Gird your loins, Beloved. We’ve got a big chunk today.

This is my defense against 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 Cephas (Peter)? 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 from merely a human point of view? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have sown 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  (1 Corinthians 9:3-12). 

I told you it was a long chunk.

But you can see how it’s kinda one unit. How was I gonna split that up?

Anyway, the key to it all is in that last line: But we did not use this right.

Paul had legitimate rights to all sorts of support from the Corinthians, but he chose not to exercise them. He didn’t want anything to get in the way of the Gospel.

Beloved, our society is so very concerned with rights. Are we willing to lay ours aside for the sake of the Gospel? And not just the big, grand rights, but the little ones–like our right to the last of the ice cream, or our right to that parking space?

Sorry–was that a little close to home?

Happy Tuesday, Beloved