Sermon Tone Analysis

Designing the Message

1. Paul claims His Rights

2. Paul Gives Up His Rights

3. Paul's Reason is to be a Slave

4. Paul's Attitude for Service

1. What is My Message About?

It's about Evangelism.

2. Why is it important?

As believers, we need to be reminded that the rights and freedoms we enjoy as a Christian living in America sometimes need to be denied to reach people with the Gospel.

3. What do I want them to do?

Look for ways to build common ground with their non-believing friends to share the Gospel.

4. What is the single most persuasive idea?

What can I give up to gain more towards Christ?

Giving up to gain more towards Christ.

A winning strategy: Give up your freedom to gain more towards Christ.

In other words, what comforts, preferences, pleasures and priorities can I deny myself in order to better serve the people God has put in my midst to hear the good news of Jesus.

Passage Outline

9:1-2 - Paul Defends His Rights as an Apostle to the Corinthians

Am I not Free?

Am I not an apostle?

Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?

Are you not my work in the Lord?

Paul uses four rhetorical questions to argue his legitimate authority and use of liberty as an apostolic ministry to the Corinthian church.

Commentators have diff interpretations of the word "free" - elutheros that Paul is using here... Calvin think he is talking about "freedom" from his apostlic rights in contrast to the false apostles who benefit from the rights of being paid for their services for example.

Ciampa and Rosner (2010, 397–98) distinguish the legal freedom Paul discusses in ; and the “freedom” mentioned in the present verse.

In their view, refers to the “divinely given freedom from the imposition of the norms of this world to live by the norms of the Spirit.”

In other words, it is a uniquely Christian freedom that empowers believers to serve God and to “do as we ought” in the power of the Spirit.

9:3-12

3-6 - Paul Uses Examples of Rights Extended to other Apostles

vs. 4 - Do we not have a right to eat and drink?

vs. 5 - Do we have a right to take along a believing wife even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord, Cephas?

vs. 6 - Or do only Barnabas and I not have the right to refrain from working?

7- Paul Illustrates the Rights with Soldiers, Farmers, Shepherds

Soldiers serve not on their own expense - they are paid.

Farmers plant a vineyard and eat of it.

Shepherds tend a flock and use the milk.

8-10 - Paul Supports this Argument from Moses in the Law

You shall not muzzle the Ox ()

God is not talking about Oxen but our sake (10)

Point: The plowmen ought to plow in hop and the thresher to thresh in hope of SHARING THE CROPS.

11-12 - Paul summarizes his Point of Sowing Spiritual Things and their Right

If we sowed spiritual things, is it too much if we should reap material things in you? (No, in light of the previous argument says Paul)

Paul compares this right with what the Corinthians already are doing with other "philosophers" and yet Paul says, how more does Paul have a right because of the nature of his apostleship which is greater than any other traveling philosopher.

IRONY: But Paul doesn't use this even greater deserving of right from the Corinthians, instead he "endures all things"...

PURPOSE: that we may cause NO HINDRANCE to the gospel of Christ.

13 - 18 - Paul Argues for His Rights and His Giving Up of Those rights for the Gospel

(13) Illustrates from those who perform sacred services eating the food at the temple

" " those who attend have their share with the altar

(14) So also the Lord directs those preaching the gospel, get living from the Gospel

(15) Paul uses none of these things and not writing to have them done for him for it would be "better" for him to DIE than have any man make my boast an empty one... (hyperbolic statement meaning that Paul would rather lose his life than have his proclamation of the Gospel be misunderstood as a way for Paul to benefit materially when His greatest desire, even though it is his right, is for people to be "won for the gospel")

(16) Paul's rationale is for if he preaches the gospel he has nothing to boast of, for he is under compulsion (by whom????), for WOE is me, if I do not preach the Gospel

(17) If he does this voluntarily (how so since he is saying he is under compulsion... but it is from his calling from Jesus himself?) on his own without his calling... he gets a reward (from them or from God) but if against my will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me by God ().

(18) What is Pau;'s reward?

Preach the gospel with out charge even though he deserves it from the Corinthians

So as not to make full use of his right...

19-23 - How Paul Uses His Freedom to Give Up His Rights to Preach the Gospel and Win More

Notes from NT Wright

One of the great moral gains of the 20th century is the belief shared by most people around the world that all people are to be respected and valued.

Weak people, prro people, hungry people, little people, frightened people, of diff color, sex while the strong, rich, well fed, confident and socially advantaged of the world have no right to do what they like with them.

'human rights" is used to express this sentiment

Talking about rights has its own set of problems - it can be a way of standing up for the weak but it can also be a way of asserting all kinds of things about people being independent and doing whatever they like in every sphere of their life, the right to be arrogant, selfish, greedy or whatever.

Paul faces the problem of rights in the Chaopt 8, comes to them again in 10 and is dealing with food sacrificed to idols for the Corinthians.

Some of them asre stressing they have a right to eat whatever they want knowing God's truth that food is just food .

Maybe some are reminding Paul the have a right to join in on the imperial celebration and Paul agrees with them 'strong minded' christians... and is prepared to make use of his right as a roman citizen when app (, ; ).

But knowing your giths is only part of the story.

There may be an occasion that the correct thing to do is not to act on your rights.

How does Paul make this case?

1. by describing his rights as an apostle that he is deliberately nottaking advantage of them

2. Paul wants to show them that there is more than 'rights" and that rights by themselves can lead to arrogance, the cure for which is about the demands of the Gospel

This text:

1. Example of rights not used for the purpose of the Gospel

2. Tells us about hat it meant to be an apostle (this was a matter of dispute in Corinth... )

PAUL SHARES HIS RIGHTS AS AN APOSTLE (1-12a)

1. Someone who had Jesus the risen Lord.... (15:5-8)... therefore could tell the world first hand the good news... one true God broken power of death and all the other powers that enslave human kind.

Paul was an apostle and the Corinthians should treat him as such since he was the one that shared with them this good news in the first place,.

2. Paul hasn't operated like other apostles have.

Peter have set a standard of how apostles should live and work... theecomas occupation deserved support.

(4-5) it was Paul and Barnabas who had not made use of this right.

3.

He explains the point using three examples from ordinary life

4.

He supports this from the Mosaic Law - and even from a later Jewish writing, Ecclesiasticus or Ben Sirach (vs 10 quoting ).

PAUL GIVES UP HIS RIGHTS FOR THE GOSPEL (12b-18)

Illus: Joni Mitchell shares in a song about clarinet player playing on a street corner in a bustling city not with mediocrity or boredom but out of love for music and doing it all for free.

Mitchell reflects on how people pay her lots of money to hear her play , the cars, the concert halls she gets to play in and how her work may be starting to lack an authenticity like the one she hears from this clarinet player...

He is playing for 'free' and maybe his is echoing, embodying, celebrating a deeper freedom as a result...

Paul was announcing the gospel 'for free'.

He cherished and guarded the privilege... as if his life depended on it.... he would rather die than accept payment.

Wouldn't it be easier?

More productive?

Legitimizing for the heareres?

1. Paul does it because he's aware of the need to be present a role model for Christians to follow.

Certain rights may have to be given up for particular reasons.

2. From earlier in the letter, Paul makes it clear - diff being a worker for and in the church of Jesus vs a traveling teacher of wisdom and sophistry, rhetoric.

Such teachers would ask for money, if special interest, they could come and teach a class for a higher fee... this isn't the GOSPEL of Jesus and how it worked.

The Gospel is for everyone and not just those who can afford it.

3. Maybe Paul's sense of indebtedness to Jesus himself.

He had persecuted the young church, reminds them in 15:9.

Rescued from angry and bitter life by Jesus and commissioned to announce the good news.

He had no choice... out of love that welled up in him (Gal 2:19-20).

Even if hadn't wanted to, he had no choice, he had been set free in order to do this.

4. Paul's unique position of being an apostle who had to be stopped and turned around from such persecution had to embody a practice of sharing the gospel free of charge and his reward would be no reward.

5. Uses one more illustration - those who work in the Temple.