4 You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain. ~ Deuteronomy 25:4
I recently heard a man say, “If Paul was a fisherman, Peter was a tentmaker, and Jesus was a carpenter. Please, tell us why your preacher doesn’t have a real job.” Now, he did correct the mistake that Paul and Peter should be flipped, so that’s beside the point. It’s the fact that it’s just not true. See, he said it very much like it was a mic-drop moment. Like he had just wrecked Christian pastors. Here’s the problem with that: they didn’t do those things alongside preaching and teaching the Gospel. That’s why Paul said that this Law was written not for the ox, but for us. For those who preach and teach the Gospel.
9 For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? 10 Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. 11 If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?
1 Corinthians 9:9-11
Peter, James, John, and Andrew were all fishermen prior to taking up their roles as teachers, preachers, and apostles. They put that aside. That’s why Jesus said the well-known phrase, I will make you fishers of men. They were no longer fishermen by trade. Even after the death and resurrection of Christ, Peter said that he didn’t have time to handle disputes and such because it was more important for him to be devoted to prayer. So, they set others up in places of authority to deal with those things.
Peter wasn’t out fishing for money. Peter was spending his time praying and getting souls saved. Paul was a tentmaker in only one area because he didn’t accept offerings from them. But he did receive them from places like Thessalonica and Philippi. It was because he didn’t want the risk of their misunderstanding of Scripture to keep them from hearing the Gospel, which he explains to the Corinthian Church in that same chapter. In fact, Paul makes it sound as though they were fine with Cephas and the other apostles receiving money but not Paul and Barnabas, but that’s beside the point as well.
Paul says throughout this chapter that if you are preaching the Gospel, then you should make your living from the Gospel, just as every other person makes their living from their job. So, this man’s point in the video I saw wasn’t actually an argument at all. Just as Peter couldn’t devote himself to prayer and teaching in the way he needed to in order to properly share the Gospel with others, so are pastors unable to have a full-blown other job or real job, as he called it in the video, as well as lead a congregation and feed the sheep. This idea that pastors need to have ‘real’ jobs isn’t a biblical one, because according to Scripture there’s no other job that is more important than getting souls saved and building the Kingdom of God.
Peace. Love. Go Forth and Stop Trying To Muzzle The Ox.