Learning From The Past

1 Cor 10:1-13

There is an age old saying that goes, “History always repeats itself”. The reason for this is that people tend to not pay attention to the past until it comes back to haunt them. Paul understood that thinking and reminded the Corinthian Christians to remember the history of the Jews. “Don’t make the same mistakes they did” He said. “You can learn from their failures and not repeat them.” So many people say that the Old Testament has no bearing on our lives today. Tell that to Paul.

How many tyrants have come to power the same way a previous tyrant came to power while everyone believed this one would be different? How many teens have made the mistakes of their parents all the while professing they would never make those mistakes?

Paul tells the Christian to pay attention to the Jewish history. God knows you’ll make the same mistakes otherwise.

PRAYER

I. Know your Bible

A. Paul’s examples

1. Paul reminds the Christians in Corinth that they have no excuses for committing some sins.

2. They had the history of the Jews to draw on and should know better.

B. We must learn from the past

1. We not only have the history of the Jews, but also the history of the early Christians to draw on, so where does that leave us?

2. Ignorance of Scripture doesn’t get us off the hook when we have access to the word.

3. God expects us to study and grow in our Biblical knowledge

4. That’s why we offer Bible class through the church here.

5. Yes, sometimes they aren’t the most exciting studies, but you can still learn and your relationship with God might be tied in with something that is being taught in Bible study.

6. Unless you are true student of the word at home, most of your Bible knowledge is based on what you learn here.

7. And frankly, if this is all you get, it’s not enough.

a) Acts 2 showed they studied together every day.

b) Paul praised the Bareans because they searched out the scriptures daily to see if what he was saying was true.

II. Idolaters

A. Paul draws from when they were traveling in the wilderness.

1. The people grew tired of waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain and so begged Aaron an idol for them to worship.

2. What is significant here is that what they are really wanting is another god to worship, not just a form of Jehovah to behold.

3. They got so caught up in a religious frenzy that Moses realized they were totally out of control.

4. He had faithful men from the Tribe of Levi strike down 3000 of the Israelites and God sent a plague to afflict them even more for their sin against him.

B. An idol is anything that come before God is our lives

1. It could be work

2. It could be school

3. It could be sports

4. It could even be our families.

C. One preacher made a point that I will never forget.

1. He talked about people who loved their sports and how they could tell you the stats of some player from 10 years ago. They could tell you the nation champions in chronological order in a particular sport. They were also the same people that said they just couldn’t memorize scripture and didn’t even know the books of the Bible.

2. What comes first in their lives, God or sports?

3. Something to think about isn’t it?

III. Sexual Immorality

A. Numbers 25 gives us the background to this reference

1. While staying in the region of Shittim, the Israelites began sleeping with the Midianite women. Not only were they going against God’s demand for purity before marriage, but they began having sex as a form of worship to the Midianite Gods.

2. It became so bad, that one man had sex with a woman right in front of Moses as he stood in the entrance of the tabernacle.

3. Finally, one of the Israelite judges was so angered at what these people were doing, that he followed the man and put a spear through both of them as they had sex.

4. God sent a plague on Israel that killed 24,000 people who had participated in this immorality.

B. God has always taken the sanctity of marriage and purity very seriously.

C. He understands that when we destroy our sexual purity, that our spiritual purity seems to go out the door with it.

IV.Testing God

A. When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, He told them he would provide for them. Yet at every turn they questioned Moses and God about really taking care of him.

B. In Numbers 21 they again questioned God taking care of them, but this time, God had enough and sent a plague of snakes that killed everyone they bit.

C. How do we test God today?

1. Not having the faith as a church that God will help us do what we need to do to spread his gospel.

2. Base every decision on a budget rather than God’s ability to provide.

3. In my own life, I have to tell myself that God will provide for my future whenever I think about doing something else purely for money’s sake.

4. Anytime we deny God’s ability to provide for us, we test God.

V. Grumbling

A. Grumbling here is talking about a building up to overthrow God’s leaders.

B. Paul brings his lesson of the past to a climax in vs 10 as he refers to Korah and those who rebelled with him.

1. In Numbers 16 we have an interesting story about Korah who led 250 of the community leaders to Moses and Aaron to tell them the people were no longer saw them as leaders of the nation. That they were more Holy and in touch with God than Aaron and Moses.

2. Moses simply said let see who God choose. The next day they all gathered and God in an incredible show of force of who He had chosen to lead the nation, opened the earth and swallowed all the families of the rebellious leaders. Not only that but sent a fire that burned the 250 community leaders that also rebelled against Moses.

3. That should have been the end of this story. The Israelites should have seen that God was with Moses and Aaron, but they refused to acknowledge their leadership and continued to grumble against them.

4. God had enough of the people and began a plague to wipe them out. Luckily for them Moses and Aaron made atonement for their sin and begged God to stop the plague. Still, 14,700 died because they wouldn’t accept God’s leaders.

C. Be careful of your grumbling

1. There are times when we don’t like the decisions made by our spiritual leaders.

2. Unless they are bringing the church into sin, we better tread very carefully about rebelling against them.

3. We had better know if they are God’s leaders or not.

4. As we select men to be elders here, every single person should be on their knees in prayer that we select men who are God’s leaders not just men WE want to lead us.

5. There isn’t much worse for a church than ungodly spiritual leaders.

6. And there isn’t much better than Godly leaders

VI.Ultimate Lesson

A. Paul wants us to understand one thing

1. In the movie City Slickers one of the characters makes the point, “there is one thing in life that makes us happy, you have to figure out what that thing is.”

2. Paul kind of says the same thing, but tells us what that one thing is.

3. READ vs 12

4. What he is saying is stay alert. If you think you have it all figured out, you ignore the past and set yourself up to fall.

B. Temptation

1. vs 13 is one of most helpful verses in the entire Bible for Christians. One you need to highlight in your Bible. READ

2. This verse ONLY applies to Christians. It’s a fulfillment one of the major roles of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

3. It’s not sinful to be tempted

a) We all get tempted

b) Since Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, we have had to deal with temptation.

4. It’s how we deal with temptation that matters

a) God’s knows our areas of temptation

b) Satan knows them too and exploits them at every opportunity.

5. There is a constant battle between God and Satan for our soul based on these temptation.

6. What we forget is that God won the war, we just have to let him help us win the battle too.

a) When you are tempted, you don’t have to give in.

b) God always provides a way out of that temptation.

c) He will never let Satan tempt you in a way where it is impossible to say no.

7. We fall to temptation, because we don’t want to take God’s way out.

8. We WANT to give in to that sin.

9. Remember this scripture and John’s words, “He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world.” 1 Jn 4:4