Jump In

1 Corinthians 3:1-9New International Version (NIV)

The Church and Its Leaders

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?

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.

Cheyanne and I have been watching this new show called “Hunted.”  The premise is that 9 teams of 2 people per team are given a one hour head start over some of the absolute best fugitive hunters on the planet.  If you can stay on the run for 28 days you will be given $250k.  It seems easy enough, right?  And then you start seeing all these teams getting caught within 10-15 days.  So I laugh at their silly mistakes that lead to their capture.  The whole time I am thinking “I could do this”.  These people are making some pretty stupid mistakes.  For example, one of the teams had made it to day 14, the halfway point and wanted to celebrate by going to Taco Bell.  Mind you, the hunters were really no where near their trail.  They were camping way off the beaten path and were really doing well until they decided they needed Taco Bell.  The hunters had managed to get the license plate a while ago but had lost track of the vehicle since then.  But once these ladies started on their journey to Taco Bell, the LPR’s starting lighting up.  Do you know what a LPR is?  I didn’t until the other night.  It’s a License Plate Reader.  They are cameras and computer programs that do nothing except log license plates at certain checkpoints in real time.  The ladies weren’t even done eating their Taco Bell by the time the hunters had caught up to them.  Some of the other teams have gotten caught by the hunters who put up fake “wanted” posters on their social media profiles and offered a reward.  I mean, these hunters can use some pretty dirty tricks to get help finding these people.  After watching for a few weeks, I am not nearly as confident as I once was in my ability to do well in this game.  The object of the game seemed much easier than the reality of it.  Honestly, I think I could win the money by telling others how to do it from the comfort of my couch but I am not so confident in my own ability.

These words from Paul really hit me this week as I struggled with a few things.  God reminded me of my infancy.  He reminded me that I am like the infant who still drinks milk instead of eating solid food.  And the biggest slap to the face, “You are still worldly.  For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?”  Man, that one hurt.  That one hit hard.  If I see some political post that I don’t agree with, I research it the facts trying to prove its merit or hopefully find that it’s altogether false just so I can throw it in the face of another person.  I find myself trying to “win” arguments instead of seeing where the other side is coming from at times.  I lose sight of God.  I go back to the baby’s milk when I thought I was ready for solid food.  It seems that as soon as God has primed me to do something great, to advance me from spiritual infancy into something greater, I resort to falling back into my old ways.  I lose sight of the direction God is pointing me and decide to do it my way instead of His.  It’s like I know I am ready to be weaned off the milk but refuse to do it.  I am reminded of the first time I jumped off the diving board in the deep end of the pool.  I wanted to do it so bad but chickened out so many times before making the leap.  Later that day, I was diving and having so much fun with my friends.  Fun and greatness I missed out on for so long because I refused to jump.  

C.S. Lewis says, “Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with ever fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”  We must fully give of ourselves, wean ourselves from the milk, jump in the pool.  When we do this everyday, we will be as close to God as we can possibly be on this earth.  But the comforts of only giving part of ourselves to God is holding us back.  We may sit down and dangle our feet in the water but still refuse to jump.  We often think what we are doing is “good enough.”  Paul reminds us that we are co-workers in God’s service, we are His field, His building.  I love the point Paul is making here.  The Corinthians are arguing over whose version of Christianity to follow, Apollos or Paul.  Paul says it does not matter!  “I [Paul] planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.  So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”  

At this point, you may be thinking, “Didn’t he just say last week that he sometimes makes these sermons too complicated because he tries to throw too many things in at once...”  And you would be correct if I do not tie them together.  Personally, my spiritually infancy leads me to reaching out to a social media post that I do not agree with rather than reaching out to someone whom I can tell is in need of help.  I knew something felt off and I did absolutely nothing about it.  That is the 2017 version of exactly what Paul is referring to in the first half of our scripture this morning.  We stand more than ready to defend our values, the officials we have elected, we will defend our American pride and the honor of our family but yet we won’t reach out a hand to someone we know when they need us most even on social media.  We keep saying we are ready for solid food and we aren’t.  Whether it be a calf or a child, weaning is a difficult thing.  There is a bond there that needs to be broken in order for it to flourish.  Within the realm of that bond there is comfort, stability and knowing where your nourishment comes from.  It’s like standing at the edge of the diving board or pool.  Pointing out the mistakes of others from the comfort of your couch is equal to standing next to the pool.  Laughing at someone going to Taco Bell instead of staying hidden is like gossiping about a co-worker behind their back.  It is easy to do from the edge of the pool, still suckling on the bottle of milk.  It’s easy to say that life is too busy to be a regular church attendee.  It’s easier to see yourself as holier and more pious than others instead of getting your hands dirty.  It’s easier for something foreign to stay foreign rather than taking the time to get to know more about it.  We are still suckling on the bottle and God is telling us there is so much more.  We are attached to the comfort and stability instead of giving it up to see what God could do with us if we were on solid food.  Imagine the greatness God could accomplish if we would no longer stood at the edge of the diving board and we would jump.  Imagine if we looked at one another as co-workers in God’s service.  That we are His field, His building.  William Barclay says, “God uses human instruments to bring to men the message of his truth and love; but it is he alone who wakes the hearts of people to new life.  As he alone created the heart, so he alone can re-create it.”  The time has come for you and I to get off that couch, to stop simply pointing out the mistakes of others and we need to jump in.  As Lewis said, we need to give up our selves so we can find our real selves.  We see so much wrong with the world we live in today and we think we cannot do anything about it.  Well, you are right, I may plant the seed, you may water it but God will make it grow for He is the one who can do something about it.  We are too busy standing on that diving board holding that bottle to neither plant the seed nor water it.  There is a hunter out there that will try to derail our success, he will tell us we are trying to accomplish the impossible, that it’s not even worth our time.  Not true.  He will use all his tricks to trip us up.  But if we jump, if we give God all of who we are, if we give up all of our selves, there is nothing He cannot accomplish.  Absolutely nothing.  Amen.