Only God Can Grow a Church

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with me to the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 3.
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Am I coming through out there? Can you hear me? Okay, just making sure.
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I've got a new microphone this week.
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I couldn't stand having that one attached to my head, so now it's here.
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We're going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 3.
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We're going to be reading verses 4 through 9.
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The apostle says, 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.
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I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
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So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
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He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.
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For we are God's fellow workers.
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You are God's field, God's building.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word this morning, and I pray, Lord, as I feel very weak, I pray that You would give me strength.
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And I pray that You would keep me from error.
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I pray that You will open up the hearts of Your people to understand and know the truth.
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And Lord, as we talk about a touchy subject this morning, Lord, and that's attendance and numbers and increase in growth, Lord, I know how easy it is to come at that with a man-centered focus and a worldly perspective.
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So I pray this morning that we would have the perspective of the Lord, that we would have the mind of Christ on this subject.
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And I pray, Lord, if there are those here who have come today who know not Christ, and I know there must be in a crowd this big, there is certainly those who have not bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, that they would hear in this message the call of the Gospel and know that Your Word tells us that all who believe on Him will be saved.
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And I pray it in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Please be seated.
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Oftentimes, when people find themselves in discussions about church, whether those discussions are being held with family members or friends or maybe people we know that go to other churches, the conversation will inevitably turn to the size of the congregation.
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And that's because in the minds of many people, in fact, in the minds of many pastors, unfortunately, the size of the congregation equals the value of the ministry.
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The size of the congregation is proof of faithfulness, effectiveness, and again, ultimately value.
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People will boast, our church has 500 people, our church has 1,000 people, our church is the fastest growing church, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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I recently went into a church and I was there for something going on with my kids.
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I went into a church and there was a trophy in the narthex.
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Now, I've been in plenty of schools that had a trophy case.
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I've never been to a church with a trophy case, but I walked in and the trophy got my attention, so I walked over to it and I read it and engraved on the trophy was the highest attendance award from the local association.
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And it was as big as any trophy I'd ever seen.
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It was a good three foot tall and marble bottom.
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They spent a lot on this trophy.
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Attendance is a huge marker in the minds of many regarding effectiveness.
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If a church is small by the world standards, it must be some indication of how little it matters.
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And if a church is large by the world standards, well, that must be proof that they're doing something right.
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In fact, I can't tell you how many times I've heard that.
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Well, pastor, how can you question the value of a ministry when they're reaching so many people? They must be doing something right.
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Now, I think it's pretty easy to demonstrate fallacy of that argument.
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All you have to do is look at how many throngs of people attend weekly church services pastored by men who are nothing more than health and wealth gurus, life coaches, and positivity experts.
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They're not preachers of the gospel, and yet they have churches that are overflowing at the seams.
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And likewise, you see churches that are pastored by faithful men of God that are relatively small and sometimes really small.
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I remember when I first met Dr.
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James White.
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Dr.
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James White has had a profound impact on my ministry.
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Many of you have heard me talk about him many times.
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He's out in Arizona, and he's an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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And when I met him, I mean, this is a guy who's done over 150 moderated public debates.
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He's debated all over the world with Muslims and Roman Catholics and others on the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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He has a worldwide ministry.
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And his church is smaller than this one.
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And he's not even the preaching pastor.
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He's one of the elders.
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The pastor is Don Fry.
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He has been the pastor of Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church since 1974.
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A faithful man of God, and yet a small church.
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So even with the obvious reality that size is not always the best indicator of faithfulness, church size still, in the minds of many, is an indicator of value.
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And thus many make it their mission to grow the church by any means possible.
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In fact, if you type in Google, church growth book, I did it just to see what would happen.
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There were lists of books.
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How to break barriers.
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How to take your church to the next level.
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How to find the secret to grow the church.
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Because the goal in the eyes of many is growth.
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Growth at any cost.
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Growth in any way.
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Growth regardless of methodology or theology.
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Growth is the only focus.
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And this mindset of growth has brought with it what I consider to be a very dangerous trend.
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Because we now have churches that are so big that people can safely blend into the background and have no accountability.
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People can live their lives and want and sin.
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I'm not saying everybody that goes to big churches is this way.
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I'm saying this is what it fosters.
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It fosters an idea.
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And I know a lady very close to my wife and I recently told us a story how she was a member of a church living in sin for seven years and no one ever had an issue at all because no one ever knew.
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And our text today, Paul, provides for us some very important principles.
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I say this, it's one principle.
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A very important singular principle for church growth.
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Because I know some of you ask me sometimes about what I think about the church and the growth.
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And you know this, I'm not saying I don't want the church to grow.
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I want the church to grow.
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Growth is good and we do want to see growth.
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But we want to see more and more people come to Christ in a legitimate saving experience.
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We do not want to manipulate growth.
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Because when you manipulate growth it is not of God.
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I've told stories before about how some churches build baptistries in the shape of fire trucks so that after the vacation Bible school they can get all these kids lined up.
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Who's not going to get in the fire truck? And there they can send the association the numbers for all those fire truck baptisms.
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It is a worldly methodology.
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And let me tell you something folks, when you win them with a party, you've got to keep them with a party.
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Because what you win them with is what you win them to.
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And when the party is over, so is the growth.
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And so churches have become amusement parks.
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It's become six flags over Jesus.
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And we're more concerned with entertaining the goats than we are with feeding the sheep.
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So growth has become a serious problem.
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And when I look at this passage, the focus of today is verse 6.
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And the focus of today is this, real and genuine growth only comes from God.
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Paul said, I planted a Paulist water but God gave the increase.
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If it's real and it's genuine, it's got to be from God.
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So we're continuing our study of 1 Corinthians.
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If you haven't been with us, I want to welcome you here this morning.
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We have been going verse by verse through this book.
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And just to give you a little bit of a context to bring you into chapter 3.
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In the first two chapters, Paul is dealing with division in the church.
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He was the one who planted the church when he was on his missionary journey.
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And when he was on his missionary journey, he spent 18 months, a year and a half in Corinth, planting the church.
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Then he left and another man came in by the name of Apollos.
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The Bible says Apollos was mighty in the scriptures, which means he was a mighty teacher of God's word.
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Even though he was a little confused at the beginning, and Priscilla and Aquila had to take him off to help him understand it better.
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Once he understood it better, he became a mighty teacher in the early church.
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So Paul was the church planter, Apollos was the church's preacher, and both of them had influence in the growth of the church.
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And the problem is, divisions arose up out of that.
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Some people started saying, I am of Paul, meaning I was here when the church was founded.
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Or some people would say, I was of Apollos, I was here when the church was really growing.
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Other people said, I am of Peter, meaning I've got an attachment to our Jewish roots.
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And some people said, I am of Jesus, trying to show their high level of piety.
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And these divisions allowed sects to arrive in the church, each sect claiming some kind of spiritual superiority.
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But Paul tells them, you were not saved because you were spiritually superior.
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In fact, God chose you because you were low and weak.
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You were not chosen because of wisdom, power, or nobility.
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You were chosen so that God could show His strength through you.
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The issue at hand, I believe, the heart of the issue, and it sounds simple, but it's really not, because I believe it's the heart of all sin.
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The heart of the issue is pride.
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And if you go all the way back to the garden, what was the heart of Eve's sin and the heart of Adam's sin? It was pride.
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What did the devil say to Eve? Don't you know that on the day that you eat of it, you will be like God.
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And what do we want to do? We want to be like God.
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We want to have God's authority.
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We want to have God's prerogatives.
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We want to be like God, not in the good way, but in the bad way.
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We want ourselves to be exalted.
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And in chapter 3, verses 1-4, which is what we looked at last week, Paul deflates their pride, or at least he tries to, by saying this.
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He's saying, you guys, I can't even speak to you as spiritual people because you're acting like the flesh.
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You're acting like unsaved people.
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You're acting like carnal people.
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I can't even speak to you as mature Christians.
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I've got to speak to you like babies.
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Now, that's a pretty hard hit against the pride.
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I mean, if I came to you and I said, brother, we need to talk, or sister, we need to talk, you're acting like a child, you'd probably be pretty upset.
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Whether I was right or wrong, you wouldn't like it.
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And I wouldn't like it if you came and said that to me either, so I'm not saying, I'm not up here on my pious, you know, podium.
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I wouldn't like it either if somebody said I was acting like a child, but that's what he says.
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He says, you guys are acting like a bunch of lost children.
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That's what brings us to verse 4, which is where we started today.
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Because in verse 4, he says, When one says, I follow Paul, and another says, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human? Meaning, are you not acting like fleshly? Are you not acting like the natural? Are you not acting like the unspiritual people? And it's on the heels of that accusation that Paul spends a few verses discussing exactly what he thinks of himself and Apollos.
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Because remember, the issue is, they're highlighting their spiritual superiority by their attachments to Paul and Apollos.
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They're highlighting their own state of being uplifted by saying who they're associated with.
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So Paul's going to give them a little bit of something to think about, beginning in verse 5.
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He says, you want to align yourself with Paul? You want to align yourself with Apollos? Well, think about this, verse 5.
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What then is Apollos? What then is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each.
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Now, in the ESV, verse 5 says, What then is Apollos? What then is Paul? But if you have a King James Version, you will notice that it says who? I think it also says who in another translation.
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But I know that in some translations it says what.
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In some translations it says who.
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This is a translational difference, not a textual variant that I'm aware of.
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It's just a difference in how you translate that word.
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And I think the ESV and the NAS are better than the King James at this point.
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Because I don't think Paul is making a reference to who he is.
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I think he's making a reference to what he is.
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You understand what I'm saying? He's saying, what am I? What is Paul? What is Apollos? Now, again, it could be translated, who am I? Who is Apollos? But at this point, he's making a point about what he is.
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Because he says, what is Paul? What is Apollos? We are diakonoi.
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You ought to know that word.
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It's a Greek word and it's where we get our word deacon.
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He said, we are diakonoi.
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We are deacon.
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Deacon.
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Now, this is not in the sense of the office of deacon.
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Paul was not a deacon by office.
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Neither was Apollos in the office of deacon.
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Instead, this term is being used to describe the role that he was in.
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In fact, I encourage you, if you do word studies in the Bible, look up the word diakonoi, which is the proper word here, diakonos, and look it up and see how it's used.
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It's not always used to apply just to the office of deacon.
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In fact, when Jesus said, the greatest among you shall be your servant, that word is diakonos.
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It's the same word for deacon.
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The greatest among you.
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It doesn't mean the greatest office in the church is deacon.
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Sorry guys, that's not what it means.
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What it means is the person who has the greatest role in the church is the servant.
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Jesus said, I came to you not as one who was being served, but as one who served.
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That's that word, deacon.
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I came to you as one who serves.
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In fact, in Romans 13, when Paul talks about the government, he says the government is a servant of God to exercise the authority against evildoers.
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You know what I'm talking about? Romans 13 talks about the role of government, and it says essentially the government is a minister, because that's another word that can be translated.
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The word minister comes from the Latin, and that's the Latin translation of the Greek diakonos.
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Diakonos is Greek for servant.
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Minister is Latin for servant.
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And sometimes in some of your translations, you get to Romans 13 and it says the government is your minister of God to administer punishment to the evildoers.
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That's why we got policemen.
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That's why we have a military.
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That's why, you realize what the world would be like if we didn't have somebody administering punishment to the wicked? It would be absolute martial, it wouldn't be martial law, it would be anarchy.
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So there's these ministers that run around that do the work of the government.
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We don't always like everything the government does, but they have a purpose under God's established order.
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My point is, simply say this, Paul is identifying himself as a servant.
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He's identifying himself as one around whom a sect should never be made.
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He's saying, I'm a servant, Apollos is a servant, and ultimately the whole church body is made up of servants.
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Why would you guys create sects around us or cliques around us when we're the same as you? How foolish is it to divide the church in pride over being associated with somebody who's a servant just like you? In fact, in verse 7 he says, neither I nor Apollos are anything.
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Now that's hard for us to hear, I think, because we tend to put people on pedestals very easily.
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Paul says, I and Apollos are nothing.
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We're simply servants through whom you believed.
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In fact, he says, what is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each.
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So even in this, he's pushing it back to God.
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He's saying, in fact, that word the Lord assigned could actually be the Lord produced.
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God produced servants for that church.
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God appointed Paul to plant.
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He appointed Apollos to preach.
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He appointed them to do this.
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This is all the work of God.
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These men have been appointed by God to do this thing of preaching and teaching.
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So where do we exercise pride in that? If God is the one who does it, we should be thankful, not prideful.
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And the reason for boasting is excluded.
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And then in verse 6, this is our, like I said, the primary for today.
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That leads us up to here.
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He follows up with that very famous, and I imagine many of you have probably heard this before, and maybe some of you have it memorized, where he says, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
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Paul is making an important point here about growth that I think we need to understand.
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He's using the illustration of agriculture.
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He wants us to imagine a farmer.
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He wants us to imagine a farmer going out to his land, taking a spade, forcing that spade down into the ground, opening up the ground, opening up a hole in the earth, reaching into his sack, taking from that sack a seed, laying that seed into the hole, covering that seed over with dirt, and then taking some vessel that holds water and applying an amount of water over that so that the seed can begin to take hold of the earth and begin the process of growing.
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And he said, that's the picture I want you to have when you think about Apollos and you think about me.
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Paul speaking.
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He says, I planted.
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I was the one who went out and I took my spade and I stuck it into the ground and I opened up the earth.
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And that's the picture that we have.
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If you read Acts 18, that's where Paul first goes into Corinth.
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And if you remember when he first went into Corinth, he had just come out of Athens.
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He had just come out of the center of absolute brilliance in the ancient world.
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Greek philosophy was centered in Athens.
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And he had just come out of a place that was the upper echelon of all intellectual thought.
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And now he goes into Corinth, which essentially was the high water mark for sinful living.
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It was like going from Boston and all the colleges, the Ivy League, over to Atlantic City, where everyone's just living for the flesh.
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And Paul goes into this place and he tells us earlier in 1 Corinthians, when I came to you, I came to you in fear and trembling.
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And I can imagine why.
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Can you imagine going to try to start a church in the middle of the Vegas strip? And he goes in with fear and trembling and he has that mindset, but he goes and he plants.
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He digs into the dirt and he plants the seed of the gospel and in 18 months the church has begun to grow.
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And then he leaves and another man comes and that man's got the gospel with him as well.
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And he begins to water that growth and that growth begins to grow and that church is now thriving, but it's dividing over all the wrong things.
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And Paul's saying, look, you need to understand something.
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I planted and Apollos watered, but the growth you're experiencing did not come from us.
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Go back to the picture in your mind of the seed.
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When that seed is in the ground, once that seed is in the ground covered up and watered, the farmer has stopped anything.
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He cannot force that seed to germinate.
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He cannot force that bud to sprout.
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He cannot make, he can't even see it.
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You realize that? Once you put the seed in the ground, and I'm not any kind of a farmer, so I'm assuming, once you put that seed in the ground and cover it over with dirt and put water on it, you don't see it until it busts out of the ground.
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You can assume that everything that's supposed to happen is happening under the dirt, but you don't know.
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Only God knows.
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And guess what? God is the one who's causing it to happen.
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And you say, well, God established a natural order by which this happens.
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He established the order of germination and He established the order of photosynthesis so that when it breaks through and the sunlight hits it, it begins to grow and gain strength.
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Yes, but God is the one who's causing all this to happen.
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God is the cause of all of this.
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And beloved, if you're here today and you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, God is the one who brought you to Him.
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He's the one who saved your soul.
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Somebody planted the seed somewhere.
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I talked to a sweet girl a few years ago.
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I used to work at First Coast High School.
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I did security there while I was in seminary.
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And she came here to visit the church one day.
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And she was a good, godly young girl.
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She'd just been married.
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And they came and visited us on a special service.
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I think it was a Good Friday service or something a few years ago.
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And she came to me and she said, Pastor Keith, you were the first person to ever share the true gospel with me.
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I didn't know that she got saved.
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I didn't know that she went on to have a godly marriage.
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I didn't know anything.
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I just knew that when I met her and got to talk to her, she came to the Bible club where I would minister in the afternoons after school.
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And I shared the gospel with her.
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And that's nothing about me.
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I'm not saying that in any way to lift myself up.
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I'm simply saying there was a seed planted that I knew nothing about.
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I just knew that she'd heard the gospel and that was good.
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But I knew I couldn't see into the ground.
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I couldn't see what God was doing.
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And God was the one doing it.
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Her continued faithfulness has nothing to do with Keith Foskey.
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Her continued faithfulness has everything to do with God the Holy Spirit working in her heart.
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And that's why Paul could say, I planted and Paul is watered.
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But God is the only one who can make that seed grow.
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God is the only one who can make that seed flourish.
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And this again takes me back to my introduction.
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When it comes to church growth, we have some responsibilities.
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Let me say this.
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We have responsibility to preach the gospel.
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We have responsibility to disciple.
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The Bible says, go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations.
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Baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
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So we do have responsibilities.
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But we do not have the power to make it grow.
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Only God has the power to make it grow.
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And that's the thing I wanted to stress.
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Because if you look at verses 7 to 9, Paul makes a point.
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And I don't want us to miss this.
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He says, so neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything.
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Meaning we're not causing the growth.
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But only God who gives the growth.
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He who plants and he who waters are one.
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And each will receive his wages according to his labor.
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And Paul is going to talk about this later in chapter 3.
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He's going to talk about the fact that when we get to heaven, there will be rewards for that which is done on this earth.
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People don't often think about that.
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But we do get rewarded in heaven.
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But the greatest reward of all is Christ himself.
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He is our reward.
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I like that picture of we receiving a crown and laying it at the feet of Jesus.
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You know, there's a song.
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We bow down, we lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus.
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That's a picture of that valuable day.
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But the point I'm trying to get to here is, he says in verse 9, For we are God's fellow workers, you are God's field, God's building.
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Now I want to clear something up here.
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Because while he does say that we have a purpose, we have a purpose.
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We have the purpose of planting, we have the purpose of watering.
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And those things are necessary.
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He does say something that I think is difficult.
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And I actually think it's, I don't think it's mistranslated.
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I think it's poorly translated.
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But then again, I don't want to argue with a translation committee.
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But at times, I have to.
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In verse 9, it says, We are God's fellow workers.
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If you have a King James Version, it says, We are working together with God.
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I don't think that's the best way to translate that.
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I think the better translation is that we are working together for God.
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And I'll make the argument based on this.
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It's based on how I understand the text.
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The term God there is possessive.
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Meaning it indicates that the workers belong to God.
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So going back to the ESV, read it that way.
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For we are God's fellow workers.
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Not indicating that we're fellow working with God, but that we are fellow workers working for God.
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I would argue that's the better way to understand that.
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Now if you want to argue that you're working with God, in the sense that you're planting, you're watering, and God's bringing the increase, perhaps that's correct.
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But let me tell you why I have issue with that.
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Because verse 7 says, That the one who plants and the one who waters is not anything, but God who brings the growth.
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Why would he then turn around and say, We're all doing this together? The point is that the work we do is for God.
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When you go out and evangelize, why do you go out and evangelize? Because God is in power to do so, and God's commanded us to do so, right? And ultimately we do it for God.
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And here's the thing, Mike, and you know this as well as I do.
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We go out and evangelize and a lot of those people don't get saved right away, right? A lot of those people spit in our face or yell at us, or say they don't want to hear what we have to say, right? I mean that's happened.
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Right? You've been threatened.
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I haven't been threatened yet.
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But, oh actually I did.
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I had a guy stick a knife in my face.
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I forgot about it.
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It was a screwdriver actually.
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So we've all been there.
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Not all of us, but it was a good day.
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But the point is, we are all fellow workers for the same master.
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We're all working for God.
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And none of us have any reason to boast or to elevate ourselves among the other.
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We're all servants.
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You say, well pastor, you're the one who gets up and preaches on Sunday.
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The Bible says some people are hands and some people are feet.
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And the hand can't say to the foot, that I have no need of you.
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And the eye can't say to the ear, I have no need of you.
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For if we were all an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? And if we were all an ear, where would be the sense of sight? Right? We know that.
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And yes, we're going to be rewarded one day by God for whatever He has done through us, but ultimately we are all His servants.
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And ultimately we're all working for Him.
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When we go out and evangelize, I'm doing it because I want to see God glorified.
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Now I want to see people get saved.
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I really do.
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I don't want to see anybody go to hell.
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I want to see people come to know Jesus Christ.
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And that's highly motivating, to go out and share the gospel.
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But ultimately, even if everybody I ever share the gospel with doesn't get saved, I'm still glorifying God by proclaiming His message.
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Because I don't have the power to save them.
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This is why I have such a big problem with the manipulation that happens in a lot of churches when the invitation comes.
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Because what happens in the invitation? Well, we bow our heads, and we close our eyes, and the keyboardist plays very softly, and the music comes up, and the lights go down, and we work this manipulation to try to get people to come forward.
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Used to, they had the counselors sit up front, and wait for the people to come.
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But then they said, no, it's actually smarter if we put the counselors out, so that the counselors will begin to come first, and then the rest of the church, these people who are on the fence, see those counselors come, and then they start to come.
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That's just a manly, worldly tactic.
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It really is.
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It's a tactic to get people to do something.
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You know, used to we want people to come forward.
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Then we stopped doing that.
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Then we started doing the stand up where you are.
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Then it quit doing that, because we don't want to embarrass people.
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Then it became what? Raise your hand.
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Then it became close your eyes, bow your head, so nobody will see you raise your hand.
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Kind of flies in the face of Jesus, who said if you deny me before men, I'll deny you before my Father in heaven.
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We don't want anybody to see us do it, because we don't want to be embarrassed.
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Let me ask you this.
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What was it in the first century church? What was the identification with Christ? Was it walking in an aisle? It was not.
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You know what the identification with Christ was in the first century? Baptism.
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Baptism does not say, but it was the outward identification of becoming a Christian.
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So by being baptized, you were cutting ties with the world, because that wasn't done in secret.
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Baptisms were done in full view of everyone.
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So the idea that you're going to sit, and you're going to raise your hand out of view of everyone, that's just manipulative.
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It's not the way it's supposed to be.
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And again, I've kind of strayed a little bit, so let me get back to where we are.
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Because this is Paul's, he's saying, here in verse 9, he says, We are God's fellow workers.
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We are working together with God.
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For what purpose? So that God will grow His church.
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God's the one who's going to grow, not us.
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We are working for God, hoping and praying that He uses us, but He's the one that's going to grow, not us.
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And the point I think Paul is making, that goes back even further, than just the context of these few verses, back into chapter 2, and even into chapter 1, is simply this.
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If this is the case, if we are all God's fellow workers, if we are all God's servants, then there should be no envy among us, there should be no strife among us, and there certainly, certainly, shouldn't be any cliques and sects and divisions of spiritual superiority among us.
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What is Paul? A servant.
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What is Apollos? A servant.
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What are you? A servant.
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How then are you going to lift yourself up and put yourself in the category of spiritually superior? It's not what we should do.
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We're working together for the Master, but the Master is the one who's going to grow as He sees fit.
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Now I have a question I want to ask, and begin to draw to a final thought here, because I've thought about this many times, and I actually heard a pastor ask this question and it became very clear that this had been on my mind before, and it really, it just, maybe it doesn't bother you, but it got my attention.
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He asked a question, the pastor asked a question, he says, how do we respond when we don't see the growth? How do we respond, as a church, when we don't see growth? When the back door of the church is as big as the front, or maybe it's even wider.
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And this is often a feeling people get, even if they don't verbalize it, they start thinking, well, where is the growth? Man, we've been planning, this church has been alive since 1958, we've had, I would say, a real revival in 2008, so we've been ten years this side of a revival, where's the growth? That's where a lot of people would ask.
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And beloved, my answer is simply this, as long as we are being faithful, to God, to His Word, to the preaching of the truth, to calling men and women to repentance and faith, then we need to be satisfied with whatever growth He provides.
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Because God knows what we need, God knows who we need, and He has promised to provide all our needs in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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And He will grow us according to His sovereign will.
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We will never be bigger or smaller than He wants us to be.
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Don't we believe in God's sovereignty? Don't we proclaim that? But it can be easy to get discouraged while waiting for growth, so I want to share a story with you.
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I heard this story many years ago, and I must tell you, I don't know the name of the man about whom this story is, but I know that this story is proclaimed as a true story.
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And perhaps you've heard this story, and maybe you know the man's name, but I do not.
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And if you do, share it with me, because I sure would like to know.
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Long ago there was a man who was boarding a ship as he was traveling for business.
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And when he arrived at the dock to board the ship, he was met by an elderly man who was walking down the line sharing the gospel.
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The man had a simple message, and he was walking down.
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Each person who was getting ready to get on the ship, the man was simply walking down the line and talking to every person before they boarded the ship, and they didn't have anywhere to go.
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He sort of had a captive audience, so he just walked down the line.
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And the businessman, waiting to get on the ship, listened to what the old evangelist had to say, but he really paid not much attention to it.
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He just heard the words.
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However, later on the boat, when he finally was on the ship, and they were at sea, as he laid in his stateroom by himself, the words of that evangelist began to over-roll in his head and roll over and over and over.
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And he couldn't get the words out of his mind until he realized he is a lost man who desperately needed the Savior that that evangelist was telling him about.
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And he got down on his knees on the side of that bed that he was laying on, and he prayed and he cried out to God for salvation through Jesus Christ.
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And he was legitimately saved at that moment that he believed.
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And the story continues that this man became more and more devoted to his faith and would often think of going back to that dock to try to find that evangelist.
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And on many of his business journeys, he would tell the story of the old evangelist.
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And on many of those journeys, he would talk to other people who had heard the gospel from that old evangelist.
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He talked to other people, some of them who had been saved, who had heard the gospel from that old evangelist.
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And finally, it came up on his business route that he had to go back to that place where he had first heard the gospel, and he was excited.
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And when he returned, he got to the dock and he noticed a ship being boarded, and there was that old evangelist walking down the line telling people about Jesus.
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And he was excited, and he got off the boat and he walked over to the man and he asked the old evangelist, he said, will you come and talk to me? And he did, and he stepped to the side and he recounted.
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He said, you're preaching the gospel as what God used to save me, and I have spoken to countless people who have told me the same story in their life that they heard the gospel from you and were saved by it.
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And the old evangelist began to weep, and through tears, he looked at the businessman and he said, dear brother, I have been coming to this place for decades.
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I've walked down these docks hundreds or thousands of times, and I've spoken the gospel to countless people, and I have never until this day knew that there was even one who ever believed in Jesus on account of my preaching.
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Beloved, that old man was content with planting seeds.
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Are we content with planting seeds? Are we content with watering and trusting God to bring the growth? In 1913, a poem was written by Joyce Kilmer that says, it was entitled Only God Can Make a Tree.
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It begins, I'm guessing many of you have heard it, I think I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.
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And the last stanza of the poem says this, Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.
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Beloved, that's true.
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Only God can make a tree.
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Men can plant, men can cultivate, men can nurture, but only God can make a tree.
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And that's equally true for the church.
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We can labor and we can toil, we can preach and we can disciple, but only God can build the church.
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Only God can grow the church.
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And that's good, because the Bible says, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it, build it in vain.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word, I thank you for the truth of the word, and I praise you for growing us as you have.
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And Father, we are humbled that not only did you save us, but you sustain us, and you sustain this church for your purposes, and glorifying your name, and seeing yourself exalted.
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And I pray today, Lord, first, for those who are believers, who are members of this church, who have come here, I pray for them, Father.
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I pray that they would be satisfied in the growth that you give, and Lord, at the same time, be willing to continue to plant and water and watch you give the growth, that we would be faithful.
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Your word tells us that it is the responsibility of the steward that we be found faithful.
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Lord, let us be found faithful.
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And Father, for those who have come today, who might not be members, but are believers, I pray for them, Lord, that they might see here a place that they would want to call home, and a place where they could worship, and a place where they could find the teaching and discipleship that they need, and a church home.
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And Lord, Father, for those who have come today who know not Christ, Lord, we can't reach into their heart and cause the seed to grow, but Lord, I pray that the seed has been planted, I pray that it's been watered, and I pray that you would bring the growth, that you would bring that gift of regeneration which would cause them to cry out in repentance and faith, and a desire to serve Jesus all their days.
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Father, I thank you, and I praise you, and I love you.
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In Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Let's stand and sing together.