Well, good morning, my name is Andrew Evans.
Let me welcome you to Church of the Resurrection.
It's great to be with you, great to be opening up God's word with
you. We are coming today to a
challenging passage, a good passage, First Corinthians
chapter 10. So let me encourage you to turn
in your Bibles to 1st Corinthians chapter 10, again in
the Pew Bible, that's on page 900.
And before we get started, let me pray for us.
Father, I praise you that you are God.
Who speaks. Would you speak to us today?
Would you draw us to yourself through your word?
I pray this in Jesus name, Amen. Now here at Church of the
Resurrection, we are nearing the completion of several renovation
projects in our building. The kitchen has most of the
fixtures in it. The elevator is making good
headway from all appearances. From the banging that I hear
during the week the the parish hall, doesn't it look great?
It's we're really close to being done there.
We had some great celebrations there.
So we are getting close. Lord willing, before too long,
all of these will be completed. And when they are done, we will
be free, free, free from the stress of finishing them St.
free from the, the project management.
Our budget will be free of the money that we've spent on it,
the obligated money. But more than that, we will be
free to use these places. Well, well, we just just think
about the elevator. When that elevator is finally
done, people with disabilities will be free to access every
floor of this church. Praise the Lord, what a gift
that will be a great day. Completion brings freedom, But.
But freedom can breed complacency.
Even when all these places are completed, we will need to
steward them well. We'll need to actively watch
them. We'll need to maintain them.
We'll need to clean them. We'll need to fix problems when
they inevitably arise. Freedom for it to be true.
Freedom cannot breed complacency.
And there's a parallel here with our Christian faith.
One of the glorious truths of our faith is the completed work
of Jesus on our behalf. Our salvation doesn't depend on
us adding anything to what Christ has already done for us.
When he was hanging there on the cross and said it is finished,
he meant it is finished. The work is done, all of our
sins are paid for, We are ransomed from the power of
darkness and evil. All we have to do is look to
Christ in faith. This is where the great
Reformation doctrine of solafide by faith alone is pointing us.
We must look not to ourselves, but to the completed work of
Christ by faith for our salvation.
We don't add anything to it. Just look in faith to Christ and
you are free. And this principle of our
freedom has been the animating force, you could say, of
animating principle of Paul's letter over the last couple
chapters. He's telling them I am free in
Christ. Here's how I use my freedom.
I lay down my rights for the sake of others.
I fill up my freedom with mission, and you can too.
My friends in the Corinthian church, my friends at Church of
the Resurrection, you are free. If you are looking to Christ in
faith, you are free. But but your freedom must not
breed complacency. You must not become
overconfident. Presume on your salvation.
Otherwise, just like if you take on an old church building and
and renovate it and then take it for granted, the whole thing
could start to come apart. So Paul's rhetoric here in this
part of the chapter, this part of the book is it's actually
taking a little turn. And it's really interesting to
see how it's taking this turn. He started off this section in
chapter 8 by basically assuming the strength of the Corinthians.
My friends, you are free. You are strong.
Now use your strength and your freedom to help those around
you. But here at the end of Chapter
9, in the beginning of chapter 10, you can, you can almost feel
him sort of leaning in a little bit.
Maybe his voice drops a little bit and he's inviting the
Corinthians to see you may not actually be as strong and as
secure as you think you are. Because overconfidence breeds
complacency. Complacency tolerates sin, and
sin destroys. This isn't just a risk for the
church in 1st century Corinth, though.
This is a risk for us as well. We can identify different
reasons for complacency, perhaps, but I think that many
of them, perhaps all of them, come back to a a
misunderstanding of our freedom. Maybe we think of our salvation
as a kind of key. We just receive it at one point
of time and then we're good to go.
We, you know, we can get through the door at the end of our
lives. So does it really matter what we
do if we just have that key? Maybe we think of our salvation
as making us, you know, respectable.
We're saved. We don't, we don't do certain
things that the pagans out there do.
We see the movies and I'm like, that's crazy, that's wrong.
We might struggle here and there, but gosh, you know, we're
respectable people. Our sins.
Our sins are respectable, respectably small.
Or maybe we take our freedom as a license to indulge.
We've, you know, we've cast off the prudish shackles of our
Puritan forebears and realized that indeed, it is OK to drink
alcohol and enjoy other good things in life.
And so we do. But how easily does a freedom to
enjoy become a license to indulge?
And so we can become not only possessive, but even
self-righteous in our sinful overconsumption.
Our freedom in Christ is a great and a glorious truth, but
overconfidence in that freedom can breed complacency.
Complacency tolerates sin and sin destroys.
This is the context for Paul's words here to Corinth and to us.
His point in this section, to give you a thesis statement, is
this sin will destroy your soul, so flee sin.
Your sin can actually undo all that Christ has done for you or
you think that Christ has done for you.
So my friends, flee sin Paul here in this passage walks the
Corinthians through 8 steps to fleece sin to fleece sin.
So grab your Bible. Let's look at this passage
together. Look at these at this these
eight points. So the first step is to identify
with God's people identify with God's people.
Look at verse one with me, for I do not want you to become to be
unaware, brothers, that our fathers, we're all under the
cloud and all passed through the sea.
Paul here is referring to the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt
when God saved them from slavery.
And I think that Paul here would have started to raise some
questions for them to really grab their attention when he
calls them our fathers. Didn't Christ free us from the
Jewish law? How could they?
How could the Corinthians, particularly the Gentile
Corinthians, be connected to the the Jewish people of the Old
Testament? Paul continues to drive home his
point here. Verse 2.
All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
OK, baptism, it's a Christian, right?
Not exactly a Jewish thing. Jews had a kind of baptism, but
it's not, it's not central. It's really central.
Why is Paul talking about baptism here?
Verse 3? All ate the same spiritual food.
All drank the same spiritual drink.
OK, Paul, I'm getting uncomfortable here.
Food and drink. That's what we do with the
Lord's Supper every every week. Are you saying that they are
doing the same thing that we're doing now?
Are we doing the same thing as them every Sunday?
For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed
them, and the rock was Christ. Now don't get lost in this image
of a floating rock. We can talk about that
afterward. Look at the central point he's
making here. For the Israelites in the
wilderness, it was Christ who was feeding them.
Christ fed them in the wilderness, just like Christ is
feeding his people now. Everything that the Israelites
were experiencing was part of God's salvation plan, and it is
the same salvation plan that we are experiencing today.
Same God, same salvation. The ancient Israelites were just
as much a part of God's people as we are today.
Now, the Corinthian Christians probably felt superior to the
Jews. The Corinthians had knowledge.
They had freedom. These are both true.
But the Corinthians are still receiving the same salvation
from the same God that God began unfolding with Israel millennia
earlier. Israel back then was feeding on
Christ in the future, just like the Corinthians.
And just like we are feeding on Christ and His work in the past.
We all have the same Savior. We must identify with God's
people and not separate ourselves from them.
So that's the first point. Second, we must learn from their
example. Learn from their example.
So our forefathers in the wilderness all had the same
nourishment that we did, right? Baptism, Sacramento, meals,
God's word, all nourishing them and all nourishing us with
Christ. But what does their example show
us? Even though they received that
nourishment, even though they experienced God's salvation,
they fell. This is verse 5.
They were overthrown because of their sin.
God rejected them even though they had experienced its
salvation. And my friends, if that happened
to them, the same could happen to us.
We've experienced an exodus, an exodus from slavery to sin.
So we must learn from them. Verse 6.
Now these things took place as an example for us that we might
not desire evil as they did. Now in premarital counseling,
one thing that we ask couples to do is to create a family tree
each each remember the couple just go look at their family
tree, go interview parents and grandparents if you can, and,
and learn about the, the family history of the spiritual
history, the physical history, the sort of mental, emotional
history. It's a great exercise.
And then they, they give this family tree to the, to the
partner, to the intended. And it's really valuable to know
what the patterns are in our families lives, right?
These things don't dictate to us what our future is, but they
show us where there may be tendencies, they show us where
there may be weaknesses. And so we have to pay attention
to those things. Maybe cancer, maybe an
addiction. You need to pay attention to
those things and maybe take some pre emptive steps against them.
And there's a parallel here between Christians this side of
Christ and the stories of the people of Israel.
They are our family. Their problems are our problems.
We shouldn't merely respect them, but we should learn from
them. Because they are spiritual
ancestors. We should learn from their
successes and their failures the same.
God was at work in them as is at work in US.
Third, we must see sins connections with clarity.
See sins connections with clarity.
This is verses 7 through 10. So Paul here lists 4 failures of
the Israelites in the wilderness.
They were idolaters in verse 7. This is the golden calf
incident. They were sexually immoral verse
8. They put Christ to the test in
verse 9. They grumbled verse 10.
Now these are all serious things.
I think we can agree the list feels a little random though.
Like, why these things, Paul? Why are you talking about these
things? Now, remember the context for
what he's talking about here. Paul is addressing the question
of whether Christians should be able to eat meat that's been
dedicated to idols. He's addressing a matter of food
and drink, and all of these examples that Paul has chosen
here of Israel in the wilderness stem from matters of eating and
drinking, matters of food. This is obvious in the first
example, right? Verse 7, Do not be idolaters as
some of them were. As it is written, the people sat
down to eat and drink. So they were worshipping the
calf and having a party, eating and drinking, having a feast for
the calves. But all the other stories
actually do as well. I encourage you to go back and
look at them. There are numbers 25, numbers
21, and numbers 11, so go check those out.
See the link now. Sometimes eating itself can be
wrong. Exodus 32, the story of the
golden calf. The feasting is in honor of the
golden idol, the golden calf. They shouldn't have been eating
in that way. Eating the food in that context
was wrong, but sometimes eating can actually lead to other sins
as well. Israel ate with Pagan nations,
and they drew them into sin. Israel failed to be grateful for
what they ate, for God's provision in the wilderness, and
so they grumbled and complained. Friends, sin is slick.
It will find a way to slip in. Even things that in the abstract
are not sinful per SE can become twisted, is the example of
Israel here shows. Even something as basic as food
can lead our loyalties away from God.
Sin can connect itself, can attach itself to even good
things, and we must see these connections with clarity.
Dig past the immediate act when you're thinking about something
and think about what's connected to it at the level of the heart.
Is sin twisting something that is good in order to draw you
away from God, cause you to rely more on yourself or on something
else, and not to rely on God? Look for those connections.
See those connections. See sins.
Deviousness with clarity. 4th We must understand the consequences
of sin. What happened to many of Israel
when they sinned? Paul here doesn't mince words.
They were destroyed. Sin led to their destruction,
and I think we are to read that as eternal destruction.
Few people had had such an experience of God's saving power
as Israel, hadn't they? They saw first hand God saving
them. How often do we say I just need
to see God at work, Where is he? They saw him.
But even after experiencing the powerful exodus, that didn't
prevent them from rebelling and ultimately losing the life that
God had given them. My friends, we worship a
gracious God. We are offered boundless,
infinite forgiveness. But this forgiveness is not a
license to sin. God saves us from sin so that we
can live for him in righteousness.
The ongoing presence of sin in our lives should make us
tremble. Now, the stories of Israel are
really dramatic here, aren't they?
You know, 23,000 died in a single day.
God, they tested God, God sent serpents.
The people died, but what happened so rapidly for them can
happen much more slowly for us. Tolerate a little sin here.
Allow, you know, some light idolatry there.
After all, at least I'm not as bad as those other guys.
I'm not doing that. But in that indulgence of sin,
our heart will change. We will become hardened to God
and to his ways. And after a few years of this
living in sin, we will be far from God.
We will be far from trusting God and far from eternally safe.
Faith leads us to following God. Sin leads us to separate
ourselves from God, even for eternity.
These are the consequences of sin.
We must understand these consequences. 5th We must look
with hope to the end of the age. Now verse 11 here is a kind of
hinge in this passage, turning us from the examples of what we
should not do toward what we should do instead.
And here at the end of this verse, he drops in this little
line that we are those on whom the end of the ages has come.
Paul here is pointing us to the way that Christ has inaugurated
the final age. He's inaugurated the end of time
in his death and resurrection. His complete work at the cross
and at the empty tomb has brought about, has inaugurated
this new age, and we are living in that dawn.
We see the glory of what Christ is bringing.
He's bringing peace, life, wholeness, flourishing.
We see that. We even taste that.
And yet we are still standing at the brink and we still feel the
shackles of sin and the pull of temptation in between these two
epochs. And so in Christ, not only do we
see with greater clarity the work that God is doing.
And the goodness of this final age.
But we should also be yearning for him to come and to complete
that work. In a word, Paul here is inviting
us to faith look with hope to the consummation of the end of
the age. 6th Because we have faith in God's work to bring
about this completion. We must turn our eyes away from
ourselves and fight presumption. Verse 12.
Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he
fall. And this verse is actually the
central exhortation of the whole passage.
The Corinthians thought that they were strong, they thought
they were free, they thought they were standing tall, right?
And Paul says, be careful, be careful, Do not presume on your
own strength. There is always the possibility
that we can drift from God. Don't trust in your own
strength. How many examples do we have in
the Old Testament of people who started out so well in their
walk with the Lord and then drifted far from God?
Great King Solomon inherits the Kingdom of David, Asked to have
wisdom from God, which is the best possible thing to ask for.
Starts out so well, and then he slips and slides and falls over
years and years and at the end of his life we have no idea
where he is in his standing with God.
We must not presume on our own strength.
We must stand guard. Fight the presumption.
So for fighting presumption, we are then fighting temptation.
Seventh, fight temptation with God's faithfulness.
Fight temptation with God's faithfulness.
Verse 13 No temptation has overtaken you.
That is not common to man. God is faithful and He will not
let you be tempted beyond your ability.
Sometimes when we're in the throes of temptation, we can
feel like we are just utterly alone, can't we?
That nobody understands the strength of what we're
experiencing? And see where Paul here
redirects our attention. God is faithful.
God will not abandon us. He will not leave us.
So my friends, when you were tempted, don't turn inward, turn
toward God. Remember that God is with you
and will give you more strength, will not give you more than you
can handle. He will give you the strength to
fight. He may stretch you, but you can
always resist. And so, my friends, you can
fight temptation, you can fight sin by drawing it near to God,
by remembering his faithfulness and then fighting, knowing that
he will not abandon you and that in fact he is with you.
Notice here how Paul is not undermining the doctrine of
solafide. Faith alone.
We are saved by faith alone. Even here, even when we're
struggling against sin with all of our strength, we are doing so
with faith. It is faith from first to last.
So trust in God's faithfulness. 8th And finally, we must look
for the way of escape, end of verse 13.
With the temptation, He will also provide the way of escape,
that you may be able to endure it.
We are called to escape sin. We aren't called to just sit in
temptation, hoping that we can endure it.
We are called to act, looking at to how we can get out of
temptation and escape sin. If you're an alcoholic, you
don't go sit at a bar and hope to avoid a drink.
If you're struggling with lust, you don't spend time on your
phone late at night. Leave the bar, put away your
phone. Escape temptation.
Actively look to flee the temptation to sin and look with
the eyes of faith, knowing that God will provide a way out.
Sin is not inevitable, you can act to fight it and God will
provide to you that way of escape if you will take it.
So these are the 8 steps that I see Paul giving the Corinthians
and giving us for how to fight temptation, identify with God's
people through the millennia, learn from their example, and we
learn from them by seeing sins, connections with clarity, and
then understanding the eternal consequences of sin.
We must look with hope to the end of the age.
As we turn away from a presumption about our own
strength, we instead turn to faith in God's faithfulness.
And as we do that, we are looking with the eyes of faith
for a way of escape. This is sort of this passage in
in eight points. Now, I think that there are
broadly three kinds of people who will hear this passage.
Now, one, maybe this is you, the Christian who's, you know,
following Jesus, killing sin in your life, successfully fighting
sin. When you see sin, you repent and
it ends. And this passage says to you,
keep it up, keep going, don't go complacent.
The Lord is with you. Keep looking to him in faith and
keep fighting. And the next person, second
person, is a person who perhaps is very much like the
Corinthians here. You're at peace, you're
comfortable, and you're allowing sin and temptation to creep into
your life. And if that's you hear Paul's
word to you very clearly, your soul is in danger.
Grazing sin in the name of freedom can lead to your
destruction. Repent of your sin.
Fight temptation. Turn away from sin and toward
the life that Christ offers you. You must not presume on the
graciousness of God. One way that we do this is by
confessing our sin. Bring it into the open.
Ask Christians around you to walk with you as you're fighting
sin. The clergy here, we're ready to
walk with you, to hear your confession, to assure you of the
good news of the gospel, and to walk with you as you seek to
kill sin. Now, the third person who hears
this passage is someone who feels stuck and you're desperate
to get out. But you feel stuck in sin.
Like you're like your feet are stuck in quicksand and you just
can't quite get out. You're just stuck.
And you hear the warnings of Paul and you say, I know that
and I'm terrified. Am I going to be destroyed like
Israel? That's the terror in your heart.
This passage meets you in that terror and should encourage you
to fight sin, but to fight sin with hope.
Turn your eyes to Jesus first. Look at all that He has endured
for you. See the temptations He has
endured. See the victory He won for you
at the cross and at the empty tomb, and then fight, knowing
that your victory is secure. Bring God's people into your
fight, not out of shame, but with a hopeful expectation that
God in fact will bring you out. He will deliver you and set you
free. Don't look at your sin with
shame. Look to Christ and then with
God's people. Fight the sin for all of us.
We must look to Jesus no matter where we are.
As we encounter this passage, we must look to Jesus, the founder
and the finisher of our faith. He saves us both from the
condemnation of sin as well as the power that sin has over us.
It's hold. It's slavery.
The German reformer Martin Luther was probably thinking
about this floating rock when he wrote the the first verse to
possibly his most famous hymn, Rock of Ages.
Cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.
Let the water and the blood from thy riven side which flowed be
of sin, the double cure cleanse me from its guilt and its power.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, Amen.