According to the Scriptures

Damian Kyle: Well, here's the question before us today on According to the Scriptures: how do we avoid becoming a castaway due to sin? He tells us in verses six through 10, in kind of in general, the point he makes in those verses is that we need to be ruthless with sin. I love the old saying—those who've been around for a while, you know it: the ruthlessness of sin requires ruthlessness with sin.

Any sin that I harbor in my life is working for my destruction. James said, "And then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, then brings forth death."

Guest (Male): Hey, it's great being with you today. Welcome, this is According to the Scriptures with our teacher and pastor, Damian Kyle. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, we find the Apostle Paul encouraging the Corinthian believers concerning the issue of temptation.

His writings remind us today that yes, everyone gets tempted, but God will always provide a way out for us. Let's turn now to 1 Corinthians 10 and see how to avoid becoming a castaway due to sin. Here's a hint: it has a lot to do with being ruthless with sin. Here's Pastor Damian.

Damian Kyle: And then he tells us in verse eight, there's the danger of sexual immorality. So we could just skip over this; nobody—this is not an issue for any of us. In verse nine, I'm just kidding. So this speaks of a time in Israel's history when the men of Israel, they committed harlotry with the women of Moab, and it resulted in the death of 23,000 among God's people.

23,000 became disqualified and castaways from God's purpose for their life under the influence of that sin. Stop and think about how many callings, how many giftings, how many purposes and plans of God have been buried under sexual immorality and the temptation to it.

And then in verse nine, there was the sin of tempting God, or tempting Christ. This refers to Numbers chapter 21, the incident involves the bronze serpent as is reported there. The people began to speak against God and all of the hardship of their lives. "The Christian life is so hard, and God puts us through so much, and boy, I don't even know if I like this being a Christian thing or a child of God. If he can't take care of people better than this."

The whole idea is that God saves us to deliver us into absolute comfort in our Christian life, rather than saving us into now working in our lives to prepare our character for heaven and to prepare us for that "well done." And so they began to complain against God, all of the hardships.

The problem with all of that is that they were wandering in the wilderness, not because that 40 years—not because God had failed them, but because of their own sin, their own lack of faith to enter in by faith to the Promised Land when God called them to do that. And so God sent fiery serpents, you might remember, into the camp of the children of Israel. They bit people, and many of them died.

And their refusal then to look to the bronze serpent for as God's provided salvation related to that. And so their pride and their arrogance and the pride and the arrogance that we have to be careful of in our own lives, and that is that I'm smarter than God. And if he doesn't do things my way, I'm going to take my ball and I'm going to go home. I'm going to leave if you don't start doing things my way.

And so now I want the Christian life to occur on my terms and not his. And it's an excellent way to become a castaway and to become disqualified in Christian service. And so rebellion against God and his authority over our lives.

Then this is interesting in verse 10: the sin of complaining. This refers to Numbers chapter 16, where Korah and others who joined him in his rebellion against God's choice of Moses as the leader of the children of Israel, and then God's choice of Aaron and Miriam.

And so he began to complain, and he put together this murmuring campaign among the children of Israel. "Moses, he's just doing—this is nepotism that he's doing here. And I can do things better than him." And they begin this complaint campaign against Moses.

The problem is that God took all of that complaining against Moses, his choice—his choice of Moses—the complaining among his people very, very personal. All complaining in the life of a child of God is to complain against God. It is to complain against his wisdom. It is to complain against his love. It is to complain against his character. And so complaining is libel against God in the mouth of any Christian.

Well, it's one thing for the world to libel God, to speak against God or of God in a way that's intended to harm him, but it's an entirely different thing when God's people are guilty of the same thing. And that's what happens related to complaining.

I'll never forget, you know how things are where you sometimes hear when you hear things for the very first time as you're going through the Bible or different subjects dealt with for the very first time, and it never stops, really. But I remember the first time I ever heard somebody—it was Pastor Chuck Smith—and he talked about how God viewed complaining among the children of Israel and what a sin it was, and the judgment that came upon them related to it.

And I've never been much of a complainer. Never. I just haven't been. I don't know what it is. I mean, I don't like any of the people I work with, but I mean other than that, and so—I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I think they're all great, honestly. I pinch myself for the people that I get to work with.

But it's just not in me. I come from a background where in my childhood and youth that would then make you thankful for anything for the rest of your life. And so to complain at all, number one, it doesn't do any good. But then to complain about God.

But it really drove home that lesson, the importance of not complaining as a Christian. Sometimes some of you will ask me, "Hey, how you doing?" and almost always I'll say, "No complaints. No complaints, not from me." And part of it's born out of having been exposed to that so long ago.

And so God brings this great judgment, of course, on Korah, his household, and all those who aligned themselves with him. And God removed that leaven of the complainers from among his people. And so needless to say, the sin of complaining made castaways or disqualified another group of God's people.

And so the sting of, I think, this warning of complaining would have hit very, very close to the Christians there in the church at Corinth because the letter here indicates that a whispering campaign against Paul was going on within the church. And the problem was that God heard their whispers.

Now, Paul tells us in verse 11 that he wrote this for our instruction. God includes all of these examples from the Old Testament for our instruction so that we will learn from them and not follow them onto the path of disqualification. So the Old Testament is not merely or solely a history book. It is a book of history, but it is filled with spiritual lessons for us that God intends us to learn from the Old Testament saints.

And so what's the old saying? That one thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. And it's the truth about that. It's so hard. Here I am, I'm 70 years old. And so I've been able to see things that are going on in our country for a second and a third time. I've already seen them crash and burn two times or three times in my lifetime.

And I think to myself, can't I get out of here without it happening for a fourth time? And yet here it is all being repeated. One of the great things about being my age—I'm not heading into a rant, I'm not heading into a rant—but being my age is in my formative young adult years, I know what New York City was before Giuliani.

Nobody wanted to be there. It was, except for certain parts, it was just so run down. Crime everywhere, empty storefronts everywhere because no one was enforcing laws. And now you've got somebody that's for mayor in New York and is going to turn it into a democratic socialism, and it's like, where does this go? It goes to where it went before.

And I'm so glad I don't live in New York, but not everybody in New York City agrees with this kind of stuff—New York City—just like people think, "Ah, you people in California, you get what you deserve. You get that governor you got and all the policies you have and all the craziness that's out there and all of that." And they don't realize it's just got to be a 55-45 majority, and you have no voice.

It's not all of us. Some of us are perfect. And so we learn nothing from history. It's repeated all of the time throughout man's history. And so Paul brings this up, and he says we must learn from our history and not keep repeating these things every generation or two throughout church history.

And the point that he's making here in terms of this instruction is that he's telling us it has always been the few among the all of God's people who run to win in their relationship with God. And that's the flat-out fact of the matter. That is the history. It's always been the few among all of God's people who do not end up a castaway concerning their Christian service and their influence for the kingdom.

Who will not end up at the end of their threescore and 10 becoming more interested in experiencing their liberties or sin than being faithful to God's call upon their lives and to love God with all of their heart, all of their mind, and all of their strength. And to love their neighbor as themselves.

And I don't doubt it. It's God's place—he knows the condition of our hearts, he knows the condition of his people in the world today. And the number of people who just enter into the Christian life and then say at some point, "Forget all of this, I'm going to live the life that I want to live. I don't care how many other Christians I stumble. I don't care how many unsaved people I stumble. I don't care anymore about their souls, and I don't care about God's plan for my life any longer. I am going to engage in the sin and the liberties that I want to."

Now, thankfully, with the seven minutes that we have left, Paul doesn't leave us there. Holy Spirit doesn't, but goes on to answer the question, how do we avoid becoming a castaway due to sin? And he tells us in verses six through 10, in kind in general, the point he makes in those verses is that we need to be ruthless with sin.

I love the old saying—those who've been around for a while, you know it: the ruthlessness of sin requires ruthlessness with sin. Any sin that I harbor in my life is working for my destruction. James said, "And then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, then brings forth death."

There is—anybody that says, if I were to say, "Listen, I know God's got to forbid sin in everybody else's life because he should. They can't handle it the way that I can handle it." That's self-deception that we can sometimes have related to it. "Oh, God, he forbids that, but you know, I brought that sin into my life and I've been rolling about five years now related to that and I haven't been hit by lightning or anything yet."

And what they don't realize is that any sin that we allow to abide in our life—quietly, powerfully, determinably—it is working toward our destruction, our death. The death of our relationship with God, the death of our intimacy with God, the death of God's plan and his purposes for our lives. And it can even result in physical death.

The path of sin is a very dangerous path. And Paul will get into it later in chapter 11, where some within the church at Corinth—these are Christians—some within the church at Corinth because they would not honor and respect the rest of the body of Christ and be mature in how they conducted themselves as an edifying member of the body of Christ and instead were harming the unity and the blessing of the church there.

Paul said God has taken some of those that you know home into heaven. He's just removed them from the earth, just looked at them and said, "I can't trust you down there anymore. I'm going to remove you and take you to heaven." And he did that. So we need to be ruthless concerning sin.

And then second, in verse 12, he says there: "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall." And so the need to beware of pride, that feeling that "I don't need to be warned about any of these things. There's no way that my liberties or my sin could become so dominant within my life that I would become so selfish or ever fall prey to these kind of sins that the children of Israel did. I'm glad there's warnings for it in the Bible, but I'm way more spiritual than to ever fall prey to any of those things."

And for each of us though, there's a very long line of sins which are formed right outside of our door, the door of our heart, which are very eager to make a castaway of each of us if we give them even half a chance. And so pride is a self-confidence that we shouldn't have in terms of walking with God, remaining faithful to God, not becoming a castaway or disqualified.

It requires humility. It requires some healthy dose of self-distrust. I will never make it all the way to the end of this race in God's plan for my life if he doesn't help me. And to be able to realize under certain circumstances, the wrong place, wrong time, wrong this, wrong that, that apart from God's grace, we're capable of anything the children of Israel did and more.

And pride really sets us up to be blindsided. And we have to be careful when we think, "Oh, I could never sin in those ways." And then he tells us in verse 13 that when we're tempted, we always need to look for the way of escape that God will always be faithful to provide to us in the face of temptation that's looking to make a castaway of us or disqualify us.

And in other words, yes, we have to be sober, we've got to be vigilant concerning sin, but Paul doesn't want us to look at these sins and to get paranoid by these examples either, and to look at them and say, "There's no way I'm going to make it. If they couldn't make it in this gauntlet of all of these sins that lie between me and a well done, I'm never going to make it. And falling and becoming a castaway is inevitable."

Paul is quick to tell us it isn't at all. And you notice, and I'll do it very briefly, four things from this verse. Every temptation we face is common to man. I must not think I am extraordinary or unusual because I'm tempted. Everyone is tempted. Everyone is tempted as fully as everyone of us is tempted in our Christian lives toward these things and other things.

It may not be the same thing. There may be certain things that tempt people and they have virtually zero power in terms of being any allure to me. And then but the other thing, it goes the other way around related to me and them. But every single Christian faces the strength of the temptations that the children of Israel did.

And somehow it's comforting to know that we're normal. We're not some kind of a freak because we face temptation. It's comforting to know that everybody does. But at the same time, never look at the person who's living a strong, victorious Christian life and think about them, "They're spiritual, they're walking wholeheartedly for God because they're not tempted in the same way that I am."

And God says, "No, no, no, no, no, no. You don't get to fool yourself with that. They're every bit as tempted as you are in this life." And yet they are handling that temptation in a biblical way that allows them to continue to grow and to move toward their well done.

You notice second here that God is greater than any temptation we will ever face. And so God is with us every moment that we're being tempted. And so temptation occurs and we don't say, "God, where are you?" We say, "Okay, Lord, you're with me. You are here right now. You see this in technicolor, what I find myself in the middle of here."

And so we turn to him. He's with us in the middle of temptation. And then third, he tells us God will never allow us to be tempted above what we're able to bear. So if we're in the midst of a temptation or a trial and he doesn't provide a way of escape, it means we can bear it.

I don't think I can bear it. No, he has to push us beyond our own resources to discover his. So if he allows us in some kind of a situation, he's teaching us something that's there. We have what's necessary to deal victoriously with the temptation, and he knows what he's built into our lives in terms of godly character. He knows the grace he's pouring into our lives and that we can handle this in his grace with that enduring it.

And then in any temptation that we're tempted with that's beyond what we can bear, to just look for a way of escape because God is going to provide it to us. And sometimes the escape is to run. He's going to say flee idolatry in verse 14 as we get to it next time.

But we remember the famous scene with Joseph and Potiphar's wife, and she said, "Lie with me." And she's been getting the whole palace down little by little trapping him, trying to get him to commit sexual immorality with Potiphar's wife. And the only way he could get out of there was leave his robe and run, leave his clothes in her hands and run from the palace.

And so with the temptation, there's always a way of escape. And sometimes it's running. But God will always provide that way of escape to us. It will never be to disobey him in order to escape that temptation. There'll be a biblical way that he'll provide. Something will open up and we'll say, "Okay, Lord, I see that." Or claiming a promise or whatever it might be.

And that then brings us in that fleeing idolatry to verse 14, but as I mentioned, Paul shifts gears and he there for another subject and we'll pick that up next time.

Guest (Male): Pastor Damian Kyle on how to overcome temptation and avoid becoming a castaway due to sin. You've been listening to According to the Scriptures, part of a study in 1 Corinthians.

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