Expository Preaching HR504 LESSON 13 of 20 Haddon W. Robinson, Ph.D. Distinguished Professor of Preaching and the Senior Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts Let s talk about the second developmental question. The first is, What does that mean? The second is, Is that true? Do I really believe it? Paul deals with that question in the Corinthian letter in chapter 9. In chapter 9 of 1 Corinthians beginning at verse 1 Paul says, Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Putting that positively, Paul said I am an apostle. Let me prove it to you. 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 [verses 1-2]. All of that is simply saying, I m an apostle, and the proof I m an apostle is I have seen the Lord on the Damascus Road. He appeared to me. The other proof I m giving you that I m an apostle is you. It is through my ministry that you have become Christians. So in that first paragraph he is proving that he had a right to be called an apostle. Then in the next paragraph beginning at verse 3 Paul says, 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 brother Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living? [verses 3-6]. There he is saying that because he is an apostle he has the rights of an apostle, and one right he would have had as an apostle is the support of the Corinthians. He had a right to that support. And then he goes on to prove that. He s going to prove the right that he has as an apostle who ministered to that congregation. Look at how he does it in verse 7. He s answering the second developmental question is that true? Do you have a right? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? If you re a soldier, you don t have to go out and raise your own support. Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its grapes? If you own a grape vineyard, whatever else you have you ll have grapes to eat and wine to drink. Who tends to a flock and does not drink of its 1 of 5
milk? If you ve got a flock of goats or you have a herd of cows then you can know this: you re going to have milk to drink. And then, Do I say this just from a human point of view? he says [verse 8]. That is, I ve given you some illustrations, some proof from ordinary life in the life of a soldier, in the life of a vineyard keeper, in the life of somebody who owns a herd. But I go beyond that. Do I say this merely from a human point of view? Or doesn t the Law say the same thing? Okay, and this is what the Law says: It s written in the Law of Moses: Do not muzzle an ox while it s treading out the grain. Is it about oxen that God s concerned? No he says it s for us, doesn t he? Yes, this was written for us [verses 9-10]. He s going to show that the Old Testament Law supported the right that he had as an apostle to receive money from the Corinthians, and his illustration is an interesting one. He goes back to the Old Testament and says, Don t muzzle an ox that s treading out the grain. A friend of mine who knows more about the Old Testament than I do said that that command in the Old Testament is not found in the literature of the surrounding nations. It is a concern that God has for the ox. You understand the illustration. If an ox is treading out the grain, as long as he is working treading out the grain take the muzzle off. He ought to be able to eat as much of that grain as he wants. Well okay, but [then] he says, Is it about oxen that God s concerned? I would have thought, Yeah, it s about oxen, and it is, but he says this for our benefit, doesn t he? Yes this was written for us because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they might do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest [verse 10]. Okay. What you see in the illustration of the oxen [is] if it applies to oxen it ought to apply to people and it ought to apply to an apostle who s doing ministry. And so he says, If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? [verse 11]. I mean, If others have this right of support from you, shouldn t we have the right all the more? [verse 12]. Now I want you to notice what s happened. This is the second functional question is it right? Is it true that Paul has a right to be supported by the Corinthians? Is that really true? And Paul goes on to say look at the world around you. The world of the soldier in the army, the grape owner, the sheep or the goat owner or the cattle owner, they all have the right to eat of the crop from the animals that they take care of. And if you want a second proof, 2 of 5
look at the Old Testament, the Law, in the example of the oxen that says we have that right. And then if that doesn t prove it, then a person who s plowing the field and bringing in the harvest has a right to participate of the harvest. And he takes all of that to prove the fact that he, as an apostle, has a right to material support from the Corinthians. If others have this right of support from you, Paul says, shouldn t we have it all the more? [verse 12]. Now he s going to go on in this chapter to demonstrate that he did not take advantage of that right. He did not take money from the Corinthians; instead he worked at making tents. But what I want you to see is that at this section of chapter 9 he s answering the second developmental question, and he does it by giving you a list of proofs from nature, from the Law, from the farmer. Or you can see it again in another passage that raises the question in a different way. If you look at 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is talking about the resurrection of the body I mean of your body, my body. The Greeks did not believe in the resurrection of the body. Greeks believed in immortality, life after death. You can see that in the plays of Euripides, of Sophocles, but they didn t believe in the resurrection of the body. And Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, is going to argue that our bodies will be raised. So he starts by talking about the resurrection of Jesus. He s going to prove that the resurrection of the body is at the heart and core of the Christian faith. Jesus rose from the dead, and he [Paul] says there are all kinds of witnesses. There are witnesses that saw Him after he arose, hundreds of them. Some of them apparently had come through Corinth and testified that they had seen Him after He rose. He s proven that we will rise because Jesus rose from the dead physically. But notice in verse 35 of 1 Corinthians 15, somebody s going to raise an objection, and he [Paul] says, Someone may ask, How are the dead raised? I mean, With what kind of a body will they come? You can see the power of that question. Paul is arguing that Christians will be raised physically from the dead and somebody interrupts him and says, Wait a minute Paul, is that really true? Do I really believe that? I mean suppose a man is out in the middle of the Mediterranean. He s a sailor and he has an appendix that bursts. He can t, you know, bring him into shore so what they do is they have a brief burial. They put him into the Mediterranean and fish will come and nibble at his body and then a fisherman on the shore catches one of those fish and he eats that fish for dinner. Then the refuse from his body will become manure. I mean how 3 of 5
can you say that the dead are going to rise physically? That s the question: Is that really true? Can I believe it? And Paul said, Wait, wait, wait. That s a foolish question. Sounded like a good question to me, but what you sow does not come to life unless it dies, and when you sow, you don t plant the body that will be, but you just plant the seed, perhaps of wheat or something else. And then God gives it a body as He has determined, and to each kind of seed He gives its own body [I Corinthians 15:36-38]. What s he saying? Well when I grew up in New York City, it was amidst of the ghetto, and I had never been out of New York. So if you ask me where food comes from, I would have said the grocery store. If you said where does the grocery store get its food? That would have stumped me. So in school they were always trying to teach us where food comes from, and so I remembered in third, fourth grade we had a window box. Each one had his own box and they gave us some seed. I think it was lima beans, and we planted the beans and we were supposed to water it. We did each day and after a couple of days I didn t have anything showing in my box, so I dug in and I discovered that the bean had become squished, and I figured the teacher won t know about this so I covered it all up. But to my surprise, something grew. What grew was different from what I had planted, and yet there was a connection. Now Paul says to these folks who are well aware of how things grew, You plant a seed, little seed. You plant it, but there comes from that [is] wheat. The thing that develops is different from the seed you planted, but it s connected. And so he s going to argue, when you bury a body, God will bring from that body a new body, but it will be connected to the body that is buried. I think if Paul were talking today with what we know, he would talk about DNA. He d say all that God has to do is have one bit of the DNA and He can not only recreate the body, but He can create a new body designed to live in eternal realms. Now again my task here is not to teach 1 Corinthians 15. It s to teach the developmental question. The question of Is that really true? Do I believe it? And Paul throughout 1 Corinthians 15 is wrestling with that question. To the Greeks, who did not believe in the physical resurrection of the body, but they were Christians, 4 of 5
Paul is arguing, proving that indeed the body that will be raised will be related to the body that s buried. You find that all the way through the Scriptures. First developmental question: What does that mean? Explain that to me. The second developmental question: Is that really true? Do I believe it? And you try to give the proof to answer that second question. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 5 of 5