Worship

Pentecost 7                          July 12, 2026
1 Corinthians 3:5-11               Pastor Wolfe

Many famers, but one seed.
Many builders, but one foundation.

Paul’s words in these verses remind us of something significant that makes Christians different from everyone else. God is the center and doer of everything in his Church. We are blessed to receive and believe his promises. We are privileged to praise and sing and serve. But the power, the growth, the salvation, the foundation – everything we look for and everything we build on – all of it belongs to God alone.

To make his point simply, Paul reminds us of these truths with two vivid pictures: one of farming and one of building. Both pictures show us how the work of the Church gets done. With many people working for one purpose. But behind it all there is one God doing all the blessing. Today, we meditate on Paul’s inspired words under the theme: “Many farmers, but one seed. Many builders, but one foundation.”

Paul begins with the farming picture so we will too. He writes, “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. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow.”

Right away Paul confronts a sin that still clings to Christians today: pride in our own works and favoritism toward certain leaders. The Corinthian congregation was perhaps the most richly blessed of all the churches in the 1st century. They had amazing spiritual gifts and tremendous leaders. But instead of celebrating these things together they were dividing themselves into factions. “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas.” Yes, Paul had brought the seed of the Word to them. And it seems Apollos might have been a more eloquent speaker. Peter was first one of the original Twelve. But none of them mattered as much as the Word they were delivering. They were treating pastors as celebrities, as if salvation depended on the preacher’s personality or skill rather than the Word’s power.

Paul wouldn’t not allow it. “What is Paul? What is Apollos?” In other words: Who do you think we are? We are nothing but servants. We’re farmers. Tools in the hand of God. Gardeners and farmers can put all the seed in the ground they want – if God doesn’t send rain and sunshine at the proper time, the planter’s work is for nothing.

There is a warning here for pastors and for members. Satan grabs a lot of souls by making ministry a popularity contest. Churches built around personalities instead of Scriptural truth tend to grow quickly like the plants in shallow soil in Jesus’ parable. But when the leader leaves, or worse, falls, then that shallow foundation allows Satan to pull souls up by the handful. So yes, I want to be loved. And I know Pastor Pedersen and Pastor Enter do too. And yes, pastors and members have and form close bonds, especially when we get to be the ones to welcome people into the faith and help people grow more deeply into the faith. But do you know what good pastors really want? We want you to love the Word we preach more than you love us. We want you to connect to the Savior first. Then the church where that Savior is preached. And only then to us as the messengers. Because what is Wolfe, or Pedersen, or Enter? We plant, we water, but it is God who makes you grow in faith through the Word.

But there is a danger on the other side of this picture as well. Imagine a farmer who doesn’t work hard. He’s slow to get his seed in the ground. He doesn’t take care of his fields. He harvests the crops when he gets around to it. No matter how perfectly God sends the sun and the rain, that crop will never yield the harvest God intends for it either. So, while the credit and the glory for the blessings of the church go to God, it would be a great and terrible sin to just sit on our hands and wait for him to do it without our effort. After all, think of Jesus’ commands for us to work. To “GO and make disciples.” To “work while it is day before the night comes when we can work no more.” There is urgency to this planting and watering that God gives us to do.

So your task today is not to determine if you are a laborer in God’s harvest fields, but to consider what kind of laborer God has made you to be. Perhaps you are a planter of seeds, starting conversations everywhere you go, inviting stranger to worship and coworkers to church. Or maybe you’re a waterer, nurturing the gentle faith of our church’s children. Or you could be comforting the lonely and hurting with visits. Leading, encouraging, giving, showing hospitality. The list of labors is endless, but God promises a reward to all the faithful who are working the field. Not a place in heaven for those who work (Jesus has won that completely for us with HIS work). No, our reward is seeing his work in others. In seeing their souls saved with outs.

Walk the narrow road that gives praise to God for those who serve you and for the privilege of serving in the ways you can. But let us never boast in anything but the Lord. Let us work, and work hard, at planting and watering and nourishing the Word that makes us different. But let all the glory be heaped on the God who works first and most. It’s his field. His seed. His harvest.

In verse nine, as Paul makes his central point that we are all co-workers in God’s service, he changes his picture. The seed in the field is, in a sense, a picture of how God brings people into the faith. Paul’s image of the church as a building reminds us that we are all built together in one place on one foundation. He describes the founding and ministry at Corinth in verse 10. “By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it.”

Every building needs a foundation. Paul laid that foundation in Corinth by preaching Christ. On his third missionary journey he came to them proclaiming Christ, and him crucified. He showed them their sin, and Christ’s payment for it on the cross. He marveled with them at the resurrection from the dead that proved the power of the Son of God to save. He taught the pure Gospel of Christ. And after him, Apollos and others had taught faithfully and truthfully too.

And now Paul reminds them: “Each one should build with care.” Why? Because not every building material is good. Not every teaching is solid. Not every idea is safe and not every trend is wise. The Corinthians were tempted to build with human wisdom, worldly philosophy, and personal preference. They were tempted to add their own ideas to the foundation. They were tempted to treat the church like a human organization rather than the temple of God.

We face the same temptation. We live in a world that constantly pressures the church to adjust its message, soften its teachings, or shift its foundation. We hear voices saying: “Don’t talk so much about sin. Don’t emphasize repentance. Don’t insist on doctrine. Don’t cling to the Scriptures. Don’t preach Christ crucified—preach something more appealing, more modern, more popular.”

But Paul warns us: If you build on anything other than Christ, the building will collapse. If you trust anything other than His Word, the structure will crack. If you add human ideas to the foundation, the whole thing becomes unstable. With these words Paul reminds us that budgets and programs and buildings are all secondary to the heart of the church. The center of our faith. The rock beneath our feet. The foundation of Christ that cannot crack, shift, or crumble.

And so while there are many builders in the church – pastors, teachers, lay men and women who serve and work and strive – once again we find that these many builders all have one purpose. Not to direct us to our own work or our own ideas or our own righteousness. No, we build on the foundation of Christ revealed in his Word.

So whether Paul speaks of farming or building, the message is the same: We may be the workers, but God does the work. He gives the growth. He lays the foundation. And he does it all by the Spirit’s work through the Word. This little thing that truly is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe.

We would be blessed simply to receive it and believe it. To know that our sins are forgiven and our place in heaven is reserved for us by Christ’s work and promise. That truly would be enough to make us so different from so many around us. But God gives us more. In grace he allows us to participate. He lets us plant and water with the Word. He lets us build and serve on that foundation of Jesus. We witness. We encourage. We love and help one another. Not because he needs us, but because he loves us.

So Christians, remember this week how different you are by the Word of God. Be free of pride in yourself. Let go of favoritism and instead cherish every true and faithful preacher and teacher of the Word. No matter how well or imperfectly they deliver it, they bring God’s great Gospel treasure to you in their jars of clay. Let us be the many farmers sharing the one seed. Let us be the many builders working on the one foundation. That unity of hope and purpose, brothers and sisters, makes us different. Blessedly different. To God be the glory. Amen.