WWUTT 1465 Review of 1 Corinthians 3 (Part 2)

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Hey friends, I'm on the road this week, but in keeping with our study through 1 Corinthians, I'll be playing clips from the sermon series that I did through that book, rejoicing in the message of the cross, the power of God for salvation when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible teaching podcast that we may be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Paul once again says,

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I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

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I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it, and even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh.

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Jesus said to his own disciples in John chapter 16, this is in the upper room, this is three years into Jesus's earthly ministry.

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It is the night before he's about to go to the cross, and he says to his disciples, there are more things that I have to teach you, but you're not yet ready for it.

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And then in Luke chapter 24, after the crucifixion and after his resurrection, when he is going up to the

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Mount of Olives to ascend into heaven, he teaches his disciples the scriptures and shows himself all throughout the

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Old Testament. And it says there that their eyes were open to understand and see the things that he spoke to them.

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I believe it's Luke 24, verse 45. That their eyes were finally open to understand the things that he was talking about.

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Here on the night before his crucifixion, they didn't even understand what he was talking about when he was breaking bread and passing it among them and saying, this is my body, which is broken for you eat in remembrance of me.

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Huh? What? What's he talking about? What? I kind of remember something he was saying before a bunch of disciples walked away when he said, unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

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Well, we all thought of that as a metaphor, and now he's breaking bread and he's doing it again. He's saying, this is my body, which is broken for you.

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What is he talking about? My body is his bread. This is my blood, which is spilled for you in the cup of the new covenant.

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Drink this in remembrance of me. Cup of the new covenant. What? The disciples didn't understand these concepts.

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And he said, what I do with you now, you do not understand. But a time is coming when you will understand what this means.

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Even now you are not yet ready for you're still of the flesh. While there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

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For when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow Apollo, Apollos, are you not being merely human?

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Attaching yourself to people instead of being fastened to the head who is

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Christ Jesus from whom all the nourishment of God is given to us.

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Verse five, Paul says, what then is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants through whom you believe as the

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Lord assigned to each. In other words, there's nothing wrong with listening to Apollos. There's nothing wrong with listening to the teachings of the apostle

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Paul. In fact, you should be listening to what it is that they're saying to you, but they're not your salvation.

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Christ is. They are servants of God for your good, for your benefit, to build you up in the faith.

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Why are you saying you follow Apollos and you follow Paul? Now you'll hear me teach a number of different teachers in any sermon or in any

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Bible study. It's to help to deepen your understanding of the truth that we're talking about.

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Because folks, I didn't come up with this, all right? I had to be taught to get to the place where I'm at spiritually now, and I'm still being taught as I continue to spiritually mature.

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You who have been with me for a long time, you've watched spiritual maturity happen in me, and I've watched it happen in you.

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There are ways that I'm continuing to grow, and there are men that teach me through these concepts, and so that you will better understand these concepts,

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I will bring up some of the men who have talked about these things and tell you, so -and -so has looked at it this way, or he's spoken about it in this context to help you understand these truths.

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But in no way am I presenting a name to you to say, this is the person that you should follow. Who you should follow is

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Christ. Those who are servants of Christ who teach his truths to help us understand his truths,

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I'll reference those names for that purpose. But they're not in any way being presented to you as men and even some women that you should be following.

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It is Christ who you are to follow. There was a Sunday school teacher here when

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I first came on as pastor that really was annoyed with some of the names that I would drop. And so he implemented in his

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Sunday school class here at this church, we're not going to mention any names in here. He said that to his class.

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We're not going to bring up any names. We're not going to quote from so -and -so and so -and -so and so -and -so and so -and -so started listing some of those names.

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We're not going to quote from those guys. We're going to open up the scriptures and we're going to read them and we're going to see what it says for ourselves.

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And if you have something that you want to share, you can share it, but we're not going to be quoting any names in here. And so I went out to lunch with that individual to sit down with him and help him to understand the reason names are being quoted is not because those people are being presented as Christ.

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They're servants of Christ to help us understand these concepts better. And I said, whether or not you want to admit it, you're following some of those teachers yourself and their thoughts are coming out in the things that you are saying, but you want to claim a total autonomy and independence as if to say any of the truth that you ever came about, you found it on your own, which simply isn't true.

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And after I said that, he said, well, you know, I prefer a different method of study than you prefer.

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You prefer to go through the entire scriptures like this and you go verse after verse after verse. I prefer to approach things a different way.

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And I said, okay, well, what's your approach? And he said, I prefer the Socratic method. I got to tell you,

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I almost fell out of my chair laughing when he said that. I took everything to contain myself when

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I'm saying it's appropriate for us to present names. And then he says, I prefer the

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Socratic method named after Socrates, right? And I'm going, do you hear what you just said?

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Like I don't, I don't like that you quote names and you present these people as though there's somebody that needs to be, that needs to follow.

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But you teach according to a method that's named after Socrates. What is

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Apollos? What is Paul? They're servants for your good. Servants through whom you believe.

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You didn't believe in them. You believed in Christ because of what they said to you as the

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Lord assigned giftings to them to preach the gospel of Christ. I planted, I planted the church in Corinth.

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Paul is saying here, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth and both are instrumental and important in the growth of the church.

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The one who plants and the one who waters. Verse seven, so neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only

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God who gives the growth. Now, when you look at the association that we're a part of, the

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Smoky Hills Association, part of the Kansas, Nebraska convention of Southern Baptists, which is part of the greater

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Southern Baptist convention at large, I love being a Southern Baptist. And as long as Southern Baptists adhere to biblical truth,

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I will be one until the day that I die. But God bless them. The Southern Baptist convention loves their numbers.

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And it seems like a church is only producing spiritually when that number that they are sending to our offices continues to go up.

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Then we know that something right is happening in that church. There is so much emphasis on the planter and hardly any emphasis on the one who waters.

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But they're both important and they're both equally instrumental in growing the kingdom of God.

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The one who plants and the one who waters. The one who brings people to the faith and the one who grows them in that faith.

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Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God 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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Jesus said to his disciples in John chapter 4, the fields are ripe for harvest.

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The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. And he said to his disciples, there are others who have come before you and have planted and you're going to come and harvest the work of their labor.

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But what the one who sows gets and what the one who harvests gets is the same reward.

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Both are important works in the kingdom of God. Let's look at Galatians chapter 6.

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Galatians chapter 6. I'm going to conclude with this and come back to 1 Corinthians 3 .9

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and that is how we'll close. Galatians chapter 6 starting in verse 1. Here we have that charge of admonishing one another and encouraging one another in the faith.

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Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

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Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Understand my brothers and sisters, if somebody who is your brother or sister in Christ has to come to you and say to you, hey, you've been living in this sin and you need to repent of it, receive it as a kindness, not in hostility.

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For the brother or sister who brings this to you is living in obedience to the word of God. If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual, in other words, you who are mature, should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

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Keep watch on yourself, not to exclude those who are spiritually mature.

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Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Any one of us, as long as we inhabit these flesh, can be subject to temptation and sin.

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Verse 2, bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

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For if one thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

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But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor.

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For each one will have to bear his own load. Now you might look at verse 4 and go, now hang on a second, because when we were in 1

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Corinthians chapter 1, the apostle Paul said, let he who boasts, boast in the Lord. And here in verse 4, it says, let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone.

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Huh? I thought we weren't supposed to boast in ourselves. We were supposed to boast in Christ. Yes, we boast in Christ.

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The point that Paul is making here is that when you look at your spiritual maturity, it's not based on looking at the guy next to you and going, well, at least

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I'm better than him. Okay? Then you're boasting in the fact that you're better than this other person, and that's not the way that we're supposed to understand spiritual growth.

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Micah 6, 8, what does the Lord require of you, O man? But that you do justly, you love mercy, and you walk humbly with your

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God. So there is a personal walk that we are all on where we are growing in our maturity and spirituality, the personal growth that we do, your personal

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Bible study, your personal prayer time with God. But all of this is to be a benefit to the whole body of Christ, not just yourself.

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And so as you grow in maturity and bear your own load, then you become a person of spiritual maturity who is able to restore the brotherhood to the path of righteousness should anybody go astray because of their transgressions.

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So this becomes a continued benefit to the body of Christ in our spiritual growth and maturity.

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Verse 6, one who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches.

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I'm going to repeat that again. One who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches.

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So in other words, here's where I get to take a little bit of credit for myself as a teacher.

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And I do so very humbly, so bear with me. But as you grow in your spiritual maturity,

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I as a teacher get to rejoice because I'm seeing you grow up in Christ.

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And that is something you should want to do with those who teach you.

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One who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches.

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Do not be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever one sows that he will also reap.

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You sow good seed, you bear good fruit. You sow bad seed, you get bad fruit. You've heard the expression, you are what you eat, right?

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You eat a lot of fat, greasy food, you become a fat, greasy dude, all right? If you eat devil's food, you're going to do devilish stuff.

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If you eat angel food, you're going to do heavenly spiritual things, right? If you eat nurse stuff, you're going to become a nurse.

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If you eat doctor stuff, you grow up to become a doctor. If you eat policeman stuff, you'll grow up to be in law enforcement.

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If you don't eat anything, you go into politics. Sorry. But what you sow, what you invest into your spiritual development is what you're going to reap.

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If you're not investing anything in your spiritual growth, here's my warning and here is my caution to you.

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Jesus says of them, they will be cut down and thrown into the fire for they're worthless and no good.

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They do not bear fruit. You can claim I had a conversion experience when

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I was eight, but you're not producing fruit. It means nothing. You're a dead tree, just like the trees that I've been cutting down in my backyard over the course of the fall and the winter, that I know is not going to produce once the springtime comes.

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It's just going to be a dead tree continuing to stand there even in a time of fruitfulness. Jesus says those trees are going to be cut down.

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They're going to be thrown into the fire. So there is an expectation of spiritual growth in the life of a believer.

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We're going to talk more about this last week. The title of my sermon today is planted. The title of my sermon next week is watered.

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So then we continue to talk about this growth as the building of God. Verse 8, for the one who sows to his flesh will reap from the flesh corruption, but the one who sows to the

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Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up.

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So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

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Which is a verse that we tend to use talking about charity, but we're specifically talking about spiritual concepts here.

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Where Paul says, let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

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As we were talking about this as elders this past Wednesday, Chris brought up the illustration when he was living in Yuma, Arizona, and he would become associated and acquainted with the farmers there and the work that they put into sowing a harvest.

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In the job that Chris did, he gets paid every two weeks. Still to this day gets paid every two weeks, right?

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So as long as he's been employed, he gets paid every two weeks. And he is able to see every other week the fruits of his labor.

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There it is right there on my paycheck, the number that represents the work that I've done this week. But a farmer, a farmer doesn't get to see his paycheck until he's produced a harvest.

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And the farmer isn't even sure how much that's going to be until the harvest is produced and sold.

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And so he labors all the way through the time of growing the crop and caring for it and making sure there's no blight on the harvest.

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Making sure the pests are not eating it up. Making sure the right number of nutrients are in the ground.

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Whenever there's a period of drought and it hasn't rained in a while, doing what is necessary to make sure that the crop is getting the water that it needs.

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All this labor and all this work. And then finally when the time of harvest comes and he's able to see the fruit of his labor and he gets that paycheck and he sees what all of the work was worth, then he actually knows what all of that investment was for.

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But not until then. So the analogy that's used here regarding a farmer, and Paul is using the same analogy with the

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Corinthians when he says, I planted, Apollos watered, God provided the growth.

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It is a labor of love that is being done for you and it is something that is produced over a period of time.

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But some of you think that you're more mature than you actually are. You're little sprouts and you're acting like fully grown corn stalks.

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But some of these deep spiritual concepts, I can't teach you this yet. You're still babies in the faith.

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You need to go back to eating pure spiritual milk until you can grow up into some of these deeper concepts.

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And it's a long time. It is a long process. And you see

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Paul's encouragement of Timothy the same way when he says to him, be ready in season and out of season to preach the

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Word of God. There's going to be times when you're preaching when you're going to see fruit from the preaching and there's other times you're going to be preaching where you're going to be wondering, what in the world am

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I doing this for? Because it's a long process. This thing that we do called sanctification.

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Growing in holiness and becoming more like Christ as we grow and develop in these spiritual concepts.

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So we understand the analogy that Paul is using related to farming here. It's a long period of time.

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It takes a lot of work. Which is why some of the frustrations that I was encountering in my first two or three years of pastoring,

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I knew the Bible well enough not to get frustrated with some of the animosity and opposition that I was facing as people were starting to come under my teaching and get used to the way that I executed things and presented the

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Word of God. I knew not to get frustrated and not to just throw my hands up and go, I can't do this.

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What in the world? Because I am a labor of God who is growing me and disciplining me every day as well.

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Who am I to look at anyone else and say, you're hopeless, I can't help you. Because God could have done that same thing with me, but He loved me and showed mercy to me through His Son Jesus Christ and rescued me out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

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And so because God is patient with me, I know to be patient with the people of God. And there's no reason to get frustrated or fed up when the work gets hard.

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I believe it was George Whitefield who said, Lord, I am weary in doing

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Thy work, but I'm not tired of it. There's still a work that is to be done.

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There's still a love in this work of Christ to grow the people of God. And Paul, referring to himself in Apollos in verse 9, says, for we are

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God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.

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And there we have a transition point. You are God's field. You are

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God's building. This is When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web, and we thank you for selecting ours. But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.

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Find a good, gospel -teaching, Christ -centered church to worship with this weekend, and join us again Monday for more