The Pattern of His Promises Prove Faithful :: 1 Corinthians 10:(1-5) 6-13
The Word for our meditation today comes from our epistle reading in 1 Corinthians 10.
6. Let us pray ...
Lord God, heavenly Father, You have blessed us abundantly with life and salvation, and you sustain us in the wilderness of this world with your heavenly bread. We implore You, protect us from ourselves, deliver us from our selfish pride, and help us to rejoice always, sharing your gifts willingly with our brothers and sisters in need, through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
5. [Catechism]
Please now open your [Lutheran Service Book] to Page 324 and join me in confessing our faith doctrine on the Sixth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer.
What is the Sixth Petition? ... What does this mean?
4.
Paul writes, Let the one presuming that he continues to stand, pay attention [so that] he may not fall (v 12). This is the goal of Paul’s discourse for us today, because nothing, Paul says, is worse than being an overconfident Christian.
Therefore, I will begin with a question: Is it possible for someone who has been baptized to fall from faith and be lost eternally? The answer is yes. You can fall from faith.
That said, let us be clear: God’s promise to save each of you in baptism is true. He will not revoke his promise to you. God’s promise to give you the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation in the Lord’s Supper is TRUE. He cannot change his promise. His promises to you stand in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper ... EVEN IF we do not believe them. All of God’s promises find their yes in him (2 Cor 1:20). Baptism saves you, and the Lord’s Supper gives you the forgiveness of sins, and therefore eternal life and salvation.
Nevertheless, let us also be clear: Everyone who rejects God’s promises rejects his Word of Grace, and therefore rejects Jesus, abandons God’s promises and will not receive them.
This is the underlying truth of God’s Word for us today. So take heed.
In our epistle reading today from 1 Corinthians, Saint Paul is aware that complacency could cause him to forfeit the heavenly prize (9:23-27). As Jesus told the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3: Heaven has no room for lazy Christians.
That is the context with which Paul begins our reading today. He writes ... For I do not want you to be unknowing, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were 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 drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, among many of them, God was not pleased, for he overthrew them in the wilderness (vv 1-5).
3.
By revealing this truth, Paul is showing us that there is a pattern in Scripture we can learn from ... a pattern of Scripture that shows us something about ourselves ... a pattern that began even before the Exodus from Egypt. This pattern reveals that many Israelites did not receive their inheritance in the Promised Land because they were unfaithful ... lazy ... and that Christians ... not only in Corinth, but also today ... face the same danger.
Think of it this way, our Heavenly Father is like a parent who sets a $100 bill on the table and tells you that he left it there for you. That’s a promise. The bill is real. It is what he says it is. The question is, will you receive it? Sadly, far too many people refuse ... they reject ... they turn away from ... the promises of God. I can get it on my own terms, they say, taking it for granted. Though the Corinthians would admit they were sinners who sin ... just like you ... that the wages of sin is death (Rm 6:23) and that God offered them a gift: Eternal life on account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus ... many of them were rejecting God’s grace ... making a mockery of God’s grace ... acting like the gifts of God were not important.
So Paul warns them not to be like the Israelites, who grumbled and complained about God’s gifts, saying that God’s daily bread was worthless food ... despising the Lord’s Supper like the Corinthians (1 Cor 11:22). Instead of looking up in faith to the cross, or in the case of the Israelites ... the serpent on the pole ... many died in their sin. Instead of being grateful that God set them free through baptism, they came to despise the gifts of God, loathing what they called worthless food (Num 21:5). This is the pattern Paul unpacks for us today.
2.
Listen to our epistle again. What happened in the wilderness to the people of Israel was not a one-time event. Paul writes, These things became our patterns so that we do not desire the evil they desired (v. 6).
The people of Israel ... like you ... were under the cloud ... that is, they were in the very presence of God ... for the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from the people (Ex 13:22). God protected them. More than that, they were baptized in the sea, just as we are in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who drowns the sin that pursues us (Ex 15:1), sanctifying us ... setting us apart ... making us holy just as he is holy (Lev 19:2).
In the same way, the people of Israel all ate spiritual food and drank spiritual drink (Ex 16:35; 17:6), just as we eat and drink in the Lord’s Supper. The manna sustained them and nourished their faith that God always provides. It was his promise, just like Luther says. These words [given and shed for your for the forgiveness of sins show us that in the sacrament forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given us through these words (SC VI 3).
At the same time, Paul’s epistle teaches us that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper do not save us if we do not have faith ... that is, trust in the promises of God. The Israelites were all baptized. Yet they were not all saved ... They didn’t believe the promises of God. They forgot they needed the forgiveness of sins.
But baptism still saves!
Both Peter and Paul proclaim this in no uncertain terms. Baptism now saves you, Peter says in his first epistle (1 Pt 3:21). And as Paul says in Romans 6, Thanks [be] to God ... on account of baptism ... you then became submissive ... to the pattern of teaching (Rm 6:17).
1.
It’s good to learn these patterns from God’s Word. They enable you to come to know that God’s means of grace actually works. They are promises. Through this faith ... which is given to you by God himself so that no one can boast (Eph 2:8-9) ... you are able to apprehend and never let go of this Word who saves. And that changes you. It helps you break the cycle of sin.
Paul writes: Now these things came to be our patterns, so that we would not crave evil as [the Israelites] did, nor become idolaters as some of them [did]. As it is written, ‘The people sat to eat and drink and rose up to play.’ Nor should we sin sexually as some of them sinned sexually, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. Nor should we test Christ, as some of them tested [him] and were destroyed by serpents. And do not grumble as some of them grumbled and were destroyed by the Destroyer (vv 6-10).
Brothers and sisters in Christ, God has called you and communes you through his Son ... giving you unity with God and one another. God bestowed his grace on Israel just like he did that for you and the Corinthians.
Therefore, remember, worshiping the golden calf is no worse than worshiping me, myself, and I ... trying to convince ourselves that we know what is best for ourselves ... that we can take care of ourselves ... that we can then seek God’s gifts on our own terms.Remember, we should not live as if our bodies are NOT a temple of the Holy Spirit. With the Holy Spirit dwelling within you ... on account of baptism ... the Christian life should be characterized by holiness (1 Cor 3:16-17; 6:19) ... that is, as we heard last week, as a good tree bearing good fruit (Mt 7:17).
Sexual sins are uniquely vile because they are sins against one’s own body (1 Cor 6:18), and therefore against the temple of God. That means, it is NOT OK for a man and a woman to live together outside of marriage. It is NOT OK to teach your children that is is acceptable to live this way. Remember what happened in Numbers 25: The Israelites prostituted themselves thinking it would help them prosper, but twenty three thousand fell in one day.
And remember, it is not OK to grumble and complain about the gifts of heaven that deliver, sustain, and nourish you in this valley of sorrow. Do not put the Lord to the test. When the Israelites did this, they were bitten by the fiery serpents (Num 21:9), and many died ... refusing to remember their baptism or that the bread of heaven nurtured their saving faith.
Therefore, repent every one of you in the name of Jesus.
You can do this. Why? Because you are the baptized of Christ. You have his promise that your sin died with him on a cross. You have been raised with him into eternal life. You have the promise that the water and the blood of the sacraments continue to flow from his side into the font of forgiveness and cup of salvation. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability (v 12).
THE PATTERN OF GOD’S FAITHFUL PROMISES WILL LEAD YOU TO ETERNAL LIFE
... in Jesus’ name.