The Lord’s Day Evening

August 19, 2007

The Sermon at the Service of Ordination and Installation

of Nathan Shurden and Jeremy Smith

I Corinthians 3:1-17

 “God and Associates”

The Reverend Mr. William H. Smith

From time to time I have two similar and recurrent dreams—and just for those of you who are some sort of therapists out there, I already know what these dreams mean! One of them is that I have signed up for a college algebra course and have not attended a single class, and I am on my way to the final exam. The other is that I am on a platform expected to preach, and so far have not even found a text. And once or twice the setting of that dream has been this very place. And as I recall, in those dreams Ligon Duncan would not even let me so much as borrow a book in order to make some preparation! I never thought I would have the opportunity to see that dream fulfilled, but here’s the opportunity now.

      I’d invite you now to come with me to the word of God as we find it in the third chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. The church at Corinth existed in a large commercial city known for its religions and its wickedness. It was amazing that by the power of the gospel a church had begun there, and yet though a church had begun there, it had not progressed as Paul could have expected.

      Hear now the word of God:

            “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 in only 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 the 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.” 

      “You are immature; why don’t you grow up?” Those are words that we don’t want to hear, whether we are a teenager who thinks she’s already grown up or we are a newly married young man who continues to live as though he were single, or we are an older person who has reverted to childish ways.

      That is what Paul says to the Corinthians. They are Christians, his brothers, babes in Christ; but their thinking and behavior is not that which you would expect to find in those who are not believers. You expect new converts to struggle with their faith and life, but you do not expect those in whom the Holy Spirit has dwelt as long as He had in Corinth to show such immaturity and lack of spiritual discernment. It’s just fine for a baby to be a baby, but there’s a serious problem when an older person behaves in an infantile manner.

      The problem in Corinth was not that they had not yet made the discovery of the Spirit-filled life. No, their problem was that they made too much of the Spirit and too little of Christ and His cross. The problem was not that they had not learned the kind of teaching that an older, more mature Christian could receive; the problem was that they had not learned the significance of Christ only and Christ crucified. It’s a serious thing to say to any Christian, “You are fleshly,” and it’s an even more serious thing to say, as Paul said, to a whole congregation. But Paul is not content merely to make the charge. He presses the evidence before them:

“For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving only in a human way? For where one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human?”

      It’s as simple as asking, “Does the Holy Spirit ever produce jealousy and strife? Do mature Christians make ministers the cause of disunity?” To ask the question is to answer it.

      But Paul is content not only to make the charge and give the evidence, but he wants to show them a better way. And he does so by giving them three pictures of the church that involve God and His associates, who are His ministers.

I. First, the church is God’s field.

      You can’t get a crop unless someone goes into the field and does the labor – planting and watering, for instance. Whether you’re a cotton planter or a backyard tomato grower, there has to be work if there is going to be fruit. I do not know of anyone who has ever harvested in the fall who in the spring looked out at his field and trusted the Lord. Harvest comes from the field where there is work. On the other hand, I do not know of a single farmer or gardener who has ever produced a single tomato or boll of cotton. These people may put it in the ground and may water it and tend to it, but they do not produce the fruit. It’s the mystery of God’s work in this world that fruit comes to the plant that we set in the field.

      The church is God’s field, and the Corinthian Christians are God’s harvest, however disappointing that harvest may be to Him at this point. Who has done the work? Paul and Apollos. One planted, and one watered. But God alone gave them the increase.

      Now the essential thing for us to learn especially tonight is to know that it makes no sense for us to develop loyalties based on our views of various ministers, because ministers are, as Paul says, nothing. He goes out of his way by not even referring to them as persons. He does not say, “Who are Paul and Apollos?” but “What are they?” Neither of them ever produced a single convert. Neither of them ever caused a single Christian to grow in the grace of sanctification. Neither of them had ever enabled a Christian to persevere to the end to enter his heavenly reward. All that is God’s work. No minister can take credit or deserves credit. This is one of the most basic truths about the church in God’s word, and yet it seems a truth that is hard to learn and easily forgotten.

      How often have churches thought, “If only we could have this preacher or that preacher as our pastor, surely all would be well and we would experience great growth.” There was a time when a few Presbyterians in Mississippi seemed to think that revival would break out if they could only get a certain Baptist minister down here to preach often enough. And how many churches today are built on the personalities of their pastors, and their pastors are willing to have it so. Churches are known by the names and the fame of those who serve them in the ministry. There’s nothing more important for these two ordinates to learn (or for any of us to remember tonight, especially if we are ministers) but that we are nothing and God is everything.

      Now all this may confirm so far something that a lot of Christians secretly think but seldom express, and that is that if ministers are nothing, then we probably could get along as well without them. After all, we all have Bibles, we all have the Holy Spirit, we all can read and interpret the Scriptures; and then, don’t the most important things that happen between us and God happen when we are alone with Him, and don’t involve ministers at all? Maybe we could do as well without them.

      Slow down just a minute if you’re thinking that way. Paul says we ministers are not much, but we are something. We are servants through whom you believed. They are the servants who had brought the word of God to the church in Corinth, and it was the word of God that God used to make Christians out of pagans. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ…but how shall they hear without a preacher?” That’s God’s plan. Faith depends on hearing, and hearing depends on a preacher. You might just as well expect to eat without farmers as to expect to become a Christian, live as a Christian, and die as a Christian without ministers.

      Moreover, it’s God who assigns ministers to their place of service. Some he places on great big plantations like this one; others He puts in places that are as small as the backyard garden plot. But it’s God who makes those decisions and puts those men where He wants them to be.

      Moreover, God will pay them. Of course He wants you to pay them now, but at the Last Day, God will pay them. He will judge the faithfulness of their work, the diligence of their work, the usefulness of their work; and whether their pay is great or small, He will reward them for the service they have given.

      Ministers aren’t much, but they are something. Don’t make too much of them. They are only farm hands. And don’t make too little of them; they are necessary farm hands.

II.   Secondly, the church is God’s building.

    Most buildings under construction are owned by someone, and that person employs an architect or a general contractor who will oversee the work. He in turn hires the sub-contractors who will do various parts of the job. The building cannot go up without the workmen, but the building belongs to the owner, and the building must be built in order to please him.

      The church in Corinth is a building that God is going about putting up through His contractors. God is the owner of the building, Paul is the general contractor, and all who follow him are sub-contractors. And it is God who will determine what each workman will receive as pay when the work is done.

      The church has only one foundation, just as a building must be built on a foundation. I remember in my middle year of seminary that the Kennington Chapel which now dominates the campus at Reformed Seminary was going up, and the soil test showed that that great building would not be able to stand if simply the contractor came and poured a slab. No, there had to be great holes drilled in the earth, and those were filled with concrete, and those became the pilings which supported the slab on which the building was built. There were many important decisions: whether the church would have a high or a low pulpit; where Mrs. Kennington’s portrait would be placed; whether or not The Book of Common Worship would be in the pew racks. All sorts of decisions, but nothing was more important than the foundation. The only foundation the church can ever have is the Lord Jesus Christ: who He is and what He came to do for our salvation. Unless the church confesses that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son who, in time, without ceasing to be God, became man, one Person paying for our salvation, the church cannot exist. Only when the church is able to confess that it is by the righteous life, the sacrificial death, the glorious resurrection, and the heavenly reign of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are saved is the church built on the foundation which can support it.

      The need of the church at Corinth, and the constant need of the church everywhere, is not something more than Christ, but more of Christ. As Paul told the Corinthians, “Christ is our wisdom and our righteousness, and sanctification, and our redemption.” Christ is everything for the foundation.

      Christ is the foundation that Paul laid. Anyone who came after Paul must build on that foundation, must build a building which fits that foundation…otherwise, the building will not please the Owner, and the building will not be a stable building. By God’s grace and for His glory, you have built this beautiful place in which to worship God. But unless its walls conform to its foundation, it will not stand. And unless the church rests wholly upon Christ as its foundation – on the truth of Christ and the work of Christ – the church cannot stand.

      I heard of an Episcopal priest who confessed that she was both a Christian and a Muslim. Now, though that church is able to tolerate all sorts of doctrinal error and moral failure, it seems that she went too far even for that church, for she was told she could not be both a Christian and a Muslim as a priest of the Episcopal Church.

      The other night I was watching a discussion on television about a book published by a Dutch Catholic priest in which he said, “In the interest of understanding and tolerance, let us Christians begin to call God “Allah,” because God doesn’t care what we call Him.” Oh, yes, He does! God the Father will not be known as anyone other than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and God the Son will not be known as anyone other than the eternal Son made flesh for our salvation.

      There are not a few churches, some even appearing under the evangelical banner whose ministries can be experienced on television, who seek so little of Christ that we have to wonder whether they are churches or not.

      Not only does the foundation matter, also the materials that are used matter. Some materials are valuable and lasting; others are cheap and destructible. You could put up a building in a hurry if you want to use cheap materials. But if another Katrina or even a lesser storm comes along, such a building will not stand.

      There are plenty of mega-churches today which I believe are building with wood and hay and straw. They are sure to collapse if our economy fails, if our government structures collapse, or if the church in America should experience real persecution. They have built with wood, hay, and stubble. Some of them build with messages of self-esteem and coping strategies and optimism, and helping people to feel better about themselves in life. Others build with speculation about the end times that are fanciful, and like some kind of Star Wars book. Others build on political activism, and others build on the promise of health and wealth. But those are not the precious stones and the gold and silver by which the church of Jesus Christ is built.

      Churches like this one, who have been blessed in all their history to have ministers committed to the one and only foundation, Jesus Christ, are blessed. And churches with ministers…the ones you have now who are committed to build the church with the tools God has given, with the word read and preached, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper rightly administered, and prayer offered up to God in the congregation…it is that kind of work that will last and will stand, even should the economy go south, even if the government itself should collapse, even if persecution should come to the church of Jesus Christ, churches such as this built on the right foundation and with the right materials will stand. And you can be glad and confident that on that Last Day when our Lord Jesus Christ judges your ministers by the foundation and the materials they have used, they will have no reason to be ashamed, for God will say to them, “Well done, you good and faithful workmen.”

III.  Thirdly, the church is God’s temple.

    When the children of Israel left Egypt, they lived in tents. And in the wilderness, God said to them ‘I want to have a tent, too. I want to have a tent so that I can live right in the midst of you.’ And so He gave them the instructions for the building of the tabernacle. All the tribes of Israel camped around the tabernacle where God manifested His presence and His glory. When they became settled in the promised land, God waited until they got into their houses, and even until the king had built his palace, and then He placed it on David’s heart to make the preparations for the future temple which would take the place of the tabernacle. And Solomon, David’s son, was given the privilege of constructing that great temple.

      The temple was the place where God lived among His people. It was the place where God revealed His great glory to His people. It was the place where He accepted their sacrifices for the atonement of their sins. It is the place where He received from them the worship that He called upon them to give.

      Now Paul says, “Don’t you know that you are the temple of God, and God’s Spirit dwells in you?” And then again he says, “God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” This is a place in the Bible when it would be much better if Southern English prevailed over standard English, because we have a way of distinguishing the singular and the plural of you. No real Southerner ever uses y’all to refer to a single person. That’s the way Yankees caricature Southerners on television. No, we know you is singular; y’all  is plural. And what Paul says here is ‘Don’t you know that y’all are the temple of God? That God dwells in y’all by His Spirit? That God’s temple is holy, and that’s what y’all are?’ The church is God’s temple. God lives in the church! God shows His glory in the church. God allows us to come, claiming the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for acceptance with Him in worship in the church. It is in the church that we are able to offer up to God pleasing worship, according to the directions that He has given us.

      Because the church is God’s, it is a holy temple. It belongs to God as no other organization on earth belongs to Him. God’s temple is His unique visible organization on earth where people worship Him in spirit and in truth, where He appoints the government made of elders, and where He wills for the means of grace to be dispensed.

      Since the church belongs to God, since the church is where God lives and reveals His glory and His worship, God has a special care for His church that He has for nothing else.

      I have three very sensitive spots: my daddy, my wife, and my five sons and their families. You say something bad about them or do something bad to them, you’re on the fightin’ side of me! And that’s the way God loves His church. He loves His church so much that He must warn us through Paul that if anyone destroys the church of God, God will destroy that person.

      Paul is thinking about false teaching, for one thing…false teaching that uses wood, hay, and stubble, but also false teaching that doesn’t even have the foundation of Jesus Christ. Strong warning that Paul gives to these two ordinands and to all of us who minister the word of God: Build with inferior materials, and you will lose your reward; build on some other foundation, and you will lose your soul.

      But Paul was thinking also of members of the church of Corinth, and in the church through the millennia to come. In the church at Corinth they would go so far in their jealousy and strife and their parties built on ministerial personalities that they were in danger of dividing, even destroying, the church. They would rather see the church divided than to lose the battle of egos. This is where not only ministers come in, but all of us who are members of the church of Jesus Christ come in. Indulge in petty rivalries, and God will not be pleased. Destroy the church by rivalries, and God will destroy you.

      The church is the most resilient organization on earth. That’s because it’s God’s field, it’s God’s building, it’s God’s temple. God will always have a church on this earth, and He will always give to His church faithful ministers and stewards of the mysteries of God. Tonight we honor the place of the church. Tonight we give thanks for the gift of ministers. And tonight we give all glory to God for the wonder of the church, and the gift of its ministers.

      Let us pray.

      Our Father in heaven, we ask that by Your Spirit You would apply to our hearts, to our minds, and to our living these great truths given to us through Your apostle regarding the church. May we love the church; may we build upon the one foundation; may we use the right materials; may You be pleased; and may You dwell among us and reveal to us and through us Your glory in this world, for we pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.