1 Corinthians 10:1-13 - Part A

The example here is the nation of Israel. They had been liberated. They had been set free. They had been given their liberty, but they abused their liberty.

Talk about liberty. They were given liberty. God sprung them from the bondage of Egypt. They had been slaves in Egypt. God gave them literal freedom and took care of them out in the wilderness. But what did they do with their liberty?

They abused it. This truth can be daunting, but it doesn't make it any less real. The world and other believers are watching how you live. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares a vital lesson from Israel's history on how to use your personal liberty to glorify God and encourage others. Now we want to tell you about a resource that will encourage you in the good plan that God has for you. Forbes.com recently published an article with 22 tips for how to completely change your life in one year.

Sounds complicated. The Bible tells a different story about how to change your life. The Bible says repent and return to God, and it reminds us we need to always insert but God into every situation.

Here's Skip Heitzig. But God is a phrase that appears 45 times in Scripture. It's a game-changing phrase. It means that no matter who you are, no matter what you have done, no matter how you may have failed, the truth is God can make things different for you from now on. But God. Discover the power of but God in Scripture and why it's a game changer for your own life with the But God teaching series from Pastor Skip Heitzig. Our thanks when you give $35 or more to help keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air. Get your CD collection today.

Call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we're in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 as we join Skip Heitzig for today's study. Back in chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians, Paul introduced the topic of which we are still dealing with. That is personal liberty as Christians. What can I do as a believer? Is it okay?

Is it lawful for me to do? There are black and white parameters. Most of us understand the thou shalt nots of the Bible, but there are certain things that are gray areas. And Paul touches on them because it was one of the things the Corinthians asked him about. So in chapter 8, he, I think it's chapter 8, no chapter 7, now concerning the things which you wrote to me. That's where he introduces the answering of questions they wrote to him, a series of questions they had. One of them is answered in chapter 7. Chapter 8 is another one. And there's a transitional phrase that I've been telling you about the last few weeks.

I just want you to get it in your memory. And it's this little phrase, now concerning. When Paul says, now concerning, in this book, he is introducing a topic that happened to be in the letter the Corinthians sent to Paul. Hey, Paul, what about staying single versus staying married?

Now concerning those things that you wrote to me about. And he addresses that. Another issue they had was being invited to a house and eating meat that had been sacrificed to a pagan idol in a pagan temple. Not as applicable today in our culture, but it was huge in the Corinthian culture. But what about that, Paul?

What do we do? And so in chapter 8, now concerning things offered to idols. He then uses chapters 8, 9, and 10 to deal with the issue broadly about Christian liberty in light of the fact that some believers are weak in their faith, number one. Number two, you are being observed not just by other believers, but by unbelievers. So these are considerations that you must keep in your mind when you have to discern what you can and cannot do as a believer.

What things you can and can't get involved in. Then in chapter 12, he introduces another topic they wrote to him about. They said, hey, what about spiritual gifts? And so chapter 12, now concerning spiritual gifts. And in chapter 12, 13, 14, he deals with the use of spiritual gifts in the assembly. Then chapter 15, he deals with the whole doctrine of the resurrection. So he's dealing with a number of topics they wrote to him.

They asked about food that was sacrificed to an idol. And in chapter 8, if you remember, he said, look, we all have knowledge. We all may know that that statue is just a piece of wood or a stone or a piece of metal, but not everybody has that knowledge. And you might have that knowledge, but I'm saying you also need love to govern your decision. Not just knowledge. Look, I know better and I can eat anything I want to no matter who it's sacrificed to because I have knowledge. Paul said, I'm glad you have knowledge. Now have love as well.

Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. That was chapter 8. Then in chapter 9, Paul is still on the same subject, but he uses himself as an example. He goes, look, I'll use myself as an example. I'm an apostle. I have certain rights of financial remuneration. I have rights to take with me a believing wife like Peter did and like the other apostles did. But even though I have those rights and those privileges and I also have the knowledge that it's okay for me to do certain things and it's even scripturally based for me to do that, I have chosen to forego those privileges because I want to boast in the fact that I've made the gospel free of charge wherever I go.

Other churches have supported me, but I never ask anything from you guys in Corinth. Still the same overarching truth, Christian liberty. Now in chapter 10, he continues that, but now a different example. And the example here is the nation of Israel. They had been liberated. They had been set free. They had been given their liberty, but they abused their liberty.

Talk about liberty. They were given liberty. God sprung them from the bondage of Egypt. They had been slaves in Egypt. God gave them literal freedom and took care of them out in the wilderness. But what did they do with their liberty?

They abused it. And so he's going to swing back and answer some of the issues that we dealt with in the previous chapters, but we begin in chapter 10, verse 1. It took us long enough to get there, but here we are. Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware. The old King James says, I don't want you to be unaware. The old King James says, I don't want you to be ignorant.

It's an interesting introduction because this is what I found. Whenever Paul says, hey, you guys, I don't want you to be ignorant about this, it is usually an area where Christians display the most ignorance. He said the same thing concerning eschatology, the coming of the Lord. I don't want you to be ignorant of the coming of the Lord or our gathering together with Him in 1 Thessalonians. That happens to be a huge area of ignorance. When it comes to spiritual gifts, I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren, of spiritual gifts. And yet, many believers are ignorant or misguided when it comes to the use or exercise of spiritual gifts within the church. In fact, you could count five times in the New Testament where Paul says, I don't want you to be ignorant, don't want you to be ignorant, don't want you to be ignorant. All five of those happen to be areas Christians display a lot of ignorance in. It's a controversial area. Paul wrote to clear it up.

In fact, that would be a fun series to do sometime is to look at those five areas and just sort of unravel each one. But anyway, I digress. Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware or ignorant that all our fathers, now he's speaking about Jewish fathers, Jewish forefathers. All of our fathers, that is the nation of Israel in the wilderness, were under the cloud and all passed through the sea.

What is he speaking about? The cloud of God's glory, the Shekinah glory of God in the wilderness. Remember, it was a covering of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night. And the sea that he's speaking about is the Red Sea.

I don't want you to be ignorant. All of our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. Back in the desert years when Israel wandered through the wilderness for 40 years, by the way, they didn't have to be in the desert 40 years. If you were to walk from Egypt up along the Gaza Strip toward Israel, you were just to walk it. It wouldn't take you more than seven days to get from the place where they were at down to the Nile Delta in Egypt. You go up the Gaza Strip, you go up the Via Maris, and you're right up in Israel.

It'll take you seven days. It probably, since there were two or three million of the Israelites, it wouldn't have taken them more than a month. So there was a legitimate wilderness experience they had. They were delivered, brought into the wilderness. It was the legitimate wilderness experience they had. It should have lasted them a month.

It lasted 40 years. That's the illegitimate wilderness experience. It took them 40 years and God promised them because they complained over and over again.

We'll get into this in this chapter. God told them that they were all going to die in the wilderness and they complained about their kids. They said, our kids, our kids are going to die.

You don't care about our children. And God said, really? Tell you what, I'm going to deliver your children and make sure they get into the promised land, but you're all going to die in the wilderness and they're going to go in there without you. And two million to three million of them died during that 40-year journey.

Only two, Joshua and Caleb, made it through. But God graciously provided a cloud. And the cloud, the Shekinah glory of God, was a covering.

The Bible says in Psalm 105 that God spread out a covering over the children of Israel, which was a huge blessing because to be in the Sinai wilderness, it would be like camping out in Phoenix during the summer and having to move as a few million people through that kind of a heat. But what if God provided for Phoenix every summer a cloud cover so that the harmful rays, the sun, couldn't penetrate? That's essentially what the Lord did with that cloud.

He spread it out. So serving the Lord was cool. And then there was that pillar of fire by night, so they had a nightlight as well, that illuminated in that cloud.

It just must have been awesome. Now, it was an advanced GPS system. GPS, not global positioning system, but God's positioning system. God kept them in the wilderness, and then whenever that cloud began to move or that pillar of fire began to move, they would pack up their belongings, and they would move to stay cool, to stay under the cloud. And they would stop wherever God stopped. Wherever the cloud stopped, they would camp there, and then they would move on. Our fathers, the Jewish fathers, went under the cloud, passed through the sea.

That's the wilderness experience. All were baptized into Moses and into the cloud, in the cloud and in the sea. That is, it wasn't a mob. It was a community of God's people being immersed, led by Moses, into the trough of where the Red Sea once flowed, though they went through on dry ground and got to the other side. But they were all as a community in unity and solidarity with each other, and God delivered them and walked through that with them. Then verse 3, all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. It says they all ate of that same spiritual food. We know what they ate during that wilderness wandering. What did they eat? Manna. God brought bread from heaven, but it was interesting stuff. It was interesting because God must have injected the manna with all the needed nutrients and all the necessary vitamins and proteins. Because in Deuteronomy chapter 8, toward the end of the wilderness march, the Lord said, I brought you out of Egypt with a strong hand, brought you out into the wilderness. And He said, during that time, your garments didn't wear out.

That's miraculous. Wearing a garment for 40 years. Look at what you have on. Imagine wearing a garment for 40 years.

Look at what you have on. Imagine wearing that for 40 years, how ripe that would smell, and how frayed it would be. But then imagine if every time you cleaned it, you washed it, it didn't fray, it didn't get old, it just kind of kept its shape, and you could wear it for 40 years.

Now I know you'd get tired of it nonetheless because, gosh, the same fashion for 40 years, but that was God's gracious provision. But also, He said, your garment didn't wear out and your feet did not swell those 40 years. Medical experts, I have read, say that the idea of the swelling of feet happens when you have the same diet over and over again and you don't add variety to it.

You don't have all the right balance of nutrients. So that's why I say manna must have had all that was necessary, that spiritual food that God gave them, to sustain life so their feet wouldn't swell so they could maintain homeostasis, so they could be vital and live well during those 40 years. Manna was also interesting because it says they could grind it in their grinders, they could beat it in their mortars, they could bake it in their ovens, so it had interesting properties. So I don't know if Mrs. Moses wrote a book, A Thousand and One Ways to Prepare Manna, with all sorts of recipes, but no doubt there was bamanna bread, or manicotti would be one.

There would be manna souffle, all sorts of different varieties that you could do with it. And I've told you before that one of the Scriptures say that it tasted like wafers baked with honey. So that's why I say when I eat a Krispy Kreme donut, I think, oh yeah, this is manna, manna. Hot now, manna. Must have tasted like that. I do get caught up on the manna thing.

I do love it. Okay, so God provided that they ate the same spiritual food. They drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. It's an interesting Scripture. We know in the Old Testament that water was a problem.

When you're in the desert, sources of water for two million people would be an issue, and they complained on one occasion we don't have enough water, or on a few occasions. And we know that Moses was told to go up to the rock and hit it with his staff and out flowed and out flowed water, enough water, must have had a lot of subterranean pressure, to bring water to the two million souls plus livestock and to nourish them. Later on, Moses was told to speak to that rock. He got mad, misrepresented the Lord, and beat it, said must we bring water out of this rock.

You know the story. But according to Paul, he says now that rock was Christ. There's a lot of ways to look at that, and most people look at that in a spiritual kind of a way. They spiritualize the text a little bit, saying that spiritually speaking Christ is the living water, the satisfier of the soul, and all that. That's true, and perhaps that is in Paul's mind, but let me suggest another possibility. There was a Jewish legend that persisted, and Paul would have been aware of the legend. And the Jewish legend was that the rock in the wilderness that Moses struck that brought forth water actually appeared wherever the children of Israel would camp. So if they camped, pulled up camp, moved miles away, they'd be there.

There was that same rock that would provide water for them, and so it just sort of followed them. It was a Jewish legend that the rock followed them wherever they went. Now that's just a legend, and I don't necessarily believe that to be true. It could be true, but it's a Jewish legend. It could be that Paul was aware of the legend, and he said, you know you're right, knowing about the legend, knowing what they believe.

There was a rock that followed you, but that rock wasn't a literal rock. That rock was the person of Christ who sustained you during the wilderness march, and it could be here that the idea is that they at that time under Moses were anticipating the coming of the Messiah. We know that Moses predicted another would come that was like him, and the New Testament identifies that other prophet as being the Messiah. So that was introduced by Moses to wait for the coming of Messiah. So under Moses, the children of Israel anticipated the coming of Messiah, the rock of their salvation. And it's interesting that Jesus at Caesarea Philippi did say to his disciples standing before this huge rock in Caesarea Philippi, he said, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And he used a Greek word petra, and petra means a massive stone, and the word that is used here in the Greek language for the rock that followed them was Christ is the same word petra, that massive rock. Of course, in Matthew 16 when Jesus brought this truth up, he was speaking about the massive confession of belief that he was the Son of God, because Peter had said, I know who you are. You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

Flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you, Peter, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say, you are Peter, petros, a tiny little pebble, but upon this petra, this massive stone of your confession of who I am, I'll build my church on that. I'll build my church on that.

I'll build my people on that. So they drank from the same spiritual drink. They drank from that spiritual rock that followed them.

That rock was Christ. But now they have this incredible liberty. They have a newfound freedom. They're not slaves in Egypt.

What are they going to do with this liberty? But with most of them, God was not well-pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. As I mentioned, only two of the two million or so survived, Joshua and Caleb. Why did they survive?

Faith. They applied the promises of God to their lives, and they mixed the promises with faith. And the test of that faith took place in Numbers 13, when Moses sent 12 emissaries to spy out the land. And they spied it out. They looked at it. They came back, and they brought a report in the 12 spies, told the children of Israel what they found in the new land that God had given to them.

And this is what they said. Now, they brought back, these two guys brought this huge pile of grapes that was so large, it took two men to carry them between their shoulders. That was the fruit of the land, as evidence of the blessing of God. And so they brought the fruit out, and the 10 spies said, well, as you can see, the land is indeed good and abundant that the Lord has given us, but the cities are huge and fortified, and the people are pretty tall. The sons of Anak are there, and they're enormous, and we are grasshoppers in their sight. Joshua and Caleb came forward and said, nah, let us go in at once and take that land, for we are well able to take it.

And the 10 dissenters said, no, we can't take it. They're huge. They're giant. They're huge. They're huge. They're huge. They're huge. They're huge.

And the 10 dissenters said, no, we can't take it. They're huge. They're giants. Joshua and Caleb said, they're bread for us. They're food for us. Easy pickings, big targets, easy to hit. Can't miss them.

Let's go for it. But the people of Israel listened not to the joyful, hopeful report, but the doom and gloom and fearful report. And so, because they chose to believe that, God said, really? Okay, you're going to die in the wilderness, and they wandered around for 40 years, and that entire generation perished except for those two, Joshua and Caleb. Not much has changed today. You put your ear to the ground. You read the news. You listen to the news.

You look at your Twitter feed. There's basically the voices that are hopeful, and things are getting better and great, and other people say, no, it's not. It's horrible and doom and gloom.

It's just going to get worse. And you just have to decide who are you going to listen to. And as a believer, you should listen to the promises of God. They're sure and filled with hope. That's Skip Hinting with a message from the series, Expound 1 Corinthians. Now, here's Skip to share how you can keep these messages coming your way and connect others around the world with God's truths. God's Holy Spirit lives in us.

Why? To help us live out our faith in this world. And our heart is to come alongside of you to do the same. That's why we work to make these Bible teachings available to friends like you. And you can help connect even more people to God's Word today through a generous gift. Here's how you can give now to impact others' lives with God's truth. on God's promises. Connect with Skip Hinting is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.