Gospel Support & Gospel Surrender

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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So as you've heard now already a few times this afternoon, we're in 1 Corinthians 9, verses 1 -18.

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And I want to admit at the onset, just as we begin looking through this text, this is a very, very difficult section of Scripture to teach on and to preach on.

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It's not because it's unusually technical. It really isn't that hard to understand.

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Paul's thinking and logic are straight as an arrow. It's easy to follow along. It's not because this text is hard to apply or to obey in the

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Christian life or in the life of the Church. But the reason why this text is hard to preach is because it simply is an awkward text for someone in the position of Church leadership to bring before God's people.

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And I'll explain why it is. Why it is that it's so hard to preach this passage with any amount of boldness.

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Just a few years ago, some of you might have heard, John MacArthur finished preaching this decades -long project of preaching and teaching systematically through the entire

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New Testament. So from Matthew all the way to Revelation, verse by verse, line by line, all 27 books.

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And when he came to 1 Corinthians 9, verse 1, the text that we have for today, he stood up in front of Grace Community Church and he confessed.

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He said, this is the hardest message that I have ever had to preach.

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Those are his exact words. And I can relate to why that is. In this first half of 1

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Corinthians chapter 9, what we'll see is this. That if this text is accurately taught and it's rightly understood and it's faithfully applied, there's no way around it.

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It has a direct benefit on the person preaching the message or a direct benefit on the people that are in the leadership of the

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Church. And not only that, but the application of the word to some extent serves the minister.

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And so it makes it awkward, as the person preaching this, to say it with boldness. And you're going to see why that is.

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But there's another reason. We don't have any visitors here today. And to be honest with you, I'm okay with that.

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Because if we had visitors today, they would likely say something like this. See, I told you, we go to church.

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The one day that we go to church, the guy at the front wants us to fill the offering plate. That's not our goal.

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But the reality is we've seen many abuses, or we've heard about many abuses of so -called pastors and elders with lavish lifestyles and private jets and sprawling mansions and nice cars and nice clothes and everything else.

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And so when someone preaches this text, I want you guys to recognize that there might be a little part of you where suspicion arises or where maybe the temptation to question motives comes up.

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And so we run the risk of doing any number of these things as we preach the text.

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But we preached on 1 Corinthians 8 last week. And by God's grace,

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Lord willing, we'll preach on 1 Corinthians 10 in a few weeks' time. And so we see it as our God -given mandate to preach and teach the whole counsel of God when it's easy and when it's hard.

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And so we're going to teach that today. We're going to do just that. So we're going to wade in to chapter 9 of 1

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Corinthians, those first 18 verses, and I trust that you're going to judge my motives rightly, that you'll judge our motives rightly, and that God will bless this study.

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So with all that buildup, what is this passage about? Steve just read it. I'm not sure if you were paying attention.

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But what is this passage about? What we see is that Paul brings up two principles primarily in this text that he holds in dynamic tension with each other.

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So there are these two principles that live side by side and yet with some degree of tension.

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The first thing that Paul is going to do for the first 14 verses of this chapter is

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Paul is going to make an airtight case, a very compelling case for compensating or supporting the man or the men who labor in preaching the gospel and preaching

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God's word to God's people. He makes a case to pay the pastor, you could say, to repay physical things toward those who labor for the church's spiritual good.

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So Paul makes that case for the first 14 verses. And then second, what Paul is going to demonstrate is this, that his own life is an illustration of the fact that our primary aim should not be to seek our own interests, to exercise our own rights, to exercise our own freedoms, but to surrender our rights when necessary for the good of others.

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So he's going to build on what we heard from Steve last week in chapter 8. So you could call this, and you'll see it in your bulletin if you have the notes section open.

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This is Paul's case for gospel support and gospel surrender. It's one point, but you're going to see how it fits together.

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So let's see what Paul has to say in 1 Corinthians 9. We'll look at the first four verses together.

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He says this, In verse 4, he says,

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So Paul begins, I don't know if you noticed when Steve was reading, he begins with this flurry of questions.

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So we're looking at 18 verses, and those 18 verses Paul asks, by my count, at least 17 rhetorical questions.

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He's not looking for an answer. This is one of those situations, you know, where sometimes the best way to make a strong statement is to ask a pointed question.

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Well, Paul does that, not once, but 17 times. He has a statement to make in this text.

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And it begs the question, what is the statement that Paul is trying to make? Now, if we forget the chapter and verse divisions, you might not know this, but when the

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Bible was inspired, it was not given to us with 1 Corinthians 8 and 1

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Corinthians chapter 9. It was simply a letter without chapter or verse division. So if we remove those chapter and verse divisions for a minute, it might help us to discern what it is that Paul is getting at.

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What Paul's getting at here is not a new argument, not a new thought in chapter 9, but it's the continuation of an old thought in chapter 8.

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And he's pointing to himself, in a sense, and he's saying, my own life is an illustration of this principle that I've just worked out in chapter 8.

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And if you weren't here or if you can't remember, in a nutshell, what Paul was making a case for in chapter 8 is this, that the knowledgeable Corinthians, they possessed knowledge, knowledge in this case that puffed them up, should surrender their rights and give up, meet offer to idols out of love for their fellow believers, especially those believers who had a weaker conscience.

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So in essence, he's saying, as one commentator puts it, your Christian freedom is not a license for you to do whatever it is you want, but it is liberation to do what you ought to do.

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So mature Christian liberty, a mature view of Christian liberty. We hear a lot about religious liberties.

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This is different from religious liberty. This is individual Christian freedom, what I am able to do.

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A mature view of Christian liberty is not obsessed with my rights, with my freedom, with what

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I get to do, with the knowledge that I have, but a mature view of Christian liberty is concerned with what is best, not only for my soul, but for all of God's people and for God's glory in all of the world.

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And so that's the case that Paul made in verse 8. And now he's saying in chapter 9,

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Corinthians, I have not asked you to do anything that I have not first done myself.

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And so if you're paying attention in chapter 8 or if you're understanding now what Paul was saying in chapter 8, Paul's now going to build on that.

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He's using his life as the illustration to make this case.

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Paul gave up his rights for the good of the Corinthian church and the advancement of the gospel.

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And so he has this extensive list of questions. And it might be worth asking, what did

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Paul give up that he's now going to use as an illustration to back up what he said in chapter 8?

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What did he give up? If we look at his questions, we get a sense of what that is. In verse 6 he says,

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Is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?

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Or in verse 11, he says, If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?

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Or in verse 14, he openly states, The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

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And so what Paul is getting at is this. He's saying, I want you to give up your rights. You knowledgeable, puffed up Corinthians.

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When it comes to these idols or this food sacrifice to idols, these issues of Christian conscience.

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I want you to give that up. Just like I gave up my right to be compensated for my ministry among you.

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I labored to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to you. I discipled you and it would have been, he says, fully within my rights and my liberty, my freedom.

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Like he asks in that first question, am I not free? Paul was free to expect some material return for his labors, to eat and drink at the

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Corinthians expense, to take along a believing spouse, as he says, to make his living by his ministry.

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But he says, I did not make use of this right. And so for the first 14 verses,

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Paul is going to demonstrate this principle. He paints a portrait of this principle.

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What I call this point, gospel support. And so if you've seen your handout, that's point number one, gospel support.

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There's going to be two points, gospel support, gospel surrender. Gospel support is going to be a lot longer than surrender, just because of the dimensions itself of the text, or the proportions of the text.

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But as part of this idea of gospel support, what Paul is going to make the case for is this.

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The gospel laborer has a right to material support for his ministry.

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And Paul isn't as shy as I might be, and he's not as shy as John MacArthur was when he preached on this text.

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He parks himself here, and what we're going to find is that he gives five examples, or five precedents, for why gospel ministers, gospel laborers, have a right to compensation, have a right to support for their ministry.

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So we're going to jump right into it. The first example that Paul gives, beginning in verse one, and he looks at this from verse one to verse six, is the other apostles.

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So Paul asks this question, he says, Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the

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Lord? If you guys know anything about 1 Corinthians, what Paul was experiencing in that particular place and time was a crisis of authority.

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People were questioning his apostleship. We saw that a bit in chapter four, but people were calling into question his authority among their people.

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And what Paul does here is he lays out his apostolic credentials. He says that he saw Christ on the road to Damascus.

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He became a witness to the resurrected Christ in Acts chapter nine.

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And that is, in case you don't know, one of the qualifications of an apostle. When they were looking for apostles in Acts 122, they said they needed to be a witness of the resurrection.

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And Paul was commissioned to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. He was sent out for this purpose.

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And that's what the word apostolos, the Greek word apostolos for apostle means, a sent one.

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And so Paul said, I've seen Christ, I've been sent. And then he leans on his role in the conversion of the

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Corinthians. They themselves, he says, are the real seal of his apostleship. Now kids, what does

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Paul mean when he says a seal of his apostleship? Can you think about what that might be?

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If someone puts a seal, maybe on a certificate, what does that tell you about the certificate?

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It's real, right? It's certifiable. We see that in our practice today.

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In Paul's practice, what would have happened is, this was before people could read in mass.

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And so a seal held some significance. It was either on a letter. It meant that this is certified, certified quality.

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It is the real deal. Or it could even be on, let's say, like a container of wine.

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That this is an authentic wine. This is something that, it is what we say it is.

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And so Paul says, I am an authentic apostle, and you are proof of that.

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You are the seal of my authenticity as an apostle. And yet Paul did not insist on making use of the same rights that the apostles did.

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Now Paul describes, if we look at verse 5, the support that these apostles received. So some of the apostles, like Peter, or he names

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Christ's brothers. In case you don't know, that might have been James. Like the book of James was likely written by Christ's brother.

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The book of Jude, also Christ's brother. So that could have been James or Jude. They could travel.

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They could minister. It was widely accepted that they should be supported for their labor. And so if they came to Corinth amongst the

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Corinthians, the Corinthians would gladly pay their way. They would pay for their travel. They would provide for their meals.

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They would do whatever needed doing to ensure their needs were met. They shouldn't have to work side jobs to support themselves.

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But that wasn't all. Amongst the apostles, it was also recognized that not only should there be enough compensation for the minister, when these apostles traveled around, when

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James and Jude and others traveled around, not only enough for them, but also for their wife.

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So all of the family's household needs were met. And we should note this as something, if you know anything about family structures and husbands and wives, this is something that's both very generous of them to do.

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They didn't have to pay for their wives, but they did. It's generous, and it's also very wise.

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Now, I don't know if you guys have ever heard that saying, happy wife, happy life. Now, there's a lot of baggage attached to that saying that I am not fond of, but there's at least a kernel of truth in that maxim, right?

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That when a man and his wife, when a man and his family are secure and their needs are met, the man is going to be more happy.

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He's going to be more productive. He's going to be more able to devote himself to whatever God has called him to.

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And so the Corinthians at least have this idea right. It's generous and it's wise to provide for both.

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And so the apostles were thoughtfully provided for. They had ample enough support for the family's needs.

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And even if the church had to dig a bit deeper to support the apostle's spouse, the benefits were felt by everyone.

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Now, this, that practice in itself flies in the face of what I've heard some philosophies are about compensating pastors.

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I've heard people say, if we can keep the pastor poor, God will keep him humble. It sounds really nice, but it's unbiblical, at least in this sense, that when we do compensate, if we support a missionary, not only do we make sure that that man or that individual has what they need, but we make sure that all of their needs are met.

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Otherwise, it's not going to be very fruitful. So Paul leans on the example of the apostles.

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The apostles were supported. Do I not have the right to support? Next thing that Paul looks at is human custom.

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And he looks at this in verse 7. He says, who serves as a soldier? I was thinking about you,

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Lowell. Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? I don't know if you've ever done that. Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit?

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Who tends a flock without getting some of the milk? So Paul uses this imagery from the world.

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A soldier, a gardener or a vineyard owner, and a shepherd. And we see similar language used in 2

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Timothy 2. 2 Timothy 2, Paul writes this. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits.

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This is verse 4. Since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him, an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.

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It is the hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. So all of these are familiar jobs that are often used to describe the work of a

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Christian, but especially a Christian leader. And so elders and missionaries and others are to wage the good warfare, to fight the good fight.

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We see soldier and warfare language used often to describe the work of Christian ministry.

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And yet, picture this. Lowell, I wonder what you'd think of this. What soldier goes to battle each day, and then at the end of the day still has to find out where they're going to find something to eat.

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You've been in the battlefield all day fighting, and now you've got to go barter for some cornmeal.

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Any army that adopts that policy of sending their soldiers out to fight, and then when they come back hungry, say, well now go find your food.

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Any army that adopts that approach is going to lose whatever war they enter into.

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And I found an interesting illustration of this in even Canadian history. So during the First World War, the

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Canadian government enacted a number of programs to save food in order to send it overseas to the soldiers that were fighting.

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And so they had meatless Fridays where people would give up eating meat so there was more meat to send out.

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Or they'd have war menus that would be published in the newspaper that would give people ideas of meals that they could make with limited ingredients.

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And to reinforce this whole idea, the Canadian government would put out posters in prominent places in the community for people to understand why it is that they were doing this.

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And one of the posters they put out all over Canada during this First World War campaign was this.

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It says, we are saving food. No, I'm going to try that again.

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We are saving you. You save food. Well -fed soldiers will win the war.

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Well -fed soldiers will win the war. And so here Paul has that same idea in mind. What type of soldier goes to war and then still has to find food at the end of the day?

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He uses the idea of the gardener or the shepherd, this agricultural illustration that we see often.

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Who plants a vineyard? I think about Nicole, my wife, who loves gardening. Would she still plant a garden if she knew that she was going to get absolutely nothing from that garden?

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You know, plant peas. Peas are nice and green, but they don't look so nice that we would plant them if we didn't expect to gain any peas from that crop.

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And then even a shepherd. In Paul's day, many of the shepherds were slaves. They worked for meager pay.

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We hear what the Egyptians thought about shepherds. They were lowly and despised, these unclean beasts in the field with their animals.

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And even the lowly shepherd, the despised shepherd, gets to enjoy some of the milk from the sheep from time to time.

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He works to care for that flock, and he is sustained by that same flock.

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So, we've got the apostles, human customs. In verse 8, Paul points out the

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Old Testament law. So this is the third principle out of the five that he points out. In verse 8, he says this.

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Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the law say the same? For it is written in the law of Moses, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.

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Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake?

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It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope, and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing the crop.

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If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?

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And so, here Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 25 verse 4. So we have a lot of references today.

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But Deuteronomy 25 verse 4, there it says, You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain.

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Now, when this law was given to the Israelites through Moses, picture this, they would have an oxen that would be treading on the kernels of grain.

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This would help to separate the grain from the chaff. They would throw the grain and the chaff in the air.

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The wind would blow the chaff away, leaving the grain to fall down on the floor. Now, how cruel would it be for that oxen, who's laboring night and day to tread the grain, to say, you can tread the grain, you can feed me, but you cannot have any of it yourself.

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So God says, don't muzzle the ox, don't muzzle the ox. Let him be sustained by the grain, at least, that he's treading throughout the day.

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Now, God cares about oxen. Kids, are any of you guys animal lovers?

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Yeah, God loves animals. He cares about the oxen. And in the book of,

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I find it really interesting, in the book of Jonah, the very last verse in the book of Jonah, God shows that he not only had pity for the people of Nineveh that were rebelling against God, but he even had pity for the cattle that lived in Nineveh.

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He cared about animals. And Christ said in the Gospels that God cares for the lilies, the flowers, and the sparrows.

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In Proverbs 12, 10, it says, Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast.

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So the righteous one, God himself, has regard for the animals that he's made. But Paul gives a clear idea.

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When God, in his divine foreknowledge, issued this law to the

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Israelites in Deuteronomy, he wasn't just looking to oxen. Certainly there was application there.

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But he was looking forward to those Christian ministers, those missionaries, those elders, those pastors, those expositors, when he gave this command.

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And he said that the laborer deserves his wages to bring the gospel to the people still in darkness and to make the word of God fully known to go out into the harvest fields.

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That labor deserves his pay. Paul gives us, I love this,

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Paul gives us an image, some insight into this in 1 Timothy 5. And Steve, you read that this afternoon.

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In verse 17, 1 Timothy 5, 17, Paul says this, Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor.

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What is double honor? I remember someone asking that one time. What is it to pay double honor?

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We're going to find out. Especially those, he says, who labor in preaching and teaching. For the scriptures say, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and the laborer deserves his wages.

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So this double honor that Paul is speaking of, in verse 17, he answers what that double honor is in verse 18.

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It is to provide wages for those leaders who have labored in Christ's church.

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That is what double honor means, to provide wages, to provide compensation, to provide support.

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But notice that there are some qualifications for this. It's not just anybody who qualifies for this double honor, who qualifies for the wages of their labor.

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So it's not those who peddle the word of God like a used salesman, or like a used car salesman, or like a snake oil salesman.

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Paul talks about that, those who peddle the word of God. It's not the prosperity preachers, those who would have you pile up your money along the edges of the stage.

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It's not for the faith healers. It's not for the slothful. It's not for those with slack hands.

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No, Paul tells us, he says, the church is to pay double honor to those who rule well.

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Those who rule the church well. And that word rule, I don't know if you guys like when

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I bring up these Greek words or not. I find them helpful. You can tell me afterwards if you find them unhelpful.

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But the word rule, that's the word proistemi. And that means those who provide capable and wise leadership.

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A good leader. Those who manage God's household well. So that's one qualification.

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They need to rule well. And then he says, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.

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That word labor is the Greek word kopiou. And that means, if you can picture this, to labor, to kopiou is to toil.

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It's to struggle to the point of exhaustion. Paul uses that word in Colossians 1, verse 28.

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There he says this. Picture this, he's talking to the Colossian church. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

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So they're warning, they're teaching with all wisdom to present everyone more and more like Jesus.

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And then Paul says in verse 29, this is Colossians 1, 29. For this I toil.

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For this I kopiou. I toil, struggling. Agonizemi.

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I agonize with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

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And so those who qualify for this double honor. Those who labor are those who are ruling the church well.

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They're providing good leadership. They're working hard to serve God's people.

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I once had a conversation. I think we could probably use a mental break, so I'll share this. I once had a conversation with a brother who belonged to a church where it was common practice for them to engage in extemporaneous preaching.

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This spontaneous preaching. And they saw it really as being an unspiritual thing to do any kind of advanced preparation.

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So what would happen is Steve would read the text, 1 Corinthians 9, 1 to 18, and then

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I would come up and I would open my mouth and we'd all, I'm going to learn something too today.

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What's going to come? They saw it as unspiritual to make preparations.

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And so as a result, God's flock was largely fed on whatever product that man could muster in that moment.

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Whatever I can come up in that moment. I don't know about you, but I stand up here regularly, and if I don't have at least some notes in front of me,

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I'm done. I'm toast. And it's going to be completely shallow and almost useless whatever

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I say from the front here. Now perhaps it's not a coincidence then that they got this idea from a misread or a misinterpretation of Luke 12.

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Luke 12, verses 11 and 12. If you guys know what it says there, it says, When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the

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Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.

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Now, this instruction from Christ is in a completely different context. It's in the context of persecution, not in the context of the assembled gathering of the saints, where the elder, the pastor, the expositor is preaching and teaching for these people.

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And so in their failure to study the text and to study the context, they reached a misinterpretation.

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They came to a misinterpretation of this passage. Perhaps not surprisingly, if the guy just gets up and says what's on his mind after he reads the text.

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Now, this is not what Paul had in mind when he said that someone should labor to teach and preach.

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Well, there are those exceptional circumstances. You know, you hear of the Charles Spurgeons and the

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George Whitefields, who in a moment's notice are asked to preach, and they preach the best sermon that's ever been preached in that century with just a couple of seconds notice.

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Well, there are exceptions to the rule. The fact that those are exceptional proves the point.

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It proves the rule. A faithful sermon in some ways, I don't know if you guys know this, but a faithful sermon, what you see on Sunday is kind of like seeing the tip of the iceberg.

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There are hours and hours and hours, even for the worst sermon a man has ever preached.

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If they're a faithful preacher, you're seeing the labor of hours and hours of prayer and meditation and careful study and thinking what do your people,

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Lord, need to hear this afternoon or this morning or whatever the case might be.

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It's biblical for whoever's preaching and teaching to work hard at that. In 2

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Timothy 2 .15, I'm not sure if my kids are paying attention. This is one of your memory verses. But do your best,

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Paul says. Do your best. Other translations say study. The King James says study to show yourself approved.

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Be diligent. Make every effort to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

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And so if Steve and I are gone one day and you're wondering, is this person at the front worthy of my double honor?

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Ask yourself, are they laboring to preach and teach the whole counsel of God?

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Are they toiling? Are they struggling to make the word of God fully known amongst you? By God's definition, faithful, precise, spirit -filled teaching and preaching is not something that's thrown together the hour that we meet, but it's something that is painfully, agonizingly labored over.

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It's the fruit of hours of study and meditation and prayer. Even D .A.

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Carson, if anyone knows D .A. Carson, he's a very well -respected Bible scholar. The man has a colossal mind.

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I think he reads over 300 books a year. It was the last time I saw it. And he says this, and I go back to this often, effectiveness in teaching the

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Bible is purchased at the price of much study, some of it lonely, all of it tiring.

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If you are not a student of the word, you are not called to be a teacher of the word.

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And so that is the type of person that we pay double honor to. You can tell that was a bit of a hobby horse of mine.

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The next thing we see, point number four, is the Levitical priesthood. And Paul looks at that in verses 13 and 14.

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He says, 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?

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In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

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So not only did the Levitical system, you know the 600 plus laws of the old covenant law, not only was this intricate system of worship, but it made provision for the priests that were laboring in the temple, that were laboring in the tabernacle.

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And those who daily ministered to God in that system of worship. And so the priests were generously compensated.

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I won't take us through all the texts in Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, but suffice to say this, that they were generously compensated.

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So for the burnt offerings, the priests got to keep the hides. For the sin offering, the guilt offering, the peace offering, they were able to keep some of the meat.

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For most of the grain offering, they were able to keep most of the grain. For all the varieties of tithes and offerings, almost all of them have an allotment for the priests.

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In Numbers 18, Moses says, well it says this, The Lord spoke to Aaron, Behold, I have given you charge of the contributions made to me, all the consecrated things of the people of Israel.

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I have given them to you as a portion, to your sons as a perpetual due.

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This shall be yours of the most holy things reserved from the fire. Every offering of theirs.

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And he lists off the offering and he says, In a most holy place you shall eat it.

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Every male may eat it. It is holy to you. And so Paul is saying, The apostles have had the opportunity to be compensated.

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The soldier, the farmer, the shepherd, the priest, the oxen, sorry, the priest.

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And then he says here, probably his strongest case, Even Christ, number five,

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Christ's authoritative command. Even Christ has taught this. In verse 14, he says this,

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In the same way the Lord, so that's Jesus, commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

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So the Lord Jesus commanded this when he sent out the 12 disciples. In Matthew chapter 10 and verse 10.

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He says this, Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, no bag for your journey or two tunics or sandals or a staff.

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He says don't pack extra clothes. Don't pack a bag. Don't pack extra money.

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This is why. For the laborer deserves his food. In whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it and stay there until you depart.

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So Christ taught that. And then in Luke chapter 10 verse 7, when he sent out the 72, there were two times he sent out the 12.

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Another time he sent out the 72. When he sent out those disciples, he said, remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide for the laborer deserves his wages.

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The laborer deserves his wages. And so he's telling the disciples. I remember when I was a new believer, I had just such a messed up view of this passage.

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And I remember one time Nicole and I had this stranger living in our house. He was essentially a homeless man.

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Nothing wrong with that, except that it was a misinterpretation of this text. This guy who thought he was a prophet.

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And I thought we need to support him. We need to have him in our house. That's not quite what Paul is or what

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Christ is getting at here. But what he's saying is that the disciples, when he was sending out the 12, when he's sending out the 72, they're to trust in God for his provision.

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Don't take any extras. Don't take money. Don't take food. Don't take clothes. Trust in God.

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Because God is going to provide people who are going to provide for you. If you just devote yourself, seek first the kingdom and his righteousness,

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I'll take care of everything else. Now Christ, even Christ practiced this.

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So even Christ was the recipient of other people's support. If we look in Luke 8 verses 1 to 3.

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Soon afterwards he, that's Jesus, went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.

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And the 12 were with him, those are the disciples, the apostles, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities.

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Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others, it says, who provided for them out of their means.

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So here Paul makes this case. It's a long case, but these five points. You have the apostles' example, the human customs, the

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Old Testament laws, the Levitical priesthood, and the authoritative preaching and teaching of Christ.

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Paul says, I have a right to be compensated, as do these other individuals.

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And then here Paul really lays out, he unveils the substance of his argument.

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He says, I have a right to your support, but I did not make use of that right.

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I could have, but for the sake of the church, for the sake of the saints, I didn't make use of it.

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And he says in verse 15 this, he says, but I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am

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I writing these things to secure any such provisions. And I want you to know, that's not why

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I'm preaching this message either. It's not now to secure provisions. But Paul says, for I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of this ground, of my ground, excuse me, for boasting.

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So Paul's made a case for gospel support. Now, this other principle that lives in tension with gospel support is this, gospel surrender.

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And the point that Paul makes here is, we should surrender our rights when necessary, for the good of others.

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So Paul didn't write this, as I've said, to get the Corinthians to pay him now. He says in verse 15,

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I would rather die. We don't see it in the original, in our

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ESVs, if you have an ESV or maybe an NIV, but in the original text, there's a grammatical break there.

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It's like when someone is, they're getting excited and they start saying one statement, and they switch gears halfway through.

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And so the Net Bible renders it this way. He says, I would rather die, no one will deny me of my grounds for boasting.

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He just switches the topic. He's very passionate about this. He says necessity was laid upon him to preach the gospel.

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Paul told the Romans, if you remember where he says this, he said he had that obligation to preach to both the

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Greeks and the barbarians, to the wise and the foolish, to the Colossians. He said he had been given a stewardship to proclaim the word of God.

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And he even says, woe to me, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. I don't know if you know that Paul there is likely using language from Jeremiah.

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Jeremiah often, if you've read Jeremiah recently, he's always woeing.

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And he's woeing because he's called to preach, to teach, to prophesy faithfully in the midst of just a completely corrupt people.

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And he encounters all of these difficulties. In Jeremiah 20, verse 9, he says,

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If I say, I will not mention him or speak any more in his name.

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I don't know if any of you have ever had this experience. There is in my heart as if it were a burning fire shut up in my bones and I'm weary with holding it in and I cannot.

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So Jeremiah said, even when I tried to hold it back, it was like fire inside of me.

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It just had to escape. And this was Paul's experience. If God has called you, think about this, if God has called you to any type of ministry in the word, any type of preaching, teaching, exhortation, evangelism, it's going to feel a lot like this.

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If you've been called by God to herald God's words, it's going to be like a burning inside of you that just eats you up from the inside.

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And so this was Paul's ground for boasting. It was his reward to preach

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Christ and him crucified free of charge. And we can,

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I don't know if you guys, does anyone else find it fascinating when you look at an epistle and you see something that Paul or maybe one of the other writers is talking about and then you can find that in the book of Acts?

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Like to see those two mesh in? You can see that in Paul's life, not only in the letter of 1

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Corinthians, but you can find it in the book of Acts and in his letter to the Philippians. And so we'll look there out of interest sake.

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In Acts chapter 18, we see what Paul does. Paul comes into Corinth in verse 1.

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He meets Priscilla and Aquila. He ends up, after meeting them, living with them for a period of time.

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And because he was in the same trade, he works alongside them. And in Acts 18 verse 3 he says, and because he was of the same trade, so this is

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Paul in Corinth, living out what he's preaching. And because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.

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And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.

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So this is where our expression tentmaker comes from. Those people that work with their hands during the day.

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It's kind of like a superhero, right? They're a carpenter, they're a tentmaker, they're an

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IT person, they're whatever they are during the day. And they are a minister of the gospel by night.

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And so Paul was a tentmaker, literally and figuratively. Made tents during the day, but his first calling, we'll see in Acts 18, 11, was to minister the word of God.

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And he stayed a year and six months teaching the word of God among them.

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And he says that if any need arose during that time, so as he was providing for himself, if any need arose, in 2

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Corinthians 11, 9, he tells us how he met that extra need. In 2

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Corinthians 11, 9, he says, and when I was with you, so he's talking to the Corinthians here, and was in need,

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I did not burden anyone for the brothers who came from Macedonia. If you know where Macedonia is, that's

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Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, supplied my need.

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So I refrained, and will refrain from burdening you in any way.

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So Paul labored, he worked with his hands, he made tents while he was in Corinth that he might offer the gospel free of charge.

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And when an extra need arose, the Macedonians provided that need.

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This is the last dot that I'm gonna connect as part of this, in Philippians 4, when

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Paul was writing to the Philippians, he says this, Philippians 4, 14 and 15, yet it was kind of you to share my trouble.

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And you Philippians know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, that was

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Acts chapter 17, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only.

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And so you see the apostle Paul, he's a tent maker, he's coming to the Corinthian church free of charge, and whenever any extra need arises, it's the

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Philippians, likely, that are providing for that need. And so Paul gives us here the illustration, the example of gospel support and gospel surrender.

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Paul had a right to something, he gave up that right for the good of the church. Now we're at the very end here,

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I just wanna look at two points, two quick points of application. So firstly, as I've already said, like Paul, I have not preached, nor have

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Steve and I planned at any point to preach this message in order to secure provision for ourselves.

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Steve and I are happily making tents at the moment, it's our great joy, it's our reward, as Paul says, to serve you.

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But nonetheless, the text reminds us of the importance of being generous supporters of the proclamation of the gospel.

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Now, we're firm believers in this church, at least at the leadership level, that we need to be gospel supporters.

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And so if you look at our annual church budget, we do have one, and we can give you access to that if you'd like, almost 50 % of the church budget, whatever people do offer, goes almost immediately, just passes through our hands and out to a missionary, to a gospel laborer of some kind.

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So as a church, we want to be generous, we want to be gospel supporters, but I will say this by way of application, we want to be more generous, we want to support more people, we want to support more missionaries.

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And the life of William Carey shows us a good example, or maybe the value of this type of support.

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So William Carey, has anyone heard that name before? William Carey? He's widely known as the father of modern missions.

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And so when, at that time, in the late 1800s, the early 19, sorry, the late 1700s, early 1800s, there were very few people that really recognized the

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Great Commission. They thought that was really more for the apostles, that Matthew 28, 18 to 20,

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Great Commission, that was for those guys. But it was William Carey and some others that said, no, this is timeless.

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This is for all of us, for all time. We're to go make disciples of all nations. And so William Carey went out, but before he did, before he moved to India, where he spent 41 years of his life, he talked to his friend

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Andrew Fuller. Andrew Fuller is another big name in church history. And he said to Andrew Fuller, something that's become a famous saying, he said,

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Andrew, I will go down into the pit if you will hold the ropes.

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So I will go, I will preach the gospel, but I need somebody holding the rope while I'm down there.

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And so William Carey went into the pit. Like I said, 41 years he spent in India.

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Much of that time, he experienced illness. His five -year -old died of dysentery when they first arrived there.

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And his wife, I believe her name was Dorothy, literally lost her mind, got to the point where she was accusing him of things, threatening him with a knife, and they had to lock her in a room until she died of fever.

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William Carey went into the pit. Meanwhile, Andrew Fuller went around the

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British Isles teaching people about missions, preaching from the Bible, the importance of the

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Great Commission and of going out and making disciples of all nations. He held the rope. And in a way, it almost mimics the relationship between the

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Philippians and Paul. Paul was ministering in Corinth amongst this immature group of believers, and you had the

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Philippians at times holding the rope. And I want, as a point of application,

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I want this church to be more like the Philippians than the Corinthians. I want us to either go in the pit or hold the rope.

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I want us to, if you're called to be a missionary, to preach the gospel, then go in the pit and let us hold the rope, or at least help to hold that rope.

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So that's one point of application. The other one is this, that we can learn from Paul's example to carefully exercise our

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Christian liberty. It's not only about our freedom, but it's about the good of the whole church.

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And so we can apply this to food offered to idols, although that isn't an immediate need of ours, but we can also apply it to other matters of conscience.

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We can apply it to worship on days of the week. We can apply it even to things like the pandemic and the political climate.

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Again, separate from Christian or religious liberty is this idea of Christian liberty, this issue of conscience.

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We should seek to uphold peace, to love one another, to do good for one another.

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One commentator writes, he says, certainly we have privileges as Christians, but we must never use our privileges in such a way that we hinder the gospel.

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Or I could add, we must never use our privileges in such a way that we would wound a brother or sister in Christ.

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And so let's learn. This is my conclusion. Let's learn from Paul's example. But even more, let's see

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Christ in this. Let's learn from Christ's example. In his great love, in his grace, in his divine generosity, he humbled himself and became poor that we might become rich.

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When you realize this idea of gospel support, gospel surrender is rooted in the gospel.

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It was Christ who became poor that we might become rich. In his infinite love, he did not cling to his own divine freedom as God of very gods.

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He could have remained in the heavens, separate from us, but he humbled himself.

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He became a man. He went to the cross in our place that we might be truly free in him.

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So brothers and sisters, we have freedom, we have freedom to be generous, we have freedom to be kind with one another, we have freedom to consider one another's consciences.