So I'd like to talk today, the
subject, the title is The Threshing Ox. The Threshing Ox is my title. And I'd like to start reading
in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, starting in verse 7. 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 of 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? That's the first passage I'd
like to read. Later on, we'll also venture
over into 1 Timothy. But to set this up a little,
both of Paul's letters to the Corinthians, in them, it is clear
that the members of the assembly did not give Paul the full honor
that he was due, specifically the Corinthian assembly. In both
of his letters to the church, Paul makes a defense for himself.
It can be found in various places within both letters to the Corinthians
that Paul is found making a defense for himself. Now, for one thing,
the Corinthians thought Paul was not a good public speaker.
At least some of them were to have quoted as being said, Paul's
speech was contemptible and his personal presence was unimpressive. Yet his letters were weighty
and strong. So Paul had a great presence
in his letters, but not necessarily in his public speaking. And Paul
even affirms this view of himself when he claims that he was meek
when face to face with them, but bold toward them when absent. And unfortunately, we only have
his letters to them, so we see his boldness, but we don't see
that meekness except through his claims. He also claims to
be unskilled in speech. Those are Paul's own words. Such
statements imply that Paul's presence in person was more humble
and weak than his projected presence in his letters. Now, this should
not be detrimental to his message because he was very skilled in
knowledge according to himself and very obviously according
to the letters that we have from his hand. Now, we, I think, would
all agree that knowledge of the truth is far more important to
a proclaimer of the gospel, a proclaimer of God's word, than a good public
speaking presence, which Paul apparently did not have. But
this was a stumbling block, apparently, to the Corinthian assembly. Now,
that's one instance of him having to defend himself. Also in Paul's
second letter to the Corinthians, there is an especially bold defense
that includes a fair dose of sarcasm And this is in 2 Corinthians
chapter 11, when he says that the Corinthians receive other
apostles beautifully. But he calls these apostles that
they supposedly received beautifully, most eminent apostles or literally
super apostles. I think this is sarcasm because
later on down in the same chapter, Paul begins to talk about how
these are false apostles and deceitful workers and that they
disguise themselves as angels of light, just as Satan disguises
himself as an angel of light. So it appears that that he's
using heavy sarcasm here by calling them super apostles or most eminent
apostles. So the Corinthians entertained
false apostles as if they were super apostles, giving them higher
honor than Paul himself. So the worst enemies of the gospel
don't always appear as obvious opponents. Sometimes the worst
enemies are those who veil themselves as angels of light and come to
us with what they say is the gospel, when in reality it's
not a gospel. So the Corinthians were not good
enough stewards of God's word to recognize this for themselves. So this prompted Paul once again
to have to make a defense to the Corinthian assembly for himself
and his own apostleship. So we have an ongoing pattern
of defensiveness in these letters where Paul defends his ministry
to the Corinthians and in our passage that we just read together
in the third verse of chapter 9 of 1 Corinthians, so just before
the passage that we read, Paul begins by saying, my defense
to those who examine me is this. So at the beginning of that chapter,
he starts to say, this is my defense. And what follows is
through the entire chapter, the entire chapter of 9 1 Corinthians,
is Paul, who's possibly the greatest champion of the gospel that has
ever come on the earth, other than the Lord Jesus himself.
He's having to defend himself in regard to a certain right
that he has in the ministry of God's word. He concentrates on this one right,
and that is the right to be paid a wage. So the entire chapter
is Paul talking about his right to be paid a wage. And this is
what I would like to examine, is the minister's right to be
compensated, the minister's right to be paid a wage. So Paul begins
his defense by citing three other jobs that the Corinthian church
would have been well acquainted with. So he starts from kind
of a man's point of view. He starts by mentioning three
different jobs that the Corinthians would have known about. Number
one is the soldier. He says, who at any time serves
as a soldier at his own expense? The Christian can be considered
a soldier in many ways. We are told to wage warfare against
our invisible spiritual enemies in 2 Corinthians 10. And Paul
instructs Timothy to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ. But
this is not what Paul means here. He's not wanting us to take this
in a figurative or spiritual sense. He's referring to an actual
soldier of the time when he says, who at any time serves as a soldier
at his own expense. We can imagine this ourselves
and imagine how absurd it is even today to imagine a soldier
serving in the army at his own expense. Let's imagine the soldier
buying his own weapon to go out there and fight for our country.
The soldier buying his own MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, to eat out
on the battlefield. You know, what if the soldier
had a family? And he's out there fighting.
He would have to hold down another job or find some other way to
support his family. And this is why Paul uses the
soldier. Because anybody during that time
and anybody even during our time can look at a soldier and realize
that a soldier needs to be paid a wage for his work. It's absurd
to imagine any other scenario. The second example that Paul
uses is the vineyard keeper. He says, who plants a vineyard and does
not eat the fruit of it? So it's equally absurd to think
of a man planting a vineyard, cultivating the vineyard, harvesting
the vineyard, and then not being able to share, to partake of
the benefit of that vineyard. And his third example is the
example of the shepherd. So a shepherd who lovingly tends
his flock, who goes out and comes in with them, protects them from
wolves, protects them from dangers. leads them to food, to water.
Doesn't he have a right to share in the milk of the flock? I mean,
he's out there alone with the flock. Can't he share in the
milk? It's his right to do so. So these are the three examples
that Paul uses from a man's standpoint to bring to light the fact that
there are jobs out there who deserve to be paid wages. The
Corinthians apparently took issue with certain ministers and apostles
making wages from the ministry. So, if they hadn't taken offense
at this, Paul would not have mounted this defense. He used
an entire chapter, what we call a chapter, to mount a defense
for being paid a wage. So Paul is a master of logical
arguments. And he begins his argument by
citing these examples to set up his logical argument to the
Corinthians. But as we know, and I think we
would all agree, the greatest defense of any practice is not
using logic or everyday examples to back up your argument. It is what says the scripture.
What sayeth the scripture? This is exactly what Paul goes
on to say. He goes, he says, I am not speaking
these things according to human judgment, am I? So his point
is, I'm not telling you these things from only my mind. I'm
telling you these things from God's mind. And that's important
to any Christian, of course. So Paul then reaches back to
the laws given by God through Moses to find the meat of his
argument. So back in Deuteronomy 25 verse
4, mixed with a bunch of laws dealing with how humans should
treat other humans, we find his quote, you shall not muzzle the
ox while it is threshing. The King James Version here,
as corn, threshing corn, even though in reality that's not
in the text. So growing up in the city, I'm not very familiar
with the methods of harvesting grain. So I had to look all this
stuff up, and it was very interesting what I found, and so I thought
I would share that with you all. Previously when reading through
this passage, I kind of imagined the ox doing some random thing
to corn or grain over here and not really understanding what
was meant exactly by threshing. So I'd like to talk about the
three main steps, the three main processes involved in harvesting
grain. I don't know if you guys are
familiar with them, but I certainly wasn't. The first process is
called reaping. And that's a pretty straightforward
process. It's the act of removing the
part of the plant that you're interested in eating. So this
is typically done with a scythe. Back then it would have typically
been done with a scythe or a sickle. A scythe is the long blade that
we see the Grim Reaper carrying, you know, with two handles that
you would reap with. The sickle is a smaller blade,
curved blade. And the sickle is what is talked
about in the Bible. The Bible often references the
sickle. So that's what the Jews would have used in that day.
So that's the first process called reaping. The second process is
called threshing. And that's obviously part of
our text. So threshing is the second step
in the process of harvesting grain. And threshing is the action
of separating the inedible part of the grain from the edible
part of the grain. And during biblical times, this
could have been done in three different ways. So we're talking
about threshing, separating inedible from edible. It could be done
in three different ways. Number one, you can beat the
grain with a flail or a club. So it would be on a threshing
floor, called a threshing floor, and you would beat it with flails
or clubs or rods. It's a very manual process. It
involves people doing it. B is trampling or treading the
grain. And this would be accomplished
by having a beast of burden, such as an ox, walking over the
grain. And they could also be dragging
behind a cart with wheels on it. So the action of walking
over the grain or the wheels would crush the grain and separate
the parts. And C, there are things called
threshing boards, which can be pulled behind the ox or the beast
of burden, and it's flat where it rolls, it's a large object,
and it just covers more grain at one time. So it's pulled by
the ox. There are two parts, the edible,
which is the grain, and the inedible, which is called chaff. I'm sure
we've all heard that word before. So these three methods of threshing
are actually used in the Bible in one small place specifically
that I found. It's in Isaiah chapter 28. Verse
27, it says, for dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
so that's the sledge, nor is the cartwheel driven over cumin,
but dill is beaten out with a rod and cumin with a club. So there
are multiple ways of threshing mentioned there. And the final step in processing
grain is called winnowing. So we have reaping, threshing,
and winnowing. Windowing is the action of separating
finally the chaff from the grain. So during the threshing, the
grain and the chaff are still kind of lying together, intermingled
together, but they're actually separated. Now winnowing is when
you use wind or some other method to actually remove the lighter
chaff from the heavier grain. So they would use baskets. You
could throw the baskets up and the chaff would blow away in
the wind and the grain would remain. Or you could use forks
and fork it up so that the chaff would blow away and the grain
remains. Okay, so that's called winnowing. There is biblical
reference to this process. For instance, in Jeremiah, quote,
I will winnow them with a winnowing fork. So there's the fork. And
then Isaiah 41, you will winnow them, the wind will pick them
up and a gale will blow them away. So it's talking about the
wind blowing away the chaff again. All of these aspects of grain
harvesting would have been very familiar to the Jews. They weren't
familiar with me because I grew up in the city and I went to
the grocery store. But the Jews were very familiar with this
process because it was part of their everyday lives. So it was
perfect to use these processes as illustrations or examples
or analogies to the Jews because they would be very familiar with
it. And all of these steps are often used in the Bible. They're
examples of planting the seed, growing the seed, harvesting
the grain, threshing the grain, winnowing the grain, and finally
burning the chaff. The reprobate is sometimes referred
to as chaff that's burned. But we are concentrating on the
threshing portion of the process. Paul is defending his right to
a wage as a minister. And he has quoted the Old Testament
scripture that says, you shall not muzzle the ox while it is
threshing. So in our, when we talked about
it, the ox threshes the grain by walking over it. And he could
have something attached to him as well while he's walking over
it. This is work on the part of the ox. This is work on the
part of the ox. The ox would rather be doing
any number of other things. He'd rather be grazing in the
field, sleeping on his feet, I guess. But the ox is working
here. And God stipulates in His Word
that the ox has the right to eat the grain when he's treading
it out. I often read John Gill for his
commentary on various passages. And for the passage in Deuteronomy
25.4, John Gill talks about various methods by which the Gentiles
would try to keep the ox from eating the grain while it was
treading the grain. Some examples he cites are putting
a thorn in its mouth so that the ox wouldn't want to bite.
Covering the grain, if you cover the grain with something, the
ox won't be able to get to the grain when it's treading. And
even smearing dung on the beast's nostrils so that it wouldn't
desire to eat. These are methods the Gentiles
used to try to get ox to not eat the grain. But as we know
and as Paul said, the ox is not the primary benefit of this law. Paul interprets the law as it
relates to ministers of God's Word. He says God is not concerned
with oxen. Is he? God doesn't care about
the oxen. No, he says he is speaking for
our sake. The hour here does not refer
to every man. The hour does not refer to all
Christians. The hour refers to ministers. Ministers who work just as hard
as soldiers, just as hard as vine keepers, and just as hard
as shepherds. So just with these examples of
working professions Paul has previously used, it would be
cruel not to allow the ox to share in his wages of his work. Without the ox threshing the
grain, the Jews would have had to do it themselves. should not
the ox be rewarded justly? In the same way, the minister
of God's word works to proclaim the word rightly. Shouldn't they
be rewarded justly? Paul uses the word, Greek word,
exousia, six times in this single chapter. This word occurs 103
times in the New Testament. And the word refers to power,
right, or authority. So Paul and the other elders
have the power, authority, or right to earn their living from
the work they do ministering to the saints. I think this is
an important word because just like in every example of Paul's,
the three examples that he used, the wage due to those people
is not due as charity. The wage is not charity. The soldier's pay is not charitable
or gracious. The vine worker's portion is
not a gift. The shepherd's milk should not
be given for any reason other than that it is earned. We all
believe in a gospel of grace. We should know very well the
difference between something that's earned and something that's
gifted. The gospel that we believe in
is one of gifted grace, unmerited favor. Paul's words in Romans
4 recall this for us. Now to the one who works, his
wage is not credited as favor, but what is due. Certainly. We have no power, authority or
right to salvation except by the gracious gift of God through
our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the truest example of
a gift. This is the truest example of
favor. Of grace, salvation is something
that we can no way earn by any amount of work, but on the other
hand, the minister's wage is not a gracious gift. It should
not be treated as such. It is an earned wage. But we
know that, at least in Paul's case, he did not require this
wage from the Corinthians. He does not exercise his power,
authority, or right to collect a wage, even though he's very
obviously working hard for the Corinthians. This is specific
to Paul, though, and he does this thing because of the hardness
of the Corinthians. The Corinthian assembly is to
blame. The Corinthian assembly is to blame for Paul's not drawing
a wage because they are weak. Paul had the right to do so,
but chose not to for the sake of the gospel. But this should
not be expected from any other minister. This was Paul's boast. He talks about this being his
boast. So we must emphasize the particular
nature of Paul's refusal to exercise his right to wages with the Corinthians. We should not apply this to all
ministers, forcing them to work outside the ministry to support
themselves and their families. I find the illustration of the
threshing ox to be interesting in a couple of different ways.
I thought about the ways that a threshing ox is similar to
a working minister. So number one, the ox cannot
easily escape his work. So an elder who truly cares for
his flock cannot easily escape either. They are expected to
regularly preach and teach the assembly. Many take few, if any,
vacations. And this matches well with an
ox that is beholden to the work set before him. So imagine an
ox who must always thrust the grain, always thrust the grain.
It's always there for him to do. This is similar in a way
to a minister who doesn't feel right in leaving his assembly
for a number of reasons. Number two, the work is virtually
never ending. There will always be new grain
to tread for the ox. just as there is always work
for the minister. The word of God is infinitely
teachable and we cannot expect to learn or teach all that there
is in the word of God in a thousand lifetimes. Number three, the
work is sometimes thankless. The ox is expected to tread the
grain as a minister is expected to preach the word. Often without
appreciation. Number four, The work of both
is needful and provides great benefit to others. Number five,
the work of both provides food for consumption. The ox provides
physical food for physical well-being. The minister provides spiritual
food for spiritual well-being. And finally, number six. Threshing
removes desirable parts from undesirable. So the grain is
the desirable part and the chaff is the undesirable part. Threshing
is the action of removing those two things. And this matches
well with a minister who rightly preaches God's Word, who will
remove the chaff, the reprobate, from the true Christian who appreciates
the Word and doctrine preached from the Bible. I told you we
were going to flip over to First Timothy, so if you wouldn't mind,
I'd like to do that now. First Timothy, chapter five,
verse 17. So in fewer words here, Paul
is going to convey the same ideas to Timothy, but The sad thing
is, well, I guess it's a good thing. In writings of Timothy,
he doesn't have to surround his words with a defense of his own
ministry. So this is a much shorter passage.
First Timothy, chapter five, verse 17. The elders who rule
well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those
who work hard at preaching and teaching. For the scripture says
that you shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing and
The laborer is worthy of his wages. So the best elders and
the ones requiring the most compensation are those who work hard at preaching
and teaching. That's the NASB translation.
I prefer the King James here, which renders this portion of
scripture far better, I think. And it says, especially they
who labor in the word and doctrine, the word and doctrine. So there
are three important words to take note of here, I think. Number
one, labor. The ministry is work. It is labor. The Greek word here literally
means to feel fatigue and to be wearied by work. Labor, feel
fatigue, be wearied by work. It is not an easy task to preach
God's word rightly. Paul says elsewhere, we ask you,
brothers, to respect those who labor among you, esteem them
very highly in love because of their work. The second word we
should take note of is word logos. The word of the Lord is of the
utmost importance to Paul. Everything preached should have
its foundation in the word of the Lord. And number three, the
third word is doctrine. Paul loved doctrine. Paul was a master at doctrine. He starts all of his letters
off with doctrine and ends with practicality, which doesn't say
much for my practical message today. But his encouragement
to reward those who teach doctrinally is of special note. especially
considering the fact that he does not even mention practical
teaching here. He knows that practical lessons
are born from doctrinal lessons. We are warned not to be carried
about by every wind of doctrine, and having a teacher that is
solid in doctrinal teaching is of the utmost importance, not
only to Paul, but to us. So those who labor in the word
and the doctrine. Does Paul promote preachers who
tell great jokes? Does he promote preachers who
tell compelling stories? Does he promote teachers who
fill their bleachers, who can pack a stadium? Does he promote
song singers and merry folks sitting out there? Surely, if
you were to fill your bleachers, if you were to tell great jokes
and entertain your audience, you should be worthy of a higher
wage, right? No, not to Paul. It is the elders
who properly expound on the Bible, who work hard, who work hard
to rightly interpret scripture. These are the ones who deserve
greater wages because they are sowing a far greater spiritual
seed. Even inside the Christian preaching
realm, there are teachers, preachers, whatever you want to call them,
that are paid high wages. For instance, televangelists.
You just turn on the TV and you see people like Benny Hinn who
fly around in jets and make millions of dollars. Do these highly paid
preachers even know how to exegete scripture? Do they know what
doctrine is? Do they know what word is, the
word of the Lord? Do they even care what it is?
Do these men preach doctrines such as the depravity of man?
Do they preach a gospel of grace? Do they preach predestination?
Do they preach a particular and effective atonement? I think
this certain doctrine is one of the least preached today and
the most necessary. An atonement that is effective. An atonement that accomplished
something, that didn't just accomplish the ability for man to come to
God and say, yes, I'd like you to be my God. That's not an accomplishment. The accomplishment of the particular
atonement is that those who Jesus Christ died for are saved, will
be saved eternally. So we could call these super
preachers, kind of like Paul calls them super apostles in
sarcasm. You know, they preach a message
of self-esteem. They preach free will. They preach
name and claimant gospels. Even outside of religion, there
are other individuals paid very high wages. Some are obvious
examples like sports professionals, CEOs of companies, stock moguls. All these people make very high
wages. But what do these people do for the real concerns of the
human race? What do these people do for the
real concerns of the human race? Do these people have anything
to offer that will make a bit of difference on the day of judgment,
when we finally stand before the righteous judge? Do these
highly paid people have anything to offer us that will help us
on that day? The hindsight is 20-20. And at the judgment seat,
will the world look back and agree, yes, we rightly doled
out all of our cash. We paid the right people the
right wages. Or do you think, imagine if the Lord sits on his
throne, and the people are before the Lord, and the Lord asks them,
did you pay people rightly? Do you think that people made
the right wages? Of course, everyone's going to
agree that no. So Paul would not recognize any
of these people as persons worthy of double honor. Does the scripture
say how beautiful are the feet of those who bring entertainment?
How beautiful are the feet of those who run companies successfully? No, how beautiful are the feet
of those who preach the gospel? These are God's words, and that
is scripture. The word for honor, timei in
the Greek, Paul uses in 1 Timothy literally means price or value. Timae means price or value. And
by extension, it means honor or dignity. So, it's normally
translated according to context. If a word can mean multiple things,
you translate it according to context. While any of these translations
make sense in relation to Paul's main point here, that ministers
who work hard for us are worthy to be held in high esteem, if
we take this word a little more literally, the passage reads
this, let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double
payment. That's a valid translation. The
word is often used in this way. A great example is Ananias and
his wife. They both lied about the money
they received when they sold the land. And they are said to
have kept back part of the price for themselves. That's the same
word. Also, you are bought with a price.
This is also the same word. So the point being that while
in this it may be translated honor, it can also rightly be
translated price. So, Paul's instruction to Timothy,
we may rightly believe that not only are elders to be paid a
wage for their work, that's well established. We may also make
the conclusion that elders who preach well, who labor in the
word and doctrine, are to be paid double wage, double price,
if we were to use it literally. So I cannot properly wrap this
up without also touching on the fact that if it is the right
of the minister to be paid a wage, if it's the right, the authority,
the power of the minister to draw a wage, the wage must come
from somewhere. Those who receive spiritual blessings
from an elder must, through what ability they have, contribute
funds for the wages that are due him. This is a true and necessary
conclusion to the things that we are examining. It's a logical
conclusion to it. It's an inescapable logical conclusion. If one person has the right to
a wage, there must be some debt owed elsewhere, lest there be
no money from which to draw the wage. So to conclude, I'd like
to quote a very short quote that sums up very nicely in a few
words. This is a quote from Vincent Chung, who is a modern day Gordonite. I like reading him. This is in
his commentary in the Ephesians. From the perspective of the minister,
it is a right. And we've read that. From the
perspective of those who benefit from his ministry, it is a debt. So very short summarized version
of what we just talked about. It's simple and it's biblical.