Tonight I would like to take a look at Matthew 16. Actually, we are just going to start here, and then we will go to some other verses. To begin with, let us go to Matthew 16 and I will read from verse 5. It says in Matthew 16:5-12:
And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread. Which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.
I will stop reading there.
This is really a rather incidental account between Christ and His disciples. They are traveling, they come to the other side, and, oops, they forgot to bring bread, as it said in verse 5. Then Jesus said in verse 6, Matthew 16:6:
…Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.
Then we read of the disciples reasoning among themselves.
Who are these men? Most of them are true believers. Most of them are saved men. We know that Judas was not; but as far as the other eleven, we would gather that they were saved men. These men are trying to figure out what Christ is saying to them, but it is not always that easy and it is not always that simple.
Some people have the idea that the Bible is a simple book. It is simple, if all one reads is John 3:16. If all someone thinks the Bible is about is, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,” then that is enough. What else does someone really need to know then?
There are a lot of churches out there that pretty much stay on this level. They do not go very much beyond this. They try to keep it very simple. They think that the Bible is simple: we are sinners; God has provided salvation in Christ; John 3:16 says that He loves everybody. It is only a matter then as to whether or not an individual is going to accept Him, if an individual is going to be someone who chooses Christ.
Right there what has happened is that the complex book of the Bible has just confounded tons of Christians with this one simple verse, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” Their understanding of this, because they think that this is so simple, is wrong. But this is just the nature of the Bible. It is not a simple book. It is the most complex book that there is.
If a person goes to law school, they have to do a lot of studying of law books. But law books are not more complex than the Bible. Medical books are not more complex than the Bible. Scientific books are not more complex than the Bible. All of those books, as well as anything else that the world can gather together, are not more complex than the Bible. The Bible is the world’s most difficult book to understand. This is because the Bible is impossible to understand.
If someone were to put enough time into it, most people would probably be able to understand certain things concerning the law or medicine or science or math, or whatever. If they are diligent and just put a lot of time into study, eventually they are going to begin to learn some things.
Well, you can put tons of time into studying the Bible; but if God does not want you to know something, you are going to walk away with zero knowledge. Really, when you get down to it, you are not going to know much at all of the Bible.
This is because the Bible was written by God. This is the simple answer. Who writes the law books? Men do. Who writes the medical books? Men do. Who wrote the Bible? God did.
In Isaiah 55, there is a verse that kind of puts us all in our place if we ever think that we are somebody. In Isaiah 55, it says in Isaiah 55:8-9:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith JEHOVAH. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
So here is the comparison. When you look out at the stars at night, how high are they? How much higher than the earth are they? NASA could launch a rocket and the people would die before the rocket ever reached one of those distant stars. The heavens are so much higher than the earth, and God is saying that this is the comparison between His thoughts and our thoughts.
We are just little tiny creatures. This is all that we are. The best, the greatest, and the most brilliant, well, they are the most brilliant of the most little tiny creatures. Some can be more advanced than others, yes; there are brilliant scientists. But once we compare that man to God, he does not know anything.
God, by His wisdom, has made fools of the brilliant people of this earth, as He has allowed them to come up with a teaching like evolution. They think that they have it all figured out when they really do not. They do not know anything as they ought.
The problem with the Bible, and it is everyone’s problem and has been a constant problem all through time and a major problem today, is how we are to understand it. How do we understand the Bible?
Let us go back to Matthew 16. In Matthew 16, they forgot to take bread. Then we read that Jesus says in Matthew 16:6:
…beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.
What are the disciples thinking? They reason among themselves, and then they say in Matthew 16:7:
…It is because we have taken no bread.
Maybe they are thinking that Jesus said this to warn them about the bread that a Pharisee or a Sadducee might give to them. Maybe it would be defiled. Maybe it would be poisoned. After all, there is conflict between the rulers of Israel and the Lord Jesus and His disciples; and so they are wondering and reasoning among themselves.
Again, most of them are saved people. But where do their minds go? Right away, where do their minds go? What is the first thing that these saved men think of? What level of thinking are they on and what level should they be on?
They are thinking on an earthly level and they are on a natural level. They forgot to take bread. Jesus is talking about leaven. Naturally, it must have had to do with bread. Then they are told that they have to beware of the Pharisees and the Sadducees should they provide any bread.
No; this was wrong. This was a very wrong understanding that they had, even though this statement was made in a way that was plain, literal, and straightforward. This is what Jesus said. This whole conversation and discussion was about bread.
So here we see the disciples following an understanding that the theologians of our day have. They are following the methodology that the churches teach. Countless Christians just look for the plain literal sense of the Word of God.
Christ is the Word made flesh, and so where does this get them? When they do this, when they follow this hermeneutic, when they follow the teaching of just understanding the Words of Christ on a basic and simple level and they do not look for any other meaning, where does this get them? They are lost. They have no real understanding of what He was saying at all.
It goes on to say in verse 8, Matthew 16:8-11:
Which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? How is it that ye do not understand…
Why do they not understand?
What does the Bible tell us in Romans 3? We read in Romans 3:11:
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
This is God’s perspective of all mankind. There are a zero number of people who understand Him. There are a zero number of people who understand the Word of God.
If He just left the situation as it is – He is infinite eternal God and His Word is brilliant, while we are little tiny finite man with our minds – and He did not do anything to assist us, none would understand. Nobody. Nobody would understand at all.
Of course, we know that God does not leave things there. We know that He does help us, but there are more problems that we will see in Isaiah 45. Not only naturally does no human being understand the Bible, not only this, but God says of Himself in Isaiah 45:15:
Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.
He would not even have to hide Himself, and yet He says that He does. This is why, for instance, in the Proverbs, God speaks of searching for wisdom “as for hid treasures.” We have to dig, like one would dig for gold or silver, because it is hidden. Truth is buried on the pages of the Bible. In order to find spiritual riches, spiritual treasure, we need to dig; and God tells us how to do this digging in other places in the Bible. But He has hidden truth from man.
We read in Matthew 13 that Christ spoke in parables. It says, “Without a parable spake he not unto them.” So have you ever wondered about this or asked yourself why Christ spoke in parables? Why? Why is it that “without a parable spake he not unto them”?
Was it because He wanted to tell us a nice story to help us to understand something? Is this really the case? There are some parables that two thousand years later we still do not understand. Would it not have been much easier and much plainer for Christ to have directly said, “Beware of the teaching and of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees”?
They would have understood this right away; but He said, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.” He used a figure of speech. He used something to represent something else. This is what parables do.
You would think that we would have figured out that Christ spoke in parables and that He was the Word made flesh in order to teach us that this was how God wrote the Bible. This is why without a parable He did not speak. He was trying to instruct us that He spoke in parables and that what we would have to do in order to understand anything in this Bible is to look at the whole Bible like a parabolic statement.
We are going to have to search for truth. We cannot be lazy. We cannot go to the Bible and expect an understanding to be right there, like “of that day and that hour knoweth no man.” This is a lazy man’s understanding to say, “Well, there it is right in Mark 13:32!” These were the verses that we used to discuss on a daily basis. We have gotten away from them over the last month.
But the problem that the churches had and still have is that this is lazy, superficial, and casual, because it is just skimming the surface. God will always resist those who do not “study to show thyself approved unto God,” those who do not dig into the Word, those who do not search the Scriptures to see if it is so.
I think it is very rare and I do not know if I can think of a single instance where we can just go to one verse, read it, and have a whole doctrine figured out. I do not think that this is possible to do with the Bible. The way that God has written the Bible is that we must compare Scripture with Scripture, “here a little, and there a little,” and then we are able to come to truth.
Here in Matthew 13, we read in Matthew 13:9-11:
Who hath ears to hear, let him hear. And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven…
This is a reference to the true believers.
Then it says:
…but to them it is not given.
This is referring to the unbelievers, to those whom God never had a plan to save.
It continues in Matthew 13:12-13:
For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
Again, we see a lack of understanding or ignorance. The Bible tells us that “a wise man's heart discerneth [or understands] both time and judgment.” By the way, is this still true? Of course this is true. “A wise man’s heart,” which is referring to a child of God, “discerneth both time and judgment.”
Well, we blew this with May 21, right? No; no. What was May 21? It was Judgment Day. It was the day that God closed the door to Heaven. It was the day that He judged mankind; and so we understood the time and the judgment. We knew this. We had this correct. What we had wrong was we thought that there would be a great earthquake.
Let us look at these two events, a major worldwide earthquake and the shutting of the door to Heaven. God is no longer saving because Christ is the Door and He is the only way into Heaven. The only way to experience eternal life is through Christ. When this Door shut, which it did on May 21, this happened on the spiritual level. No one could see this.
If you remember, Jesus gives us an example of a man who was sick of the palsy. He said to him, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” Then some of the Pharisees reasoned in their hearts, “Who can forgive sins but God only?” Jesus knew that they had thought this and said to them, “Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?”
What was easier for Christ? What was easier for God to do? It is incredibly more easy for Christ to say, “Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk.” He is God. He can speak and bring a universe into being. He can make the deaf to hear and the blind to see – Jesus demonstrated these things repeatedly – and He could make the man sick of the palsy to walk. This did not take hardly any effort, but to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee,” He had to die for that man’s sins. He had to pay the penalty before the foundation of the world and experience the wrath of God for his sins. Of course, it was much more difficult for Him to say, “Thy sins be forgiven thee.”
But this was a spiritual thing. To the outward observers, nothing happened. This man was still in his bed. Then Jesus said, “But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed,” which he did.
So they saw the physical aspect of his healing, which was a minor thing. This was very minor compared to the spiritual salvation of God saving him and giving him a new heart and a new spirit.
If a physical earthquake had taken place on May 21 but the door to Heaven was still open, would that have been worse? This would not have been worse. This would not have been worse at all, because at least the people in the world could still have the hope of salvation.
God did the far worse thing. He shut the door, which was a spiritual occurrence, a spiritual happening that no one could see; but it was a very real thing as He shut the door to salvation. After saving all of His sheep, after saving the last of His elect, then He shut the door.
Since this was a spiritual act of God and since man could not see this, they do not believe it. As far as they are concerned, nothing happened, nothing happened at all. But this is not true.
This is no more true than in the Garden of Eden when God said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” We just saw in Kevin’s study that the serpent was denying this, “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
So Eve sins and is deceived and gives to Adam and they partake of the fruit. Did they fall down dead right on the spot? No; they did not. To outward eyes – and at this point Adam and Eve only had outward eyes – the devil or the serpent seemed to be right. They did not fall down dead.
But God did not lie. God told the truth, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”; and on that very day, they died in their soul spiritually. Ever since, men are born into the world and they are conceived in sin. The Bible says, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.” This means that everyone is born in trespasses and sins and has a spiritually dead heart. God told the truth. When Adam was 930 years old, he did physically die, but he did not physically in that day.
The thing is that we read the Bible and we thought that May 21 would be Judgment Day, that the door would shut, that there would be no more salvation, and that there would be a great earthquake. Even when we shared these things, we should have minimized the earthquake. As people asked us about this, we should have minimized the earthquake and we should concentrated more on what they really had to worry about, which was that Heaven’s gate would shut and that there would be no more salvation on May 21.
This is the thing that we really should have emphasized and stressed. We did, but we should have done this more. Whenever a question on the physical happenings came around, we should have changed the discussion to a focus on no more salvation; but we did not. We misunderstood certain aspects of God’s plan.
Are we not supposed to feel ashamed of ourselves? No; I do not. Should we not feel guilty? No; I do not, not in the slightest bit. In all good conscience, and this is what I think that God’s people did, in all good conscience, we shared this information because it was the absolute truth, but we were wrong on a few details.
Tell me who has never been wrong on a few details. What about the disciples? They were right there with Jesus. Jesus was talking to them about leaven and they completely misunderstood.
So when we look at the Bible for what it is in reality, we see that it is the most complex and difficult book known to man. This is true because God was the One who wrote it.
Look at 1 Corinthians 2. It says in 1 Corinthians 2:10-11:
But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?…
If I really want to get to know someone, I will start talking to them. Over a course of time, I will ask them questions and they will give me answers. This can happen with one of our neighbors. Over the course of years, we can try to find out things about one of our neighbors or one of our friends. We go back and forth and we learn things about that individual.
One day something happens that you hear about often. You look on the news and there is your neighbor. He just killed two people in the most horrible way. Then the news crew comes to your house, because you are one of his neighbors, and they ask, “What was he like?” You tell them, “Oh, he was a nice guy. He was the last person who I would ever think would do something like that.”
Why did you think this? You thought this because no one knows what is going on inside of another individual. You may think that you do, for example, with your wife or with your children or even with your neighbor. Maybe you think that you know someone inside and out. But guess what? You do not. You do not, because within each individual there can be things that they are hiding. Only that individual himself or herself really knows themselves better than anyone else, even though they do not even know themselves as they should really and as God knows them. God can search the deep things within man. He can search the heart of man.
But here is what God is saying. Who knows a man or who knows you better than yourself? You have all of your own history. You know what you think. You know what you like. You pretty much know everything about yourself that you can remember. This is because no one knows you like you do. This is for sure. Your wife or your husband does not really know you like you know yourself.
So God is using this fact and continues on to say in 1 Corinthians 2:11:
…even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
The “things of God” are the Bible. The Bible is from the mouth of God. It is the Word of God.
At the end of 1 Corinthians 2, we read in 1 Corinthians 2:16:
For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
Yes; along with a new heart and a new spirit, we can also say that we have the “mind of Christ”; but this also applies when we pick up this book, because the Bible is a reflection of the infinite mind of Christ, the mind of God. But who knows this? Who knows the mind of God?
I mean, if we cannot know each other, if we struggle after years and years of thinking that we know someone and then that person just does things and behaves in a way that we never would have guessed, if we cannot even know another creature all that well and if we really do not even know ourselves completely, how are we ever going to know the Bible? How are we ever going to understand the Bible?
Only God understands the Bible. The Spirit of God is the One who understands the Bible. This is why we need the Spirit of God in order to come to any kind of understanding, because “there is none that understandeth.” This is where we all begin. “No, not one”; not one of us understands.
But if God saves us, if He gives us His Spirit, since it is His Spirit who wrote the Bible and who knows about the Bible, then possibly we will learn truth; but still even then, the disciples have reminded us that we are not going to know things perfectly. We are not going to know everything that we would like.
Let us take a look at a few more verses. Let us go to 1 Corinthians 10. I will just read the first few verses. It says in 1 Corinthians 10:1-4:
Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant…
This means to lack understanding. It continues:
…how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
I must have missed something back in Exodus and Numbers. I do not remember reading about them eating “spiritual meat” and drinking “spiritual drink,” and I do not remember a rock chasing after them. Does anyone remember reading about this in the historical books of the Bible? No; because God did not write them in this way. How did He write them? He wrote them like history, plain old history.
They came out of Egypt, they went into the wilderness, they experienced hunger and thirst, they murmured all about it, and then God would provide. He would have manna fall from Heaven. He had Moses strike the rock and water was provided.
But nowhere there does it mention anything about “spiritual meat…spiritual drink…spiritual Rock.” No where; and yet here we come to the New Testament and God is just matter-of-factly describing this history and He is saying that this was spiritual, which means that these things represented things all about the Gospel. They represented things that were related to Christ and to the salvation plan of God.
Turn to Galatians 4. I will start reading in verse 21. It says in Galatians 4:21:
Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?
This is a reference to the law. We will see as we continue to read that this is talking about historical events in the book of Genesis, which is part of the first five books of the Bible or what is known as the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch is known as the law. Actually, the truth is that the whole Bible is the law. Everything in the Bible is the law of God, but it is interesting that God asks:
…do ye not hear the law?
This is like when Jesus would give a parable and then He would say, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” This is just a reference to history, and yet He asks, “Do ye not hear?”
Well, what do we have to hear when God is just writing about history? Are we supposed to just learn these historical events and their times and their happenings and what took place?
No; if we go to God and we remember that Christ spoke in parables and that by doing this He was trying to teach us how to understand the whole Bible, then we will understand why these verses are here in Galatians 4.
We read next in Galatians 4:22-29:
For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth [corresponds] to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.
Well, again, God asks, “Do ye not hear the law?” We could go back to Genesis and we could find these events taking place. In some of the earlier chapters of Genesis, we read where Abram (Abraham) got into trouble. He listened to Sarai (Sarah) and she gave him her handmaid Hagar (Agar) to have a baby because they were doubting God. Then Ishmael was born through Hagar. Later, Isaac was born of Sarah and he was the child of the promise.
All of these events are recorded in Genesis and there is not one peep that indicates in those accounts that they were an allegory. They were true history, but God is telling us to listen because these things “are an allegory” and that those two women represent two covenants.
It is really incredible because He is talking about the free woman and the one who is “in bondage with her children.” This is Agar who corresponds to Mount Sinai in Arabia where the law was given, plus Agar was an Egyptian and Israel was in bondage under Egyptian rule for hundreds of years. She represents the law. Sarah represents the free woman, and so she represents God’s grace. Isaac is born through her. But we do not read any of this in the book of Genesis.
So if we take 1 Corinthians 10, which talked about the rock and spiritual meat and spiritual drink, and we take this passage from Galatians 4 and then go back to Genesis and Exodus, we can mark all of those passages. Mark them all and you are going to have quite a lot of Scripture that you can look at. The churches will allow this. According to the churches, it is only then that, if you want, you can look for the deeper spiritual meaning.
Turn now to Hebrews 11 where we read of Abraham offering up Isaac. We read in Hebrews 11:17:
By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son.
Here is a hint.
Then we read in Hebrews 11:18-19:
Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.
What is the word “figure” here for? The reason is because this is referring to a type or a figure of something. Another way of saying this is that this is an allegory or a parable or that it has a spiritual meaning.
So this is another one of these types of statements. This means that the whole instance where God tells Abraham to gather his son Isaac, take him up to Mount Moriah, and to offer him as a sacrifice is a picture of God the Father offering the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
You can also mark over this whole passage. When you go through the New Testament and you do this, you are going to see, not just individual verses, but chapter after chapter where God Himself is trying to encourage us as much as possible that this is how we have to understand the Bible. We must look for the spiritual meaning. We cannot just settle on a historical account, like the church is so willing to do today.
The churches use the grammatical/historical method of interpreting the Bible where they learn all they can about the history of that day and the structure of the sentences. But where is the Gospel? It is there, but they do not want to go into it.
What they would have to allow, and they do, is they say that as long as the New Testament interprets the Old, then it is okay to do this allegorizing. But then they say that if the Bible does not already interpret something, then people had better not do this.
So, for example, let us say that we are in Genesis 16 and we have found references to things in this chapter like we just did elsewhere. Then we look for the Gospel and the spiritual meaning. But what if we go to the next chapter and we do not find anything in the New Testament that references to it? They would skip trying to find the spiritual meaning of that chapter and just understand it in the historical/grammatical way until they get to another chapter that has another New Testament reference that will help them to dig into it.
Do you see how ridiculous this is? They are cutting up the Bible. Why not understand it as God wrote it, which is that He gives us example after example after example, telling us that these things have a spiritual meaning, that this is an allegory, that this is a figure, that this is a type, etc? Why not, along with Christ speaking in nothing but parables, why not understand that this is the way that we must come to all Scripture, to the whole Bible?
If someone just reads one verse or a passage or a chapter and all that they understand is what happened in maybe 7 B.C., if this is all that they understand and nothing else, then they have not understood it. You and I and all of us need to find the deeper spiritual meaning.
Let us also go to one verse in Deuteronomy 25. We read in Deuteronomy 25:4:
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.
Do you hear the law? Remember what we read in Galatians, “Do ye not hear the law?” This is when God was referring back to a historical passage.
We can say that this is the law. Everybody knows that the book of Deuteronomy gives law after law. So here is the law:
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.
This is the law of God. Why did God write this? Is He concerned about animals? Is He just giving a good guideline to farmers? Why did God really write this? After all, this is the Bible. This is the Word of God, so why did He write this?
Let us go to 1 Corinthians 9. It says in 1 Corinthians 9:7-8:
Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also?
So here is a reference to the law.
Then we read in the next verse, 1 Corinthians 9:9:
For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn…
This is almost word-for-word. Then we read:
…Doth God take care for oxen?
This is the question. Let us put this the way that we might say it. Does God care about that stupid animal? Well, of course He does. But does God care in a way that this is a pressing matter to Him that an ox not be muzzled?
He does not care about this. How many oxen have come and gone over the centuries? He is concerned about the souls of men. He is concerned about those created in His image. The animals have a much secondary place. He did not write the law for the ox. He wrote it for us.
Now look at verse 10, 1 Corinthians 9:10:
Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.
We do not have time to get into this, but He is going to relate this to the ministry, to individuals who would be busy in treading out the corn of the Gospel, like an ox, and they should not be muzzled.
Throughout church history, it has always been understood that the pastor was to be taken care of. The minister of the congregation was to be taken care of. This was so he did not have to work a secular job in order to have time to just dig into the Bible.
This is why God wrote this verse in Deuteronomy 25, but this is just a small example. This is just one verse. If you read the book of Deuteronomy, you will find verse after verse like this one, law after law like this one, where you would have to ask the same question. For example, does God care if there are two kinds of fabric in a garment? Does He really care about this, or is He telling us something about the Gospel? In every case, he is, of course, telling us about the Gospel.
Let us stop here.