The Church and Its Leaders

1 Corinthians 3

The Meat: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. We are not to adopt the standards of the world, for if the gospel of Christ does not attract people, neither will the trappings of the world. The world's ways are sneaky and lead us to imitate it.  The church must not place its eyes on its leaders, whether they are Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, Joyce Myers, or Benny Hinn. They have all the reward they are ever going to get...the adulation of man. The role of the church is to follow Him in every circumstance. We must follow Him in worship, in fellowship, in Bible study, in training and in music. We must forsake the world and everything in it to follow Christ and Him alone.
The message of 1 Corinthians is that Christ is preeminent. He is to be the focus of our message, whether it is from the Old Testament or the New. It is not at all about us, it is all about Him. He is the First and the Last and Everything In between.
Note: Something odd happened to the format. I don't know what happened as I typed it in Blogger as I usually do, but somehow it came out strange.

3 Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?

The milk: The leaders at Corinth were worldly and acted like babes in Christ. Saved, but not growing spiritually and not leading their flock to grow in Him. They had their eyes on different leaders.

The Meat: The leaders at Corinth were good at reading the words of scripture (the Old Testament) and giving superficial meaning to it, but they never presented the meat, the deep, deep meaning of the words. They never connected the teachings of the words to the meaning of the Word. They were not even so much as living by the Holy Spirit. They picked out favorites in the church and followed them. In other words, there was a form of politics going on at Corinth.

5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. 9 For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

The Milk: The people of the church at Corinth were divided, some following Apollos and others following Paul. 

The Meat: Apollos and Paul were to be seen as a team, each with his own talents and leadership abilities and taking a different approach, but both aiming at the same thing: a thorough knowledge of and faith in, and only in, God through Christ. They were to be seen as working toward the same goal of growing the church through right doctrine and right focus. 

10 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. 14 If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. 15 If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

The Milk: Paul likened the church as a building being built and talked about how important it is to have a good foundation.

The Meat: The foundation of the church, everything it does and everything it teaches must be built on the truth of Jesus Christ. He is to be their rallying point, their focus. He is the in all, of all, through all, and by all of everything they do. If they don't get their teaching about Christ right, nothing they teach or do will be right. If they get that right, nothing they do will perish, whether by persecution, peril, or anything else the world can do to them.

16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

The Milk: We are God's temple and God will destroy anyone who harms it.

The Meat: Under the Old Covenant, the temple was a physical building complex where animal sacrifices were made. Under the New Covenant, there is no longer a physical temple. The Holy Spirit now lives in the hearts of believers. We are made safe in Him. We are led by Him. The temple is the aggregate of the hearts of people as they move toward the goal of reaching souls for Christ.

18 Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”[a]; 20 and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”[b] 21 So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas[c] or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

The Milk: We fool ourselves if we think we are wise. We are not to boast about our leaders and we belong to Christ.

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What Should We Then Do?

As Christians, what are our responsibilities to God, to His Word, to His Son and to each other?

1. We need to know the Scripture. We don't have to memorize a whole bunch of verses, although knowing some in context would help. We need to know what the Bible is about and what it teaches about what it is about. The Bible is about God. It is His revelation of His character, His love fore His creation and His plan for its redemption.

When we read scripture, we need to discern its deeper, ultimate meaning. It is not helpful to quote many verses on a given subject, draw a conclusion about some attitude of God and form a faith system on them. That's what heretics and cults do.

For instance, if I read 2 Kings 9:24 "Then Jehu drew his bow and shot Joram between the shoulders." I cannot conclude that I should use a bow and arrow to shoot somebody. Nor does it mean that if I want somebody dead, if I use a bow and arrow it's OK. That's ridiculous, right?

Well, the Scripture says it and so if I am to follow Scripture I must do what this passage says, mustn't I? No, you mustn't. That is out of context.

How about Deuteronomy 21:15, "If a man has two wives and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons..." That means I can have more than one wife (as long as I don't want to be a deacon, since 1 Timothy puts the Kibosh on that). The Bible says it, so I can do it.

What we really need to do is to discover how these verses (and all of the other verses of Scripture) reveal God's character. How do they relate to His love for His creation? What do they tell us about His plan for our redemption? If you cannot find the answers to those questions in the Scripture you are reading, you are misinterpreting it.

Go back to school, dump your previously learned mistaken concepts and learn what the Bible is really about. Otherwise, forget it.

2.  We must see people the way God sees them. Without Christ He sees them as lost. With Christ He sees them as saved for eternity. This should be our passion. We must care about them the way Christ cared for us. He died for us. Are we willing to die in order to propagate the gospel?

What about the tribes in the deepest Amazon who have never heard about Christ?

What about them? Why haven't they heard? Have you told them about Jesus? If not, why not?

We have Internet, radio, TV, airplanes, boats, cars, trains and a myriad of other ways we could be reaching them to tell them about Jesus. Why haven't we? Weren't we told to do so?

3. We should have a passion to train new Christians. They are His babes, and He has charged us with the responsibility to help grow. Do you think "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." is a reference just to physical children? Does it not apply to those who are just now saved, who know only the milk of the Word?

We should also have a passion for further training for those who are more mature in Christ. They need and want to grow, too. Don't worry. You will never train them in everything they need to be trained in, even if you started tomorrow and kept on until they die. There is ALWAYS more to learn to do for Christ.

4.  We should encourage membership in a local church. It is good to become a part of the family known as the "universal church," but to be effective ministers for Christ (and you DO know that you are a minister for Christ, don't you? If not, you need to get some of that training I was talking about in the section 3), we need to plug in to a local congregation.

You might think you can worship God anywhere, and you can. But you won't. You might think you can serve God anywhere, and you can. But you won't. Besides, the Word of God extols corporate worship, and you can't do that by yourself, no matter where you are.

5.  We must be leading people to serve in the local church (this also goes back to number 3). Christianity is not a spectator sport. People who are committed to being involved will be able to fill the needs of the church. We need to involve people in leadership, in music, in Bible teaching, in A/V ministry, in children's ministry and any other place there is a need.

6. People need to be led to take part in worship. We meet on Sundays for the very reason of worshiping God and celebrating the resurrection of His Son. Sunday worship should not be a time when we perform, either for ourselves or for the pastor. We should be celebrating Christ. Otherwise, we might as well go back to the Old Covenant way of doing things and forget about being religious.

7. We must call leaders who understand the true meaning of the Word of God, who are committed to serving Christ and His church and who set an example of dependability that people can follow. We must choose leaders of right doctrine. We must select leaders who plan for the advancement of the Kingdom of God in the church. We must find leaders who can coordinate and evaluate the functions of the church.

8.  We must invoke and follow the Holy Spirit as He gives us proper interpretation of the Word, as He leads us to effective leadership, as He gives us compassionate hearts and as He leads us to giving the best we have for our King.

Those are some of the things we must do as Christians and as members of the Body of Christ.

Evangelical, Missional or What?

There is a whole “arm” of the Christian church that believes today’s church has to be “missional,” “trendy” and that “evangelicalism” is passé, or at least not the main issue.

As if you care what I think, let me tell you. I think the church must focus on, and only on, Christ and His finished work at the cross of Calvary. If He is not enough, nothing else will be.

I think the church should be evangelical, ministerial, missional and relevant. By “relevant,” I mean gospel oriented. There never has been, is not now and never will be anything irrelevant about the gospel. The gospel message is the only one the church has. It will “attract” those whom the Holy Spirit stirs.

I believe the church should spread the good news, minister to its members, serve the community in Christ’s name, and preach the eternal relevance of the gospel.

That’s it.