Learning From the Past

Tom Shrader walks through 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, using Israel's exodus experience as a cautionary history lesson for believers who have received God's blessing but risk disqualifying themselves through overconfidence. He identifies four sins that brought Israel low — idolatry, sexual immorality, testing God, and grumbling — and presses the Corinthian warning onto his own congregation. The teaching closes with the promise of 1 Corinthians 10:13, assuring believers that every temptation is common to humanity and that God is faithful to provide the strength to endure rather than escape.

“God knows the maximum elasticity of your faith. God knows how much you can take. God's never going to put you in a situation and not give you the spiritual resources to survive that situation.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Life Management

Recorded: 2001 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 44 min

Themes: temptation, overconfidence, idolatry, grumbling, sexual immorality, discipline, finishing strong, God's faithfulness, struggling with pride, feeling spiritually secure, midlife believer, pastor, long-time churchgoer, recovering from moral failure, mentor, navigating temptation

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Galatians 3:26, Galatians 3:29, Exodus 13:21, Exodus 14, Exodus 32:6, Exodus 32:28, Exodus 20:3, Numbers 21:5, Numbers 16, Romans 6:1-10, 1 John 5:21, Proverbs 16:18, Luke 22:33, Matthew 4:1, James 1:2, James 1:13

Theological Themes: sanctification, perseverance, typology, disqualification, Christian liberty, becoming holy, biblical warning, spiritual discipline

Full Transcript

Introduction: The Fear of Disqualification

Open your Bibles, if you would, to the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 10. As you look at verse 1, you see the word "for," which immediately connects us back to what Paul has already written. We said last week that Paul is bringing to a close this section where he has talked about liberty — the freedom that we have in Christ — but he says our freedom is no excuse to flaunt that in front of a brother or a sister. As a mature believer, we understand that with this freedom comes responsibility.

Paul has been very clear. He said, if my eating of meat is a stumbling block, then I am not going to eat meat anymore. To all people he became a slave — to the Jew, a Jew; to the Greek, a Greek; to the weak, weak — that he might be used by God to win some. Paul was deeply concerned about abusing the liberty and the freedom that we have. He is not talking about those areas of black and white, those moral issues where we understand there is a right or wrong. He is talking about those areas of preference, those areas of freedom.

We said last week that there is something that frightens the apostle — and it frightens him in a good way, because it becomes a motivation for him. He said, "I buffet my body and make it a slave, lest possibly after I preach to others, I myself should be disqualified." Paul says he disciplines himself. In fact, this whole section really talks about discipline. Last week he used the image of an athlete running in a race, and he said athletes discipline themselves. We saw that those runners in Corinth actually signed a declaration stating they had not deviated from the prescribed diet or regimen for the previous ten months leading up to the games. He said that is the kind of discipline they exercise to get a crown that perishes — how much more should we be disciplined for the crown we will receive, which is an imperishable crown.

Paul's fear is not that he will lose his salvation. It is that through some act of appeasing the flesh, some moment of giving in to weakness, that action would somehow disqualify him from being used by God in the extraordinary ministry he was given — and from finishing strong. I look at my own life and say I am 51 years old, and I have another 15 or 20 years of this. I pray all the time, "God, don't let me screw this thing up. I know me — I'll mess it up. Let me finish strong. I want to be one of those who, at the end, is stronger than he has ever been." That is what Paul is saying. He does not want to be disqualified.

A History Lesson from Israel

Now Paul gives us a history lesson. Here is what he says in chapter 10, verses 1 and 2: "For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea."

Paul is saying he wants to give an example of a group of people who saw God's extraordinary blessing, His mighty work, the way He moved in a miraculous and marvelous way — and even after seeing all of that, disqualified themselves. He is speaking directly to the situation he sees in Corinth, but it applies to us as well. You and I have been the recipients of God's grace, His mercy, and His blessing. We have seen Him work in extraordinary ways. And yet there are still some who, over the course of the next weeks and months and years, will disqualify themselves from being used by God.

It is possible that the group most likely to fall is those who say, "There is no way — never me. I have it figured out. I am stronger than anybody else. Not me, ever." If that is you, perhaps you should listen closely today. Paul says, "I do not want you to be unaware." In other words: remember this, and do not let it happen to you. You know the old saying — those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. Paul is giving us a history lesson.

Three Ways to Learn

There are three ways to learn. One is through taking in new information — books, recordings, whatever it might be. Another is through personal experience: don't touch that stove, it's hot — and then you touch it anyway. There is a third way to learn, and it is a great way. It is through watching and observing others. That is why I love reading biographies so much, and why I find value in reading about those who have failed. It is enjoyable to read about winners, but there is just as much to learn from those who failed. Yesterday at the NFL Hall of Fame induction, Marv Levy was inducted. As a coach, he did not reach his first Super Bowl until he was 65 years old. There is much to learn from the lives of others.

One of the great things about my role is that I am regularly sitting with couples, and I will hear a husband describe something he said or did, and his wife will confirm it — and I will think, I say that to Susan all the time. I will find myself going home and saying, "You might have misunderstood what I meant." Or I will watch a parent with their children for a while, and I will begin to see that the parent has been pushing down on the child constantly — nothing the child does is ever right. And that becomes a lesson for me as well.

Learning From the Past

My daughter came home one day with a report card. If I remember the numbers correctly, she had six A's and a B. My eye went right to the B. I said, "What are you doing getting a B? I went all the way through high school and never had a B." She said, "And you never had an A, and you never had a C." There is something about learning from other people, and we have a great opportunity to do that today.

All Were Under the Cloud

Galatians 3:29 says, "If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise." Paul is giving us a history lesson, and there is a key word you will see five times in four verses. It is a small three-letter word: *all*. All were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses.

When Paul speaks of the cloud, we understand the circumstance. The nation of Israel is being freed. They had been enslaved to Egypt, held in bondage, and God was now going to intervene — beyond the shadow of any doubt — to remove those people from those circumstances and free them from bondage, leaving no question that it was God who did it.

Exodus 13:21 says, "And the Lord was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on their way, and a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night." This is the Shekinah glory — the hovering presence of God in a graphic, visible way. Every one of them saw it. We believe there were about two million people in the nation of Israel making this Exodus, and they *all* saw it.

All Passed Through the Sea

The account of passing through the sea is recorded for us in Exodus 14. God had released the people, Pharaoh had let them go, and they were moving. Then Pharaoh began to pursue them. They came to the Red Sea, and God intervened — you know the story. He parted that sea so that it was as though walls were holding the water back. The Israelites moved right through it, and as Pharaoh's army followed, those chariots and soldiers were drowned in the water.

Stories like that test whether we believe Scripture is accurate. I remember encountering a liberal theologian who said, "Don't take that literally. That's not the Red Sea — that's the Reed Sea." He was trying to explain away the miracle of the parting. He said it was the Reed Sea, only about a foot to a foot and a half deep, and the Israelites simply walked through. He explained away one miracle, but he created a problem with the other side of it: how did the Egyptians drown in a foot and a half of water? It is the Red Sea. It parts. That is what makes this so remarkable — God preserves His people.

Baptized into Moses

They were all baptized into Moses. One author writes: "The basic Christian significance of baptism is identification with Christ. As Paul explains later in Romans 6:1–10, water baptism is an outward sign of spiritual union with Christ in His death and resurrection. Water baptism symbolizes the baptism believers have already experienced. When we trust in Jesus Christ, we are baptized into Him, identified with Him, made one with Him. It is that idea of spiritual identification rather than physical ceremony that Paul has in mind in this passage. The Israelites were baptized into Moses in the sense that they were identified with him as the Lord's appointed leader over them."

There was a solidarity between the people and Moses. They all saw this. They all understood it.

All Ate Spiritual Food and Drink

They all ate spiritual food and drank spiritual drink. This was physical substance provided for them in a supernatural way — the manna from heaven, and the water that came forth when the rock was struck. They all saw it. You could not deny it. You woke up in the morning and there it was. They cried out, "How are we going to live? How are we going to survive out here?" And He provided.

Paul writes that they were drinking from the spiritual rock which followed them. Do not for a moment picture two million people moving through the desert with a boulder on a leash rolling along behind them. The rock is a picture of Christ. The word used there is *Petra* — a massive cliff, not even a boulder. It is the picture of God, of Christ, of the Messiah who was there every step of the way, protecting them, sustaining them, and not allowing them to perish. He was there.

Nevertheless

Verse five is a sobering verse. "Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, and they were laid low in the wilderness." In spite of everything they had seen and everything they had experienced, they were disobedient. "Laid low" means to be strewn or spread over. As they wandered in the desert, it became a gathering place for corpses.

I have said on two or three occasions now that there were two million people on this pilgrimage to the Promised Land. Remember how many got there? Two. The rest of them were laid low — disqualified, unfit. Paul says these things happened as examples for us, so that we should not crave evil just as they did.

Learning From the Past: Lessons from Israel's Failures

Paul is writing to warn his readers that they would be absolute fools to miss this lesson. He urges them to look at the Israelites and learn from them — not to duplicate their mistakes, not to do what they did. The reason he is writing this is because his readers, like those Israelites, had become confident. They had begun to take God for granted.

I used an illustration last week that I want to return to. We get a chance almost every year to be near the ocean, and the sunsets there are spectacular. But the sunsets here are incredible as well, especially with a little smog, because that gives them a pink you don't get otherwise. It is wonderful to watch someone visiting from the Midwest, or the East where people never even look up, suddenly stop and say, "Wow, this is incredible." And we have that tendency to say, "Yeah, it's like that every day."

We get like that with God. We see Him move in a spectacular way, and pretty soon in our minds we think, "He always does that." We said we needed something, and He provided it — and we respond with, "He always does it, every time." All of a sudden we begin to expect it. We begin to presume on Him, and we become a little overconfident about how strong we really are.

Paul says he wants to give an illustration, an example — and the Israelites are that example. He is going to lay out four different sins they committed that disqualified them: idolatry, sexual immorality, testing God, and murmuring. That last one is a great word. The definition is almost exactly the way the word sounds — murmuring. They were complaining. Let us look at each one of them.

Idolatry

In chapter 10, verse 7, we see the illustration of idolatry. Paul actually quotes from Exodus 32:6: "Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, 'The people sat down to eat and drink and stood up to play.'"

That was a time when the Israelites fell into idol worship, and this meant a great deal to the city of Corinth, because they were consumed with idols. The scene Paul references is recorded in Exodus 32. Moses has gone to Mount Sinai to receive the law. He has been gone forty days and forty nights, and the people are tired, weary, and impatient. They begin to eat and rejoice — nothing wrong with that. They begin to dance — nothing wrong with that either. But their dancing led to "playing," and that is not a reference to throwing sand in a sandbox. It is a euphemism for sexual relations.

All of a sudden they began to worship a false god — one they had created themselves. In their minds, they believed that by worshiping this false god they could somehow worship the one true God. They moved further and further from that, until they ended up in sexual immorality, and there were consequences. Exodus 32:28 tells us that about 3,000 men died as a result of God moving and penalizing them for this.

Idolatry is an Old Testament concept, to be sure. Exodus 20:3 says, "You shall have no other gods before Me." But in 1 John 5:21, John says, "Little children, guard yourselves against idols." An idol is anything that takes first place, loyalty, or allegiance away from God — anything that distracts us from our worship of Him, or anything that invades our lives and turns our perspective upside down or sideways. And it can be a good thing that becomes an idol.

I had been a Christian about a year or a year and a half when Susan came to me one night and said, "This is the same as when you were drinking." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "You're gone a couple of nights a week for Bible study. When you're here, you're in the back room. All you do is read the Bible, study, and talk about it." She acknowledged that I was sober, and that was good — but she was asking, "What about us?" In a strange sort of way, my Bible study had actually crowded out my living it. What good is it to know this Word from cover to cover if I don't live it?

A good thing can become an idol. I think for many people today, family has reached an unhealthy state of elevation. Everything runs through the grid of family. Someone is described as a good Christian man, and what that means is he is a good father and a good husband. That is a good start, but Paul did not have either of those qualifications. I fear we have taken family and elevated it, in some instances, to a very unhealthy place. It can be family, or success, or material things, or power — it can be any of those things. What Paul is saying is: be careful. Take a look at your life. Are there any idols in there?

Sexual Immorality

The second sin is found in verse 8: "Let us not act immorally, as some of them did." The Israelites had started to commit sexual relations with the women of Moab and Midian. This was forbidden. As a result, God sent a plague, and 23,000 of these people died in one day.

Again, this made complete sense to the Corinthians. They lived in a city infested with false gods, and for almost all of those false gods, sexual immorality was part of the pagan worship. Paul is saying they needed to watch out for this. They should not for a moment think that because they claimed to be Christians, and that salvation was secure, they could somehow be careless in this area.

Testing God and the Consequences of Grumbling

Nor let us try the Lord, as some did, and they were destroyed by serpents. The account of this is in the book of Numbers, in the 21st chapter. The people were dissatisfied — dissatisfied with what God had done, dissatisfied with the leadership He had given them. Numbers 21:5 reads: "The people spoke against God and Moses. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no water, no food, and we loathe this miserable food." And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit them, so that many of the people of Israel died.

"God, how did we get here? This is your fault, God. What are you doing, God? Have you really loved me, God?" I hear this all the time. One of the things that really catches me off guard — that makes me stop and say "whoa" — is when someone is talking about another person, or about themselves, and they say, "I'm so angry with God" or "Now's not a good time to talk to him, he's so angry with God. He doesn't understand why God did this." Well, I may not understand why God did this either, but here is what I know: He is God, and I am not. And I find that nothing but comforting. He is the sovereign God.

The Israelites began to rise up against Him — "God, what are you doing? God, what are you thinking? Why would you bring us out here?" It actually became so misguided that they said they wanted to go back. How foolish is that? They wanted to go back to slavery.

A related episode appears in Numbers 16, where the people are complaining and grumbling, attacking the leadership God had given them. They wanted to know why Moses and Aaron held authority — they believed themselves just as capable. God sent a plague, and thousands were killed. They were destroyed by the destroyer. Most commentaries agree that the destroyer there is the same angel who slew the firstborn of the Egyptians before the Exodus, the same destroyer who moves in Exodus 12, and the same one who killed 70,000 men because of David's census.

What Kind of God Is This?

Let me pause here, because you may be thinking, "This is exactly what I don't like about Christianity. What kind of God kills 70,000 men just because David took a census? What kind of God kills 23,000 just because they had sexual relations?" Some people say, "That's why I want nothing to do with the God of the Old Testament — but I love the God of the New Testament." Yet we believe in one God. We are monotheists. What you see in these accounts is God moving in a way that emphasizes: I am a God of justice. "I have blessed you, I have given you signs, I have given you a cloud, you saw the sea — what more do you need to see?"

I was sitting in a prayer circle one day, and I happened to be the last one to pray — the worst spot, because all the good prayers are taken by the time it gets to you. The man to my right prayed, "God, thank you for your infinite patience." I thought, what about the 70,000? What about the 23,000? God is not a God of infinite patience. God will not simply sit back and wait indefinitely. He may extend grace to you, but there is a point. God will not be mocked. He will move. That is exactly what Paul is saying to these people: two million left Egypt, two made it into the Promised Land. The others disqualified themselves through idolatry, immorality, testing God, and grumbling.

Written as a Warning for Us

Paul brings all of this together in verses 11 and 12: "Now these things happened to them as examples for us, and they were written for our instruction." The word translated "instruction" here does not simply mean teaching — it carries the sense of admonishment or warning. It is counsel given to persuade a person to change their behavior in light of impending judgment. He says they were examples for us. Take their name out and put your name in. This will happen to you. You will be disqualified.

Are we saying God will strike you down and you will die? That is not certain — though it is possible. When we move ahead to chapter 11, we do see that some had died because of their sin. But at the very least, there are consequences. God will not be mocked. God is going to deal with it. These events were examples for those generations and for all the ages that followed. They are examples for us today.

The Danger of Assuming You Are Safe

Therefore, Paul says: "Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall." Proverbs 16:18 says, "Pride goes before destruction." I hear it all the time — someone listens to a message and says, "I'm going to get that recording. I wish my brother could hear this. My boss needs to hear this." And I always find myself wondering: did you hear it? How about you? Why are you always concerned about the people who are not here? Paul is saying that you may be reading this and thinking, "Yeah, but that's not me. That is not going to happen to me." And he says, "Watch out."

This is not something confined to the Old Testament, as Paul accurately points out. We see it throughout the New Testament as well, but it finds no more graphic an illustration than Peter. Peter said with full confidence, "Lord, I'm telling you — never me. I'm with you all the way." Luke 22:33: "Lord, I am ready to go to prison and to die." And Jesus said to him, "Peter, the cock will not crow tonight until you have denied Me three times."

And it is not just individuals who are at risk — it can be an entire church. When we studied the seven churches, Jesus said to the church at Laodicea: "Because you say I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing, you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." He said, you do not

God's Faithfulness in the Face of Temptation

Reading along through all these things they saw, and they still fell — it can be discouraging. Paul writes to the church at Corinth, a church that had all sorts of problems, and there is a sense in which looking at this can feel overwhelming. But Paul writes these words: "No temptation has overtaken you, but such is common to man, and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with temptation He will provide you a way of escape that you may be able to endure it." You may be worried that the enemy comes, or the trial comes, or the test comes, and it is almost overwhelming and you don't know if you can withstand it. Don't be discouraged. This is the word of encouragement.

Understanding Temptation, Trials, and Testing

First, that word "temptation" means a test, or to prove. Turn to the book of James, chapter one. When we hear the word temptation, we typically think of it in a negative context, but the words temptation, trials, and testing all come from the same root word. What is the difference between a test and a temptation? It is a circumstance that comes into your life. If it is something from Satan, it is designed to destroy you. If it is something from God, it is designed to demonstrate your righteousness and is designed for your own good.

Look at James 1:2: "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." James goes on talking about trials and temptations and difficulties, and he knows our reaction — to say, "God, what are you doing?" So look at verse 13: "Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. God cannot be tempted by evil. He Himself does not tempt anyone, but each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust." Then James gives us a prescription for sin.

When we look at this idea of temptation, it is simply proving or testing. When a car manufacturer takes a vehicle out into the desert and runs it in 110-degree heat for 24 hours, it is a proving ground — they are going to find out what that car is really made of. Oftentimes it is as though God, by allowing Satan to work, works in concert in an odd sort of way. Matthew 4:1 says, "Jesus was led by the Spirit" — the Holy Spirit — "into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." Everything that comes into your life, no matter what it is, is either caused by or allowed by God.

God is going to allow it or cause it so that your strength, His faithfulness, and your righteousness can be seen. Satan is going to try to use that same circumstance to cause you to sin and to discredit who you are. Our response to a test proves our faithfulness, not our unfaithfulness.

Temptation Is Common to All

When you see all these things coming into your life — trials, tests, temptations — Paul gives us a couple of key truths. Number one, you need to know they are common to man. That phrase "common to man" means that which is human, characteristic of and belonging to humankind. We have a tendency to say no one has ever faced a test like this, nobody has ever been challenged like this, no one has ever had anything like this. Paul says millions of people have had it — maybe with a slightly different twist, maybe with slightly different circumstances, but the temptation is basically the same. The test is basically the same.

So when the test comes and the trial comes, don't say it is unique to you and that no one understands. That phrase "you don't understand what I'm going through" comes up often. Even granting that, here is what can be said with certainty: every temptation that comes to you is common to man, and that means you have no excuse.

God Knows the Limits of Your Faith

Here is a key thing in this whole process: God is faithful. He is not going to allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. Whatever you are going through, every test, every trial, every temptation — God provides you the spiritual resources to overcome it. The phrase used frequently is that God knows the maximum elasticity of your faith. God knows how much you can take. God is never going to put you in a situation without giving you the spiritual resources to survive that situation. He is faithful. Trust Him. Follow Him.

If you are in a marriage that looks like it is falling apart and you don't know what to do, it is very simple — you do what God has called you to do. You be the best wife you can be, the best husband you can be. If you have kids who are out of control and the temptation is to keep yielding and yielding, you be the parent God has called you to be, the friend God has called you to be. Be honest. Do all the things God has called you to do. That is all you need to do. Be faithful. That is His call to you — and He is faithful.

A Way of Escape and the Call to Endure

"But with temptation He will provide you a way of escape that you may be able to endure it." That can look like a contradiction. He gives you a way out, and yet you endure it? Are you out of it, or do you endure it? The answer is really both. One author writes that the way of escape from temptation, no matter what it is, is the same.

Passing Through the Test

Whether we face a test by God to prove our righteousness or a test by Satan to induce sin, there is only one way we can pass the test. We escape temptation not by getting out of it but by passing through it. God does not take us out — He sees us through by making us able to endure it.

In the midst of a trial, our instinct is to pray, "God, take it away." But what He says is, "I'm going to climb right in there with you, and together we are going right through this." We may not know exactly how it will end or what is around the corner, but we know this: whatever it is, we have the ability to withstand it, God is faithful, and millions have gone through this before. So we hang on — not trusting in our own strength, not trusting in our own insight, our own knowledge, or our own way, but trusting in Him.

In the old Disneyland days, we would have called this an E-ticket ride. There is a bumper sticker — one that is rarely seen anymore — that reads, "God is my co-pilot." The problem with that sentiment is its inference: if God is the co-pilot, then I am the pilot, and I am the one holding the controls. The picture it paints is of someone managing the rudder and the flaps on their own until a crisis hits, then handing the controls over, and once the danger passes, taking them right back. That is not what He calls us to. He says we are going through this together.

The Solemn Charge

The charge is solemn: do not disqualify yourself. Be faithful to Him. Trust Him. He is not going to leave you, and He is not going to forsake you. Do not get overconfident, and do not take your eyes off of Him.

Father, let us be men and women, students, and children who are known — individually and collectively — as people who learn lessons. Spare us from having to go through unnecessary hardship ourselves. Help us pass the test, not because we are so strong, but because You are. That is our prayer. We ask it in the Savior's name. Amen.