4th Sunday of Matthew

If to others I am not an apostle, yet at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

³My defense to those who examine me is this: ⁴Have we no right to eat and to drink? ⁵Have we no right to take along a wife who is a believer, even as the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas? ⁶Or have only Barnabas and I no right to not work? ⁷What soldier ever serves at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard, and doesn’t eat of its fruit? Or who feeds a flock, and doesn’t drink from the flock’s milk?

⁸Do I speak these things according to the ways of men? Or doesn’t the law also say the same thing? ⁹For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it for the oxen that God cares, ¹⁰or does he say it assuredly for our sake? Yes, it was written for our sake, because he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should partake of his hope. ¹¹If we sowed to you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we reap your fleshly things?

¹²If others partake of this right over you, don’t we yet more? Nevertheless we didn’t use this right, but we bear all things, that we may cause no hindrance to the Good News of Christ.

When he came into Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking him for help, ⁶saying, “Lord, my servant lies in the house paralyzed, grievously tormented.”

⁷Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

⁸The centurion answered, “Lord, I’m not worthy for you to come under my roof. Just say the word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹For I am also a man under authority, having under myself soldiers. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and tell another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and tell my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

¹⁰When Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to those who followed, “Most certainly I tell you, I haven’t found so great a faith, not even in Israel. ¹¹I tell you that many will come from the east and the west, and will sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, ¹²but the children of the Kingdom will be thrown out into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” ¹³Jesus said to the centurion, “Go your way. Let it be done for you as you have believed.” His servant was healed in that hour.