Sermon Tone Analysis

Call To Worship Scripture

Sermon Scripture

1 Corinthians 10:13

Sermon: Arrogant (Presumptuous) Christianity: A Question Of Belief In God's Holiness: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

The Sacraments of the Jews are types of ours (v1-6)

Their punishments (7-10) examples for us (11-13)

We must flee idolatry (14-20)

We must not make the Lord’s table the table of devils (21-23)

in things indifferent we must have regard of our brethren (24-33)

Chapter 10 is in response or answer to a specific inquiry:

http://www.preceptaustin.org/1corinthians_1013

I have seen it as common place within the church to be marred by a smug security.

I have battled that very smugness within myself.

There is a great temptation and common place amongst believers who believe in eternal security (a doctrine I myself subscribe to) to get an arrogance about themselves and the outworking of this doctrine within their own lives.

Our reasoning becomes scuewed and we error down a dangerous path telling ourselves:

“I’m secure in Christ.

I’m saved and can’t be lost.

If I sin a little God will be gracious and forgive me.”

We establish for ourselves within the doctrine of the security of Christ a pathway of reasoning sin.

We take advantage of the compassion and mercy of a loving God, and in error we fail to realize that He indeed does require holiness of life from his people.

In our reasoning sin through grace we forget that a Christian can indeed be disqualified from the spiritual race.

1 Corinthians 9:

As nessesity to the successful Christian life Paul emphasises strenuous self-discipline and self-control over ones own body.

The word “disqualified” is the Greek word meaning “to test and disapprove or reject.”

The proper understanding to this word is very important to our doctrine and understanding of eternal security.

What is in mind here is the loss of rewards for a Christian as they prove unfaithful and perhaps indirectly implied is the total rejection or reprobation by God as an unbeliever.

Not that one has lost salvation, but that through testing they were proven illigitamet.

Our context is most clearly about recieving rewards, but I want you to know that the word might also include a reprobate or a castaway, as in a person who is faking Christianity.

One who fails to persevere and who will ultimatley abandon the Christian faith and go back to the world.

One whose heart has never been truly reborn or subdued by the soverign Lord Jesus.

Only God knows for sure who the elect are, and we can only surmise who the elect are by their profession of faith in Christ and the spiritual fruits which flow from their life, but this same principle holds true even for ourselves.

Apparently in Corinth, there were Christians who had become arrogantly secure in their Christian life.

There was wide spread abuse of “Christian liberties”.

Their conduct was careless and a desire to pursue a life of holiness was less than stellar.

As a wake-up call Paul uses an illustration from the old testament to demonstrate a whole generation which was disqualified from the spiritual race because of godless conduct.

This gives us the context of Christian liberties in which Paul is speaking.

The context is not in the limiting of liberties but in the abuse of them.

Verse 11 gives us the purpose for which Paul is addressing this:

This section of Scripture and that which is recorded of Israel is not just for the Corinthians but it is for the whole Church of Jesus Christ.

Let us therefore observe:

ILLUSTRATIONS OF ISRAEL’S FAILURE 10:1-5

Israel’s Privileges (10:1-4)

Don’t be unaware.

That is don’t be ignorant.

Ignorance can often lead to ignorance.

Are you unaware of how God has dealt with His people in the past, and as such are you unaware of how He will deal with you?

Many in Corinth thought they knew everything.

Pride has a strange relation to ignorance.

Corinth believed that they had reached spiritual maturity…they were in the “chosen circle”.

Our fathers were all under the cloud

This is a reference to the Shekinah glory which hovered over the camp of Israel, shining by day to guide them and becomeing a pillar of fire at night to protect them.

It is a symbol of God’s presence with Isreal from their deliverance, to the crossing of the red sea, to their time in the dessert for 40 years.

Israel is a type or illustration of the church.

In the church each Christian enjoys the constant presence of Jesus Christ as spiritual Israel.

Jesus said, “surely I am with you always, to the very end of the aged” ()

And they all passed through the sea

Every Israelite from the youngest to the oldest were all delivered from the bondage of Pharaoh the same way.

They all by the miraculous work and grace of God passed through the red sea.

This is the privilege of every Christian.

Every believer as Spiritual Israel has been delivered from the bondage of sin.

The Bible says, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” ().

They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

There is a secondary meaning of the word “baptism”.

It means “to identify with”.

This is not saying that Israel was immersed into Moses or the Red Sea, but that every Israelite was identified with Moses as God’s appointed leader over them.

Every Christian is spiritually identified with Jesus Christ.

Jesus is our supernatural leader and every believer is put into this indissolvable union or bond with him at the moment of conversion.

Christ becomes the Christian’s head or leader.

They all ate the same spiritual food

They all ate the manna which was from heaven, supernaturally provided for them by God.

This stregnthened and sustatined them.

Every Christian has the privalege of feasting upon (the words, teaching and presence of) Jesus Christ by faith.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.

He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty” ().

As Christians we are dependent upon Christ (the feasting upon) for sustainment and strength.

And drank the same spiritual drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

At the begininng and end of the 40 year journey God provided water for the Israelites in a supernatural way.

There was a literal rock, and from that rock flowed an abundance of water.

Paul states that the rock was Christ.

Not that Christ was a literal rock, but rather that the water came from the rock, and the source of the water was provided by the pre-incarnate Christ, the second person of the Trinity.

Paul is pointing us to see that when the symbol of the rock appears in the Old Testament, it is a reference to the person of Christ.

In the Old Testament the Rock was a title for God.

Paul is saying Jesus is the God of the Old Testament.

He is full deity come in the flesh.

This is key to understand lest we get a separtist view…meaning we create in our minds a view that seperates God out as a different God in the Old Testament than the one in the New Testament.

God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Notice the All

Take note of the repetition of the word “all”.

Israel had many blessings and privileges, but they became complacent, laxed in their spiritual experience and disciplines.

The spiritually privilaged can fall into sin no matter how privileged they are.

In otherwords, the spiritually privilaged can still find themselves falling into terrible sin due to unbelief.

It is easy to think that because God has done some special thing for us that we are ok to do anything and be O.K. with God.

Just as Israel was wrong, so would we be.

Such is a smug or arrogant attitude toward a merciful God.

Israel’s Punishment (10:5)

The Bible tells us that 600,000 men left Egypt, and if woment and children are included that number could easily be about two million Israelites came out of Egypt.

Of those who were 20 years old and over only two entered the promised land - Joshua and Caleb.

Multiple thousands of Israelites died in the desert.

Why?

Because of unbelief and disobedience.