“Could History Repeat Itself?”
March 3, 2013
1 Corinthians 10:1–13
For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers
were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all
baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food
4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that
accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased
with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert.
6 Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on
evil things as they did. 7 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 pagan revelry.” 8 We
should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twentythree thousand of them died. 9 We should not test the Lord, as some of them did—and
were killed by snakes. 10 And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed
by the destroying angel.
11 These things happened to them as examples and were written down as
warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. 12 So, if you think you
are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 13 No temptation has seized you
except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted
beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out
so that you can stand up under it.
How are you feeling physically? Are you still young and spry? Are you beginning to feel a few
glitches in your physique that you never had problems with before? Or do you gauge how you are
doing not whether or not you have pain, but rather at what level your pain is? Think about yourself
spiritually. How healthy are you spiritually? Sometimes it seems like it helps to be able to compare
ourselves with others when we’re talking spiritual health. So Apostle Paul, who actually wrote this
letter that we are studying from this morning, wrote that he has the prize. Jesus has won the prize
and Paul had it. We would agree with him, wouldn’t we? Jesus has won the prize and has put it into
our possession. So we must be doing pretty well spiritually, right? Because of Jesus, yes we are,
and so was Paul. And yet Paul said that he beat his body and made it his slave so that he wouldn’t
be disqualified for the prize. Paul was afraid that he could lose the prize. That kind of means that
maybe he didn’t think his spiritual health was all that great. Do you know why he questioned his
own spiritual health? Because Paul knew his history. He knew how God’s people in the past had
faltered with the prize and he was wondering, “Could history repeat itself?” He wants us to know
our history also and to ask ourselves the question, “Could history repeat itself?”
Paul wrote to his Christian friends in the city of Corinth, “For I do not want you to be ignorant
of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed
through the sea.” Have you ever read through the Old Testament? Paul’s talking about some of
the events that are recorded in the Old Testament. The Old Testament doesn’t read like other
ancient literature. If you read books like the Iliad or the Odyssey and other books like that, you
have incredible stories involving incredible wars and great details about exciting events. The Bible
in the Old Testament is so different. It’s the record of thousands of years of world history, yet it fast
forwards through much of what we might call the entertaining stuff of life, the stuff you make
movies about. It often dwells on small details involving fairly insignificant characters of history.
Have you ever wondered why?
I get to tell you why. There are two pretty big reasons why. First of all, the most important
reason is that everything that is recorded in the Bible is there to somehow point us to Christ. The
reason that the Bible tells us about a widow from Moab who came to Israel is because that widow,
whose name is Ruth, ended up being the great grandma of king David, who was the greatest
ancestor of our Savior, Jesus. God wants everything in the Bible to point to Jesus.
But Paul gives us another reason that much of the Old Testament is there. He says, “Now these
things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.”
You see, Paul understood what Solomon was talking about when he said in the Old Testament book
of Ecclesiastes, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is
nothing new under the sun.” We would probably phrase it something like this: History repeats
itself.
If you’ve read the Old Testament you probably know exactly what Paul and Solomon are talking
about. There is example after example of how God’s people, who had been declared God’s people
and knew that they were God’s people, constantly drifted, walked, or even ran away from God. Paul
gives us a few examples of how the Israelites turned their backs on God. He said, “Do not be
idolaters, as some of them were.” Then he reminded us of the Israelites who created the golden
calf and worshiped while Moses was on the mountain receiving the 10 commandments from God
himself. Paul also said, “We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did.” Then
he referred to a time when Israel’s enemies tricked them into worshiping false gods by offering
their women to them for physically pleasurable pagan practices. It resulted in God’s judgment upon
them so that 23,000 of them died. Paul also said, “We should not test the Lord, as some of them
did.” Then he referred to how the people were so ungrateful to God that God brought his judgment
to them in the form of poisonous snakes, which is also when the people were saved by looking up at
the bronze snake on the pole. Finally Paul said, “And do not grumble, as some of them did,” and
he referred to when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram challenged the authority of Moses as God’s
representative, and judgment followed that killed many people.
Time and time again God’s Old Testament people fell away from him—and it’s not like they
didn’t have good reason to stay close to God! They all shared the same incredible spiritual
experiences. Paul talks about it. He said, “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.” That
sounds difficult to understand what Paul means there, but basically he is saying that all those
people had every reason to trust God and follow Moses. They all saw the miraculous pillar of cloud
that led them through the wilderness when they were delivered from slavery in Egypt. They all
walked through the walls of water on each side as they passed through the Red Sea on dry land.
They all ate the birds and the manna that God provided for them every day while they were in the
wilderness. They all drank from the water that bubbled out of the rocks, where no water previously
flowed until Moses hit it with his staff. These people shared these experiences that just blow your
mind. How they could ever turn away from God is almost beyond comprehension. It’s frustrating
when you read through it and see how quickly they turned away and grumbled against God.
But it happened. It happened over and over again. History repeated itself. And before you pass
the Old Testament people off as a bunch of primitive fools, recognize how closely Paul connects
those people to you and me. He said, “They drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied
them, and that rock was Christ.” Every once in a while people ask me a very good question. We
confess that only those who have faith in Jesus will be saved. So people will ask me, “What about
the Old Testament people? How did they get to heaven?” That’s a great question. What was their
faith in? Their faith was in the promise of the Savior. They trusted that God was going to send
someone who would fix the problem of sin and death. They didn’t necessarily have all the details,
but their faith was in the coming Savior. Our faith is in the Savior who has come. So what
nourished and strengthened the faith of God’s Old Testament people is the same thing that gives,
nourishes, and strengthens our faith: Christ. Paul said that they were accompanied by Christ.
That’s the same faith we have.
You see, we share the same faith as those Old Testament people. Let’s not think that we are
immune to the same temptations that plagued them. If you read through the Old Testament, there’s
a good chance that you will get frustrated at the repeated failures of those people. They were
stubborn. They were weak. They were easily swayed. How could they be so foolish? Paul tells us
that if it happened before, it’s going to happen again. History repeats itself, doesn’t it? Don’t you
see your own tendency to stubbornly go back to the same sins time and again?
In the Old Testament times one nation would want to defeat another nation so that they could
get tribute from that nation, or tax them for money. The Israelites’ enemies used sexual immorality
to distract the Israelites and ultimately plunder them. Sexual immorality is used very similarly
today. Who uses sex in order to try to get your money? We don’t have to go to the extreme of
prostitution. Isn’t it just about every single company that advertises on television? They don’t need
to conquer you, they just want to conquer your wallet. They get you thinking about the promise of
physical pleasure and our wallets seem to open up for their products.
Or rather than putting our trust that God’s will is always good, how quick are we to grumble or
throw out an “O my God” if something doesn’t go the way we want it? We look to the government
to solve all our problems, even when God tells us not to put our trust in princes and rulers. That
very quickly becomes idolatry. We set up all sorts of tiny tests for God to prove his love for us, as if
sending his own Son doesn’t really mean that much. History repeats itself.
How spiritually healthy are you? Did you think you are standing firm? Be careful that you don’t
fall! The examples in the Old Testament are serious warnings of how quickly we can also fall. They
are warnings to get us to doubt ourselves. They aren’t there for us to look at and be thankful we
aren’t so stubborn and foolish. They are there to help us recognize how stubborn and foolish we
are as we live out history again. So doubt yourself. Doubt your spiritual health. Doubt your ability
to be any better than those Old Testament people on your own. If you think you are standing firm,
you might want to second guess yourself.
But don’t live in doubt, dear friends. We do give history ample opportunity to repeat itself in
our lives. But so does God. And God is faithful. God never stopped calling his people to repentance.
Each time he allowed harm to come to his people, it was to wake them up and bring them back. As
frustrating as it is to read how many times God’s people turned away from him, it’s equally as
amazing to see how many times God had mercy on them. He always sought their hearts. He always
called for them to repent and turn back to him. They would return to him and then get comfortable
and complacent and feel like they were spiritually ok on their own and trust in themselves and turn
away from God. And that’s where doubt comes in. Doubts come in when we trust in ourselves.
Doubts creep in when we begin to believe the lie that we are spiritually healthy on our own. But
God is faithful. And every week we have opportunity recognize where we have proved faithless and
faith lacking. But every week we have the opportunity to recognize how God has once again been
faithful. We are reminded that Jesus took the road to the cross to suffer for our faithlessness. We
get to see once again that it’s by his wounds that we are healed. Not only is Jesus our shepherd, but
we need him to be our shepherd, because we are helpless sheep without him.
During Lent we get extra time on Wednesday evenings to let this sink into our hearts. We get
extra opportunity during those services to focus on the cross and why it is so necessary in our lives.
That cross is evidence to us that God is faithful. He didn’t spare his own Son, but gave him up as our
Savior. God is faithful. His story of love and forgiveness repeats itself in our lives over and over
again.
That doesn’t give us reason to sin now and ask for forgiveness later. God’s faithfulness
strengthens us. He has been faithful to forgive. That means he is with each one of us when we need
him so that we don’t fall because we aren’t on our own.
When we look back at history, we see that it has a tendency to repeat itself so we don’t want to
be complacent in our faith and turn away from God. On our own we will fall. But God is faithful.
His story has repeated in our lives and he is with us to strengthen us. Amen.