The Danger of Overconfidence, Part 2
1 Corinthians 10:7-10
This morning we're looking at 1 Corinthians Chapter 10, and I had intended to finish this study of verses 1-13, but got all wrapped up so I don't know where we're going to end. But we'll finish it next time, Lord wiling. Talking about 1 Corinthians 10:1-13. I was being interviewed this week by a young man and he asked me what was the first thing that I did in preparing a sermon. And I said the first thing I do is become familiar with the text. Read it, reread it, read it again, read it over again, and again maybe ten, 15, sometimes 20 times just reading and reading and reading and reading till I really have a grip on the text. Maybe reading it in various versions. Maybe reading it in the Greek whatever it takes.
And the second thing I then do is to determine what the key to the whole passage is. Every passage falls into a unit and there is a key to that unit and everything in that unit explains that key concept. And that's what I look for in the study of this scripture. What is the one key here and what goes to build to that one key. And as I mentioned to you last time, the key to the first 13 verses of 1 Corinthians 10 is verse 12. Verse 12 is the point that all of the other verses are trying to establish. "Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." The danger of over-confidence. When you think you stand you are the most vulnerable for a fall. That's the idea that Paul is dealing with in these 13 verses. This first paragraph of Chapter 10. He shifts a little bit in the next paragraph beginning at verse 14 which we'll see in a couple of weeks and goes into another them.
But for this one, it is theme of the danger of over-confidence. Now these are not isolated themes as they come in paragraphs and books, but they weave together very well and yet each one has a distinct identity all its own. Now the principle of verse 12 is a much repeated Bible principle. Pride comes before a fall, we saw last time, the Proverbs tell us. And so we need to understand what the whole passage is about. The second thing that we need to do and this will be the third thing in my procedure and study would be to determine how this particular paragraph with this particular theme fits into the total of the passage.
In other words, the broader context. Why does he discuss this here at the end of Chapter 9 and before the rest of the verses of Chapter 10? Why does it and how does it fit into this place? And from our last study, you'll remember that we told you how it fits in. This discussion in Chapters 8, 9, and 10 is a discussion of Christian liberty. And this point is very important in the area of Christian liberty. That the Christian in his freedom not get too over-confident. And that he realized that there are limits that he has to impose on himself even in his liberty. And that's where it fits and we'll see that as we develop it a little further. Now the New Testament teaches a lot about Christian liberty. And that's his theme in Chapters 8,9, and 10 of this letter.
He teaches a lot about it. Let me just give you the major points that identify Christian liberty. Christian liberty and I want you to understand what it is and you will when I'm done, if you don't already. Christian liberty, number one, is granted by God. God gives to the believer freedom. In John 8, "If the Son shall make you free," and it indicates that Christ is the agent of freedom. Galatians 5:1 says, "For freedom, Christ has set us free." In Colossians 1:13, "God has delivered us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son." In 2 Corinthians 3:17, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom or liberty."
So you have God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit all tied in to the liberty concept. Where does Christian freedom come from? It comes from the Trinity. It comes from God, the Godhead. How is it received? How do you get free? How are you made free? John 8, "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be really free." It comes when you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. John 8:30, "Many believed on His name." John 8:31, "And He said if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples and you shall be free if the Son make you free, you shall be free for real." So we believe, we follow on to believe and therein is our liberty.
So Christian freedom then is granted by God at the time when we receive Jesus Christ. When we put faith in Christ, we are set free. Now what is this freedom? What does the New Testament say it is? Number one, it is freedom from law. We no longer need to keep ceremonial laws. We no longer are subscribed to ritual and tradition. There is now an internal guideline, the Holy Spirit, no longer external rules and regulations. We don't have to earn the favor of God. We're free from the law as a way to God, as a way to please God, as a way to fulfill God's desires for us. And by that, I mean the ceremonial law.
Secondly, our freedom is freedom from the curse. The people who break the law are cursed. God says we're free from that because Christ has paid the curse, right? "Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree," Galatians 3 says. And Christ was cursed for us. He became a curse for us that we might not be cursed or condemned or judged or damned or doomed. So our freedom is freedom from the law, that is from keeping a ritual. It is freedom from the curse, that is paying the penalty for our own sin. Then it is freedom also in Hebrews Chapter 2 and verse 15 from the fear of death. We are free from the fear of death. It says in Hebrews 2:15 "And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." Christ delivers us from the fear of death. And one thing a Christian should have is no fear of death. We may fear the pain and we may fear the disease and the illness, but not death itself. Because that simply ushers us into the presence of God.
Another thing the Bible says about our freedom is in Romans 6:7 it says we are free from sin. And what it means is that we are free from the condemnation of sin. Sin cannot require anything of us, because its penalty has been paid. It also tells us in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 9:19, which we studied a few weeks ago, that we are free from all men. And what Paul means is free from the rules and the traditions of men. Free from manmade religious rules. And in Galatians 4:3 and Colossians 2:20 it says we're free from Jewish ordinances.
So what is our freedom? It's freedom from the law, pleasing God by externals. It's free from the curse, having to pay the terrible curse of God for our sin because it's already been taken care of. Free from the fear of death. Free from what sin can do to us. Free from human regulations of religion and free from Jewish ordinances. We are free from all of those areas. Paul calls it the glorious liberty of the children of God. Now another thing about it. It not only comes from God, and I defined it for you, but another thing about our freedom, it belongs to all Christians. There are not some Christians more free than others. In Galatians Chapter 5, in verse 13, Paul says "For brethren you have been called unto liberty." All Christians are called with a view toward freedom. Called with a view toward liberty.
Now another thought about the New Testament teaches is, in our freedom we are to hold on to it. Enjoy your freedom people. Hang on to it, don't give it up. Don't let anybody circumscribe you to outward ritual. Don't let anybody substitute ritual for reality. Don't let anybody drag you into forums. You hold onto your liberty and you enjoy your freedom. You say boy, that's good news. That's right. You say, where'd you get that out of the Bible? Galatians 5:1, "Standfast," it says or "for freedom Christ has set us free, therefore, standfast and don't be entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
Stay within your liberty, enjoy your freedom. Galatians 2:4 is a good illustration of it. Paul was always hounded by the Judaisers who wanted him to keep the law and get circumcised and circumcise all the Gentiles and make the Gentiles keep the ceremonies of Moses. So in Galatians 2:4, "And that because of false brethren unawares brought in who came in secretly to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus that they might bring us into bondage." Here came the Judaisers, they were looking over the Gentile Christians and they were spying out their liberty. What that really means is they were looking for weak points in the enemy's position like scouts, you know. They were trying to find where they were abusing liberty or where the liberty wasn't working so they could force them back into bondage.
But verse 4, "To whom we gave place by subjection? No, not for an hour." We didn't let them take away our liberty. Man we were free from Jewish ceremonialism, and we weren't about to subscribe to it. Not for an hour did we do that. Why Paul? "That the truth of the gospel might continue with you." Listen, if you give up your liberty all the time, needlessly giving up your liberty to ritual and form and ceremony and tradition, people will confuse that with the truth of the gospel. If you identify your Christianity by all the things you don't do, then people will think that's what Christianity is.
Hold on to your liberty. You say but wait a minute. When the apostle Paul went to Jerusalem and they told him to go take a Jewish vow, he did it. How comes he's willing in one place to keep the ceremony of Moses and he's not willing in another place? That's a fair question. Let me give you the answer. He only gave up his liberty when it was necessary to reach the people he was dealing with. Listen, when the Judaisers tried to hassle Paul to circumcise the Gentiles, He says forget it. The Gentiles don't even believe in circumcision anyway. That's no problem with them. But when it came to working with the Jews if circumcision was going to make Timothy better able to work with the Jews, he would circumcise Timothy. Do you see what the point is?
You never give up your liberty needlessly or people confuse the gospel with what you do or don't do. But you will relinquish your liberty when in a society that you're in it would offend somebody. That's the difference. It's one thing to be a Jew unto the Jews, it's something else to turn all the Gentiles into Jews. Paul says not for a minute. So your liberty comes from God. It is received to the gospel. It is defined as freedom from the law, the curse and all those things I mentioned. It belongs to all Christians. You're to hold on to it. And one other point and that's the point that gets into 1 Corinthians 10. You're not to abuse it.
Just because you're holding on to it and just because you have it, you can't abuse it. Now here's the tension. On the one hand, see you're holding...I'm holding my liberty. This is my right. On the other hand, you don't want to offend anybody. You don't want to abuse your liberty. Now there are two ways to abuse your freedom. I'm going to give you these two. We've covered one, we're covering another one. Here they are. There are two ways to abuse your freedom. Number one, by doing things that offend other people. By doing things that offend other people. And that will vary from culture to culture, year to year, age to age. Paul says look if I'm among Jews, yes, I will keep some mosaic ceremonies. I want to reach them. But if I'm among the Gentiles man, I'm not going to make them all do the Jewish laws which they don't even understand anyway. That would just be to relinquish my liberty needlessly and confuse them. So he says in Chapter 9, he went into a great detail. One way to abuse your liberty is to do things that offend others. Say I'm free in Christ, man I can do whatever I want. I'll go out and do what I want. I don't care what anybody thinks.
I was talking to missionaries recently who were in Europe. They were in a little village, small area, and the women there did not shave their legs. That was just...and that's true in a lot of places in the world, but this particular place they didn't do it. Only one kind of woman would shave her legs and that was a prostitute. That was the custom. And when the missionary ladies arrived with their legs shaved, it caused a lot of problems. The people did not understand that. And they had to relinquish their liberty, at that point, because they didn't want to be offensive because of the identification. Now that's principle number one.
You're abusing your liberty when you're needlessly harming someone else when you could relinquish it. Principle two, the second way you abuse your liberty is by doing things that could disqualify you from service. In other words, when you run your liberty out to its limits and you're playing on a thin edge...I think of the little boy who climbed in the bunkbed one night, in the middle of the night there was a tremendous crash and he fell out and hit the floor with a thud and his father came running in and he was crying on the floor. And said, "Well, what happened? How did you ever do that?" He says, "I think I fell asleep to close to where I got in."
You know, I think there's a lot of Christians who fall asleep to close to where they got in and they're always flirting on the borderline. They've got their liberty, they're running their liberty right out to the sheer edge. Paul says there are two dangers in the abuse of liberty. One, that you would offend somebody else. Two, that you would get yourself in a position to be tempted to fall into sin and get disqualified from service. These two things make up Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 of 1 Corinthians.
The first point of offending another is in Chapter 9. The second point of getting yourself in trouble is in Chapter 10. And he uses in Chapter 10, verse 1-13 an illustration of Israel to make his point. Israel fell asleep too close to where they got in and got in a lot of trouble. This is a powerful illustration. It kind of comes out of verses 24-27 of Chapter 9, notice it. Paul says in 24, "We're all in a race. We can potentially receive the prize. So run to win." Now what is the prize? To win people to Christ. To be a soul winner. To be somebody who is used of God to win people to Christ. And he says if you're going to do that, you're going to have to be, verse 25, "temperate" or self-controlled.
So he says that's the way I run in verse 26, "and I keep my body and bring it into subjection unless I myself should become disqualified." Now Paul says look, the Christian life is like a race. We're all Christians. We're in the race, but some of us could get disqualified. It doesn't mean your salvation. No, no, it means you could be disqualified out of usefulness. He's talking about service, winning people to Christ, reaching people. And he says in order for me to really reach people, I have to bring my body into subjection. I have to be under self-control. I can't just let my body do whatever it wants. I've got to be careful about my liberties. I've got to be careful about what I allow for myself or I'll run myself run out onto the shear edge. I'll get tempted and off I'll go and be disqualified and set out of service.
And with that concept he moves into verses 1-13 of Chapter 10 and he says this is exactly what happened to Israel. Because of a failure to limit their liberty, because of failure to really deal with their bodies, to really exercise self-control, they lost out. Two million of them, according to John Davis, two million of them probably is the number that died in the wilderness. With their corpses strewn all over the wilderness. Now we went into verses 1-5 last time in detail, the assets of liberty. And it just describes this nation Israel. Elected by God as a witnessing community to receive, to preserve, to pass on his revelation and to prepare the way for Messiah.
They were freed he says in verse 1. Guided under the cloud and through the sea. Identified with Moses. They all at the same spiritual food. They were sustained by God and sustained in water according to verse 4. They were free, guided, identified, sustained as a witnessing community under the leadership of God's man Moses. And the parallel is obvious people. The Christian is God's called out witnessing community, freed, guided, sustained and union with Christ who is the head and leader. And so he's making a comparison. Israel was in a race. The prize was to be a witnessing community that could reach the world, but two million of them failed. Two million of them had the carcasses strewn all over the wilderness and God had to start with a new generation because they were disqualified.
Why were they disqualified? Because they abused their liberty, because they pushed their freedom too far and they didn't put any restraints on it. They just kept pushing and pushing and pushing until finally they fell. And that brings us to today. Let's look at the abuses of liberty from verses 6-10. Their assets of liberty are listed in the first five verses and how did they abuse it. Look at verse 6, "Now these things were our examples to the intent we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted." This whole passage is written as an example. Verse 11 says the same thing. It says, "All these things happen unto them for examples."
Now Israel is an example of somebody who has freedom. They've been freed, they've been identified with God, their sustained and guided into the wilderness and the misuse of their freedom results in their disqualification. Perfect illustration of his second way to abuse liberty by falling into temptation and sin because you're not careful. Now what we're...what was going on? Well, the whole overall thing is simply in verse 6, they lusted after evil things. Now you can do two things with your body. Verse 27 of Chapter 9, "You can bring your body under control," or verse 6 of Chapter 10, "you can just let your body go wild and lust."
If you bring your body under control, you're useful to God. If you bring your flesh under control, you're useful to God. If you're controlled by the Holy Spirit, if you're controlled by God, you're useful. If you're lusting after things and your body is in control in calling the shots you are useless. If you are under control, you are qualified. If you are out of control you are disqualified from usefulness. Now specifically, what were the sins that Israel was committing? What ways did the flesh manifest itself? All right, here we go. Number one in verse 7, idolatry. "Neither be ye idolaters as were some of them as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." And he's going to make reference to a whole group of Old Testament incidents with wondering Israel.
First of all, don't be idolaters. Now Israel was idolatrists. And this really hits the issue at Corinth, because the Corinthians were living in a very potentially devastating society. As I told you several weeks ago, the Corinthian society was totally overwrought with demons, manifesting themselves behind these different idols. And idolatry was a part of everything, I mean everything. There couldn't be any kind of public occasion or anything else that wasn't connected with idols. That was their entire society just multiple gods and everything they did practically within the social framework of the Corinthian society had idols in it.
And so the mature Christians, the Corinthian Christians, you know, who were the smug confident, ones who had been around a while, they were saying this, hey look, we're in the society, we're mature, we've been well taught, apostle Paul's taught us, we've studied under him for 18 months, we know our way around. Look, we've got to be a part of our society. We can go to the festivals, the social occasions, the ceremonies and we can attend the celebrations of our society. We can get involved in all of those things and we really don't have to fear, because we're so confident, we're so mature that that stuff just doesn't really bother us. And if we have to eat idol meat, meat offered to idols, that's really no problem. We're able to resist the temptation and even if there is an orgy there, why we'll just sit in the corner and discuss theology. We're not going to really get involved and we'll be strong enough to handle it.
And so everywhere these mature, smug, confident Corinthians went, they were exposing themselves to the whole gamut of idolatry that was around them and trying to stay separated. But could they? Look at Israel, Paul says. Look at them, hardly out of Egypt. And out in the desert there weren't even any idols around, but the first opportunity they had, the first time their leader was gone, they reverted back to Egyptian idolatry. And here were the Corinthians not like Israel in the wilderness, but living in the middle of idolatry.
And if the Corinthians continually expose themselves to idolatry, they were constantly being a part of it. Believe me, it would creep right in. Look at the morality of our day. The morality of the church has changed dramatically and the reason it's changed so dramatically is because we have been slowly brainwashed. Like 50 years ago, the morality of Christianity was much tighter, much more rigid, much more confined to the scripture and now, little by little the morality of even "Christianity" begins to dissipate. And the reason is because we're in a society that is destroying all morality that is wiping out all morality and consequently we find ourselves buying the bag.
Just subliminally it approaches our minds and before we know it we've got a watered down morality. And some of the things we would do, some of the places we would go wouldn't even have been conceived of by Christians 50 years ago. The reason is we have slowly been brainwashed by the media. Paul is, in a sense, saying to the Corinthians, you can't set yourself up as somebody who thinks he stands without potentially falling and especially you'll never be able to just waltz around your whole with idolatry and not have it affect you.
You're going to come up with a syncretism. You're going to come up with a wedding between idolatry and true worship. Now verse 7, "Neither be idolaters as were some of them," notes that not all Israel worshipped at the golden calf. Some of them did. It was an individual thing. Again, in dealing with Israel in the wilderness, remember, everything that occurred was an individual thing. And so in Corinth the same thing was true. Look at Chapter 5, verse 11. Some Corinthian Christians were idolatrists. They had already made this wedding of Christianity to idol worship.
Verse 11, "I've written unto you not to company if any man that is called a brother." Now he's talking about Christians. "Anybody called a brother or at least called himself a Christian be a fornicator, sexually evil, a covetous, or an," what, "idolater, don't have anything to do with him." But apparently within the congregation of the Corinthian believers there were some worshipping idols. You see by fooling around with that, they couldn't keep separated.
It slowly creeps in. It insidiously comes in. You can't continue to expose yourself to that and not have it affect your theology and find a place there. The line gets blurred folks. It just gets blurred he said. And idolatry suddenly creeps in when freedom is abused by getting too close to the contact. Now look at Exodus 32, and I want to point out what I think to be a very fascinating truth. Exodus 32 is the reference that Paul has in mind when he talks about the idolatry of Israel. They were wandering in the wilderness. They had just passed through the sea and under the cloud, been given provision of God. And out there in the wilderness, Moses went up Mount Sinai to get the law. While he's up there, the people had a little idolatry going on.
But I think something here, I want to point it out to you. "When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mountain, the people gathered themselves unto Aaron and said unto him, up" get with it Aaron, do it, go, hop to it, whatever. Moses had been gone for a while. "Make us elohiym." That is the Hebrew word for God and I think it should be capital G, a singular. That's the name of God. "Make us God which shall go before us for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what has become of him." We haven't seen Moses in a long time. We don't know where he is, but since he is not here to represent God, let's make another representation of God.
Make us God. You say, John, why do you think that they're talking about God the true God? How could they possibly do this? Let me show you why. "And Aaron said break off the gold earrings which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons and your daughters and bring them to me." Maybe Aaron hoped they wouldn't want to do that and this was kind of a stupid attempt to stop the process by making them provide the gold themselves, but they were willing. He underestimated their idolatrist desires perhaps.
"And the people did break off the gold earrings in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And they received them at their hands and fashioned it with an engraving tool after he made it a melted calf." And that is an Egyptian deity form. "And they said, listen, "These are thy god." The representation of elohiym is what I think that they were making. This is God. God is now a golden calf. You say that's blasphemous. You're absolutely right. But why do you think it should be God instead of Gods? Look at the next line. "Which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." Did they know who brought them out of the land of Egypt? Of course they did. Who was it? Jehovah.