The Corinthian church is an outstanding example in the New Testament of deep spiritual charismatic gifts and ministries coexisting with all of the problems that come in a church on all levels. They had a lot of problems, and Paul was very quick to instruct them, to rebuke them, and to commend them. When you realize the nature of the church that came forth at that seaport of Corinth where many of them had been fornicators, adulterers and prostitutes, of all manner of evil as the epistle indicates, for these people to come into divine order was quite outstanding.
One of the problems that existed there was the forerunner of denominationalism. Some said, “We are of Apollos” because they loved the oratory Apollos could give; he was a brilliant speaker. Some said, “We are of Cephas” for they liked Peter’s ministry. Others said, “We are of Paul.” And others, who were super spiritual, said, “We are of Christ,” but that was not said in real humility.
This conflict resulted in Paul saying: So then let no one boast in men. For all things belong to you (Paul was referring to the ministries), Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all things belong to you, and you belong to Christ; and Christ belongs to God. Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy. But to me it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself (this is in a strict legalistic sense), I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord.
Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of mens hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God. Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that in us you might learn not to exceed what is written, in order that no one of you might become arrogant in behalf of one against the other. I Corinthians 3:21–4:6.
The whole basis of judgment on a Christian has to be found not upon the total output of his life, as far as the quality of his work; there must be judgment which is more righteous than that. There isn’t anything as false as the idea that all people are created free and equal. That is not so—not by heredity or any other way. The great equalizer is this: God makes grace available to us, and by the very power and grace of God, no matter how handicapped or inferior we are on a human plane, we can become anything in God for which we dare to believe. It does not matter if we can see certain hindrances.
I am deeply impressed that when it comes to the word, there are people God is bringing forth who are better ministers of the word than pastors who have been trained for years in a seminary. The word some of our young men have been preaching is nothing short of fantastic. I am in awe at the level of prophecy and revelation that is coming forth. It must be the Lord’s doing; these are not those with formal training. It is not the background on a natural level that really makes the difference. We must understand what makes a man of God, or we will not know what basis God will have to judge us.
God has given us a word to minister which is the most wonderful of all, but it certainly will never be popular. How will God judge us? He cannot judge us by the results which have come forth numerically. There must be another way. God will judge our faithfulness. Faithfulness in what? Paul was trying to explain the whole basis in this passage. He said, Moreover, it is required in stewards (notice he did not say “ministers,” he said “stewards”), that a man be found faithful. I Corinthians 4:2.
What is the principle by which a church will be judged? We must understand first of all the basic teachings. The heavenly Father, in His heart, from the foundation of the world had made perfect provision for us. In the fullness of time Christ came forth and by one sacrifice hath forever perfected them that are sanctified (Hebrews 10:14). That is a finished, perfect provision. All things have been laid by the Father into the hand of the Son, and the Holy Spirit comes to administer of this fullness to us. We receive the Spirit which is of God that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God (I Corinthians 2:12).
With this being the foundation of our thinking, we realize the initiative is falling back on us to have faith. God is doing very little in such a sovereign way or by just arbitrarily answering prayers. God is doing very little of that. If a man goes to a banker and says to him, “Give me five hundred dollars,” the banker will give him nothing. But if the man has a good account, he can write a check for that amount and it will be given to him. God will not give you anything, if you think, “Well, I need it. I deserve it. I have to have it.” A lot of prayers are just so much unbelief because they are not based upon an understanding that if you make synonymous in your mind the words “claim” and “appropriate” with your prayers, you take the beggar’s whine out of your prayers and begin to claim what God has for you.
God has made the perfect provision, and we will be judged for our faithfulness with what we know is available to us. If we have a great revelation from the Lord of what is available and we do not walk in it, we are guilty of unfaithfulness. To whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48). To whom little is given, little will be required. That does not make it easy on this body of people. It is better never to hear about this walk than to come in and embrace part of it and stumble over one or two little things that we cannot swallow nor understand or that are a personal dealing of God with us.
The people in the Corinthian church had a problem of looking to different men, but in just dealing with it Paul touched on a side issue: “It is required of stewards …” Who? Apollos, Cephas, Peter, and Paul himself. All of these men were stewards; they were stewards of the mysteries of God. They sensed the great provision that God had made, and they had to see that it was administered. It becomes criminal in the sight of God for you to hold in your heart the knowledge of divine pardon and divine fullness and to see a man in need of that and to hold it from him. You become guilty of that man’s judgment too. You just cannot say, “I’m not involved. It’s none of my business. I don’t care what anybody else does.” Neither can you be in this church and have constantly set before you the fullness and the blessing that the Lord has and say, “I am remote from this.” There must be a faithfulness and a stewardship.
Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. This leads me to understand the nature of my ministry. Whatever God shows me that is necessary for your edification, I cannot hold back. The church can grow rapidly, and have what seems to be a large, healthy congregation with no crisis, as we promote the move along. Or we can strive to receive a word from the Lord knowing that it will be like a bomb that will explode among the people and they will be living in a continual state of crisis.
“I don’t like that way of life.” But if that is what God is doing to jerk you out of the passivity and that period where you are not appropriating anything, you will have to say, “Lord, this is what I want. Deal with me Lord. Smite me Lord, and I’ll count it a kindness.” Open your heart to this because changes do not come to people who are in comfortable ruts. Changes only come to people who are continuously brought to a crisis of circumstances or a crisis of acting on the word. They see that word of God to their heart, they see themselves in the light of that word, and they must take a step in it. They have to do something about it.
We do not come to the house of God on the Lord’s day for just a comfortable little bit of encouragement to pep us up. We do have prophecies that serve that purpose. But we come that we might be instructed in the ways of the Lord, that we might be the people God wants us to be. We want to know our identity in God. We want to know our relationship to one another in Christ. We want to know that it becomes something more than just a matter of words: that it becomes a real deep divine principle operating in a practical realistic way.
Our stewardship becomes the basis of our judgment. Will God say to me, “Why didn’t you heal more people? Why didn’t you deliver more people?” He could not judge me on the basis of that because in the first place it is God who heals the people and it is He who delivers them. I am simply a steward. I dip into the great treasure house of the Lord and bring the treasure to somebody. When we lay hands on the sick, it is the Lord who is healing the sick. In the name of Jesus the sick are healed. Can we take credit for something that was a gift from God in the first place? How can we be judged for something that is wholly a gift. But in the administration of a gift we can be judged.
You are as those servants who received a talent and their Lord said, “Now use it.” If you do not use your talent, then you are judged for that. You must still give the talent back. You can go out and take the fullness that you know God has made available. If you are faithful with it, you are going out and doing business. It is an exchange in the spirit world. You invest. You put your time and effort in it with all faithfulness and look to God for His wisdom, and that talent gains another talent, and that talent gains another talent. Soon your talents are multiplying and growing and developing. It is marvelous to see it, but it comes through faithfulness.
When the work is done: I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. I Corinthians 3:6, 7. This becomes the basis of your judgment: how faithful you are in either planting or watering or what you are doing. This is it. No man can say, “My position is unimportant to God.” God is everything. You reach into the Lord’s fullness and with all faithfulness, you deliver it.
It really does not make much difference what people think of us. This is what Paul said, “I am not aware of anything against myself, but I do not have to answer to any human court; I have to answer to God. He will judge us in that day. The Lord will bring to light the hidden things, hidden in darkness, and disclose the motives of men’s hearts, the reason they did what they did” (I Corinthians 4:4, 5).
There will be pulpiteers who have swayed thousands of people, yet receive little reward because they were not ministering for the Lord’s glory. They were doing it for their own ambitious self to be exalted. They had some itch to be a leader and to be in the limelight and be important. They will probably receive no more reward than some politician who is not concerned about anyone but himself. Someone who worked with a pure motive before the Lord does not need to have any other reward; they labored to hear the Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21). Yet even when you have done everything the Lord says in the parable, “You are still an unprofitable servant.” After you have done all that you were supposed to do, you are still an unprofitable servant (Luke 17:10).
To be a faithful steward of God takes a lot of pressure off. You don’t have to be in “Who’s Who.” You do not have to be anything on the human plane. That is a comforting thought. You abdicate from the rat race. Say in your heart, “I abdicate from the rat race. From now on I give full diligence to be a faithful steward of the great fullness of God.” If you could remember that, you would eliminate human ambition and the torture and the pressure of holding the heavens up and of being something which continuously is in jeopardy. With that ambition in your heart it is like playing king of the mountain. You no sooner get up there, then somebody shoves you off. That is the way it is in the world. In this walk you don’t mind because you are at the bottom of the pile anyway. You are just serving the Lord. You are not trying to do anything but to please the Lord in all things and to be faithful.
Be faithful with that fullness of God’s provision so that you see every man in the world in the light of what God has provided for him, and you say, “I’m but a steward of it.” It takes away the hotshot zeal and attitude of a super salesman running down the street thinking: “Who can I nail next? I haven’t got my scalps,” or “I haven’t got enough notches in my belt today. I have to do something to show that I am important.” People with this attitude have a big point to prove, and they are working at it continuously because it can never be proven. But those who have wholly set themselves to do the will of the Lord, rain or shine they are doing it; they are drawing from the great treasure house of God and ministering that, one to another, in the name of the Lord.
Let us give full diligence to see that we move together with none having the pre-eminence, but all of us being brethren together: an apostolic company of prophets and elders in each local church, so that there is revelation, the gifts of the Spirit, and real discernment concerning people’s needs in every church. We must aid these new churches that are starting. We need also to start more churches.
This is a new wineskin operation, and it is very difficult to slip it into the old channels and ruts. This walk progresses more rapidly if you start from the ground floor rather than add it to some existing structure. That does not mean that we want to be the total end in ourselves. We are not trying to split a denomination or break them up. We just let them come and take just as much as or as little as they want of this. We do not judge them. We just keep moving in the direction that God wants.
Let this be in your own heart, “Lord, let me be a faithful steward.” The steward does not even have to say, “What I’m doing is mine.” He is dealing with the Master’s treasure. He is dealing with the resources of his Lord. Our ministries are not dealing with what we have in resources ourselves. But we are dealing with the Lord’s treasure, and we intend to be faithful administrators of it. We will claim it, and we will give it to someone else. This concept can be in our mind and it eliminates so many carnal problems that come.
This passage will speak to your conscience as a child of God: “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. If therefore you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous Mammon, who will intrust the true riches to you? And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?” Luke 16:10–12.
Who will give us all the fullness of God? If we are not faithful with the light and the blessing He has given us, how will He give us anything more? How can He trust us? If He cannot trust us as stewards of the sum total of everything that He has made available to us, how is He going to give us anything more.
Do not say, “I have so little.” That is where God is starting His judgment upon you. That is where He is evaluating your future. You do not gain great gifts from God because you learn more and more about the mysteries of God; you gain great gifts from God because you are faithful with very little gifts from God. When you are faithful with the little thing, God makes you a ruler over many thing. You do not say, “Well, I don’t have much, just a little gift of prophecy, so I’m not going to do anything with it. I’m ashamed of it.” You should be ashamed not to use it. You start where you are. You start with what you have.
When God wants to take care of a prophet, He does not look for a rich widow. He finds one who has just gathered a few sticks and has only a little bit of meal and a little bit of oil left in the cruse; the prophet comes and says, “Take that little and make me a cake first, and the oil will not fail, nor the meal, as long as there is a famine in the land” (I Kings 17:13, 14).
You cannot say, “I will wait until I have a big thing that I can do,” but you start right where you are with what you have, and you say, “I will be faithful with that. I will put the Lord first and be faithful. I will be a good steward with what He has laid in my hand,” and even if you do not understand, He will lay more in your hand. He will lay more and more in your hand because of your faithfulness to the Lord.
You may say, “I want to be a pastor of a big church.” Be encouraged; start by doing everything you can locally. Whether or not it is appreciated, or puts you in the limelight, or is what you want to do, you be faithful.
Lord, bless this word to us. As we have received it and embraced it with all of our heart, let more treasures come to us now in the name of the Lord. Let us more and more desire to see the fullness of God loosed upon this generation. We want to be faithful stewards of it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.