A Stern Warning

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Don Filcek; 1 Corinthians 10:1-22 A Stern Warning

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filcik preaches from his sermon series titled, 1
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Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. Good morning and welcome to Recast Church.
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I'm Don Filcik. I'm the lead pastor here and thanks for taking time to gather together. I recognize there's all different kinds of places you could be, including still in bed.
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And so it's always a great opportunity that we have to gather together and honor
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Christ. Throughout the week, I pray that God would meet us all together in the pages of his word as I study, as I let the let the word wash over me and then try to bring it here to make sense of it in our current context.
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The power of the word is in the self -disclosure of our God, him telling us who he is, him telling us how he rolls, and then in turn what he desires of us and what he has done for us.
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He shows us who he is. And when we truly believe that what the Bible says is true of him and we believe that this is true of what he actually is, we find motivation then to go and live accordingly.
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And so that's the goal of our gathering is that our faith would be expanded by taking in his word, believing it and living it.
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We're going to be continuing on in 1 Corinthians for two weeks and then we're going to kind of turn into a little bit more of a Christmas theme for the next two weeks.
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Then it'll be New Year's and off into the new year. Can you guys believe it's already here? This is kind of crazy. We're even going to start our
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Christmas songs this morning. But this morning we're going to receive a stern warning from the Apostle Paul, not exactly a
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Christmas message. He reminds us in this passage that we serve a God who doesn't play around with sin.
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It is indeed a stern warning. I don't know what you thought you were signing up for this morning, but this is the text we're going to go through.
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God judges sin. According to the book of Romans, his wrath is being poured out on all ungodliness and all unrighteousness.
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And Romans also makes clear that without the gospel, that tsunami of just wrath and judgment would sweep us away too.
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Right? We know we're unrighteous. We know that we are unjust. We know that we are ungodly. According to the standards of what is written in Scripture, we don't measure up.
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And so we would also be under that wrath were it not for the gospel. So our text this morning, despite its stern warning, is not without encouragement.
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I hope you walk away with some encouragement. But the church in Corinth had wandered off into many sinful patterns.
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There were divisions. There was sexual immorality. There was grumbling against leadership, testing the Lord through ongoing associations with idolatry.
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This church was pretty rough around the edges. There were even to the degree that earlier in 1 Corinthians, we heard that they're suing one another.
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They're literally taking each other to court. Like that's the kind of divisiveness that's going on in this ancient church.
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And so Paul will take us all on a brief tour here for the Corinthians' benefit, but also for ours.
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He takes us on a tour of the Old Testament people of God, showing that God disciplines those that he loves.
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He's going to say in this text things like, remember the thousands dead with snake bites in the wilderness? Remember the way that an entire generation passed away without the blessing of experiencing the land of promise?
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Because of their idolatry? Because of their grumbling? Because of their immorality? These things serve, he's going to say two different times in this text, hey, let these be examples to you.
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Let these be examples to us here in this New Testament era. And we are meant to learn about our
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God by observing the way he worked with sinful people in the past. We live by grace, but church, do not be deceived.
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We live by grace, but grace doesn't make God okay with sin. Grace doesn't mean that God is like okay with your sin, and he's like, okay, we're all good.
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Grace doesn't make him okay with sin. Grace merely diverts the holy wrath that we deserve toward his son.
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No, he's not okay with sin. He will judge every single sin, and it's a question of whether you will pay the price for it, or whether Christ already paid the price for it.
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The warnings to us are real, because even his chosen people, according to this text, will receive discipline.
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So let's allow God to issue a stern warning to us this morning. Let's let his word wash over us in a way that is fresh to our ears, that impacts the way that we live this week.
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And let's do so by opening our Bibles to 1 Corinthians 10 1 -22. Again, 1
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Corinthians 10 1 -22, recast God's amazing, glorious, holy, and this morning stern word to us as a church.
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He doesn't want us to be unaware. 1 Corinthians 10 1 -22,
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For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.
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Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
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Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.
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Do not be idolaters as some of them were, as it is written. The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.
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We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and 23 ,000 fell in a single day.
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We must not put Christ to the test as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer.
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Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instructions, on whom the end of the ages has come.
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Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed, lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you, that is not common to man.
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God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
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Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people, judge for yourselves what
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I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?
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The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
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Consider the people of Israel, are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do
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I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything? Or that an idol is anything?
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No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God.
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I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the
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Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
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Let's pray. Father, your word takes us on a journey.
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We go all over the place, from deep encouragements in the Psalms, to gaining voices, to lament, to some of the whimsical stories, to the depths of conviction.
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Father, I pray that you would allow this warning to settle on us. And despite the fact that this holiday season, we want to think light thoughts, and we want to think frivolous thoughts, and we want to think joyful thoughts.
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And there is something that is really awesome about incarnation. There's something awesome about the way that you have set forth to redeem broken and sinful people like us.
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There is also a warning that comes in that, because that baby that was sent to us, came to be tortured and to die for us.
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Father, I pray that we would see what our sins deserve, and that that would empower us and enable us to rejoice all the more in what we've been saved from.
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Father, I pray that you would allow this passage to be fuel for our lives of dealing battle with sin.
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Sin that rages up within us. Not doing battle with the sins of the world out there, but doing battle with the sins in our own hearts and in our own lives.
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That when we face temptation, we would lean on you, the faithful one. And that you would make us stronger as a result of gathering together this morning.
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Make us stronger as a result of having the opportunity to sing songs of praise to you in the gathering of your people.
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To hear from your holy word, a word that wouldn't come natural to us. We don't like strong and harsh words.
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Father, I pray that these examples that have been recorded and written down for our instruction would instruct, rebuke, correct.
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In the name of Jesus, amen. Amen. Yeah, go ahead and be seated.
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But if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donut holes or use the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left -hand side.
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But I do ask that you re -find your spot in 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 10, having that in front of you, on your lap would be really beneficial if it's a device or a scripture journal or whatever.
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Taking advantage of that so that you can see that what I'm saying, I'm going to be referring to the text often in this message.
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Judgment, sin, grace, discipline, wrath, eternal security, loss of salvation.
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All of these ideas are going to swirl around this passage. And I would suggest that each and every person here with various personalities will find something to focus on in this passage.
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It's going to, your heart is going to be pulled in a direction based on the way that you perceive the world around you.
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For those who are, for example, fearful and are constantly fearful that they haven't measured up to God.
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Some who are actually Christians might even fear losing their salvation. There is enough in this passage here that it could keep you up at night.
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For those who believe that you cannot lose your salvation, you will find verses to cling to in the midst of this passage, at least a verse to cling to.
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All of us will see in this passage, wrath toward sin from a holy and righteous
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God. Some will see discipline, but I think all of us will receive this morning at least a very stern warning to ourselves.
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I have to state this at the beginning as a disclaimer of sorts. I am compelled, this is, I'm telling you my bias.
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I am compelled to keep this passage that we're looking at today consistent with the rest of scripture.
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So that's one of the tasks that I have each and every time I come to a passage of scripture to preach it, is to make sure that what
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I say up here meshes with the rest of the holy word.
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I'm committed to the conviction that all of scripture is consistent and is unified in a common message.
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And so I can never look at a single passage without letting the rest of the flow and flavor of scripture impact what
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I'm reading and what I'm preaching. So I am, as I preach this, I am both convinced that scripture gives genuine warnings to believers, genuine warnings to the church about the way we live.
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And equally I'm convinced that throughout the pages of scripture you will find confidence and assurance that he who called us is faithful to keep us for himself.
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Both of those are true. Warnings about the way you live and trust that he will sustain you.
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Do you get what I'm saying in that? Both are true. We have both reasons for deep comfort when we come to scripture, but also we have the opportunity to take on stern and strong warnings to obey like in our text today.
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A perfect example of this, I just point you to a different passage just for the sake of giving you some breadth to seeing that this is not unique to the passage that I'm preaching.
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Philippians 2 verses 12 through 13 says this. Therefore my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out, work out, like work out, like how many of you have ever worked out before?
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Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Now if it ends there, stern warning, but it doesn't end there, it goes on.
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For it is God who works in you, both to will, that's the part of us that desires something, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
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Work it out while acknowledging it is God who is at work in you to both give you the desire to obey him, the desire to love him, and the work to do to show him that you love him.
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Stern warning to obey in verse 12 of Philippians 2. Strong hope that God is working in us to give us a will and actions leading to his good pleasure, verse 13.
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Both are consistent there. Both need to be preached. Warnings against sin need to be preached.
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Hoping God to work in us needs to be preached. We see both in our passage this morning, a heavier emphasis on the warning.
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Here is our outline for this morning. If you're a note taker, verses one through 11 are the examples. We'll see some ample, quite a few examples here.
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The examples, verses one through 11, the hope, verses 12 and 13, and then the command, verses 14 through 22.
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I love how consistent God is to give us hope and to give us a sense of his presence with us and his guiding direction before he issues us commands.
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So we start this morning with the examples in verses one through 11. Paul starts by informing the
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Corinthians about their forefathers in the faith. This church was primarily Gentile. They weren't raised in going to Jewish Sunday school,
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Saturday school, I guess you'd call it, but they weren't raised in the synagogue. They weren't raised around Judaism.
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They weren't raised on the Ten Commandments. Most of them were raised on the pagan gods and goddesses.
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So it's interesting that he sees the church as relating to that Old Testament tradition.
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Abraham is now our father too. We are now of the tradition of David and Moses and Joseph and Jacob.
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How? By faith. They are our fathers in the faith. And he says of our spiritual forebears that they were made participants in the salvation story of God by what he, a phrase that Paul invents here.
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It doesn't occur anywhere else. Baptism into Moses. He describes a bit of what that is into the process of Exodus is what he's really getting to.
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They passed under the cloud, the cloud that guided them as a cloud of fire by night and a cloud by day.
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They passed under the cloud through the waters. The Red Sea is imaged here, the great miraculous provision of God in delivering his people.
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He is symbolizing both their baptism and ours here in this passage. They pass through water. We in faith pass through water.
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The common ground in our baptism is that it's a starting point of a journey as God's people. Our starting point, our baptism into Christ, their starting point, their baptism into the
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Red Sea. Their baptism into the spiritual blessings came through the awesome and glorious works of the
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Exodus. We can read about it in Exodus and in Numbers. Our spiritual blessings come through the awesome works of rescue through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
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Different but similar. And he's trying here to demonstrate that those Old Testament people receive significant blessings and connection with God.
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They didn't only experience a baptism of sorts, but they also had a communion of sorts, he says. They were sustained in their walk as God's people through the wilderness by the manna, the bread from heaven that God provided for them.
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They were sustained in their walk and we are sustained in our walk through this wilderness in which we find ourselves by our routine participation in the bread of communion together.
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The remembrance of communion that we participate in each week is meant to be a powerfully re -centering activity to our week.
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We do it every week as a routine of sustaining our faith and reminding us that we walk by faith and not by sight, that our trust is placed in what
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Christ has already done for us. And they all took, not merely the bread, but they all took from the water and the rock, a spirit -provided water that miraculously sprung up from a rock in the wilderness.
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Now, there are some scholars that says that the rock followed them and you might be like kind of confused and then it goes on to say the rock was Christ. It's like, how does a rock follow you?
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There are scholars of the Hebrew language that have concluded, and I did a lot of reading this week, they concluded from Genesis and Numbers, the
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Hebrew language in those accounts of the water gushing forth from the rock and then what the Jews did after that, the
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Israelites wandering in the wilderness, it's quite likely that the Jews took that miraculous rock with them after it had gushed with water.
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So they literally loaded it on an ox cart and probably pulled it along with them. As you can imagine, people might do, if something miraculous happens, how many of you like to commemorate that, right?
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As a commemoration, like they might not have had the best of intentions in bringing it along with them, but they did. And so the rock followed them and it makes sense of some of the language in those
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Old Testament accounts and it makes sense of what Paul says here when he says the rock followed you. But what's more interesting is to see the radical phrase at the end of verse four that I already pointed out, the rock was
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Christ. The pre -existence of Christ is worthy of its own sermon or own sermon series, to be honest, but not really from this passage.
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This has a lot for us to take on. And so let me just let this phrase mean what it means and let the implications fall on you as God strikes you with this amazing thought,
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Christ has been sustaining his people long before he was born. Christ has been sustaining his people long before he was born.
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Pre -existence of Christ. Verses one through four serve to show a positive side of the work of God in the life of his
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Old Testament people. He was there in their midst just like he is here, maybe even to some degree more visibly than he is here.
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They received an initiation into the life of God through Exodus. They received a sustaining bread through the manna and water and the wilderness through the rock and Christ went with them, the text is telling us.
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They had the benefits and blessings that we have. And yet verse five takes a turn for the worse, showing us why he's elevating all these great things that they received because there's a nevertheless.
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Nevertheless is a way of saying that despite all the good, despite all the blessings, despite God's presence with them, nevertheless
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God was not pleased with them and their bodies were left strewn across the desert. The Greek word here is for scattered around.
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The image is not a pretty picture. Whoo, that took a pretty dark turn.
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Red sea crossing, water and food in the wilderness, God's provision for them, God's presence with them, scattered bodies everywhere.
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What? Goodness, Paul, you could have given us a warning at least for the sake of the children, right? Like all of a sudden, boom, dead bodies everywhere.
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And these things, he says in verse six, serve as an example for us. It's stated directly in verse six and 11, the word example.
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These are examples for us to look into and see the way that God works. We've been given numerous examples from the
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Old Testament regarding the horrible, horrible, horrible consequences of sin, but we still like to try it out anyways, just to see if it still works.
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Why, given all the stern warnings, Paul says so that we might not desire evil as they did look at verse six.
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Now, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil.
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Well, why all the examples? Why all the illustrations? Why all of this? Why the stories about David's life turning sour after the
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Bathsheba incident? Why is Cain killing Abel recorded for us? Why the earth opening up and swallowing
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Korah and his rebellion? The stoning of Achan? Why the dogs licking up Jezebel's blood in the street?
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Why all of this? You know, the cringey parts of scripture, right? The parts that make us uncomfortable.
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Why, church, to take the shine off sin? To take the shine off sin.
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The battle against sin in our hearts takes place at the level of desire.
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It's what the heart wants, and the heart wants what the heart wants. We desire, to a person in this room,
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I know something that is true of you, you desire something that God forbids. Every person, every human born under Adam and Eve have desired that which
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God prohibits, that which He forbids. We wanna try it, see how it works for us.
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We wonder if it will not work out better for us than God says. We distrust Him. We think we know better.
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And the fruit does look good after all. And the serpent says, God doesn't know what he's talking about.
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God's just trying to hold you down. He's trying to hold you back from pleasure. He's trying to hold you back from arriving.
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He's trying to hold you back from what would make you really arrive in life.
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Now, I pray regularly that God would expose sin to me for what it is. And I pray the same for you guys.
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May we all see it as filth. May we see it as destruction. May we see it as vomit and all refuse, a steaming pile of excrement in our lives.
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May I see it as a trap, because it is, it's a trap. Some of you are, some of you are
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Star Wars junkies, that's good. But we are shown the pain and consequences of sin through these
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Old Testament accounts to help us recognize the destructive power of sin.
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It's destructive. While showcasing, these things show us the destructive power of sin, while showcasing our need for a
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Savior and a Rescuer that is to come. These Old Testament accounts still forward in our lives in this day and age, looking backwards on the
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Rescuer, the Savior who came for us. But in verses seven through 11, Paul takes us on a quick video tour of the low points of the
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Exodus. Just let's, so he's already shared in verses one through four like the good things, the blessings, the way that he brought them out, the way that he was with them, the way he provided for them.
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But now, hey, verses seven through eight, hey, remember that time when they got to Mount Sinai and made that golden calf?
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Rose up and drank and indulged in sexual immorality like the pagans? Remember those fun times when 23 ,000 people fell in one single day?
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Oh, those were the days. Or verse nine, oh, remember the poisonous viper incident?
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Oh, just, I miss the Exodus. Snakes everywhere, killing people left and right, bloated bodies, all that pain from the neurotoxins.
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The snake is in it is scary, not just because it's snakes, that's enough, right?
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But also because the sin they committed is one so common in our culture and in our hearts today.
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What does it say in the text that they committed? This was a sin of putting Christ to the test.
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Putting Christ to the test in context, well, how did they do that? They said, if you loved us,
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Lord, if you loved us, we wouldn't be stuck eating this stinking manna.
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If you loved us, we wouldn't be stuck in this economic crisis. If you loved us, our kids would be honoring you.
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If you loved us, we wouldn't have this diagnosis. If you loved us, fill in the blank.
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They said, we miss the meat and the leeks and the melons of Egypt. All that plenty that we had as slaves.
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If you really loved us, you would give us better now. In essence, offering
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God a test for their loyalty. If you do this for us, then we will love you.
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That's testing God. We do this anytime we say to God, if you are good and you love me, then you will fill in the blank.
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That's testing the Lord. Not many of us have made golden calves. I hope none of you have a golden calf in your house that you bow to.
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Not many of us have participated in pagan sexual revelry, but putting Christ to the test to make him prove his love for us, heading closer to home, but then we get to verse 10.
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Hey, remember how God's people grumbled and he sent the destroying destroyer? Uh -oh, uh -oh, grumbled?
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Grumbled, that's the capital offense? Grumbled and complained? Anybody with me, just a little slight raise of the hand.
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Uh -oh! Grumbling, a capital offense? How are we breathing?
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By his grace, by his grace. I've done that this week.
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Matter of fact, maybe during a football game last night. The noose of this warning is tightening for us here.
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Do you feel it? Do you feel it getting tighter in here? Do you feel the temperature rising a little bit as you take on these words and you think about what this implies?
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Sent the destroying destroyer for their grumbling and complaining? And I think he's got most all of us.
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If grumbling is a capital offense, we are all in trouble. In this passage, we see more than merely the
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Old Testament God, though, being all judgy. Things happened as an example for our instruction.
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We live, he says, in the final age and the previous ages have served us as patterns for our blessing and benefit to consider.
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These examples are to a Corinthian church that has been dabbling in idolatry. It's to a Corinthian church that's been dabbling in sexual immorality.
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It's to a church that's putting Christ to the test. It's to a church that is grumbling and complaining.
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And it is recorded for us because God knows that we also will be tempted by these very same things.
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Now we've seen the examples in verses one through 11 and our second section of the text is the hope, verses 12 through 13.
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There is hope in this. This is a short but very important hinge in this text. Verse 12 applies the examples from verses one through 11 in a proverbial way.
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Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he falls.
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Anyone who thinks he or she stands, take heed. Don't be smug.
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Don't assume you've arrived. Stay in the battle, church. If you think you're standing, consider these who walked through the actual waters of the
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Red Sea. Consider these who watched the water come out of a rock in the desert at the very command of God, who went every morning and collected the very provision of God for their sustenance in the manna given to them.
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Consider these who were there in the wilderness, God walking with them, who beheld with their eyes the pillar of fire at night and the cloud leading them by day and be humbled.
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Be humbled. They saw things these eyes haven't beheld and they fell in the wilderness.
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There are significant pitfalls associated with overconfidence. It is possible to think too lightly about sin.
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It is possible to be abusive to grace and to cross the line over into a life of sin without even knowing it.
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It is possible to trust in our own ability to stand. And yet it's vital that we deal with what is meant by fall in verse 12.
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What does it mean that they fell? Beware if you think you stand lest you fall.
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What does that word fall mean? There's a variety of views about this, but I believe that this falling here is consistent with the examples.
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So he's giving us examples and now he wants us to apply those examples. And what happened to them? What was their fall like?
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How did they fall? In what way did they fall? They died in the wilderness. A whole generation except for two men,
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Caleb and Joshua, died off in the wilderness without ever getting into the land that God was giving to his people.
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And the problem is when we make it a metaphor. Don't forget, by the way, that this includes Moses himself. Moses himself did not make it into the land of promise.
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How many of you knew that? He didn't make it in there. And despite, what we tend to do in error,
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I think, with this passage is there's a simplistic armchair interpretation that goes into making these metaphors.
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So the promised land must equal heaven. The exodus must mean our journey through life.
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And that's the way we conceive of it, kind of without any deeper thinking. And I'm gonna suggest to you, no, no, no.
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The promised land was a literal land, a literal material reward to the people of God.
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And the death of the people in the wilderness is not synonymous with their eternal condemnation.
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When Moses died without getting into the land of promise, that's not God's way of subtly letting us know that Moses didn't make it to heaven, not at all.
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I mean, Moses can both have made it into heaven and not got the rewards here in this world, not been given the promised land, not given the fruit of his labor, not achieving because of his anger and frustration and disobedience to God in that moment of striking the rock instead of just speaking
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God's blessing over it. And so he didn't get into the promised land.
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But is Moses in heaven? Well, I believe he is. I believe he is. He was in this life disciplined as a model for us.
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The entire generation was strewn across the desert, snake -bitten and rotting, and the sun is a graphic reminder of the consequences, the dire, dire consequences of sin in this life.
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The good things of this life were kept from them due to their evil desires. I believe that verse 12 has teeth, but hear me carefully, church,
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I don't believe it has eternal teeth. In every example, the people, I could say this tongue -in -cheek, the people merely died.
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They merely died. I mean, what's the worst that can happen to us? Not death. The worst that can happen to us is eternal condemnation.
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No, they just merely died. Nothing is said of their eternal destruction here in this passage.
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This book, more than any other in the New Testament, it's kind of an interesting book. And when you study it, you actually see that 1
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Corinthians conveys a theme that isn't really found anywhere else. And this book conveys death as a potential discipline for his children.
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Would God ever take the life of one of his children in order to discipline them?
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Yes. He speaks of turning a man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that he might be saved in the end, in this very letter, in this very book.
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It says, turn him over so that his life, his physical life might be destroyed, but he will be saved in the life to come.
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Coming up in chapter 11 here, and just at the end of the holidays, we'll get back to 1 Corinthians. In chapter 11,
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Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11, 30 through 32 this, that is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died.
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Speaking to the Corinthian church. But if we judge ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
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But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
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Weakness, illness, and death are shown to be tools of God in the disciplining of his people.
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What? Yeah, they are. Those Old Testament examples. Bodies in the wilderness.
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His people. Judged. Disciplined. In the examples from the
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Old Testament, God's people died for their sinful choices. What am I saying to us recast?
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Beware. Be warned. You serve a God who takes sin very seriously.
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You serve a God who takes sin very seriously. It might be worth mentioning here that the correlation between sin and death is established, strong in scripture.
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But in the most general of ways, through sin, death entered into the world. So all die.
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And yet I take from this teaching in 1 Corinthians that some believers will be disciplined by God and will fall in their own arrogance and pride.
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This entire passage lacks teeth without the warning that's found in verse 12. But there are teeth here.
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But the warning lacks hope without verse 13. That's why I put verses 12 and 13 together is they couple together to ultimately, in the end, provide some hope for us.
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In verse 13, we find the only positive statement in this entire section of very stern warning. But they serve as an example.
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These Old Testament people, the people of God, they serve as an example. They failed so miserably. And we are told to take heed if we think we're standing.
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How can we have any hope? How can we have any confidence? How can we have any assurance? But verse 12 gives us a hint.
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If anyone thinks he stands. How do you think of yourself right now?
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Are you standing before God in strength? Are you standing before God with hope in your ability to be better than those dumb wilderness wanderers?
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Do you pride yourself in being better than Israel? Really? Do you think you are standing in your strength right now?
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Beware, church. God emphasizes that pride comes before the all.
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Instead, there is another way to conceive of this life. There's another way to deal with sin. And it is trust in God to get you through.
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Amen? Trust in God to carry you. Look at verse 13. First, he tells us that we do not face novel temptations.
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You have never once been tempted by something that another person hasn't. It's not new. There's nothing new under the sun.
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You've never been tempted by something new. We are all on the same boat. But second,
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God is faithful. God is faithful. Oh, if this was up to us and the emphasis wanted to remain on a rebuke for us and go fix your life, then they would not say
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God is faithful here. They'd say, you better be faithful. That's what we would expect here if this was not meant to encourage.
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It's not here you better act faithful, not trust your own consistency. How many of you know that's not leading us anywhere good?
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But Paul here in hope points to God. His faithfulness is our only hope. Trusting in our ability is thinking we are standing.
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But trusting confidently in Christ is to lean on his faithfulness. God will not allow us to be tempted beyond our capacity.
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God is mitigating. This is crazy. God is mitigating the level of temptation that each one of us faces according to our distinct and unique abilities to stand up under it.
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How sovereign is this God who made this universe? He is not tempting us, but he is limiting the level of temptation that you and I receive.
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Amen? And further, in his sovereign grace, God providentially offers a way out of every temptation so we could stand up under it.
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Here we find both God working and us working in the same text that Paul writes without a shred of indication that he thought he was being inconsistent.
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God mitigating temptation, making it manageable for us, and God providing a way out while our ability to endure is also held up in the text.
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For the Christian, we have a way out of temptation. And the trust and hope here given by Paul is not solely placed on our shoulders.
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If it was, he ought to say here, when you face temptations, just stand up under it on your own ability. Just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and stop sinning.
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It would be like that. What's the sketch is that? Stop it. Just stop it, right?
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That's not good counsel. Just stop it. Instead, he says all this stuff about God's actions here in the passage,
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God's character of faithfulness, God's sovereign provision of a way of escape, God's mitigation of the severity of the temptation coupled to our ability to endure it.
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This passage shows that we can trust the faithful God to keep us to the end, even as we keep ourselves obeying him out of loving hearts that have been won by his great love for us.
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Paul refuses to leave God's work out of our work. He refuses to leave God's effort,
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God's plan, God's ability out of our self -discipline. So where we find that we are working and we are striving to please him, we find that he has been in it all along.
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He always refuses to give us a cause for any boasting in ourselves. We don't endure temptation without God providing a way out so that when
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I defeat temptation, when I say no to sin, I can equally say to God, thank you for providing a way out and thanks for not letting me be tempted beyond what
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I was able to bear. I never overcome temptation in arrogance or pride.
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And now that we've been pointed to the example of the peril, the examples rather of the Old Testament perils of sin and reminded of the hope that God is faithful to use his
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New Testament people, now he issues the command in verses 14 through 22. Three words meant for us to really mine down deep into, flee from idolatry.
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Flee from idolatry. This has been a big buildup because sin is devastating and dealing with it requires trust and faith in the
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God who is with us. We don't naturally forsake sin. So Paul appeals to their common sense while assuming that they will find what he is saying sensible.
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That's the way the Greek reads. The warning gets even more stern as we find that the main issue he's concerned about is the familiarity
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Corinth has, the Corinthian church has with idolatry. They're pretty familiar with it. And he wants them to see that they're playing with fire, not exactly fire, but playing with demons.
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In verses 16, 17, and 18, he supports his command to flee from idolatry by talking a lot about partnership or fellowship or a word that some of you might recognize.
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You might recognize the Greek word koinonia, partnership, fellowship. He makes a case that in communion, those who eat together are doing so in fellowship.
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In koinonia, in partnership with Christ and with his body, we are associating ourselves with Jesus and each other.
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Every time we get up and go to those tables to eat that cracker and drink that juice, we're saying we are connected to him.
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We are connected to his sacrifice. We are connected to the work that he has done, and we are connected to one another in that sacrifice, in that blessing, in that gift that he has given to us.
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And he goes on to say the same was true in the Old Testament. When the Old Testament people ate the meat that had been sacrificed on the altar in the tabernacle or the temple, they were participating in the very sacrifices themselves by eating it.
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They were taking into themselves that which had been given for the overlooking of their sin in that era and that time.
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But when it comes to idolatry, eating in the temples also involves fellowship, yikes. Think togetherness, think koinonia, think fellowship, but not with the pagan gods.
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He's already established earlier in 1 Corinthians that those gods are nothing, so what is he getting at? He says, what am
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I saying? Am I going back on my previous words? Are the gods something? Are there really gods and goddesses?
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Is Zeus real? Is there really an Aphrodite? Is there really a Diana? Are these real gods out there?
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There's no, think togetherness with demons. There are no gods or goddesses behind any of the pagan worship, but both the
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Old Testament and Deuteronomy 32, 17, if you're into taking notes, you could just jot that down and read it later. Deuteronomy 32, 17, the
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Old Testament passage, it indicates this, and here in 1 Corinthians 10, we see in the New Testament that demons are glad to receive the worship offer to that which is not
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God. Demonic activity surrounding idolatry.
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We cannot have both fellowship with demons and with the Lord Jesus Christ. We are at risk of provoking the
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Lord when we participate in worshiping anything that is not God. And of course, we're not stronger than Him, right?
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That's how the passage ends. We're not stronger than Him. We don't want to come into a competition with God to see who comes out on top, right?
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That's how he concludes. So this passage has a couple of pretty obvious applications, I think, and there might be some other things that the
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Spirit drives into your heart. I encourage you to lean into that if the Spirit is saying something to you from this, if something that's been said in the pages of Scripture or something that God has used for my voice to speak into your context, write it down and go and apply it.
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But here are a couple of things. The first thing, the most vital thing, is come to Jesus, come to Jesus.
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He is the rock who provides refreshment for His people. He is the one who rescues us out of our bondage to darkness and slavery to sin.
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He leads us through the sea of deliverance and He is the one who has endured temptation like us, yet without any sin.
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He has done perfectly what we must work at in order to do imperfectly.
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Trust Him for the eternal life that He alone can provide. And if you're here and you have not yet met
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Jesus in that way, where you've asked Him to rescue you, you've asked Him to save you, you've said, I'm a sinner and I'm broken and I need the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross for me,
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I encourage you to come and talk with me. If God is pulling your heart in that direction, even if there's just a shred of pull, lose to that influence, lose to that pull and come and talk with me or come and talk with Mark who prayed or come and talk with Dave.
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We would love to talk with you about how you could really have a moment of coming to Jesus this morning.
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The second thing is just simply from the passage, take sin seriously. Allow the stern warnings of this passage to wash over your heart and mind.
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And think about it, are we playing with sin? Are you playing with sin? It has a bite worse than the worst of vipers.
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It is smooth at the start but burns the rest of the way down. And as much as we got up and had open mics on Thanksgiving to talk about thankfulness and gratitude, we could equally fill up more time by having open mics to say, what has sin wrought in your life?
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What have been the consequences of sin? And we could have a discussion that might take some of the shine off of it, that might expose it for what it is, the disgusting road that it wants to take us down.
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That ends in what? Death. Where does sin lead? Sin is the pathway. It is the road to death.
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Smooth at the start, burns all the way down. Let these examples of bloated bodies strewn across the desert expose sin for where it wants to take you.
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Confess your sins and flee from them. And more specifically, there's a specific type of sin that's singled out here intentionally.
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It's idolatry. And you might want to say to me, Don, surely you don't believe that demons are real or surely you don't think that they're attached to any of the practices here in America.
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Demonic influence must be over at those pagan shrines in Hindu territory, right? That must be where the demons are because they're not here in America.
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Are you kidding me, Don? How naive can you be? And I would tell you that we are a culture full of idols, full of them.
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Convenience, we ought to capitalize it. It is a deity we serve. And how many children have been sacrificed in our country to the
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God of convenience? Capital C. We ought to capitalize it every time. As Americans, it is our
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God. Convenience. Entertainment with a capital
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E. Oh, this gets convicting. Consumerism with a capital
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C. Lust with a capital L. No, we don't worship at temples like they used to.
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So we pride ourselves in thinking we're more sophisticated. What do you think?
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The demons are a little bit smarter than us. Been around longer than us. They've been observing us.
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Yeah, we pride ourselves. Which, by the way, is a sin. But we make our own hearts the altars upon which we sacrifice to evil powers.
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Flee from it all, church. Flee from it. Don't walk but run from all that reeks of worship to the things of this world.
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This passage is meant to serve as a stern warning. Not to the world out there. Not to those terrible pagan practices outside of these four walls.
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No, this is a passage to churches, to us. Paul warns us against idolatry.
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He warns us against sexual immorality. He's concerned that we might be putting God to the test. He is concerned that we might be grumblers and complainers.
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Concerned that we might be grumblers. Might be?
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Maybe? If you're anything like me, by the time you get to verse 12, you are not among the arrogant who think that they are standing.
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But you are at near despair when you read this passage from verse 1 to 12. How can
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I find hope as a man with a heart like mine? And then the reminder,
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God is faithful. God is faithful. God is faithful.
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God who promises us salvation and forgiveness through his son. God who says he was pierced for our iniquities.
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He carried our burdens. By his wounds, we find healing. Amen? So let's come together in fellowship with our
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Lord Jesus at these tables. And let's come together in fellowship with each other. The cup of communion is fellowship with his blood shed for us.
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The cracker is broken in fellowship with his body broken for us.
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So if you've asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior, and you're at peace with others here, you look around the church and you don't have animosity, nothing that you need to apologize for and fix.
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Which, by the way, this morning would be a great time as we get up in line. If there's somebody you need to walk across the room and go apologize to them, this would be a great time.
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And then take communion together. That would be awesome. But if Jesus is your
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Lord, he is your Savior, and you're at peace, then come to the tables to remember together.
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The only hope we know. Jesus died for us to show us that God, God, God is the one who is faithful.
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Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would empower us through this message, that you would allow the shine to be taken off of sin.
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And not generically, but specifically. There are some in this room who are right now contemplating their next steps into sin.
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There are some in this room who have a plan in place, that are actually on the balancing act of, am
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I going to go forward with this? Am I going to go forward with this sin? Am I going to go forward with this action? Am I going to trust God with my life and with this area?
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Or am I going to go my own way? Just test to see if there really is judgment.
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Just to test to see if it doesn't just go better for me. Father, I pray that you would meet us all right where we are at, with the specifics of our sin, with the specifics of our temptation.
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Thank you that you are faithful, that you mitigate the level of temptation, and that anyone in this room can say no to those temptations as they come.
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Oh, we don't do it perfectly, but I pray that you would be increasing victory in our lives, as we seek to love you and honor you.
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We thank you for the sacrifice that you made for us, that gives us hope, that allows us to not just be up every night in fear and fretting.
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The serpents are coming for us, that you've washed our sins away, and that there is hope for us, as we lean more and more into the trust of what
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Jesus Christ has done for us. Be with us in this communion. We thank you for the fellowship we have with Christ, and the fellowship we have with each other.