Take Heed

And I'll ask you to remain standing in honor of God's Word as we read it together tonight. If you would please turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 10. We're looking at verses 1 through 13. 1 Corinthians 10 verses 1 through 13. These verses contain a warning and a promise that we need to hear if we are to live lives that are pleasing to God.

So hear now the Word of the Lord. For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

Nevertheless, with most of them, God is the Son of the Lord. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were, as it is written the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. We must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did, and 23,000 fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 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, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

You may be seated. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, we are prone to wonder. We are prone to leave the God we love, but you have said that if we truly love you, we will obey you. Lord, every time we disobey you, we're declaring really how anemic our love for you really is, and it makes us uncomfortable. It reminds us of our guilt.

It drives us to a thousand different excuses as we try to squirm our way out from under the burden of sin, as we try to conceal ourselves from your holy gaze. Lord, I pray that tonight we would find nowhere to hide but Christ, and in running to him may we find not only forgiveness, but also victory over sin, over temptation. May we find the peace that you have promised. May we discover that indeed your yoke is easy and your burden is light. I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Well, Paul has been addressing matters of conscience in his letter to the Corinthian Christians, and he's just concluded chapter 9 by saying, I discipline my body and keep it under control lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. Chapter 10 then describes what a disciplined life looks like.

Discipline is a strong word. It means to bring something into subjection with force. Paul is aware of his own tendency to indulge his sinful desires, but he also knows that indulging in sin will bring destruction to his soul and to his testimony and to his ministry. So he wants to subdue those sinful tendencies by fighting against them and putting them to death, mortifying them. Paul, of course, is not the only one with a bent towards sin. The Corinthians are in the same moral predicament.

In fact, this is the reason Paul is even discussing the need to mortify sin. Corinth had been toying with sin through unwise engagement with various idolatries within their own culture. They were using their freedom in Christ to cover up the fact that their hearts were really just prone to wonder, prone to leave the God they loved. But Corinth wasn't the first group of Christians prone to leave the God they loved. Old Testament Israel on multiple occasions exposed the reality that they too were prone to wonder.

So many times throughout their illustrious history, Israel demonstrated that they loved their idols more than they loved God. So Israel was prone to the tendency of underestimating the power of sin. Corinth was prone to the same tendency even Paul had to discipline himself so as not to fall into the trap of giving sin a pass.

If Israel and the New Testament church and the apostle Paul himself were not immune to sinful indulgences, then neither are we, Grace Church. We need to learn to fight sin and to run from temptation and to resist the devil. Well, that's exactly what these verses are about. They're about the importance of simple obedience to God. And in calling us to simple obedience, these verses remind us of our vulnerability to sin and temptation, of our bent towards disobedience. If we are prone to wonder, and we are, then we need frequent reminders of the dangers of wondering. And that's what we find here in 1 Corinthians 10. Paul warns us of three dangers in fact to which we must take heed if we are to take sin seriously and fight temptation successfully.

So let's look at these three dangers tonight. First of all, he tells us to take heed of the danger of presuming upon spiritual privilege. Take heed of the danger of presuming upon spiritual privilege. In verses one through four, Paul describes four privileges that the people of Israel enjoyed as God's covenant children. Verse one, for I do not want you to be unaware brothers that our fathers were all under the cloud. Now, this is a reference of course to Exodus 13. You'll remember God had just delivered Israel from Egyptian bondage.

They were heading to the Red Sea with Pharaoh's army in pursuit. And Scripture says that God led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. This cloudy pillar over them was a visual representation of God to the Israelites. When Israel came to the edge of the Red Sea with Pharaoh pressing at their backs, Scripture says that this cloudy pillar stood between Israel and Pharaoh's forces throughout their wanderings through the wilderness. The cloudy pillar never left them. It showed them when it was time to take up their tents and move.

It showed them where to go. So this cloud represented God's presence with Israel, his protection over them, even his guidance to them. God was with them and all they had to do to know that God was with them was to look at the cloudy pillar.

It was a spiritual privilege that belonged to Israel alone. But Paul continues, he says, and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. And this is a reference to Exodus 14 and the I guess quintessential miracle that God did for his people Israel. The miraculous parting of the Red Sea.

God held the sea back for Israel's safe passage on dry ground and then he used the same sea to destroy the greatest superpower of the day, the Egyptian army. Israel was a privileged people indeed for God to do such miraculous feats for them. Paul alludes to these miracles as a sort of baptism into Moses. Now baptism is a visible sign that signifies a setting apart, an engrafting into a group. And so this ragtag band of slaves was being formed into a legitimate spiritual community under the leadership of Moses, who is an Old Testament picture of Christ. And so there is a correspondence between Israel's baptism into Moses and our baptism into Christ. Both set us apart from the world and identify us as belonging to the Lord.

And both Old Testament Israel's baptism and our New Testament baptism are indicative of great spiritual privilege. Paul goes on in verse 3, and all ate the same spiritual food. We read that three days into the wilderness Israel had no water to drink, 15 days in and they had no food. So in Exodus 16 God provided sustenance for them. He gives them a mysterious edible substance every morning to feed them.

Israel didn't even know what to call it, so they named it literally, what is it? It means manna in Hebrew. God would faithfully send this spiritual food to feed Israel right up until the very day they entered the promised land. Jesus refers to manna as bread from heaven in John 6 when he calls himself the bread of life.

Christ is the spiritual food that satisfies our hunger once and for all. Not only did God feed Israel with spiritual food, Paul says in verse 4, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them and the rock was Christ's. On more than one occasion God provided water for Israel. Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 describe Moses striking a rock and water came gushing out of the rock to keep a thirsting dying Israel alive in the wilderness. Paul says that this rock that quenched Israel's thirst was Christ.

It was a forward-looking picture, an illustration, a type of Jesus Christ. Now there's so many rich theological implications in that statement that it that could be a sermon in and of itself, but at the very least Paul wants us to see a correspondence between Israel's experience in the wilderness and our experience in the Christian life. Israel was a privileged people. We are a privileged people. Israel had God the Father protecting and guiding them. They had God the Holy Spirit providing spiritual and physical sustenance for them in their suffering and they were able to feast on God the Son and find in him a reassurance of God's love and care and provision. And as New Testament believers we enjoy the very same privileges, only we enjoy an even fuller understanding of those riches.

We are a spiritually privileged people just like Israel was. But then notice the surprising conclusion in verse 5. Paul says, Nevertheless, with most of them, and that's an understatement, there were only two with whom God was pleased, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

We know the sad ending of the story, don't we? After delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt and after miraculously parting the Red Sea and after giving them his law and covenant and after bringing them right up to the border of the promised land, Israel doubted God's ability and desire to fulfill his promises to them by refusing to enter Canaan. I mean, how could they doubt God now?

They had seen his power. They had seen the ease with which God brought the greatest nation in the world to its knees, and yet they wavered in unbelief. As a result, God, who would still be faithful to his promises, refused to let that generation be the one that enjoyed his promises.

Instead, every one of them who were 20 years old and older, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua who had trusted the Lord, every one of them would die in the wilderness without a home, without a fixed place of worship, without the enjoyment of God's promises, and without the full favor of God on their lives. Church, enjoying spectacular spiritual privileges and experiences does not relieve us from the responsibility of trusting and obeying the Lord. Spiritual advantages are no guarantee of grace. They can be squandered. They can be wasted.

They can be lost. On the other hand, spiritual privilege can be used wisely and faithfully. Paul says in verse 6, now these things took place as examples for us. We are intended tonight to see a correspondence between Israel's experience and our own, and we are to learn from their mistakes so as not to repeat them. I've already mentioned several points of correspondence between the old covenant privileges Paul mentions and the new covenant privileges that we enjoy. Just like he did for Israel, God has given us signs and wonders to strengthen our faith and to assure us of his covenantal love and faithfulness. We have the life and miracles of Jesus before us. We have the historical reality of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ. We have the sign of baptism reminding us that God has washed our sins away.

He has set a mark of distinction on us. We have the spiritual food and drink of communion, a frequent reminder of the body and blood of Christ given for sinners. We have the church. We have the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

We have the completed canon of Scripture. We have his grace working in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. All of these benefits and more the Lord has given to us for our spiritual good, and yet we, like Israel of old, run the risk of presuming upon these advantages and squandering them to the displeasure of God.

How do we avoid that plight? How do we use these spiritual privileges to their fullest? Well, we do what Caleb and Joshua in the Old Testament did. We remember what God has promised. We believe what God has promised. We remember what God has promised.

We believe what God has promised, and we act upon what God has promised. The saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. Sometimes I think familiarity doesn't even bother with contempt.

It just breeds apathy, indifference, boredom. If you find in yourself a tendency to approach with indifference the gracious means and privileges God has sprinkled throughout your life, you are a stranger, Christian. When I read God's Word, do I read it like my very soul depends upon it? Do I give thought to how that Word comes to bear on the various circumstances and choices that I face through the course of my day, or do I just read my chapter and check the box as if through those motions of reading Scripture is sufficient? Do I take communion thoughtlessly, flippantly, carelessly? Do I fail to adequately prepare my heart to give attention to the significance of what I'm receiving when I receive the body and blood of Christ? Does the quality of my prayer life demonstrate an awareness that I am in the presence of God when I pray, or am I a grumbling, unbelieving mess like Israel was on the borderlands of Canaan? Brothers and sisters, God has put you in a Bible-believing church. He's surrounded you with fellow sinners who are running to Christ alongside of you. He's filled you with the Holy Spirit to be a comfort and a guide into all truth.

He's given you everything necessary to thoroughly equip you for every good work. Are you using these means well, or are you carelessly squandering them through disuse and neglect? Take heed that you not presume upon the spiritual privileges God has given. Well, if we could just stop there, I think we could all go home and feel moderately good about ourselves because, after all, this is the Sunday night crowd. Of course, you're using the means that God has given you.

You're here. But Paul, of course, won't let us off the hook that easily because next he turns his attention to a danger of another sort, a danger that is much closer to the root of the problem than perhaps we'd care to admit. You see, it's one thing to admit that I don't love God's Word or His sacraments well enough. It's another thing entirely to admit that the reason I don't love God's means of grace enough is that I love my sin.

My problem is not simply a lack of love for the right things. It's also a love for an attraction to a desire for wicked things. And so Paul's second warning for us is this. Take heed of the danger of desiring evil.

Take heed of the danger of desiring evil. Look at verse six. Paul says, now these things, the things we just considered from the history of Israel, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did.

And then Paul gets very specific. He lists four ways in which Israel demonstrated a desire for evil. Verse seven, do not be idolaters as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. This is a reference to Exodus 32, the incident of the golden calf.

You remember that? Well, I'm sure Moses was away up on Mount Sinai receiving the law of God while he was gone. Israel grew restless and impatient. And so they demanded that Aaron make them a god, make them an idol who would lead them.

And Aaron did it. He crafted an idol from gold and said, this is the God, oh Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And Israel worshiped the idol and made sacrifices to it and then indulged in all sorts of vile and pagan revelry around it. It was idolatrous and it came from a heart that desired evil. Visible outward idolatry is not some sin that just happens externally.

No, it comes from the inside. It comes from a heart that enjoys idolatry, that accommodates idolatry, that wants idolatry. And so Paul says, take heed that you not desire evil as they did. Next he says in verse 8, we must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did. And 23,000 fell in a single day. This is a reference to Numbers 25 in which the men of Israel began to take Moabite women, Gentile women, to indulge their sexual appetites and in the process they began participating in the pagan religious practices of Moab. When the sin came to light, God's anger was kindled and the Old Testament says 24,000 Israelites were killed in the plague. 23,000 of them died in a single day, Paul says. Folks, this was God's special people, the people who had seen God's strength and power and love for them in his delivering them from Egypt and yet they indulged in excessive sexual sin even to the point of compromising their religious practices.

Why? Because they desired it. They wanted to. The third incident Paul mentioned seems on the face of it to be a lesser transgression. It was certainly a more respectable sin from a human perspective, but at the heart of it, it was a wicked rejection of Christ and a love for self. Verse nine, we must not put Christ to the test as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents. In Numbers 21 we read about Israel becoming impatient with God and with Moses primarily concerning the food that was being provided for them. They were quite frankly tired of manna and so they began to complain and murmur not only about the food but about their very deliverance from Egypt and shamefully they say, why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?

We loathe this worthless food. Perhaps it sounds like a mild complaint to us but Paul describes it as a testing or attempting of Christ. Through their discontentment and unbelief they were daring the Son of God to rain down judgment on them and he did. He sent venomous snakes into their midst and many Israelites died. But of course along with that judgment God also provided a way of escape, didn't he? He instructed Moses to fashion a serpent on a pole and everyone who was bitten by these poisonous snakes had but to look at the bronze serpent and they would live. The last incident Paul mentions is in verse 10.

Not only are we not to be idolaters and not indulge in sexual immorality and not test Christ, he says also in verse 10, nor grumble, nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer. One commentator I read said that it's hard to tell which incident this refers to because Israel grumbled so frequently. Most likely this is a reference to Numbers 14 which is, I think, sort of the crowning grumble of all grumbles in history of Israel. Numbers 14, this is when Israel refused to enter the promised land for fear of the inhabitants of Canaan after the spies returned with a bad report.

Numbers 14 2 gives the pathetic account of Israel's response to the spies report. It says, and all the people grumbled against Moses and Aaron and they said, would that we have would have died in the land of Egypt or would that we had died in this wilderness? Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?

Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt. Why do we grumble? Why do we murmur and complain about our circumstances, about our health, about our relationships, about our opportunities, about what we have, about what we don't have? We complain because we're discontent with what God has given. We're discontent with what God has given because we want things that are contrary to what he gives. And ultimately we want things that are contrary to what God gives because, church, we desire evil. Grumbling and testing Christ and indulging in sexual immorality and idolatry, in fact, every sin we commit comes from a heart that in some measure desires what is evil and hates what is good.

James 1 14 and 15 says, each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. The devil didn't make you do it. Your unsaved boss didn't make you do it. Your annoying siblings or spouse or parents didn't make you do it.

Your disloyal friend didn't make you do it. We yield to temptation because we want to. And Paul says, take heed of the danger of desiring evil. You realize, brothers and sisters, that our fight against sin begins at the seat of our desires. That's where the fight starts. We don't take the root of our desires.

That's where the fight starts. We don't overcome secret addictions or outbursts of anger or generational patterns of behavior by merely trying to control the outward manifestation of those things. No, we overcome sin by digging up the root. And the root will always be a heart desire for some evil, some forbidden thing. Paul is calling us to attack sin at the point of our desire for it, not at the point of its bearing fruit and taking over the whole garden of our soul. And so the insidiousness and the subtlety and the strength of our sin is such that we need to take heed of the danger of even the slightest desire for evil.

But then this brings us to the best part of our text tonight. I've been waiting to get to verses 12 and 13. These verses declare that even though our sin is incredibly strong, there is something that's even stronger.

Let's discover what that is. Paul's third and final warning is that we need to take heed of the danger of misplaced confidence. Misplaced confidence. And this final warning has a negative side and a positive side. The negative side is beware of placing too much confidence in self. Verse 12, therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. If you think that in and of yourself you can heed all the warnings and resist all the temptations and stand strong in the faithful of sinful desire, well, you can't. Romans 7 was true of Paul. It's true of me.

It's true of you. Romans 7 says that if we find in ourselves a law waging war against our minds so that we do what we don't want to do and we don't do what we want to do, of course one day Christ will deliver us from this body of death, this sin cycle, but until then I better not put any confidence in my flesh because I cannot fight sin in my own strength and win. But church, verse 13 is in the Bible.

Don't forget it. Verse 13 is a sweet and powerful gospel truth that calls us to put our full confidence and hope in the power of God over our sin. Listen to this incredible promise from God and be strengthened by it. Verse 13 says, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. In other words, you're not the first Christian to struggle with sin the way you do and you'll not be the last. But listen to this, God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. If you've not come to terms with the sinfulness of your sin just yet, then you probably don't feel the relief and the hope that verse 13 extends to us.

But if you do seek your sin for what it is, if you do feel the guilt and the weight of your own sin, if you feel your own helplessness to put that sin to death once and for all, then these words ought to be a balm for your exhausted soul. Let me point out some implications of this verse. First of all, to say that God will not let you be tempted beyond your ability means that God's sovereign control extends even to the temptations you face. Now scripture makes it clear that God does not tempt us to do evil, but Christian you better believe that he is fully aware of every temptation you face and he has set a limit to that temptation.

He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability because he is in control of how much of how much temptation you face. It also implies that different Christians have different tendencies and abilities when it comes to fighting sin in their lives. One Christian may be prone to alcoholic addiction, another to sexual indulgence, another Christian may struggle with with lust but have no problem with anger, another Christian may struggle with alcohol and lust and anger but have no problem with gossip. We all have differing sin struggles and differing strengths and weaknesses. The point is we don't need to compare ourselves to each other. Don't pat yourself on the back because you don't struggle like that Christian over there.

By the same token don't have a pity party because you struggle more in a particular area than someone else. Fight your fight knowing that God is regulating and governing the quantity and quality of the struggle and God knows your limitations. Finally this verse implies, well it does more than imply, it promises that with every temptation you face God will provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure. This means we ought to be expecting the way of escape. We ought to be looking for God's way of escape and I will tell you this from personal experience, the way of escape is often much earlier in the fight than we think. Someone says, Lord I was at the bar trying not to take a drink but you never provided a way of escape.

Well God most likely provided a way long before the drive to the bar. We need to get proficient at noticing God's escape hatch and we need to prepare ourselves to take that escape hatch immediately when it presents itself. What I want us to remember though is that God sets a limitation to the temptations we will face and He will always always give us a way of escape. We do need to admit our bent towards sin but Christians God doesn't intend us to walk around expecting a personal moral meltdown at any moment. On the contrary we need to expect that God's grace is going to be stronger and more delightful than our sin. Where sin abounds, grace super abounds.

So we need to take spiritual danger seriously but we need to take the grace of God with equal seriousness. When I was a young boy, maybe five or six years old, my family was on the mission field in Latin America and we had an opportunity to spend a day at a tropical beach. I don't know if you've ever seen the beaches in that part of the world but they are absolutely beautiful. The water is incredibly clear. In fact you can stand in chest deep water and see your feet on the sea floor. You can also look down into the water and see all sorts of sea creatures, things you don't see up here in the Carolinas. There are tropical fish of all sorts with these vibrant colors that are mesmerizing and these fish as I recall are not shy.

They'll swim right up to your feet and nibble on your toes. Well between the ocean waves and these nibbling fish I was terrified to go out into the water even though I really wanted to go into the water. I remember standing on the sand trying to work up my nerve to join my sisters who seemed to be having so much fun but my fear of drowning or of getting eaten by a school of bright happy yellow and blue fish was just too much. About that time my dad who had been a trained lifeguard, he's an excellent swimmer, came over to me and picked me up and started carrying me out into the water and I was holding on to him like my very life depended on it. I could feel the waves pushing him around. I just knew he was going to fall. I was going to drown.

It was going to be all over with but he never fell. Once we got out past the breakers a little bit I looked down and saw swarms of fish below us so I lifted up my legs until my knees were firmly planted in his armpits. My dad just laughed at the fish and told me that their nibbles didn't hurt at all.

In fact, they actually tickled. Eventually I felt safe enough to relax and enjoy the beauty all around me. My dad's knowledge and his swimming ability and his courage and his presence transformed a fearful place into a safe place, a beautiful place. Church, so it is with life in this fallen world. So it is in the face of our need for sanctification and our vulnerability to temptation. It's a frightening prospect by yourself but you have your heavenly Father with you, holding you, promising to sustain you through it. He is faithful and we can trust him.

We need to take sin seriously which means we need to take heed to these pitfalls to which we are prone but we also need to take the grace of God and the faithfulness of God seriously. He will not leave you to fend for yourself. In fact, he has tied his very character to the promise. He is faithful.

You can trust him. Let's pray. Father, if we are to be pleasing to you, we must obey you. If we are to obey you, we must take heed of the dangers that lead to disobedience.

Sometimes those dangers seem overwhelming. We are so prone to wonder, so prone to leave the God we love. But Lord, tonight you have reassured us that you will never leave us. You will never let go of us. You will never forsake us.

You will hold us fast. You'll keep us from falling. Lord, we know that in this life, we will slip. We will in this life, we will slip. Some of us will slip a lot but even in those moments, you were faithful. You will never allow us to slip beyond your grip. Thank you that the security of our salvation doesn't reside in our ability but in yours and may that realization spur us on to fight sin with a soul and a renewed confidence and gratitude for the grace you've given us. But I pray this in the name of the one who has been tempted as we are yet without sin and who now ascribes his victory for us. In the name of Jesus our Savior, our Lord, our friend. Amen.