I suspect that the prospect of tweeting the revelation that God had given him would have been impossibly frustrating for Paul.  In Chapter 1 alone of the Greek version of 1 Corinthians, there are 1,937 characters.  Chapter 15 is twice as long.  (Even before this parenthesis, this introduction is 100 characters too long to be tweeted.) 

I often teach Bible school students and preach to church members, "If you've never read a book like Romans or 1 Corinthians straight through in one sitting, the chances are you don't know what the book is about."  Reading, as we are, in a One-Year format that breaks up the Jewish and Christian Scriptures into bite-sized daily morsels, it's easy to miss the fact that Paul started a train of thought in Monday's reading (8:1-13) that carries straight through, uninterrupted, to the end of tomorrow's (10:14-33).  Over the course of these chapters, Paul refers to subjects as diverse as sacrificial meals in ancient Greek/Roman temples, the authority of an apostle, the right of a preacher of the Gospel to expect material provision in return for his/her ministry, adopting the lifestyle practices (i.e., Jewish or non-Jewish) that will give Paul credibility with his audience, living with purpose and self-discipline, the disobedience and resulting death of nearly the entire Exodus generation of Israelites, grumbling, temptation, immorality, vegetarianism, and the Lord's Supper (Communion, or Eucharist).  And these are only the main topics...

As you read today and tomorrow, I want to point out to you that everything Paul is saying over this four-day span is to make a single point.  It's a point Paul touched on first in Chapter 6–a point so counter-cultural and uncomfortable for us that we might have sped right past it without reflecting on what a significant challenge it throws down in the face of our most unconscious assumptions and deeply-held values.  It's worth separating out visually to maximize the impact:

"Even to have lawsuits with one another is a defeat for you.  Why not just accept the injustice and leave it at that?  Why not let yourselves be cheated?" (6:7, italics mine).  Another translation reads: "Why not rather be wronged?"

Think about that for a second.  If you were born in the U.S.A., it's almost impossible to imagine a logic more dramatically opposed to ours.  I remember the words, 'It's a free country' in the mouths of my childhood friends, flying out like fists in defense of 3rd graders' right to do whatever it is that they were doing at that moment–something that often involved hurting someone else's feelings.  They were usually too busy insisting on their rights to recognize that their actions were violating someone else's.  (I'm not convinced that this blindness diminishes with age for most Americans.)

In America, our rights are what what we fight and die for.  When they are violated we want justice.  What we do not want, under any circumstances, is to prefer to be wronged, to accept injustice.  I can only assume that's because we cannot easily conceive, even in the church, of a higher value to live and die for than freedom, than the justice that guarantees me my rights.  

It is precisely here where the "Jesus whom Paul preaches" asks us: Of which kingdom are we citizens?  Do you live by the American Way, or the Jesus Way?  Do you abide by the laws of the land, or the royal law of love?  Paul spends 73 verses (6,926 Greek characters – or 50 tweets) on illustration after illustration of this most fundamental of all principles for followers of Jesus.  This kind of repetition leads me to suspect that this is so important, that something absolutely core to the Gospel gets lost, that our Gospel becomes less-than-Gospel, something other-than-Gospel– that we actually abolish the Gospel... when we insist on our rights.  Listen to Paul's variations on this theme: I lay down my rights to financial compensation as an apostle; I willingly restrict my freedom in order to show respect for the religious convictions of others; I spend so that others can have; I go out of my way to avoid doing anything that might offend another person or cause them to violate their conscience; even though I am a free man, I have become a stave to all to bring people to Christ; I would rather die than allow the use of my freedom to harm another believer, or to make Jesus unattractive to someone who doesn't know Him.

In a tragically ironic twist, almost the only Americans who live by anything approaching this demanding of an ethic are our soldiers.  They kill and lay down their lives so that we can have our freedom and live in security, prosperity, and peace.  But Jesus didn't call followers to Himself with the instruction: let others take up arms and kill so that you can live a life free of sacrifice and service.  He said, "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.  If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.  But if you lose your life for my sake, you will find it.  For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve–and to lay down His life as a ransom for many."  Paul apparently got the message.  He wrote, "Each of you should have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who gave up all of His rights and privileges."  And Paul lived what he preached: "I become all things to all people so that by all means I might win some (to Christ)."  He was also unapologetic about calling people to follow His example: "You should Imitate me just as I imitate Christ."

So today as you read about the generation that came out of Egypt, notice that Paul says their story was recorded in order to warn us not to assume that 'we're in' because we've seen God do miracles on our behalf, or because we we've been Baptized or regularly take Communion... As you read tomorrow about participating with demons and eating meat sold in the marketplace ... Don't lose sight of the fact that Paul has one point and one point only over these four days in our Bible readings: "Don't be concerned for your own good but for the good of others" (10:24; almost a word-for-word echo of Philippians 2:4).

Or, as I paraphrased it earlier: I would rather die than allow the use of my freedom to harm another believer, or to make Jesus unattractive to someone who doesn't know Him.

Exactly 140 characters.  You can tweet that.  

But you probably shouldn't unless you're at least willing to try to live it.