1 Corinthians 9 1 thru 18

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1 “Do Not Use This Right,” 1 Corinthians 9:1-18 (November 17, 2013) Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? 2 If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. 3

This is my defense to those who would examine me. 4 Do we not have the right to eat and drink? 5 Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? 6 Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? 7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk? 8

Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? 10 Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. 11 If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? 12 If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. 13 Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? 14 In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. 15

But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. 16 For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship. 18 What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. PRAY If you are a visitor we are glad you’re here this morning. We are working our way through the book of 1 Corinthians this fall (1 Corinthians is a book in the New Testament, written about 2000 years ago to a church in the ancient Greco-Roman city of Corinth by a man named Paul, who was one of the first great Christian teachers), and we come to a text – the first part of chapter nine – that in some ways is very easy to understand. In past weeks I’ve really had to wrestle with exactly what the apostle Paul was saying; it might have taken me until the Friday before I was going to preach a sermon that I really grasped Paul’s argument.

©2013 J.D. Shaw

2 Not this week – this week, as I hope you’ll see in a moment – Paul’s argument is very clear. There’s no questions what he’s talking about it. He’s writing about the rights he has as an apostle (in fact, the editors of your particular Bible might have that as the heading of this chapter), and one right in particular. But in understanding how Paul thinks of his rights, and what he does with his rights, we’ll see a very searching application for us. First, the right Paul has. Second, the reason he surrenders it. Third, the motivation for surrendering your rights. First, the right Paul has. We’re going to take a few minutes to walk through about ten verses in chapter nine. First, we’ll jump to verse 14: “In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.” It’s pretty clear what right Paul is talking about here, isn’t it? He’s talking about his right to make a living from the preaching of the gospel. He’s talking about the right all ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ have to receive payment, to receive a salary, for the work they do in ministry. And in several other verses in chapter nine Paul elaborates on that right. 1 Corinthians 9:4: “4 Do we not have the right to eat and drink? 5 Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? 6 Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? 7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?” Then again in verses 11-12 we read: “11 If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? 12 If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more?” So Paul lists five arguments for why he has this right. First, other apostles – like James and John, brothers of Jesus, and Cephas, or Peter, exercise this right. They don’t have a second job outside of preaching the gospel; rather, they devote themselves solely to work of ministry. Second, in verse 7 he gives some analogies to demonstrate why it’s completely reasonable to expect that if you are a preacher of the gospel, you get paid for your work in preaching the gospel. First, who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who joins the army, for example, and is expected to pay his own way? No one – when you join the army, your uniform is provided, your shelter is provided, your weapons are provided, your food is provided, and you’ll get some cash on top of that. If you work in agriculture (Paul says either in a vineyard or by tending flocks, but really it would apply to any kind of farming) – if your job is farming, would the person you work for expect you to do it for free? No, you do it to share in the proceeds – either by directly sharing the crop with the owner of the land or the boss-man, or by receiving ©2013 J.D. Shaw

3 payment through funds that are generated by the sale of the crop. No one expects you to serve as a solider or as a farmer for free. So it is with preachers of the gospel. Preachers sow the Word of God liberally through their teaching into the hearts of people who listen, and they water that seed with more preaching, praying the whole time that God will give the increase – that God will cause that seed to grow in the hearts of people into a full-fledged, robust, strong Christian faith. And if the preachers have sewn that spiritual seed and it yields a spiritual harvest in the form of the souls of those people who believe the gospel, then no one should begrudge them exercising their right to material payment – to making their living from the gospel. Fourth argument - we read verses 8-9: “Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? What’s that about? Paul here is quoting Deuteronomy 25, which as a whole is a chapter devoted to social and economic relationships between people. But there’s this one verse, verse 4, at first glance it’s kind of out of place, in which Moses writes about of all things, an ox, and says, “As the ox is doing his work treading out grain, walking on it and crushing it and separating the grain from the husk so that it can be harvested, don’t put a muzzle on the ox! Let him dip his head down and eat some of his grain if wants a bite.” And Paul says about that verse, “Do you think God is only worried about the ox?” So, apparently, this was a proverb of sorts in the ancient world. You do not ask someone or some beast to do a job without also allowing them to share in the profits from it. And God agrees, because he included this proverb in his law. Finally, Paul gives one more reason for his right – verses 13-14: 13 Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? 14 In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. Under the old covenant, the seat of Jewish worship was the temple in Jerusalem. The temple was manned and worked by priests born out of the tribe of Levi. Whenever the people of Israel brought an animal – a lamb or a calf – to sacrifice to God at the temple, the priests slaughtered the animal and placed it on the altar as worship to God. But again, these men did not work for free – they received payment in the form of the food, the tithes, the meat brought to the temple by the people. Now there are no temples in Christianity – that dispensation in history has passed. But Paul analogizes again and says just as under the Old Covenant the priests received payment for their work by the people of God, so under the New Covenant, a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ has the right to receive payment from the church he serves. What’s the very obvious application for us today? Men who devote their lives to the preaching of the gospel can expect to make a living from it. They should not have to ©2013 J.D. Shaw

4 moonlight, work two jobs, three jobs, in order to make ends meet. Those who sow spiritual things like preachers can expect to reap material rewards from their people. Now, as you might expect, it’s awkward to teach on this subject, for all kinds of reasons: number one, because I have an obvious conflict of interest – I am a preacher of the gospel, and I do make my living from the preaching of the gospel. And I know there’s a first-time visitor to Grace this morning who’s thinking: yep, see, those preachers are always talking about money, always trying to get into your pockets and get your money. If that’s what you’re thinking, then please know it’s not true. This is my 100th Sunday morning sermon at Grace Bible Church (I looked it up) and I’ve never mentioned this topic before. In fact in my ten years of ministry I’ve never taught on this subject And I would never pick this passage or topic out of thin air and choose it to preach on a Sunday morning. Not that I doubt its truth or inspiration or wisdom, but I just don’t have the guts. I don’t want to do anything that could cause me to be perceived as someone who is after your money. I’d never choose this text. But I don’t apologize for teaching on it, either. We do something at Grace called expository preaching, where we pick a book of the Bible, we start in chapter one, verse one, and we teach straight through it, tackling whatever we find along the way. And this is the text for this Sunday, and paying the preacher is the central theme of it, so that’s what I’m talking about. Men who preach the gospel can expect to make a living from the people to whom they preach the gospel. And they should be paid well. Paul says well enough to bring along a wife; in other words, well enough to comfortably raise a family – without always being at wits’ end about how to pay the bills each month. There’s a story about the chairman of deacons in a Baptist church that didn’t have a pastor and he just wanted God to send them a poor, humble man to be their preacher. For months he led the church to pray that God would them that kind of man, a poor, humble pastor. And when they got finally got a man to come to the church, they installed him as pastor, and the deacon got up to pray during his installation service to thank God for providing a shepherd for this flock. And the deacon said, “God you’ve sent us this man, and we thank thee for him, and we ask that you would keep him humble, because we will keep him poor.” That’s not what Paul says – preachers of the gospel should be paid, and be paid well enough to provide for their family. And I can imagine someone saying, “J.D., how much is that exactly?” The short answer is I don’t know; it will vary from time to time and place to place. I’d hesitate to give a number; and in fact we’ve charged three of our elders at Grace to come up with a proposal as to what that number is.

©2013 J.D. Shaw

5 But I will take a moment to make clear: there are churches out there that have the means to pay their pastor more but they won’t; they are very stingy with their pastors. Grace Bible Church is not one of those churches. The pastors here at Grace have had many conversations about how thankful we are for how you care for us, for how you enable us to provide for our families, and so I want to tell all of you who contribute to the work here at Grace: thank you. Thank you. And just so you know in the next several weeks we’re going to launch a new website, and on that website we’ll place the annual church budget, so you can see what the church spends on various items including our salaries. And monthly we’ll put a statement of how much money was brought in and how much money was spent and what we spent it on, just so you can see for yourselves whether the leadership is being good stewards of your gifts. That’s all available now if you ask for it but we recognize that it’s almost certainly better to just put it out there than to wait for you to ask for it. So, Paul says to pay the preacher – he has the right to it. But that’s not all he says, is it? Verse 12b: Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. Now the sermon gets really awkward for me – Paul goes out of his way to say, “I have this right to payment from you, but I’m not going to take it. I’m not going to let you pay me.” So I can imagine some of you thinking, “J.D., why don’t you follow Paul’s example, and trust the Lord for your provision? Are you not as spiritual as Paul?” And the answer to that second question is there is no doubt I’m not a spiritual as Paul. And, no, I am exercising my right and I plan to continue to exercise my right to receiving my living from the gospel. But I understand that one of our other pastors at Grace, Jim Davis, told me he wants to make an important announcement this morning regarding his salary… No, we are both exercising our right. But Paul doesn’t – why? Should pastors who get paid by their churches feel guilty because we do? Second, the reason he surrenders it. It’s not clear from 1 Corinthians precisely why Paul surrenders his right to payment. He says in verses 15-18 that he does not want anyone to deprive him of this boast that he has that he preaches to them without charge, but he doesn’t explain why. It’s not until you get to 2 Corinthians that you really find out why. The first thing to note, thought, is that Paul did get paid to do the work of ministry in Corinth. 2 Corinthians 11:7-9: “7 Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached God’s gospel to you free of charge? 8 I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. 9 And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. So I refrained and will refrain from burdening you in any way.”

©2013 J.D. Shaw

6 Paul was a preacher in Corinth for eighteen months, he started the church there – you can read about it in Acts – but he didn’t work a second job for the vast majority of his time there. Instead, other churches – from Macedonia, another province in Greece – paid his way. So, let’s be clear: Paul did get paid to preach the gospel; he just didn’t let the Corinthians do it. And all the pastors and preachers take a collective sigh of relief. It feels like we’re off the hook a little bit. So why wouldn’t Paul take payment from the Corinthians? The Corinthians were a relatively wealthy bunch of people. They were accustomed to paying their people well, their servants well; they were used to having money and being around other people who had money. But it had gotten to the point where they didn’t know any other way to live. They began to assume that you had to be relatively wealthy in order to have any kind of real life. They began to assume that you’ve got to make a least this much money and live in this kind of house and have these kinds of clothes if you’re going to be happy. And it got to the point where they couldn’t conceive of people being successful while also not having a lot of money. Paul picked up on all this and saw it for what it was: a love of money that was a spiritual cancer to their souls. The Corinthians wanted a leader, they wanted an apostle, to whom they could point with pride and say, “Look, there’s our successful pastor! Look at the house he lives in, look at the clothes he wears, look at the servants he has.” And Paul instead had dirt under his fingernails from his day-job as a tentmaker, he wore the same old clothes, he had no family with him, practically no money, and he refused to take any from them – even when they were begging him to take it. And they had to look at him in the same shabby clothes every week and listen to him preach for eighteen months, this walking, breathing contradiction in terms – no money, yet an apostle, successful. A happy, rejoicing child of God. Why? Paul wanted to teach them a lesson: 5 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he [God] has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Hebrew 13:5. Paul surrenders his right to the payment because if he did not the Corinthians would have heard a different gospel from the one Paul preached. Paul would have been preached Christ with his tongue, but if he took their money all they would have heard was, “Money, money, money. You can’t be successful, you can’t be happy, without money.” Paul would have hindered his preaching of the gospel if he took their money, so he refused to and he took just enough apparently from the Macedonian church to get by. Here’s the application: you all have the right to spend all the money you can on yourselves, on your family, on your children. Every penny. You don’t get into heaven by giving all your money away – that’s 1 Corinthians 13. You have the right to spend your money, all of it, on yourself.

©2013 J.D. Shaw

7 You may ask, “J.D., what about the tithe? You know, giving ten percent of your income to the church.” OK, what about it? You don’t get into heaven by giving the tithe. You have the right as a Christian to spend all the money you make on yourself. If you are a child of God, how you spend your money will not affect God’s love for you. You can spend your money all on yourself. But here’s the question: will you hinder the preaching of the gospel when you do? When you have all the house you can, all the car you can, all the clothes you can, all the hunting you can, all the vacation you can, will it hinder the gospel? We live in the most materialistic culture that’s ever walked the earth. In this kind of culture, when you spend all you make on yourself and your family, and then take on debt to spend more, what does that make you? It makes you just like everyone else. Whatever gospel witness you might have gets lost in the noise – nobody can hear the gospel coming from you because they see someone talking to them who’s just like them. Paul had to do something fairly drastic to wake the Corinthians up from their money trance. Here’s what I want you to ask yourself: what can I do, what could we do, as a family, differently with our money to wake this town up when it comes to the gospel? In this culture, spending all you can on yourself and family is what makes you like everyone else. Do you know what blows peoples’ categories? When they find out you make Rolls-Royce money but you drive a Ford Fiesta. When they find out you could easily live in this neighborhood, but you live in this one. You could have these clothes, but you wear these clothes. And, here’s the key: to do so happily, joyfully. Or, say, you don’t make Rolls-Royce money – but you, even though you are solidly middle-class or lower middle-class, you are very content and happy with what you have. Your primary emotion when you think of your home is gratitude, not embarrassment. You’re not embarrassed when people who make more than you come over; you like practicing hospitality even though so many have nicer homes than you. You’re not ashamed of your house, your car, and your clothes. What I hope happens is that husbands and wives and children and unmarried people go home and over the next few weeks pray for wisdom from the Lord and ask him: Father, I know I’m your child, I’m a child of the king, and you’re going to love me no matter how I spend my money. I know that. But I also want desperately to know this: how can I not use the right I have to spend my money on myself and my family so that other people around me in this town can see how glorious you are? What could we do, Father, differently? I hope lots of you pray that prayer. But how? This is not an easy thing to do, because everything, everything, our culture throws at us teaches us the desirability of more and nicer things. There is no motivation in the world to be content with less. How can we do it? Third, the motivation to surrender your rights. Getting the motivation to surrender your rights is, I think, a constant struggle. You don’t work at this every couple of weeks, or ©2013 J.D. Shaw

8 every couple days, or every couple of hours. It is a constant struggle to overcome the relentless and widespread lying we encounter about how spending money on ourselves will make us happy. Two things we must ponder continually – from the time you first wake up until you go to sleep, and you probably should even pray that you dream these things: first, think on Jesus. Christian friends, ask yourself this regularly: when our Lord Jesus was in heaven before he became a man, what did he lack? What did he not have? Have you ever asked yourself that? What did he lack? Too often we say: nothing. He had everything, he lacked nothing. But that’s not true. There’s one thing Jesus didn’t have in heaven – he didn’t have you. So he left everything he could leave – all the power, all the glory, all the joy and happiness, all the riches, of heaven, to come down to earth on the greatest rescue mission known to man, to die on the cross in the place of sinners so they could be reconciled to God. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a preacher in London during the past century, and he used to say that epistles of Paul are fun to preach through because he sprinkles gospel nuggets all throughout his writings. Just one sentences reminders of the good news of Jesus Christ. One of my favorites is 2 Corinthians 8:9: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” I love that verse. To the extent you believe that Jesus became poor so that you might be rich, you will be motivated to surrender your rights. To the degree it gets down in your heart, you will want to do whatever you can with your rights to make much of God and make him known. Second, think on giving. Too many Christians constantly daydream about how nice it would be if we had a bigger house” or “wouldn’t it be nice if I had more clothes” or “wouldn’t it be nice if I had a newer car” “go on this trip” or “save this much money.” We get these catalogs in the mail or we get on Pinterest or Craigslist or Tradewinds get on Quickbooks and we daydream about how nice it would be. But that is totally counterproductive. We must not meditate on getting, but giving. Two verses: Malachi 3:10 (the words of the Lord God): 10 Bring the full tithe into the storehouse [don’t get hung up on the word “tithe,” there – I don’t think in the New Covenant that applies only to gifts made to churches – I think you could apply this verse to all kinds of charitable giving], that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test [and the old King James says, ‘prove me now’], says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.” God lays down the challenge: prove me. Prove me. You have the right to spend your money on yourself however you want – if you’re a child of God, that’s not going to cause ©2013 J.D. Shaw

9 you to stop being a child of God. But I want you to trust me, prove me: don’t use your rights, and see if I’ll bless. I know one of the reasons so many of us spend so much money on our family – in the form of houses, vacations, cars, Christmas presents, whatever – is not because we really want to the stuff. We’d be content with less. But we are worried about what others think. And I don’t even mean the neighbors, the proverbial Jones’, though there is some of that. Mainly, it’s about how parents, our spouses, our children will react. “You don’t understand, J.D. – I’d love to spend less but my wife would never go along with that.” Or, “My mother-in-law would go ballistic if we moved into that house.” Or, “J.D., if we didn’t do this, that, and the other with our money, my kids will resent me. They’ll hate me, because all their friends get to do these things. How will they understand if we say, ‘No, honey, we’re not going to do that’? They will hate me.” Do you know what God says? He says, ‘Prove me. Put me to the test. Joyfully (and that’s key – you can’t do it begrudgingly; God loveth a cheerful giver) give your money away and spend less on your family, talk about these things joyfully with your family, and prove me – see if I won’t change hearts you thought would never change.” Acts 20:35 (Paul, to the Ephesian elders): “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Here’s a fundamental reality that runs all throughout the Bible: the more you are able to give your money, your time, your talents, your preferences away to bless the people around you, the more blessedness you’ll experience, the more life you’ll have. Now the flip side of that reality is this: the more you focus on yourself, the more you are determined to use your rights for selfish ends, the more you die. How many of you know someone you consider selfish? You don’t like that person, do you? They never think about you – they’re only focused on themselves. You can’t stand that person. And you know that person is miserable and unhappy. But here’s how we respond to that kind of person. We say, “I don’t want to be like that – so how selfish can I be before I start to look that person?” We don’t want to be completely selfish; but at the same time we want to live for ourselves as much as we can without being obvious about it. According to the Bible, that kind of thinking is like saying, “You know, I don’t want to drink all this glass of poison, because then I’ll die. But it tastes kind of good, so how much can I drink without having to go to the emergency room?”

©2013 J.D. Shaw

10 How selfish is it safe to be? And the answer is: no amount of selfishness is ever safe for your soul. It’s all a virus, it’s all cancer, you don’t want any of it in your life. So focus on giving. It’s the only way to stay safe; it’s the only way you can have life. One last thing: what kind of blessing will God give me? Here the prosperity preachers on television say that if you sow your seed with them, God will give you a return on your investment. Give $100, you’ll get $500. Give $500, get $2000. I don’t think God works that way. God wants to give you something more precious than gold. He wants to give you himself. “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11. If you knew that you were going to be full of joy, with pleasures forevermore, would it matter if you were broke? Would it matter how much money you had? Psalm 34:8: “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” We are called to give, to prove, to taste. But it is really hard to taste and see that filet mignon is an outstanding cut of meat when you keep cramming your mouth full with Hamburger Helper. Did you know that? God says stop – stop using your rights. Stop trying to fill yourself, and let me fill you, and then you will taste and see that I am good. Amen. Let’s pray together. Father, we rejoice that you are not like us. Where we are selfish and can only think of ourselves, you are generous beyond measure. You give, and give, and give, even to the point of giving your one and only Son for our sake. We pray for your grace to overcome our anxieties, our fears, our selfishness, and to believe truly that it’s more blessed to give than to receive, so that nothing would hinder the preaching of the gospel in Oxford. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

©2013 J.D. Shaw