Laying Down Our Rights

In this message, we dive into 1 Corinthians 9:1–18, where the Apostle Paul sets a radical example for the church in Corinth — and for us today. Rather than demanding what he was rightfully owed, Paul willingly laid down his right to financial compensation so that nothing would get in the way of the gospel taking root in people's lives. Paul's pattern points us back to Jesus, who gave up the glories of heaven and laid down his life for ours. So what are you willing to lay down so that Christ can be formed in others? This message challenges us to loosen our grip on our rights — especially our right to a full schedule — and make ourselves genuinely available to the people around us.

Transcript

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Last spring is when we started this series that we're in in the book of First Corinthians. This is uh a letter that is written by a man named Paul who is a traveling church planter. And this is one of the pieces of correspondence that he had back and forth uh with that church that he planted. And if you have been with us for almost any part of this series, you know that this book of the Bible is kind of wild. This is if producers were looking for a church to be at the center of a first-century reality TV show, Corinth would make the cut. And the reason is because so much of what we see happening in the Church of Corinth is juicy enough for a reality television show. So there was conflict and there's relational tension because some in Corinth are uh clinging to certain leaders and gaining status from being associated with this leader over against that leader. They were taking one another to court in petty disputes. So just imagine two members of the Corinthian church standing before Judge Judy. Like, ew, you know. One guy in the church was sleeping with his stepmother. Some were visiting prostitutes, some were withholding sex in marriage, some were getting divorced. And as we see in this section here today, some were mixing the practices of their former religion with following Jesus. And so this church is, you can say, kind of messed up. This church had its fair share of problems, and Paul's objective in writing this letter to them in the first place is not first or exclusively to try and modify their behavior. He writes to them in order to show them how the good news of the gospel will provide a deep heart-level transformation, and it's out of that transformation that a changed life will flow. And so Paul is not writing to simplistically say, stop doing those things, although he would like them to stop doing those things. He's writing to show them here's how the gospel does its work, and when it takes hold of your life, it will change you as well. And so that's what he's after, is them to be deeply transformed and changed. And uh although these things that we see in the letter of 1 Corinthians, the divisions and the sexual immorality and the conflicts, all these things that we see express themselves very differently in our modern culture. But the reality is that we deal with all of the same kinds of things in the modern-day church, and that's why this letter is so important for us to spend some time sitting with. And that's what we've been doing over the course of uh this last year with some breaks in between here and there. So let's turn to these verses that are before us that you just heard read, and uh let's explore them together and see what it is that God has for us in these verses. So as we look at them, the first thing that we can see here, the first thing we need to observe and notice is the problem that Paul is facing. We can summarize the problem that Paul is having with this church in Corinth in this way. They are trampling one another in the exercise of their rights. And you'll notice how I have the word rights in quotation marks. So these members of the Corinthian church are running all over each other and they're damaging one another, they're hurting one another, all in the exercise of these so-called rights. In order to see this, let's uh zoom out and just see where this passage that was just read fits into this section of the letter broadly. So, chapters eight to ten within the letter of 1 Corinthians forms one unit, and Paul's main objective, what he's hoping to accomplish in this section of the letter from chapters eight to ten, is he wants them, he's trying to persuade them to not participate, not to participate in what are called idol feasts. So just in the passage before this, he talks about idol feasts and he talks about food sacrifice to idols, which sounds so like antiquated to us and like something that we have that doesn't make any difference or has holds any relevance for our lives in the modern world, but in fact, as we'll see, it does. So he's been urging them not to participate in idol feasts, and uh what was happening was that scattered throughout the Roman Empire and throughout the city of Corinth, there are these temples that were set up to various gods. And within those temples, there were spaces you could uh you could reserve, banquet halls and meeting rooms. And what you would do is you would gather together in that temple for that god, and you would partake of a meal together as a part of whatever it was you were doing, and part of that meal was food or meat that was sacrificed to the god of that temple. And so that was just a part of all these meetings and gatherings that took place there. And some of the Corinthians are participating in these kinds of feasts where there is food sacrificed to idols that they are ingesting, and this is what he's writing to help them see they cannot any longer participate in. Not to mention the fact that these celebrations and these uh banquets that took place were known as being places where people would drink too much and then make bad choices. So there's more than one thing at play here. Paul, what Paul wrote in chapters 8 to 10 is structured sort of like a sandwich. Okay, so in the first part, uh, sorry, in the last part in chapter 10, he's very direct and very forceful in how he says to them, he says, you cannot participate in these idol feasts, because in doing so, you are participating in idolatry. And he says it more strongly than that. He says, you are participating in the table of demons. You are engaging in demonic spiritual activity by participating in these idol feasts, and so that's a reason why you cannot participate in them. But then in chapter 8, in the first part of the sandwich, he comes at this from a slightly different angle, and he he's he's saying, you can't participate in these feasts because in doing so you are destroying those for whom Christ died. Some of their brothers and sisters in the Lord are being led to also participate in this idolatry, and they're being led away from Christ. And Paul wants them to understand the urgency of this. Now we'll get to the middle section of the sandwich in just a moment, but for now the point is that Paul wants them to see that what they are doing in participating in these idol feasts and eating food sacrificed to idols is they are not just doing something that is offensive to their brothers and sisters. Okay, they are not simply uh hurting their feelings. They're living in a way that is destroying them spiritually. And so he writes to them and says, you cannot participate in these idol feasts any longer. He wants them to see just how serious of a thing this actually is. So this is this is the problem that Paul is facing in the church in Corinth, is that some of these believers are trampling one another and damaging spiritually others in the church community in the exercise of their so-called rights. And the way that Paul addresses this, as we're gonna see right now, is he doesn't address this problem by scolding them or focusing merely just on their external behavior. What he does is he shows them with his own life a better way. And that's what we see next in these verses. So we see the problem that Paul is facing, and the second thing we see here is we see the pattern that Paul sets. With his own life, he sets a pattern for how they ought to be living. So going back to the sandwich, at the beginning he says, you can't do this because you're destroying those for whom Christ died. At the end, he says, You can't do this because you're participating in idolatry. And then, sandwiched in the middle here, he says something that at first glance seems like it has absolutely nothing to do with this whole thing of idol feasts and eating this food sacrifice to idols. He gives his own life as an example of self-giving love. It looks like he is sort of doing a non sequitur, like he's changing the subject or talking about something that's a different thing, but as we're gonna see, he's not. He's actually setting a pattern for the Corinthians for how they ought to be living. So the pattern is this the pattern is radical self-giving love. He sets a pattern with his own life of radical self-giving love and self-giving accommodation. See, he knows the Corinthians, and he knows that he needs to accommodate them in their spiritual weakness because of how spiritually immature they are. And so that's what he does. He gives himself as an example of this. So, in contrast to the so-called rights that the Corinthians have that they refuse to let go of, that they're clinging to, Paul now points us to a legitimate right that he has, that he has willingly let go of. And that's the contrast. Okay? The Corinthians are holding on to so-called rights, not letting them go. Paul has legitimate rights that he himself has willingly chosen to give up for the benefit of the Corinthian church. So the main example that he gives in these verses has to do with receiving financial compensation from the Corinthians. So he talks about in verse 7, he says, who serves as a soldier at his own expense, who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes, who tends a flock and does not drink the milk. So he's naming these different kinds of vocations, and he names a soldier and a farmer and a shepherd, and what all these things have in common is that there's a kind of intrinsic benefit that they all receive from their work. And that's what Paul wants them to see. He's causing, uh bringing these pictures to their minds, they all receive some kind of compensation that's intrinsic to the work they do. And Paul says it's good that they that they should receive that compensation. And he points, he points to himself and says that he has the same exact kind of right. He says there's a right that he has to receive financial compensation for his work in gospel ministry, but he's chosen to give it up. Now, the place he goes, he he grounds his argument for why he should be paid by them in Deuteronomy chapter 25, verse 4, which is a part of the Torah that talks about livestock. It talks about cattle. So he quotes this in verse 9 where he says, For it is written in the law of Moses, do not muzzle an ox while it is treading the grain. So a small bit of context will be helpful here. So in the ancient practice of grain threshing, you would have an ox or a set of oxen or some other strong animal. And what they would do is they would pull a threshing cart behind them. And as they made passes over top of the grain harvest, the kernel would be separated from the stalk. And that's a part of this process. And the use of these oxen made this whole process like a hundred times more efficient. Imagine by hand pulling all the pieces of uh all the heads of grain from a stalk would be just terrible to do. And so they used oxen for this. And uh oxen eat this grain. Okay, that's that's a part of like their diet. And so you can imagine that as these oxen are going in all these passes and doing all this hard work, that it at times they're going to stop and take a snack break. And they're gonna eat some of the grain that they are working so hard to tread out. And so, what some of the farmers would do is they would put muzzles on those ox because every single time an animal stopped and ate some of that, what would happen was that it would eat, pun intended, into the profit of the farmer. He would have less grain at the end of the process. So you would you would muzzle them so they couldn't stop and get any benefit. And God, in his instruction given to the people of Israel, told them, don't do this kind of thing. There's a kind of intrinsic benefit that is good for an oxen to receive. If it's doing all this work, you should let it eat some of the eat some of the grain. It's gonna be okay. So God commanded his people to share, let those oxen share in the benefit, and this is the principle that Paul is applying to his own situation. So to be really clear about this, he's not saying that Deuteronomy 25 was written to give us guidance on pastoral compensation. He's not using this verse in that way. He's picking up on the principle that's underneath that passage, and he's saying, guys, if livestock have the right to receive a tangible benefit from their work, shouldn't those who give themselves to give their lives to gospel ministry, shouldn't they also receive a benefit from their work too? God cares about oxen enough to put this in his instruction in the Torah given to his people. Don't you think God cares as much about humans who are giving themselves to gospel ministry? Then in verse 14, he says, he goes so far as to say this he says, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. So this is the right that Paul has. He's saying, I have the right to receive financial compensation from you for the work of ministry that I'm doing among you. It's a right that I have. I'm owed that from you. But he's chosen to give up that right. Why would he why would he do that? Well, a couple different reasons. He doesn't uh he doesn't tell us explicitly, but in verse 12, I think we get a sense of this. He says in verse 12, we do not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. So what we can take from that is that in some way Paul understood his receiving of financial support to be a hindrance of the gospel at work among the Corinthians and through the Corinthians in their community to see people come to know Jesus. So he's saying, in some way, me receiving money from you is gonna hinder the work of ministry. Again, he doesn't tell us why, but you can imagine some reasons why this might be the case. This is a uniquely immature group of people. Okay, and so you you could imagine how they believed that if they gave Paul money, that they had some kind of ownership over him. That he owed them something, that they had rights over him, or that they would get special or preferential treatment from Paul. Because after all, he got something, so why wouldn't he give something back? Or he may have thought that taking money from them would reinforce a distorted picture of the gospel as something that is transactional in nature. So he he may think these people are so immature that they might misunderstand and think that if they give me money, they are somehow purchasing spiritual benefit. And so he wants nothing to do with any of those misunderstandings, and he's not willing to risk it. He's not willing to take money if it meant that there would be a misunderstanding and that the gospel would be uh hindered among them. So what he wants is for the gospel of God's free grace and unearned mercy to be formed in them, and he's so committed to that that he's willing to say, I don't care about your money. I don't want your money, keep your money. Because if you gave it to me, it would do the opposite among you that I want it to. So he gave up his right for legitimate financial compensation. Now the pattern that Paul sets here, again, is one of radical self-giving love. Radical self-giving accommodation where he says, I know these people. I know what this is going to do among them and in them if I take money from them. It's going to hinder the gospel, not advance it. So I'm going to choose not to take money. So he does this radical act of self-giving love and accommodation, and he laid down his legitimate right so that the gospel could be formed in them. And as he does this, as he points to himself, both here and other places in the letter, he's not being arrogantly, you know, he's not arrogantly setting himself up as the spiritual superhero. He's, as we've seen, he's happy to point people to his example. He's happy to point people to his life only insofar as his life points to Jesus. The pattern that is set here is it doesn't originate with Paul. The pattern of radical self-giving love and radical self-giving accommodation for the benefit of another, that doesn't come from Paul. That comes from Jesus. Jesus is the one who set that pattern. Paul writes about this elsewhere in his letter to the church in the city of Philippi. Listen to what he says in Philippians 2. He says, Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used for his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. So notice what he's saying about Jesus here. He's saying, Jesus is God. He is God, and the one through whom all things were made, he had every right to remain in heaven, in unbroken fellowship with the Father and the Spirit. He had that right. The one through whom everything was made, he had the right to remain in heaven and receive unending, ceaseless worship. That was that's owed to him. He deserves it. He had every right to remain in the riches of heaven, experiencing the glory that he deserves, and yet he laid aside his rights. He set aside those rights. He chose to let those legitimate things that he was owed, he let go of those things and he took on human flesh. And he didn't come as a as a you know earthly wealthy king or some person in a position of prominence. He came in the lowest form of a servant, and he gave his life and he went so far as to suffer and to die for us. So he set aside those rites. The praise and the worship of the hosts of heaven was replaced by crowds mocking him, by the empty promises of his closest disciples, and by silence in the Garden of Gethsemane. As he pleaded with the Father for the cup of his coming suffering to be taken from him. This is at the heart of the message of the gospel. This is the pattern that we see is that Jesus laid aside his rights for us. His legitimate rights, he laid those things aside so that we could benefit. And the only reason we benefit is because he laid those things aside. So this is the pattern that we see in Paul's life, but it doesn't start with Paul. It starts with Jesus, and Paul is saying, look to me as my life models Christ. This is what Paul patterned his life after. This is the attitude that Paul wants. He wants this formed inside of the Corinthians as well, because they don't have this. Again, they are clinging to things that they think are rights, but are just so-called rights. They refuse to let go of them. And Paul's saying, your life is founded on a man who gave up his legitimate rights so that others could benefit. That's the pattern. Here's the question that I invite you to ask yourself as we bring this time to a close this morning. What am I willing to lay down so that Christ can be formed in others? What am I willing to lay down? What are the rights maybe that I will choose to give up so that Christ can be formed in others? If I think if we're honest, this is a question that we had rather not ask. I don't know if I want to know the answer to this question. What's it gonna cost? But for our lives to be formed into the kind of life that God wants for us and a life of actual true flourishing, this is the question that will get us to that life of flourishing. Counterintuitively, what do I need to give up and lay down so that others can be formed into the image of Christ? For Paul, the answer was financial compensation. I'm just not gonna take money from you. What about you? What are you willing to lay down so that Christ can be formed in others? Let me, in these last moments here, suggest one area in which I think we can and should give up our rights. Okay? This is one area among many. This is not comprehensive. I hope that this gives you uh just sort of primes the pump for you, and that you can take this question back into your time with God this week and sit with this, and maybe God will lead you in a different direction than what I'm about to say. But this is just an example of the kinds of things that we may, that God may ask us to give up for the sake of others. So the area in which I think we can and should give up our rights is the area of availability. Here's two things that are true. Life in our individualistically oriented culture happens at 400 miles an hour. And gospel transformation happens slowly and in relationships. And you may notice that these two things may not be compatible with one another. So often our lives and our schedules and our pace of life defaults to what the culture, sort of broadly speaking, around us says is normal. And what the culture around us says is normal is actually unhealthy and unsustainable. And because this is the way of life that's just pressed in upon us, it's just a way of life that's expected, it's normal. What that means is that very often we find ourselves filling our schedules to the brim, and then and then some we find ourselves running ourselves ragged, chasing after things, even things that are good things. And then if there's something left over when it's all said and done, then I'll give myself away to others. But this is just the the this is the way that our culture, again, broadly speaking, this is the way of life that we're told is normal. You look first and foremost for yourself, and if you have a biological family, it's next for them. And it's what you want, and it's what you desire, and if there's anything left over, once you've gotten all the things in your life that you want to have, then you start looking at how you can serve other people. And if that's the pattern that we're formed in just naturally by the world around us, what that means is that the deck is in some way stacked against us. That's the mindset that we are formed in by the culture around us, is that you should run yourself ragged, live at 400 miles an hour with no space, and if you do find space, maybe give it to someone else. But friends, I want to remind you that God has designed a part for you to play in helping others grow closer to Jesus. You may be thinking to yourself, I don't know what gift I could possibly give. I don't know enough about the Bible, I don't, I'm not extroverted enough, I'm not this, I'm not that. There's a unique ministry and a unique role that God has designed for you to play and unique ways that God has designed you to lead others closer to Jesus. Friends, you are the you are God's plan for how the other people in this room are going to become formed into the image of Christ. And you know that cuts both ways. The other people in this room are the means by which God will form you into the image of Christ. This is how God has designed the body, but it will not happen without the purposeful act of making ourselves available to one another. It can happen without us making ourselves available to one another. Now, I'm not telling you here's a quota of the number of hours or number of times a week you need to be doing this or that. I'm not here to give you that. I'm just here to say, God has designed a unique role for you to play in seeing the gospel formed in other people, and if your lives are inaccessible to others, you cannot experience the life of flourishing that God has for you. Your life of flourishing is not found only when other people give to you, but when you give of yourself for others. And you'll never partake of the life God wants for you if your lives are inaccessible, if we don't have space for one another. And again, this is the counterintuitive pattern of the gospel. That a flourishing life is not one where we obsess over our own needs being met, but one where we give ourselves in radical acts of self-giving love to one another. To be clear, I'm not saying that you should ignore your family, that you should remove healthy boundaries from your life. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that this kind of life where we purposefully choose to lay down our rights so that others can benefit and so that others can be formed in the image of Christ, we will never drift into that kind of life. It will only happen when we do it on purpose. And so, since the environment in which we live is trying to form us in another way of life, we have to do this on purpose. And if there's no thoughtfulness, if there's no intentionality, it's not gonna happen. In what ways are you laying down your right to fill your schedule full? So that Christ can be formed in others, so that your life can be available to others, not only so you can give to them, but so that others can give to you, so that you can experience the joy and the flourishing of investing in other people in deep spiritual relationships, and so that you can be invested in as well. In what ways are you making yourself available in that way? Again, the counterintuitive message of the gospel is that if you want to find your life, what do you have to do? You have to lose it. That's how this gospel thing works. You gain your life by dying. You gain what's truly important by dying to the things that you may think are truly important. What are you willing to lay down so that Christ can be formed in others? Again, I want to make this really clear. I'm I'm not trying to push any specific point of application on any person. I'm not I'm not thinking through this with like specific people in my mind of like, oh, this person really needs to hear this. Not at all. This is just a like, I know my own self, I know my own life, I know my own pace of life. And maybe it's because I'm coming towards a sabbatical this summer and I'm thinking about my pace of life. What are we willing to lay down so that others can be formed into the image of Christ? One of the good things that uh that's the thing that's just good for us is to name out loud that following the pattern Jesus set is costly. We should just name out loud that laying aside our rights, letting go of what we want, so that others can benefit, it's not cheap. It requires that we give ourselves to one another, that we say no to good things, so that we have space in our lives, and so that we have margin for other people. That may look like being involved in some sort of a like actual organized group, you know, like a small group or adult class or senior Bible study or uh book club or any number of different sort of uh things we can put on the schedule. This also happens in in the in the context of relationships that are just natural relationships, where you get together and and things are unplanned and it's spontaneous and it's it's more organic in nature. This happens in all those different places. So again, I'm not saying there's one specific thing that you have to go from here today and do. But choosing this life means we say no to good things so that we can have the best things. And the only way that we're gonna have the stamina to sustain a life like this over the long term is if we keep looking to Jesus. It's in him that we see this pattern, and it's as we fix our attention on the cross that this attitude of a willingness and a gladness to give our lives for the sake of others that will be formed in us the more and more we look to Jesus. And so this morning, I invite you to look to the cross. As we come to the communion table, we are reminded of this greatest act of self-giving love that God has done for us. This act of self-giving accommodation where the Lord came to us. He did not expect us to make ourselves ready for him. He came to us. And we get to remember what he's done for us. And as we do this, week in and week out, our lives are formed more and more into this pattern. As we come to the table, let me invite you to take a few moments for silence and confession, and then we will join together and come receive Christ at the communion table.