Growth comes from God 27/08/2021

I took this photo of a ploughed field when Janie and I were travelling through France in 2011. If this field is going to produce a harvest, it will require God to do his work.

The Corinthians were making the mistake which Christians have made throughout the centuries. They were making too much of men - and elevating them to a status which they did not deserve. Most readers will know that I have been fairly heavily involved as a volunteer at the Keswick Convention. Among the many tasks I was given, I had to put out extra seats at Skiddaw Street to cope with the huge increase in attendance because of the popularity of certain speakers. There were two speakers in particular who caused logistical nightmares for management of Keswick Ministries as well as the Welcome Team. Our capacity was insufficient. Even putting the seats a bit closer (in the pre-Covid days) we could not find enough seats for this crowd of 'conventioners.' As site manager at Rawnsley, I had to close venues because the venue had reached capacity. I was very unpopular with some people because they had travelled far and had made a huge commitment to hear their favourite speaker.

In a sense, the Corinthians were doing the same thing. They were making too much of certain men and the role they had played in the formation of the church at Corinth. Paul had played a major role in founding the church. We have seen in a previous Day Share that he had spent at least 18 months in the city and had earned his keep while teaching the message of the cross to the Jews and Gentiles in the city. When the Jews rejected his teaching, he focussed his efforts on the Greeks (Gentiles). After Paul left the city, there was a visitor who was a much better speaker than Paul. He had a natural gift for public speaking whereas Paul seemed to have some issues in the PR department. I am not sure what his problem was but he did not seem to make a very good impression on some of his listeners.

For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.” [2 Corinthians 10: 10 ESV]

In sharp contrast, the new visitor to Corinth was a man named Apollos who was an orator. People liked to listen to his sermons. If he had been doing the Bible Readings at Keswick, the Welcome Team would have run out of seats in no time. I am not sure what it was about his preaching which was so appealing. Did he have good illustrations or did he quote from famous philosophers. But he soon gathered a following. He had many people who began to look down their noses on Paul as grossly inferior to their hero, Apollos. It is not easy to cope with this situation. There is nothing really spiritual about it. For a start it is not good for the Apollos to be elevated too much so that they are in danger of becoming proud. It is equally hard for the Pauls to feel slighted and rejected even though they have been faithful in their service.

Paul is dealing with this situation in these verses and the points he makes are relevant to us today.

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. [2 Corinthians 3:5-7 ESV]

Paul makes two very valid points. Both he and Apollos are only servants. It is good to remember that today. There is always the danger that we will put a servant of the Lord on a pedestal and begin to worship him or her or give them too much glory. There is nothing wrong with showing gratitude to a man or a woman who has provided helpful support to you in your Christian pathway. But we need to remember that they are only servants. My father had a wee saying which went like this - the best of men are only men at their best. We are often disappointed when we discover that someone we have admired so much is not infallible. By that I mean that they are human and make mistakes and are only sinners saved by grace.

The second point is that no matter how brilliant the speaker is, s/he will accomplish nothing unless God is active in the hearts and minds of the hearers. Paul uses a metaphor to make his point. Paul says that he was the one who planted the crop and Apollos provided much needed water. But the growth in the church was a work of God. In the same way as a miracle takes place in the seed that is sown in the ground and it germinates and begins to shoot out of the ground, so there is a miracle takes place in our hearts. It is a work of God. It is God who brings about growth. When someone becomes a Christian, there is often a human chain involved. It is not common for only one person to be the agent God uses to bring about a conversion. It may have begun with a grandparent who was a Christian or a Christian neighbour who made a deep impression on Katy. There may have been Christian friends who witnessed to her sometimes half-heartedly or ineffectively so they thought. The preaching on that Sunday was the next link in that chain and the dear lady who 'pointed Katy to the Lord' was the last link in the chain. Oh, I forgot to mention that someone had prayed for Katy when she was just a child that she would grow up to become a Christian. In all of this there is a basic principle - which I labelled imperative divine agency. Unless God does a work by His Holy Spirit in Katy's life, all the witnessing and the preaching and the praying will be pointless.

We need to remember this simple lesson. In an age of celebrity, there is a danger that we try to turn Bible teachers into celebrities and forget that their efforts will be futile unless God does His work in the heart of the individuals.