First Corinthians chapter nine at verse 26, and I'm gonna read as far as chapter 10 at verse 13. I was reflecting this afternoon as I reviewed my notes, how very different this message is than the one we heard this morning. Whereas that one was like a hug, this one might be more like an ice shower. So why does God do that? We didn't set it up that way. We didn't carefully calculate that together. We just had our text that we're preaching through. The reason, of course, is twofold. One, people are different. What they need to hear is different. But secondly, we are different, day to day, month to month, year to year, and so what we need is different. So, as we come now to 1 Corinthians 9, verse 26, Let it blot out the wonderful memory of this morning, that the Lord, like the pity of a father, so is his pity towards us. That is true. And so is this. So take a look here at 1 Corinthians 9, beginning at verse 26. Please give your attention to the word of God. I'm in 2 Corinthians, it's a second. 1 Corinthians 9, verse 26. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. For I want you to know, 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, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil 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 rose up to play. We must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did, and 23,000 fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now, these things happened to them as an example. They were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. 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. Now, a long time ago now, I went to seminary, that is, school for preachers. I had many, many classes, most of which I have thoroughly forgotten. But one of the more memorable ones The professor got up, and he was a man who himself had gone to the same seminary, and then he'd gone off to Harvard to study Old Testament at Harvard. And so as he was, he told us that he was in this class with a Jewish professor going through rabbinics. And the professor was relating the ancient rabbinic answer to the question, what did the Israelites drink in the wilderness? You know, early on, you hear about them thirsty, and they're complaining and grumbling, and so God tells Moses, speak to the rock, and they'll give you water. And then way at the end of the 40 years, you have them complaining, and you have God telling Moses, speak to the rock, and I will give them water. But there's like 38 years between that. What were they drinking in between? Well, this is the kind of thing that rabbis think about, you see. And so rabbis noticed that the second time, when they sing about the well, they say, spring up, oh well. And it's not spring up, it's actually go up. And every other time you see the word go up, it means something is going. And so the rabbi said. Rabbi said, what happened is that the rock followed them all through their journeys and the water flowed out of the rock and that's how they drank through the 40 years. That's why it's spoken of at the beginning and at the end. We would understand that it followed them. Now if you're alert, you're thinking, So why'd they complain the second time? But anyway, never mind that. This is a rabbinic. So the professor's sitting there, and he's reading different ancient rabbinic sources that are going on at some length. And it's rather humorous about this rock and how the water came out of it, and they all drank from it. And the professor said, he was sitting there laughing with all the rest at how absurd it was, until the professor said, now turn to your New Testament. He said, oh, wait, what, what, what, what? And of course, Professor Levinson, I think it was, took them to chapter 10, verse four. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. I think the professor was still mad that his seminary education had not prepared him for that. He didn't know that that was in there, so he made sure that we knew. And I've made sure that you know. Now, what are you gonna say about it? Well, this was a professor who liked to give us problems. I don't think it's much of a problem, because you'll notice that the rock is a spiritual rock. As soon as you're told it's a spiritual rock, you are not being called on to believe that there was a physical rock that went moving around. He called it a spiritual rock. He knows the tradition. He's riffing on that tradition, but he's not actually endorsing the tradition of a physical rock moving around. He twists it and says, well, there was a spiritual rock. But some of you are saying, well, now this verse really bothers me. I never noticed that before. But not only is the spiritual rock following them, the rock is Christ. Now, that's a bridge too far. How is this rock Christ? Well, at the end of the Torah, you have the Song of Moses, in which God says to Moses, teach them this song so that they'll remember who God is and they'll remember their sins. And in the Song of Moses, do you know what God is called most often? their rock." In the Song of Moses, God is their rock. And so what looks initially a little bizarre, that the rock is Christ, actually is a pointer towards Christ's divinity. Because here it doesn't say that the rock was God, it says the rock was Christ. And so what he's saying is, he's riffing on the tradition of a rock following them. But far from endorsing it, he's saying there was a spiritual rock following them, because God was present to them at all times, showering them with his blessings, protecting them, being there for them when they needed it. He was their rock, and he was with them. And what do we call God present in the world to save? We call him Christ. Christ was present to his people in the wilderness. So I hope I have removed this rock of offense from any of you. Now let me point out to you that we are in the same position as the Corinthians. Just like the Israelites, and just like the Corinthians, we also have been given many spiritual blessings by the Lord. Just like the Israelites, just like the Corinthians, we also have been baptized. We also eat spiritual food. Our rock is present to us. And so just like the Corinthians, who stand between us and the Israelites in terms of time, just like the Corinthians, we need to learn from Israel's failures so as not to imitate them. We need to run hard and avoid disqualification. So I began at the end of chapter nine. Chapter 10, it really does begin with the word for, to tie it back to what he's just been talking about. He says, for I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers. So he's going into something, and he's coming out of this. He's compared the Christian life to a race, in which he says, you've got to run hard. He compares the Christian life to his own practice. He says, look at me. I'm not running aimlessly. I'm disciplining my body. Both of these examples, his own example and the example of someone in a race, he's saying the Christian life takes attention. It takes effort. Takes persistence. He's not describing a hundred meter race, he means a long race. We might add that Christian life takes humility, takes prayer. It's a struggle. And you know, it's hard to run alone. This is my sport, running, right? So I've run alone and I've run with a team. And it is easier to run with a team. Some days you don't want to run, but if you've already made an agreement with somebody to run, you need to go. By yourself, you might be like, I'm not running today. You might start running and say, I'm only going to do two today. But when you're with the team, you do all five. It's easier to run together. And you have all these potential teammates all around you here. Are you running with the aid of your teammates? Are you willing to be a teammate and to run together? I want to encourage you, since we are called on to run, and we know it's easier to run together, to run together. to work together in the Christian race. Because we have a race to run and perils to avoid. So let's run together and avoid disqualification. Because that's what he goes on to say in chapter 10. You need to know that our fathers were disqualified. They were first saved and then destroyed. Now it's striking that he does say our fathers. because he's talking to a mostly Gentile church. Most of them weren't biologically descended from these people, but he still says our fathers. He didn't say my fathers. He doesn't say some of our fathers. He just says our fathers, which should tell you, Christian, that you've got two sets of fathers. You've got the people that you could discover by talking to grandma and making a family tree. You've got your biological fathers and mothers. But you also have spiritual fathers and mothers, and those you can read about in the Bible, the further back ones. You don't have to read about in church history. Those are your spiritual fathers. And so that tells us how to read the Bible. It's not about what happened to those people. It's about what happened to us in the past. This is our gang. This is our fathers. It's how Christians are to read the Old Testament. It's our history. It's our people. Because it's the people of God, the people that God had called to be in covenant with himself, the people he'd adopted. And as we heard this morning, He has also, in Christ, adopted us. And so he begins to say, our fathers were blessed like us. He begins to launch into a typology, a fancy word that I gotta use right here, because the word example, twice, is actually type in Greek. And what he's saying is, God has worked into history, things that repeat. God has worked into history, foreshadowings of later things. That's why Joseph, if you really look at him, is so much like Jesus in what happens to him. Joseph is a type, a foreshadowing of Christ. And so he begins to read the Old Testament and use the words from the New Testament to describe the Old Testament. He's bringing the type close to the truth, says Chrysostom. And so he says, they were baptized into Moses. How were they baptized? Well, they went through the Red Sea. Now you could argue, you could say, wait, wait, wait, the whole point of baptism is you get wet. The whole point of the Red Sea is they didn't get wet. But you're thinking too hard. The basic point is a little different. They were saved from their master by passing through water. And in baptism, we are saved from our old master, the devil. We're saved from the condemnation, the accusations that he can correctly bring. We're saved from that by Passing through water. You see the similarity? They were baptized and we were baptized. They ate spiritual food. He means manna. Christians eat the Lord's Supper. You can say, well wait a minute, what do you mean manna's spiritual food? It fed their bodies. Well, it's spiritual in two senses. Manna was spiritual food because it sure wasn't natural. It's not normal to walk through the wilderness and have food on the ground every morning. So that was spiritually, that is supernaturally provided for them. But secondly, as they went out every morning and gathered manna off the wilderness ground and ate it, was it only their bodies that were supposed to be strengthened? No, their souls were supposed to be strengthened as well. We can trust God. We could again this morning. Every morning, their souls should have been fed together with their bodies. So you say, They had spiritual food. They had spiritual drink. They had God present with them in Christ. But though they were richly blessed, God was not pleased. And it matters because they were overthrown in the wilderness. They died and never saw the promised land. And while it's certainly true we don't know where they spend eternity, we're not told that. What we are told is the arc of their earthly lives. first saved, and then under God's judgment. And so we are to note, we are to learn from that. Last week, I preached on Psalm 138, and I mentioned at the end, the verse that points us towards the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. And I spoke about that with a friend this week, and he said, well, wait a minute, what about Jesus and the four soils? And I said, yeah, yeah, exactly, all right. Jesus is stronger than all. He will hold on to his saints. There's no question about that. There are people in the fourth soil category because God has chosen them. But for us, we don't know who those people are until they persevere. We don't know who's gonna persevere till they persevere. And so God uses passages like these to spur us on and to wake us up and to keep us moving in the right direction in our race. As I said last week, the doctrine of perseverance of the saints is not a call to complacency. You see here a call not to complacency, but to erase. So we must run hard and avoid disqualification. What disqualifies us? Well, he's ready to tell you. The basic large category is right there in verse six. We must not desire evil as they did. When you repent, repenting is turning from your sin to God. That is the repentance that is part of salvation. There is partial repentance where you turn from one sin to another sin. And that may be an improvement depending on what the two sins are, but it's not a saving repentance. The saving repentance is the one that turns from the sin to God. That is to say, from the evil to God. And once you've turned to God, to desire evil is to turn back to where you started, to turn back to desiring evil. Now we know we sin. We know we all stumble in many ways, as it says in James. What are we to do? Pray for forgiveness and get up and start again. You know, I've been in a race and fallen down. I got up and kept on running. There you go, that's what you do in a race, right? You get back up and you finish the race. What you must never do in the Christian life is get to the point where you are domesticating your sin, holding onto your sin, settling into this sin, saying, you know, actually, I want this evil more than I want God. I'm just gonna have both, this evil and God. You must not settle into that. Because if you think about that, that is first of all not turning from evil to God, it's not repentance. And secondly, on that point you're saying, I'd rather have the evil than have God. I'd rather have this bitterness, I'd rather have this resentment, I'd rather have this sinful practice. To say I want this more than God is to make it your ultimate. Which leads us right into the specifics that follow. The big category is, must not desire evil. Well, what are some examples? Well, he says, well, if you look at the Israelites of the wilderness, out of the gate, you have the golden calf. There were idolaters. The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. The golden calf is Exodus 32. It's an example that has idolatry, sexual immorality, and eating meat offered to idols. Now I trust that few of us are tempted by that complex of things. I trust there's very few of you who are being presented with an object and being told to bow down to random objects. But to go back to what I was just talking about. Whenever you say, I must have this thing or I die. I must have success or I die. I must have a boyfriend or I die. My wife has to love me or I am undone. I have to have sex or that's the end of me. I have to have my health. I have to... Whenever you begin to say this, you just start to say, you have to have this thing to live. You have to have this thing to be content. You have to have this thing. But whatever the thing is, if it's not God, you're going to lose it. So why do you say you have to have it when you're going to lose it? Don't make the thing you have to have something that you're going to lose. You say, I have to get married? Okay, it's a good thing. And then one of you will die. Go through all those things, whatever they are, you're going to lose it if you ever get it. Do not make your ultimate thing something less than the ultimate thing. Because if you do that, that is the language and the feeling and the sense of idolatry. When you say, I must have it or I am ruined, I am undone, that is the sound of idolatry. It's the language of worship. You're putting something in the Christ's place. And this can take a very pious form. I remember a pastor, Rich Gantz, speaking at a church planners conference. He was speaking to a bunch of guys trying to start churches. He says, I don't want to see any prayer requests from any of you. He says, pray, because we need three tithing families. He said, I don't want to see that. You don't need three tithing families. You need Jesus. And we're like, ugh. Because when you try to start a church, you feel like you need three tithing families. on top of what you have. You hope you have four, you have three more, you'd be all set. That's how you think. You think you'd be all set. Say, I don't want to see that. What you need is Jesus. Good things take the place of Jesus. So listen to yourself. Listen to what's coming out of your mouth. Listen to yourself talk, as we heard this morning. The thing you have to have, is it God? Well, if it's not God, then we have a problem. Because we just identified your idol. And if you have an idol, then you are an idolater. You're called on to repent of that idolatry. Idolatry disqualifies, and so does sexual immorality. As he goes on to say, we must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did. And 23,000 fell in a single day. Speaking of what we can read about in Numbers 25, when the Moabites and the Midianite women came out at Balaam's advice and said, we're having this wonderful party. Come and join us, guys. You can leave the women at home. So many Israelite men went to the wonderful party, which was, of course, idol worship, meat, and sexual immorality. And I trust you don't see the whole scene very often, but you can certainly see the back half of that scene on any college campus on any weekend. We need to pursue purity. It's not enough simply to say, let me limit my sin to a manageable amount. No, we need to pursue purity. We need to be aiming for something positive. If you're having a particular kind of problem, maybe you need a new rule in your house, that if it has a screen, it never goes upstairs. That might be a good rule. But whatever rule you need, you make the rule that you need to have. Remove the charges, have them all plugged in downstairs. Immorality disqualifies, and so does testing Christ. He talks about people being destroyed by serpents. He means Numbers 21. And what happened there was, once again, they were grumbling about the food. They said, there's no food, that the food is worthless, which is obviously contradictory. First they say, there's no food, and then they complain about the food's quality. All right, so you have a sense there of the irrationality of complaint. But of course, they were tired of manna. And to be fair, it sounds like manna was good, and you would get tired of it after your whole life, too. So what do they want? We know what they wanted. They wanted meat. So once again, we have an example that deals with wanting meat, craving meat, and having none. And so they tested God. Can God provide food? Can he provide meat in the wilderness? The answer was yes. God blew in the biggest pack of quail ever. But he was not pleased with them. And so he also sent a plague with it. They had tested God. And the way that we test God, I mean, meat, you can buy all the meat you want right down the street here. Meat is easy for us. You can get that with ease. But we test God when we say, I wonder how far I can go with this sin. Or I wonder how long I can go before I do what I know I'm supposed to do. Or is God really gonna punish me for this? And we are not to test God, we're to trust God. Now, I don't know if it's always so easy to know the difference between testing God and trusting God, but that's why you have teammates. That's why you have people to talk to. Am I trusting God here, or am I testing God here? And finally, he says, nor grumble as some of them did. We're destroyed by the destroyer, probably the destroying angel, angel God sent on several occasions to bring death. And I'm not gonna give you one reference for that one, because there's a bunch of things he could mean. And we need to sit up and listen because we tend to excuse grumbling. We know idolatry's bad, God says so. We get the point of sexual immorality. Testing God, well, yeah, obviously you're not supposed to throw yourself off of a cliff and see if God catches you. All right, so we get that, but grumbling seems like it's my right to grumble. But God here reminds us of how seriously he takes grumbling. That's why I love having a friend. I say, how are you doing? He says, I can't complain. I want to laugh, because I'm always thinking, I can. I'm sure you can complain. Let me show you how. No. No, it's a good attitude to have. Yeah, you could complain, but don't. Don't complain. Let us not have a complaining spirit. Chrysostom writes, we are called on to bear hardship with a good grace. Therefore, it is recorded of the apostles that when they were beaten, they sang. You get that out of the 12. You get that for Paul and Silas. When they were beaten, they sang. Israel suffered hardship and grumbled, and some of them were destroyed. And God has put us on notice because he gives us their first 11. These things happened to them as an example, a type, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Happened to them as examples. God never destroyed all of them. There would always be a plague, and it would kill a bunch of them. It was an example to the others. Don't do that. And they could see it. Oh, don't want to go with Dathan and Abiram. Got it. OK. Don't grumble. Got it. But it's written down for everybody afterwards. And it's especially written down for us, because on us, the end of the ages has come. Now, what does he mean by that, particularly since he wrote it almost 2,000 years ago? It seems like a long end of the age. What are we getting at? Well, it means also in the Old Testament, the great promise is that Messiah will come. And Messiah has come. That's why it's the end of the ages. Messiah has come. And there's not a lot left, as far as we can tell, on God's spiritual calendar that has to happen before Christ returns. If you look at what has to happen, the gospel must be preached to all nations. Well, maybe that's happened already. You can certainly make a case that it has. There has to be a great apostasy. Well, I mean, there's a fair amount of apostasy. I don't know how bad that has to be. The man of sin must be revealed. Well, again, some people tell you they know exactly who that is. So, maybe, maybe not. But again, looking at it, there's not much that has to happen that hasn't already happened. before Christ returns. And so the end of the ages have come upon us. And Christendom's comments again, if the Israelites scorn God's gifts and suffer judgment, and our gifts are greater, then what is our punishment if we neglect so great a salvation? A point that doesn't come just from Christendom, but from the author of the Hebrews. Which is why he then wraps up the section by repeating himself, or generalizing himself. Verse 12, therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. That's pretty much what he said in reference to himself back at the end of chapter nine. I think I stand, but I'm taking heed. I box my body, I discipline my body. I watch out, and so must everyone else. Now so far this has been a fairly terrifying message. because he was speaking to a proud church, a church that thought they were so knowledgeable, had so many spiritual gifts, and they took those spiritual gifts and they became a proud, exclusive, shame-the-poor, faction-ridden, sexual immorality-tolerating mess of a church. That's why he has to take out the lash and come at them for their pride and their knowledge, which they were not knowing as they ought to have known. And so at verse 13, he softens it a little. Although it's interesting, he still is taking away their pride. The scripture never encourages us to be proud in ourselves. He softens the blow a little bit at 13, but still attacks pride. He says, faithful is God. The grim history he's run through does not have to repeat itself. The typology does not have to extend to you. You do not have to follow in the footsteps of the fallen Israelites. You can walk a different path. Faithful is God. So run hard and avoid disqualification. When he says God is faithful, we are to think of all those verses that the same author Paul writes elsewhere. When he says God works in you, both to will and to work for his own good pleasure. Remember that. God works in you. Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Just call on the Spirit and seek to walk by the Spirit. Or Jesus, abide in Christ. Abide in Him and He will abide in you. All those comforting verses, He gestures too quickly. He says, you know, God is faithful. And how does He show it? He says, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. When times are tough for you, you are tempted to think that they are the toughest times that anyone has ever faced and that in no way could you be expected to hold on. I've talked to a man who was sure that no one else had suffered the way that he was suffering. And that was becoming his excuse for the sins he was sinning. And here the Holy Spirit says, no, no, come off it. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. Maybe not everybody has the temptation, but enough people have that we can say this is a common temptation. And you are having it as others have had it before you. Don't take pride, I have it the worst, and then despair. in this sort of reverse pride situation. I have it the worst. There's still pride going on there. He takes it down. Nah, it's a common temptation. Secondly, he says, God will not let you be tested beyond your ability. Now, it sure feels like it sometimes. It sure feels like it. But I suspect it feels like it when we're not racing to God for help. We need to be racing to God for help when the temptation is strong. If we do not do that, it's going to be beyond our ability. Christendom says, actually, every temptation is beyond our ability. We need God for everything. I read a book once on the wonderful growth of the church in Korea. Great explosion of growth, 1890s, 1900s. And then they faced all this persecution from Japanese invaders and then from the communists. There's one particular man who was in captivity, I think it was with the communists. Every day they would bring him in, beat him up, have a statement there for him to sign, renouncing the Christian faith. They'd beat him up, sign it, nope. But every day he had prayed first. And then one day, for some reason, he didn't pray. They took him in, they started beating him up, next thing you knew he was signing it. He said, whoa, whoa, what happened? They let him out. Repented of it. I'm sure God was merciful to him. But you can't say he was tested beyond all ability. It was beyond his human ability, his own ability, but we're promised God's help. One day he did not put on the armor of God was the one day that he suddenly crumbled. We have to put on the armor of God. Must we say it's beyond my ability? Well, alone, yes, but you're not to be alone. You have to put on the full armor of God. Because we have this promise. He provides a way of escape. That sounds great. You escape, the temptation is over, that's great. Provides a way of escape that you may be able to endure it. Oh, that sounds like it's lasting. Too bad. I was hoping it'd be over. Except that there are a couple sins in scripture that we are told to flee. And I think the word flee indicates flee it, get out of there, and it will be over. One of them comes in the very next verse. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry." There will be settings where everybody else is doing it, and there's a very powerful temptation to idolatry. Flee! Get out of there! The temptation will subside. The other one that comes to mind is sexual immorality. Flee from that as well. So as we look at this passage today, Reminder, it says not to grumble. God is serious about it. This should not characterize us. You need to identify and reject your idols. And if the word idol doesn't resonate with you, we could try the word craving. The things that you crave, that is that you want too much, you want inordinately, you have to, those are cravings. Maybe we know it from food. I'm not passing judgment on the food part of it. Just use that idea for the rest of life. The cravings, getting into idolatry territory. And rejoicing God. Rejoice that God looks on us with the pity of a father. Rejoice that he has given us every spiritual blessing in Christ. And he's given us a family, fathers. He's given us a team, brothers and sisters. So I encourage you, beloved, to get with your teammates and run hard and avoid disqualification, abiding in Christ and walking by the spirit. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. There is a word for this situation and for that situation. Lord, help us to recall to mind the word that we need. Help us to recall the word that we need at the moment that we need it. So Lord, help us to remember your word and to bring it out. Help us also to be able to bring it out for the benefit of others and to say a good word, your word, to others as they have need. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. It's time right now to share those things that