Trinity 9
1
Cor 10:6-13
8/1/21
Around 140
A.D. a man named Marcion arrived at the church in Rome. He became part of the church there, and it wasn’t
long before people took notice of Marcion.
Marcion taught that the god of the Old Testament was an evil, lesser god
who was different from the true God of the New Testament. The false god of the Old Testament was
judgmental, wrathful and vengeful. On
the other hand, the true God of the New Testament was loving, gracious and
merciful.
Marcion
made quite an impact, and it didn’t take long for the church at Rome to
recognize that his ideas were a rejection of God’s revelation in the Old
Testament. Marcion was denying the very
thing that the New Testament clearly taught – that God’s action in Jesus Christ
was the fulfillment of everything that God had done in the Old Testament. Marcion was excommunicated from the church in
144 A.D., but his ideas continued to be something the church had to reject and
defend herself against.
Marcion’s
view of the God in the Old Testament probably sounds familiar, because it is an
extreme form of a common view that we encounter today. People often describe God in the Old
Testament as judgmental, wrathful and vengeful.
On the other hand, they say that Jesus in the New Testament is loving,
gracious and merciful. And of course, when they describe Jesus this way, it is
often connected with the desire that people in our world have to do what
they want to do.
In our
text today, Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, tells us that this view is
completely wrong. He points to some
moments in Israel’s history when God acted in judgment and wrath, and tells us
that these events are examples for us. In fact, they have been written
down for our instruction. They show us that God’s people can’t choose to
live in ways of sin and expect everything to turn out just fine. They can’t because God has acted
dramatically in his Son Jesus Christ to give us forgiveness and make us his
people. The love, grace, and mercy that
we have received in Christ has set us apart as God’s people who now seek to
live as what God has made us to be.
The church
at Corinth was a real challenge for the apostle Paul. They seemed to think that
because they believed in Jesus Christ they were spiritual people who had
already possessed everything that was necessary. In its most extreme form this led to a denial
of the resurrection of the body. But it
had a significant impact on how they lived in the world.
Within
First Corinthians we see two areas where their attitude had a great impact. The
first was how they viewed idolatry and the meat that was sacrificed to
idols. The Corinthians said things like
“We know that we all have knowledge.” They said, “We know that an idol is
nothing in the world and that there is no God except one.” Because they knew this, they thought they
could continue to take part in various activities of paganism such as eating
meat sacrificed to idols – even on pagan temple grounds.
The other
area was sex. In the Greco-Roman world the only person who was off limits for
sex was the wife of another man. It was
just assumed that men had sex with their slaves. Brothels were a normal part of life, and the
Roman government even provided them for the poor. And in many parts of
paganism, sex and religion were intertwined.
There were temple prostitutes, and having sex with them was part of the
religious practice.
In the
verses just before our text, Paul reveals that the Corinthians believed that
because they were baptized and were receiving the Sacrament of the Altar they
were protected and immune from any harm as they engaged in these normal parts
of life in the first century world.
However, the apostle warns them that this is not the case. And he uses
the experience of God’s people in the Old Testament in order to do this.
Paul has just talked about the miraculous experience that the Israelites had with water in the Red Sea, and the manna and water provided by God, because he is making a comparison with what the Corinthians now experience in Holy Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar. The apostle writes, “For I want you to know, 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,
with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the
wilderness.”
The Israelites had experienced this
miraculous rescue and provision by God. But it hadn’t changed the fact that in
the end most of them died in the wilderness and did not enter the promised
land. Then Paul says in our text: “Now
these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil
as they did.” Far from being random
events in the ancient past that reveal a wrathful God who is no longer
relevant, Paul wants the Corinthians, and us, to know that these are
examples that teach us as we deal with God today.
God has not changed. In
the Old Testament he revealed himself as the holy and just God. He is the God
who judges sin and pours out judgment and wrath against sinners. But he also revealed that he is the God who
is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. God has not changed. And so the experiences of Israel teach us about
how we need live and act as God’s people today.
Paul says in our text, “Do not be idolaters as some of them
were; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink and
rose up to play.” The apostle refers to the incident when the Israelites
worshipped the golden calf. Naturally,
in our day idolatry does not take the form of a pagan temple. But there is no end of the things that we put
before God: our personal autonomy to do and think as we please; wealth, and
financial security; sports and hobbies.
The apostle adds: “We must not indulge in sexual
immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a
single day.” Paul refers to the time of
which Moses tells us, “the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab.”
Israelites fornicated with the Moabites and became involved with the false god
Baal Peor, and the sexual immorality that was part the worship of this form of
Baal.
When you read the letters of the New Testament you find that
they address the subject of sexual immorality again, and again, and again. This is not surprising. The biblical understanding of sexuality and
marriage that the New Testament church shared with the Greco-Roman world was
completely foreign to what people had known.
It taught that sexual union between a man and woman only occurred in
marriage between a husband and wife – no exceptions. It taught that the sex
established a one flesh union between husband and wife that united that couple
before God for life. And of course, Jesus taught that lustful thoughts break
the Sixth Commandment, and not only the physical act.
We recognize that the world has become more like the first
century than ever before. Sex outside of
marriage – whether just as part of “hooking up” or as part of dating – is
considered normal. Couples live together
before marriage all the time. Our culture
is immersed in sexual messages and imagery.
And of course – an unlimited amount of pornography is available on your
phone. The apostle Paul’s word challenges us, just like they did the Corinthians, to see that we are to live our lives in
relation to sex and marriage in ways that are God pleasing and according to his
will.
The apostle goes on to mention two other times when Israel
complained and grumbled against God, as he writes, “We must not put
Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by
serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed
by the Destroyer.” Then after listing these various examples, Paul
adds, “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were
written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.”
The apostle says that they were written down for our
instruction. And the reason they instruct us is because we are those upon whom
the ends ages has come. Paul is
referring to the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If it were not for Christ, these events in
Israel’s past would be meaningless events of ancient history. They would have
no relevance to us. But now because of
Jesus, the Scriptures of the Old Testament are the means by which God provides
us with instruction about the importance of living as God’s people.
We have become God’s people, because Christ was the fulfillment
of God’s promise to Abraham, “In you
all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all that
God promised about Israel when he said through Isaiah, “I will make you as
a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the
earth.”
We are
sinners. Almost all of us are not
descendants of Israel. But God acted to
save us by sending his Son into the world as he was conceived by the Holy
Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary. The
Son of God entered into this world to do the most shocking and unexpected thing
– to be crucified for us. As Paul says
in chapter 15, Christ died for our sins in accordance with the
Scriptures and was buried. The message
of a crucified Christ and Savior was absurd to the ancient world. Paul himself pointed this fact out. And yet this is how God act acted to take
away our sins. As Paul wrote in chapter one, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are
perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
A crucified
Jew, dead and buried, would not be the source of power to save us from
death. But as Paul declares so
vigorously in chapter fifteen, Jesus did not stay dead. Instead, on the third day God raised him from
the dead. In the Jesus the resurrection of the end times has started. He is the
firstfruits of those who have died. That
is why the apostle says that we are those upon whom the end of the ages has
come. The last days have already started in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The
crucified and risen Lord is the power of salvation. And you have received the
benefits of this saving power in baptism. Earlier in this letter, Paul says, “Or do you not know
that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither
the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice
homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers,
nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
Yet then he adds: “And such were some of you. But you
were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Through baptism God has washed away your sins. He has made you holy in his eyes. He has justified you – declared you not guilty
– the same verdict that he will speak on the Day of Judgment. God has given you this new life and
status. And he calls us to live as what
he has made us to be. This means that we view sin as something against which we
must struggle, and not something we can just give in to or embrace. The
examples from Israel’s history in the Old Testament serve as warnings about
what happens to those who live in that way.
When we do fall in sin, we confess it. We don’t view it as something that is no big
deal, because after all, we are Christians. We certainly don’t take up regular
patterns of sin in our lives. We don’t because through the work of the Spirit,
God has made us a new creation in Christ.
We are those who have been washed, sanctified, and justified in baptism.
We are those who have been blessed to receive the saving action of God in
Christ. We know that we live as those
upon whom the end of the ages has come in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment