Okay, let's turn to 1 Corinthians
chapter 10. Our text is going to be in verse
13, and we're just going to divide this verse into three divisions,
and that will be our headings this morning. Here's our first
heading, verse 13, There hath no temptation taken you, but
such as is common to man." Here's the second heading, "...but God
is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that
ye are able." And here's the third heading, "...but God will
with the temptation also make a way to escape." And note this last part. that
you may be able to bear it. You may be able to bear it. There's
no temptation that's taken us, brethren, but such as is common
among us as brethren. No temptation has taken us, but
that's common to man. Temptation means two things.
There's trials that God sent purposely. There are trials of
your faith, work of patience. That's what James said. And then
there's one other way the word temptations is used in Scripture,
and it means the lust of our flesh. And that's not of God. Let no man say when he's tempted,
I'm tempted of God. For God can't be tempted with
evil, neither tempted be any man, but every man's tempted.
This lustful temptation, when he's drawn away of his own lust
and enticed. Believer, there's no temptation
that's taken you, but such as is common to man. You know, we
get to thinking sometimes that our trial is worse than our brother's
trial. And it's somehow the trial is
meant to humble us. Sometimes we can be overtaken
in pride even by the trial. That's why we got these two words
right here before our text in verses 12. It says, Wherefore
let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. And then
there in In verse 14 it says, ìWherefore, my dearly beloved,
flee from my knowledge.î Those are two good words of instruction.
Now, weíve got the example here of the church in the wilderness
back up in verse 1. Letís just read this. ìLord,
for brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant how that
all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through
the sea, and were all baptized under Moses in the cloud and
in the sea. and did all eat the same spiritual
meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink, for they drank
of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.
But with many of them God was not well pleased, for they were
overthrown in the wilderness." Now, these things were our examples. They all came out of Egypt together.
They was all taught the same gospel of Christ together. They
were all faced the same trials together. And they all had that
same lust of the flesh together. And yet the majority perished
in the wilderness. The majority of them perished
there in the wilderness. Well, he says there in verse
6, I want to look at some of these trials. And I think here,
and it's just this brief example that Paul gives us by the Spirit
of God, he tells us pretty much every trial that we face, every
one of them. He says here in verse 6, through
the intent we should not lust after evil things as they also
lusted. We have trials of God's providence,
where God's working everything in this world, and sometimes
we wrestle with that lustful flesh in the midst of those trials.
You know, every step is ordered by God exactly for His people. Every step in this world we take
is ordered by God. All Israel came out together.
They went right where God directed them together. They had what
God gave them. And they didn't have what God
kept from them. The problem was they wanted to have what God
hadn't given them. And they didn't want what God
gave them. That's the problem. Now, God's
children are proven one way. We're proven through the manna.
We're proven through the manna. We're proven through the bread.
When He gave that bread, He said, I'll rain down bread from heaven
for you. And the people would go out and gather a certain rate
every day that I may prove them whether they'll walk in my law
or not. The Lord told Philip, you reach out six, it's just
a parallel, an extra sixteen. The Lord told Philip, that multitude
came there just before he told them, I'm the bread from heaven,
just before that happened. The multitude came there and
he said, Philip, how are we going to feed all this multitude that
he might prove him? looked away. I don't know how
it went. And you know what him and Andrew
was thinking when they was out there gathering up all them loaves
and all them fishes in those baskets? They were thinking,
why did we ever look away from the prairie? Why did we look
away from him? That's what he proves to us over
and over and over again. He gave them quail in the wilderness
too, but you know when he gave them that quail, he didn't give
them any instruction about that quail. He didn't give them any
instruction. He gave them instruction through the manna, but he didn't
give them any instruction about the quail. The quail's flesh. The quail's flesh. We're not
going to get any help from the flesh. And when we start turning
to the flesh and lusting after the flesh and feeding on the
flesh, we're not going to find any peace and any life, any contentment
whatsoever. None. The Lord said, except you
eat My flesh. That's the flesh. To eat, except
to eat my flesh and drink my blood, you don't have any life.
To eat His flesh, drink His blood, believe on Him. He said, and
you'll never hunger and never thirst. That's where the contentment
is. And in all these trials of providence,
you know, if you have, if you don't have, the Lord's teaching
us, we're not going to find contentment in His flesh. We're not going
to find contentment in worldly riches. Our contentment's going
to be in Christ alone. That's where we find contentment.
We've been chosen in Christ. We've been redeemed by Christ.
We're called by Christ. We're kept by Christ. And we're
taught by Christ. And when we get to glory, Christ
is going to be the crown of glory. And I'll give this to my young
brethren. We have stuffitis. And we want
the stuff that it took these older brethren 30 years to have. We want that now. And we could
give our children all this world and give them everything we can
give, carry them from one ballgame to the next ballgame, from this
club to that club, from this thing to that thing, to where
they got absolutely no time for the Scriptures, absolutely no
time to worship the Lord, absolutely no time for anything. And at
the end of it all, we may have given them the world, but if
they don't have Christ, they're going to say there's something
else you could have given them. But if God bless the world, we
endeavor to teach them Christ and endeavor to show them the
way. And God bless that. Even though
we didn't give them the world, they'll say, You gave me everything. Because they'll have Christ who's
all. They will have all. Then they
had the trial of patience. Oh boy, this is a tough one.
Trial of patience. Trial of waiting on God. Look
here in verse seven. Neither be ye idolaters as were
some of them, as it is written. It says the people sat down to
eat and drink and rose up to play. You know how that came
about? God didn't operate on their timetable.
Moses went up into the mountain. Scripture says, when the people
saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people
gathered themselves together under Aaron and said, Oh, make
us gods that will go before us. Ask for this man Moses, the man
that brought us up out of the land of Egypt. We don't even
know what's become of him. You remember Saul? Samuel told
him to wait until he come up there, you know, and Saul got
to looking around, and he saw all the enemies around him, and
he saw, and he decided, I'll take place of the high priest,
and I'll make an offering myself and do all that. Samuel came
up there, and he said, he told him at one point, he said, you
know what stubbornness is? He said, it's idolatry. Not waiting
on God. That's the idolatry. The idolatry
came about whenever he made that camp. It came about because they
didn't wait on God. They looked to self. That's idolatry.
What about in our day? What about in our day? If you
want to look at this in 2 Peter 3, 3, we're waiting on Christ
to come down out of the mount right now, aren't we? This One
who delivered us out of Egypt, we're waiting on Him to come
down out of the mount right now. And you know what's going on
in the world all around us? In religion. I'm talking about
in religion. You know what's going on all around us? 2 Peter
3, 3, knowing this first, that there shall come in the last
day scoffers. walking after their own lust
and saying, where's the promise of his coming? For since the
fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the
beginning of the creation." That's exactly what they said over there
when Moses didn't come down out of the mountain. And folks get
tired of waiting, and they say, where he had come back, let's
make something that people can see. Let's make some religion
that folks can see. And that's how we'll get the
folks in here, and we'll prosper that way. We got to wait on the
Lord. The farmer plants a seed, and
he can't do anything to make that seed grow. He just got to
plant it and wait. God gives the early rain, He
gives the latter rain. Our miracle grow, that miracle
grow that we have is the gospel. And we just preach Christ, and
we wait on Him. He gives the rain. And we wait on Him, just
like the farmer does. And He gives the early and latter
rain. Then they had the trial of the false prophets and false
religion. Verse 8, Neither let us commit
fornication, as some of them committed. I'm sorry, 1 Corinthians
10, 8. Neither let us commit fornication,
as some of them committed, and fell in one day, three and twenty
thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ,
as some of them also tempted and were destroyed as serpents.
Balaam is one of those false prophets, and you read about
Balaam, he spoke the truth because God made him speak the truth.
Why was he a false prophet? He's a false prophet because
he joined himself with Moab, at Belpior, with false free-will,
idle-works religion. That's what made him a false
prophet. And joining himself with them, he used the Moabite
women to attract Israel to come there, and they joined themselves
with him. And it says, the people began
to commit whoredoms with the daughters of Moab, and called
the people unto the sacrifices of their gods, and Israel joined
himself unto Belpior. The believers joined Christ. like a husband and a wife are
united. We're joined in, we're one with
Him. And to join in with will-worship,
and to join in with false religionists who are exalting man rather than
Christ, to join in with them is fornication. It's spiritual
fornication is what it is. Israel had some false prophets
left in their day. Corinth had some left in their
day. We've got some left in our day. The Lord's left them there
on purpose. We're all facing that same thing.
That's not something that's uncommon in any of us. They're all around
us, and we all face it together. But to join with them, to join
in with them, that's spiritual fornication. Look at verse 15
there. I speak as to wise men. Judge
ye what I say. The cup of blessing which we
bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread
which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?
For we being many are one bread and one body, for we're all partakers
of that one Christ, of that one bread. We're members one of another
in Him. Behold, Israel after the flesh,
just look at that example, are not they which eat of the sacrifices
partakers of the altar? What say I then? What's your
point, Paul? What's your saying? That the
idol is anything, or that which is offered as sacrifice to idols
is anything? No, I'm not giving any credit
to their worship whatsoever. I'm not saying that what they're
worshiping and those things are anything. I'm not saying that
at all. But I do say this, verse 20, that the things which the
Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God. And
I would not that you should have fellowship with devils. You cannot
drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of the devil. Can I be
partakers of the Lord's table, not the table of devils? Do we
provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? Shall
we tempt Christ as they tempted Christ in the wilderness? We're
going to tempt Him? We can't reform Babylon. You
can't reform Babylon. You can't reform Babylon at all. And that's what folks should
do. I'm going to stay in here and maybe I can help them out
a little bit, try to steer them in the right direction. You're
going to get steered in the wrong direction. You're not going to
steer them in the right direction. The Lord says, come out of Babylon.
He doesn't say go in there and try to reform them. Come out
of Babylon. We can't provoke the Lord to
jealousy. We don't tempt Christ as if to say, well, will the
Lord keep me? I was going to go in. If I'm
His, He'll keep me. I'm going to go in here and join
in with them. We don't tempt Christ that way. Brother Don made that good illustration
yesterday. You wouldn't do that with your
wife. You wouldn't do that with your husband. No, no. All right, here's the next thing.
We have trials with God's ordained means of grace. You know, we do. Listen to this,
verse ten. Neither murmur ye as some of
them also murmured, and were destroyed of this destroyer.
They murmured against God, they murmured against the manna, they
murmured against his messengers, they murmured against his gospel,
they murmured against his ordinances. Chorus said, We're all holy.
You give yourself too much authority, Moses. Who are we? We're nobody. You're murmuring
against God, not us. You think that, you think we
wouldn't have any problems with God's ordained means of grace.
You ever felt like this? I feel so, I'm so cast down and
I'm so, I'm so weighted with this burden that I'm under. I
can't even go to the services tonight. You know there's no
better time to go than then. I can't even look up the scriptures
and read them. and no better time to open them up. I can't
go to the Lord in prayer, no better time. He don't say, come
to me when you're strong. He says, come to me when you've
got nothing, when you've got no strength. That's where you're
going to find strength. The whole purpose of coming to
Him. The gospel is a means, the gospel
used to say, to please God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that way. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing
by the Word of God. This scripture, He's given us
these scriptures. Don't read those scriptures.
Be diligent in them. He's given us His ordinances. We got to the Lord's table. We
got baptism. Obey Him. Obey Him. He's given
us access to His throne of grace. Come to Him continually. Continually. Now, verse eleven says, All these
things happened unto them for examples, and they were written
for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
So we see here every brother and sister facing the same Same
trials, and we're wrestling with the same fleshly lusts, aren't
we? Same fleshly lusts. So here's
our second vision, though. Look at this. Verse 13, But God
is faithful. God is faithful. Who will not
suffer you to be tempted above that you're able. You know what
the difference between those who perished in the wilderness
and those who continue to believe in God was? The grace of God. The faithfulness of God. That's
the difference. That's the difference. God is
faithful. Everybody that He's called, He's
faithful to keep us. It says He's able to keep you
from falling and to present you thoughtless before the presence
of His glory with exceeding joy. He's the only wise God, our Savior.
And He's faithful. Just like we saw that full cup
last night, He's faithful. He's full of faith. And if we
don't believe, He's got a bad faith. He's going to keep us
believing Him even when we don't believe Him. He's going to turn
us again and keep us trusting Him. He's going to honor us,
or honor His Son Christ Jesus as we re-honor Him, because He
shed His blood for us, and He's going to honor Him. And so He's
going to keep us trusting Him alone. And He's called us, and
He's made us new, and He's given us this grace in our heart to
hear Him and to believe Him. And He's told us through His
gospel, He said, Behold, I'm with thee. I'll keep thee in
all places whither you go. I'm going to bring you again
to this land. I'm not going to leave you until I've done that
which I've spoken to you of. And we believe Him by His grace.
We trusted that what He said to us is so, and we believe Him. And because we believe Him, He's
going to be faithful to keep us. The psalmist said, Thou wilt
keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because
he trusts you to do that. He trusted in you. He made us
to trust him. He wouldn't call us and make
us to trust him. And here is word that he's promised
to us to trust him. And then when we started trusting
him, betray our trust, he wouldn't do that. He's going to trust
us, because we trust him to trust us, to keep us trusting him.
And that's what these trials are to teach us, that God's faithful.
You might have, somebody might have a dear loved one that's
been unfaithful to you, or a business associate or something, been
unfaithful to you. God's never been unfaithful to you. And that's
what He's teaching you in that trial. He's not unfaithful. He's faithful. He's the one that's
faithful. You come to the bitter waters
of Morrow. You've seen one thing after another slip through your
fingers. You had all this stuff, and you thought, boy, I've got
some security now. And the economy just started
going south, and you saw one thing after another slip through
your hands, and it caused some bitter water for you. Do you
know what God's teaching through that trial? Everything we try
to find security in in this world is a fading, fleeing, worthless
shadow, and it won't help us at all. But God's faithful. You
still got Him, don't you? Still, everything else may have
slipped through your fingers, But you still got Him. God is
faithful to keep His children. And there was an old preacher
I read about that he was arrested in the days of Queen Mary, and
they were going to take him to be killed for preaching the gospel. And when the soldiers came to
arrest him, they said, they were laughing at him, you know, and
they said, Oh, where's that God that's working everything together
for good now? Where's He now that's keeping
you and providing for you. Is this all working together
for your good?" And he said, yes, it is. They went on a little
further and a preacher fell off his horse and broke his leg.
And man, they went to town with that. They went to laughing and
scoffing at him and saying, you know, oh, I guess that's working
together for you good too, isn't it? He said, yes, it is. And
because he fell off that horse and broke his leg, they couldn't
get to London on time. They didn't plan to. And by the
time they got there, they heard all these bells ringing. And
they said, what's the bells ringing for? And they said, Queen Mary
died yesterday. Ain't going to be no preachers
on today. But if he hadn't had his leg
broke, better have our leg broke, isn't it? It's going to keep
us in the Lord. And he's faithful, too, in his
restraining power. Satan can't do anything but what
God permits him to do. And he's faithful to bring that
judgment just to the place where it needs to be brought to, to
teach us to trust him along. I want to give you something
to look at over here in Psalm 9. Psalm 9, in verse 16. This is about his
faithfulness. Psalm 9, 16. The Lord is known by the judgment
which he executed. He has that judgment Allow that
trial just to go just to where it needs to go. Keep us. He's
known by the judgment he executed. The wicked is snared in the work
of his own hands. Hegeon, Selah, that means give
us a double thought. Give us a double meditation right
here. Think on that. The Lord's known
by the judgment which he executed. The wicked is snared in the work
of his own hands. You know why he does that? There's
two sides to that coin. The wicked's going to be snared.
through God's judgment. The wicked's going to be snared
in the work of his own hand. But there's a flip side to that.
Verse 18, For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and
the expectation of the poor shall not perish forever. The Lord's
doing this for His people. Let me give you an example. Remember
in the days of Moses, when Moses was a infant, and the command
went out, kill all the babies, because Satan had been trying
from the beginning to keep Christ from coming into this world.
The command went out, kill all the babies. That wicked command
and wicked hands, you know what happened through those wicked
hands? Moses was taken to the house of Pharaoh and raised the
best he could be raised, and then later carried back into
Egypt, and he's the one God used to bring them right out of Egypt. Haman and Mordecai. Haman went
about, boy, he's going to have Mordecai slain, and he's going
to have all the Jews destroyed. And Satan's working behind all
that so that Christ don't come into the world through the line
of the tribal children. And Haman did everything. He
built the gallows. He had everything arranged, ready
to hang him. He came in there, and that king said, he done found
out about the whole plan, and said, I want to give honor to
the man that's going to save these people. He said, what should
I do to him? He said, put him on the finest
stallion, rope him in the best garments, take him through the
streets, and let everybody praise him. He said, I think that's
what I'll do. And they went out and hung Haman
on the gallows he made, on the very scaffold he made, and took
Mordecai and brought him to the streets. That's Christ. But the best example is when
Christ came into this earth, and he walked this earth, finally,
finally, they came to the point where Satan thought, I got him.
I got him. And all those wicked hands went
to working together, and with every blow of the hammer on those
nails, Every blow of that hammer, Christ was crushing Satan's head. Every blow of that hammer, he
was crushing his head. The wicked, he was digging the
grave. And with every spade that he
was digging the grave for Christ, he was digging his own grave. And by that, the oppression of
the poor has ceased. The expectation of the needy
has been fulfilled. And we've been delivered. We've
been delivered. He's known by the judgment he
executes. He's faithful. So when the trial comes and it
looks like, boy, I'm gone. My steps are gone now. This is
it. I'm done. Just know, the works
of the wicked. He's working the works of the
wicked to let them dig their own grave and deliver his people
out of captivity. I had a daughter in Christ that
told me one time the Lord took her mother when she was real
young. And she told me, she said, I wouldn't change anything about
it now. And she said it was very painful,
very sorrowful, but I wouldn't change a thing about it because
the Lord taught me how very near His presence is with me continually.
And she said, I would not give anything for what He's taught
me. She said everything He did was best. That's when you know
you've come to the end, the end for which the trial was sent.
That's the end for which it was sent. Here's the third thing. the way of escape. Verse 13. But God will, with the temptation,
also make a way to escape. And you note this here, that
you may be able to bear it. We looked at all these temptations
here. Is the Lord, is He taking us
out of the world? He said, Lord, I pray not, Father,
I pray not that you take them out of the world, that you keep
them from me. Has He taken false religion out
of the world? It's still there. Has He taken us out of this flesh
that's lusting and warring against us? It's still there, isn't it?
So He don't have to take us out of the trial. He can deliver
us out of the trial without He taking us out of the trial. The Lord gives grace sufficient
to keep us, to make us stand. And that grace always leads us
to Christ. And Christ is the way. He's the
way we escape. He's the way we escape. In the
wilderness, you know, when they came to the wells of Myra, and
that well was bitter, and they couldn't drink it, boy, they
thought they fixed it. They thought, we've been thirsty
here. We've got to come to the well.
Here's water. And the word went through the camp, the well's
bitter. But you know what the answer was? You know how they
escaped that bitterness? You know how God provided for
them? There was a tree there, a tree
there, and that tree, he said, cut down that tree. Because he
put Christ on the cross, and because Christ bore away the
sin of his people, he's the one who comes in the time of those
bitter waters, and he sweetens the waters. He makes the water
sweet for us. They come along, they went to
the wilderness of sin, they went to murmur, nothing to eat, nothing
to eat. The Lord gave Nana that bread, that bread. Don't long
for the flesh. Don't look after the flesh. He
gave them what they wanted. He gave them flesh until it came
out their nostrils. He gave them flesh, but he gave
them leanness of soul. But the bread, the bread, the
bread, those that ate the bread, that's where the provision is.
They came after that. They come in to reap for them.
They didn't have any water. He said, Go up there, Moses.
He said to Horam. And he said, I'm standing on
a rock. God, our Father, has been standing on a rock since
before the world ever began. That rock's Christ. And because
that rock was smitten in place of His people and put away our
sin, the water of life has come out of that rock. And that's
where we're going to, that's, He's the way of escape. He's
the way we're going to be able to bear these trials. Every one
of these trials, that Bill Serkis came, where was the way of escape? He was made what was killing
them. He was made what was biting them. He was made what, that
venomous thing that was killing them, and it was lifted up. Just
like Christ was lifted from the cross, and they looked to Him,
and they were healed. He's the way. His presence, you
know what His presence does? It makes the beauty of His holiness
so beautiful to us. When He comes in the midst of
the trial, it makes it so beautiful to us that the temptations, our
lustful temptations, lose all their power, and the trial loses
all its bitterness, and we find the water sweet in Him. And really
what's happening when he does that is the whole burden that
we're under, he's showing us, I'm carrying the whole thing.
I'm carrying the whole thing. It rolls off of us onto him. And we see he's carrying the
whole thing. He always has been. He's been
carrying our burden for us since the Lord put us in him before
the world began. And he's going to keep carrying
it. One of my dear sisters told me, it's been 13 years, Since
my husband passed, he's been carrying me, hasn't he? He's
continued to carry you. Sister Eleanor, he carries you. Listen to this. Listen to this
word. Isaiah 46.4. We've got to look
at this. You're going to like this. Isaiah
46.4. This is what he whispers to you
when he calls you to it. and draws you to come to His
throne of grace and causes you to pour out your heart to Him
and to listen to what He has to say, this is what He says
to you. He says, verse 3, He says, You are born by Me from the belly,
you are carried by Me from the womb. Verse 4, And even to your
old age I am He, and even to great hairs will I carry you.
I've made you, and I'll bear you, even I will carry you, and
I'll deliver you." The world may be raging around you. As one man said, the world's
going to hell in a handbasket, and a handbasket's made in China
and sold at Wal-Mart. He takes that burden and He makes
us be able to bear it. Be able to bear it. And you know
what James said? He said, he that bears the burden,
he said, he that goes through the temptation and bears the
trial, he said, he's going to come to the end. He that endures,
he that perseveres to the end, preserved by Christ, kept to
the end, he said, he's going to receive a crown of life. Then,
just like Brother Donnie said a while ago, then it's not going
to matter. You know how you watch those home videos of your little
kids and stuff, and you look back, you laugh at the silly
things you did, the foolish things and everything. You know, you
just sit around laughing. Maybe that day we're just going
to think, whew, we was a bunch of little children. I pray that the Lord will give
us grace to believe Him, grace to find contentment in Christ
only, grace to wait on the Lord. Grace to look away from the religion
and the fool's goal of this world to him alone. Grace to continue
in his gospel together and grace to run this course right to the
end where we meet Christ our all. That's my hope. On behalf
of Melinda and I, we sure do love you. We do. Thank you so much. We pray for
you and we thank you. And we thank God for you. Amen. Oh, sweet, so precious.