Sermon Text:

We are continuing our journey through 1 Corinthians, working our way passage by passage through the letter seeking God’s instruction on how we are to live as His children together. This week we pick back up in chapter 10.

Beth and I lived in Pennsylvania for several years and we would frequently drive back and forth from Detroit to our home south of Pittsburgh. Many of you who have been out that way know that most of the drive is smooth and straight. You can drive at high speeds for several hours and there really are not too many things you have to worry about. As you get into Pennsylvania it gets a bit hillier and curvier but nothing too bad on the freeway. But on I-79 just northwest of Pittsburgh there is a massive S curve on the freeway. As you get close to this you will start to see a lot of road signs warning of the curve until you finally come upon a large LED billboard warning you to slow down and be careful.

I can tell you from experience that if you hit that curve without adequately slowing down you will not forget it. In fact, it was a regular event on the local news out there to see both cars and trucks rolled over and major accidents there. There are so many accidents that occasionally reporters ask the road commission if there are any plans to straighten that section of the road. The response is always the same, there are no rollovers of vehicles travelling at posted speeds. The authorities have clearly communicated the danger as well as the requirements to travel safely and the best solution is for drivers to heed the warnings and follow the law.

Friends those road signs are instructions, messages, and revelation from the authorities about what is coming so that drivers can navigate the road ahead safely. This is the authoritative word of the state communicated for the good of the drivers. Those drivers who recognize the authority of those communications and trust them can travel safely, those who do not court disaster. Similarly, the Bible is an authoritative word. It is the word of God, and it also contains warnings and information to protect and inform the people of God as we travel through this life. Those who recognize its authority and trust in its message will be safe and those who do not are headed for disaster.

In our passage today, the apostle Paul is going to issue a sober warning to all those who identify themselves as God’s people. He is going to caution us that the grace of God frees us from sin, but not to sin. He is going to remind us that salvation comes to those who not only profess, but possess, faith and that genuine faith leads to genuine obedience. That is the main point of our message this morning.

“Genuine faith leads to loving obedience”

If you have your Bible, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 10 beginning at verse 1. If you are using the blue pew Bible, we provide it is on page 1194. If you do not own a Bible or have need of one, please take that one with you as our gift to you. Paul begins in verse 1,

10 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, ² and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, ³ and all ate the same spiritual food, ⁴ and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. ⁵ Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. ⁶ Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.

At the end of chapter 9 Paul emphasized that we all need to stay focused like spiritual athletes constantly seeking to be obedient to the faith. Now he introduces examples from the Old Testament Exodus narrative that show how urgent this is.

That is significant because prior to the resurrection of Jesus, the Exodus is the most dramatic salvation event in the Bible and so Paul is telling us that we can learn something important about salvation by looking at these previous salvation narratives that point forward to the culmination of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ.

The Exodus points us to Gospel realities. Israel was delivered from slavery in Egypt, believers are delivered from slavery to sin and the devil. In the Gospel, God comes down from heaven to save His people and in Exodus it was God himself who delivers Israel. In the Gospel we are covered by the blood of the sacrificed Christ so that the judgment of God will pass over us and, in the Exodus, the people put the blood of the sacrificed lamb upon their doorposts so that death would pass over them.

The people then leave Egypt, identify themselves as God’s people and begin making their way through the wilderness toward the promised land. This church age we live in is a lot like that wandering through the wilderness. Christ has come, the decisive event has occurred. We are free from slavery but are not yet in the promised land. There is danger on every side, and we must rely upon the Lord to guide us. Having begun well, we are not yet in the promised land of milk and honey we seek.

Paul is warning us not to deceive ourselves. There are many people who identify themselves as God’s people, who even participate in the life of the community of God’s people, but are not actually saved because they do not have saving faith. He says in verse 5, ^“with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.”

Most of the people who put the blood on their door as an emblem of faith did not see the promised land. Most of the people who identified themselves as God’s covenant people died in the wilderness because they did not have faith. They did not trust God. That should be a massive warning to us today. Seventy percent of people in the United States identify themselves as Christians and around 50% of Americans belong to a church. Though it is declining, there remains in our country a strong impulse to claim some sort of faith in Jesus. It doesn’t take too long, however, to figure out that this desire to identify as Christian often has very little to do with the way many people actually live. This is tragic because identifying with Jesus as savior but not as Lord is not saving faith. Let’s look a little closer at Paul’s examples.

“…our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, ² and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea”

There were many who died in the wilderness who had walked on dry land in the middle of the sea. They saw the light of God in the cloud which led the way. Paul says they were baptized into Moses. I want us to understand what he is saying.

Friends, your baptism cannot and does not save you. Baptism is an act of obedience and faith. If you are baptized apart from faith you have simply taken a bath. As a result of your baptism you may get to assemble with the people of God. You may even join them on their journey, but whether you are baptized or not, you will not see the promised land if you have no faith. He says,

^“3 and all ate the same spiritual food, ⁴ and all drank the same spiritual drink.”

Imagine being among these Hebrews and waking up every day to receive bread from heaven! Imagine having stood there and seen the Lord God bring forth rivers of water from desert rocks to quench your thirst! But sadly, many of those who experienced these things were not trusting God because they loved Him and wanted to worship Him. They could not deny that God was with them but to them, He was just a means for them to satisfy their own fleshly desires rather than one worthy of enduring great hardship to be with. They did not see the promised land.

You may be a member in good standing and eat the spiritual bread of fellowship in communion. You might partake of the cup of blessing in the Lord’s supper, but if you do this without saving faith, you only drink judgment upon yourself. Paul says,

“For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”

We saw last week that Christ was with them as they wandered. He is the rock of salvation that provided and protected all the faithful then and now. But then as now there were many who only appreciated Jesus when He gave them what they wanted but never loved Him enough to faithfully endure the suffering that journey required. They never saw the promised land.

Friends, it is possible to be among the people of God without being one of them. Salvation rests upon faith in Jesus Christ alone and not merely some Jesus we invent in our own mind, but the true Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible. We are warned repeatedly throughout the New Testament that we cannot presume upon God’s grace. Listen to what Jude says in Jude verse 5,

⁵ Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

I want this to settle into our minds. These people who were judged had been led by the light of God’s presence in the pillar of fire. They had tasted the bread from heaven. They were witnesses to the power of God in salvation and even shared in the blessings of the Holy Spirt as they were led out of Egypt. They had received the word of God through the teaching of Moses and seen the work of God in the lives of the faithful around them.

Even so, they did not trust God for their salvation. If after experiencing these things their hearts remained hardened, there was no other hope for them. If you have heard the gospel and know the gospel and even identify with it, but do not sincerely believe it, there is no hope left for you.

Speaking again of this wilderness example Hebrews 6:4-6 says,

⁴ For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, ⁵ and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, ⁶ and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

We are not saved by knowing the answers to a theology quiz, or signing a card, or coming forward during a song. We are not saved by baptism, or communion, or even membership in a church. Only a sincere faith in Jesus will save you.

We are all born with sinful hearts. Like those who died in the wilderness, we are most concerned about satisfying the desires of our flesh. We will come to God only when it is on our terms. We want Him to take care of us and give us what we want but we do not love Him. We praise Him when things are going well and get angry at Him when they are not.

Deep within our hearts is the unspoken assumption that we are good and deserve the good life and that any difficulty we encounter is unfair.

The truth is that we have pushed God aside from His rightful place and what we actually deserve is judgment and it is only by His grace we continue to receive any good thing. In rejecting God, we have spiritual vandals corrupting the good world He created to display his love and glory. Every law we break is a rejection of God and causes harm to other people. We lie, cheat, steal, covet, and dishonor others, all while convincing ourselves that we are justified in doing so.

But God, in an incredible act of mercy and love has made a way to save us while not ignoring our sin. He sent His son Jesus to earth to live as one of us. He lived a life of perfect faith, earning all the blessings we do not deserve. Then Jesus takes upon Himself all the sins that we have committed and pays the price for them upon the cross. He pays the price, suffering the outpouring of the wrath of God, so that all who believe in Him may receive the blessings of a perfect life.

He was crucified and died, then three days later He rose again victorious showing that sin and death have been defeated. He has overcome the world and the devil and invites all who will repent and believe to receive the blessings of His life and work. When we admit that even our best works are marred by sin and that our only hope is in the perfect righteousness of Jesus, we receive that perfect righteousness as a fee gift of grace to the glory of God.

It is by faith in Jesus alone that we are made acceptable to God. Our works and our life do not contribute in any way to us being justified, which means to be declared righteous in the sight of God. It is our faith alone, which is itself a result of God’s grace alone, that unites us sinners to the perfect savior and transforms us from children of wrath to children of God.

This, however, raises a very important practical question. How do we know if we have saving faith? We can see from our passage that a great many people who identified with the people of God were destroyed. I told you earlier that 70% of American’s say they are believers in Jesus.

Our culture certainly does not seem to have a 70% influence of godliness and we know from the Bible that there are people who believe something, but do not possess saving faith. Since it is so easy for our hearts to deceive us, even about what we really believe, the word of God calls us to carefully examine ourselves in light of the word.

2 Corinthians 13:5 says,

⁵ Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!

The ultimate test is whether we have a faith that results in Jesus Christ being in us and us in Him? The Bible gives a consistent answer to this question, and it is the same truth that Paul is operating with in this verse. It is also the main point of the message today, “Genuine faith leads to loving obedience”

There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that we can accept Jesus as our savior and not our Lord. There is only one evidence of saving faith offered in the Scripture and that is a Love for Christ that results in repentance and obedience. We are all sinners, and we all have imperfect faith, but if we have any true faith whatsoever, it will result in loving obedience.

Anyone who has kids or who has ever been around kids understands the difference between loving obedience and forced obedience. Stronger people can force obedience through threats and power but the obedience of saving faith is one powered by love. If there is no obedience, there can be no assurance of salvation. If there is only legalistic obedience, this is not an obedience of the heart and there can be no assurance of salvation.

This is the clear and consistent teaching of the Bible. Obedience is not the root of our salvation, but it is the fruit of salvation and if there is no fruit, we cannot claim the tree is healthy.

Matthew 7:21–23 says,

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

In John 14:15 Jesus says

¹⁵ “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Ephesians 2:10 clearly shows the balance between God’s grace in salvation and the works that come flow from it,

¹⁰ For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

One of the reasons we emphasize prayer and Bible study so much is because the Holy Spirit will use those means to produce fruitfulness in those who believe. This will strengthen you and provide assurance to you when you need it. That is why 2 Peter 1:10–11 after listing several of the characteristics of an obedient and faithful person Peter says,

¹⁰ Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. ¹¹ For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Peter says we should be diligent to confirm our calling and that is what Paul is saying in our main text as well. We live in a time when it is considered rude to question the reality of someone’s faith. The Bible, however, calls us to examine ourselves and it calls local churches to put out those whose lives give evidence that their testimony is false.

No person can know perfectly what is in the heart of another person. What we can know, however, is if the life of a person is consistent with the faith they claim. We all sin, but there is a huge difference between seeking Jesus solely to be delivered from the penalty of sin and seeking Jesus to be delivered from the presence of sin.

We must examine ourselves, using these examples from the word of God. These warnings are like those signs in Pennsylvania. Those who have faith will heed the word and the evidence that you believe the word is that your behavior changes. The evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in our heart is that we grow increasingly obedient to the word of God, which in turn protects us from the dangers that would cause us destruction.

Let’s be careful not to short-circuit the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts by seeking easy assurance. Instead, let’s point ourselves and others to the word of God as the standard by which we evaluate our faith. We cannot claim to love Jesus while nonchalantly or even proudly living in sin. We may show up to church, but if the rest of our week is characterized by grumbling, reviling, violence, greed, or lust we have no reason to believe God is with us. If we are entertained by godlessness or spend our resources pursuing worldly pleasure, we have no basis for thinking that we have the Spirit of Christ. If we do not find our pleasure and satisfaction in Jesus now, there is no reason to think we will do so in the next life.

If, however, we have the Spirit of God then these warnings will speak clearly to us. We will take note of what lies ahead and seek His help in remaining faithful so we can finish the race. In verse 7 Paul continues,

⁷ 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.” ⁸ We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. ⁹ We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, ¹⁰ nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer.

Paul focuses on four behaviors that characterized the unbelief of these people and for which they were destroyed.

1. Worldliness
2. Sexual Immorality
3. Presuming upon God’s grace
4. Complaining

Each of these is evidence of a lack of faith. Look carefully at this list. First, we notice that people haven’t changed in the past 2,000 years because we could have come up with this list yesterday. Second, every one of these things are sins that begin with a small impulse and grow stronger and stronger over time.

The people were worldly. “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play”. God didn’t play much of a role in their priorities. They lived for themselves and the pleasures of the world. They indulged themselves in sexual immorality and the pleasures of the flesh. There was no recognition of being vessels set aside for the glory of God.

Verse 9 says they “put Christ to the test”. They presumed upon the grace of God. They thought that no matter what they did, they would be forgiven. God had shown Himself merciful so many times in the past that they did not believe that there was an end to His patience and so they continued in their sin. Finally, it says they grumbled. Rather than trusting God to meet their needs they complained and were unappreciative of the blessings they had.

Paul says all these things were idolatry. They were a false worship that comes from having a wrong view about who God really is. These things do not come from faith in the true God, they reveal a faith in a false God. Paul says these things happened so that we may know the true God and be instructed better in our faith. He says,

¹¹ 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. ¹² Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

By God’s grace the failure of others is given as a warning to us. God is overflowing with Love and Jesus Christ will wash us clean of every sin but make no mistake God is holy. We can only stand before Him if we are united to Jesus through faith in Jesus.

There is no condemnation for anyone in Christ but to come to Jesus we must leave the world behind. If we seek the life he offers we must be crucified to the world with Him. Our obedience is the evidence of our faithfulness. If you are like me this is a very uncomfortable truth.

When I look at my life and my thought life, I see the unbearable truth of how weak my faith is. I find the reality that apart from Jesus I cannot stand at all. I see the weeds of all four of those patterns of sin trying to gain a foothold in my mind. I know I cannot live the obedient and repentant life God expects in my own power.

But that brings me back to the good news. God doesn’t accept me or reject me because of my obedience. My savior has already died for me. The Father is already pleased to look on me because by faith I am covered in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. This frees me to pursue obedience, not to be accepted, but out of my love for Him and desire to be like Him.

I am weak but I can live in peace and joy, knowing that my sins have been taken away and that God is working within me to prepare me to be in His presence. I can pursue obedience knowing that the sovereign God of the universe loves me and there is no power in the world who can pluck me out of His hands. My faithfulness is imperfect, but His is not. Look at how Paul finishes,

¹³ No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. ¹⁴ Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

I pray that God will grant each of us the true and pure faith that endures to the end. May our church be a place where we encourage each other and when necessary, admonish each other to remain faithful in Christ through our loving obedience.

Amen