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My goal this morning is to get you to think less of me.
That's the purpose of the sermon today. So you would esteem me, not in a higher way, but in a less so way.
For some, that's probably very easy to do. Maybe you'll have roast pastor for lunch, which is your typical course of fare on Sunday afternoon.
Reminds me of Sinclair Ferguson who said he would listen to children criticize the pastor and his sermons.
And Sinclair would say, they've learned well from their parents. But in a very real way, you need to think properly, in a very godly way, about leadership.
About all the great preachers throughout the ages. About the leaders here at this church.
About the Apostle Paul. There's a right way and a wrong way to think about leaders.
And I've been here 13 years and I have to say from the bottom of my heart, this is not flattery, this is not, I'm trying to soften you up to get the knife to just go straight in, like sometimes
I might do. I feel and receive love from this church.
I know you love me. When I'm out of town and I come back, I've missed you and you've missed me.
And we have a relationship now over 13 years and there's a right kind of bond. There's a right kind of, we love our pastor.
We want to imitate him as he imitates Christ. There's a good healthy dose of that. And I'm glad, by the way, it's better to be loved by your congregation than hated.
Despised. I've felt both in my life and I like this one better, where people love me.
I'm just a go along to get along kind of guy. But Paul writes in 1
Corinthians to the church of Corinth and he says there's a right way to look at leaders and a wrong way.
A proper way to evaluate them and an improper way. And the way you look at your leadership at a local church determines how unified the church is.
Wrong view of leadership, wrong view of the church. Proper view of leadership, good healthy unity.
And so I really think from the bottom of my heart, you look at me too highly. You think too well of me.
And I want to bring us back down today to 1 Corinthians, so please turn your Bibles there. And I want you to see that you can evaluate leaders in a proper way.
We preach the Bible verse by verse here. And I'm so glad for that because we cover all kinds of topics.
I never in a million years would pick a sermon like this in my life. But it's good, it's healthy, it's right.
After all, who wants to preach a sermon? I want you to think less of me today. Especially in our society, you know, you go to Hannaford and you're meeting the cashier.
Oh, hi, how are you? I'll say because they rarely talk to me. And, you know, in California it's bubbly.
You know, hi, how are you? And I think these people are con artists. They want something from me. I'm thinking like a New Englander now when
I go to California. It's wearing off on me. There's an agenda here. You smile at me.
And I'll say, how are you? And you know what I say. And they'll say, how are you back? And I'll say,
I'm doing great, especially compared to what I deserve. You deserve everything, the high life, the best.
I'm special. I'm the center of the universe. I should be on People Magazine's cover. I'm the best.
We live in that kind of society. And I know something for a fact because it's dwelling in my heart and yours too.
We all have a tendency to idolize people. We're worshipers.
And we will worship someone. And God needs all of our worship.
And he will not give his glory to another. And I don't want any of your worship. I don't mind encouragement. I don't mind thank you.
But we need to think rightly because it's bound up in our hearts to worship people, to idolize them, to think of them too highly.
Now, we haven't been in 1 Corinthians for about, I think, about nine weeks. So just let me give you the panoramic overview.
And then we'll come to the spot where we are. This is a letter meant to be read at one time so you could get the full sweep.
And here we just dive into these few verses in 1 Corinthians 3. It's necessary for us to understand the book.
So 16 chapters. And here's what Paul does to this struggling church.
He says, I've got four main issues, four moral issues. Chapters 1 through what?
6. And it's one of these books that is very spicy. I call this a picante book.
And you begin to read it and you think, anything but boring. There's crazy things going on. And Paul says, the church is divided and I want you to be unified.
The church has sexual sin going on, incest and stuff. That can't happen in the body of Christ.
The church has lawsuits. People are suing each other for gain. You can't do that.
And he deals with those kind of moral issues. Lack of purity. There are people who are adulterers committing adultery, fornicators committing fornication, homosexuals committing those kind of acts, on and on and on.
And Paul says, I need to deal with this problem. Those kind of people do not inherit the kingdom of God. And then some people wrote
Paul a letter and asked him some questions because they wanted the answers.
And some of the questions were, is it okay to be celibate? What do we do about meat sacrifice to idols?
Should women wear some kind of veil or head covering in public worship? What do we do with the
Lord's Supper? What about speaking in tongues and spiritual gifts? What about those?
Did Jesus really be raised from the dead? Was he raised from the dead? And what about giving? So four moral issues, seven questions.
And now we're back in Chapter 3 dealing with this first moral issue, unity in the local church.
I wouldn't normally spend Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 on unity, but Paul does. And we're right in the middle of this first reproof, this first moral issue in response to these reports that were brought by those in the household of Chloe.
What about church unity? You've got to have the right view of wisdom.
And now we move to the section you've got to have a right view of leadership. This is going to be good for us today because most, did you know this, what's the average tenure for a pastor today in Protestant churches?
Mainstream and evangelical. Less than three years. Two and a half to three years.
Partly because mainline churches say if you leave that guy in for too long, he gets too much power.
He gets to know the people. He marries some of them. He buries some of them. And he kind of gets to know them. And we, the senate, we, the bishops, we, the leaders, we, the presbyters, we need to keep control of this thing.
And we can't let the pastor get in there. So you're in for two and a half years and then you're out. Sometimes pastors are out because they're lazy, sinful, and stupid.
They get fired and they should get fired. They think they're the next John Knox. Sometimes churches hire pastors because you're our hireling.
We tell you what to do, when to do it, how often to do it. We want to see your expense reports. We want to see your day timers.
We want to know where you were today, how many miles you drove, and why aren't you at the church building all the time. And so then pastors just leave.
But I think there's more of a tendency, at least I think in our church, is to look at a Dave Jeffries or a
Pardeep or Steve or myself and say, we don't hate these guys. We love them, but we just might love them too much.
How to properly evaluate leadership in the local church. Let me give you six considerations in Chapter 3, verses 5 to 9.
This is a thought here that Paul has on how to evaluate leadership, and I'm going to give you six total, maybe not six today, but six total in Chapter 3, verses 5 to 9 in 1
Corinthians, so that you can properly evaluate leadership so that you may contribute to the unity of this church.
Number one, focus on Jesus Christ, not on the hired help.
Focus on Jesus Christ, not on the farm hands, not on the hired help. Look at verse 5.
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? What's the next word?
Superstars. Pedestal standers. Is that a word?
It's no. Servants through whom you believe as the Lord assigned to each.
Now, when I was in Los Angeles, I would meet celebrities for the first time. I was a kid from Nebraska, and all of a sudden, somebody would say to me, would you please pass the cream, and I would look over, and I think,
I know that voice, and I'd look over, and there's Spock standing right next to me, Leonard Nimoy, and I'm just staring at his ears thinking, what's going on?
Then I'd go, I went and ran a triathlon, and a guy came up to me and said, what kind of after -triathlon party are you going to go to?
I looked and said, I haven't made up my mind, and it was Tom Cruise asking me which party I was going to go to, and I'm thinking, wow, this is pretty good.
I ditched him. He couldn't be bothered. Everywhere you would go, you would see people from Mr.
Tito, Walter Matthau, to Bono, and you'd just see them on the streets, and I would watch people just go up and worship them, and just have to be by them, and the paparazzi, and you know what it's like,
People Magazine, Us Magazine, TMZ, you name it. It's just this celebrity idolatry, but you know in evangelicalism, we do the exact same thing.
I know John MacArthur pretty well, and he doesn't want this, but I watch people do the same thing to John MacArthur that they did to Rob Lowe and Melissa Gilbert when
I saw them at the video store. The exact same thing. If you'd go to somebody's house that was prominent, let's say the president invited you to the
White House, and you noticed every time you picked up a shrimp cocktail and some kind of little apple juice, and you set it down, there was people with kind of aprons, people kind of dressed up, and before you know it, and they could do it in a very sly way, they'd just slip in, take all your stuff, and move on out.
And the president was talking to you, and you would say, well, excuse me, president, but I've got to get to know this servant better.
I've got to know this servant, and I want to follow them, and I want to see where they go, and I like them better.
By the way, what kind of shoes do those servants have? Are they some kind of special suede shoes? What are they drinking behind the scenes?
Does that person kind of drink Diet Coke back there? What do they do? It'd be ridiculous. And you could see where the parallel is.
Jesus Christ is the only God, and let's just compare, just for a brief moment,
Jesus Christ and me. Let's just say Jesus was here today in the flesh, if that was theoretical.
And now we're greeting people at the end of the service, and I stand and greet. I hope you would be trained well enough that I would say to myself, not one person has come over here and said hello to me.
They're flocking to Jesus, and Paul says, I am a servant. Now he doesn't say I'm a slave.
He says I'm a servant, and the Greek word is diakonad. I'm a deacon. I'm a table waiter. Did you ever go to a restaurant?
I was one in California, Carl's Jr., and they give you like a little, you order, you pay, and they give you a little number.
And you go to your table and you set the little number there. And that person that comes out looking for the number, number 18,
I've got two double cheeseburgers and five 99 -cent value meals, and okay, that's the ebendros. Oh, man, you're awesome, and I get down on the floor and begin.
You are exalted. Paul says we are servants, and look how he says it.
What would English grammar dictate? Who then is a paulus? Who is
Paul? But that's not what the text says. The text says what.
The function's important. The people are not. This is not a who. This is a what.
These are worker bees. These people are nobodies. They're farmhands. I was a farmhand once in Nebraska, in northern
Nebraska, up in Crofton, and we worked really hard for two summers, and then finally the family invited us in for lunches during the day, about 11 o 'clock for lunch, and I was with my friend
Scott, and we were the two hired farmhands, and we got paid, I don't know, about $50 a day, and they let us sit over to the side.
We were nobodies. We were nothings. Paul says, I'm a servant.
And you guys are running over here, I'm of Paul, I'm of a paulus. Paul says that's not right.
Personality cults. You can just see it in evangelicalism today. One pastor, 19 campuses.
Once every 19 weeks we get the real pastor. The other 18 weeks we get the video. Because they're focused around the guy.
I'm going to die one day. I'm going to get kicked out one day. I'm going to get fed up with you one day. Maybe not all at the same time, but just comma in between each of those.
And servants are replaceable. You can just look down in the corridors of church history and say,
Oh, God, what were you doing taking Calvin home at 55, and Edwards at 56, and you shouldn't have
William Carey lived longer? What about Adoniram Judson? What about Mary Schleser?
Somebody dies, Spurgeon dies, the kingdom is never going to come to England, or the world.
God just reloads. Here's another servant. Here's another servant. Here's another servant. And so if everybody's looking at Jesus, the church comes together.
That's what he's after here at Corinth. Because they're all looking at Paul. I have a question for you. If Paul says, don't look to me, look to Jesus, how much less am
I than Paul? Our James Boyce, our R .C.
Sproul, our John Piper. Here's Paul. Paul says, don't look at me. I'm a servant. If you go to a fancy restaurant, and the waiter comes out and gives you this five -star meal, you might say thank you to the waiter, but who's the one that made the meal?
The chef. We are not to exalt leaders.
They are what's, not who's. I'm a what. Paul tries to lower his status in their eyes.
I just find that fascinating. I read an article last week, and it was by a pastor who described his wife's view of his preaching.
And here's what she said, as he relates it. She is supportive, but unimpressed.
I thought, I'm married to a woman who's very supportive, but she is unimpressed with me and my preaching.
That doesn't mean she doesn't think that I'm not preaching the Bible, or I'm not being faithful. But she is supportive.
I guess you get a dollar, because I'm bringing you up. If we're bringing a kid's name up, they get a dollar. She's supportive, but she's unimpressed.
I want you to be supportive, but unimpressed. I'm not even close to Paul. And Paul's saying, why would you look at me?
And you notice what the text says? Servants. That's who we are.
Why worship the servant? Turn over to John chapter 2, if you would, please. And I want to just give you an illustration of this.
And you think, well, you know, Mike, you just think you're such a big shot around here, so you're telling us all, you know, it's something you've created in your own mind.
And we don't worship you. We don't have you as some kind of idol. And we know you have clay feet.
Well, then, if the answer is that, I'm glad. Excel still more. John chapter 2.
Now, when we read this, I dare you to let all your focus and attention and praise and admiration go towards the servants.
I dare you to not stare at the son, Jesus. Here's the first miracle that Jesus did.
John chapter 2, verse 1. On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine.
Jesus said to her, woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the table waiters, the servants, do whatever he tells you.
Now, there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons. Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water.
And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, now draw some out, take it to the master of the feast.
So they dutifully took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water, now become wine, did not know where it came from.
Though the servants had drawn the water new, the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, everyone serves the good wine first.
And when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.
This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.
Isn't the servant awesome? Do you notice how praiseworthy they were? It was just awesome to watch.
They did it so quickly, so obedient. And even preachers turn these things into, well, how do we serve the
Lord? We should serve without asking. Delayed obedience is disobedience. We should serve with joy.
And we should do whatever the master says, no matter what the outcome is. That's how we should serve Jesus. That's not the way to preach this passage.
The passage should be preached this way. Jesus is awesome and he has the authority over natural elements.
He can do whatever he wants. And he's giving them a good spiritual lesson that the old wine of Judaism is gone.
Here's the new wine. Look at Jesus. Where's Waldo? I don't see Waldo. I see some servants and some people, but I see
Jesus as the sign maker. I drive by churches and there are signs,
Reverend, Doctor, Founding Pastor, Double Doctor, so and so.
And I just want to go, I'm so glad I'm not the
Founding Pastor, Double Doctor, Reverend Bishop, Apostle.
John the Baptist knew. The disciples come to John. John's disciples come.
Is this the real deal? Is Jesus the Messiah? You're somebody and we listen to you preach and you're preaching about repentance.
What about this Jesus who's come? What do we do with him? And John the Baptist says what?
I can't even tie his sandals, I'm so low. And I have a job to do and that's this.
Minimize John the Baptist and extol Jesus. He must decrease John so Jesus may increase, right?
That's exactly what Paul's trying to get across. Paul, Peter, John, your favorite missionary, your favorite pastor dead or alive,
Martin Lloyd -Jones, Elizabeth Elliot, they're all table waiter farm hands.
They're nobodies, they're nothings. They mean nothing in terms of worshiping them.
And I think they'd all say that too. Well, you know, my favorite preachers are so -and -so, then such -and -such, then such -and -such.
You don't know anything because my favorite preachers are better than your favorite preachers. You can't even analyze preachers very well because you think
Piper's the greatest preacher. I think S. Lewis Johnson's the greatest preacher. You listen to John MacArthur.
That kind of talk makes a church not unified but disunified, ununified.
Number two, second consideration. Number one, focus on Jesus, not the hired help.
Number two, focus on Jesus Christ because he himself and no one else gave you eternal life.
And for that matter, every other good thing you have spiritually, physically, temporally. Focus on Jesus because no one else gave you eternal life.
Look at verse 5 again. We're just going to dive into verse 5, and these words are important.
If you read the Bible too fast, you're not going to get it. You need to read the Bible like a Middle Easterner. Here's how
Westerners read the Bible. I can read as fast as I can. I've got to read the Bible in a year. I've got to read the speed reading, kind of Evelyn Woodhead speed reading class.
You know, I've got to just get through as fast as I can and go as fast as I can. Yes, I read the Bible. I read a Bible every year. I read a different translation every year, and now
I'm up to my 15th time going through the Bible this year. Well, that's good, but unless you're
Reverend Dr. Founding so -and -so pastor, you didn't remember anything you said. You didn't remember anything you read.
But when you read slowly and over and over, you get this kind of just how they would read back in those days and just systematically with understanding.
What then is Apollos? What then is Paul? Servants, now mark these two words in the
ESV. Through whom you believed. Those are the two key words. You might want to just underline them. Through whom?
Not because of. If you got saved when I preached, you didn't get saved because of me.
You got saved through me because I preached the word of God. If I have converted anyone here,
God have mercy on your souls. You need to repent and trust Jesus alone because you're not saved.
But there are preachers, evangelists, men, women, personal discipleship, and when they preach the word, you believe because of them or you believe through them.
I believe through them. You don't say, well, you know, the instrument is really important.
No. The Savior is the important one. If you go have surgery,
I don't think, and I've been in a lot of surgeries, and I won't bore you with any more gory stories today, but the first time
I saw that scalpel cut some skin open, I didn't know if I was going to faint or pass out or, you know, be intrigued, and then they took the tumor out and sewed them all up and gave them some antibiotics, and then they're walking back and forth.
I didn't see anybody, especially the patients, say, can I have a copy of that? Can I get that scalpel? Can I just put it in the autoclave and sterilize it?
And I just want to mount that scalpel up above my living room because my living room fireplace because I just want to remember that scalpel.
It means a lot to me. I kind of have a soft spot for scalpels. I collect scalpels. No, hopefully you go and say, thank you, the surgeon hand saved me.
He used that as an instrument. That's exactly how God uses people, as instruments.
Nobody gets saved because of preachers. You get saved through preachers. So why idolize the instrument?
I saved no one here. By the way, this is going to shock you, I know. I did not invent the doctrine of unconditional election.
I didn't make up the doctrine that once God saves you, you can't be unsaved because it's all of grace.
I didn't invent grace alone, through faith alone, through God's glory alone. I didn't write the
Bible. The Spirit of God never talked to me with kind of butterfly wings, kisses on my face, and I wrote things down.
I never concocted the virgin birth. I never made up that once Jesus had no body in eternity past,
Father, Son, and Spirit, one God, and then God the Father says, nobody can see me and live, yet I'm going to send my
Son. He cloaks the Son with human form, and Jesus will forever have human form.
And when you're in heaven, if you're born again, you will see Jesus with those five marks in His body, still in human form, the
God -man. I never made any of it up. And by the way, how could I? You don't get saved because of preachers.
You get saved through them. Just like you're not saved in Ephesians because of your faith, you're saved what?
Through faith. I don't know if it's just hot in here or what, but we have more sleepers today than we normally have on a
Sunday, summer day. So that either means a few things, but we won't go into those.
So let's just take a deep breath. Matter of fact, I'm just going to take this off. That will give you a little break, and then you can kind of identify with me.
Yes, pastor, it's hot. I am too. It's hard to stay awake. I do not make my preaching successful.
Whatever success this preaching pulpit has here, no matter who's in it, we don't make it successful.
Who does? Spirit of God. It's the Word of God. Spirit of God.
I never made up substitutionary atonement. Can you imagine the God -man who never sinned became sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God?
In him? Jesus the just dying for the unjust that he might bring us to God?
If I was making things up, I would make up things like this. Be good. Be better than your neighbor.
It's nice to be nice. It's good to be good. That's the religion.
By the way, when people make things up, that's the religion they make up because every false cult makes that up.
They don't say, if we're going to be saved, if our sinful selves will ever be saved, it will be the mercy of God and by his compassion and grace only because we can't make ourselves pleasing to God because just like we learned today in John 8, we're slaves to sin.
So God have mercy upon me. But if I was making up a religion, I'd say, listen, when you're really little, just get a couple drops of water put on your head in the name of Jesus and then go live like hell.
Throw God a bone on Sundays, maybe Easter, and you're good. Or I'd invent a religion that said, you know what?
When you're older and you think you know enough of the creeds and the Bible, get dunked under the water. Get dunked all the way under and come back up and then when you live, live like you love yourself with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Forget your neighbor, but be nice to people. Give some money maybe to the
United Way or some charities. Don't murder, don't rape, don't rob.
Be a good mom, be a good dad, good son, good church -goer, good grandpa, good grandma, and just be good in society's view and you're in.
That's what I would invent and that's what every false cult has invented because the Bible alone says that Jesus' death made way for salvation.
If we could get to heaven by being good, God is a hateful, vengeful, sadistic
God who would kill His Son on the cross and pour out
His wrath on Jesus when we could be good enough with a little water on our heads or dunked under and have a few creeds memorized and show up on Sunday.
Why did Jesus do that? Why did the Father damn His Son? 1
Peter says, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness for by His wounds you were healed.
Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation with reference to sin to those who eagerly await
Him. Plan of salvation? If I came up with it,
I would be worthy of worship. Yet I didn't come up with any of it.
The cross. Who came up with the cross? Listen to what Arthur Pink said, At the cross all our iniquities were laid upon Christ and therefore did divine judgment fall upon Him.
There was no way of transferring sin without transferring its penalty. Both sin and its punishment were transferred to the
Lord Jesus. On the cross Christ was making propitiation solely towards God.
To think that God was my enemy and then in great love He sent
His Son for me and for all those who would ever believe. If I was making up a religion
I would say, When they sin, get them. The love of God.
Grace and truth in Christ Jesus. That's why when Paul preached he said, I've got a one -strum message and that is
Jesus the risen Savior. Number three. Number three.
How do we think about leadership in a church? If you're visiting how do you think about leadership in your own church back home?
So that we honor God with our thinking. One. Focus on Jesus not on the hired help.
Two. Focus on Jesus because He is the one that saves and no one else.
Three. Fascinatingly. Focus on Jesus Christ who sovereignly places pastors into His, Jesus' local churches.
Focus on Jesus Christ who sovereignly places pastors into His local churches.
Look at verse five. What then is
Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed.
And here's the part we want to focus on for this consideration. As the Lord assigned to each.
I get asked this all the time especially by people in California. How did you get to New England?
You get asked it all the time. How did you go to New England? Were you there before? Did you have some family there?
Was your mom from New England? Why did you go to New England? That's what they're really asking more than how.
They're going why? Just like you say. Why would you ever move to California?
Fruits and nuts. Those are the conservatives. You know what
I say? I give them a long story. But I like to give the shorter story better. Mike, you're a sinful, foul, unclean sinner.
And for my own good pleasure, I've loved you. I've saved you. I've given you spiritual gifts.
I've adopted you in my family. I've given you the Holy Spirit as a seal to the day of redemption. And I like Isaiah said to the
Lord. You want to send me somewhere? I'm going. If you've really been saved, you just say,
I'll go wherever you want. I'll do anything. How did
I get to New England? The Lord assigned me here. I can make it very personal now. The Lord gave me to you.
You said, and vice versa. I'm just the next in a long line of preachers.
God said, Abendroth, I've saved you. I've redeemed you. I've reconciled you to me. And then now I want you to go.
Okay. You know, it's like when you're a kid, you say, all right, let's see. Where would I like to go to be a missionary?
Maybe Bali. Dear Lord, please, I'll go anywhere in the world, but please don't send me to Bali.
Because, you know, sometimes if you pray, just don't send me to Caracas. You know, you get sent there. So you kind of, you go, I'm going to trick
God. I'm going to do the opposite kind of switch -o change -o thing on him. I said,
Lord, and came with me. Supportive. I'll go wherever you want to go. I'm here to follow you and serve in ministry with you till death do us part.
Only thing I said to the Lord was basically I would prefer not to learn another language. I'd like to preach in English.
I don't know how many years I have left, and so if I spend four years on learning German, then. But I'll go.
I'll go anywhere. God assigns people.
So if God has assigned me to you, then why would you go, wow, that's a, the person assigned is really great.
If you think I do preach the word, and you are glad that there's faithful exposition, Christ -centered inerrancy that we teach, then you should say,
God, you assigned us blessing. You know, there's a man who was faithful back in New England during the 1700s, and he died.
And Jonathan Edwards said, you know what, there's so many people in that church that don't want the word of God. God said, all right, you don't want my word.
You don't want substitutionary atonement. You don't want literal resurrection. I will graduate my servant, and I will take him home, and I will judge you by giving you and assigning you a pastor after your own desires.
If you're a visitor, and you have a faithful pastor, you should be saying, God, hallelujah. I've got somebody that actually stand up and pull the trigger, and will preach the word in season and out of season, and reprove people, rebuke people, exhort people with great patience and doctrine.
For the time will come, you know the rest of the verse. And here, do you see that in verse 5?
As the Lord assigned to each. So why would we rank them? Well, we have four elders, and this is how
I rank them. They're all assigned. God, I think I don't really like that ranking that you had.
Well, God could have only given us John Piper at our church, it would have been better. The sovereign
God of the universe picks his servants to go preach the word places.
So Paul says, you want to follow me, Paul? You want to follow
Apollos? I'm more of a teacher, he's really eloquent. We're both assigned by God.
You should be thinking about God, and he's assigned these people here, so we should be unified. That's the big picture.
Turn to Ephesians chapter 4. I don't know how much more time we have, but let's just go to Ephesians 4. I want to talk about this just because it thrills me.
I'm in awe of Jesus for doing this very thing. You say, well, there should be some things said about pastors and how they should pastor.
We'll get to that soon enough. Ephesians chapter 4. Now, we're thinking about God assigning people to local churches, to ministries overseas.
2 ,000 years ago, 1 ,500 years ago, this week. And now look at this sovereign
Jesus assigning people. And how did Jesus get people to send to churches sovereignly? This is the best.
Ephesians 4. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.
Jesus' hand -pictured gift is what the context will say, just like 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
According to the measure of Christ's gift. Sovereign distribution, his pleasure, his free will.
If you don't have the gift of teaching, God purposely didn't give it to you. If you do, it's all God's grace.
And he's earned the right to do this. Look at verse 8. Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.
Now, when I was growing up, I learned this. There's some people, they die before the second coming. They go down into Abraham's bosom.
They're kind of just down there. It's kind of a sphere. There's another sphere over here they could see. And then
Jesus is going to eventually, or maybe he did with his first coming. Maybe it's the second coming. He goes down and goes to Abraham's bosom.
He takes some captives' captives, and he lets them go. And he lets the prisoners go out of Abraham's bosom, and off they go.
I don't know about you, but when somebody taught me that, I just kept looking in Ephesians 4, saying, I think that's a cool thought, but I can't see it.
I want to tell my friends. I want to tell my wife. This whole Abraham's bosom, captives' captive, and all this.
I know people just look at me and think, well, maybe you don't have the gift of teaching, because I don't understand.
How many people here have ever heard that's letting people out of Abraham's bosom? Well, I'm glad a few of you.
You're looking stone -faced like, well, you haven't heard it. In a good way, most of you haven't heard it. Here's the language.
You can get the old message on this, but here's the language. The general in Rome, he goes out, and he has multiple victories over multiple peoples, and he takes tons of land, and he comes back with the big what?
Triumph. The triumphant return. And so he's going to come and approach the senators, and they'll vote.
Is it a triumph, or is he not? And what does he bring back with him? He brings animals.
He brings slaves. He brings other generals, and he leads this big train of enemies into town.
And some he'll say, look, I'm really a nice guy. I'll let you go. Most, he says, I bring back the generals to show you
Romans that I'm in charge, and I will poke their eyes out and then kill them because I'm the general who's now had a triumph.
It's a train of people. So what's the figurative language? What's the way to think of this? Jesus, by his life, death, burial, and resurrection, goes out, and he wins over enemies.
And he brings those enemies back, and instead of slaying the enemies in the presence of all, he gives them new life, changes them, and then he gives them to his church to say, serve my church.
Sovereignly, Christ Jesus. Why would I say, do you know what? I'm going to run up and admire that servant, that slave, that captured general.
No, he would never do that. He gave gifts to men.
Who were the gifts he gave to men? Who were the gifts he gave to men? And he gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastor -teachers.
Okay, back to 1 Corinthians. I'm going to do a portion of the next one, and then we'll stop.
A portion of the next one. Because it's too good to pass up. It could be the last sermon
I ever preach, so I'm going for it. Fourth consideration.
Focus on Jesus, who alone causes all church growth. Alright, if you're kind of sleepy, then let me just wake you up.
If you have a book on church growth, how to make the church grow, then you need to burn that book.
Not even figuratively. How about really burn it? Get some kerosene out. Get some kind of flaming, what's that gel stuff called that they have?
I think it's illegal. Don't get that. Church growth galore. How to get your church bigger.
We're going to learn from this passage right here. God alone causes church growth, and no one else ever.
If this church grows, it only grows because of God. Not me, Dave, Pradeep, Lewis, or anybody else who's ever been an elder.
God causes growth. And if this church is growing not through biblical means, then
I don't want to grow that way. This is so good. I've saved so much money with all my church growth stuff.
Well, Mike, how are you? What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a pastor. How big is your church? You know what
I want to say? You know what my flesh says? My flesh says, bigger than yours.
No. My flesh says, listen, I'm not downtown. I'm not in a big city.
You're in Los Angeles, and you've got 2 ,000 people. You're in the south, and you've got 5 ,000. Big deal.
I'm in a little pipsqueak town in Massachusetts, just north of the armpit of New England, some
Worcester, Worcester, Worcester. I mean, no one, everybody there, they don't care about Jesus.
And I'm stuck here in some kind of suburb with a bunch of miscreants.
And you ask me how big my church is. You know, the typical thing in a pastor's conference, how big is your church?
These guys are always the ones with small churches. And the guys with big churches are always sitting behind the tables, signing books, how to make your church grow.
Because this is what the publishers do. Let's see. He had 50 people. He's now got 10 ,000.
He knows what he's doing. Let's go there. Just like they went to John MacArthur. ABC came to him and said,
John, we want to come to a special on Sunday night. And how did you get the church to grow? How do you get 3 ,000 people on Sunday night to your church?
On Sunday night. He said, well, we sing some hymns, we do some baptisms, and I preach for an hour.
No. There's a trick. What's the trick? You're not telling the trick. You know, it's not patented yet, so you don't want to tell us.
Pastors can grow the church organizationally. They can get more money. They can get more people.
But God alone causes spiritual growth. Look at it. What a great agricultural discussion. I planted, verse 6 of 1
Corinthians 3. 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. I'm 50 years old now, and I think
I'm supposed to start birdwatching and start to garden. I know it's good. Jesus was a birdwatcher.
Gardening's good, but I'm just bad at both. So I looked up some websites on gardening.
And I want to know, how do you cause your garden to grow? Anybody here know? How do you cause your garden to grow? And the answer is, you don't.
You might put some water on there, the right kind of soil, some fertilizer.
You might pull the weeds out. You might make sure it has the right amount of sun or not enough sun. But no one here causes the growth of the garden.
Not one person. So I'm giving up gardening. How does it actually grow?
What's the effectual cause? And just like a local church, the effective causer is
God. If this church has grown, I didn't cause it. And it relates to evangelism.
You say, I go down to Worcester and evangelize. I want to evangelize my kids. I want to evangelize my neighbors. From the initial growth to ongoing growth, it's all caused by God.
The activity of man stops. And by the way, if you look at the Greek tense,
He who plants, arist. He who waters, arist. God gives and gives and gives imperfectly the growth.
There's a planting in time. There's a watering in time. But the growth from God is always
His alone to give. So why think more highly of me than you ought?
Should you be thankful? I think the answer is yes. Should you encourage one another and encourage the elders of time?
I think the answer is yes. Should you think too highly of us?
I'm of Mike. I'm of Steve. I'm of Dave. I'm of Pradeep. I'm of MacArthur.
I'm of Boyce. I'm of Piper. I'm of Ferguson. I'm of fill -in -your -blank, your favorite preacher.
The answer is no because it deflects from the glory of Christ Jesus. It's good to learn these things.
It's great to say, you know what, Jesus should be the focus. So here's my assignment for you this week to have
Christ as a focus. I want you to read the Gospel of John. Read the
Gospel of John, and I dare you not to be impressed with who Jesus is, even if you're an unbeliever.
And you'll say, no one talks like that. No one acts like that. No one heals like that. No one preaches like that.
No one dies like that. No one's been raised like that. Why would I want to run around and say, our pastor's better than your pastor?
Let's pray. Thank you,
Father, for this day. It is a new day for you with new mercies, great faithfulness.
Father, I'm very, very thankful that we have a church that's unified. I'm very thankful that the people have a desire to obey because you have loved them and given them so much.
I pray that you just increase that desire. We can never do these things on our own.
That's why we have a Savior, the Lord Jesus. That's why you've been so liberal in giving us your Spirit to indwell us and empower us to do these things.
But in response to your great love, we would like to think about leaders more properly. Father, I do thank you for these dear people who have loved the
Ebendroths over the years and the other men and their families. But, Father, I pray that you would protect them from getting their eyes off Christ Jesus ever.