Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1602
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, June 5, 1881
“I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, neither he who waters, but God that gives the increase. Now he whoplants andhe who waters are one: and every man shallreceive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are laborers together with God: you are God’s husbandry.” 1 Corinthians 3:6-9.
IN all ages since the Fall there has been a tendency in the human heart to forget God and get away from Him. Idolatry has been the sin of all nations, including God’s favored people, the Jews, and including certain persons who call themselves Christians who still make idols out of crosses and images. This vicious principle of ignoring God and setting up something between our minds and our Creator crops up everywhere and in every department of thought. When men study the works of God in Nature, they often hang up a veil to hide the great Worker. Because God acts in a certain way they call His method of action a Law and straightway they speak of these Laws as if they were forces and powers in and of themselves and thus God is banished out of His own universe and His place is taken up in the scientific world by idols called, “natural laws.”
Take the region of Providence and here you find persons, instead of seeing the hand of God everywhere, looking to second causes. They are seeking causes of prosperity and becoming very despondent if they do not appear to exist; or viewing the agents of affliction and becoming angry against them, instead of bowing before the God who has used them for correction. It is easy to make idols out of second causes and to forget the God who is everywhere present, causing all things to work together for good. That this evil principle should intrude into the Church is very sad and yet it is with difficulty excluded.
You may bar all your doors as fast as you please, but the idol-makers will come in with their shrines. In the instance of the Church at Corinth, Paul found the Brethren forgetting their God and Savior in their high esteem for certain preachers. Instead of all saying, “We are Christ’s disciples,” and uniting together to promote the common cause, they established parties and one said, “Paul, who founded this Church, is to be had in the greatest reverence and we are of Paul.” Others replied, “But Apollos is more eloquent than the Apostle Paul and by him we have been edified till we have gone beyond Paul and, therefore, we are of Apollos.” But a third party declared that they were of no sect whatever, for they were “Brethren” and were “of Christ.”
These last, I suspect, either ignored or denounced the other two parties and would not commune with them, in order to testify against their sectarianism and to promote unity. I only surmise this from the conduct of those “Brethren” who in our day take the Corinthians to be their model and cut off everybody else, being more exclusive than any other sect in Christendom! The Apostle warns the saints in Corinth against this—he brings the Lord before their minds and bids them remember that if Paul plants and Apollos waters, still, it is God that gives the increase. Since they think so highly of men, he will have it that “neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters anything” but God that gives the increase is everything.
See to it, dear Friends, that you set the Lord always before you in this Church and in all your Churches! Know them that labor among you and esteem them highly in love for their work’s sake, but do not make them your dependence. Remember that the ablest ministers, the most successful evangelists, the most profound teachers are, after all, nothing but laborers on God’s farm—“laborers together with God.” Let your mind be set upon the Master and not upon the servants! Do not say, “We are for this man because he plants,” or, “we are for the other because he waters,” or, “we”—a third party—“are for nobody at all.” But let us join in ascribing all honor and praise unto God who works all our
works in us, since every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of Lights, to whom be glory world without end!
I shall begin at the end of my text because I find it to be the easiest way of mapping out my discourse. We shall first remark that the Church is God’s farm—“You are God’s husbandry.” In the margin of the revised version we read, “You are God’s tilled ground,” and that is the very expression for me. “You are God’s tilled ground,” or farm. After we have spoken of the farm, we will next say a little upon the fact that He employs laborers on the farm. And when we have looked at the laborers—such poor fellows as they are—we will remember that God Himself is the great Worker— “We are laborers together with God.”
I. We begin by considering that THE CHURCH IS GOD’S FARM. The Lord has made the Church of His sovereign choice to be His own by purchase, having paid an immense price for it. “The Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.” Because the Lord’s portion was under mortgage, therefore the Only-Begotten Son laid down His life as the purchase price and redeemed His people to be the Lord’s portion forever and ever. Henceforth it is said to all Believers, “You are not your own; you are bought with a price.” Every acre of God’s farm cost the Savior bloody sweat— yes, the blood of His heart! He loved us and gave Himself for us—that is the price He paid!