. Let each one take care
how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation
other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if
anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones,
wood, hay, straw, 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. If the work that anyone has built
on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's
work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will
be saved, but only as through fire. Do you not know that you
are God's temple, and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone
destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple
is holy, and you are that temple. 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. For the wisdom of this
world is folly with God. For it is written, he catches
the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the
thoughts of the wise, that they are futile. So let no one boast
in men, for all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or
Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or the present, or
the future, all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ
is God's. Lessons, the reading of God's
word. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you,
Lord, for an opportunity to again open your word and devote some
time to the Lord, seeking to understand it, to submit to it,
to meditate upon it. Lord, we pray that you would
use our time to be beneficial Lord, to our souls, that we would
draw near to you. And as we draw near to you in
Christ, that we would be conformed to the image of Christ, that
we would be made more mature, more like our Savior, more like
the God-man. We pray in his name. Amen. Well, like I said, the Corinthians
were just infants in Christ. They were immature Christians.
when they should have been, by this point, far more mature than
they actually were. This was a big problem. Now the infantile level of maturity
at the Corinthian church was creating what we today might
call a toxic church environment. It was characterized, as Paul
says in our passage, by jealousy and strife. And again, in this
chapter, Paul goes back to part of the reason for the strife. He talks about these competitions
between leaders, or at least the way that people view the
leaders. Now, this is something that Paul had already brought
up in chapter one. If you look back at verse 12
of chapter one, you'll see this, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos,
or I follow Cephas, or I follow In a very similar way, we get
this in verse 4 of chapter 3, I follow Paul. And another, I
follow Apollos. So there's a lot of strife here
over this. We might imagine some of the
conversations that were going on in the Corinthian church.
You know, I really think that Paul, he's the best, because
he's the founding pastor after all. And somebody says, nah,
Paul's a fundamentalist. You know, his letters always
make me feel guilty, and he's nowhere near as good an orator,
a preacher, as Apollos. Paul, I think, is highlighting
this kind of attitude of strife, of jealousy, of competition.
He's highlighting this, and he's saying, look, you becoming connoisseurs
of church leaders is not something you should boast about. You shouldn't
think that that is a mark of discernment and wisdom and maturity. It's actually the opposite, the
exact opposite. And so Paul confronts this behavior
in our passage, and part of what he's doing is he's undercutting
some of the theology, the false theology, that was behind some
of this snobbish talk. and this competitive spirit. What I think he's doing here
is he's saying, look, you Corinthians, in the way that you speak about
church leaders, on one hand, you're making too much of church
leaders. And on the other hand, you are
demoting church leaders. You're not making enough of them. How so? Well, on the one hand,
they're making too much of church leaders because they're making
them out to be superheroes. Celebrities, these figureheads. And so the focus was becoming
all about these leaders within the church. He lists Paul, Peter,
Apollos, though very likely there were local folks who were there
in Corinth that are not named, but that everybody would have
known about. These leaders, the people were
looking up to them, and so there was a form of clericalism that
was beginning to develop, making too much of church leaders, making
them out to be these superheroes and celebrities. We might say
that they were making the church leaders out to be these, essentially
these like CEOs or entrepreneurs or politicians. And that actually
gets to the other side, which is that they're making too little
of the church leaders by thinking of them in secular terms. And here's what I mean, not that
they were saying that they were non-religious. Today we use secular
in that way. I mean secular in the older sense
of that word. Secular in the older sense means
of the moment, of this age, that which is temporary, that which
is passing away. And so if you're viewing church
leaders as a CEO or an entrepreneur or a politician, you're thinking
of them in these kinds of categories of a secular job, a job that
is essentially about this very moment. And I think for Paul,
that is to make too much or too little of church leaders. It is to demote them in some
ways. Not that we don't care about
this moment. Not at all that we don't care
about, for instance, loving our neighbor. Caring about whether
our neighbor has food to eat. We care about the here and the
now. Don't misunderstand me. But there
is something unique about pastors, elders, deacons. There's something
unique about church officers that they're neglecting here.
So let's look at what Paul, I think, is saying in return. Paul, in
our text, confronts these falsehoods by reminding the church of two
important truths. The first one is this, that leaders
in the church are servants. They're servants, all right?
So they're not to be exalted in this way, made superheroes
and celebrities. He says that we are servants,
verse five. And so he compares the work of
Paul and Apollos with the work of who? The common farmer, who
does his work not knowing how nature will respond in bringing
forth the growth of the harvest. The farmer relies on the weather,
relies on ultimately the Lord, is providentially in control
of the growth. So too, Paul sowed the seeds
of evangelistic proclamation. Apollos spent time watering,
taking that learning to a higher level. But in both cases, they
must rely on God alone. They must rely on the transformative
grace of God. He brings the growth, not their
strength or their wisdom or methodology or oratory skill. It is God who
brings the growth. In other words, church leaders
are to be faithful servants, but they cannot transform hearts
and should not seek self-exaltation and secular glory by using worldly
methods. to make them look wise and powerful
according to the world. Now secondly, Paul says this. He says that the work of church
leaders is a high and a holy and a uniquely durable work. This is a work that should last
into eternity. This is why I say that church
leadership roles, these These officers, their work is not essentially
secular, that there is something unique to the call of church
leadership. So Paul appeals to more imagery,
and this time he appeals to the imagery of a skilled builder
or craftsman. Leaders in the church must follow
the blueprint provided by God, just as the Israelites did with
the old covenant temple. This means that the quality of
the work of church leaders matters, right? So pastors can't say,
you know, don't judge me, you know, it doesn't matter what
my work is as long as it's done in sincerity. No, no, no. The
work matters, not just of church leaders, but of everybody in
the church who's doing ministry. work matters, the quality matters. In fact, the work of ministers
of the gospel is so important that ultimately, Paul says, God
will judge it on the last day and will burn up in the fires
of judgment and purification all that fails to meet his standards,
which I don't know about you, but I think that's a really sobering
word. Certainly if you're a church
leader, that's a sobering word. These fires will remove all of
the so-called converts to Christ who are really attracted to the
preacher and not to Christ, which is a sobering word for the Corinthians.
To the program and not to the kingdom mission, to the social
club, but not to the building up of the church or the temple.
And so the way that church leaders minister must emphasize Christ
and the kingdom mission of making mature disciples of Jesus Christ
in a way that will ultimately give way to eternity, to the
new heavens and to the new earth. Now, at the end of 1 Corinthians
3, I do think that Paul brings it back to the original point
about this issue of immaturity in the Corinthian church, and
the issue of strife and jealousy within the church. And so I want
to begin to move into the last section of this sermon by helping
us to hopefully meditate a little bit on this topic as well. And I'm going to have us do that
by considering a question. The question is this, are you,
friend, primarily a critic in the church or a craftsman? Are you a critic or a craftsman
in God's church? Now to help us think about this,
I'm going to give you some different brands of critic and some different
kinds of craftsman, again, to help us consider this. The first
one is, let's talk about critics. We'll start with the negative
stuff and end with the happy stuff, all right? So the first
one is this. The first kind of critic, and
you know, I've been in ministry long enough now to have interacted
with and also been tempted toward all of these, so I'll just say
that, but the first one is what I'll call the spectator in the
church, the spectator. The spectator is the churchgoer
who comes on occasion to worship, might even show up at a congregational
meeting, because I got to get my vote in, right? That's a little
bit of a joke. But who doesn't see anyone from
the church outside of those occasions. The spectator views the church
as a traditional institution. that is useful. It's a service
for me. It's an old traditional institution
that provides a service for me of various kinds, but the spectator
does not really in practice view the church as a few of these
things, as an embassy of God's kingdom on earth. The spectator
doesn't view the church that way. He might say he does, she
might say that she does, but by being a spectator, no, this
person does not. Why? Well, to view the church
as an embassy of the kingdom on earth, the Great Commission
mission must be a priority. And if you're only showing up
on occasion and you're not spending time with the people of God,
I would say the spectator's not all that engaged in the kingdom
work, in the mission work. And so they don't view the church
as what it is, an embassy of the kingdom of God on earth. Also, the spectator does not
view the church as a household of faith. Again, a lack of fellowship,
a lack of connection shows this, and a lack of service. The spectator
tends not to volunteer. Why? Well, the household of faith
means what? There's familial responsibilities. There's obligations that come
along with being part of a family, and that's true of the family
of faith. The spectator does not view the church as a temple
of God, because the spectator doesn't take worship all that
seriously, and therefore doesn't view the worship of God, the
church of God as the meeting place between God and man in
Christ. The second critic that I'll list
off here is what I'm gonna call, just to bring it back around
to the food network, the traveling foodie. So the traveling foodie. I think this is a major problem
in the church today. The traveling foodie is a connoisseur
of sermons and of churches The traveling foodie loves the new
and the novel, but very quickly grows tired of consuming the
same old kind of preaching, the same old songs, the same old
ministries, because those things very quickly become, oh no, ordinary. The traveling foodie doesn't
like words like that. And so the traveling foodie will
move on to find a church that will satisfy his or her hunger
for a truly five-star church. The next one is perhaps another
very large problem in the church today, as I think it tends to
be in the church throughout the ages. But the third one, the
last one that I'll mention is this, is the demolition expert. The demolition expert. The demolition
expert is the church member who simply must express his or her
opinion on virtually every matter in the church. Now that might
be hyperbole, but that's okay because the demolition expert
is an expert in hyperbole, almost always speaks in such words.
No detail is too small to receive an explosive critique from the
demolition expert. Whether it be the facial expressions
of the usher, greeter, a typo in the announcements, the length
of a sermon or imperfections in the sermon, the way that a
volunteer arranges the desserts at fellowship meals, the demolition
expert is ready to detonate another unnecessary bomb in the church. rather than to focus on ways
that he or she could join the work of building the church up. The demolition expert is sadly
too busy tearing the church down. Strife, jealousy, criticisms. This is the demolition expert.
Friends, we need to be able to think self-critically. If we're
going to criticize anybody, we'll take the log out of our own eye.
It needs to be ourselves first. Where are you, friend? Are you
there? Are you the spectator? Are you
the traveling foodie? Are you the demolition expert?
Do you lean into these kinds of roles within the church? Now, I'm not saying I always
have to say this. I'm not saying that No one should
be criticized in church leadership, or no one should offer helpful
comments, constructive criticism within the church. But even as
I think of the demolition expert here, I suppose we could say
this. There is no office of official
church critic. There's no office of church critic,
okay? And if you are taking that role
on, you need to be reminded, that's not an office. That's
not a official role that you should be taking on. And that
perhaps, actually, this is what I find in the church at least,
the people who are doing the ministries, usually they're the
ones who know how to criticize it best. They have more insight
than somebody outside lobbing grenades in. Well, this brings
us to the craftsmen. We go to the positive side of
things. Who are the craftsmen within
the church? Well, of course, we know elsewhere
that Paul speaks of the church as a body, and not everybody
does the same things. Not everybody is the same body
part, as Paul says. So who are the craftsmen? Well,
let me give you a few categories to think through this one as
well. The first one is the ordained officer. That one's an obvious
one. I bring it up first, really,
just because this is a focus for Paul in chapter 3. And, of
course, he's focusing on that primarily because that is connected
to the tension there in Corinth. But this is the ruling elder,
this is the pastor, this is the deacon, the ordained officer
who has clear roles within the church to shepherd and to serve,
to teach, and to lead by way of example. The ordained officer
is to build the church up, to build the church from a place
of Christ-like leadership. But we have to remember, this
doesn't mean what? It doesn't mean that the ordained
officers are the only workmen, the only craftsmen. Rather, they're
at the front of the pack. They're leading the charge. That's true. But they're not
the only ones doing the work. The people are to be following
them and, as Paul says, mimicking, following after the way that
they're doing things. and seeking to be like them as
they are like Christ. The second category would be
those in the church who are lay leaders. Lay leaders. This is
a really important category, I think, within the church. These
are men and women who organize and execute ministries within
the church. In our church, we've got committee
after committee because we're good Presbyterians, right? And
there's committee members and committee chairs and VBS directors
and Sunday school teachers and so on and so forth, or even going
outside of the local church in some ways. You could think about
other ways that you serve in hospitality serving in nursing
homes, serving in ministries like Good News Club and things
like this around the community, and so on and so forth. Lay leaders
are incredibly important within the church. It's a massive blessing. And then third, and we shouldn't
skip over this, there's what I'll call the unskilled laborer.
I was in West Virginia on a mission trip with our church. It was
the first year that I was able to go since I became the pastor
four years ago. And we have a lot of people who
are, I mean, they're electricians and construction kind of people. And so we went down there, and
I was just unskilled labor. I'm just there to dig a hole.
That's all I'm there to do. Well, all our guys are out doing
all of these is one of the things with their skills, right? And
in some ways, we have to think about that in the church as well,
that you know what? We really need people to set
up and tear down and be physically present when there's all the
kids smacking each other with foam swords, right? We need this kind of thing. We need the unskilled laborer
to be willing to generously give of their time, even if, no, they're
not the one leading, or taking charge, or organizing, or on
the committee, or what have you. But we need these unskilled laborers. And then the last category I'd
throw in there too, and again, we don't want to overlook it,
is the joyful participant. The joyful participant. Again,
often overlooked, but so important, that we need people to participate
in the ministries of the church. This is huge, to help in the
up-building. The Lord uses you simply listening
to a sermon and then actually going off and applying it. The
Lord uses you showing up and, you know, kids, you showing up
and being there at the camp or the youth group. We need this. We need adults to be there in
Sunday school and to take part in the ministries of the church,
and to do so not as somebody showing up to say, hmm, you know,
fold the arms and say, I wonder if this will be good or not,
and I'll be sure to tell him if it's not, right? No, no, no,
not the critic, but the joyful participant, the joyful participant. I'm here to receive from the
Lord through, right, through this ministry that's being put
on, the joyful participant. So my challenge then to you all
is to meditate on this a little bit yourselves. Where are you? Are you a critic in the church,
a spectator, a traveling foodie, a demolition expert, or are you
a craftsman seeking to build up the church, to build one another
up within God's church for God's glory using his means all for
the gospel mission Is that who you are in these various ways?
Unskilled laborer, joyful participant, maybe you're an ordained officer,
maybe you're a lay leader, but how could you grow in becoming
a more effective, more joyful craftsman and shy away from put
to death that critical spirit? Let's pray to this end. Our Heavenly
Father, we do pray acknowledging that all of us have a temptation
and to become a critic of various kinds. And Lord, to do so would
be to fall into this Corinthian sin of having a church characterized
by jealousy and strife, criticisms, arguing. Lord, we pray that you
keep us from such sin, from such temptation. Lord, I pray for
this church, Lord, even as they're seeking to bring in a man for
gospel ministry, seeking to get him into the country. Lord, we
do pray that you would work and bring him quickly. But even as
that is the plan here, Lord, we pray that you would be protecting
this church and filling it, filling it with craftsmen rather than
critics. And Lord, we thank you that by
God's grace, even if we do fall into that spirit of criticism,
you are good to draw us out of it. Christ is able to lead us
in repentance and in transformation. And we do pray for that, for
those who have fallen into that sin. We pray in Christ's name,
amen.
Critics & Craftsmen in The Temple of God
| Sermon ID | 84242139156850 |
| Duration | 33:20 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 Corinthians 3 |
| Language | English |
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