Know Your History

1 Corinthians 10:1-10

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It’s important to know your history. If you don’t know your history, then you’re likely to make the same mistakes that other people have in the past. The Apostle Paul in First Corinthians chapter ten warns God’s people to learn from Israel’s history. He says,

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. (1 Corinthians 10:1-5)

So he says, all right, there’s people who saw the glory of God. He rescued them. They saw his great deliverance. They were aligned with Moses. They were baptized into Moses. They were following him, and they were following the Lord. And yet many of them turned away, even though they had Christ and His Word right there with them. So take this as a warning, he says.

Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.” We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. We should not test Christ, as some of them did—and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel. (1 Corinthians 10:6-10)

He gives all these examples from Israelite history, and there’s lots of applications a Christian can make for all of this. We’re going to focus on one, the last one, because I think this is a challenge for long term Christians. Verse ten says, and do not grumble, as some of them did and were killed by the destroying angel. God says that our grumbling or complaining, our criticism is actually a really dangerous thing. And he’s making these allusions to Israelite history. And here’s one of the ones that’s going through his mind.

God’s people are coming, and they’re just not happy with the leadership. So they go to Moses and Aaron, their spiritual leaders, and they say, hey, we’re all God’s people. Why are you taking the lead here? Let’s overthrow them. Then they start to stage this revolt. And at this point, you’d think that their spiritual leaders would just say, no, stop this. But they actually say, well, let’s check in with God on this. We’ll see if God does something dramatic here. We’ll see who he’s actually chosen as a leader. And God does.

They have all the rebellious people stand off by themselves, and the earth opens and swallows them up. And then God sends a plague that starts ravaging the people. And there are just people dying in rows and lines, you would imagine. What is Aaron, the high priest who’s been appointed by God but has been rebelled against, what does he do? He takes his censer of burning incense, and he just runs into the ranks of people. You can picture people dropping like flies all around him until he gets to the end and stops the plague.

These people that were rebelling against him, he still loves them and cares about them. And he does what high priests do: stand between God and mankind and atone for, cover their sinfulness, and plead for them.

We get a picture of Jesus doing something like this too for people like me and you, who often do grumble and complain. People who start to think that criticism is a spiritual gift. No, it’s not. And we see Jesus come into our world where people are dropping like flies apart from Christ, and he runs into our world, ready to live perfectly for us and to offer a sacrifice for the sins of the world, to shed his blood so that we can be forgiven and so that we can live.

And Jesus would be swallowed up into the heart of the earth, too, in a way, as he dies on the cross and as he’s buried in the grave. But that couldn’t hold him. As he takes all of our sins, he rises victorious, leaving them in the grave, leaving them out of God’s sight. And you stand forgiven. And really, we stand ready to live a different kind of a life, not criticizing and complaining in negative ways, but instead focused on one mission: getting to the promised land and bringing as many people with us as we can. And instead of saying, I don’t like how that’s being done, saying, how can I help? How can I share my Savior? How can we work together? God bless you as we do that.