So from 1 Corinthians 3, starting at verse 5, here the word of God, Paul says, What then is the Pallos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believe, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted a Pallos watered, but God was causing the growth, so that neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, but each will receive his own reward according to his labor, for where God's fellow workers, your God's field, God's building, let me pray. Holy Spirit, I pray now that you would simply come and you would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, that they might hear your gospel. I pray that you would come and you would give us a correct perspective on what it means to be a minister in your name, amen. If you're visiting, I am, I've been preaching through 1 Corinthians to me, it seems like a long time, several months now, and the problem with the Corinthians, just for a brief background, the problem with the Corinthians church was this, you see Paul went into the city of Corinth, which is an extremely secular city, and he told them the story of Jesus, the story of Jesus life, and the story of Jesus' death on the cross, and the story of Jesus' resurrection, and the Corinthians in large part bought it. They embraced that story, and if you will, they became Christians, and yet it's obvious from this letter that although they became Christians, although they sort of trusted Jesus, they sort of said the sinner's prayer, they didn't get it, and the reason you know that they didn't get it, that they didn't understand the gospel, they didn't understand the application at least of the gospel to their lives, is that their lives were defined by arrogance and division. Okay? They were extremely arrogance, and they were extremely divided, and the irony is they were extremely arrogant and extremely divided about who was the best pastor in their church, right? They were the kind of church that would come to church sort of as it was beginning, and they would look at the bulletin and see who was preaching that day, right? And if it was their favorite preacher, they'd stay, and if it wasn't, you know, they would go out and write bikes or something. I know that doesn't happen here. So anyhow, Paul takes the opportunity, since their main division, their main argument, their main arrogance, is about the pastor they follow, Paul's takes the opportunity this morning to sort of give them a glimpse into what it even means to be a pastor, right? In some sense, he's told them the whole time, you guys don't get the gospel, you just don't understand it. And today, he's going to say, not only do you not understand the application of the gospel to your lives, but you, by virtue of the fact you're arguing about who is the best pastor, you don't even understand the nature of what it means to be a pastor, right? And so for me, it's a little bit funky, right? It's because I'm a pastor, and now I have to preach about what it means to be a pastor, right? So of course, it's going to be all easy and good. But really, it's important for you. It's incredibly important for you to hear what it means to be a pastor, and there are a couple of reasons for that. The first reason is that grace, church, Seattle is filled with innumerable pastors. What do I mean by that? Remember in Revelation 5, when all the nations are gathered around Jesus, it says that you have won them to be a kingdom of priests. That according to the Protestant tradition, the way we read the Bible is that every believer, if you believe in Jesus, that at that moment, you become a priest. Your job at that time is to mediate the presence of Jesus to those around you. That if you are a believer in Jesus, you are in fact a pastor at some level. You are responsible for caring for other people, okay? And I'm taking these from the most important to the least important, okay? So the primary important person that needs to know what it means to be a pastor is simply you, the average Joe, if you will. The second level of pastors we have here are community group leaders. The nerve center and backbone of our church is this network of community groups. You have the public schools sort of always complaining that there's too high a ratio of students to teachers. And because there's such a high ratio of students to teachers, that there's just each student doesn't get enough time. Well, grace, Seattle, we recognize that. That's across the board in every area of human life. So here, we have community groups in which late ministers, you people, community group leaders, pastor each other. There are groups of 10 to 12 people in the community group leaders who are responsible for not only teaching you the gospel, but for caring for you, for taking care of you, for bringing you meals when you're sick, all of these things, that's the responsibility of the community group leader. We have another level of pastors, right? We have shepherds and elders. The shepherds and elders, their job is to take care of the community group leaders, right? They go to the community group leaders and say, what can I do for you? How can I help you serve your people? And then finally, last, at the bottom of the pecking order, and I'm not saying this in order to be false, it's with the Bible teachers, at the very bottom of the pecking order, at the end of the procession, Paul would say, is me, and your staff, that the staff exists to support all of you, that the pastor, the man, his responsibility is really to be the lowest guy in the totem pole and to sort of support all of you. What do you need from us? In some sense, you need to hear what it means to be a pastor, because every one of you here pastors at some level. The other reason you need to know is because most people in church, and frankly, most people outside of the church, secular people, I'm believing people, all of them, all of us, have what I call the Cool Hand Luke syndrome. Remember Cool Hand Luke? I talked about it about a month ago, and Cool Hand Luke, you have this chain gang of basically men who are desperate for hope. Remember, of course, they're in a chain gang, so they're all losers at some level, but in the movie, of course, they really make them out to be losers. So they're all in the chain gang, they have no hope, they have no sort of comfort, and then all the sudden Paul Newman comes and Paul Newman writes, he's cool, so Paul Newman comes, and he starts doing things that are just the other guys only dream about doing. Remember, he placed the card game at the beginning, and he that never shows his cards. In fact, I don't know if he ever looks at them, and he's in this poker game, the whole chain gang is betting, they're throwing in their money, and every time he says, how I don't know how to work some poker, but every time he says, I call, he ups them, he keeps upping, upping, upping the bet, and so the bet gets so big, all of the money in the whole chain gang, and everyone in the whole chain gang folds, and they say, let us see your cards Luke, and he turns them over, he's got nothing, and that's where he gets his name. Remember, the other guy goes, ooh, you're cool, so he gets it, and they eat, remember, he eats 50 eggs, they're all talking about something, and he says, I can eat 50 eggs in an hour, and that's one of the most beautiful scenes in movie history, where he eats 50 hard boiled eggs, and his reputation is growing, right, that Luke can do anything, and then he escapes, and remember he escapes, and he sends him a picture of himself with the two beautiful women, it was really fake, because he gets brought back, but they're still proud of him nonetheless. And then he escapes again, and every time he escapes, these guys are more and more and more enamored with how cool Luke is, and to remember final afters, last escape, what happens? The guards bring him back, and they take him outside in front of the whole prison, and one of the guards says, Luke, what's your dirt doing in the warden's hole? Friends just said this is the ground, so Luke has to dig a huge hole, and all the dirt's in a pile, and then the guards says, Luke, what's all your dirt doing in my yard? And so for 24 hours, Luke digs a hole, and fills it up, digs a hole, and fills it up till finally he is utterly and completely broken. Remember, he's crying, he holds on to the guards' leg, and says, please, please, please, don't do this to me anymore, and he's broken, and all these prisoners are completely devastated, and remember when Luke goes in, he desperately needs help, and what do all the prisoners do? They scorn him, they don't want to have anything to do with him, why? Because they put all their hope in him, and when he couldn't deliver the goods, when he screwed up, they couldn't handle it, and they scorned him, and that happens all the time in the church. Remember Jimmy Swagger? Jimmy Swagger, for his context, Southern Louisiana was a great pastor, he really was. Many people became Christians, he started ministries, he fed more people than you and I, ever will feed, he started colleges, and yet what happened when he committed adultery? Those who are closest to him, those who are his right hand men, what do they do to him? They scorned him, not only they scorned him, they came on television and told the country how bad a person he was. Now why did they do that? How in a heartbeat can they go from being his greatest supporters to be in his greatest enemies, and his greatest hardship? And the answer is easy, it's because their hope was misplaced. They put all of their hope in Jimmy's ability to pull this thing off, and when he screwed up, their hopes were dashed. Even in a church like ours, I can't imagine a church in which a pastor has more encouragement than I do. I mean that. However, given the statistical probability that I will screw up at some point, something over 100%, you will be devastated or not devastated depending on where your hope lies. Because if your hope is in me, your pastor, or if your hope is in the shepherds, or if your hope is in your community group, they're going to screw up and you're going to be devastated. Because of that, you need to know the proper role, the proper perspective of a pastor, and so that's what I'm going to talk about this morning. Is what is the place of a pastor? I'm going to talk about three things. The first thing I'm going to talk about is basically the pastor's role. What is the pastor's place in the church? The second thing is the pastor's perspective on ministry, and the third thing is the pastor's partnership with other people. So all of that said, let's look first at the pastor's position in verse 5. Paul asks a rhetorical question and answers it. He says, what then is Apollo's and what is Paul's servants, through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one? Now, he asked this great question at the beginning, and if he stopped, the answers would not actually be very pretty. He says, what is Apollo's? What is Paul? The Bible says very little about Apollo's, except this, that he was a screw-up. Apollo's apparently was one of the greatest preachers that the New Testament ever knew. However, he had a problem. In Acts 18, we find out his problem, that Apollo preached the Bible, but he didn't preach the gospel. You see, Apollo's was a great communicator, and he came into the synagogue, and he was preaching the Bible, the likes of which no one had ever heard, and everyone was wild. The only problem is, it says in the book of Acts, that he did not know Jesus. He did not know Jesus was the Messiah, so he preached the Bible, and everyone was wild. But he didn't preach the gospel, because he didn't know Jesus. And what is very humbling about Apollo is that these two tent makers, Priscilla and Aquila, had to pull him aside and say, you know, Apollo's your great preacher. You know, I like the thing you did with the Blair Witch, it was really impressive. You know, all of that stuff, but you don't know Jesus, and if you don't know Jesus, all of this Bible teaching is nothing. And so in some sense, Apollo's had this reputation of on one hand being great, but on the other hand of being corrected by very humble tent makers, Priscilla and Aquila. You know, it's sort of like all the pastors would go to the pastors meetings and say, Apollo's had to be corrected by a girl, you know, all that kind of stuff. So Apollo's did not have a great reputation. Now the next question, who is Paul? He says, what is Apollo's? He's a preacher who had to be corrected. Who is Paul? Now Paul, this might be shocking to some of you, but Paul would have been the David Berkowitz of Jerusalem. Remember David Berkowitz? Many of you are too young. David Berkowitz is the son of Sam, one of the most notorious serial killers in the history of our country. Why do I say that? The other night, I was watching, I was flipping through channels before I went to bed, and there was, I was shocked because I saw, I hit this Larry King interview, and Larry King was not sitting at Gras's desk with his suspended, but he was sitting in a prison. And the person sitting across from him was David Berkowitz. And David Berkowitz had this big Bible in his lap, so of course that caught my attention. And I thought, I wonder what this is about. And I just caught it at the point where apparently they have been talking about Berkowitz's faith, and Larry King said to David Berkowitz. He says, now how did the guy see it perceive you? Hit you out with Jewish serial killer. Let's tell them about Jeeps. And Berkowitz, he didn't bat an eyelash. He said, it's really not true. Not that odd. He said, the precedent has already been set. And of course, Larry King's like, you named me one Jewish serial killer who's ever told people about Jesus. And Berkowitz just said, Paul, remember, Paul was very high, and he was very noble, and he had an Ivy League education, but his job was systematically going through Jerusalem and killing Christians. That is by definition a serial killer. So here is Paul, a serial killer. And so why does Paul make this point? What is Paul? What is Paul? You see, they were bragging about these guys, and Paul says, we are not superstars, but in fact, we are the worst of all sinners who have been embraced by Jesus. And because of that, we are now servants. We are servants through whom you believe. What does it mean to be a servant? Basically, what it means to be a servant is this, is that you are a conduit of grace. You are a conduit of grace as opposed to being a bucket. I have a friend in, he's from Nashville, he's in Florida now, he subscribes to what he calls plumbing theology. And by plumbing theology, basically, he makes the point that every Christian is either a pipe for a bucket. See, if you're a pipe, what you believe is that God's grace is never ending, that his stream is never ending, and then he gives more than you could ever imagine. And so therefore, you can just let it flow through your life into the lives of others. You don't have to hoard it. Most Christians, though, he would make the case our buckets. They just receive and receive and receive and receive and receive. And every now and then, when the bucket gets bold, they let a little bit spill over, but other than that, they don't give anything. I'm not talking about money, I'm talking about your lives. So Paul says that I am simply a pipe. I'm a conduit. I am someone through whom God has chosen to give you the grace of Jesus. And each one, as God gave to each one the opportunity, what he's talking about here is that each minister, each pastor, is simply given different gifts and different places in which they are conduits of grace. So that's where he goes next. So first he talks about his position. And his position is this. It is not one of a superstar. It is not one of being the man, but in fact it is one of being a servant that I'm just a conduit or a pipe. The second thing he does is he gives his perspective on what it means to be a pastor. And so if you would look at me with verses 6 through 7, he says, I planted a polished water, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. Basically, he lays out these roles. And he says, I planted Paul. He says, I planted. Now to digress a little bit, I just want to make the point that Paul comes in and says I planted. What he's talking about is churches. You see, Paul was considered an evangelist. And as an evangelist, what Paul saw his task to do was not simply to go out on the street and hand out tracks to people because you know what that ultimately doesn't mean anything. What Paul saw his job is doing was to reach people for Jesus and to form churches. He planted churches because people come to know Jesus, not by a track. They come to know Jesus by being in a relationship with other people who know Jesus. And they come to understand the gospel, not by reading a holy Joe tracks, but they come to understand the gospel by seeing it lived out and worked out in the lives of people. So Paul says, I came into Corinth and I planted. I established this thing called the church and then Apollo came and he watered. Apollo came and he continued the ministry. He continued to preach and to build up the church and apparently Apollo really was a great preacher. But you can just imagine the Corinthians sitting around over a beer arguing about who was a better preacher. Paul or Apollo? Right, I know people do that. They do that all the time. You know, they compare preachers. And so anyhow, imagine them arguing about that or arguing about how they should do things. Right, some people saying, well, when Paul came, Paul said always had to be this way. And other people saying, well, Apollo is here now and he's the man. So we should do it this way. And they're all arguing and Paul says to them, you guys don't get it. I planted Apollo's water. But here's the correct perspective. God caused the growth. That God caused the growth. In some sense, Paul is saying that my job is simply to do that which I am called to do and it is God's job to do everything else. And what Paul is doing here is not just stating his humility, but he is stating his faith in the gospel. Right, remember Jesus said in Matthew 16, the disciples were all worried because Jesus said I'm going to suffer and die. And Jesus said to them, I will build my church. And the gates of hell will not come against us. And what Paul is saying, my job is simply to do my job. And Jesus has promised that he will build his church. There's nothing fancy about it. It's very interesting because people call us now from all over the country. And they ask me, you know, we hear that something really cool is happening in Seattle. Can you give us your method? What did you do to make this happen? And I say, I know they always think I'm lying to them. I say, you know, I don't know. And they'll say, oh, come on, you had to do something. There has to be some kind of method, some kind of trick, if you will. And I said, no, you know, I just came and started gathering people and telling them about Jesus, you know, and Jim Danceller. He just does worship in the community group leaders just lead. There's nothing fancy at all. And they don't believe me because people want. They want sort of the quick fix. They want the quick growth. You know, there's a multi million dollar industry for church growth. The latest and greatest tricks on how to make your church grow, how to make it bigger. And what you know of what the church needs to learn in these days is the same less than the coffee growers are learning now. If you read Atlantic Monthly, I think it was the last issue. One of the title of the cover articles was, can coffee save the rainforest? Well, coffee growers are learning is for one thing. In its natural state, coffee grows in the rainforest. And it grows in the shade. And you don't have to fertilize it. You don't have to do anything. You just plant it and water it in the rainforest takes care of the rest. And by doing that, it produces the best coffee possible. And not only does it produce the best coffee possible, the best quality product, but on top of that, the plants will live for generations 50 or 75 or 100 years. However, given the good capitalists that we are, we figured out that if we take coffee and we move it out to the sun and we dump chemical fertilizers all over it that it grows 10 times as fast produces 100 times more beans and we make a lot more money. But you know the problem is the coffee is not as good for one. And for two, you know, the plants only live for 10 years. So you can do the tricks. You can do all the methods with the coffee, but it ends up with a worst product that doesn't last. And that's Paul's point. That's his point for the church. You see, we tend to think. I know I tend to think as a pastor I've got to make something happen. There's got to be some trick. There's got to be something that can help us move to the next step. It can help us grow. And what Paul says and what the Bible says is Tommy, your job is simply to be Tommy. Your job as a pastor is to tell people about Jesus and your job as a community group leader is to pastor your people and your job. If you're an accountant is to be an accountant, your job. If you're a paramedic or a firefighter is to be a firefighter and by doing that and living the gospel, the rest is up to God. You see, what Paul is saying here primarily is that my job as a pastor primarily is not to bust my butt and gut it out, but it is simply to believe the gospel. We tend to talk about it in our circles. If you ever go to a pastor's conference, they say, what a pastor needs to be. The best pastors are faithful. And what they mean by that is the best pastors are beautiful. They gut it out. They really stick in there even one times or hard. And what Paul is saying is that the best pastors are faithful, but he's talking about it in the original sense of the word. When the word faithful surfaced in the 14th century, it meant full of faith that Paul went out and planted churches, not because he was beautiful and not because he was gutting it out, but because he was full of faith. The evidence that he was full of faith was the fact that he went. He said, you know what God has called me? I'm going to go and that's all I can do. And so all of that is the case. The God causes the growth and each pastor has a different job and God causing the growth. What does that mean? What does that lead us? Well, it leads us to this thing called partnership. So look at me finally. I think as verses 8 and 9 for Paul's perspective on partnership. And he says in verse 8, he says, now he who plants and he who waters are one, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers and you are God's field, God's building. Basically what Paul says here is that he says, look at verse 8, the first sentence, he says, now he who plants and he who waters are one. Is mean to the same person what he means by there in the Greek is that they're unified and purpose. That the one who plants is a different job than the one who waters, but the fact is they're both shooting for the same end. That the same end in mind and the end that they have in mind is that people would understand the gospel. And in accomplishing this end, they both have different jobs. And since they have different jobs, Paul says that all you responsible for is pleasing God. You're not responsible for pleasing the people in your congregation. You're not responsible for competing with other ministers and looking and saying, man, that guy is so much better than me. He's much better a preacher. He says that each one does his job and each one will get his own reward. That is that all you need to be concerned about is pleasing God. And Paul says this, that only when you come to the conclusion that my only job, the only thing that drives me is pleasing God, then you can begin to work together with other people. Then you can work together. It's very interesting because in this passage Paul preempts a steving cubby by about 2,000 years. He says that we are gods and that means owns. He doesn't mean you're fellow workers with God. He means that we are gods that is God owns us, fellow workers. And the word here is suner goi. That we are gods suner goi from which we get the word synergy. And what Paul is getting at is the same thing that cubby gets at in his book. Remember in 7 habits of highly effective people, you know, I can never follow the time management stuff. He lays out, you know, that's my weakness. Nonetheless, he's very perceptive, right, because he says basically there's three ways that people deal with each other. And the first way is defensive. People look at each other and every situation is when lose. Either I'm right or I'm wrong or you're right or you're wrong and we're going to stand this room and we're going to fight it out until someone walks away a winter and someone is dead. And that's how most people work, right? Or a lot of people work. That they go into every situation defensively. That life is a win-lose situation. So when I go in church, I have an idea for a program that either I'm going to win or I'm going to leave the church. Now if we're a little bit more, you know, nice than that, cubby says, you are a compromiser. And he doesn't mean that in a bad sense. He says people, the first level of communication is defensive. This second line is compromise where you walk into a situation and you sort of know it's like negotiating. You know what you're willing to give up before you walk in there, but you're going to push for everything anyway. So you go in and you throw your whole program out and people don't buy it all. So you'll compromise. You'll give and take a little bit. It's when the church you have this give and take. But you know the problem with that is you never really trust the other person. You never really trust that they're proactively out to do your good. You never trust that their motivations are good. And so what you do is you're going to put a stake in the ground for what you're not willing to move for, but you'll compromise on the things that are on the edge. And Stephen Jay cubby says, and Paul says, that that's not how the gospel works. cubby says in life, the best, the way things work best is when you work you have synergy. And what cubby means by synergy is that you recognize the other people's gifts. You recognize that they have gifts and abilities that you never could imagine having. And that God needs those gifts in the church. And that you have gifts that they don't have. And instead of being defensive, and even instead of compromising, you go in saying, how can we accomplish the same end together? How can I use your gifts? How can your gifts and my gifts be both most utilized to the greater sake of the gospel? But you can only do that if you understand the gospel. You know, you can't go into a situation saying, you know what, I'm going to go in and I'm just going to let the other person exercise their gifts any way they want to. And we're going to work together, we're going to do it. You can only do that if you understand the gospel, right? Because most people are incredibly insecure. You can only have win-win situation if you're secure. And most people are incredibly insecure. And the reason they're insecure is they're not sure A, that you love them, but they're really not sure that God loves them. They're not sure that when Jesus says, if you trust me, I will forgive your sins and I will never, ever let you go. I will never fail you or forsake you. They really don't believe that. And since they don't believe that, life for them is either defensive or it is compromise. But still in compromise there are just these things that you can't give up just in case. And what Paul says is that the pastor, more and more, I'm not saying that I do this perfectly, but the pastor ought to be the one who exhibits an example of this sort of win-win attitude, this synergy. Why? Because the pastor believes the gospel, he should. The pastor models for you, you know, since I believe the gospel nothing's the end of the world. So as you go through this week, and the next time you're sort of upset at me, or upset at your community group leader, or upset at each other, you've got to ask yourself, what is it about the gospel that I'm not getting here? What is it? Let me pray. Jesus, I would pray that you would come, and you would simply apply the gospel to our hearts, that you would teach us to pastor each other, and you would apply the gospel to our hearts in such a way that we would be able to pastor each other, that we could decompose of grace for each other. We thank you for this, and we praise you in your name. Amen.