1 Corinthians 9:1-12 | Episode #990

July 25, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

1 Corinthians 9:1-12

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

Applying God's word to your daily life.

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope.

As we finish Faithful Finance, we want to produce our winter Bible study done at Lake Community Church on First Corinthians.

It'll be a fairly long Bible study.

We will break it up into different parts,

and so you will get a really good, really fast study through the book of 1 Corinthians before we move on to the book of Joshua.

We are in chapter nine now, when we're going through 1 Corinthians,

this is a.

Remember,

And I'm kind of doing a little bit of review. Remember, this is a very carnal or worldly church, okay?

They're fleshly oriented. They're oriented toward the flesh.

And they have a lot of issues that we find in the New Testament church.

And those issues that we find in the New Testament Church make First Corinthians so powerful. It really makes 1 Corinthians what it actually is,

which is a book that speaks to,

in my opinion, the American church. It does speak to the American church pretty heavy.

And so when we're studying this,

I want you to see that there are many, many issues that he deals with that are fleshly. Now we're gonna get to a chapter here where he makes the transition,

where he's getting away from trying to teach them just how to function as a church, as a healthy, growing church. He moves away from that and moves to a spiritual understanding.

And in fact, he quite clearly says,

I'm going to move to the spiritual now. Okay? And then he spends the next five chapters, really. He spends the next five chapters dealing with spiritual issues.

Now you go, well,

if they were so worldly, why were they spiritually oriented? Well,

you need to hear me.

Our knowledge of the Corinthian.

The Corinthian people is pretty. Pretty extensive as far as historic. Historicity, as far as the historical background of it. But our understanding of our necessary understanding of the actual Corinthian church or the church in Corinth is solely based off of the book of First Corinthians, okay?

It's solely based off of that. And so we.

We don't really have a whole lot of knowledge about the Corinthian church other than that we do know that the people of that time would have been very different than the people of our time,

because even the people who were not Christians were very spiritually oriented. And when I say spiritually oriented, they believed in spiritual things now,

and they worshiped a bunch of gods.

And those gods in my opinion are either demons or fallen angels. And they worshiped those gods. They worshiped them, and they believed in supernatural activity. They believed in things that happened beyond the natural world.

And that's what supernatural means. It means something that happens beyond the natural order of things. And the way God made the universe, okay? It's something that is. Is different, is unique.

Now, it's not unique from God because.

Because God is spirit and God is the author of the universe, which means he's not limited by the universe. The universe just.

Just reflects who he is.

It reflects his nature, but he is beyond and over the universe. And so when we're talking about this, this group of people,

they were very.

They were very fleshly and worldly oriented, and yet they believed heavily in the spiritual,

which makes them a really unique people,

okay?

And. And it leads us to a lot of dichotomy that helps us understand things for ourselves.

Now, this next chapter for me is a chapter that has taken on a lot of importance in my life, okay?

Because as a young past studying through the Bible, as a young pastor studying through scripture,

this chapter in many ways motivated me due to my experiences as to the ministry at a young age, in my 20s and early 30s.

And I read this chapter, and as I read this chapter, I began to think about it and I began to consider it.

And I realized that Paul is giving instruction to the church,

but he's also helping young pastors with minds, with a mindset,

okay?

And the mindset that you get from chapter nine,

in my opinion, is very important for a pastor to have.

And oftentimes we miss out on it, okay?

And the church misses out on the ideas and the understandings that come from it.

And that's what causes a lot of issues in the body of Christ and especially in many of the churches that are in our modern times. So let's start with chapter nine.

He says,

am I not an apostle?

Now remember,

a disciple is a follower, okay? He's a follower of Christ. In fact, disciple means one who follows. An apostle is one who is sent,

okay? So you've got the idea of someone who is disciple of Christ. So they were follower of Christ.

And then God, once he's brought them to a place of maturity, he sends them out to do his work, to do his ministry, to do his mission. And by the way, the apostle Paul had that time period for himself after the Damascus Road experience.

He spent a long time studying and a long time not in the public eye, not. Not in the public domain.

A few years studying and trying to reconcile what he knew about Christ,

which I believe was a lot. And I believe actually Corinthians teaches us that a little bit itself.

He knew a lot about Christ.

In fact, I think he was the rich young ruler.

But not only that,

he knew a lot of the Old Testament. He was an Old Testament scholar, okay? He was a great.

In fact,

he was the chief prosecutor of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, which would have made him an expert in the law,

which meant he knew the Old Testament.

He knew the Old Testament.

So when we get to this, it says, am I not apostle?

He says, am I not free?

Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?

Now he's asserting himself in his position.

He is giving them the understanding that when I'm talking to you, I am talking to you as an apostle.

I'm talking to you as one who is free in Christ.

I'm talking to you as one who has actually seen the Lord Jesus.

Now, this passage tends to indicate not just a glimpse of him. He's not saying, I had a momentary encounter with Jesus. He's saying, I've actually seen Jesus for some depth and breadth,

okay? He says, and if anyone thinks he knows anything,

I'm sorry, I'm. Verse 2. If I'm not an apostle to others,

yet doubtless I am to you.

What he's saying is, if I wasn't an apostle to anybody, I am definitely an apostle to you. Because I'm the one who started this church.

I'm the one who started the church in Corinth.

So I'm the one who was sent. You can talk about what my ministry is compared to other people. And that's been the problem, right? Some say I'm of Apollos, and some say I'm of Paul, and some say I'm of Christ.

That's a problem. There's a whole lot of fighting in the church. And he says, listen,

I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ.

He says, and I'm sure enough apostle to you,

yet doubtless I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord, Meaning it's guaranteed that I'm an apostle. Because there's an active, vibrant, growing church here in Corinth.

You're a seal of that apostleship.

Nobody can say I'm not an apostle.

Do we have no right to eat or drink?

Now, I want you to hear me.

For some reason, in the church,

especially in the Church of America,

and I'm not talking about mega churches,

and yet I am talking about mega churches.

I'm not talking about Small little churches. And yet I am talking about small little churches.

What he's saying is, is do I not deserve to have food and to drink?

Don't I deserve to get paid? Is what he's going to say.

All right, you go, well, megachurch pastors make a lot of money.

Yeah. But the problem is there's a lot of mega churches that the pastor makes a lot of money and everybody else just barely gets by.

And we're not talking about just a few group, a few people at the top. We're talking about all the way down to the bottom.

That is a problem of many mega churches. If you go and actually look into it, they have a whole lot of people that are making 10, $11 an hour,

serving 50, 60 hours a week,

okay? And only getting paid for 40 of those hours.

All right? So I'm not just talking about pastors, but I will tell you this.

There has been a history, especially in the Deep south,

of hiring pastors or calling pastors, especially calling young pastors who are naive and fired up,

and the church making a pact with.

With God, God, you keep them humble and we'll keep them poor,

okay?

So that they'll be good vessels to serve Jesus Christ.

All right? They do it. And let me tell you something that's happened a whole lot,

A whole, whole lot.

And churches who had the money to pay their pastor, unwilling to pay their pastor.

All right?

He's making an argument. Now, I want you to.

Those of you who know me personally can see how my ministry and the things that I have have worked toward as a pastor would have been really, really informed by this passage,

okay?

It says, do we have no right to take along a believing wife,

as do also the other apostles,

the brother of the Lord and Cephas? What is he saying? Don't I get a right?

Now, he doesn't have a wife.

But what he's saying is, don't we have a right to take a wife?

And he's saying,

the brother of Christ, meaning James,

the head of the church in Jerusalem, and Cephas, meaning Peter,

he's saying, peter has a wife,

James has a wife.

I should have the right to have a wife. By the way, this kind of destroys that whole idea of God's called leadership in the church being unmarried.

Okay?

This passage kind of ruins that whole idea.

He asked a lot of rhetorical questions, okay? And when I say he asked rhetorical question, for those of you saying, I've not heard of that before, rhetorical question is a question that.

That has an obvious Answer to it, okay?

It's a question when you ask it, it's an obvious yes or no.

And he says here,

do I not have a right to take a believing wife?

He says, or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working?

What he's saying is,

why is it that I and Barnabas are being treated differently than the other apostles?

Why are we different from them?

All right? And the truth is,

is it works both ways. And let me say that it works both ways if you're a pastor and your church is mistreating you and your church is not doing right.

I know you have a call to your ministry.

I know that you have a deep call to God and you want to stay loyal to God.

But I'm not talking to anybody in this room. I'm just talking to folks on online that may see this years from now.

If the church is not taking care of you,

they're not listening to your discipleship either, okay?

So you leaving them when they're unwilling to do what they're supposed to do is not wrong.

Okay?

It ain't wrong.

He says.

He says whoever goes to war at his own expense. What is he asking? Who goes to war at his own expense?

Who plants a vineyard and does not eat fruit?

And who tends a flock and does not drink the milk of the flock?

What he's saying is I have a right to get paid.

Making an obvious right now. I want you to listen, you go, well, Pastor, I know you probably. You don't take us out. I know, I know, but we're going to get to that later on, okay?

But I want you to hear me.

Those who serve God in the ministry have a right to get paid. They don't have to take pay, but they have a right to get paid.

And paid well enough so that their family's not starving and not just barely making it.

Do I say these things as a mere man or does not the law saying the same also? What he's saying is, am I saying this just to give you human ideas and understandings?

No, he's saying, I'm going to the Old Testament to it with it. I'm going to tell you what's in the law.

He says, if we have sown spiritual things to you,

it is a great thing if we reap your material things.

Well, that's straightforward, isn't it?

I'm sorry,

miss. Verse 10. Let's read it.

Or does he say it all together for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt. This is written that he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope, and should and.

And should be partakers of this hope and hope. Here is a word that's being used regularly, especially in the book First Corinthians, which means and a. A realistic and anxious expectation,

meaning it's. It's a real expectation,

and it's an anxious expectation.

By the way, I'm going to say this because it just needs to be said while we're in this passage,

and I'm not saying it to our church. I'm going to just say that to y' all.

This.

This chapter really ain't got nothing to do with our church, okay? But I am teaching it, and so I need to teach it.

Are you following me?

This chapter has nothing to do with our church,

but there are certain truths that need to be known out there in the back of your mind. You need to know these truths,

okay?

If somebody works, they deserve to benefit from that work.

That is a truth there.

If they choose not to take pay for it,

then that's their spiritual blessing for the future.

But that's their choice and not your choice.

And that's true of everything.

And I hope a young pastor down the road's watching this.

I hope he reads it and looks at it and. And hears it and understands it.

If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it. It is a great thing. If we reap your material things, is it a great thing? Yeah.

If others are partakers of this right over you,

are we not even more?

What he's saying is, if you're going to pay these people for things,

why wouldn't you pay us as you go? Today I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.