Introduction:
1. A pastor was retiring after 25 years in his church. As he was clearing out the bedroom in the parsonage he found a small bowl containing 5 eggs and $1,000. Baffled he asked his wife, “Darling, what is this little basket under the bed with the 5 eggs and $1,000 in it?” “Oh“ she said “I must confess that every time you preached a bad sermon I put an egg in the basket.” Secretly the pastor was pleased: “That’s not bad, 5 bad sermons in 25 years.” Then he asked, “And the $1,000?” She said, “Well every time I would get a dozen eggs I sold them!” (Martin Dale, Sermon Central)
Cell #1— I Corinthians 3 is on page 871 of the Bible in your pew.
2. I knew when I ran across that joke this week that I had to share it this morning and dedicate it to Joe. However, on a more serious note, I want to tell you about a conversation that Joe & I had a few months ago. Joe told me that his faith has gotten much stronger over the last few years.
3. Those of you who attend the church all the time know that I like to use a lot of stories in my sermons. Stories help keep your attention, but I include them for more than that. If you study Jesus’ sermons, you discover that He frequently used stories too, they are called parables. Stories can help us grasp difficult truth and make sense of it.
4. In this 3rd week of our study in 1 Corinthians we come to a passage that teaches us about working and growing together in our faith. There are people who don’t believe they need a church and they’re partially right. You can be a believer and not go to church, but it’s very difficult to be a growing follower of Christ alone. We need others to help us in the process. Our relationship with God is personal, it’s one on one, but church if it does what it’s supposed to do it not only teaches us about God, it also connects us with others who are following God and that is very helpful spiritually.
5. If you have found 1 Corinthians 3 let’s read it together.
1 Dear brothers & sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life.
2 I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready,
3 for you are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of 1 another & quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world?
4 When one of you says, “I am a follower of Paul,” & another says, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you acting just like people of the world?
5 After all, who is Apollos? Who is Paul? We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us.
6 I planted the seed in your hearts, & Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow.
7 It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.
8 The one who plants & the 1 who waters work together with the same purpose. And both will be rewarded for their own hard work.
9 For we are both God’s workers. And you are God’s field. You are God’s building.
10 Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful.
11 For no 1 can lay any foundation other than the 1 we already have—Jesus Christ.
12 Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw.
13 But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value.
14 If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward.
15 But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.
16 Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God & that the Spirit of God lives in you?
17 God will destroy anyone who destroys this temple. For God’s temple is holy, & you are that temple.
18 Stop deceiving yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise.
19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, “He traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness.”
20 And again, “The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise; he knows they are worthless.”
21 So don’t boast about following a particular human leader. For everything belongs to you—
22 Whether Paul or Apollos or Peter, or the world, or life and death, or the present and the future. Everything belongs to you,
23 and you belong to Christ, & Christ belongs to God.
6. Let’s ask God to open His word to us and then we’ll begin our study of 1 Corinthians 3. Let’s pray.
TS— Paul begins the 3rd chapter of 1 Corinthians by telling the Corinthians…
Cell #2—
I. It’s Time to GROW UP 1 Cor. 3:1-9
1. Paul was the one who had brought the message of God’s grace to the Corinthians. In a sense he was their “spiritual father.” During the 18 months he had ministered in Corinth, Paul had tried to feed his spiritual children and to help them grow in their faith. Just as in a human family, everybody helps the new baby grow & mature, so in the family of God we must encourage spiritual maturity. When children are learning to eat they begin with the most basic food possible, their mother’s milk. But it’s not long before their menu begins to expand. As children grow, they learn to eat different food. They graduate, to use Paul's words, from milk to meat. It’s appropriate to begin with the beautiful story of salvation, but the Christian life is about more than just accepting Christ, it’s about becoming more like Him and becoming godly in our day to day lives.
2. Tragically, that wasn’t happening in Corinth. He said they were still controlled in verse 3 by “your sinful nature.” This word for “sinful nature” comes from the Greek word “SARX” which means flesh. The problem wasn’t that they were flesh and blood, all of us are, the problem was that they were dominated by their fleshly desires. Their values were based upon temporary pleasure, not on the eternal hope that is the focus of God’s kingdom. You can see this is what he’s talking about when he says, “Aren’t you living like people of the world?”
3. The way that question is posed in the Greek, makes it clear that Paul anticipated a positive answer. The Corinthians, if they were honest, had to admit they were living selfish lives, not godly lives. They had been believers long enough that they knew better, but they were not living better. That brings us to a tragic, but all too common point.
Cell #3—
It’s possible to be a believer for a long time and still be Spiritually Immature. (1-3)
4. Immaturity can take many different forms, but Paul deals with one of the forms it took in the Corinthian community. In the Corinthian church there were two factions that didn’t get along.
5. You can see what Paul’s talking about in verse 4 when he says, one group says, “I’m a follower of Paul” and the other group says, “I follow Apollos.” The reality was that the congregation should have been focused on the Lord, not on whether Paul or Apollos was the main Christian leader. Do we still have things like this go on today?
6. Yes, now we have people who get focused on their denomination; “I’m Baptist,” or I’m Pentecostal” or “I’m Presbyterian” or “I’m Catholic.” Now let me be very clear; there are godly Baptists, good Pentecostals, godly Presbyterians and good Catholics too, but if we’re followers of Christ He is to be our focus, not our denomination or pastor. Our focus is to be on God not on our group.
7. Paul and Apollos demonstrated the correct relationship between those who were working for God. They were cooperative servants of one master. Apollos and Paul were a model of how the Corinthian church should have functioned. Paul bluntly states, “I planted the seed” then quickly added, “Apollos watered it,” but then he made the ultimate statement, “but it was God who made it grow.”
Cell #4—
The Christian faith doesn’t focus on Honoring Us it assumes that should go to God. (6-9)
8. As God's servants, we must understand that we cannot ourselves produce any real spiritual results, only God who can do that. Paul pictured the Corinthians as a fertile field. His work was just phase one. Cultivating a field is vital, but if young plants don’t get water they don’t grow. Paul pictured Apollos as having been the one who watered. Each of them had played a role in the growth of the church at Corinth and they had played it well.
TS— And that brings us to the second principle in this morning’s message…
Cell #5—
II. It’s Time to WORK TOGETHER 1 Cor. 3:10-16
1. Paul changes the spiritual metaphor here, he no longer is using the example of a farm, he now used the picture of building a building. He said that he laid out the foundation as an expert builder.
2. Paul makes the point that he had started the building, but he did the foundation and now someone was coming along afterward to finish the building. He started God’s work in Corinth, but he wasn’t the one who was finishing God’s work in Corinth.
3. Any real spiritual growth that happens in a church happens because of God, not the pastor. Allow me to apply this to our own situation. I love you as our church family and you love me as your pastor. I try to help you grow in your faith, but I’m not the source of your growth. In fact, some day, and I hope it’s a long time away; my ministry at The Refuge will end. A new pastor will carry on the work. It might be Jeff Sulmar. It might not. But if The Refuge does what God has put it here to do, the work will continue. The Refuge isn’t my church; it is God’s church.
Cell #6—
The church is to be involved in something Bigger than We Are. (11)
4. The church is ultimately about Christ and His kingdom, not about you or me and what we want. In the next section of this passage he makes an interesting statement that at first glance seems a bit strange. Look at verse 12. He says anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials. Blake is a carpenter. He uses wood, sheetrock, nails, screws and a whole ton of other materials, but I want you to notice the materials Paul lists here. He mentions, “gold, silver, jewels, wood hay or straw.”
5. Why would he list such strange materials? What kind of ancient buildings had “gold, silver and jewels” in them? Paul probably had a mind a temple. In fact, if you look down in verse 17 you will see there that Paul even uses the word “temple.”
6. But there’s more to this picture than immediately meets the eye. Look at vs. 13 because it’s here that he says how this spiritual work will be tested. It will be tested by fire. Only the “gold, silver and precious stones” will survive that kind of testing, the wood, hay and straw will go up in smoke.
Cell #7—
We will one day be rewarded if the work we do For God Survives. (14)
7. How well are work will ultimately survive must be based upon using only the most precious materials. Now, leave the analogy of a building for a moment and move back to the idea of the church. Now remember, the church is God’s people. If the church is based upon something other than Jesus and His kingdom, it may temporarily look impressive, but it won’t ultimately last because it’s not built on the right thing with the right foundation.
8. Sometimes we lose sight of what’s really important. Let me illustrate with a foolish little story that makes the point. A guy stopped at a convenience store; after filling his tank he paid for the gas and bought a soda. As he was getting ready to drive away he noticed two men working near the road. One man would dig a hole 2 or 3 feet deep and then move on. A second man came along behind filling freshly dug holes. The man watching the 2 men work confronted them. He said, “One of you is digging a hole and the other is filling it up. You’re not accomplishing anything.” One of the guys said, “You don’t understand, mister, normally there are 3 of us. I dig a hole, Sam plants a tree and Jesse here puts the dirt back. Just because Sam’s sick, doesn’t mean Jesse & I can’t work.” Here is the point, sometimes we just do what we’ve always done without thinking. We need to make sure what we’re doing is based upon what Jesus wants us to be doing. We can’t just mindlessly do the same thing over and over.
TS— And that brings us to the final part of the passage. Here Paul tells us…
Cell #8—
III. It’s Time to FACE THE TRUTH 1 Cor. 3:17-23
1. Let me explain where I get this last point. Look at verse 18. Paul says, “Stop deceiving yourselves…” That’s another way of saying, “it’s time to face the truth.”
2. Paul now begins to make the point of the entire passage. He doesn’t ask the Corinthians to change, he demands that they change. Paul also signals he is wrapping up his argument by reintroducing several of the words he used in the previous 2 chapters, like “world,” “fool,” & “wise,” which dominated 1:18-2:16. If our faith is in people, even godly people we’re headed for big trouble. They had been focusing on their leaders rather than the Lord & it was wrong.
3. Both Paul and Apollos were good leaders. I want to be a good leader. As your pastor I want to help you grow spiritually, but I’m not the key to your faith. You don’t have to go through me to get to God. People often focus on the pastor rather than the Lord. When we do that we’re doing what most other religious people do, but we’re wrong. Notice the end of verse 19, “He traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness.” Following a charismatic leader may seem like the right thing to do, but ultimately it’s not about the leader. Here is the point…
Cell #9—
It’s possible to think we’re Wise and actually be A Fool. (18)
4. Let me say it a bit differently. If you’re following me instead of following the Lord, it might seem smart, but it’s actually really dumb. I won’t intentionally mislead you, but I’m not the One you need to follow. No pastor or leader is. You need to follow God and seek Him, not just blindly follow any pastor and that includes me.
5. Let me show you another reason Paul makes that point. It’s at the end of verse 21. He says, “For everything belongs to you.” Paul’s point isn’t that you shouldn’t respect your pastor, or be willing to follow his leadership, but he is making the point that your faith can’t rest on your pastor or anyone else for that matter. You have what you need to have a relationship with God without me. Let me give you one final statement that you need to clearly understand.
Cell #10—
Our ultimate focus should be on God not on a Pastor or other Spiritual Leader. (21-23)
Conclusion:
1. We all get confused about this from time to time. This morning I want to conclude with a wonderful story that happened in a church several years ago. Mac was a very successful businessman who was in his 70’s. He had been a church member for many years but didn’t really understand having a relationship with God. Then one night during a message he understood that while he knew about God, He had never trusted God to forgive his sin and come into his heart. Though he had been involved in a lot of religious activity, he never actually trusted Christ. After spending a few days thinking about his spiritual condition Mac decided to make a public profession of his faith the next Sunday. He talked to the assistant pastor and both he and Mac in tears. The pastor said, “This is tremendous, Mac is one of the most brilliant businessmen in our city! He’s wealthy, he’s talented, and we need to put him to work!” He told the assistant pastor, “I want you to see that Mac is totally involved in what our church is doing.” No one who was there will ever forget that with his eyes full of tears Mac said, “Pastor, I don’t need a job. I need the Lord.”
2. That is the question I want you to ask yourself today. Not, do you come to church regularly. Not, do you like your church family? Not, do you work at the church? I know most of you do those things and they’re good. No, I want you to ask yourself the question, do you know the Lord and are you growing in your relationship with Him? Is there something you need to do to take the next step in that relationship?
3. Some of us need to invite Him into our heart. Some of us need to follow Him in baptism. Some of us need to simply commit ourselves to following Him more passionately with prayer and Bible study. I don’t know precisely what God is challenging you to do, but I know my job is to point you to Him and encourage you to allow Him to continue His work in your heart. Will you accept my challenge this morning? Let’s pray.
Warren Wiersbe, Be Wise: 1 Corinthians, (Colorado Springs, CO: Cook Communications) 2001.
2 John Walvoord, Roy Zuck, The Bible Knowledge Commentary: 1 Corinthians, (Colorado Springs, CO: Chariot Victor) 1983.
3 Jack Cottrell, Tony Ash, Richard Oster Jr., The College Press NIV Commentary: 1 Corinthians, (Joplin, MO: College Press) 1995.
4 William Baker, Ralph Martin, Carl Toney, Philip Comfort, The Cornerstone Commentary: 1 Corinthians, (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale) 2009.
5 Frank Gaebelein, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: 1 Corinthians, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan) 1981.
6 Bruce Barton, Greg Asimakoupoulos, Jonathan Farrar, Linda Taylor, Dave Veerman, Neil Wilson, Life Application Bible Commentary: 1 Corinthians, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale) 1999.
7 William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible: 1 Corinthians, (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster) 1975.
8 Scott Chambers, Are there Different Levels of Rewards in Heaven, (Dugger, IN : Christian, Sermon Central) 2005.
9 Chris Appleby, Fools and Factions, (Surrey Hills, Australia: Anglican, Sermon Central) 2003.
10 A Todd Cogent, We Are the Church, (Greencastle, IN: Evangelical, Sermon Central) 2003.
