God Stands in Our Way

Let's turn to the Word of God today. We're reading from 1 Corinthians 10, beginning at verse 1 through 11. And I'll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version. Again, that's 1 Corinthians 10, verses 1 through 11. And it says, Now, these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.

Do not become idolaters as some of them did. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play. We must not engage 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 the destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us on whom the ends of the ages have come. In the Word of God for the people of God, thanks be to God.

In the Hot Takes series so far in 1 Corinthians, we've covered sexual ethics, marriage, relationships, food offered to idols, and a lost zero letter, which we do not have. Paul begins his letter with praise. He writes about their eloquence.

He praises them for remembering and holding on to the traditions he taught them. Paul says of this anointed assembly that they were lacking no gifts. They had everything that they needed to function as a healthy church.

Paul considers himself not only to be the founder of that community, but also its spiritual father, placed in authority over them by God. Yet Paul considers the church at Corinth to be spiritual infants, and as such, he knows they can only digest spiritual milk. Paul's heartfelt pastoral advice speaks with them as a loving parent would speak to their children, teaching them what to watch out for on their journey of faith together.

Paul offered them instruction, suggesting a wise and proper course of wisdom that he learned from the lives of the ancestors who came before them and who came before us. Like any good parent who has a child who hasn't quite developed the logical capacity to judge correctly right from wrong or play from danger, God will sometimes stand in our way, especially when we're headed towards danger. This is what I mean about God being against us.

God stands in our way for our own good. And Paul is writing back to the people in Corinth to affirm this, and he shares a word of admonition with the people.

Paul teaches them with lessons from the past, asking them, Do you remember the story of when God parted the waters so that the ancestors of Israel could cross the sea on dry land? Do you remember that story? Because I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea.

Do you remember when your ancestors were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea? Like you Corinthians, you have been baptized with water and under the cloud of God's spirit. And you have been filled with God's spirit.

Paul is connecting Israel's baptism of water with Jesus and Jesus' baptism of the Holy Spirit. Most scholars link baptism to the ritual bath of the mikvah, which was a place where the high priest would enter into the ritual bath before entering into the Holy of Holies. Second Temple Judaism believed that this was the very place on earth where the presence of God dwelt.

Church, you too, you too have been baptized with water and received the Holy Spirit. You have been renewed to life. God's grace has been poured out on you.

God's love has been overflowing and fills you. The presence of God now lives in you. Tell your neighbor, God's spirit lives in you.

You see, the Corinthians were supposed to be on the move from a world of bondage and dehumanization and on a journey to a land of liberation and human dignity. Siblings, we too are on a journey moving towards collective liberation. He says, do you remember when God provided for all of your needs?

Do you remember when God, God's self, provided you with spiritual food and with spiritual drink, caring for you like children? It wasn't a lavish meal, but it was enough provisions to sustain your life, keeping you even as you wandered through the wilderness. Thank you, God.

Paul says, God's spirit hovered over Israel in the wilderness just as the spirit hovered over the church in Corinth and over us gathered in worship today. Like Washington, D.C., Corinth was a capital city, and it was also a major administrative province in the Roman Empire. The Roman military, like our National Guard and our militarized police, roamed the city streets at Corinth.

But 200 years before Paul, that same military destroyed Corinth.

And so after Paul finishes praising them and reminding them of their baptism and reminding them of their giftedness, then Paul pivots in verse 5. He says, nevertheless, God was not pleased with them. God was not pleased with most of them.

But now we ought to see what Paul is doing. Like any good father, at times, much needed and necessary correction is better received when it's softened with praise. His tone changes.

The story takes a turn, grabbing their attention. They begin to sense what Paul is up to. They're gifted with the gift of discernment and reading between the lines.

The church at Corinth thought they had arrived, but in fact, their journey of faith had only just begun. These same Corinthians had access to Paul and had regular meetings with Timothy. They thought in some way they graduated in the faith, matured and grown up in the Lord.

And they thought they could keep on playing, not the restorative play that we speak about in our values, but play that doesn't restore, play that corrupts. They forgot. They forgot the purpose of God's radical and unreserved provision for them.

They nearly repeated the transgressions that cost so many lives in the wilderness. They were about to worship the things that they made with their own hands. They were about to become idol worshipers.

Not idol as in sitting still or sitting on your hands. No, that's another church at another time. They were still trying to worship in ways that didn't upset anyone.

Worship that didn't challenge their way of life. A worship unconcerned with liberation. They were trying to be good Roman citizens and followers of the way of Jesus.

But Paul points out this as being incompatible with the gospel of Jesus. To proclaim Jesus as Lord is to renounce all other lords and to renounce Caesar. In Corinth, faithfulness to God wasn't fully developed.

In other words, the folks were still playing. Idolatry and worshiping what you make by your own hands. And they were complaining instead of offering gratitude.

Gratitude for all the blessings. And without offering gratitude, the people began to grumble. And the grumbling led to their undoing.

Just like it happened in the story of Israelites. It's worth noting here that the word translated for sexual immorality is again a word that we know well. It's porneomen.

Which again here has been translated as sexual immorality. However, alternatively and metaphorically, it means to be given to idolatry. To worship idols.

To permit oneself to be drawn away by another into idolatry. So Paul is focused there. He's not wandering off topic.

He refuses to move on until he knows that they get it. Do not repeat the mistakes of the past. That is Paul's point.

In the former times, God followed the Israelites as a rock that was a well of water for them. Called Miriam's well in some places. And Jewish Midrash commentary says that the rock and the well were one in the same.

Following the children of Israel in the wilderness, The Spirit of God went out like a cloud to guide them by day and a pillar of fire by night. Paul is clear that the rock is Jesus. He is our rock in a weary land.

He's a shelter for us in the time of storm. He is the chief cornerstone which the builders rejected. Jesus is showing us a better way.

And Paul confirms this for us again and again. That God has not abandoned us in the wilderness experience. God has not left us to die of thirst in the wilderness.

What you see there on your screen is known as the split rock of Horeb. It's located in Saudi Arabia. And this is the type of things that biblical archaeologists love.

The split rock of Horeb is in the region of Mount Horeb. It is also the biblical mountain, some believe, where God appeared to Moses and established the covenant with Israel. The rock itself is 50 feet tall.

And I wonder if you can see the two men who are but an inch tall in that picture. That rock has some meaning that we can glean from it. The split rock reminds us of Moses who was told to split the rock so that the rock would become a well.

And tradition says that Miriam's well followed the people of Israel as they traveled and wandered in the wilderness. So the rock and the well were one and the same, according to tradition. The rock also reminds us of the burning bush, the Ten Commandments.

The prophet Elijah fled to a cave in Horeb where he said he heard God speaking to him in a gentle whisper. Some translations say he heard God speaking to him in a still, small voice. Most biblical scholars and traditions consider Horeb and Mount Sinai to be interchangeable names or different parts of the same mountain range.

In Hebrew, the name Horeb means dryness or desolation.

Paul says that even though you all had access to the rock who is Jesus, you're still playing games. God wants you to have peace and rest and restorative play, but it doesn't want you to sit on your hands. Liberation and salvation require our active engagement.

Playtime must not impede renewal or slow down our progress forward. Remember, salvation is for our good, but for God's glory. The revelation of Jesus Christ translates the divine presence of God's Holy Spirit as both an outward manifestation and embodied transformation.

And relocating the place where God lived from chiseled marble statues and temples filled with gold and decorated objects was a revolutionary revelation. The Roman Empire rested on the worship in the temples. Places that these Christians now believed were off limits and now empty.

And one day, those people at Corinth just stopped showing up. They stopped giving their wealth to the temples. They disrupted the economy that fueled their oppression.

This was the church being born from a nonviolent act of resistance. And maybe it's also a blueprint for oppressed people anywhere. The gospel always signals an end to the former order and moves communities steadily toward a renewed world.

And in closing, verse 7 says that the people sat down to eat and drink and they rose up to play. Paul's admonition is worth rereading because even though his warning seems to single out sexual immorality, a simple reading misses the point. As I mentioned, the empire ran on temple worship and the people in Corinth stopped funding the temple and stopped funding their oppression simply by being faithful to the God who came to set them free.

The chief concern here is faithfulness to God and what we believe about Jesus, Christ, our anointed one, our bread of heaven, our fountain of life, our solid rock who goes with us even in our wilderness and makes his home in and among us. Christ shows us the way toward healing, wholeness, liberation, and justice. We should be confident, siblings.

We should be confident in our faith in God and know that God has and is saving us for our good, but for God's glory. Amen.