Deliverance is promised

Text: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Focus: temptation

Function: to help people see that God will deliver them from temptation.

10:¹I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, ²and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, ³and all ate the same spiritual food, ⁴and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. ⁵Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.

⁶Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. ⁷Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” ⁸We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. ⁹We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. ¹⁰And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. ¹¹These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. ¹²So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. ¹³No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

I hope that by the end of this message we may have some confidence in what it means for us to labeled the righteous people compared against those who do evil.

But more than that, I hope that we too can learn to rely on the power of God that is inside of us so that we do not fall into the distractions that keep us from serving faithfully in the Kingdom of God.

I wrestle with our definition and understanding of what it means to be righteous. Joseph, we mentioned, was a righteous person, so he did the right thing by Mary instead of having her put to death for being pregnant outside of marriage.

In Matthew 25, Jesus made it clear that at the end, the angels will separate the sheep from the goats, implying the righteous from the unrighteous, based on whether or not we cared for the least of these. He includes the sick, the naked, the homeless, the prisoners, and the refugee.

Throughout the scriptures, the righteous are not contrasted with the unrighteous, but the evil people.

The implication is that the righteous people are not evil.

In my understanding, the sin of doing evil is doing things that harm others. It can be either through direct action, or turning a blind eye to injustice. We are called to bring about the common cause of loving one’s neighbor to the entire world. We are called to influence those around us to eschew evil by caring for others.

But Paul gives us an idea of evil here in this passage by explaining the sin of the people of Israel as they were passing through the desert.

If you are familiar with the story, you might know that half the time God was telling Moses that He was going to wipe them out for their lack of faith.

It was frustrating, I believe, to both Moses and God that although the people had seen the 10 plagues against Egypt, had seen the Red Sea part and they crossed on dry land and then watched the Egyptian army be destroyed on their behalf. That although they had a pillar of fire and smoke guiding them and they heard the voice of God from the Mountain when God gave the 10 commandments that they would have learned to trust God to keep them safe.

Instead they constantly complained and turned away from trusting God even though they had evidence that God was with them every day, symbolized by the fact that every day food appeared on the ground in the midst of a desert to feed them. They were living a supernatural life and still did not trust God to care for them.

And Paul calls that lack of faith, evil.

Now, as I mentioned, I call evil acts that harm to others by action or inaction. But Paul calls a lack of faith: evil.

I heard a Mennonite Seminary professor tell us that there are three big sins in the OT. The Biggest is a lack of concern for the poor (that is why Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed).

Not caring for the poor is committing evil, according to God. The other two sins had to do with our relationship with God. They were a lack of faith in God’s promises and idolatry.

God hates sin, and by that I mean evil. A lack of faith is not committing evil, but I believe that a lack of faith in God offends God because then we are not believing in His love for us and for humanity.

They were punished for not trusting in God.

Paul tells us in the passage that Christ was with them and apparently, they did not recognize Him.

When they were thirsty, Moses struck the rock and water flowed in the desert to nourish them. Paul says that the rock was Christ. And it fits with what Jesus says in the NT about how we are vessels of life giving water to the world through the Spirit of Christ that lives inside of us.

There was a difference between them and us, by the way. They were near the presence of Christ, but according to Jesus, the one who is least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater and all who came before. We assume the difference is that now that we have been cleansed by the Spirit of God and forgiven through faith in Christ, we have the Spirit of God inside of us enabling us to do the right thing. The Spirit of God leads us to love others. He will always lead us in the right path to care for even the least of these.

They were not like us. They did not have the chance to be born again by the Spirit of God.

Look at the promise of what the Spirit does for us in Ezekiel 16:²⁵I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. ²⁶A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.

He is speaking of the future when Christ Jesus sets us up as the family of God here on earth.

Even though they complained and couldn’t see what God was doing, God delivered the Israelites time and time again.

And it offended God that they would not trust God in the future when God was faithful in the past.

And that leads us the the point of the passage. We are all temped and tried. Sometimes the normal circumstances of living on planet earth gang up on us and we are overwhelmed. Sometimes we are tempted by our own desires and they get in the way of us living lives that reflect the power of God present in our lives.

And the promise is that by the power of the Spirit, we are sealed in God’s kingdom.

I mentioned last week how Abraham was considered righteous because he trusted God.

But he failed in several occasion and kept coming back to God. The scriptures show us story after story of men and women who believed or tried to believe and God was with them in both their success and in their failures.

God is loving and forgiving. And God knows the weakest parts of our minds and where we struggle the most. And it is in those places of weakness, I believe, that God comes to us and loves us the most.

Rest in God.