8/14/2019 1 Cor 10Be Careful That You Dont Fall One Of
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1 Cor 10Be Careful that You Dont Fall
One of my most memorable sports moment was the final minute of
the marathon
race at the Sydney Olympics 2000. Australian Jane Saville was
poised to take out
the gold being the first to enter the Stadium. The Australian
crowd went mad. We
were chanting and waving her on. However, just a short distance
from the finishline, she was disqualified for a illegal gait. You
could her devastation on the big
screen. The Apostle Paul must have seen many such incidents in
his time in a
nation that was consumed with sports. He ended with Chapter 9 of
1 Corinthians
with these words : that I might not be disqualified in the
end.
Here in chapter 10, he deals with the dangers of
presumptuousness. He has
been talking about Christian freedom, now he puts in a
cautionary message that
one should not presume on the goodness of God and become
careless in our
walk with Him. He takes his lessons from the way God dealt with
His people
under the Old Covenant, during the time of the wanderings in the
wilderness
under Moses. In that generation, Gods people knew many
blessings, but they
also were guilty of many sins, for which they were severely
punished.
He outlines several points:
Their blessings (v. 1-4)
The people of Israel enjoyed many repeated blessings from the
Lord: protection,
guidance, sustenance, forgiveness. All these took place in a
series of remarkable
incidents, where God intervened to demonstrate his sovereign
control of their
lives.
Their sins (5-10)
v. 5 says Yet God was not pleased with most of them, and their
bodies were
scattered in the wilderness. Indeed, of the generation which
left Egypt under
Moses, it is recorded that only two who reached Canaan: Joshua
and Caleb. That
is the solemnity of Gods displeasure with a presumptuous
generation. We are
stress at this point that this is all the text says: their
bodies were scattered in the
wilderness. Nothing is said in terms of their eternal
destiny.
The sins of the people of God under Moses have an ominous ring
in terms of the
known and the likely sins of the Christian community at Corinth:
covetousness,
idolatry, immorality, straining the patience of the Lord, and
grumbling against
the Lord. Specific events in the wilderness wanderings were
doubtless in Pauls
mind, and he specially recalled the golden calf, the hankering
after the fleshpots
of Egypt and the mass immorality with the daughters of the
Moabites and the
story of the brazen serpent (Num 14, 30, 38; Ex 32, Ex 17 and
Num 21, and 25).
Paul effectively told the Corinthians to not be presumptuous
about their spiritual
condition to the point of indulging oneself into thinking that
sin does not matter.
Their punishment (5-10)
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This can be summarised in three dramatic and tragic phrases;
they were
overthrown (5), they fell (8) and they were destroyed (9-10) by
the Destroyer.
Their warnings (11-13)
Here comes one of the most famous verse in the Bible if you
think you are
standing strong, be careful not to fall. The temptation in your
life are no different
from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not
allow temptation to
be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show
you a way so
that you can endure. I like what The Message says Dont be so
nave and self
confident. You are not exempt. You could fall flat on your face
as easily as
anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; its useless.
Cultivate Gods
confidence
Paul is reminding us that none of us is invulnerable to
temptation. Temptationitself is not a sin, nor is a sign of
weakness. It simply presents a choice for us to
reaffirm our allegiance to God or to the world or the devil. We
need to walk
circumspectly before the Lord so that we do will not be
disqualified at the end.
Discussions:
All of us are more vulnerable in certain areas than others? What
situations or
people present the most temptation to you?
What strategies can I put in place to defeat the temptations in
my life?l
