Take Heed Lest You Fall

TAKE HEED LEST YOU FALL

An Exposition of 1 Corinthians 10:1-22

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date: January 3, 2021

Series: Renewal 2021

Note: Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard   Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

THE SCRIPTURAL TEXT

We have a great passage for today (1 Cor. 10:1-22) – not only because it helps us understand the richness of what it means to participate in the Lord's Supper, but also because it calls us to intentionality in our day-to-day spiritual walk. Which is a really good thing to be reminded of as we start the new year. Holy Scripture says:

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

⁶ Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. ⁷ 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.” ⁸ We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. ⁹ We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, ¹⁰ nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. ¹¹ 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. ¹² Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 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, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

¹⁴ Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. ¹⁵ I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. ¹⁶ The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? ¹⁷ Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. ¹⁸ Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? ¹⁹ What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? ²⁰ No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. ²¹ You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. ²² Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? (1 Corinthians 10:1-22)

This is the Word of the Lord, and it is for our good. Let's pray:

Father, we thank you that these things were written down for our instruction – to warn us, to counsel us, to encourage us on the path of holiness. Father, we pray that you would give us hearts that are receptive to your word this morning, that it would enter into our hearts and transform our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.

PART ONE: THEY SQUANDERED GRACE

I want to walk through this passage in four parts. Let’s begin by looking at verses 1-5. Here is my summary of this opening section: Even though all the Israelites were blessed with the provisions of God's grace, most of them were not pleasing to the Lord and they perished in the wilderness. It is a very sobering lesson here. Outward association with divine blessings is no substitute for actually living in a way that pleases the Lord.

These Israelites of Moses’ generation, who were delivered out of the land of Egypt, what wonderful blessings were theirs. They were rescued out of slavery in the land of Egypt. They were brought through the sea, and they were en route to the promised land. And here in verses 1-4 the apostle Paul talks about these manifestations of grace – these demonstrations of grace that they were associated with. They were under the cloud – God's presence was in the cloud, guiding them and protecting them. God made the sea part, and it was as if they were baptized into Moses. They were associated with Moses, God's appointed leader to rescue the people. They were baptized into Moses through the sea, and therefore initiated as God's covenant people. And then, as they went through the wilderness God provided miraculously for them. It was as if they enjoyed the Lord's Table in their wilderness wanderings. God provided spiritual food. It was real physical food, but it was a miraculous provision – manna from heaven. It was real literal water, but it was miraculously provided from the rock, which represented Christ the Messiah, who was with them.

But even though they had these tremendous blessings, most of them were not pleasing to God – and ‘most of them’ is an understatement. How many of them were pleasing to God? Two (excluding Moses and Aaron). The two were Caleb and Joshua. All the others were overthrown – they were laid low – they were put to death in the wilderness.

What does it mean to be pleasing to the Lord? I was thinking about this passage in relationship to what we learn in the book of Hebrews. The book of Hebrews tells us that “without faith it is impossible to please him [God]” (Hebrews 11:6). That's in Hebrews 11. Earlier in Hebrews, the writer was reflecting on this same experience that Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 10 – about how the Israelites never made it into the Promised Land. And the author of Hebrews says that they didn't make it into the Promised Land because of their unbelief (Hebrews 3:19). It’s the same thing that Paul says, just described in a different way. The people were not pleasing to the Lord because they didn't have faith. They weren't trusting the Lord. They weren't trusting the Lord before he delivered them through the Red Sea. They thought it was all over, but then God delivers them. And just a few days later what are they doing? Just a few days after this amazing deliverance they're grumbling because the water is bitter. And the Lord sweetens the water for them. And then the Lord spoke to them. Exodus 15:25-26 says, “There the LORD made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer.””

There are vital lessons for us here. You can look at this on different levels. On one level we must understand that benefiting from miraculous deliverances and benefiting from miraculous provisions is no substitute for heartfelt obedience in the day-to-day. Or you can look at it this way: partaking of the holy ordinances – and this is going to come up later in the passage, and there is a sense in which the Israelites were baptized and they ate at the Lord's Table – participating in the holy ordinances or the holy sacraments is no substitute for a lively faith that actually walks in the ways of the Lord. We must be people who trust the Lord to come through for us.

So verses 1-5 tell us that even though all the Israelites benefited from divine blessings, most of them – all but two of them – were not pleasing to the Lord.

PART TWO: DON’T BE LIKE THOSE SQUANDERERS  

This leads to verses 6-11, which I would summarize this way: Don't be like them! Don’t be like the folks who weren’t pleasing to the Lord.

Verses 6-11 fit closely together. You can see how verse 6 begins: “Now these things took place as examples for us”. And then verse 11 restates this idea: “Now these things happened to them as an example” – that is, as an example for us. You see, we're called to follow good examples, but we’re also called to learn from bad examples and not follow those bad examples.

Paul is giving himself to us as a good example. At the end of Chapter 9 he wrote:

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly;” – 

here Paul is sharing his example with us – 

“So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

Paul is a good example; we ought to imitate him. But then he immediately tells us about all of these Israelites who were not a good example – they were a bad example! – and we should learn from their bad example and not follow in their footsteps.

This is an amazing passage. Do you realize all of the Old Testament passages that stand behind these first 22 verses in 1 Corinthians 10? It's astounding: Numbers 11-25 and Deuteronomy 32 and Exodus 32 and Exodus 14. All of those passages are in the background to these 22 verses.

Let's walk through the five ‘nots’ that Paul highlights in verses 6-10.

The First ‘Not’

The first ‘not’: “that we might not desire evil as they did” (v. 6). That's where all of our problems begin, in terms of the desires and the inclinations of our heart. And we are told in Numbers 11:4-35 that the Israelites craved meat and despised the manna which God had provided for them. And God was angry at their complaining and grumbling. And he gave them so much meat that it came out of their nostrils and he sent a plague upon them and they died. That's what God thinks of evil cravings. Do not desire evil.

The Second ‘Not’

The second ‘not’: “Do not be idolaters as some of them were” (v. 7). Do you know what an idol is? An idol is not merely a statue that people build with wood, and then overlay it with gold and silver. Of course, there certainly are many idols like that in the world, and there have been throughout history. But at root an idol is really anyone or anything that we put in the place of God.

In verse 7 Paul was referring to Exodus 32. God had given the Israelites this remarkable deliverance and then he had revealed his Ten Commandments to them at Mount Sinai. And then what did Moses do? Moses went up the mountain to talk with God. And what did the Israelites do? This is what it says at the beginning of Chapter 32: “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”” (Exodus 32:1)

The people were thinking: God seems far away, God's appointed man seems far away, we need something tangible, we need something that we can see and touch and feel good about. So, make us a god, Aaron. And so, as you probably know, Aaron collects all the jewelry and he makes a golden calf. And Aaron says something like: Here is your God, O Israel. Let's celebrate a feast to the Lord. They conceived of this as a feast to the Lord, but they had represented the Lord with an idol. And what did they do? “The people sat down to eat and drink,” Paul tells us, and that's what it says in Exodus 32. They “sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” (1 Corinthians 10:7; see Exodus 32:6) Now it’s not like they rose up to play a game of soccer! Instead there is revelry and an unhinged dancing and laughter and maybe debauchery that is all centered upon their devotion to this idol. Paul’s warning is clear: do not put anyone or anything in the place of God.

The Third ‘Not’

The third ‘not’: “We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did” (v. 8). Here Paul is referring to Numbers 25, which says that the sons of Israel began to commit sexual immorality with the daughters of Moab. And the daughters of Moab invited the Israelite men to make sacrifices to their gods. They were eating and drinking with these women, before these false gods. And God sent a great plague upon them.

The Fourth ‘Not’

The fourth ‘not’: “We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did” (v. 9). This is a reference to Numbers 21: the people were impatient and they “spoke against God and against Moses” saying: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loath this worthless food.” (Numbers 21:5)

Do you notice how much in the 1 Corinthians 10:1-22 passage has to do with food and drink? I mean it's all over the place – there are continual references to food and drink. And going back to the Old Testament, the Israelites were not content with what the Lord had provided. They craved what he did not provide and they complained about not having it. And so in Numbers 21, “the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people” and many died (Numbers 21:6).

The Fifth ‘Not’

And finally the fifth ‘not’: “nor grumble” (v. 10). Do not grumble! Do you know what Old Testament passage that refers to? It's a tough call because they were always grumbling – Exodus 15, Exodus 16, Exodus 17, Numbers 11, Numbers 12, Numbers 14, Numbers 16, Numbers 20 – they're always grumbling, always complaining, always quarreling, something's always wrong. Usually it has to do with food, but not always. Sometimes they grumbled about Moses – who is this Moses guy? Why is he exalted above us? Why is he special?

The Heart of the Matter

Now here's the deal. It's easy to point the finger at them and be like, ‘Man, they're just really messed up! I mean, we would never do that!’ Well, evidently we might do that. Otherwise Paul wouldn't waste his time exhorting us not to be like that. So it's obviously possible for us to fall into those same patterns.

But here's the bottom line, aside from the particularities of their sins. Here are the questions you have to ask. Are you satisfied with the Lord's arrangement of your life? With the Lord's provision? With the Lord's instruction? And with his boundaries? Do you trust him to lead you in the good way and to supply your daily bread? Do you believe that the Lord is with you for your good? That's the fundamental heart problem that the Israelites had. Their unbelief expressed itself in this tragic way: they did not believe that the Lord was with them for their good.

They thought that the Lord was against them – that he had delivered them and brought them into the wilderness to destroy them. And that mindset is what gets us into all kinds of trouble. It may be marriage; parenting; the workplace; finances; any number of cultural, social, political, or church-related ups and downs that we face. Do you believe that the Lord is with you for your good?

In Numbers 13, the Lord had those twelve spies spy out the land of Canaan that he was going to give them. And you know how they, the Israelites, were discontent with the manna that God had provided. Well, God showed these twelve spies the Promised Land – they got to see a land flowing with milk and honey, a good land. They brought back wonderful fruit that had come from that land – and that was the land where God was going to take them. He was going to give them a banquet in the Promised Land. But they refused to believe. They basically said, The Canaanites are going to kill us!They didn't believe that the Lord was with them for their good. They didn’t believe that the Lord would bring them into the Promised Land and satisfy them with a better banquet than they could have ever imagined. Don't be like them! 

PART THREE: HUMBLY RELY ON GOD

Next we come to verses 12-14. Keep in mind that all 22 verses are interrelated. Here's my summary of verses 12-14: Humbly rely on God in order to successfully resist temptation. The Lord does not want what happened to the Israelites to happen to you.

Verse 12 says, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Of course, this verse is speaking to the issue of presumption and self-confidence. But the reality is that – in the truest sense – the Lord wants you to stand. He wants you to stand – not in self-confidence, but in His strength. If you look at the end of verse 13, the goal is “that you may be able to endure it [that is, to endure the temptation]” – to withstand or to bear up under the temptation. The Lord does not want you to fall on your journey in the same way that the Israelites fell. He doesn't want you to be destroyed or laid low. Instead he wants you to stand firm; to walk steady; to run the race with endurance (1 Corinthians 9:24, Hebrews 12:1); to press on; to bear up under; to honor your God as you walk before him. So that's the goal.

Now Paul gives us four or five things that we must do, if we would not be like the Israelites who squandered God’s grace.

Take Heed

The first thing to do: “take heed” (v. 12). “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” If you're going into this new year and you're thinking ‘I've got this’ – he is talking to you! He is talking to all of us, but especially to you if you think ‘I'm just going to keep on coasting and I'm not going to get off track. How could I possibly get off track?’ Paul is saying that if you think that you stand, then you need to take heed: take heed to the example of the Israelites, to the warning from this passage, and to the fragility and the weakness of your own soul. Take care. Watch over your soul. Look carefully to the steps that you take. Be circumspect. Have your eyes open. Pay attention to your surroundings and to what's going on in your heart, and set your eyes on the Lord. Take heed!

Don’t Exaggerate the Severity of Your Temptation

Here is the second thing to do: Don't exaggerate the severity of your temptation. This is stated in two different ways in verse 13. First, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.” And then there's a second statement that echoes the same thing: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.” So if you think that your particular temptation is over-the-top, that no one else has ever dealt with this, that your situation is a special case – or if you think that your temptation is so intense and so severe that you do not have the resources available to you in the Lord to withstand it and overcome it – then your thinking is unbiblical.

When you face temptations, severe and intense though they are, you should understand, first of all, that the kind of temptations that you are dealing with are also being faced by tens of millions of other people around the world. These are just common, normal, ordinary, terrible temptations. Terrible, severe, intense temptations afflict everyone! You're not a special case. And if you tell yourself that you're a special case, I think you're going to get yourself into trouble. You might give yourself an excuse not to seek to overcome the temptation, or you might not look to others to help you. ‘How could they help you, if you're a special case?’

But the other thing that we must keep in mind is that God himself “will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.” Now “your ability” doesn’t mean the ability that you have in and of yourself. Instead “your ability” means the ability that you have as a son or daughter of God; the ability that you have as a saint who has been sanctified, who is in Christ, and in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. If you really are a child of God, then this promise is applicable to you – that God “will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.” So instead of feeling sorry for yourself, lay hold of the Lord. Lay hold of his promises. Lay hold of all the resources that he makes available to you. Stand up and slay the dragon! That is the idea, do you understand?

So, number one, take heed; and number two, don't exaggerate the severity of your temptation.

Cling to God and His Faithfulness

The third thing to do is this: Cling to God and his faithfulness. There is this wonderful affirmation in the middle of verse 13: “God is faithful”. That makes all the difference. God is faithful. God is trustworthy. He will “never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). He will uphold you. He will help you. He will watch over you as you come and as you go. His eye is upon you for good. He remembers that you are made of dust. He knows your weakness. He's not ashamed of you on that account, but he's even moderating the intensity of the temptation so that it doesn't overwhelm you. And he stands ready to help you and strengthen you in the midst of it. God is faithful.

Look Expectantly for the Way of Escape

As you are trusting in the Lord and His faithfulness, there is a fourth thing to do: Look expectantly for the way of escape. If you believe that God is far away – if you believe that God is against you – then you're not going to be expecting him to make a way of escape for you. But if you're clinging to the Lord and believing in his faithfulness and eagerly looking for his help, then you can put this into practice. It says in verse 13: “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” (italics added). God wants you to endure, withstand, resist, and overcome the temptation. And so, this is a promise that God will make a way of escape.

That way of escape will vary from circumstance to circumstance. It may be as simple as: ‘I had believed a lie, and it was troubling me. And then I read God's Word, and it set me straight, and I believed his promise and it gave me peace.’ And there's your escape – believing the promise.

Trusting the Lord is always at the heart of escaping temptation, but there may be other things to do. The Lord may lead you to simply say no to the offer that is set before you. You may have to turn off the television, shut down the computer, or maybe you'll have to be like Caleb in the movie Fireproofand smash your computer (if it is proving to be a continual and overwhelming source of temptation). You may have to break off a relationship with someone who is having a negative influence on you. You may have to run away from the temptation, like Joseph did in the Book of Genesis. You may have to run to your brothers and sisters in Christ, who can help you and encourage you and pray for you and lift you up. But the heart attitude that we ought to have is: ‘My God is going to make a way of escape and therefore I am looking expectantly for it!’

Take It!

So take heed; don't exaggerate the severity of your temptation; cling to God and his faithfulness; look expectantly for the way of escape; and then, finally, we come to the fifth thing to do: take it! Take the way of escape! Immediately after verses 12-13, verse 14 says, “Therefore my beloved, flee from idolatry.” So your faithful God has made the way of escape and you see it, so take it! It is no credit to you if you can intellectually recognize the wonderful escape that God has made for you, but you don't take it. Instead be resolved to walk in obedience and follow the God-appointed escape route!

PART FOUR: NEVER COMPROMISE YOUR LOYALTY TO JESUS

Finally, let's go to verses 15-22. This is really the heart of the matter. I've said that this whole passage refers to eating and drinking over and over and over again. The real issue isn't merely physical eating and physical drinking, but it's trusting the Lord's provision. It's being content in what he supplies for your well-being. This certainly comes to the fore in verses 15-22. Let me summarize it this way:

Realize the gravity of eating and drinking at the Lord's Table, and be resolved that you will not compromise your loyalty to Jesus by eating at the table of his rivals. Realize the gravity of partaking at the Lord's Table, and be resolved in your heart and mind that you will never compromise your loyalty to Jesus by eating and drinking at the table of his rivals – at the table of idols, at the table of demons.So let’s walk through these verses.

Paul wants us to understand the gravity of the Lord's Table, and he wants us to think through it for ourselves. So he says in verse 15, “I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.” You're sensible. You’re wise. You can think. You know the Lord. You know the Bible. Judge what I'm about to say, Paul says, and that's why he asks a bunch of questions in verses 16-22, because he wants you to interact with his reasoning process.

Paul says in verse 16: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?” The Son of God shed his innocent blood in order to make atonement for our sins and bring us peace with God, and we have fellowship with him. Verse 16 continues: “The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” This is true spiritual food: Christ gave himself for us – his body was broken apart so that we could be put back together. What love, what sacrifice, what generosity!

And this body of Christ represented in the bread is so remarkable in that it unites us together as one body. As verse 17 says, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” The Lord's Table is what truly binds us together and unifies us as his children.

This eating and drinking is an act of worship. We come to the Table as worshipers – as participants in worship. Verse 18 says, “Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar?” When you partake of the bread and the cup, you are a participant in all that is represented here. And the remarkable thing is: who provided the sacrifice? You must understand that the idols, the false gods, the demons, they make you pay everything, and they don't care about you at all. But the unique thing about the Lord’s Table – and the sacrifice and the altar associated with it – is that the Lord Jesus Christ himself is the sacrifice. He paid it all. He laid everything on the line. He is the One who offers the sacrifice. And it is our privilege to be guests at his Table.

After showing us the gravity of the Lord's Table, then Paul shows us the gravity of idolatry. He says, “What do I imply then? That food offered to idols as anything, or that an idol is anything?” (v. 19) Here's the deal: in ancient times, food was often prepared in the context of a sacrifice to a foreign god. And that could trouble the minds of believers. But earlier in Chapter 8, Paul taught us that since idols aren't anything, if you go to the meat market and you buy some meat to eat at home, and you know and understand that an idol is nothing, then you don't have to worry about the fact that some pagan prepared that meat as an act of devotion to an idol, as long as you understand that you're not worshipping that false god.

But when it comes to overt festivals and celebrations and events where people are coming together in order to honor a false god or to honor an idol, Paul tells us that we must understand that there is something dark behind the idolatry. There is a dark spiritual reality where people are essentially offering sacrifices to demons: “No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God” (v. 20). And Paul says you need to avoid that. How can you partake of the Lord's Table and then go and sit down at the table of demons? It's utterly incompatible: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” (v. 21)

Flee Idolatry!

Now for us living in a materialistic culture, we may struggle to think: ‘How does that apply to us today?’ Well, I would just say two things. Going back to verse 14, we need to flee idolatry. And we need to flee both front door idolatry and side door idolatry.

Front door idolatry is a celebration or festival or party that is explicitly given in honor of a false god. Do those happen today? Yes. Inter-religious or inter-faith prayer services, pride parades or same-sex wedding ceremonies, parties or concerts that are marked by debauchery and disorder, a political protest that is characterized by religious-like zeal for a person or a party or an ideology – behind these allegiances stand dark spiritual realities and you do not want to associate with them.

But we are more likely to be tempted by side door idolatry, which is what Paul was talking about in verses 6-10. You see, it's not so much that the disorder and debauchery is out there, but that it's in here (in your very own heart) and you look for satisfaction in all the wrong places and, like the Israelites, you're impatient and discontent and not satisfied with what the Lord provides. And before you know it, you find yourself eating and drinking and rising up to play with an idol, with a god-substitute at the center of your devotion. Flee idolatry!

We are weak, brothers and sisters, we are weak. But God is strong and he does not want to leverage his strength against us. He wants to leverage his strength for us. In his great strength, the Lord Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and he purchased us with his own blood and he loves us with an everlasting love. Shall we provoke his anger and jealousy by fooling around with demons, idols, false gods, god-substitutes: “Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” (v. 22)? Or shall we be loyal and devoted to our Lord?

Let me pray.

Father, I pray that you would give us the grace and the strength and the nourishment to stay faithful to the Lord God, to stay faithful to Jesus Christ, who loved us and laid down his life for us. Father, I pray that you would impress upon our hearts and minds that you are faithful, you do all things well, you make a straight path for our feet, and all that you have provided is good for us. And I pray that we would live with confidence in your care. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.