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I. WE ARE GOD'S FELLOW-LABOURERS.

1. Men rush into the ministry or into similar positions without a doubt about their ability. But if they pondered the words, "We are God's fellow-workmen," they might see some reason to question their fitness. Every workman has two things which must not be wanting in God's fellow-workman.

(1) An object. This in our case is the final happiness and perfection of each in heaven, and the attraction of each toward that Person who can bring him there. How ought we to ask ourselves whether this is substantially our object!

(2) A method. Every artisan not only knows what the particular result he designs is, but he knows also the process by which he must arrive at it. Now we who undertake to teach others ought to be quite sure that the gospel is true in its two great parts, the offer of forgiveness of sins through Christ, and the offer of the Holy Spirit's presence to transform, direct, and sustain: these things we ought to have experience of in ourselves, and so be able to declare, as of our own knowledge, that those who listen to us may attain the great object if they will only use the proper means.

2. It is in carrying on this work in this way that we are God's fellow-workmen. God has the same object that we have, and God is co-operating with us in our endeavours after it.

II. YE ARE GOD'S HUSBANDRY, with regard to the state of your hearts and characters at any particular time.

1. By nature the soil is cold and hard, shallow and barren. It bears some things which look good and beautiful, waiting, as it were, for the Holy Spirit to turn them from natural gifts into spiritual graces; but not yet receiving, because we prefer having them as they are, and shrink back from prayer, which is the connecting link between the soul and God. Now, when we see how slow we all are to take this little step in earnest, we feel that nothing can give us any hope at all but the assurance that God is here engaged, and that He can work with us, preparing the stony ground to receive the good seed of His Word, that it may take deep root and spring up into an abundant harvest.

2. And as it is with the ground, so it is with respect to the weeds which grow so rankly. Long experience teaches us to expect them. We say to ourselves, It must go on so to the end; no care or pains of ours will ever root them up. Perhaps not: and yet it may be not only our duty to labour on as if we might succeed; but more than this; the fault may be in great part ours for not having remembered that we are God's husbandry, and for not having prayed to God more earnestly to do for us that which for ourselves we could not do.

III. YE ARE GOD'S BUILDING.

1. This is especially true of young people. Your characters are forming now; soon they will be (what we call) formed: then habits of good or evil will have become a second nature, and change, if it come at all, will be a difficulty beyond anything that you have yet known of. Every day is adding something to the building: something of good, or something of evil, some accession of knowledge, of self-control, of practice of good and conquest of evil, or else of carelessness and indifference, of self-indulgence or vanity or forgetfulness of God.

2. Yet, blessed be God, He has not left us (strictly speaking) to build. Ye are God's building. O how gracious an assurance; that, while that formation of character is going on, to all appearance, so easily and almost casually. Still all the time God is working, God is building; if we will only seek Him and trust Him and not thwart or counteract His work, He is carrying on, in the secret of the soul, a process of formation, and the finished thing will be His own temple, in which He will abide for ever and be satisfied with His travail! But, indeed, we must seek Him.

(Dean Vaughan.)

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KJV: For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.

WEB: For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's farming, God's building.