GOD’S FARM-HANDS – 1 Corinthians 3:5-9

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on July 15, 2018 under 2018 |

Bethany Bible Church Sunday message; July 15, 2018 from 1 Corinthians 3:5-9

Theme: The cure for division over the church’s preachers and teachers is to keep those preachers and teachers in biblical perspective under Christ.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

If I could figure out a way to do it, I would sit down with you and listen while I preach from 1 Corinthians 3.

We’re looking today at a passage that is about how the church is to view its preachers and teachers—and about how viewing them rightly would cure the divisions that the church sometimes has over them. And it’s a passage that speaks every bit as much to the preacher as it does to the congregation.

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Now; you’ll probably remember that the Corinthian church had a real problem with this whole matter. They had been imitating the Corinthian culture around them in overly-elevating their teachers. They were acting toward their spiritual leaders in same the way that the world around them was acting toward the popular philosophers and celebrity teachers of the day—and were dividing themselves under their favorite teachers in a very ‘carnal’, a very, man-centered, very ‘fleshly focused’ sort of way. It was all very severely hindering their spiritual growth.

In 1 Corinthians 3:1-4, Paul was straight-forward in addressing this problem. He told them;

And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not carnal? (1 Corinthians 3:1-4).

Apollos was another great Christian teacher who had ministered in the Corinthian church. But neither Apollos nor Paul could have taught those Christians as they needed to be taught; and this was because they were still behaving in a spiritually immature way. The immaturity of these Corinthian believers was shown in the fact that they would say things like “I am of Paul,” or, “I am of Apollos,”

And that leads us to our passage this morning. In verses 5-9, Paul writes,

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building (vv. 5-9).

What Paul endeavors to do in this passage is to solve the problem of the divisiveness within the Corinthian church over its preachers by putting those preachers in proper biblical perspective. It’s really remarkable how he does this. He places the Lord Jesus in the top position and calls these believers to set their focus on Him. He calls them to remember that they themselves—as an assembly of believers formed into a church family—are the Lord Jesus’ cultivated field. They are, if you will, His ‘farm’. And he affirms to them that he and Apollos—and the apostle Peter, and their other leaders or teachers or preachers—are to be properly seen only as ‘servants’ who work on the Lord’s farm as his divinely appointed ‘farm-hands’.

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Now; the idea that the church is the Lord’s ‘farm-field’ was not one that originated with Paul. It’s as old as the Old Testament book of Isaiah. In Isaiah 5, the prophet sang a song about it. He wrote;

Now let me sing to my Well-beloved
A song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard:
My Well-beloved has a vineyard
On a very fruitful hill.
He dug it up and cleared out its stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine.
He built a tower in its midst,
And also made a winepress in it;
So He expected it to bring forth good grapes,
But it brought forth wild grapes (Isaiah 5:1-2).

That was a song about the nation of Israel at the time of its apostasy—just before it went into captivity in Babylon. But it shows us that God thinks about His precious people as a cultivated field—one that needs care, and from which He has a right to expect good produce. The Lord Jesus spoke the same way also. Do you remember what He once told His disciples? Looking out with compassion upon all the needy people before Him, He told them,

“The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38).

And dear brothers and sisters; you and I need to think of ourselves in that way—as the Lord’s field. We are His precious, cultivated farmland. We belong to Him. And those who serve in His farm-field are not the ones we should ever be dividing ourselves under. We should never say that we are ‘followers of Pastor So-and So’; or that we are identified by ‘Dr. Such-and-Such’s school of thought’.

I love our Lutheran brethren, for example; or our fellow Christians who are of the Wesleyan tradition; or those who call themselves Calvinists. But I am sure that neither Martin Luther nor John Wesley nor John Calvin would be happy that Christians identify themselves by their names—and certainly far less so if those professing Christians were to divide themselves from each other as their ‘followers’.

We need to view the church as God’s one great farm; the Lord Jesus as the one true farm owner; and pastors and teachers as nothing more than farm hands that the Lord sends forth to tend His field.

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Let’s look, then, a little closer at these words from Paul and see what he tells us about the preachers and teachers that our Lord sends out to serve in His churches. First, look at verse 5 and notice …

1. WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE.

Paul wrote, “Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one?”

Now; the name that he gives to himself and to Apollos is here translated “ministers”. But that name might be a little bit confusing. In our day, “minister” has become a technical term for anyone who is in vocational ministry—a clergy professional. But that’s not what Paul means at all. The word that he uses in the original language is diakonos. That’s the word from which we get the name for one of the offices within a church leadership structure—’deacon’. But even that is not what Paul means. The best way to understand what Paul means is simply as ‘a servant’. Who then is Apollos? Who then is Paul? They are just ‘servants’—just waiters, if you will, who serve at the table.

In Jesus’ kingdom, it’s no small thing to be a servant. Jesus taught us that He Himself did not come to be served, “but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). And He taught His disciples, “whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant” (Matthew 20:26). Jesus declared that ‘being a servant to others’ is the pathway to true greatness. But we need to remember that a ‘servant’—by definition—is only serving another. And it is that ‘other’ that we are to align ourselves under—and not the servants themselves. Just think of how silly it would be if a wealthy family was living in a great house filled with servants; but if all the family member were dividing themselves from each other by declaring, “I am a follower of Mr. French!” or, “I am of Mr. Belvedere!” or, “I’m of Jeeves!” That’s no way to think of servants.

And that’s what Paul said that he and Apollos were. They were just the servants of another. And it’s to that ‘other’ that all the attention and glory should be given. As he wrote in 1 Corinthians 4:1; “Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” Paul told the Corinthian Christians that they were just “ministers” or servants “through whom you believed …”

And notice that Paul goes on to say, “as the Lord gave to each one”. Some translations interpret this as saying that the Lord assigned different tasks to His servants—one type of task to Paul; another type of task to Apollos. And I believe that’s true. But other translations have it that the Lord gave the opportunity to believe—that He gave ‘saving faith’ to each one that Paul and Apollos might have served. And I also believe that’s true too; and I tend to think that’s the correct interpretation. After all, the Bible teaches us that we are saved by grace through faith—and that even the faith itself is “the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). But perhaps the Holy Spirit moved Paul to write these words in just this way; so that either interpretation is possible, and that both truths would stand out to us.

But doesn’t either interpretation reinforce the main point? Whether it is speaking of the particular assignments that the Lord gives to His servants, or the gift of faith that He gives to each believer in response to their labors, it is all His doing. He is the farm owner; and He gets the glory—not the servants.

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Now, this is further reinforced to us in the next thing that Paul tells us about servants like Apollos and himself; and that is …

2. HOW THEIR LABOR IS DISTRIBUTED.

In verse 6, he makes it clear what kind of servants he and Apollos were. They were just ‘farm-hands’ in the Lord’s cultivated field. He writes, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.”

When Paul spoke about himself ‘planting’ and Apollos ‘watering’, I believe he was reminding the Corinthians of the chronology of events in their work toward them. Back in Acts 18, we’re told the story of how Paul had first come to them as a missionary. He came first to work in Corinth for a time as a tent-maker with his friends Aquila and Priscilla; and we’re told that while he worked, “he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks” (v. 4). Once his fellow missionaries Timothy and Silas came, he went ‘full-time’ in preaching the gospel as an evangelist to the Corinthians.

Now; Paul’s preaching caused trouble. It often did. It stirred up a great deal of opposition. But the Lord spoke to him in a vision one night; and said,

“Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not keep silent; for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many people in this city.” And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them (vv. 9-11).

In time, the “many people” that the Lord had set aside for Himself believed. And that was how Paul ‘planted’ in God’s farm-field in Corinth. And he eventually had to leave. But the work continued. The end of Acts 18 tells us that Priscilla and Aquila were in the city of Ephesus; and they heard a dynamic Jewish scholar named Apollos. Verses 25-28 tell us;

This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John. So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. And when he desired to cross to Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; and when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace; for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ (Acts 18:25-28).

Achaia was the region in which the city of Corinth was located. And so, Apollos stayed for a while and ministered to the Corinthian believers. After Paul had ‘planted’ the gospel in God’s farm-field of Corinth, Apollos stepped in and ‘watered’—nourishing the brand-new believers who were there with the truth of God’s word.

There’s an interesting fact about the grammar of the original language. When Paul’s and Apollos’ labors are being described in verse 6, the aorist tense is being used. That’s just the simple past-tense. But when we’re told, “but God gave the increase”, the imperfect tense is used. That’s the tense you would use to describe a kind of past action that was ongoing. You could translate it this way; Paul planted, and Apollos watered; but God was—all along—giving the increase. It was His divine hand, behind the scenes, doing all the real work.

And so, who was most important in all that? Well, neither Paul nor Apollos were. They were just farm-hands. Both of their roles were necessary; and God used them. But neither role was more important than the other. They were just ‘instruments’. It was the Lord who was most important in all this, because it was He who gave the increase and blessed the growth.

And that, dear brothers and sisters, is the right way to think about the preachers and teachers in the church. God gives some tasks to one, some tasks to another, and He even gives the faith in response to their labors; but all along, it is God—not they—who gives the increase. They should never be the focus of attention.

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And that leads us to what Paul declares next in verse 7 …

3. WHO ULTIMATELY GETS THE CREDIT.

Paul writes, “So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.”

I know that a few folks here this morning have farms. And almost all of us here have gardens. But I’m sure that you realize that no gardener or farmer—no matter how good they are—ever really grows anything. They put things in the ground; and they take things out; and they care for the soil; and the water the seed, and feed the plant, and make sure sunshine can get in. But they don’t actually ‘make’ anything grow. It’s God who alone can do that. When the county fair comes along, and the biggest ‘this’ gets the award or the most beautiful ‘that’ gets the blue ribbon, it’s nice that people receive recognition for their work. But if we were all honest about it, it really ought to be God who takes the prize.

Jesus told an interesting parable about this. In Mark 4:26-29, He said;

“The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come” (Mark 4:26-29).

The farmer certainly had something to do with it, didn’t he? He scattered the seed. But to a large degree, how it all worked out was something that was beyond his capabilities. It was God who ultimately gave the growth. And that’s the same with the church’s pastors and teachers. They should work hard. They should proclaim the word. They should care for and nourish God’s people. But it is ultimately God—not them—who gives the growth and who should receive the honor.

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Now; given the fact that it is the Lord’s farm, and that it is He who gives the growth, then there’s no real hierarchy between the farm-hands. They all work for the same Master, the Lord Jesus Christ. This leads us to verse 8; where Paul tells us …

4. HOW THEIR WORK WILL BE EVALUATED (v. 8).

He wrote, “Now he who plants and he who waters are one …” They obviously have different roles. But their roles are not in competition with one another. They are united under the same Lord and under the same cause.

You know; I can’t count how many times I have preached and preached on a subject—thinking that it just isn’t getting through. And then, someone in the church will come by and say, “I heard Pastor So-and-So’s show on the radio the other day. And do you know what he said?” And then, they’ll go on to tell me what I had been trying to preach to them for the longest time. Every pastor will tell you similar stories like that. But you know; it doesn’t matter. We’re not in competition. One preacher gets through where another might not be able too; but that last one might not have gotten through at all if it hadn’t been for the work of the first one. Another preacher says it in a way that another can’t quite put it. And if it’s all under the Lord Jesus, and if it’s all from His word, and if it’s all in the power of the Holy Spirit, then it’s all for the same Lord. We are “one”. When the kingdom grows, we all enjoy the harvest.

So; there’s a fundamental unity between God’s farm-hands. But Paul then adds, “and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.” There is a fundamental unity in the cause; but there is also a distinction in the reward. A faithful pastor of a small, struggling church, or a faithful teacher in a tiny little Sunday school class, will not be rewarded less for their labors than an equally faithful pastor of a large mega-church, or an equally faithful director of a large Sunday School program. God doesn’t reward His farmhands on the basis of how large or how small the harvest is. The size of the harvest is ultimately up to Him. Rather, He rewards His farmhands on the basis of how faithful they were to do the work He gave them to do.

I believe that’s a principle that not only applies to pastors and teachers, but to all believers in God’s household. We all have places of service in helping to expand the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And the real question is, “Have we been faithful with the work that our Lord has given us to do? Have we faithfully done our part to serve God’s household?”

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And that leads us to one more point that Paul makes about the farmhands; and that is …

5. WHERE THEIR WORK IS BEING DONE.

In verse 9, Paul writes, “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building.” Paul and Apollos and Peter and any other pastors or teachers or evangelists who served at Corinth—and indeed, any who served anywhere else in the kingdom of Christ—were His ‘fellow workers’. No particular one was over another.

But they all worked in God’s field—not in a field of their own. They ministered to that which belonged to the Lord Jesus—not to that which belonged to themselves. They served that community of people that Jesus Christ purchased for Himself with His own blood. And so, he wrote at the end of this chapter and told these Corinthian believers;

Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come—all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s (vv. 21-23).

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Now; at the beginning of our time this morning, I said that I believe this passage has a lot to say to me as a pastor and teacher. I want to make sure that I remember my role. I have an important one. But it’s not one that puts me above anyone else. In fact—if anything—it puts me under a greater obligation; and subjects me to an even sterner judgment if I do not faithfully do my job. I want to be a faithful farm-hand in this particular farm field of the Lord.

But it also has a lot to say to the congregation as a whole, doesn’t it? We must be careful never to elevate the pastors or teachers in God’s household above what the Bible says about their position. They are simply servants—’ministers’ in the truest sense—divinely appointed ‘farm-hands’ in God’s cultivated field.

You are Jesus’ field. Don’t ever be divided over farmhands. Keep Jesus first.

AE