According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): One of these days, I’m gonna see the hands that took the nails for me. One of these days, I’m gonna hold the key that opened up the gate for me. One of these days, I’m gonna walk the streets of gold never paved for me. One of these days, I’m gonna see my Savior face-to-face. One of these days.

Here in America, we focus a great deal on our rights and freedoms, but as we’ll see today on According to the Scriptures, sometimes as ministers of Jesus, we’ll need to give up some of our rights and liberties for very good reason. Pastor Damian Kyle has us consider 1 Corinthians chapter nine and a time when the apostle Paul gave up his rights as an apostle for the sake of his fruitfulness and effectiveness in the ministry.

Damian Kyle: 1 Corinthians chapter nine this evening. Now here in chapter nine, and that’s as far as we’ll get tonight, we actually begin a new section beginning in verse 24 that then wanders into chapter 10. But remember, with a one-week separation from our study in chapter eight, that Paul instructed us about the importance of foregoing any kind of a liberty for the sake of not stumbling a fellow Christian.

And here in chapter nine, he expands on that, instructing us about the importance of foregoing any right that we have as a Christian and doing it voluntarily, and any liberty that we might have for the sake of not stumbling the unsaved world around us out of a desire for them to be saved. Remember the city of Corinth? Ray Stedman, in his series through Corinthians, he called it First Californians or something like that because there’s nothing new under the sun, but we face all the same things.

But here in Corinth, they’re a very, very carnal congregation, and everything was about their rights, "my rights," and "my freedoms." They were consumed about these kind of things as if there wasn't anything more important in life, even in the life of a Christian, than the exercise—my life being spent in the exercise of my liberty and my rights. So we live in the United States of America, and you can hardly see anything that happens on a daily basis where there isn't some protest or some demanding of a group of people of our rights.

So rights are elevated to this kind of an ultimate place in our lives and extolled in that way within our culture. And what can happen is, even as Christians, we can come to believe that our rights and our liberties and our freedoms are the most important thing in the world, when in fact Paul tells us here that sometimes they simply aren't. There are more important things in life than our liberties and our rights.

And so in this passage, the apostle Paul reveals to us two very important areas in our life in which it is important for us as Christians to forego our rights when it’s necessary. And the first thing that he tells us is in verses one through 18: We are always to forego any right or Christian liberty that would harm the effectiveness and the fruitfulness of our service to God, if it would in any way hinder his calling upon his life. Remember, it's his calling before he ever gives it to us, something to be careful with and to handle not in a carnal way, but in a spiritual way.

And then second, in verses 19 to 23, that we should always forsake any liberty or right as necessary for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of winning people to Christ, for the sake of the salvation of their souls. Now in this, Paul is continuing to build, as I mentioned, on chapter eight, where he made that point when it comes to our expression of our Christian liberties, that love is always to trump knowledge.

And so he moves now from the area of meat and eating meat offered to idols, and now he moves into how we’re to view our Christian service and ministry, and how we’re to view human souls. So Paul had made his rights, and this is the point that he makes in the first 18 verses here, he had made his rights as an apostle secondary to the effectiveness and the fruitfulness of his ministry there in Corinth.

And so what Paul does here is he asks the church at Corinth, and us, but related to the church at Corinth, he isn't asking them to do something that he not only was willing to do in his own life, but that he had already done in his life in being used by God to birth the church there in the city of Corinth. The church in Corinth were the beneficiaries of his determination to elevate love above knowledge in his dealings with them.

And so in verses one through seven, Paul states his rights as an apostle. And he gave them two proofs for his apostleship in verses one through three. Apparently, there were some in the church at Corinth who didn't want to give Paul's teaching apostolic authority in their lives, and they didn't want to support him, give him the support that he was due, material support, as an apostle, probably because he wasn't one of the original 12.

So Paul gives them the proofs of his apostleship. First, that he had seen Jesus, which was understood by the 12, by the apostles, as a requirement for being an apostle. And so I always cringe a little bit when somebody is involved as a Christian or is in Christian ministry and they take the title of apostle unto themselves.

The second thing that he does here as a proof for his apostleship is that his ministry to the church at Corinth, elsewhere too, but principally here for the church at Corinth, that his ministry had been supernaturally effective. God was supernaturally blessing it, and in doing so, he was affirming Paul's apostleship and affirming Paul's claim to apostleship. And so Paul was saying, in essence, if you want proof of my apostleship, just simply look in the mirror.

Then in verses four through six, Paul states three rights that belong to him as an apostle. The first is in verse four, and that is the right to maintenance, the right to be supplied with food and drink and the necessities of life by any church that was hosting him or any of the apostles for some spiritual purpose. I mean, we've never had an apostle come to this church, but to your relief.

But when somebody comes to the church and they come here to minister from wherever they come, they never come on their own dime. They come on our dime. So we pay for everything that’s involved in that, try to be very generous with honorariums to people. Look at people in the way that when they come and they teach here or they do something here, they only have so many weekends in their life and they are committing one of those weekends to us. That's a big deal, especially when you get to my age and you realize how finite life is.

And so we don't expect them to come and then pay all of their expenses and then do all of the giving and then shoe them out the door. And yet that’s how Paul was being treated by this church in Corinth. It’s just so far below Christian in even kind of the lowest definition of hospitality related to Christianity, and that’s the way that he was being treated by them.

He said a second right that he had in this apostle in verse five was that he had a right to bring a wife along with him in his travels. And he noted that the other apostles did who were married, that the brothers of Jesus, the half-brothers, they did so, even Cephas, Peter, did so. We know that Peter was married. Jesus healed his wife's mother, his mother-in-law, in the course of his public ministry. And so even though Paul was unmarried, if he'd had a wife, then he would have had the right not only for him to be supported during his period of ministry in Corinth, but also his wife. And yet he's receiving neither from them.

And we notice, and third, he in verse six, his third thing that he brings out in his rights as an apostle: his right to devote his full time to the ministry of God's word. In other words, to earn a living from the gospel without having a job to do on the side when that is possible. Now, he goes on in verses seven through 14, and he defends his right to receive support as an apostle based upon five arguments.

And so he calls five witnesses to the witness stand to say to the church at Corinth—I mean, talk about pulling teeth to get these people—a very carnal body, and it’s just embarrassing. And so he lays out for them and calls five witnesses to the witness stand to support his assertion related to this. And he takes the first one from everyday life, and in verse seven, he speaks about soldiers.

He said when soldiers go off to war, they’re supported when they go off to war. No one expects a soldier to do both. What kind of an army would it be if it was like, you go to war and then you’ve got to hold down a job at the same time in order to be a soldier? Well, that wouldn't work out that great. He then gives the example of farmers, farmers who plant a vineyard, they’re supported by the fruit that it produces. And then he speaks about ranchers, he speaks about dairymen, they’re supported by the animals that they give their life to tending.

And clearly, Paul here, he's likening Christian service and work to all three. It's part army, part vineyard, part flock, and it really is. So he's asking the question: Why shouldn't a man who serves the Lord in a spiritual calling partake in some of the reward on the other side of their hard work? And so if the right of support is readily acknowledged by the unsaved world, the necessity of material support in life by the unsaved world in these earthly occupations, how much more should it be in the service of the Lord? If you’re getting antsy at all, we won't be taking an offering. I’m not priming you for anything like that.

The second witness that he calls to the witness stand for his right to be supported in this way as an apostle in verses eight through 12, he argues from the Old Testament law. In the Old Testament law, God had declared that when you used an ox to thresh the grain and the wheat, it was not to be muzzled when it did that. So they would use oxen, they would put all the grain out with the stalks and the husks and then the grain itself, and they would roll these heavy pieces of wood with sometimes pieces of metal and pottery in it in order to roll over the wheat so that the wheat would be separated from the chaff.

And God declared in the Word of God: Don't muzzle the ox when he’s doing that work. He is to feed on the stalks, he's to feed on whatever is in that environment while he is working. And you’re not allowed to partake of the fruit of that animal’s labors and not supply for its need. And so here Paul used that passage to teach that the minister who’s called by God to give his life fully toward the advancement of the kingdom of God also has a right to partake of material blessings that often accompany, not always and not everywhere in the world, but oftentimes accompany a healthy ministry and certainly resources that were available in Corinth.

But they were not extending it to him. And it’s good to be reminded that ministers are not machines, they’re not animals. They are people who have given their lives to God and determined to do what God has called them to do. Third, he argues from, and he brings the witness on the witness stand in making this point, he argues from Old Testament practice in verse 13.

In the Old Testament law, the priests and the Levites, who had been called by God to spend their lives in service of the Lord at the temple in Jerusalem, God made sure that he met their needs, their physical, material needs through the offerings and giving of the rest of the people. And so they gave their offerings to God, the people did, who then, and God then in turn, instructed that a portion of these offerings were then to be used for the support of the priests and of the Levites that were serving there.

And basically, Paul is saying that does God care less about and have less of a concern for the apostles that he's anointed here and called then to carry the message of the new covenant of salvation found in the sacrifice of Jesus than he did for the Old Testament servants? And of course, the answer is no. And then the fourth witness that he brings on the witness stand to make this point is he argues from the very teaching of Jesus.

And he saves his weightiest argument for the last here, in Jesus himself taught that a workman God has sent to do his work is worthy of his wages. And so Jesus spoke in Matthew chapter 10. He sent the 12 out. He commanded them saying, "Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, do not enter into a city of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go, preach saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you've received, freely give. And provide neither gold nor silver nor copper in your money belts, nor bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor staffs, for a worker is worthy of his food."

And so Paul takes and now he wraps up what is an airtight case for on this particular issue. The principle of which he states there in verse 11: "If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things?" And then sadly, in the first sentence of verse 12, Paul stated that they had readily taken care of the needs of other apostles and other leaders that had come through and into Corinth, while they had denied that support to Paul.

We'll need new bodies to meet certain members of the congregation at Corinth when we see them in heaven someday. Here's the human instrument that God used to birth that church, for them to hear the gospel that changed their life and their eternities. And not only would it be one thing if they denied it to Paul and then denied it to everybody else, but they were generous in supporting others and still denied it to the apostle Paul. I mean, what an affront, how embarrassing for a church.

And then just when you think Paul is, as you read this and as I explain it, just as when you think Paul is going to call for the church to take an offering for his needs, he doesn't do that. In fact, he does something that’s completely unexpected and does a complete U-turn because the supreme point of this passage is not to lay a case for his right to be supported by them. He did all of that to make the bigger point that he's making here, and that is that though he had a right to this kind of support from them, he gave up that right for the sake of the fruitfulness and the effectiveness of his ministry there in Corinth.

And so that word "nevertheless" in verse 12: "Nevertheless, we have not used this right, but endure all things lest we hinder the gospel of Christ." Nevertheless, he didn't use this right. And why did he not use this right when it was his right to use? Why did he make it secondary in his life in this circumstance? He said, "lest we hinder the gospel of Christ."

And so like today, in the ancient world, it was filled with con men of all kinds, including religious quacks and frauds and charlatans. And so they would travel from city to city to city, and they would make money off of people based upon religion. This thing goes on very much yet today, and not concerning everybody on television, but in the years ago, I don't know what Christian television is like today, but years ago it was awful. It was just viewed as an easy way to make money.

And people would travel, and then people that came into a city then to preach the gospel, in the city of Corinth, they would look at them and say, "Oh, here’s one more charlatan, you know, just doing what he’s doing in order to get money from us." And Paul knew that that was what he was walking into in Corinth. And so he said, "I’m not going to—I’m going to erase money at all from being an issue at all. They’ve seen enough bad examples related to this, and I want—I want them to see something different."

Now, in the early church, there was a sufficient number of people claiming to be apostles, not just representing other religions, but moving from city to city claiming to be apostles and then asking to be supported or to receive material things and going from church to church expecting the church to feed them and to clothe them and without working, that then late in the first century, a book called the Didache or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles was written in order to address a variety of issues facing Christians, and they included a section that deals with this problem.

Here’s what the Didache declared related to this: "Let every apostle that comes unto you be received as the Lord. That unto you be received as the Lord, and he shall stay one day, and if need be, the next also, but if he stays three days, he’s a false prophet." All right, that’s tightening up the program.

"And when the apostle goes forth, let him take nothing save bread. No offerings till he reach his lodgings. Give him enough to get to his next place. But if he asks for money, he’s a false prophet. No prophet that orders a table in the spirit shall eat of it. The Lord is telling me to make a feast tonight, made up of everything that you own."

And so they had some common sense related to things as Christians, and the Didache said, "if someone does that, he’s a false prophet. If he that cometh is a passerby, succor him as far as you can, but he shall not abide with you longer than two or three days unless there be necessity, as with the apostle Paul. But if he be minded to settle among you and be a craftsman, let him work and eat. But if he has no trade, according to your understanding, provide that he shall not live idle among you, being a Christian. But if he will not do this, he is a Christ-monger. Of such men, beware."

So this is the kind of hucksterism that was going on.

Guest (Male): Whether you're a pastor, missionary, or even a Sunday school teacher, there will be times where you'll need to make some sacrifices so the gospel of Christ or the ministry isn't hindered or harmed. Today on According to the Scriptures, we've been in 1 Corinthians nine, learning about a time when Paul would lay aside his rights as an apostle. Pastor Damian Kyle is our Bible teacher. Well, for resource requests like today's message on CD, reach out to us by phone. The number is 209-545-5530. That's 209-545-5530.

Pastor Damian Kyle's studies can also be heard online at accordingtothescriptures.com, 1place.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we also have a church app where you can listen to Damian as well. Search for Calvary Chapel Modesto in the App Store or Google Play. If you would like to partner with us financially with a financial gift, you can do that through our website at accordingtothescriptures.com. And thank you very much.

Well, let me also give you our mailing address: According to the Scriptures, 4300 American Avenue, Modesto, California, the zip code is 95356. Don't miss our next study in 1 Corinthians, when Pastor Damian Kyle will again open the word, helping us live our lives according to the Scriptures. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Modesto. One of these days, I’m gonna see the hands that took the nails for me. One of these days, I’m gonna hold the key that opened up the gate for me. One of these days, I’m gonna walk the streets of gold never paved for me. One of these days, I’m gonna see my Savior face-to-face. One of these days. One of these days. One of these days. One of these days. One of these days.