1 Corinthians 10:1-5

1 Corinthians 10:1-5

For I do not desire you all to be unaware, brothers, that all our fathers were under the cloud and all came through the sea and all were being baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink.  For they were drinking out of the spiritual rock that followed, and the rock was Christ.  But God was not pleased in a great many of them.  For they were being spread out in death in the wilderness.

Thoughts for Today

First Thought

Now Paul turns to talk about being overcome with temptation.  As the sections that follow will indicate, the case example that he is going to use is the whole food offered to idols example that he began in chapter 8.  But as we can see in these verses there is really a bigger picture.  Paul is really talking about overconfidence in the wrong things.  Paul wants us to understand that just because we are a spiritual people and just because we experience some cool moments of God does not mean we are invincible.  It does not mean that we are impossible of being corrupted.  Yes, God can work miraculously in our lives.  And yes, we can still stumble and fall after seeing the hand of God at work.

Has this ever been true in your life?  Have you ever experienced a clear display of God’s power and then still stumbled into sin?  Why do you think humans can do that after having such a clear experience of God’s hand at work?

Second Thought:

As proof of the concept that I put forth in my first point, Paul gives us four examples from the generation of the Exodus.  The first two can be found in Exodus 13:20-14:29.  Here we see that the Lord went before the people in the form of a cloud and led them across the Red Sea on dry ground.  These are two huge demonstrations of God’s power!  The second two examples can be found in Exodus 16:1-17:7.  There we hear about the manna from heaven and the water from the rock.  Here are another two great demonstrations of God’s power and compassion.  Yet we know from experience that there were only two of the exodus generation who were allowed to go into the Promised Land: Joshua and Caleb!  All of these people had seen God’s power at work, yet they stumbled enough for God to reject them.  Seeing a demonstration of God’s power in our life is no guarantee that we cannot fall into sin and ultimately even into God’s rejection if we fall far enough.

Why did the Hebrew people in the exodus story ultimately fall from God’s grace?  Do you think people in any time and any place can make that same fall?  Why or why not?

Third Thought:

Those Hebrew people had all the great moments.  He even says here that they were baptized!  Yet that whole generation except two people fell out of God’s favor.  Then Paul reminds them that the core should be Christ.  Here we find the crux of Paul’s specific teaching regarding food given to idols and his more general teaching on avoiding the fall from God’s grace.  When we get caught up in the events, we forget that we are saved through Christ.  When we get lodged in our human tradition and following our human rules, we stop following God’s hand at work in our lives.  It isn’t baptism or any other great manifestation of God’s power that saves us.  What saves us is Christ and His death on the cross.  The other things are great events of God’s power in our lives.  But our salvation comes from Christ and through the cross alone – not through the other events.

How much do you believe that your salvation was from the cross alone?  How much emphasis do you put on any other event in your life?  Why do we tend to emphasize certain events in our life over the death of Christ on the cross?

Passage for Tomorrow: 1 Corinthians 10:6-13