THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE PASTOR (1 Corinthians 9:1-14)
INTRODUCTION:
This morning I promised to talk about the relationship between Village Missions and McCleary Community Church. Why is this important? For one thing if it was not for Village Missions I would not be here, I would not be the pastor of this church. We just watched a video that gave us some particulars about Village Missions, when it began and who it was that started it. Village Missions began in 1948 and was founded by Rev. Walter Duff. The purpose of Village Missions is to bring the Word of God to people in rural North America where no vibrant witness of the Gospel exists, where churches are closing and unable to keep their doors open. McCleary Community Church contacted Village Missions when they saw the possibility of their doors closing. They partnered with Village Missions to receive a pastor to keep the church doors open. I am the third Village Missions missionary pastor that has served here in the McCleary Community Church. So, what does this relationship look like? Both Village Missions and McCleary Community Church agree to several responsibilities. Village Missions agrees to provide spiritual leadership by invitation, missionary pastors in Village Missions are appointed to the church they will serve by the leadership of Village Missions. The mission agrees to supply leadership that is qualified and acceptable to you, the membership of the church. They also agree to assign new leadership, if for some reason the present leadership is not acceptable. The mission agrees to supplement the missionary’s support, as God enables, to the minimum base support. Village Missions agrees to counsel, encourage, and guide the missionary assigned. These are some of the responsibilities that Village Missions agrees to meet. When the church invites Village Missions to provide spiritual leadership, they agree to provide adequate housing and utilities for the Village Missionary, either through a church owned parsonage or by providing a housing allowance. The church agrees to fund the Mission-provided “Benefits Package” which includes medical, life, and disability. The church also agrees to designate 10% of the general church offerings each month for Village Missions. This offering is used by Village Missions to bring a missionary couple to you and assist in providing leadership to other rural communities. The church agrees to provide as much of the missionary’s base support as possible, with the goal of providing all of it. These are some of the church’s responsibilities for this partnership between Village Missions and the church to exist. At one point in time McCleary Community Church provided all of our base support, that changed several years ago when the church went through a period of inadequate funds to provide for all the needs of the church, and that continues to be the case today. Village Missions supplements my salary each month to meet the base support set by the mission administration and board of directors. I am an employee of Village Missions appointed by them to serve as your missionary pastor along with Karla and my family.
This morning I want to briefly look at a passage of Scripture where Paul defends the right of those who are ministers of the gospel to have their needs provided for by those to whom they minister. Paul uses himself as an example. Let’s pray and then look at our passage of Scripture this morning.
--PRAY--
SCRIPTURE:
Turn in your Bibles to 1st Corinthians 9:1-14, our passage for this morning. Please stand if you are able, in honor of the reading of God’s Word and follow along as I read.
1st Corinthians 9:1-14,
“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. My defense to those who examine me is this: Do we not have a right to eat and drink? Do we not have a right to take along a believing wife, even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or do only Barnabas and I not have a right to refrain from working? Who at any time serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat the fruit of it? Or who tends a flock and does not use the milk of the flock? I am not speaking these things according to human judgment, am I? Or does not the Law also say these things? For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing.” God is not concerned about oxen, is He? Or is He speaking altogether for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written, because the plowman ought to plow in hope, and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the crops. If we sowed spiritual things in you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share the right over you, do we not more? Nevertheless, we did not use this right, but we endure all things so that we will cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ. Do you not know that those who perform sacred services eat the food of the temple, and those who attend regularly to the altar have their share from the altar? So also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel.” (1 Corinthians 9:1–14, NASB95)[1]
INTRODUCTION TO 1ST CORINTHIANS 9:1-14
Paul in the first 14 verses of this chapter defends his right to receive financial support from the church in Corinth. In the chapter before this and the chapter after this Paul is speaking about Christian liberty and how we must not use it in such a way that it causes a weaker brother to stumble or hinders his growth in the Lord. Paul then in chapter nine uses himself as an example of the mature use of Christian liberty. He begins as I said by defending his right to receive financial support from the church, then in the second half of the chapter he shows how he set that right aside to achieve a higher goal. He is not saying that setting this right aside is always proper, but for him it was proper at that time. He defends his right to financial support from the church through the use of five arguments that support his position. We will briefly look at each.
PAUL’S APOSTLESHIP (1st Corinthians 9:1-6)
Paul’s first argument was that he was an apostle. The word apostle means “one sent under a commission,” and refers primarily to the 12 disciples of the Lord, Judas Iscariot having been replaced by Matthias, and Paul. These apostles had a special commission along with the New Testament prophets and that was to lay the foundation of the church. One of the qualifications of being an apostle was having a personal experience of seeing the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. Paul had this experience on the road to Damascus when he was traveling there to arrest Christians. The Apostles were the witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Apostles were also given the ability to perform special signs and wonders to attest and confirm the message which they preached. In 2nd Corinthians 12:12 Paul reminded the Corinthians that he had performed signs and wonders during his ministry in Corinth. Paul goes on in these first verses to tell the Corinthian believers that they are the special seal of his apostleship. Corinth was a difficult city to minister in, yet Paul through the power of God ministered and saw Corinthians come to faith in Christ.
Because Paul was an apostle, he had the right to receive support from those to whom he ministered. The apostle was the representative of Jesus Christ, for this reason alone he should have been welcomed and cared for. Paul was not married, but some of the other apostles were and some of those who were leaders in the church were, and if Paul would have been married his wife also would have had the right to be supported by the church.
Paul had the right to devote his full time to the ministry of the Word, he did not have to make tents. The other apostles did not work to support themselves because they gave themselves completely to the ministry of the Word. Paul and Barnabas labored with their own hands not only to support themselves but also to support their partners in ministry.
HUMAN LIFE (1st Corinthians 9:7)
Paul goes on in verse seven to show us that a workman deserves some reward for his labor. Paul uses three examples to support his position. First, he uses the soldier and makes the point that the soldier does not support himself but is supported by the government that has made him a soldier, paying him a wage, and providing him with the supplies he needs to carry out his duties as a soldier. Next Paul uses the example of a farmer, a vine grower, does not plant a vineyard and then does not eat the fruit. The farmer enjoys the fruit of his labor. The man hired to tend the flock expects to have a portion of the profits for his labor, the milk produced by the sheep and the goats.
Paul’s point was clear, the one who ministers for the Lord has the right to expect material benefits for his labor. If this is true for the “secular” world, it should also be true for the one who labors to meet the spiritual needs of people.
OLD TESTAMENT LAW (1st Corinthians 9:8-12)
Paul did not want his readers to think that his argument was according to human judgment only. So, Paul turned to the Old Testament Law to defend his position. The Old Testament was the Bible of the early church as the New Testament was still being written. The early believers found guidance for living the Christian life in the principles of the Law. They knew they could not fulfill the Law and had been freed from its demands, but it gave them guidance and pointed them to the Savior.
Paul quoted Deuteronomy 25:4 to prove his point. What does not muzzling the ox while he is treading out the grain have to do with Paul’s position. The answer to this is found in the context of where Paul is quoting from. The context of Deuteronomy 25 is not about animal husbandry, but it about human relationships. This verse about not muzzling the ox in this context was a proverbial expression about just compensation for labor done. Paul understands this and rightly interprets it this way, that it was not written out of concern for the oxen, but for man’s sake. A modern day parallel would be the saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” which is most often applied in contexts other than canine obedience. Paul correctly saw the spiritual principle in this saying, and that is the laborer has the right to share in the bounties. Just as the plowman and the thresher both have hope to share in the crops.
Verse 11 of our passage clearly states the basic principle that Paul was trying to teach: if we receive spiritual blessings, we should in turn share material blessings. Paul had used this principle in writing to the Romans when he wrote in Romans 15:25-27, “I am going to Jerusalem serving the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. Yes, they were pleased to do so, and they are indebted to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in their spiritual things, they are indebted to minister to them also in material things.” (Romans 15:25–27, NASB95)[2] Our Scripture reading from Galatians 6 this morning teaches this same principle, that those who teach the Word have a right to expect the church to whom they minister to support them.
In verse 12 Paul implies that the Corinthian church had supplied the support of others who had come and ministered to them. Because of this Paul says they have this right even more since they had planted the church. Paul goes on to say that they did not use this right so that they would cause no hinderance to the gospel of Christ. Paul worked and supplied his own needs as an example and so that no one could accuse him of preaching the gospel as a way to make money. Paul did not want in any way to look like the false teachers and charlatans who peddled the word for profit, Paul saw this as a hinderance to the message of the gospel.
OLD TESTAMENT PRACTICE (1st Corinthians 9:13)
Paul turns back to the principle he is trying to teach concerning the support of ministers of the gospel. He does this by reminding the Corinthians that those who ministered at the Tabernacle and later the Temple, both the Levites who served at the Temple, and the priests who attended regularly at the altar received their food from what was contributed and what was brought to be sacrificed. The tribe of Levi had no inheritance, and they were to be provided for through the tithes and offerings of the Israelites to the temple. The regulations concerning their part of the offerings and the special tithe they received are given in Numbers 18:8-32 and Leviticus 6:14-7:36 and 27:6-33.
The application that Paul is making is clear. If the Old Testament ministers under Law were supported by the people to whom they ministered; should not God’s servants who minister under grace also be supported by those to whom they minister?
THE TEACHING OF JESUS (1st Corinthians 9:14)
Paul had one last argument that supported his position, and this was the strongest argument of all. Paul stated that the Lord Jesus directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel. Paul was referring to words spoken by Jesus that were recorded for us in Luke 10:7 and in Matthew 10:10. Both Luke and Matthew recorded for us the same event and it is when Jesus sent the seventy out ahead of Him to every city and place that He Himself was going to visit, they went ahead to prepare the way for His coming. Jesus said to them in Luke 10:7, “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.” (Luke 10:7, NASB95)[3]
Even though the Corinthians did not have either Luke or Matthew, the Lord’s teaching would have been given to them as a part of oral tradition from the Apostles. Since Jesus said that the laborer is worthy of his wages it a fundamental principle that the church must not neglect. This was Paul’s concluding argument in his defense that the those who proclaim the gospel should get their living from the gospel. Paul put it this way in our Scripture reading this morning in Galatians 6:6, “The one who is taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him.” (Galatians 6:6, NASB95)[4]
CONCLUSION:
Paul in 1st Corinthians 9:1-14 certainly proves his point, that those who are ministers of the Gospel should not have to do some other work to support themselves and their families. Paul’s five arguments proved conclusively that he had the right to expect the Corinthian church to support him in his ministry when he was with them ministering to them.
Village Missions in their partnership with the local church believes that this is true as well. In a footnote to Village Missions agreement to supplement the missionary’s support, they write, “Our missionaries are to be in full-time service and are not to have outside employment…” Village Missions believes this is an obligation of the church but is willing to supplement it until the church is in such a position as to pay their pastor’s full salary. The church’s only income is what is supplied through the offering, the budget amount listed in the bulletin is not enough for the church to cover the base minimum support required by the mission and at this point we fall short of this budgeted amount often. This budgeted amount is not only for the church to pay the minister, but it also pays utilities, insurance, and other expenses required for the church to stay open and operate. As a church body we need to be praying for the finances of the church and asking God what more we can do. Exactly a year ago I gave three messages on giving, in those messages I talked about tithes and offerings, and I said that in the New Testament we are never told to tithe, and if you want to tithe as they did in the Old Testament it was about 20% a year. A tithe is 10% but Israel had more than one tithe. If you desire to tithe 10% that is great place to start, but do not let that limit your giving. And if you are not giving, yet you are being spiritually fed here at the church, consider it your obligation according to Paul’s defense to be contributing to the church. Your giving should be an act of worship, don’t give begrudgingly, but do so with a cheerful heart as an act of thanksgiving and praise to the Lord.
[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[2]New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[3]New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.