Dear Church family, I enjoyed preaching through 1 Corinthians 10:1-17 the other day. Hopefully you enjoyed listening. More importantly, I hope that you heeded God’s warning by getting scared to death by the reality of sin inside of us and the potential for a disastrous fall, falling dead. (10:5-10, 12).
If it wasn’t for the Word of God saying that, then I would sound crazy. I may still sound crazy, but God’s Word speaks the truth, hard truth that we need to hear.
Fortunately, the fact that we should fear God and fear our propensity to sin with deadly consequences attached to it does not come without God’s encouragement or promise that He will remain faithful to help us in time of temptation (10:13). God is not aiming to strike us dead at the first moment we trip up (read Ps. 37:23-24!), but He is presently actively helping us to never come to that point. Therefore, it’s out of compassionate love (“beloved” as v14 says) that He tries to scare our self-sufficient pride out of ourselves. And from that same loving motivation, God essentially says in v14, “while I’m here to help you in times of temptation, you need to help yourself too by ‘fleeing from idolatry and filling yourself up with Christ (vv16-17).”
And even that statement should come as a loving command because after Paul just wrote about the deadly consequences of sinful idolatry, he’s trying to say, please stay far away from those deadly possibilities by not even putting yourself in a situation where you could be tempted and pulled into deadly error.
Finally, fill yourself up with Christ & His Gospel (vv16-17) so that you won’t be craving idolatry where you look for other things to fill your hungry soul’s belly up in all the wrong ways and all the wrong places. Filling yourself up with God’s love is the greatest antidote for craving sin and committing idolatry.
That’s my summery of Sunday’s message put to writing.
Now if that was enough for you to read, then stop here. But if you are intrigued by how we as Christians can actually be terrified of God without diminishing His absolute love, then read on.
Here are two points I want to emphasize in Sunday’s sermon on 1 Corinthians 10 which I think are important: (maybe choose just one point to read for times sake):
First, Please remember and remember to remember that you are at risk of falling prey to sin during any season of your life, weather young, middle aged or old.
That command to “if anyone thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (v12) means “you are susceptible to sin of the worst kind, of the idolatrous kind, during any season of your life no matter how mature you are.”
And the sins listed in 1 Corinthians 10:7-10 that Paul is referring to that we can fall into are idolatry, sexual immorality, testing Christ, and grumbling.
The message for us is: “take heed in your life over all of these types of potential pitfalls during every season of your life.”
Truthfully, some people are more susceptible to sexual immorality than others, other people are more susceptible to grumbling. And all of us are suspectable to idolatry which depicts every sin.
Perhaps in your older years you will be more susceptible to grumbling and complaining because life is not as good as it once was and you’ve lost money, health, and freedom. Perhaps the temptation of sexual immorality is more severe after getting married because you realize that marriage didn’t solve your sin issue because sin isn’t faithful to one, but it always craves for more.
Maybe in your older years, the idolatry that you seek is filling yourself up with a good career, a well behaved family and nice house. That could turn into idolatry if it’s “the love of money” (1 Timothy 6:8-10).
Weather the love of money, or the love of sex, both are defined as idolatry, and God tells all of us, even the mature, you are never ever ever unsuceptable to these things. And if you think that you could not struggle with these things, then you really need to hear 1 Corinthians 10:12!
I pray that God gives all of you the Holy Spirit’s light to feel your potential for idolatry, meaning: to fill yourself up with ultimate satisfaction in something other than Christ’s love for you.
And this is a warning to the teenager as well as the great grandpa. Idolatry of the heart in the form of sexual immorality & grumbling are dangerous heart dispositions for every generation. So let’s be a humble Church, WOL Chapel, and believe God’s Word about what He says about us: we are a danger to ourselves! But praise God that He helps us (v13).
Second, I want to explain why it’s okay to genuinely be afraid of God without diminishing His love and compassion. There is no doubt that Paul used the fear factor to dissuade any Christian in 1 Corinthians 10 from various forms of idolatry (vv1-12) while then seamlessly transitioning into the faithful and loving help of God to give us gracious aid in our moments of temptation (v13).
Here’s what I find fascinating in 1 Corinthians 10: Paul uses both motivations of fear and love without taking away from either. (we normally want to take away fear in the name of love or take away love in the name of fear, but Paul does neither).
Here’s how Paul convinces me of the fearful love that we ought have towards God:
After Paul scares the idolatry and self-confidence out of his listeners (vv1-12), he calls his listeners (us) “beloved” in v14 when he says, “flee from idolatry,” and the reason is that out of great empathetic, affectionate and compassionate love, God says through Paul, “flee from the sins in your life that will ruin you and could end in death.” That’s a very loving thing to say. If you love somebody and know that idolatry and sexual immorality of various kinds will ruin their life, then you would be loving to tell them to flee from them because the truth is they’ll be destroyed if they don’t.
That’s the spirit of God’s exhortations and warnings in 1 Corinthians 10. To go too far and get sucked into idolatry (sexual immorality, etc…) could end in severe punishment from the Lord Himself. Again, that’s a loving thing to say. Remember that the examples given in the Old Testament applied to the Church (v6 & v11) were not arbitrary deaths, they were death sentences towards the children of Israel who sinned. And they were all aimed towards the overconfident Church to say, it could happen to you (v12 paraphrase: “you could get sucked into error and fall dead too!”)
So by the time Paul says, “beloved, flee from idolatry” you should hear a loving statement from the Holy Spirit that says, “oh, my dear dear child whom I love greatly, please be afraid of how dangerous sin is in your life. At a certain point, your Father could discipline with the death penalty on you. Don’t take His grace for granted!”
Here’s an analogy: In Hosea 13:8 , God is called a she-bear robbed of her cubs. A momma bear robbed of her kids will get angry out of protective love for her offspring, and somebody is going to get torn up in anger BECAUSE of her love for her kids.
And if I love you, I’ll tell you, ‘please stay away from an angry bear.’ That’s what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 101-14: “please flee any reason to rile up God like an angry bear.” That might seem misrepresentative of God, but it’s Hosea’s language, not mine.
In the case of 1 Corinthians 10, Paul is saying, don’t awaken God’s anger which is born out of love. An angry bear robbed of her babies is angry because first she is loving towards her offspring. And to rouse up God’s consequences and destruction upon our life is never arbitrary, but it extends from His love. Idolatry has a way of rousing up God’s jealous love like nothing else (look at James 4:4-5) and its end can lead to 1 Corinthians 10:4-10 consequences in our life.
Idolatry is the equivalent of adultery in Scripture. And Proverbs makes it very clear, adultery leads to death and the spouse getting his/her spouse stollen away to unfaithfulness will be angry. What’s more, “is it possible to carry fire next to your lap and not get burned?” All of this is Proverbs 6 language. Apply that towards the idolatry of 1 Corinthians 10 and you should understand that the consequences of idolatry on the Lord (aka: spiritual adultery) are disastrous and God hates it BECAUSE you are His Bride and He loves you! “Therefore, my beloved flee from idolatry!” That’s such a statement born out of love in 1 Corinthians 10. It would be like God say, “flee any possibility of cheating on Me, because I’m jealous for you and if you cheat on Me, I will be angry out of my exclusive love for you.”
Apply it in your own marriage. Out of love, what kind of anger would an unfaithful spouse trigger in you? And we’re not even God.
I hope that makes sense and helps you understand how God’s fiery warnings are not contrary to His warm love. 1 Corinthians 10 contains both, and we must accept that but I pray that you would also understand it.
In post sermon talk, somebody said that God can be compared to a parent who a child fears and is legitimately afraid of being disciplined for wrongdoing BUT that kid absolutely knows that their parent loves him/her, no doubt about it. A child can be afraid of their parent in certain circumstances but absolutely know that he/she is for them and absolutely loves them. BUT, that doesn’t negate a gnarly discipline for doing something absurdly wrong, or continuing to disobey 100x over. As I said yesterday, “don’t try to test God, because He is slow to anger and ultra compassionate, but He has a boiling point to that anger, however long it takes to get there…let’s not try to find out!”
I think C.S. Lewis said it well in his “Chronicles of Narnia, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “Is Aslan the Lion safe?” And one of the beavers reply, “safe? No, he’s not safe, but He’s good.”
Finally, I want you to understand that 1 Corinthians 10 was explaining how we should be afraid of God, not simply afraid of God because He’s an angry God, NO, but we are to be afraid of God WHEN WE ARE OVERCONFIDENT and IF WE FALL INTO IDOLATRY BECAUSE He is a loving God (context, context,context!). I know that’s hard to fathom but that’s what God is saying. Be afraid of dreadful potential in you and the consequences because God loves you and you have the potential to not love Him.
1 Corinthians 10 is not saying that you should be afraid of God when you are loving Him well and obeying Him. You should be afraid potentially, though, of how His anger is triggered by His love IF you start habitually clearly sinning and committing idolatry. Don’t treat your sin too mildly and God’s attitude towards your potential sin indifferently & casually!
1 Corinthians 10 is not saying ‘God is angry at you, therefore, be afraid of Him and run away from Him,” No, as children of God, the Holy Spirit writing through Paul is saying, “God loves you, therefore be afraid of Him and run towards Him!”
Vv1-12 would be incomplete without vv13-17! Vv13-17 make it clear that God loves us, helps us to stay away from temptation, and tells us to flee idolatrous temptation, but not flee Him! We know that we’re not told to flee God because vv16-17 says, “fill yourself up with Jesus.”
So should our fear of God make us run scared away from God? Absolutely not. We should actually run towards Him knowing that He is here to help us through times of temptations; Jesus rules on a throne of grace seeking to help us in times of temptation when we fail (Heb. 4:14-16), and when we fill ourselves up with Christ (symbolically) through communion, we’re reminded of how Jesus took our punishment for us and demonstrated the greatest love of God to show mercy and not wrath.
So if I may rap up all of this, please understand the unity between fearing God, seriously, fearing God because of our indwelling sin and terrible potential and fear God because you believe that He loves you. Fill yourself up with Him so that you don’t look to fill yourself up with idols. God is a jealous God simply because He loves you. And jealousy is worse than wrath (Proverbs 27:4).
Let’s not trigger God’s jealousy Church, because we are in a covenant relationship with Him and He loves us. He is faithful to us (v13); let’s remain faithful to Him by fleeing other lovers who would take our heart away from God (v14). Let’s fill up on Christ (vv16-17) because He loves us and draw near to His Throne of grace (Hebrews 4:14-16) so that we’ll run with fear away from our potential idols knowing that God loves us too much to feel indifferent towards grievous sin which we’re all capable of.
God help us and give us His grace!
With great love in Christ,
Aaron
