1 Cor 10—Be Careful that You Don’t FallOne of my most memorable sports moment was the final minute of the marathonrace at the Sydney Olympics 2000. Australian Jane Saville was poised to take outthe gold being the first to enter the Stadium. The Australian crowd went mad. Wewere 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 bigscreen. The Apostle Paul must have seen many such incidents in his time in anation that was consumed with sports. He ended with Chapter 9 of 1 Corinthianswith these words : “that I might not be disqualified in the end”.Here in chapter 10, he deals with the dangers of presumptuousness. He hasbeen talking about Christian freedom, now he puts in a cautionary message thatone should not presume on the goodness of God and become careless in ourwalk with Him. He takes his lessons from the way God dealt with His peopleunder the Old Covenant, during the time of the wanderings in the wildernessunder Moses. In that generation, God’s people knew many blessings, but theyalso 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 remarkableincidents, where God intervened to demonstrate his sovereign control of theirlives. Their sins (5-10)v. 5 says “Yet God was not pleased with most of them, and their bodies werescattered in the wilderness”. Indeed, of the generation which left Egypt underMoses, it is recorded that only two who reached Canaan: Joshua and Caleb. Thatis the solemnity of God’s displeasure with a presumptuous generation. We arestress at this point that this is all the text says: their bodies were scattered in thewilderness. 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 theknown and the likely sins of the Christian community at Corinth: covetousness,idolatry, immorality, straining the patience of the Lord, and grumbling againstthe Lord. Specific events in the wilderness wanderings were doubtless in Paul’smind, and he specially recalled the golden calf, the hankering after the fleshpotsof Egypt and the mass immorality with the daughters of the Moabites and thestory 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 spiritualcondition to the point of indulging oneself into thinking that sin does not matter. Their punishment (5-10)
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