150. It is taken from St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians chapter 9, beginning at the first verse. Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who sit in judgment on me. Don't we have the right to food and drink? Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and see us? Or is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk? Do I say this merely from a human point of view? Doesn't the law say the same thing? For it is risen in the Lord of Moses, do not muzzle and ox what it is treading out the grain. Is it about oxen that the Lord is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn't he? Yes, this was risen for us because when the plow and plows and the thresher threshes they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have so much spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more? But we did not use this right, on the contrary we put out with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. Don't you know that those who work in the temple get their food from the temple and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered at the altar. In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. But I have not used any of these rights and I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me. I would rather die that have anyone deprive me of this post. Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach, woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward. If not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. What then is my reward? Just this, that in preaching the gospel, I may offer it free of charge and so not to make use of my rights in preaching it. This is the word of the Lord. Second reading is taken from the Book of Acts, chapter 15, starting at verse 12, and you can find this on page 111-0 of the Church Bibles. The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up. Brothers, listen to me, Simon has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. The words of the prophets are an agreement with this, as it is written, after this I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. It ruins I will rebuild and I will restore it that the remnants of men may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord who does these things that have been known for ages. It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God, instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. This is the word of the Lord. We live in a world where we are supremely conscious of our rights. Have you ever noticed how anyone who ever disputes anything these days appeals to their rights and talks about exercising their rights? We have women's rights, we have gay rights, children's rights, the rights to a prophesanded of living, the rights to housing, the rights to a good night's sleep without neighbors making a noise, we have the right to privacy and the right to a job to name but a few of the rights that we seem to have accumulated over the last few years. And Christians get like that too. The attitude of appeal to your rights at all costs, that attitude, spills over into church life. We are so often tempted to insist on our rights and yet perhaps nothing is a clearer indication to us that we have been seduced by the spirit of the world. This was the problem of the Corinthian Christians as well. Last week we saw how some of the elitist Christians, the ones who claimed to be superior because of their special so-called gifts of the spirit, we saw how they were behaving, they had the gift of knowledge, they interpreted scripture to their own situation to suit their own desires and needs. And the Apostle Paul had to show them that their understanding of scripture itself, actually the thing they claimed to be knowledge from God that itself was deeply flawed. So deeply flawed that they were in danger actually of leading Christians to hell. That's what that word in chapter 8 there means that they would be destroyed by your knowledge. Destroyed is the word that is used in the Bible of people going to hell. Serious indeed. In chapter 8 verse 9 this is on page 1,150 of the Bibles in front of you. 1,150, 1 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 9 Paul had to warn them, be careful that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. Now the word there actually is not freedom. The word is right. The word is right. Be careful that the exercise of your so-called rights does not become a stumbling block. A stumbling block is something that causes us to miss the message, to fall over it, not to like what we hear. Do you remember that there's just one legitimate stumbling block in the Bible? One legitimate thing that you can put in the way of somebody who wishes to come to God. And we learned of it in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 23,
1 Corinthians 1 verse 23, it's a recurring theme through this book, the idea of the stumbling block starts there back in chapter 1. We preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. Yes, it's all right. When you preach the gospel and you preach Christ that they don't like Christ and they stumble and they don't become Christians, that is not your problem. That is the gospel message and people don't like the gospel message very often. But when you put something else as a stumbling block, then the problem is yours and you are perhaps putting something in their way that they see as too big a hurdle to get over to become a Christian or to become a mature Christian. And so there's a stumbling block there and that is utterly wrong. And the gifts of the Spirit here had become a stumbling block. You must have it. If you don't have knowledge, you're not like us. And it was a stumbling block and stumbling blocks of that sort, stumbling blocks in Scripture are things that stop people coming to Christ. And the way the gifts of the Spirit were being used were stopping people coming to Christ. It's very important we understand that. Those words that Paul is using, he's used time and again before in this epistle. And that is how he has used the words. We cannot ignore that. A stumbling block is something that stops people becoming mature Christians or coming to faith. Being destroyed means going to hell. It doesn't mean anything else in Paul's writings. That is how terribly serious this issue was and they would be destroyed he has said in chapter 8 by your knowledge, the gifts of the Spirit that they were flaunting and flouting in front of everybody else. As arrogance and puffed up Christians, they were claiming that they had the right then to eat this meat and go into idle temples even and sit down and eat meat. They were full of themselves. They were self-consciously full of themselves. If I go into that idle temple, I will simply show how knowledgeable I am. You see, it's a deliberate action by which they show off their so-called knowledge. They flaunt themselves. And they were wrong as we saw last week in their interpretation of the Bible. They were wrong in leading people astray but they were wrong in another way as well. They were wrong to talk of their rights at all. As Christians, they just did not have these so-called rights, rights to flaunt themselves, rights to lead others astray, rights to eat in an idle temple and so on. It's one thing you see to say that meat is meat and can be eaten because God has given us meat to eat and Paul will be saying that in chapter 10 of this epistle later on when he comes back to the subject of eating meat. It's one thing to say that but it's another altogether to say we can eat it in an idle temple and cause another Christian to stumble. And in the first few verses of chapter 9 that we've read, Paul tackles this issue of rights. And he does so in a very dynamic way. He applies it straight to himself. He says, if anyone had reason to flaunt his position, it's Paul. He starts off by saying that he is free. He is an apostle. He's seen Jesus. He's not under the law anymore. Indeed the church of current is a result of his work, he says. Now if that doesn't put him one up on them, what could? People may put him down, he says in verse 2 but the elitist Christians who he's dealing with have the least reason to put him down or to feel superior to him because actually they are evidence that he really is an apostle. If they want to see the proof that he is an apostle, look at themselves because there they are as Christians converted under his ministry. And so Paul goes on in a defense of his position. He's identifying himself you see with the weak people of chapter 8. The people who are less self-consciously aware of their faith. The people who are less secure in their faith, who feel threatened by these terribly superior Christians at Corinth. He too is threatened by them. We meet that again in two Corinthians where Paul shows what's going on there. Paul did not seem to have many of the gifts of the Spirit and certainly he didn't make as much of them as the Corinthians did. And so he continues to point to himself. Verse 3 this is my defense as if the apostle really needed to defend himself but his point is much deeper than that. He has rights. As an apostle he has the rights to be financially supported. He has the right to take a wife with him on his journey. It's likely as I think you know that his wife had by this time died and he had a right. A God given right should he wish to to marry again. He has a right to take a wife along as do some of the other apostles. He's talking about genuine entitlements and yet he doesn't seek financial support but rather he supports himself by tent-making and he has not remarried. Now Paul is talking about real rights. He continues to rub the point in. Verse 7 a soldier gets paid, a grape-grory to the grapes, a goat-heard drinks, the goat-smilt, the point is made by simple observation of life. That's the way life is. It's an entitlement of right. Paul has a right like all these people to a decent family as an apostle and a decent life of comfort. That is his right. Not just though from simple observation of life. Paul is determined always to appeal to scripture. I think I'm going to need a drink of that orange juice at the back car and if that's all right. It's all right to look at life around and to say well they all have these rights but what about from scripture? That's the foundation always for Paul and he shows that even the Bible makes the same point as an apostle. He has the right to be supported, to live a comfortable life, to be paid for by the people and he quotes Deuteronomy 25 verse 4. Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out grain. I'll give you a moment to think about that. It's a strange example to use. If you ever wondered what on earth Paul was getting at when he used that verse to prove the point that he ought to be paid, it's a strange example but actually his point is very straightforward. In God's Old Testament law there was concern even for an ox. Therefore how much more concerned does God have for the rights of his preachers of the gospel? That's the simple point Paul is making. In fact what was happened was that as the ox would walk across the grain with pulling some huge weights that would crush the grain and blow away the chaff and so on, the ox would not be muzzled. He would be allowed to eat of the grain that was on the floor in front of him and that way of course the ox would keep going longer. He was eating of what he was involved in and Paul uses that. How much more is God concerned for the rights of someone like him? This was written for us, says Paul. The minister of the gospel has a right to his pay from the flock he has nurtured. Verse 10, it's part of the harvest that he can share in. Verse 12, if others have that right of support, how much more so does the apostle Paul? So much for Paul's argument. The Corinthian elite thought they had arrived. They thought they were really something. Their gifts of the spirit made them want to exercise their supposed rights of eating this idol meat or going into a temple restaurant and so on. But Paul has rights, rights to proper respect, rights to be looked after financially by the church and so on and now he moves in for the kill. Verse 15, but I have not used any of these rights and he's not asking for them either. I would rather die than have anyone deprived me of this boast yet I preached the gospel. I'm compelled to do so. The word there in the Greek means he's driven forward, driven forward to preach the gospel and he will not exercise any right. He will not do anything that might cause anybody to stumble along the way. I won't boast, he says, it's simply a necessity laid on me. I am absolutely compelled to be out there preaching the gospel, committed to me as he puts it. In verse 17, his reward lies not in what the church pays, not in exercising his so-called rights, not in the spiritual gifts he has, he does have, but clearly refuses to pronounce upon, but simply in preaching the gospel freely, verse 18, one a passage. It moves really hard and fast. I'm not delayed on it, verse by verse. The Paul is quickly just building up this argument, you see. Until he says, I will not have anything stand in the way of the gospel. Paul has rights like we all do. Unlike the Corinthian claims to have rights, rights that Paul says anyway can't be supported from Scripture, Paul has shown that even scriptural biblical rights can be put aside for the sake of the gospel. The Corinthians were flaunting their rights and they weren't even biblical ones which you've shown in the previous chapter. Now, he chooses one that's downright, they're in Scripture and he says I'm prepared to give it up for the sake of the gospel. The gospel has priority. That's Paul's message and it's been his message again and again through this epistle. The gospel, the good news that Christ has died for the sins of all who have believed in him, that is the priority. Paul will give up anything if he can get that gospel out to others. Even if he's taking a salary should him for the gospel then he will give it up. Never does he want to put a stumbling block in front of anyone. I wonder how many of us here today treat the gospel with that much priority. How do we treat outsiders or how do we treat brothers and sisters in Christ? After all in this passage they're dealing with brothers and sisters in Christ in the priority of the gospel. Do we put Christ crucified before any rights we may think we have? What about the right we have to go around thinking that we are superior to others? We don't perhaps think we need to pray together with other Christians. Or what about the right we may feel we have to go to certain films that the cinema without ever considering what it might do to another Christian who may find themselves drawn in. Practical Christianity, the Bible simply does not say that you cannot go to the cinema. The Bible does not say as we saw last week that you mustn't drink alcohol. The Bible doesn't say a lot of things but what the Bible asks us to do is to say wait a minute you may have a right, a freedom to do this or to do that. But what about the gospel priority? What's it doing? What's it saying for that? Are you for the sake of the gospel prepared to give up the party, the alcohol? Not because they're necessarily wrong. They're not. But in some circumstances you might have to give such things up simply because you begin to think through the implications of the gospel with the friends you're going with. First 12 says we endure all things rather than make the gospel a stumbling block or a hindrance. Yes, it may not just be a matter of giving something up. It may not just be a matter of giving something up that you like. It may be even suffering and enduring pain or difficulties or deprivations for the sake of the gospel. I think we need to be practical about this for a minute with something we're looking forward to here in this church at the moment. Over the next three to five years we want to reach out into the community much more than we are doing with the gospel. This outreach has several prongs. We sort of summed it up in that phrase project Harvest. I think it's an exciting phrase. The idea that the gospel priority is absolutely there. There's a harvest and the workers are few so Jesus but actually they're not so few here, are they? It's an exciting sort of catch-all phrase for praying, for giving to the Lord's work, for going out and bringing people and talking to them about Christ.
But I think what I hear around the churches that some people can't see the point in just acknowledging that they're part of project harvest. They can't see the points that others might need encouragement to preach and to witness and to give for the Lord's work.
I suppose such people are already good at giving, they probably are. So good at witnessing, they probably are. Good at praying, well they don't need to join with anybody else. Well this passage speaks clearly to that. It says for the sake of the gospel, think of your brothers or sisters who you may need to build up, which is Paul's point through this epistle, that we are here not for our own selfishness, not for our own arrogance, not for saying we're better than anybody else, but for building each other up in the Lord that we may better reach out. To others. Project harvest is just one way, there are many other ways in this church, but it's just one way here in which we demonstrate to each other the gospel priority in this church as we respond to passages of structure like this. We need people, we need buildings next year, we're adding to our team of ministers here. And we've talked about that now for three years at AGMs and the PCC took it on board last March. It takes a long time to discuss these things through, to think them through, to know whether God is properly calling us that way. And it won't actually come on stream until September 95. So it'll have been going about four years in the planning and praying this one. But soon we will be employing a youth minister to join us in the pastoral team here.
We'll be bringing back to the church some new ideas to see what you can think and what you think about our extension. So we can seat more people looking just today, which was by no means a very full Sunday. When the children were in here, we were at over 80% capacity in this church. And I can show you books, many books which are written on church growth. And if we had an outside consultant come in here, they would simply say you won't grow any more at heart the parish church. And they would be right because you have reached the capacity beyond which you will not begin to draw more people in who are completely new to church. And we need those extra seats, but much more than that is the PCC saw when they went up to head up to see a church not dissimilar to ours and what they've done, that the opportunity to reach out into the village, if we put something on that end, gospel priority, you see. This isn't, you know, some people have said otherwise to make themselves so comfortable, they don't spend their money on other people. Extraordinary misunderstanding of the gospel priority. You and I are called first and foremost to witness here in this village. And I am prepared to give up whatever it takes to give up. And I hope you are too, whether it be time to pray, whether it be money, holidays, whatever it takes, to give it up so that we can see the gospel priority come through. Our rights should be given up for the Lord. It's as simple as that. It is my rights to spend my money as I wish. It is. The Bible says it is. And Paul says, but for the sake of the gospel, I'm prepared to give up anything that it not for the stumbling block in the path of someone else as they come to Christ. We see some of that go on here. We see where people would not come into a church because it's so cold and it's so damp and it's got pews that nobody's ever sat on before in their lives. People have never been to church. And now they come in and bless them. I had somebody stop me in the street the other day and they said, I was completely wrong. I have to admit it and I should have said this to you earlier, but that church is so comfortable now. They come into a funeral and they say, well, we're thinking about starting to come to church. It's a gospel priority. We can look at a chair and we can say, well, that's not a gospel priority. But if it brings people in or if something else is hindering people come to Christ, then it is a gospel priority. It's a gospel priority, whether we have our rights to Wednesday evenings on our own or to pray with other Christians. Do we wish to exercise our rights to the evening off? The Apostle Paul was prepared to give up anything and everything, even his life for the sake of the good news that Jesus has come to this earth. Jesus died for all who confess their sins. Jesus rose again that all of us might have eternal life. That's the gospel message. If you don't know that this morning, that's the message that we are about in this church and let me commend Jesus to you. Let me commend Jesus to you. Come to him and he will forgive. Come to him and he will give you peace and love. For those of us who are Christians, that is the message, which must never be obscured because you and I want to do something else, exercise some right or other that we may have to use our time in a different way, to use our money in a different way, to think of ourselves as spiritually superior that we can't be bothered to help and encourage and build up others in the Lord. Never put yourself on some superior spiritual level. Join with brothers and sisters in Christ. Build each other. Let's build each other up in this faith. It is a glorious faith. It's centered on a person on Jesus Christ and then here in Hartford it will become clearer and clearer that our absolute priority is the gospel and people will see that we're prepared to give up anything for that. Let's pray. Father, we do pray that you will give us that compulsion that the apostle Paul felt at your calling, the compulsion to put the gospel first, whatever we do, whatever you have called us to do in our normal lives that still the gospel may come first and may it be first in our thinking here in this church, but we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.