The Rights of the Shepherd

The Apostolic Defense and the Text of 1 Corinthians 9

Today's text is 1st Corinthians chapter 9 verses 1 through 15. Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? 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. This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? 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?

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

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. Is it for oxen that God is concerned?

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

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.

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

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. Bow your heads, let's pray.

Prayer for the Sermon and for Shepherds

Father, thank you for the gift of your word. Thank you for this letter where we're over halfway through. Thank you for each message so far, Lord. I thank you for our shepherds that work very hard, Lord.

Our shepherds spend hours taking care of these sheep, taking care of me, taking care of us. Lord, thank you for who they are. Lord, help us to take care of them. Lord, I pray that you would open our eyes to this text, that you would convict us, that you would reveal, illuminate this text to us, Lord.

I pray for Josh. Give him the gift of preaching. Lord, thank you for the gift. Lord, we pray for the service, and we pray all these things in your name. Amen.

The 1689 Confession and the Question of Paying Pastors

We've been blessed at this point in the young life of Covenant Baptist to have very few controversies, but one of them that has raged since the summer of 2025 is this one. London Baptist Confessional, Chapter 26, Paragraph 10 states, the work of pastors being constantly to attend the service of Christ in his churches, in the ministry of the word and prayer, with watching for their souls, as they that must give an account to him.

It is incumbent on the churches to whom they minister, not only to give them all due respect, but also to communicate to them of all their good things according to their ability, so as they may have a comfortable supply without being themselves entangled in secular affairs, and may also be capable of exercising hospitality towards others.

And this is required by the law of nature and by the express order of our Lord Jesus, who has ordained that they preach the gospel should live of the gospel. So that is in our Statement of Beliefs. It is written by older men, and it has stood the test of time.

It is deeply biblical. It is easily defended from multiple scriptures, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And if you listen to the recordings, if you weren't here, if you listen to the recordings on the 1689, we kind of skimmed over.

We went really fast through them, and what's not on the recordings is the question-and-answer section afterwards, in which I believe at least two of the sessions, if not three, got dominated by this topic.

So, all cards on the table. I am bivocational. I work full-time at Springdale High School, and I am paid here. And the question rages, and there are several questions. Can a pastor be bivocational? Do we have to pay a certain amount?

Who else gets paid? These are questions that we have had. It really is in many ways, and look, I will tell you, I am blessed by this being the fact of our church so far, is that this is the hot-button issue of CBC so far in its young life.

And I will tell you, that's a good hot-button issue to have. All right? I like that. It's a good one. It's something to talk about. So, we have decisions to make, and we have had decisions to make about who gets paid, how much they get paid.

How does this replicate the mission and vision? The mission of this church is the Great Commission, just like every Church of Jesus Christ. But the vision of this particular church is to raise up men to be church leaders, and to replicate this church by planting churches in first Northwest Arkansas, and then outwards as it extends from there.

That requires a lot of time, a lot of discipleship, and a lot of questions about how can this happen. You will have statistics thrown at you often. I don't know how true they are, but they are said so many times that they've become dogma, and that is that 80 of church plants fail.

I will tell you, in practicality, it seems as though when you look at church plants, it's probably not a good idea to send 25-year-olds out to plant churches that are given $700 a month from an overarching corrupt institution like the North American Mission Board.

Okay? Probably not a good plan. So, we can go from there and look, how can you plant churches? And it basically boils down to, in our time, I think that you can have a staff member that is paid a comfortable living or facilities, but not both.

Right? And so, the way that we have tried to peel that apple and look at it here, is that we have an eye toward raising up bivocational elders who can go and not have the financial strain on a fledgling church, but maybe can grow into that, if that is the desire of the body.

And there are many things in this text this morning, and Paul is going to make arguments over and over again, from the lesser to the greater. He is going to first establish his position as being an Apostle.

Capital A Apostle. If I was looking in the scripture and not giving the pious answer of Jesus, and you asked me, who is your greatest hero of the scripture? Kelsey can tell you right now who it is.

It's Paul.

It's a man that I, I revere him. His words tear me up. I love him. I will never be as great as him. And I can, I can resonate with so much of what he says here, because Paul's desire is what I wish mine was.

And that desire is to proclaim the gospel and to disciple people. That's his whole drive. That's what he does. That's all he cares about. And then this thing gets in the way because there's critics. And there's always critics.

So Paul starts, and he is going to give an account at chapter 9 here, because we read between the lines and see that there are critics at Corinth. There are people that are disparaging his ministry. But even more than that, probably hurtfully to him, they are disparaging the Apostle himself.

They are calling into question his credentials. They're calling into question his fruits. There will be another letter written to the Corinthians. We call it 2nd Corinthians, or across the pond they call it 2 Corinthians.

And that one is really dealing pointedly with the critics of Paul. And we see some of the things in that letter that they're saying. That he's not really an apostle. That he's a grifter. That he is there for worldly gain, and that he is preaching a gospel that doesn't result in anything.

Because look at him. His gospel gets you persecuted. And it's like the prophets of old, who the people that were contemporaries hated the prophets, because they spoke of the judgment of God, and then they were revered later after they died.

He was St. Paul after he died. He was a thorn in the side of the religious establishment while he lived. And we see this today. If you dare to speak the truth, if you dare to go against the conventional wisdom of the culture that is run by the prince of the power of the air, you will draw critics, and they will attack personally.

Paul says, am I not free? Remember, we are in the context of liberty. We are in the context of last week we saw in chapter 8, that Paul has warned against syncretism. You must not eat the meat of the idols.

You must not be entangled with the blood. This was the decree of the Council of Jerusalem, and people in Corinth with their sophistry are making arguments that it's okay to go and be seen worshiping in the temple by eating the meat.

And so Paul comes off of that, and he is talking about what real freedom looks like. And Paul is going to give us a master course in the next few lessons about what freedom as a Christian looks like. And friends, as Americans, we have done ourselves no favors culturally here.

I am convinced that we have no idea what liberty means in America, held up against not only what our forefathers believed, but especially what Paul the apostle wrote. Am I not free? Am I not an apostle?

Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? 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. Paul was taught by the Lord Jesus Christ for three years in the desert, and Paul came back and was vetted and established by the apostles.

In fact, Peter says that Paul's writings are scripture. An astounding thing to say about another man, is it not? And Paul points to, in the face of his critics, he points and says, your very existence as a church is the seal of my apostleship.

If you want to look at my credentials, if you want to look at my ministry, look at yourselves. You are the product of my ministry. That's what Paul says. As a guy who planted a church, I can relate. I can relate.

And you guys are very dear to me. And in many ways, when I am called before the great shepherd and I'm asked to give an account of my deeds, I'm going to point at you. You'll be my resume. You'll be my credentials.

And I will fail you, but I want to steadfastly work for you, as Paul did for the people at Corinth, to understand the pain. And Paul is about to give his harshest rebukes, and so he sets himself up this way.

His apostleship cannot be doubted, but he carries with it authority. He is a man who has every right to write this letter. He has planted this church, he has watered it, and he is sending letters to rebuke and to cultivate it.

And so his appeal is going to be, how do you treat the people who are in charge? How do you treat your leaders and your shepherds? And that's where we get to the title of the sermon this morning, which is the rights of the shepherd.

Paul is going to establish the rights and then talk about liberty, because those two things are different. Rights and liberty are different. If you will look, we're going to follow through, and I'm going to spend Paul's case, which is established in verses 3 through 14.

If you will follow along, you're going to see several ways that Paul makes the case that shepherds deserve earthly goods for their spiritual work. That is the premise. The premise is this, and Paul writes it over and over again.

If you want to mark a place, you can go to 2 Corinthians 5, and you will see in really clear form, Paul's view of the worldly physical versus the eternal spiritual. And what he is saying is that what you experience here is a far lesser value than the eternal, because the eternal is forever.

You will surely dwell in eternity based on the decisions you make while you're dwelling in tents here. And so when Paul makes this argument, what he's saying is that a shepherd of the church is giving tremendous sacrifice for the spiritual good of his people, and that the least that he should expect from that is some material blessing.

This has been wildly perverted in our day. Wildly. And I'm going to let that sit, and it has raged on social media this week. The age old, I think there may be a bot that's just like using bad actors to recycle things about every five or six months.

This month, what raged in the Reform ghetto, news from the ghetto, was this. Pastors, we got it real hard. You guys don't. You don't understand what it's like to be me. And I need sabbaticals. I need them.

I need time off. Does that sound like what Paul's saying here? Do you think Paul worked hard? Do you think Paul needed to take three month breaks from preaching the gospel? I don't think so. I think we have a bunch of mercenaries that inhabit pulpits today.

I think we have a bunch of people who have found that we can put in 15 hour weeks to make upper middle class income, and if you can be especially adept at marketing, you can make a lot more than that.

Because if you can titillate the sheep and the goats by bringing many of them in, then you can make for yourself an even better living. And every seven years, I mean, it's like the Passover, right? Every seven years, you probably should get three months off.

So that you can recover because it's oh so difficult. And my response to that is wah, wah, wah. It's ridiculous. And what it does is it degrades this office.

Do you see it?

Because we have men who are struggling and working to provide for their house in an economy that is not favorable. And men are working long hours. And when they get a puffy, soft-handed guy who stands behind the pulpit saying feminist coded nonsense, who then says, I'm so tired, I need some time off.

It degrades the office. That is not what Paul's talking about. What Paul is talking about is a man that strains so hard for the church and for his people that he doesn't have time to row crops. Don't miss it.

It was hard to eat in this time. There was subsistence farming. And so the man who was studying the scrolls, not the internet. How can I complain? I have every commentary that has ever written that I can bring up with a simple one-word search.

And I can see it in the language. And I can see all the codexes. There is everything there instantly. And the men who went before us had pieces and parts. And they would struggle under candlelight with quills writing sermons.

And that's what Paul's talking about.

What a man.

But a man who is enslaved to Christ. And so he writes to his beloved church. And he makes the argument for why they need to take care of their shepherds. Not so they can go on golf vacations to Pebble, as much as I would like that, right?

That's not it. It's so they can eat. It's so they can eat. It's so that they can take the time to study without growing crops and raising beasts of their own. That's what it's about. A man who was going to study needed to study.

And he needed to pour out his life. We had the, we had the, I know I'm calling it here. I hope it's good. We have a man who is so involved in the community in this time that he's known by the pagans and the Christians in the community as being a man of God.

And there are many demands on this man's time because he is the educated man in his city or his community. And so his time is strapped. That's what Paul's talking about. He's not talking about these soft, weak-kneed guys who are making a living being clerics.

It's offensive. See, Paul has been given this authority. And because of this authority, he's not unlike the other apostles. He says the other apostles, they're able to take wives. They're able to have homes.

Is it only Barnabas and I that don't get to do that? Because Paul is traveling to all of these churches. He's being harassed and persecuted everywhere he goes. And he says, is it just us? And the answer is no, it's obviously not.

It would not have been sinful for Paul to take a wife. But there are critics. There are critics who point to Paul and they're saying, you're just like the other guys who come in and give us really smooth-sounding stuff and make your living off of your rhetoric.

That's why Paul begins in chapter one by saying he doesn't come with rhetoric. He comes with the simple thing of the foolishness of the cross. Remember that? It's all connected. Paul's not coming like a Greek sophist with rhetoric.

He's coming with the power of the cross. Why does he not demand to get paid? To skip to the end is because he loves the church of Corinth more than food. Incredible man. Incredible man. It makes me sad to think how far we've fallen.

He is a minister of the gospel and a tent maker. But he is gaining up support from even the poorest churches around in Macedonia. Paul is not against the church contributing to gospel ministry. In fact, he's arguing for it here.

And he first makes the argument from nature. I hope you see it here. He calls out a couple of groups. First, it's understood by everyone, even in ancient times, that if you are a soldier, you're probably not raising crops.

If you're a soldier and you are out making war, you do not have time to provide your own provisions. You're going to have to be paid and fed by the magistrate or the government that is sending you out to be a soldier.

That stands to reason. So Paul makes the argument. Are shepherds of the people of God not more important than soldiers? Are we ambassadors for Christ, he would write in 2 Corinthians 5. It's understood.

No one would argue. Would we say that the men who are overseas right now fighting, would we say, yeah, guys, if you can't make your own food, then what are we even doing here? No, we're obviously feeding them.

Okay, that's always been true. We see another argument. He says it's understood that farmers will feed themselves from the fruit of their own fields. And that they will have the milk from their own animals.

It would be nonsensical for a farmer to raise his crops and then give all of those away and starve to death. No, we would look at that and say, that's really dumb. If you're a farmer and you raise crops, you should probably have food.

We understand this, right? And so what Paul is making the argument for is that these obvious truths are also in light of this and spiritual goods are more valuable than physical. And so if we pay for soldiers, and if farmers get to take from their own orchard, then ministers of the gospel should be able to reap the benefits of their own fields.

See the argument? This is the less convincing one, but it's pretty convincing. Now let's go to the really the airtight one. And this is the argument from God's law. You shall not muzzle the ox while it's threshing.

Does God care more about oxen than he does about people? And we even know that to ask that is to answer it. That's an absurd question. It's rhetorical. And then we would also extend this far and say that oxen obviously in Jewish tradition are a metaphor for laborers.

The oxen are people who are laboring. And so the ox is threshing out the grain. It was very hard work. The ox was tied up and walking, pulling a heavy load all day long. It would be immoral to not feed the beast of burden.

And likewise, Paul makes the argument from law that it would be immoral not to feed the shepherd. And we have excesses on both sides of this if you guys have been around. We have the prosperity punks who are going in, getting seeds of faith and living lavish lifestyles, flying private jets all over the place.

You're Kenneth Copeland type, right? But then you also have people who the congregation just starves out. And this is true. There are men who have labored their whole lives in churches and they have nothing.

No house, nothing to pass on to their children, and they are starving to death for their whole life. And when they get sick, they're destitute. That is a shame on the church. If the church cannot take care of their shepherd, they don't need to be a church at all.

What's the point? If that's what we're saying spiritual goods are worth, then what's the point of the spiritual goods? So there is a medium ground. We're not trying to fly people around on luxury jets, but at the same time, we should not be starving people to death.

See, the Lord directed a class and we can see it. And the Lord himself in Luke 10 and the Synoptic Gospel said to his disciples as they went out to preach the gospel, he said, stay in that house eating and drinking what they give you for the laborer is worthy of his wages.

Do not keep moving from house to house. So when his disciples would go into a town to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God, then they would stay in a house under hospitality and they would be fed with the people who own that house.

And that was the way the disciples were supposed to expect to do ministry. Similarly, today, a man who is a shepherd of the flock should be taken care of with the goods of that people. The argument is clear and the Lord makes it.

See, owners were responsible for taking care of their oxen. If you'd like to read interesting stuff about oxen, Deuteronomy 22 is a place to go. So owners are responsible for taking care of their beast.

If you let your beast out and it mauls somebody, you're responsible. But similarly, I found this interesting. If you see your neighbor's ox out of its field roaming, the Lord says that what you're supposed to do to love your neighbor is to go alert your neighbor or to pin up that ox so that they would be given back to the owner.

See, it's a community where we're looking out for each other. Do we do that? And I think here that we do, but there is some practical stuff we'll get to. He follows up his argument from the law of God in Deuteronomy to an argument from temple practices.

These are practices that go back to the Levites that align with nature and with God's law, as they obviously would. See, the priest class of Israel, when it was established, they were the Levitical line.

They were descendants of Levi, and they were given cities that were scattered all over. They did not have their own land allotment as a tribe, and that meant that they did not have huge areas where they could cultivate crops.

They were dependent on the other tribes to come in and to give them a tithe of food to protect and to keep the priestly class. They had no portion with the other tribes. So the Lord, in his wisdom, made a class of priests who were dependent on all of the other tribes for their living.

Probably would have been scary to be a Levite. And what we do is we see from that a lot of bad behavior in the temple through the Old Testament, don't we? We see the sons of Eli. We see the sons of Samuel.

There's all kinds of bad behavior because what you wanna do is you want to naturally build a consortium of rich benefactors who are gonna keep you in the lamb, right? Literally, so you could get the lamb and the goat and the beef, okay?

You wanted that stuff. And the beef, which we know is delicious, that would be by the rich people who were sacrificing in the temple. And so you wanted to make them happy. So what do you do to make rich people happy?

Well, we know you throw lavish parties. And that's what was going on in the temple. And it was a disgrace to God and he killed them. See, there is a warning to this in pastors. We can say on the one hand that we should be taken care of by the flock.

But on the other hand, we will give account. And if we fleece and abuse the people of God, there will be retribution. Not many of you should become teachers. James in his same letter writes that we are to show no partiality to the rich because there's always a temptation to have the one who comes in who's a big giver.

There's always the temptation to bring them deep into our councils so that they will continue to provide the living. That's how the grift of the minister goes. You can get the masses or you can get the influential.

And if you're especially talented, you can get both. And then, then you can have $20 million church buildings and then the money keeps flowing.

And that's the way it works.

It's a dangerous thing. What's lost in all of that is the fear of God. So congregants who starve out pastors don't fear God because they don't care what he said. And pastors who fleece sheep for filthy lucre don't fear God either.

So what do we do? What do we do? And that's where we come to the end. And I am going to focus all of our practical this morning on verse 15. It's an astounding verse and it launches what Corey's going to be handling in a couple of weeks.

But I have used none of these things. Do you understand? I want to stop there. Paul has argued he has a complete right to take all these things. And in fact, it probably would have been good if the Corinthians had freely offered to give him these things.

Both of these things are inherent in the text, right? The Corinthians gave him nothing and he asked for nothing. And there's a two-way street in this. I have used none of these things and I am not writing these things so that it will be done so in my case.

For it would be better for me to die than have anyone make my boast an empty one. What is his boast? His boast is that the gospel is real. That there's death and rejection of Jesus Christ. That there's life in faith that's given through grace.

That there's life in repentance. And if a pastor making some money gives his detractors a valuable sword to cut through his gospel ministry, I join with Paul. I'd rather die. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

I would rather die than for that to happen. See, Paul has made the arguments. There's no way can you really open Scripture and argue against what Paul says. Shepherds should be paid. They always were.

It's just like the Levitical line. They should be paid. And yet, now we see what Christian liberty looks like. Paul sets these rights aside for himself.

Christian Liberty, Gospel Witness, and Refusing to Be a Hindrance

Why?

Well, we see it to avoid hindering the faith of Gentiles who were used to the grift of high rhetoric oratory skills to promise civic and educational benefits. What people do is they would come into these Greek towns and they would be fast talkers.

And they would be able to use the philosophy and they would stir people up and they would say, look, if you follow me, if you follow me, then you're going to have all these educational benefits. You will rise up through society.

All it's going to take is a small monthly donation. If you've ever watched late night TV, you'll see the commercials piling on and on back in the day, right? The infomercials about, you know, it's less than a cup of coffee a day.

That's the appeal for thousands of people to do it. See, Paul also does another thing though. And I relate strongly to this one. He wants to silence critics who would accuse him of being in this ministry for money alone.

I want to tell you something astounding. The New Testament has no category, no category for false teachers who are not in it for money. False teachers are always in it for money.

And I don't mind saying,.

I have been accused of that. And there was a time at this church where I most certainly and emphatically gave up my right because I do not want to be accused of peddling the gospel. That is the furthest thing from my intention.

And in the presence of critics who can cast doubt and dispersion, there is a biblical, simple way to cut them at the knees. And that is to not take it so that it would not be a hindrance to the gospel.

So if Paul is setting these things aside for himself for their good, so that they would not think he's a grifter, also so that the critics would be silenced because what possible motivation would Paul have to beating his head against the wall time and time again in this church if they're not even paying him?

You understand how crazy this is? This church is a thorn in his side. They have all kinds of problems going on. And Paul's not getting paid a dime. Why is he even messing with them? In fact, he says he wants to come back.

The travel was not easy in the ancient world. Why does he want to come back? There's a bunch of people who have got their sway that have told him, Paul's just, he's a liar. Why are you even listening to him?

And Paul's like, I'm coming back.

Why?

It's because he loves them like a spiritual father. They're his children. And we see the apostle John talk the same way in his letters at the end of the book about how the church, they're his children.

They are his legacy. Everything that he is giving account for to God is dependent on his legacy, his children in the faith. That is the joy of being a shepherd. Shepherds should not whine about the job.

Do we or do we not have a chance to fill up the sufferings of Jesus Christ? That should be a joy to God's people. And it should be an extended joy to a man who would want to be a pastor. And we need you.

If you have that calling, if you desire to be a pastor, understand. You are signing up for hardship. You are signing up for criticism. You are signing up for people to not listen to you. You are signing up for hours and counseling and frustration.

And it's awesome. It's amazing. I couldn't do anything other. Paul's gonna say later that the gospel compels him to do this. And I feel that so strongly. From the time I was born, my mom knew before I ever did that the gospel compels me.

I have to. There's no other way. It's an amazing thing that he does. He wants to protect his brothers, the other apostles.

Do you see that?

Why does he make the argument? Because it's not for him. He doesn't want to get in the way. But he does know that the church at Corinth is not gonna survive if they don't take care of shepherds. No one's going to shepherd them if they're starving to death.

So you should pay your shepherds. He also knows that his apostles, Peter, James, the brother of Jesus, Jude, the brother of Jesus, John, and all the rest of them, they do have wives. They are getting paid.

And Paul is cutting the critics off of the knees by saying, hey, maybe I'm not getting paid, but they deserve to get paid and they should be getting paid. They are doing amazing work.

Keep paying them.

Keep taking up the collection. He's so pure hearted. And that leads us to the final turn. What about us?

What about us?

Here's what we know for sure. And then there's wisdom in this. What we know for sure is that a man who labors in gospel ministry has a claim to physical goods. I've been thinking about how to best do this.

Here we go. In the best book written in the English language, J .R .R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, there is an especially profound chapter. It's called The Forbidden Pool. It has really nothing to do with the plot of the books.

In fact, if you look at it, you could be like, why is this even here? And I think Tolkien wrote this for one reason that he was driving at, and that is this. There is hierarchy in the world. And if there is a claim from the master to the servant, obviously, right?

The one who serves the master, the master has a claim to his work and his allegiance. But there is also a claim from the servant on the master. If you've never read the story, what's wrong with you? If you have read the story, if you have read the story, I encourage you to go back and read that chapter.

It's about a sniveling little monster who is a liar and a thief. His name is Gollum. And he made a lying promise, a swear, an oath, an oath to serve his master and he fully intended to break it. And yet, do you know what his master did?

He respected that oath and he saved the monster's life knowing that it would come back to bite him. It's an incredible story. Pastors, we know, we know that we're going to get bit sometimes. Our job is to not whine about it.

We know what's going to happen. There is a greater call to service. And that call to service is between the shepherd and his creator. I don't know how it's going to work, but someday I'm going to give an account for our ministry with all of you.

And they'll ask me about names. How is it going to be if I don't know what you did? It's not going to go well for me.