1 Corinthians 3:5-9

November 12, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 13:45 in the audio file.

Or, The Lord of the Harvest and His Laborers

It’s been said that the graveyards are full of people the world could not do without. That tongue-in-cheek comment is intended to point out that no man is indispensable, but just the opposite. Every man is replaceable; no one on earth is necessary in an ultimate sense.

Perhaps in no occupation is this more true than in preaching and pastoring. You might not know it from how so many of us pastor-types promote ourselves and pimp our ministries and prepare our legacies. Sometimes it is not the preacher’s fault but the fault of his followers. They not only listen to but lean too heavily on a man. But too high a view of those in ministry fails to acknowledge how ministry works.

This does not demand that we have too low a view of preachers either. No man is indispensable but God has made many men instrumental in our faith. While God could have done it other ways He chose men to teach (or translate and transport) God’s Word to us. The Holy Spirit used and uses these men to grow us up for fruitfulness. So in terms of God’s story, He has caused certain effects through men and, in that way, we are to thank God for their work.

1 Corinthians 3:5-9 is about the proper perspective on those who preach the word of the cross. The Corinthians had the wrong perspective and had divided over which preacher was best. From 1 Corinthians 1:18-3:4 Paul demonstrated that such quarrels missed the point. The message ins’t something that can be marketed. The Holy Spirit must overcome the natural man’s revulsion to a crucified Christ. As is true of the message so it is true of the messenger, which now becomes Paul’s focus through 4:7 if not 4:21.

Those elders who “labor in preaching and teaching” (as Timothy called them, 1 Timothy 5:17), who labor for the Lord of the harvest (Matthew 9:37-38), must be seen in their proper place. This paragraph profiles six principles of gospel labor that should give perspective both to preachers and those who listen to them.

The Assignment of Labor (verse 5)

Where there is jealousy and strife and sectarian quarrels there is too much fleshliness. It’s the human way to divide over which human, including which preacher, is more important. “When one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human?” (verse 4) And isn’t this a misunderstanding upstream?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each.

Shouldn’t the question be “Who is Apollos?” and “Who is Paul?” Apollos and Paul are persons after all. Yet the interrogative pronoun in Greek is not Who? (masculine) but What? (neuter). Some later copies of the text changed it to the masculine form in order to tone down the grammatical discord. But this is Paul’s point: the person himself should be considered as a tool.

Apollos and Paul, and all laborers like them, are servants (διάκονοι). They are agents of another, those who answer to someone else, they do what someone else wants. Servants are not greater than their masters. The Corinthians were seeking to increase their own status by attaching themselves to certain men, and Paul explains that they were going the wrong way, at least in the eyes of the world.

The Lord is great, though the worldly-wise refuse to acknowledge His glory. The Lord assigned to each servant his labor, and that labor was effective. They were servants through whom you believed. The servants were God appointed means to bring about the faith of the believers, so Paul quotes Isaiah to the Romans that the feet of those who bring good news are beautiful (Isaiah 52:7 in Romans 10:15). We are thankful for those who spoke to us the word of life (see Hebrews 13:7), but we remember that they only did what the Lord assigned.

The Division of Labor (ver[...]