1 Corinthians chapter 10. We
begin reading there at verse 1. It says, Moreover, 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 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
to the intent we should not lust after evil things as they also
lusted. Neither be the idolaters as were
some of them, as it is written, the people sat down to eat and
drink and rose up to play. 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 of serpents.
Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were
destroyed of the destroyer. Now all of these things happened
unto them for examples, and they are written for our admonition,
upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that
thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. There hath no temptation
taken you, but such as is common to man. But God is faithful,
who will not suffer you to be tempted or tried. Above that
ye are able, but will with the temptation or trial also make
a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. Wherefore,
my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. 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 are all partakers of that
one bread. Behold, Israel after the flesh
are not they which eat of the sacrifices, partakers of the
altar? What say I then that the idol
is anything, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols
is anything? But I say that the things which
the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to
God. And I would not that ye should
have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the
Lord and the cup of devils. Ye cannot be partakers of the
Lord's table and of the table of devils. Do we provoke the
Lord to jealousy? always stronger than he. All
things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.
All things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but
every man another's wealth. Whatsoever is sold in the shambles,
that eat, asking no question for conscience' sake. For the
earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. If any of them
that believe not, Bid you go to a feast, and ye be disposed
to go. Whatsoever is sent before you,
eat, asking no question for conscience' sake. But if any man say unto
you, This is offered in sacrifice to idols, eat not for his sake
that showed it, and for conscience' sake. For the earth is the Lord's,
and the fullness thereof. Conscience, I say, not thine
own, but of the other. For why is my liberty judged
of another man's conscience? For if I by grace be a partaker,
why am I evil spoken of for which I give thanks? Whether therefore
ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of
God. Give none offense, neither to
the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God. even
as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit,
but the profit of many, that they may be saved or delivered."
Now that's a lot of thoughts covered in this chapter. We're not going to attempt to
go through the whole chapter, but I wanted to read it so we
could see the context of what Paul's And of course he is continuing
on with the thoughts that he had in chapter 9. He said, Now every man that striveth
for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it
to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I therefore
so run, not as uncertainty, So fight I not as one that beateth
the air, or fights an imaginary foe, but I keep under my body,
and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when
I preach to others, I myself should be a castaway, or disqualified. That is, that I should appear
before my brethren as being one who is a hypocrite. That's essentially what he is
saying because he's talking about the fact He's not talking about
there's something he could do that would cause him to be cast
out of God's presence, but he's talking about something that
he might do as a man in the flesh. Therefore, he watched over himself
in the flesh, he says, because he did not want to be found to
be a hypocrite before men so that men would look at his preaching
and say, well, there's nothing to it. It doesn't mean anything. That's the reason why he said
that he would not take money from those to whom he preached,
because he didn't want someone saying, well, he's just preaching
for money. If he didn't take any money, they couldn't very
well say that, could they? And so it is. Now, unfortunately,
we live in an age when there is a lot of preaching for money.
In fact, most preaching that's done today is done for money.
And I'm not saying that everybody has a mind just to make money
that might be out here preaching, but, dear brethren, the gospel
has nothing to do with money. Now, you would never come to
that conclusion if you listened to most preachers, like on the
radio and TV especially. You'd think that money was one
of the most important ingredients in preaching the gospel, would
you not? Because most of them tell you, and I'm going to tell
you what, we're just going to have to quit. and the Lord is
going to let the Lord down in what we are doing if you do not
send us your money. So it is all up to you to do
it or the Lord is going to go out of business. Now dear brethren,
the Lord, He does not need men in the first place and He certainly
does not need the money of men. He owns the cattle on a thousand
hills and He will put money in the fish's mouth to pay His taxes
if it pleases Him to do so. And so the gospel has nothing
to do with money, and Paul made it very clear that he wasn't
in this as a business or as a career in order to make money from those
to whom he preached. And so it is that he says here,
with that same principle, I am going to watch over myself. And
I am going to, by the grace of God, not put myself in situations
that after I have preached to others, I myself would be a castaway
and just be disqualified from being what I would claim to be. And then he says, and also brethren,
keeping that same thought in mind, he says, also brethren,
I would not that ye should be ignorant about the history of
God's dealings with the nation of Israel. Now it's interesting
here that he speaks to this mixture of Jews and Gentiles, which mostly
were Gentiles in this Corinthian church. Now there were Jews among
them. But Corinth was basically a Greek city and the people that
were converted in that church by and large came out of the
pagan background of the Greeks. And so it is that he is speaking
here to them as though they are all of one family because of
this reason. You see, we are not Jews in the
strict sense of the word having the blood that's passed from
Abraham down to us. Now some of us may have some
of that blood in us, but it doesn't matter. And here Paul is using
the example of the Jews to these Gentiles. And what does he say? He said, I will not have you
ignorant how that all our fathers, because he is showing in my estimation
here that there is neither Jew nor Gentile in the kingdom of
God. But the Lord used the Jews to
typify the love of Christ for His church and the deliverance
that He would bring forth for His church, and in the same way
He has used the Gentiles as a means to bring the gospel to the Jews.
So it's an amazing thing, but the Lord doesn't have a natural
people in the earth which He says, these are My people. His
people are those which He has chosen out of every kindred,
tribe, nation, and tongue on the earth. And we all have the
same fathers as those who speak here, because He's talking about
fathers being in the household of faith. those whom the Lord
was pleased to manifest His grace and mercy to as He brought them,
the nation of Israel, out of Egypt. And so He says, I don't
want you to be ignorant of these things. You need to know your
history. You know, one of the things that
is happening in our nation today is And all the different problems
that we have is because we forget about the history of what went
on before. And when you forget history,
as someone has wisely said, when you disregard history, you are
prone to repeat it. You know, and isn't it the truth? I mean, we just keep doing the
same old things. It's like we forget about all
the things that went behind. and we are before us and we just
keep making the same mistakes over and over again in a natural
sense as a nation. So that is what he is speaking
to them about. In the spiritual sense he says,
moreover I do not want you to be ignorant of this. I want you
to know, I want you to look at what the Lord did when He brought
the nation of Israel out of Egypt. And he says that they were under
the cloud and all passed through the sea. They all came the same
way. There was not another pathway
for the Israelites to escape the Egyptians who were bent on
their destruction. There was only one pathway, one
avenue by which they were delivered. Is that true? I mean there is
not one of them that when they got to the other side, there
was not some coming over in boats. You know, and there was not some
stragglers that came along later on after the sea had closed up. No, once the sea had closed up,
that was it. The only ones that made it through
there alive were the Israelites. But all of them made it through
there, as you pointed out so ably there earlier. The Lord
has not lost one of those that belong to Him, and He is not
going to lose one of them that belong to Him. There was none
that were left behind. They made it through that. They
were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
There is no need to make more out of what Paul is saying here.
He is not speaking of a lesson on baptism here. He's just using
the term, they were all dipped in the same stream. Now we know that they went through
on dry land, so it's not literally speaking about going through
water, except for the fact that they did go through the water,
didn't they? Although the water didn't touch them, because it
was a wall on the right and on the left. And so they did go
through the water, though it didn't touch them. Now they were
all under the same cloud. That is the cloud that separated
them from the Egyptians, but this was the same cloud, was
it not, that was a shade to them by day, and then the fire was
there by night. And so the Lord says they were
all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. In other
words, as they followed Moses, they all went the same way. They
did all eat the same spiritual meat. Now He says spiritual meat here,
which it was spiritual meat. It was that meat or that food
that was sent down from heaven. They ate the manna. That's what
He's literally speaking about here. Now, it was natural food,
was it not? Well, sure it was, but it was
spiritually provided because no man had anything to do with
it. They didn't cause it to fall. It fell from heaven, and the
Lord gave it to them. And it's the same fashion in
which we think about this bread and this wine that we have here.
It's been provided for. And there's not a thing in the
world... Now we know somebody went out and bought the wine
that's in these glasses. Somebody made the bread and somebody
ground up the flour and all of that kind of stuff. But the substance
of it, what it is, we didn't provide it. For the Lord said,
this is my body which is broken for you. He said, this is my
blood which is shed. to wash away your sin. Now, we
have this here before us, but we didn't provide it, did we?
All we could do, I mean, all we could do is sit around and
eat some bread and drink some wine, but it wouldn't be anything
if it wasn't that the Lord had provided the spiritual meat that
comes with it. that has nothing really on the
one hand to do with the physical aspect of it except the Lord.
Because we are flesh and blood, He has given us things in flesh
and blood that we might see and that we might taste and feel.
And so they did all eat the same spiritual meat and did all drink
the same spiritual drink. Now you remember how they got
water. The Lord told Moses to speak to the rock and water came
out of it, didn't it? And then one time, what did Moses
do? He hit the rock. And the Lord took him to task
for it. Because, you see, the Lord would
provide it. It wouldn't be by the hand of
Moses. It wouldn't be through some demonstration
of something Moses could do. So they did all eat the same
spiritual meat, did drink the same spiritual drink, for they
drank of that rock. Have you ever drank of a rock?
Have you ever tried drinking a rock? That would be pretty
tough, wouldn't it? So what does it mean? It means they drank
of the water that came from the rock. But it's not talking about
the rock, per se. You know, men like to have religious
relics and different things. that they can put their hands
on. And I'm sure that if you could
go over there to this part of the world and you could identify
and historically document that one of these rocks was the rock
out of which the water flowed, that you could break that thing
up and there'd be people lining up to buy it. Because they would
think there was some significance to that rock. That's not what
he's talking about here. He's saying that the rock which
they drank out of, which all of God's people have drunk from
in all ages, is the same one. Those whom the Lord loved among
the Jews, they're not all Israel which are Israel, but those whom
the Lord loved out of Israel, they've all drunk from the same
spiritual rock that the Israel of God in all ages is drunk from,
which is the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what He says here. They
did all drink, for they drank that spiritual rock that followed
them, and that rock was Christ. So He's not talking about a mineral
here, is He? He's talking about the Savior.
He's talking about the One who is the Deliverer of His people. And then He says, But with many
of them God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the
wilderness. Now this is an indication of
just what I just said. They are not all Israel which
are of Israel. Even as it is true that all those
who walk among the saints of God are not of the saints of
God. Now that is a fact. That's just
the way it is. The Lord said that He would cause
the wheat and the tares to grow together until the time of the
harvest, and then He would separate them. So just because a man comes
along and says, I'm a follower of Christ, doesn't mean that
it's so. It doesn't mean that he belongs
to the Lord because he's a religious man, because he's a moral man,
because he does many wonderful things in the name of the Lord.
That doesn't make a man a child of God. But the Lord knoweth
them that are His, and He says, but with many of them God was
not well pleased. Now the Lord is well pleased
with His people. How do we know that? Because
of what He told John the Baptist. When John saw them, or what He
told Peter and James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration,
He said, This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Now, dear brethren, if God's
people are hidden in Christ, can it be said that God is not
well pleased with His people? Now, what is He teaching us here?
He's teaching us just exactly what He said by example. Now,
you see, God's people, we don't come into the spiritual life
of the children of God with perfect knowledge, we come as babes,
do we not? And we learn. And that's why
He says, I don't want you to be ignorant about the things
that happened to Israel in time past, because I don't want you
to repeat the things they did that were evil. Now you see,
the Lord instructs His children, does He not? And He teaches us.
Just like a child many times, you can teach a child, don't
touch the stove. The stove will burn you. Do not
touch the stove. Do not screw a light bulb out
of the lamp socket and stick your finger in there. But just
like me, I had to try that one day. Only ever did it once. Only once. Because that was enough. And I learned it. See? And when a child, they don't
know what hot or cold is. But how do they find out? Because
they'll touch it. And then they'll cry and carry
on, oh, I burned myself. Well, you know. But unfortunately,
because of the nature and way of man, that's the way that we
are. And so the Lord would teach us through experience these things. And were it not that we were
well-pleasing in His sight, He would cast us off, would He not?
I mean, what could a man do to cause himself to be pleasing
in the eyes of God if he's not pleasing in the eyes of God?
You tell me. Now there are people out there,
religious people, who tell you, well, he can do this, this, and
this. Brethren, you can't make yourself well-pleasing in the
eyes of the Lord. Only Christ can make a man well-pleasing
in the eyes of the Lord. And if Christ makes him well-pleasing
in the eyes of the Lord, nothing can keep him from being so. And
so what he's teaching us here is by example to avoid these
things. He says here, now these things
were for our example. The Lord caused Israel to go
through this wilderness and he demonstrated that he was not
well pleased with some of them because they fell into idolatry
and all sorts of things. Why did he do that? For our sake,
to show us the example of what it is that befalls those that
go contrary to the way of God, that turn aside, that go into
idolatry. and all of such things. Now these
things were, for our examples, to the intent. Here is the purpose,
that we should not lust after evil things as they lusted. That is the purpose, to teach
us, to set an example for us, to show us. Neither let us commit
fornication as some of them committed and fell in one day three and
twenty thousand. Now he's speaking about when
they worshipped the serpent that they put on the pole. Remember
when they disobeyed the Lord and then they put the serpent
on the pole so that they might be set free from it. And later
on, what did they do? They worshipped the very thing
that the Lord had set forth before them. So the Lord would show
us and teach us by those examples that He has set forth how we
ought to walk. Now how ought a child of God
to walk? Paul is telling these Corinthians
about idolatry. He is teaching them what it is. Idolatry is not something that
you can ignorantly go into. Idolatry is something that you
decide to do. Now, a child of God cannot be
an idolater. If somebody is an idolater, they
cannot be a worshipper of Christ, because he said you cannot worship
God and devils. You can't do it. It can't be
done. He said no man can serve God
and mammon. No man can go after the things
of the world and love the things of God. Those two things are
contrasts to one another. They cancel one another out.
And so he said, don't do these things. Well, wait a minute. Why is he saying don't do them
if God's people can't do them? That's why he's saying it. He's
saying that because God's people are not to do these things. We're
not coming around here telling people, well, go on and commit
adultery. No, we tell people, don't do
that. Why? Because that is the conduct
that is pleasing unto the Lord that he finds in his people.
That is the exhortation. We exhort God's people. to walk
in these ways. Neither let us tempt Christ,
as some of them also tempted and were destroyed on the surface.
Would you want to tempt Christ? I mean, would that be your desire?
To tempt God to destroy you? No. I mean, if you loved Christ,
that's not going to be the thing that motivates you. Having said
that, we're not saying here that God's people never fall into
the very sins that He's talking about. But dear brethren, these
things are set forth for us an example that we might turn from
that. He shows us how He treats that. And He shows us how grace is
sufficient in all things when He is pleased to deliver us even
after we have touched the stove and burned our hand. And he comes and he puts ointment
on the thing. Now, he doesn't take the sting
of that burn away, does he? Because we remember what that
is. But the Lord will teach His people.
He'll give examples to them. Neither murmur ye, as some of
them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now, we're going to stop there
because we don't have any more time, but that's sufficient to
set the groundwork for what he's going to talk to the Corinthians
about using these examples of course that we might learn how
we ought to walk because that is are very important for the
children of God to walk according to the teaching of the Word of
God. That's why we teach one another,
is it not? It's not because we think that
by doing that we're going to make ourselves acceptable with
God, but it's because we are the sons of God and we desire
to walk in His way. So may the Lord help us.