He Will Also Provide

1 Corinthians: How the Crucified Christ Shepherds a Fractured Flock

Mar 2

Written By Benjamin Vrbicek

March 2, 2025

Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek

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Sermon Manuscript and Discussion Questions

Scripture Reading

1 Corinthians 10:1–22

1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

6 Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil 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 rose up to play.” 8 We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. 9 We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, 10 nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. 11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. 12 Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 13 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.

14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 18 Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? 19 What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. 22 Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

Please permit me a quick update before we begin in prayer. About five weeks ago, we announced that Pastor David would be transitioning to a new job in New Hampshire. He’ll be working at a Christian residential rehab facility. David is not here this morning, but his new job has nothing to do with it. David is preaching at Midtown church this morning, the church we planted eighteen months ago. The plan is to have David here with us, leading worship and serving small groups, until the middle of May. We’ll have a reception for him after church on May 18.

Related to the transition, I wanted to mention that your church leaders have been having lots of conversations about how we hope to fill his role and all the roles at your church. We’ve talked and prayed extensively about what it would mean not to hire anyone. And we’ve talked and prayed extensively about what it might mean to hire. Unity is starting to form around some of the possibilities, perhaps even what might be the best possibility, though we’re not sure yet. One thing we all agree on right now is that a national church for a pastor is very much not ideal. National searches can be awesome, but they are also risky, expensive, and time-consuming. Which, then Pastor Ron’s name comes up, and we joke that we did an international search because he was serving in Italy when we hired him. Ron has been and is great. So he’s not the reason we’re against big, national searches; in this season, we’re trying to avoid that if we can. And we think we can. So, if you don’t mind praying for your leaders and your church, we’d certainly appreciate it. We hope to have more to say soon.

As for the passage, it’s a lot of words and a lot of history that create a lot of chances to get confused. We had planned to cover all of chapter 10, but I shortened it, partly because the themes at the end of chapter 10 are so similar to the themes in my sermon on chapter 8 from two weeks ago. And we also shortened the passage so we can zero in on what Paul says here. Next week I’ll be preaching chapter 11, a famous passage about head coverings.

So, with all this in mind, I want to read v. 13 again and then pray. I want us to have the comforting, encouraging promise of God’s ability and his faithfulness seen clearly, so that through all the hard warnings of the passage, we know the hope we’ll end with.

13 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.

Let’s pray as we begin. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”

This passage is about both purity and mixing things, some things that should not be mixed. But of course, some things are much, much better when they are mixed: bacon and eggs. A family in the church kindly brings many dozens of eggs to church each week to give away. With the price of eggs their gift to all of us is amazing. They might as well put gold in the egg cartons. It’s really kind of them. But many of you would say that if they brought bacon AND eggs, that would be even better because that’s a good mix. Some might say bacon, lettuce, and tomato is also a good mix. The other week I mentioned the meme “said no one ever.” One of you emailed me a picture of a chalkboard at a breakfast restaurant that said, “That’s too much BACON… said no one ever.”

There are other good mixes. Sweet and sour chicken. Or sweet and salty treats. Peanut butter and chocolate desserts. Strawberry cheesecake. Pepperoni and extra cheese. Again, sometimes you enhance flavor by partnering certain flavors and textures.

But sometimes that’s not true at all. Some pairings are terrible. Sometimes when you mix things you ruin them both. You can’t mix tacos and gasoline, right? “I love how these tacos taste like gasoline… said no one ever.” You can’t mix Gatorade and toilet water. Not to be gross, but they are both yellow, so what’s wrong? You know what’s wrong. Sometimes purity (not mixing) really, really matters.

And the problem we see in this passage and the problem sometimes with us, is that we are not as concerned about purity as we ought to be. The church in Corinth was mixing what ought not to be mixed, and, using the example of the Old Testament, Paul tells them they ought to stop and he tells them how God wants to help them be pure.

Now, I know I just used the words purity and ought when I said that their church and sometimes our church is not as concerned about purity as we ought to be. And I know some of you have a kind of allergic reaction to those words. I get that. At different times, religious duty (what we ought to do before God) has been weaponized against people, and the same has happened in some circles with purity.

But deep down, you know that even if some have abused the ideas of duty and purity, you know that they have a legitimate place. It’s the legitimate place of purity that Paul is talking about. I’ll put it like this. If there is any marriage you care about, whether your own or someone else’s, you feel a certain jealousy for that marriage to have purity and not to have the marriage bed get mixed with others. We all get that. And when the passage speaks of God’s jealousy, as it does in v. 22 as his jealousy for the purity of his bride—the purity of the church—Paul is not trying to hurt anyone by instilling purity and duty. When God speaks about purity, he wants us to be happy and holy forever. He doesn’t want us mixing tacos and gasoline. Or, to use the words of the passage, he doesn’t want us mixing the Lord’s table and the table of demons.

This is all getting ahead. Let’s look at this in three parts: the danger, our duty, and God’s promise. First we’ll talk about spiritual danger, then the Christian’s duty in light of the danger. Finally, we’ll talk about God’s comforting, encouraging promise.

1. The Spiritual Danger

We’ll start with the spiritual danger. By this I mean something particular. Paul means something particular. I mean the danger of having physical proximity to the salvation of God and physical proximity to the sacraments of God yet remaining spiritually unchanged. That’s the danger. I’ll say that again. Paul is talking about the danger of having physical proximity to the salvation of God and the sacraments of God but remaining spiritually unchanged, meaning spiritually mixed with idols of the heart.

Paul uses the Old Testament to show this, using them as a kind of example or what we might call a cautionary tale. I mentioned the other week how we can sometimes think of the idols in the ancient city of Corinth as very different from ours, but at the level of the heart, our struggles are the same. In a similar way, Paul is talking of the commonalities between Israel and Corinth and us.

We see Paul’s emphasis on our similarities in a place like v. 1, when Paul writes, “our fathers.” Paul writes to a church of both Jews and Gentiles who have become Christians, and yet he speaks of the Old Testament with the description of our fathers. No, not all were ethnically Jewish (in Corinth or here) and had these fathers in a physical sense. Paul’s subtle but important point is that the Old Testament was always moving toward the wonderful era of the Messiah, the era when the people of God would expand and the church would be made up of all types of people. This is something of what is meant by that epic line in v. 11 about the end of the ages having come.

We also see this commonality with those in the Old Testament at the heart level in the phrase from the promise I read in v. 13. Paul says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.” That commonality is Paul’s way of saying that what tempted them, can tempt us, or just as they were too unconcerned about purity, so we can be too unconcerned.

Paul goes on to show the great danger that too many in the Old Testament are too unconcerned using several stories. I’ll read the verses again and give a quick summary. Look at vv. 1–11 again.

If you’re newer to the Bible, all these stories will be unfamiliar. But even if you are familiar with the Old Testament story of Israel, you might still be confused by some of the references. That’s because Paul clusters several stories into this one pattern of mixing what should not be mixed. After God saved Israel from four hundred years of slavery, they left Egypt guided by a fiery cloud and passed through the Red Sea as they followed Moses, while their enemies were drowned. This is what Paul means by being under the cloud and passing through the sea. Paul calls this a kind of baptism. And then, once in the wilderness on the way to the promised land, God gave them food and drink when he provided the manna on the ground and water from a rock. Paul calls this a kind of Lord’s supper.

And this is what I mean by saying they had a physical proximity to the salvation of God and to the sacraments of God. God saved them. And God baptized them. And God feed them spiritual food and spiritual drink, giving them the Lord’s supper.

Of course, yet they grumble. “Oh, Pharaoh provided better food for us,” they said. “We should just go back to the idols of Egypt because we had it so good,” they said. Even as God graciously gives them his 10 Commandments, they are busy down the mountain worshiping a golden calf idol and saying that the idol is an accurate representation the God who saved them. Another time, they get involved with another nation, the Moabites, and rather than remaining pure from their idols, they all throw a huge, drunken party and sleep together. It’s like this international, heathen wilderness rave.

And this is the danger Paul says we can have too. We can have a kind of physical proximity to the salvation of God and the sacraments of God and yet remain spiritually unchanged. We can grow up in the church, we can get baptized, we can partake of the Lord’s supper, but in our hearts, we can still love the world more than Christ.

In the Roman Catholic church there is even doctrine that pretty much endorses this view; it’s a kind of (what some would call) sacramentalism, which is a fancy word. But it means that someone receives a spiritual blessing from the sacraments regardless of their heart posture. That’s not part of our church tradition, thankfully. But even for good so-called evangelical Protestants, we can treat spiritual things as a kind of vaccine, where if we just do a little church stuff and baptism stuff and Bible stuff and Lord’s supper stuff and a little Jesus stuff, then it doesn’t matter what we do with the rest of our lives. We can mix Gatorade and toilet water. What’s the big deal?

Thus Paul wants those in the Old Testament to be an example to us, as I said, a kind of cautionary tale. As we transition to the next point to talk about the Christian’s duty, I’ll explain better the idea of a cautionary tale.

2. The Christian’s Duty

We’ve talked about the danger of remaining unconcerned about purity to Christ. Let’s talk about our duty, or our responsibility, in light of this danger. Your first duty, your main responsibility in light of this danger, is to bring the cautionary tale close to your ears and your heart. Paul begins in v. 1, “For I do not want you to be unaware . . .” And he says in v. 6, “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” And he says in v. 11, “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” And in v. 17, “I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.” So, our duty is to hear this cautionary tale as a cautionary tale. But what is that?

A cautionary tale is a kind of story that dramatizes a danger and calls for a response, a different way of living—in this case, fleeing from idols and clinging purely to Christ.

I’ll tell you a quick story that illustrates a cautionary tale for me. I might not be exaggerating that I probably think about this story at least once a week. When I was a young middle schooler, our family attended a small church, and there was a bad injury. It could have happened anywhere, but it happened at our church, specifically in the parking lot. The pastor’s wife got hurt badly. She’s fine and didn’t die or anything like that. But here’s what happened. She was walking in the parking lot near the cars, and a license plate on a car was sticking out. Actually, the metal in one corner was curved out. And as she walked by—and I’m sorry this is gross—but she sliced her leg at her knee. No one amputated her leg or anything like that. She did get a ton of stitches. But I wasn’t even there. I only heard about how bad it was when my mom told the story. And to this day I cannot walk in a parking lot near a car bumper without thinking of this story. It’s etched into my brain. When we walk as a family out of Costo, my eyes are looking for that one license plate that’s curved, and I’m gonna be ready when I see it.

That’s part of what Paul wants the Old Testament to be, a cautionary tale. Our duty is to bring this tale as close to our heart and our ears as we can. And while my story about stitches and a cut knee is bad, Paul’s is worse. He speaks of those who fell in the wilderness and then look what he says in v. 12, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.”

In v. 8 Paul writes of those who fell in the wilderness, and then he says, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Do you see what he did there? Making a play on the word fell, he wants you to bring the tale close. Paul condenses several stories into one, but the point is that for forty years, bodies fell, becoming littered across the wilderness. As they pursued life in their idols, they got death. When they mixed God and demons, they ruined their faith.

There are those who would tell you never to question whether you’re actually saved or not. That’s not what God wants. Paul is telling us to bring that example close, to make sure we don’t become them. He doesn’t want us to presume that our physical proximity to the things of God actually reflects that our hearts our close to the things of God.

3. The Promise of God

All this talk of spiritual danger and Christian duty could make it seem like the passage is only a downer. On the one hand, some people say, “Don’t ever question your faith,” but on the other hand, some can make it seem like no one anywhere has ever been saved. That’s not true either. And that brings us to the last point about the promise God offers strugglers like you and me. We need to read again the verse I highlighted at the start. In v. 13 God promises that he has provided in Jesus everything we need to be happy and holy forever. Look at v. 13 again.

Paul stresses the faithfulness of God. The God who spoke into the darkness, let there be light, and there was light, is promising that whatever common temptation you are experiencing, he is faithful. And he is faithful, even when you are not. The story of Israel, as you can tell, is not the story of people who were really great and really deserved to be sent the Messiah. No, they were a people like us, who really need a Savior, who really need a faithful God. And in Jesus, we see God’s faithfulness. Because God promised to send a savior, he did send a savior. For them and for us. He is faithful.

The great hymn about God’s faithfulness is not a great hymn merely because the poetry of the words has a beauty to it. No, we love the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” because the lyrics are the answer to our danger and the other side of the coin of our duty. On the other side of a Christian’s duty is the promise of God. We sing of “Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, / [God’s] own dear presence to cheer and to guide; / Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.”

That’s what God is promising. We might wish he was promising something other than strength for today, meaning, why not bright hope for today? I don’t know the answer to that, except that perhaps today, he wants you to know his nearness not by solving all our problems but by carrying us through them. And that can be so hard. And we might wish for a promise that said we could just get out of our trials and out of our difficulties. I sometimes want that too. But it seems his plan is to part the Red Sea and give us his strength to walk through it. While that causes challenges, it does build our relationship with him, which God thinks is pretty important.

As we close, I just want to highlight one more aspect of the promise. Notice how tailored the promise is to each person; notice the language of you.

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.

Your friends and family and coworkers might not really know you as well as you’d like. You might even feel like they don’t know you at all or know the struggles you’re experiencing. You might feel like your pastors don’t even have a clue what you’re going through. But this passage is promising that God does. He sees and he knows and cares.

And he’s strong. The last lines of the passage highlights this with a rhetorical question. “Are we stronger than he?” Paul asks. Of course we are not stronger than God. Paul’s point is so then we shouldn’t fight against him. But think what God’s strength does for us when he is for us, not against us. It means we can have his strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, even if we don’t have the strength ourselves.

Let’s pray. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”

Discussion Questions

Look again at some of the descriptions of our Old Testament fathers, especially in vv. 1–11. What sins are they tempted with that also tempt us, even if our idols may be different?
Paul refers to several different Old Testament stories. Was that confusing to you? What pattern or commonality does he draw out among the stories? Why is that helpful?
Do you think our Christian culture tends to be too unconcerned with our purity and duty… or do you think we are more tempted to doubt wrongly our assurance of salvation? What are the dangers of each (struggles with purity or struggles with assurance)? Which has been a bigger struggle in your life?
Pastor Benjamin spoke of a cautionary tale. What definition did he give? Do you have any personal cautionary tales that have become helpful to you? What are they and what do they teach you?
In what ways is v. 13 encouraging to you? Are there any temptations in your life right now that God is providing a way out, and yet you’re struggling to take it?
The last verse (v. 22) speaks of God’s strength. In context, it’s about fighting against his strength. But how, in the good news story of Jesus, does the strength of Jesus become a source of hope?

1 Corinthians1 Corinthians 10