Pattern
of Spiritual Failure. 1 Cor 10:3-6
We want to
emphasize the theme that runs through the Old Testament with respect to the
Exodus generation. It is used again and again and again as the paradigm of the failure
of the believer in time and his loss of blessing, his loss of privilege, his
loss of rewards.
Psalm 78:12 NASB
“He [God] wrought wonders before their fathers In the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.”
That is talking about the miraculous deliverance of Israel from their slavery in Egypt. [13] “He divided the sea and caused them to pass
through, And He made the waters stand up like a heap. [14] Then He led them
with the cloud by day And all the night with a light
of fire.” It wasn’t actually a fire but it was the glow of the Shekinah. We know from other passages that this the Shekinah, the dwelling.
The word Shekinah is not used in the Old Testament, it was developed by the Rabbis to refer to this
concept. It is the cognate to the Greek word SKENE [skhnh] used in John chapter one where John said that the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So Shekinah
refers to the dwelling of Jesus Christ with His people. The interesting thing
is that the Jews from a distance saw this glowing cloud at night but when
Moses, who was the only one who approached the Shekinah,
he did not see just a cloud. He saw the person of the pre-incarnate Jesus
Christ in His pre-incarnate body. How do we know that? Because God says to
Moses: “I don’t speak to the other prophets like I speak to you, I speak to you
mouth to mouth.” And he speaks about the fact that he saw the finger of God, he
saw the Lord Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate state. But Moses was the only
one who saw that and that glory was miraculously reflected on his face once he
left the presence of the Shekinah. So the Jews had
this evidence, this miracle, day in and day out, of leadership, the guidance of
God by the cloud and by the fire at night.
[15] He split the rocks in
the wilderness And gave {them} abundant drink like the
ocean depths. [16] He brought forth streams also from the rock And caused waters to run down like rivers. [17]
Yet they still continued to sin against Him, To rebel
against the Most High in the desert. [18] And in their heart
[thinking] they put God to the test By asking food
according to their desire.” They are believers but they are rejecting His
provision. This is typical of every ungrateful believer in time. When you go
negative to God’s Word you always reject His provision, you always look
somewhere else for sustenance. [19] “Then they spoke against God; They said, ‘Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? [20]
Behold, He struck the rock so that waters gushed out, And
streams were overflowing; Can He give bread also? Will He provide meat for His
people?’ [21] Therefore the LORD heard and was full of wrath; And
a fire was kindled against Jacob And anger also mounted against Israel, [22] Because they did not believe in
God And did not trust in His salvation.” God is judging them. They did not
trust in His deliverance, it is not that they weren’t believers.
By this time the nation is a
nation of believers. What happened to them is the same thing that happens to
many believers after salvation and is the point that Paul is driving home in 1
Corinthians 10, that is, after salvation believers go into rebellion, they
reject the grace provision of God, and instead of relying upon all of the
spiritual assets that God has supplied they go into spiritual failure. 1
Corinthians 10 has outlined five assets. First of all that they were under the
cloud, which indicates divine guidance. Then they
passed through the sea, which indicates divine deliverance. They were baptized in Moses, which indicates their identification
with God’s plan for Israel. The fourth thing that God provided for them was the
spiritual food, and the fifth was the spiritual water. There are five
provisions or assets that every Jew had and this is related to every spiritual
asset that the believer has in positional truth. Positional truth refers to our
position in Jesus Christ, all that we were given at the instant of salvation.
The point that Paul is making to the Corinthians is: You have all of these
spiritual assets and yet you are carnal, you are not living on the basis of
these assets. You continue to emphasize that you have all this knowledge but it
is a knowledge that is not a biblical knowledge, not divine viewpoint, you are
still operating on human viewpoint and the thinking of your past Greek culture.
As a result you are in arrogance and are going to destroy your own spiritual
life just as these Jews did.
The “salvation” in the
translation of Psalm 78:22 is not phase one salvation, it is the ongoing
deliverance of God through their time in the wilderness. This is analogous to
the believer living the spiritual life as he continues to live after salvation
he has to continue to trust in God’s provision. [23] “Yet He commanded the
clouds above And opened the doors of heaven; [24] He
rained down manna upon them to eat And gave them food from heaven. [24] Man did
eat the bread of angels; He sent them food in abundance.” God always supplies
everything we need for every situation. This is the principle called the
sufficiency of God’s grace. This is one doctrine that is under tremendous
assault in the church today. The problem that we see in Corinth and in the Old Testament is the same problem we face
all the time. It is the problem that the Bible calls worldliness, using the
Greek word KOSMOS [kosmoj]
which is translated “world,” and we call it cosmic thinking. This is the
thinking that characterizes man apart from God. Cosmic thinking is all the
different thought forms and thought systems that are apart from God,
independent of God, though they may contain much establishment truth.
Every single person is born
inside the cosmic system, inside cosmic thinking, and are brainwashed with
cosmic thinking from the day they are born. Our parents brainwashed us with
cosmic thinking, your school teachers brainwashed us with cosmic thinking, our
friends brainwashed us with cosmic thinking, the media brainwashed us with
cosmic thinking; and we didn’t even know it, because we as an unbeliever had
the mentality of our soul, like a radio receiver, tuned in to the cosmic
frequency and we sucked it up like a sponge. There are all kinds of different
forms of cosmic thinking. There is religious cosmic thinking, and that can take
any number of different forms—Hinduism, Islam,
ecumenical religious concepts. You can have cosmic thinking in secularism and
evolution that denies God and has an atheistic slant to it, but there are all
forms of religious cosmic thinking. Then there is philosophic cosmic thinking
where people, have picked up various philosophical systems that they are
enamoured with because they stimulate them. Then you have eclectics. This is
where most people fall because very few people take the time or the effort to
seriously think through their thinking so that it is consistent. They just pick
whatever seems to make them smile and they have all kinds of elements from this
system and that system and this other system, and they just try to blend it all
together into come kind of hotchpot that seems to work for them and make life
work apart from God. All of this represents cosmic thinking.
What happens under the
concept of cosmic thinking and worldliness is that you can take any believer
from any point of the world and their brain is loaded with cosmic thinking. It
has to do with all their cultural values, religious values, moral values,
personal opinions and everything else. The Jews had come up in a system in Egypt. Then what happens is somebody comes along and gives
you the gospel and you have divine viewpoint. In most cases people take
whatever they already have, blend it with divine viewpoint, and end up with
some kind of new system. It is a blend of paganism and divine viewpoint and it
is not either one, it is just this blend. This is why the Bible says that we
have to completely renovate our thinking. That means we have to get rid of the
old cosmic thought. The problem that the Jews had was that they never accepted
the divine viewpoint, they never accepted God’s grace provision completely, and
every time they had some problem in life, every time it got difficult, every
time they faced some crisis out in the desert, they started griping and
complaining and grumbling to Moses and wanted to go right back to Egypt where
they had security. For them security was much more important than having the
freedom that God provided them under grace, and this is always the conflict in
human history: security versus freedom.
People can either have security
or they can have freedom. When they want security they want somebody to provide
everything for them and they usually look to the government to take care of
that. When they have freedom that means that they are personally accountable
for all their decisions and that means that if they make bad decisions then
they may end up being a failure in life. Nobody wants to be a failure in life
and nobody wants to reap then consequences of their bad decisions, so they rationalize
it is better to get rid of freedom and go back to some sort of security where I
am taken care of from the cradle to the grave. That is exactly what had
happened to the Jews. They were taken care of in a system in Egypt from the cradle to the grave. That is exactly what
socialism promises, exactly what liberal politicians promise—some sort of
security. There is either freedom or there is security, there is no compromise
between the two. It is only the Bible, only Bible doctrine,
that provides any real understanding of freedom in human history. Nobody
got those kinds of concepts until they got it from the Word of God. There was
freedom in the Old Testament under the Mosaic law,
under the theocracy, but the Jews constantly rejected it because they wanted to
go back to some system based on human viewpoint.
The technical word for this
is the word syncretism, and this has been a problem that has plagued believers
throughout all of human history. It is taking one system and joining Scripture
to it and you come up with something new that is just a blend if not being
something new and totally devoted to the grace of God. But that was the problem
in Israel and is the problem today: people don’t want to trust
the sufficiency of God’s grace. They want to always rely on something else. They’ll
talk about God’s grace and the infallibility of Scripture but the most important
corollary of the doctrine of the inerrancy and infallibility is the sufficiency
of grace. What do we mean by that? Inerrancy of Scripture is a doctrine that is
derived from the Scriptures that the Bible is the revelation from God: “All
Scripture is God-breathed,” 2 Timothy 3:16.
Therefore since God is without error anything that comes from God is without
error. From 1 Peter 1:20, 21 we know that God the Holy Spirit moved the prophets
so that He used human authors, but He oversaw the writing so that He guaranteed
that what they wrote was free from error. That is why the Scripture is
infallible and can’t be broken, because it has its source and not man. The corollary
of that is if the Scripture is true then it is also sufficient. 2 Peter 1:3 NASB
“seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life
and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory
and excellence.” This means that you don’t need to go out, away from the
Scriptures, to find answers and solutions to the problems in life.
The point of Scripture is
that God supplied everything you and I need to handle any situation and crisis
in life at the instant of salvation. So it is potential. The only thing that
activates that potential is your volition to come and sit under the teaching of
the Word of God, to study the Word of God, to make that a priority and let your
thinking be completely overhauled/renovated by the
doctrine in God’s Word.
This is the principle that
the Jews rejected. They rejected the sufficiency of God’s grace—“God can’t take
care of us”—and yet when God supplied for them he always supplied more than
enough. It might not have had all of the seasonings and culinary delights of
what they experienced back in Egypt but it took care of their nutrition.
Psalm 78:26 NASB “He
caused the east wind to blow in the heavens And by His
power He directed the south wind. [27] When He rained meat upon them like the
dust, Even winged fowl like the sand of the seas.”
There is a superabundance of God’s provision. Whatever it is in life that you
are facing there is a superabundance of God’s provision to face and handle any
situation in life. The problem is that most people don’t understand it because
they have a fraudulent view of the Word of God and they don’t understand how
the mechanics of the spiritual life function. [29] “So they ate and were well
filled, And their desire He gave to them.” The
interesting things is that in Psalm 106:15 we have
another passage that describes this, and it says: “So He gave them their
request, But sent a wasting disease among them [leanness to their souls].” They
got exactly what they wanted (what they thought they wanted) but the fact was
it didn’t satisfy them because the problem wasn’t physical. The problem wasn’t
that they didn’t have meat, the problem was a spiritual problem in their soul
and that was that they had rejected the solution of God. This is the problem on
the life of so many believers that are failures, they are running around
looking for happiness, looking for stability, but they have rejected the
provision of God, just like the Jews in the desert. When God provided manna
after a while they just got bored with it.
Psalm 78:30 NASB “Before
they had satisfied their desire, While their food was
in their mouths, [31] The anger of God rose against them And killed some of
their stoutest ones, And subdued the choice men of Israel. [32] In spite of all this they still sinned And did
not believe in His wonderful works. [33] So He brought their days to an end in
futility And their years in sudden terror.” The Jews
of that generation came through the desert, they spent a year at Mount Sinai receiving the law and during that time they rejected God’s provision,
wanted some excitement and stimulation, and talked Aaron into making the golden
calf, so they got into idolatry again. God disciplined them and several
thousand were killed on that particular day. Then when they finally left Sinai
and headed off toward the promised land they came to Kadesh-barnea and God told them to send 12 spies into the
land to check it out and they didn’t pay attention. God didn’t say to go and
see if they could take the land, He said: “I have given the land to you, go do
a reconnaissance mission to find out how you are going to take the land.” But
they didn’t listen to God. Ten of the twelve came back and said it couldn’t be
done. Tow of them, Joshua and Caleb, said they could do it because God said we could
do it, God is the one who was going to defeat the enemy, not us. They relied on
the sufficiency of God’s grace and power, that it would be enough. That is
where the faith-rest drill comes in.
Because they rejected God’s
grace provision at that time that generation was never allowed to go into the promised land. They had to spend the next forty years until
every adult over the age of twenty died. God had to kill them through a variety
of plagues and earthquakes and various other things. If we think about
two-million people dying off in the desert over a period of forty years it
means that there are several thousand funerals every single day as a testimony
to the rejection of the grace of God. Death, death and death constantly
reminded them that they were not in the place of life that God had provided for
them.
1 Corinthians 10:3 NASB
“and all ate the same spiritual food.” Every single believer has the same spiritual
food in the Word of God. We have access to the Word of God,
it is being taught today and is available today that it has never been
available before in human history. There is a superabundance of doctrinal
teaching because of the internet and because of publications and a number of
different ministries, and yet people reject it again and again and again. [4] “and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were
drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ.” This
is a reference back to Exodus 17:1 NASB “Then all the congregation
of the sons of Israel journeyed by stages from the wilderness of Sin, according
to the command of the LORD, and camped at Rephidim,
and there was no water for the people to drink. [2] Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, ‘Give us water that we may
drink.’ And Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test
the LORD?’” Ingratitude is always a sign of a lack of grace orientation. Gratitude
is an attitude of thankfulness for the reception of that which we do not deserve.
When we do not have gratitude it is because we have rejected grace and we are
choosing arrogance instead of gratitude, when our eyes are on self instead of
on God. [3] “But the people thirsted there for water; and they grumbled against
Moses and said, ‘Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with
thirst?’ [4] So Moses cried out to the LORD, saying, ‘What shall I do to this people? A little
more and they will stone me.’ [5] Then the LORD said to Moses, “Pass before the people and take with
you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand your staff with which you
struck the Nile, and go. [6] Behold, I will stand before you there on
the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and
water will come out of it, that the people may drink.” And Moses did so in the
sight of the elders of Israel. [7] He named the place Massah
and Meribah [Griping and Complaining] because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the LORD, saying, ‘Is the LORD among us, or not?’”
Numbers 20:10 NASB “and Moses and Aaron gathered the
assembly before the rock. And he said to them, ‘Listen now, you rebels; shall
we bring forth water for you out of this rock?’” Moses fails at this point and
this is why Moses is not allowed to enter into the promised
land, he finally got fed up with their rebelliousness and he responds out
of anger. [11] “Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with
his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts
drank. [12] But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you have not
believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore
you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.’”
Moses was told to speak to the rock, not to strike the rock. [13] “Those {were}
the waters of Meribah, because the sons of Israel contended with the LORD, and He proved Himself holy
among them.”
The solution is to put
problems in the Lord’s hands and to trust in Him; this is always the solution.
We are not to worry about it, not to try and figure it out on our own, but to
put things in the Lord’s hands and then to leave it there. This was Israel’s failure, they did not ever follow the divine solution
and we must always remember that the divine solution is the only solution. The
human solution is no solution, it always leads to failure.
1 Corinthians 10:5 NASB
“Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well-pleased; for they were laid
low in the wilderness.” This word that is translated “laid low in the
wilderness” is a bad translation. It is the Greek word KATASTRONNUMI [katastwnnumi] which means to overthrow, to spread, to strew or to
scatter. Literally it should be translated, “they were scattered in the
wilderness.” It talks about the fact that for forty years this whole generation
died and their bodies were scattered from Egypt to Kadesh-barnea throughout
the desert. They turned Sinai into one tremendous graveyard simply because they
refused to trust God. Only Joshua and Caleb survived to go into the land. The
principle is that they trusted in God for salvation but after salvation they
failed because they failed to operate on thinking doctrine. This is the warning
that we get in Hebrews 3:7ff:
“Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, “TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT
HARDEN YOUR HEARTS AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME, AS IN THE DAY OF TRIAL IN THE
WILDERNESS, WHERE YOUR FATHERS TRIED {Me} BY TESTING {Me,}
AND SAW MY WORKS FOR FORTY YEARS. THEREFORE I WAS ANGRY WITH THIS
GENERATION, AND SAID, ‘THEY ALWAYS GO ASTRAY IN THEIR HEART, AND THEY DID NOT
KNOW MY WAYS’; AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH, ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY
REST.’”
We are warned not to
harden our hearts, that is, don’t resist the teaching of God,
don’t be negative to doctrine as the Jews were. It is the thinking that is the
problem: going back to human viewpoint, pre-salvation, cultural assimilation. The
Jews, because of their failure, were disqualified from winning the prize. So we
have to take a warning from this not to become distracted by human viewpoint thnking, not to lose sight of the sufficiency of God’s
grace, and not to let our priorities be destroyed by the priorities of the world
around us.