Links for today’s readings:
Read: Deuteronomy 25 Listen: (2:38) Read: Romans 5 Listen: (3:53)
Links for this weekend’s readings:
Read: Deuteronomy 26 Listen: (3:13) Read: Romans 6 Listen: (3:28)
Read: Deuteronomy 27-28.19 Listen: (13:27) Read: Romans 7 Listen: (4:09)
Scripture Focus: Deuteronomy 25.4
4 Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
1 Corinthians 9.9-11
9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11 If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you?
Reflection: What If I Don’t Have an Ox?
By John Tillman
Instruction manuals often describe features your model lacks. If there’s no in-door ice dispenser in your refrigerator or no sunroof in your vehicle, you just skip those sections. They don’t apply.
If the Bible was an instruction manual, we’d all need oxen to follow it or we’d be skipping a lot of passages. Are these passages a waste of space? No. Because the Bible isn’t written to us, it is written for us.
The Bible has instructions, but isn’t a manual. It has laws, but isn’t a constitution or legislation. It has prophecies, but doesn’t tell your fortune. It has histories, but isn’t a record book. The Bible is written by and to people who lived in ancient cultures, economies, and political systems.
Commands about living in tribal or monarchical political systems don’t translate well to modern democratic republics. Regulations about debt management, property rights, and poverty don’t compute in our economic systems. Instructions about planting crops and managing animals don’t apply to city-dwellers or modern agriculture. If scripture is “to them” how is it “for us?”
Paul didn’t have an ox. He was a city-dwelling scholar and a world-traveling preacher of the gospel, but he told the church at Corinth, also urban city-dwellers, that this passage about oxen was “for us.” Paul made an amazing claim. He said that when Moses wrote this down, God was concerned about wisdom for his people, not grain for oxen. From this simple agricultural instruction, Paul taught on God’s authority that those who share in the work should share in the profits.
Paul applied this passage specifically to those, like himself, who were teaching the gospel. They were not grinding grain but sharing the bread of life. But that is surely not all that God intended either. We should apply this wisdom today to the workers in our fields, factories, offices, coffee shops, and markets.
Paul says the Bible “is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3.16) There is wisdom to apply to our political and economic systems and choices. There is wisdom to apply to our labor markets and business practices. There is wisdom to apply to our personal finances and use of power and resources.
Tune your heart to the Holy Spirit and listen to scripture in this way. There is wisdom to be revealed in every corner of scripture, even in passages about oxen we don’t own.
Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
God is a righteous judge; God sits in judgment every day. — Psalm 7.12
– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summer
by Phyllis Tickle
Read more: Kingly Qualifications
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