Sermon text: 1 Corinthians 10:1–13
Verses 1 and 2 read: “For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.”
Paul begins this chapter 10 of First Corinthians with a typological reading of the Old Testament. That is, he connects the New Testament baptism into Christ with the Old Testament baptism into Moses. He connects the two rites and sacraments that initiated the membership into the kingdom of God in the Old Testament, for the children of Israel, and in the New Testament, for the children of God the Father and of Jesus Christ. In this typological understanding or interpretation, the sea through which the Israelites passed is a kind of pre-Christian baptism. And the cloud is a type of gift: the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Paul’s first major point in chapter 10 is that the Old Testament Israelites were initiated into the kingdom of God as they passed through the Red Sea and followed the pillar of cloud by day.
Second, in light of the similarities between the Old and the New Testament baptisms, Paul wants the New Testament church and the New Testament Christian to look to the experiences — both good and bad — of the Old Testament Israelites, to learn what it means to be a child or children of the heavenly Father.
Verse three and four, he says: “and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink.” Just as Paul pointed to two types of Christian baptism and the giving of the Holy Spirit, he then references two types — which are kind of the same at the end of the day — of the spiritual eating and drinking of the Lord’s Supper. Third: the Old Testament people of God’s day were united in their common spiritual food and drink. God’s New Testament people are similarly reunited in receiving the body and blood of Christ in the sacramental food of the Lord’s Supper.
This reference to sacramental eating and drinking continues throughout much of chapter 10. In fact, it kind of summarizes the point of chapter 10. Later, in just a few verses after our reading, he addresses the fact that these Corinthian Christians were attending pagan rites and rituals and festivals, and then leaving them and coming to the church’s festival of the Lord’s Supper — which he, of course, naturally condemned: the salutary eating of Christ’s body and blood, and the idolatrous eating to which the hearers might be tempted to participate in. Paul drives a stake through the heart of that practice.
Verse seven: “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” It’s a quote from the Septuagint. What’s the Septuagint? It’s the Greek translation of the Hebrew scrolls that was in common use among Jews and Gentiles alike in the day of Christ and St. Paul. Paul’s description renders Israel’s idolaters’ eating and drinking as particularly a flagrant violation of the First Commandment, and particularly offensive, since in just a few prior verses to that, they were eating and drinking the Lord’s body and blood in the church service.
The meaning of “play” is expanded in verses 8–10, which give examples of the kind of sinful play in which the Israelites were participating as they went to these pagan feasts and festivals, where temple prostitutes were in common use and fertility rites were thus practiced. They’d leave the prostitutes and head to the church again to participate in the Lord’s Supper: a practice condemned in chapter 10.
Verse 8 recalls the incident of immorality and divine judgment of the Old Testament, when the Israelite men became involved with the Moabite and the Midianite women. And we’re told in that verse that 23,000 fell in a single day under the judgment of the Lord God. Verse 9 says, “We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents.” Tells the New Testament Christians not to try the patience of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, not to test Him. Also here: put to the test in the Old Testament is Christ. Notice the link. We don’t generally think or speak of God in the Old Testament as the Christ. Yet Paul connects testing of the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, to the person of the Christ. To test the one is to test the other.
Verse 10: “nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer.” Grumbling mentioned here refers to the grumbling of Numbers chapter 14 — especially verses 1–4, 36–37, 16:41, 17:5 and 17:10 — where the Israelites grumbled against both Moses and against God. And as you can tell by those brief references, the Israelites perfected grumbling. They did it a lot.
Verse 13: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.” Paul wants the Corinthian Christians to know that temptation is a common problem that all Christians must struggle against. And idolatry, and subsequent sins of sexual immorality, testing God, and grumbling are the results of temptations to which they yield. As Paul’s hearers are children of God who have been baptized and fed like the folks of the Old Testament, they too are sure to encounter temptations to sin as they struggle through this life, just as their ancient forebears did in their lives. Not to mention the eating and drinking part.
The apostle Paul here in chapter 10 talks about eating, drinking, and playing as if the Christians in Corinth were doing something wrong by eating, drinking, and having fun. Well, it was the kind of eating and drinking and having fun that they were doing. That was the problem.
Fourth, we, along with those Christians in Corinth, need to remember first and foremost that in the Old Testament, Israel belonged to the Lord God, and that the church in the New Testament belongs to the same Lord God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They were, and we are, children — both by virtue of the blood of the Lamb. And how can you tell that they belonged and we belong to the Lord God? By what we eat and what we drink. “All ate the same spiritual food. All drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”
Again, the Lord God includes the Christ in the Old Testament. He’s always there, always working, always redeeming. When they needed food, Israel ate manna that God provided miraculously. When they needed water, Israel drank the water that God provided miraculously. And because Israel belonged to God, God expected them to behave in certain ways: namely to act as children of the heavenly Father. That’s what He expected them to do. He expected them to avoid sexual immorality. He expected that they should not also test the Lord God and try His patience. They should trust in the Lord for all their needs and not grumble and complain and get angry.
But Israel forgot, you see, that they had to belong to the Lord. And that’s the overall message of chapter 10. Don’t forget who you are, is what Paul is writing to the Corinthians. And don’t forget how you can tell who you are: it’s by how you worship. It’s by eating and drinking the Lord’s Supper, central to the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
What were the people of Israel eating and drinking? They were eating and drinking the feast of the pagan religions, the pagan sacrifices that they had learned in Egypt. When the people worshiped the golden calf, they went from eating manna and drinking water provided by God to eating and drinking the food that accompanies the idolatrous worship of the pagans around them. As Christians, one church after another falls to the pagan beliefs and practices around us. Israel forgot that they belong to God. Thus, they fell prey to various temptations. Among them, the Israelites began to have illicit relations with the pagan women of Moab and Midian. These relationships drove the Israelite men further and further, deeper and deeper into idolatry, into the worship and rites of false gods.
The Israelites also put God to the test. They despised God’s provision of food and wanted Him to give them a different kind of food. They also grumbled against God and His servants Moses and Aaron. Many of the Israelites hatched a plan to overthrow Moses and Aaron, choose their own leaders, and march back to Egypt, where they could fill their bellies once again.
So also Christians frequently forget who we belong to, namely the Lord God. And why do we forget? Because of a woman who took and ate and gave to her husband, and he ate as well, in Genesis chapter 3. That caused all of their children, every last descendant, including you and me, to be conceived and born in sin, set against God from our very beginning.
The fifth lesson he wants us to learn: when Christians, like Israel, forget they belong to the Lord, they fall more easily prey to temptation. When Christians give in to temptation, it’s often because they forget that their bodies no longer belong to them. There’s a false message out there in the world that Christians have bought too much into: “my body, my rights.” No. They’ve been purchased with the blood of the Lamb. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and the possession of Christ who paid the price.
When Christians give in to temptation to anger, it’s often because they forget that they belong to a God who has promised in Romans 12:19 to avenge wrongdoing against His children and against His church. When Christians give in to the temptation of grumbling against God and His servants, it’s often because they forget that they belong to a God who will provide for all of their needs.
But Christ is always a constant reminder of who it is that we belong to. And how does He remind us that we belong to the Lord God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? By commanding us to “do this in remembrance of me”: to partake of the bread and the wine, the body and the blood of His very self. The same spiritual food, the same spiritual drink, from the same Rock — and the Rock is Christ. Under the form of bread, Jesus gives us His body on the cross, into which we were incorporated. We became children of the heavenly Father through our baptisms into Jesus’s death and resurrection. Under the form of wine, He gives us His blood, which He shed to reconcile us to Himself for all times — even those times we forget that we belong to Him. But He never forgets that we belong to Him.
In this eating and drinking, as Jesus reminds us, we belong to God. And the gift of food and drink God gives us as a way of escape, that we are able to endure all temptations and sufferings in this life. If we feel tempted to abandon God’s design for the body, if we look to the Lord’s body and blood, which enables us to endure the temptation, we have what He promises to give in the Lord’s Supper: the remission of all of our sins. If we feel tempted to take vengeance on those who have done wrong to us, we should again look to the Lord’s Supper, to the body and blood, who prayed on the cross as He died to give us His body and blood: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” If we’re tempted to grumble against God and His servants, we should look back to the Lord’s body and blood, which enables us to endure one temptation after another.
Jesus always knew that He was the Son of the Father. His will was one with the Father’s will. Christ never forgot the truth that man does not live by bread alone, but from every word that comes from the mouth of God. Jesus never forgot that He and His Father were one, and that those who believe in Him will never perish and no one will snatch them out of His hand.
We’re now almost halfway through the Lenten season: a season where we focus on temptations that we experience regularly as we make our way through this valley of death. As hymn 413 says, “Walk in danger all the way.” That’s what our walk is in this life: constantly one temptation after another. And some we prevail against, and many others we do not, because we’re still dealing with the fallout from the eating and drinking all the way back there in Genesis chapter 3. And when you fail to prevail over temptation, there’s Holy Absolution in the meal that God has given us to eat and to drink for the remission of our sins.
You may be tempted, but with temptation, God provides a way of escape. By the way, we all wonder about that verse. He gives us more than we can bear sometimes, we believe. Notice it doesn’t say that you will in every case overcome temptation, as some preachers preach. No, it doesn’t say that at all. It says that you may be able to endure it. And what’s your escape hatch when you don’t endure it? What enables you to endure? It’s right there on the altar in the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, who overcame every temptation on our behalf, every kind of struggle in our behalf, even death in our behalf.
Finally, by feeding us His body and blood, Jesus reminds us who we are, who Christians belong to, and what price was paid to buy us back from the evil one. So take, eat, drink, remember who you belong to, and endure. For no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. For God is faithful, the text says, and He forgives you all your sins. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.