Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 4, 2022 | 1 Corinthians - Learn from the Past

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December 4, 2022 | 1 Corinthians - Learn from the Past · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Happy to see everybody.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thankful to be with you during this Christmas season.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you started the Christmas season way too early, but you know, we've we have Bing Crosby playing in our house now and all just something feels right about that sort of thing.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Also, if you're new with us, uh welcome.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: We are going through 1 Corinthians right now.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, when we maybe you have ever come across a story that you could call like a cautionary tale, right?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So um I used to be youth pastor here at TBC, and we used to go, oh, we don't anymore, on a middle school trip to the now closed Schlitterbahn water park, okay?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of the things that we would do is we would ask, it was an all-day trip, we would ask the parents if they would be willing to send some cash with their kids so that they could buy, you know, lunch and sustain themselves for the day, right?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there was one kid, again, he's probably like seventh grade, and uh it's about lunchtime.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: His parents sent about$20 with him, and he goes and buys dip and dots, right?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Ice cream.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, hey, you know, awesome.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but make sure you get some real food.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: He spends all the money his parents sent him on dip and dots, about five orders of dip and dots.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And each time, we're like, hey, not a good idea.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're good.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, listen, I know what I'm doing.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So after like the fifth time, you know, at some point you just go, okay, I mean, deal with it.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he he runs off, right?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Comes back about an hour later, having gone on some twirly slide, and proceeds to let us revisit all of his all of his dip and dots that he had purchased.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And because he had spent all of his money, he didn't have any money to actually buy real food.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was a really exciting time.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I told that story to every new group of middle schoolers that we would have go on a trip because they would have fresh dollar bills that their parents had put in their Velcro wallets, right?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they were all so excited not having their parents around and how they were gonna spend that money.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And my my lesson to them was always, or my statement, my cautionary tale was always like, listen, it can end pretty bad.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them listened to that, some of them didn't.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that, right, we come to 1 Corinthians 10, and uh Paul is going to be giving a cautionary tale to the Corinthians, and he is going to be uh looking back at what we're going to be calling the sort of the wilderness generation, uh, which would be those who had been in slavery in Egypt and were emancipated, were brought out by God, led by Moses, and then went into the desert, into the wilderness.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: But that generation that fled from Egypt ultimately did not make it into the promised land for reasons that we'll look at here.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul is going to draw, and you'll hear me use the word compare and similar a lot this morning, because he's his whole point is bringing up this story to teach a new lesson to the Corinthians because he sees that they are walking a similar kind of path as the wilderness generation, right?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so the question that we have to ask ourselves this morning, right, as we're reading this, is are they going to listen?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: They hear this tale, they understand the consequences, are they going to listen?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that, we uh we'll begin in chapter, yeah, chapter 10, verse 1.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, Now I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: They all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, since they were struck down in the wilderness.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh the first thing you'll probably notice about this passage is that there's a lot of references, right?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: This cautionary tale, it's sort of shorthand for things that happened in the Old Testament.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So what's neat about this is Paul is talking to Christians who, ballpark, are like one to three years deep into their faith in Christ.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a uh people who have been Christians for 50 years, right?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: These are people who are brand new to the faith.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Paul has established this church, he's left, he's now corresponding with them.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really neat that he has this expectation that they know the Bible, right?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: These are not Jews, these are Gentiles, and so they've come from a history, a heritage, and a lineage that has nothing to do with the Old Testament outside of now being connected to it spiritually.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So when Paul says, hey, our ancestors, it's not actually like, you know, great-great-grandpa and great-grandpa, like that kind of thing.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's that we have a heritage with them because of our faith, and so we have this connection, right?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: This tie.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a wonderful illustration for us, even kind of before we get in, about the importance of knowing God's word and the importance of reading God's word, even if you are a new Christian.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you have been a Christian for a while, right, keep doing it.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um but Paul has this expectation that they would understand all of these shorthand references.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna do my best to kind of uh bring you up to speed on some of these things, but I can't go into depth on all of them.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll notice in verse one here, right, we see that all of our ancestors, we talked about that, they were under the cloud and all passed through the sea.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this one, as we're talking about this nation of Israel that had been in captivity and bondage in Egypt, they'd been slaves, right, and God rescued them from that slavery.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Let my people go, Pharaoh, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: The whole bit.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So now they're going through the wilderness, and there were two things that God really did immediately to show them his presence, to remind them of his existence, because up until that point, for 400 years, they hadn't had a strong relationship with God.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So in Exodus 13, 18, 21 through 22, and the Israelites left the land of Egypt in battle formation.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to lead them on their way during the day, and in a pillar of fire to give them light at night, so that they could travel day or night.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night never left its place in front of the people.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the entire time that they are in the wilderness, the entire time that they are wandering through this desert, right, God's presence is in front of them, and he is leading them visibly.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like, where should we go?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: We are listening.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is a pillar of fire and a pillar of clouds.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So this is one of the things that Paul brings up here when he says they were all under the cloud, not literally like it was stormy outside, but they were under God's presence and God's guidance.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, then the second thing he mentions is that they were all passed through the sea, right?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is something we might be familiar with.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Exodus 14, then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord drove back drove the sea back with a powerful east wind all that night, turned the sea into dry land.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: So the waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with the waters like a wall to them on their right and their left.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so they passed through the sea.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's the parting of the Red Sea, is what we're talking about.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is signifying, right, that these individuals that the Corinthians, right, hitherto might not have found themselves connected with.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: They had lived a long time previously, they weren't of the same heritage, and but now Paul is saying, okay, but there's a line here, right?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: They were guided by God, they were blessed by God, and they passed through all of these circumstances that showed that God was with them.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: This calls back even to like chapter 1 in 1 Corinthians, where Paul said, Hey, you guys are blessed.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't know how good you have it, because God is with you and he has shown his favor to you and has showered his grace upon you, and all these different things.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so his point at the beginning here is God had blessed them.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: But as we go back, we continue.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 2, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, right?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Same cloud, same sea.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, people debate it.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: But basically, what he's showing is just as how our baptism today, as Christians, uh works to set us apart, right, and show that we are dedicated to God.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites, as they were doing all of these things, as they were leaving sort of this culture behind of slavery, they were now being drawn into this new future where they were going to be a nation of God.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they, throughout the desert, it was sort of this sanctifying, purifying, cleansing experience.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's not a one-to-one connection, right?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like Moses was dunking everybody in the Red Sea, okay, as they were going through it.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: They had more important things to do at that time.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: But there's still this idea, right?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you are set apart, you are, you are destined, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: You have you are sanctified in your relationship with God, and so were they.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you can see here, even in these first two verses, how Paul is trying to draw all these parallels and make them see, hey, we are like this generation.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're baptized into Moses and the cloud and the sea.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, they all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now here we have two more references.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um Exodus 16.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord said to Moses, I'm going to rain bread from heaven for you.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: The people are going to go out each day and gather enough for that day.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: This way I will test them to see whether or not they will follow my instructions.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is manna.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: As they went through the desert for forty years, God provided their food every single day, six days of the week, and then the seventh day they were to rest.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: There was enough for two days on the sixth day.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: But they provided this, God provided this bread from heaven, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So they had spiritual food.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then we see in the last reference in this passage, Exodus 17, the Lord answered Moses, Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Take the staff you struck the Nile with in your hand and go.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to stand there in front of you on the rock at Horeb.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: When you hit the rock, water will come out of it, and the people will drink.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have water springing forth from a rock in the middle of a desert, so that an entire nation can drink from it and be sustained and continue their journey.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Spiritual food, spiritual drink.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're if you're playing along at home, right, we're tracking, we're trying to figure out what Paul is comparing that to.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's actually what we'll be celebrating later on when we have our spiritual food and drink as well.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says they had things that connected them back to God that involved bread and liquid, right?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: One was water, now we have the blood of Christ.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: But all these things are coming together, right?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says they've been blessed.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: God was guiding them, he had rescued them already, he had provided every single one of their needs, right?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: It says, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if there's an even greater connection that they have, is Paul is showing that Jesus Christ was present back in the Old Testament as they were wandering through the desert.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you go and read this account, you're not going to read the name of Jesus as you read about them eating manna and drinking this water.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: But yet Paul says Christ was present with them.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: He was the one who is providing for them.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so finally we get sort of this ultimate lock between the Corinthians and this wilderness generation, right?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Which is that Jesus was there.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the exact same kind of relationship, but as we're going to see later, as this wilderness generation became the cautionary tale that they did, and they rebelled against God and they cursed him and they questioned him and all these different things, Paul is saying what they were doing was cursing Jesus Christ, even though they didn't perhaps realize it at the time.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately their idolatry led them to destruction.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: See verse 5, nevertheless, meaning despite all the things just listed, God was not pleased with most of them, since they were struck down in the wilderness.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Saying that God was not pleased with most of them is a bit of an understatement on Paul's part.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Out of everybody who left Egypt, two survived.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was Joshua and it was Caleb.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: They were the ones who led the next generation, the children of those who had left Egypt.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: They were the ones who entered into the promised land.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And this language that Paul uses here, since they were struck down in the wilderness, the word there in Greek is basically they were strewn about, excuse me, strewn about, like they were they were scattered.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's this imagery that Paul is drawing to our mind as we sort of close the tale on the end of what was going on, when he says, and gives this image of all of these people who died and were ultimately left in the wilderness of this desert.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: As the nation moved on and they were scattered about in the desert sun, Paul says this was their destiny.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because of what they did, they invited destruction upon themselves.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that was that was a lot of weight to lift up, right?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of things flowing into this.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of cables connecting back to other parts of the Bible.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: But really, what we can simplify it to is Paul is going to make a statement, right?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: He is saying here, on the one hand, as the Egyptians, as they left and they went on this path, they started to veer off and they started to do things.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, their path looks more like this as they were going through the desert.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, as they were going through, right, what they didn't realize is first of all that Jesus was present at the beginning, that Jesus was the one who had rescued them from slavery, but ultimately, because of their disobedience, because of their faithlessness, because of their idolatry, things we'll get to in the next section, they were unable to experience God's blessing, which was the promised land in that context.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: God said, if you do this, you will experience this, and they said, No thanks.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'd rather go my own way.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: So even though they had all the blessings of God and had Christ with them, they were still choosing another way, which ultimately led to their destruction, and they invited it upon themselves.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: So then we have the Corinthians, right, who now much more clearly have the presence of Christ, who has rescued them from a different kind of slavery, and they are walking their own path here.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul is saying, Hey, I recognize, okay, as they are moving, that they are starting to make some of the same mistakes.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: I see things in you that they were doing.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: I see attitudes, I see behaviors, I see, you know, uh parts of your culture and your thought process, he says, you're walking down the same path.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so the question becomes, right, are they going to experience God's blessing?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are they going to listen to the cautionary tale, or are they going to be, in a figurative sense, strewn about, scattered in the desert, unable to experience these things?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we're at.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So now we get to the set sort of the second passage here, and we're asking the question, okay, so bad things happened to them.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Cautionary tale.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Not good.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Don't want to repeat it.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: But what did they do?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: What did yes, God blessed them, but what did they do so that they were unable to experience the blessings of the Lord?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately his promises that he had given to them if they carried out the covenant.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let us not commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in a single day, twenty-three thousand people died.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let us not test Christ as some of them did, and were destroyed by snakes, and don't grumble as some of them did, and were killed by the destroyer.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: So in each one of these, there are four things that he ends up listing here as things that they need to avoid, and each one of them, right, has its own penalty or warning associated with it.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: But notice that Paul says we look at these things as an example.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: It shows us that of the countless layers that God places upon Scripture, that when we read the Old Testament, and actually in the spring, we'll be going through the book of Numbers together, and we'll be looking a lot at the wilderness generation.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'll be looking at it from that context, right?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: The people who were there and what that means for them in that time period, as well as for us.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: But also, Paul's like, there are layers upon layers here that God, in his magnificence and his goodness, knew that what as they were walking through this, the story of their failure was going to be told to generations afterward, so that it might be an example.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, so that we will not desire evil things as they did.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the first account here, as we sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes we look back at the Old Testament and we're like, man, God was kind of harsh, you know?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: This was actually an early church heresy, was that the God of the Old Testament was different than the God of the New Testament.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, I don't, I don't think we get how obnoxious the Israelites were to God at sometimes.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't, I don't know if we fully grasp.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: When it says grumble, we'll look at that in a second.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's more than you just going, like, oh man, it's cold outside.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it is intense.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: They desired evil things.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, number one.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't become idolaters, as some of them were.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to party.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so my mom, she uh, that was a weird transition.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to make an illustration, right?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna make an illustration.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: My mom is really, really talented at making um wreaths, right?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like things you would put on your door in your home.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And she's done it my whole life, and she makes them seasonally, right?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so she goes, and typically like Hobby Lobby, and she'll pick out amongst all the things that Hobby Lobby has the right sort of flowers and decorations and things like that to put in the wreath that signify a certain season, right?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's specific.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: But there are many things she can choose from.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Paul here is drawing a very, very specific conclusion, knowing that he can pull from many, many different examples of mistakes that the Israelites did.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's bringing up this thing which we've been talking about the last few weeks, which is idolatry, right?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Worshiping a God other than the one true God.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: We've found out that it is a fake God, and that the Corinthians, they had sort of brought, they said, Hey, we're free, right?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus has set us free, we can do whatever we want.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul's like, not so fast.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: There are a couple things you need to consider.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is consider the weaker brother or sister in Christ.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is consider that what you're actually doing isn't as you know harmless as you think it is.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: But number three, now he's going to look at here, he says, this idolatry, right?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're participating in something that is much more sinister, and you're you're basically giving weight to this shameful practice.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so he looks back to the Israelite generation, to the wilderness generation, which struggled a lot with idolatry.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: But this quote that he brings up, when he says, right here, the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to party, you're like, that's a weird thing to bring up.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: But if we go back to the text, what he quoted, let's look at this.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: He took the gold from them.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is Aaron, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made it into an image of a calf.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Then they said, Israel, this is your God who brought you up from the land of Egypt.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of it and made an announcement.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: There will be a festival to the Lord tomorrow.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Early the next morning they arose, offered burnt offerings, and presented fellowship offerings.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's that?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to party.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, Look, you are dealing with idolatry.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're struggling with the same thing they were back then, and the context might be a little different.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what we can draw from this, which I think is really neat, is Paul is saying, Hey, situation's similar, but it seems like you're really struggling with the partying aspect.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: You love the Social part, the drinking part, the eating part, the uh you know, carousing part with those who were in sin and were practicing idolatry.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, the Corinthians don't have a golden calf sitting in their church, but they're still practicing all the same kind of things.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Paul picks a sort of a flavor of the month and said, Yeah, but this is what you're doing, and this is how I can draw it back to their mistakes.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: People sat down to eat and drink and got up to party, is exactly what he says here.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: So don't become idolaters.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: They say we're not.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I beg to differ.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, number two, let us not commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in a single day, 23,000 people died.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not unusual.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this like chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about sexual immorality.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was obviously something the Corinthian church struggled with, and and we see that that uh in and of itself has its own varieties that they were all uh needing to focus on.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so rather than list them out as he had previously or focus on a specific one, now he goes general.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, okay, you you have a lot of problems here with this stuff.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, with sexual immorality, he said you need to be careful because in that you were like the previous generation.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then he quotes something from Numbers 25, which had to do with the Israelites doing a big no-no, which was intermarrying with other rival uh nations.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that is far different context than what it means today to marry somebody from a different nation.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Back then it meant you were adopting their culture and their gods and would be worshiping them as well.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: You were breaking the fidelity of the Israelite community, you were inviting sin in, and you were breaking the covenant that you had made with God, right?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, many people died as judgment.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: They knew what they should not do.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: They directly went against God.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: They said, I'm gonna challenge you.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you're going to do what you say you're gonna do.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so they went ahead and pursued their own way and brought, that's been the theme here, brought destruction upon themselves.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh then three and four kind of come in quick succession.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let us not test Christ as some of them did, and we're destroyed by snakes, we'll get to that.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then four, and don't grumble, as some of them did, and were killed by the destroyer.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: When we look at the Old Testament, um, I mentioned this already, but there is a tendency that we have to downplay these things.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're like idolatry?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sexual immorality?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Testing Christ?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Grumbling?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really see the big deal here, right?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: What's the problem?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as we find out, what they were doing and their mindset and their attitudes while they were testing, while they were grumbling, showed everything about who they saw themselves to be in terms of their relationship with God.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: That through their testing of God, through their grumbling towards him, it showed that they were not a faithful people in the least.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or those who were doing it at least.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Numbers 21, the people became impatient become because of the journey.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, we've been walking in the desert for a long time, God.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: The people spoke against God and Moses.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why have you led us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's no bread or water, and we detest this wretched food, manna, right?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and they bit them, so that many Israelites died.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: But look at Psalm 78.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: They deliberately tested God, demanding the food they craved, because they did not believe God or rely on his salvation.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: If numbers gives us the facts, Psalm 78 gives us the emotion behind them and the mentality behind them, right?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: That when they go through, and you have to let's grab all these things together here.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um you saw your fellow countrymen, the people who we're talking about, you saw your fellow countrymen being beaten and murdered by the Egyptians because they could not make bricks fast enough.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: You were in slavery, you're as far back as you could remember, your family was in slavery.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Over 400 years of slavery under the Egyptians, God rescues you, leads you by a cloud of fire by night, or a pillar of fire by night, and a pillar of clouds by day, brings water up out of rocks, dry rocks, gives you food every single day of your life, so that hunger is not even a concern of yours.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: You see, and you've been present at Mount Sinai as you saw the storm and the fiery clouds and the sound of trumpets as God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses and spoke to the entire nation.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: You saw as he relented in grace from destroying everyone after you made the golden calf.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go, man, I would rather be back in Egypt.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe in God and where he's taking me.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't trust in his promises, and what is so significant there, they did not rely on his salvation.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: So now we take all of these things, right, as we finish out.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: They were killed by the destroyer.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk about that in the podcast.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: But there was punishment for these things.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, I mean, it's a it's a it's an oversimplification, but the wilderness generation was suicidal in the sense that they understood everything that God had given them and they invited destruction upon themselves consistently.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is why they're a cautionary tale.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is why this is not a, hey, listen to what they did.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, don't do what they did.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is a no-no.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the Bible tells you things you should do, sometimes the Bible tells you things you shouldn't do.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is the latter case.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: They made all these mistakes.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can recall this, right, Paul says, I see you walking down the same path.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: So as we get to our final passage here, Paul says, These things happened as to them as examples.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: We might recall verse six, I know I'm switching back and forth.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: These things took place as examples, Paul says in verse six, so that we will not desire the evil things as they did.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here in verse eleven, they were examples and they were written for our instruction.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: We should learn from this.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: On whom the ends of the ages have come.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: So whoever thinks he stands must be careful not to fall.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: But God is faithful.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, verse eleven, right, these things are for our instruction on whom the ends of the ages have come.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this is not some kind of apocalyptic message, right?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the end of the age is used to in terms for the future.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: But right now he's talking about hey, they lived in a certain age and a time period, and you are in a different age and time period.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the difference between the two is that Christ has been revealed and is now your key for unlocking everything that happened previously.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how old you are, there is a time when um technology was less advanced than it is now, right?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Radio to TV, TV to color TV, right?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's like walk through the process.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a time when your internet made noises while you were connecting, okay?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a whole section of people who have no idea what that was like, right?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: When phones flipped instead of tapped, all this kind of stuff.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I experienced this as a youth pastor, but you know, if you're a parent, grandparent, same kind of thing.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: You talk with those who are young, and it's like you don't under, you were born into this reality where all of these things exist, right?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh now you have more opportunities, we could say, but at the same time, you don't understand what it was like to see those things develop over time.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know what it was like when I had to connect via dial-up if I wanted to get on messenger or something like this, right?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm showing my generation.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we look at the wilderness generation, we say, hey, they were there at a time when God was establishing all of these things.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: God was giving them all of these instructions as part of the covenant and saying, You're my people, I am your God because of this relationship, right?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: You should worship me.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm deserving of worship, and God is right to say that I'm deserving of your honor because I'm saving you, I have grace for you, I have forgiveness for you, I'm rescuing you, emancipating you from slavery, and I'm taking you to the promised land.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And God says we have a relationship with each other.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there are things as we go back to the Old Testament and look at them, and now with the key of Christ, we say, Oh, that's what was going on.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's the double meaning, right?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was the deeper truth that was present there that we didn't realize, or perhaps they didn't realize at the time.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, now they've got Jesus.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: They have the key to unlock all of these things.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so when Paul earlier on in the story says they were rebelling against Christ, that means something to the Corinthians because they know Christ.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: They trust in Jesus, who they should.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: So on whom the ends of the ages have come, right?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: We are the ones, and we are included.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Topekans are with the Corinthians, because we are also the one on whom the ends of the ages have come.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: We now have basically all of the revelation, divine revelation that we are going to receive until the end when Jesus returns.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have all the information.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, verse 12, whoever thinks he stands must be careful not to fall.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: In this context, if you are the person who is standing, you should be very, very careful.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul is drawing, this is why context is so important.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: What have we been going through in 1 Corinthians up until this point, that the Corinthians are prideful people who overvalue their own wisdom over and above God's wisdom, that have placed their security on their abilities instead of God's power, right?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they are overconfident in the way that they are living out their faith so much so that they have gotten into danger here in what we've talked about since chapter 8, which is in food sacrificed to idols.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when Paul says, if you are someone who is standing, he's talking to a bunch of people who think they're just fine.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they are almost invincible, right?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing can touch me.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: I can go to the ceremony where they're worshiping Zeus and sacrificing meat to him.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know he's not real, okay?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: I get that.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna have, you know, some drinks.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have some fun with my old friends.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Before Paul came to town, we used to hang out all the time.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a lot of you to ask that I wouldn't hang out with them anymore.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna do this.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, okay, you who are so confident that you are not going to step into sin, be careful that you do not fall.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not a this is what do I say?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is a statement that assumes that because of their overconfidence, they're going to fall.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, our last two or our last verse for this morning, though, Paul concludes this entire cautionary tale with a hope and a caution.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: But God is faithful, he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh as we close this morning, we're gonna walk through this kind of line by line, phrase by phrase, because this is a very popular verse, and this verse has been misinterpreted quite often.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: So when Paul says, No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity, there are situations and circumstances and conversations and temptations that afflict you today that would make Corinthians of 2,000 years ago blush.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: But to say that the temptations that you face are harder, right, or are markedly different, or that we get some kind of fast pass or get out of jail free card because of how intense the temptations are, in comparison to them, that's incorrect.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: The temptations are different, right?
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: But yet they are the same.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why Paul says, nothing afflicts you which is not common to mankind.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: The Corinthians are looking at, hey, okay, what was a couple thousand years ago, 1,500 years ago, right?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: What was going on back then?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: That is just as if we were relating to the temptations of those in 500 AD.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yet Paul says, I'm telling you a tale from back then, because what has afflicted them is the same thing that's afflicting you.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is still pride, it is still selfishness, it is still a lack of ambition or lack, lack of discipline, excuse me, it is still a lack of focus on priorities, it is still a matter of greed, it is still a matter of all of these different things.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, when we boil it down and condense whatever it is that you're struggling with, it is the same thing that they were struggling with.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can't go to God sort of with this feather in our cap and say, Lord, yeah, but my situation, it's so much harder than anybody would realize.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: You were created by God and you are unique, but your sin is not unique.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Your sin is common.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Other people have been afflicted by it, and other people have overcome it as well.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: You are not special in that regard.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: But God is faithful, right?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: That is the story, the moral of the story of the wilderness generation.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: He is faithful, they are not.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: God, throughout all of these circumstances, all of their grumbling, all of their groaning, all of their testing, all of their idolatry, all of their sexual immorality, all the things that they were doing, God says, I'm still going to be faithful to you.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a story we can look at in the Bible that doesn't show God's faithfulness.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: He might work on his own timeline, but he is faithful and he keeps his promises.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, then, what does that mean?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the sad part is what it's saying is that what the wilderness generation went through could have been avoided.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: That what they experienced was something they could have handled but didn't.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: That the temptation that they faced, and there was temptation, right?
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: That they failed that test.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: That God gave them a test, allowed them to experience some hardships and difficulties, and they didn't make it through.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: They invited destruction upon themselves.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yet God was faithful.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't give them a test that they couldn't handle.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: So this particular, I don't know if you want to call it phrase, that he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, has been, I think, used, and I say this because of social media, but it has sort of been co-opted into this idea of self-righteousness or like pick yourself up by your bootstraps, you can tackle whatever challenge is in front of you, because there's no challenge in front of you that God doesn't think you can handle.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, yeah, kind of, but really it's rooted in our weakness.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's rooted in the fact that we are broken people, and the only reason we can get even close to God is because of his grace and by the empowerment of his spirit that lives within us.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: So as we look at these things, it's not a phrase of self-empowerment, rather, it's recognizing that we are weak and God is working with us in our weakness, and all the temptations that we face in this life are things which we have the power to overcome.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing by the power of Christ that you can't overcome with his help.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, with the temptation, he will provide a way out.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: That God, in all these circumstances, gives us an exit path.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, okay, there is a way that you can look at that and perhaps oversimplify it.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that, you know, every single time somebody, you know, is challenging you on your beliefs or makes you want to sin or cuts you off in traffic, that God is just like, hey, here's a waiting room that you can chill out in for a little bit before you have to deal with this, okay?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: It connects to the next part, which is that God provides a way out so that you may be able to bear it.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: There is way too much of an assumption that God is going to always remove difficult circumstances from our path, and that he is never going to allow us to build up and strengthen and sort of work out those muscles of faithfulness by living in a hard circumstance, sometimes that we have gotten ourselves into, right?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes which he has allowed us to drift into, right?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Where God has said, kind of like the Israelites, hey, there are all these nations around you that are worshiping false gods, and you, I'm telling you, they're there, and you need to watch out for them.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: So God is going to provide a way out, and he is going to give you the ability, he has given you the power to be able to endure whatever temptation you're going through.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: So now, as we consider this kind of in its totality and in closing, right, we we say we cannot be like a dumb tourist at Yellowstone, okay?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: That looks at sin and temptation and is like, I can get pretty close to this.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this thing isn't going to maul me and tear me apart.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is how we often look, though, right?
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is how we view a lot of temptation sin in our life.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're like the child goes to their sibling and is like, I'm not touching you.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I'm not touching you.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Mom, they're touching me.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I'm not touching you.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're like.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I would leave you with: a reminder and two questions.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: God is faithful and helps you escape temptation.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Where have you rejected it?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: And what is the way out?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in a moment here, I'm going to step down and we're going to have a time of reflection as we head into communion.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: And these are the things, if you'd leave the screen up, um, these are the things that I'd love for you to consider, right?
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: God has given me the power to overcome any temptation and sin in my life.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing that is afflicting me that is not common to mankind, and something that I cannot handle with his power.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I'm strong, because he is.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: So where have I been rejecting his help?
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what is the way out?
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is my path forward?
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love for you to reflect on these things, and then I'll come back up in just a moment, and we'll take the Lord's Supper together.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10, we have spiritual food and spiritual drink.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: We are connected with our and our spiritual ancestors and an entire heritage of Christianity that relies upon the body and blood of Jesus Christ to draw us together and to celebrate his sacrifice, the thing that enables us to overcome all the temptation.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so when he was with his disciples at the Last Supper, he took his bread and he broke it and he said, This is my body broken for you.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus took the cup of wine and said, This is my blood poured out for you the forgiveness of your sins.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: Would you bow your heads with me?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Father, you are good to us far better than we deserve.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: God, we uh we often are like the wilderness generation.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: Iolatrous, sexually immoral, grumbling and testing you.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: God, we we fail to often recognize how much you have truly blessed us and instead take the temptations of our life, say they're too much to overcome, and just live with them.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: God, I pray that your spirit would convict us about the areas of our life where we maybe have been a little too casual about the dangers of this world.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: God, that you would show us the way out, and that you would help us to understand the power that truly resides in us by your spirit to overcome all these things.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: God, there's nothing that afflicts us which is not common.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Father, our situations are unique to us, but they're not unique to you.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you've seen it over and over again, and you've seen some people fail, and you've seen some people succeed.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so, God, we ask that you might help us to be people who overcome temptation and sin, who can focus on our relationship with you and can walk a life where we learn from our past, the mistakes of others and our own mistakes, and by your grace know that we are forgiven.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, everybody.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.