For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
Paul has just warned that even preachers stand in danger. Now he turns to Israel's story to press the warning home. A whole nation once enjoyed God's visible care, yet most of them died in the desert.
The opening word ties this verse to the argument before it. It does not start a new topic. Some older English versions read "Moreover," which hides the link; the ESV keeps "For."
In our English version the first word of the chapter is "Moreover." But the word is really just "For." That shows that what follows is a direct illustration of the point he is making. The great mass of Israel had the outward forms of their holy religion. Yet they missed its living power completely, because they had no faith.
The phrase covers everyone who bore the name of Israel, not only those who truly trusted God. That is why the word "all" carries such weight here.
Notice first the expression "our fathers." It is not used here, as it often is, for God's true and chosen people. It describes the whole nation. Not all who come from Israel are truly Israel, yet all who bore that name were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. The LORD's power in dividing the Red Sea gave the people, who had despaired before, the confidence to follow Moses to the other side. True faith in God Himself kept Joshua and Caleb for the promised land. This faith of the eyes in Israel is a picture of "faith upon evidences," or "rational conviction." It is often found in people who, sadly, show no sign of true life toward God.
Paul himself calls these events types, or examples for us. So we may read them as pictures. The cloud and the sea each did something different for Israel.
The apostle goes on to say, "now these things were our types." That gives us God's own warrant to read Israel's baptism "in the sea and in the cloud" as a picture. Nothing could be more meaningful or practical. They began their wilderness journey as a people baptized in this way. In the picture, they were a people dead to Egypt and all that belonged to it. The cloud and the sea were to them what the cross and grave of Christ are to us. The cloud kept them safe from their enemies. The sea separated them from Egypt. In the same way, the cross shields us from all that could be against us, and we stand at heaven's side of the empty tomb of Jesus.
Once through the sea, everything changed. They had a new place, a new leader and new food.
1 Cor. 10 tells us how the children of Israel "were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea." It was as if the wall of water on each side, and the cloud resting on the water, made a dark tunnel for them to pass through. What a deliverance! No more Pharaoh, no more Egypt. On the other side of the Red Sea they were under the leadership of Moses, with supplies from heaven: water from the struck rock to drink, and the daily manna for food.
The Corinthians prized their gifts and standing. Paul points them to Israel to show what such advantages cannot promise.
Israel stands here as a warning to those who professed Christ. Did the Corinthians boast of their privileges and gifts? He shows them how little safety such institutions as baptism and the Lord's supper give to those who rest in them. ... The danger was not only for preachers, but for all who professed the name — not some of them, but all. Look at the ancient people of God. In the same way, they trusted not in God but in His acts and in the rites He had given them, their own special favours. And this was so from the beginning, not only in later days of cold and dead formality. The heart of unbelief is so ready to depart from the living God.
The line here is thin, but it decides everything. The reality is one thing; the sign of it is another.
He does not say that we can share in the death of Christ and perish. He says that it is possible to share in the symbols of His death and perish. In this way he exposes the trap that most of the Christian world has fallen into: a sacramental system where salvation depends on taking part in baptism and the Lord's Supper.
- Link. The verse opens with "For." Israel's history is not a new subject. It is the proof of the warning Paul has just given.
- Gift. The cloud and the sea were a real rescue: shelter from enemies, separation from Egypt. They were to Israel what the cross and grave of Christ are to us.
- Reach. The word "all" covers the whole nation, not just the believing few. Every one of them shared the privilege.
- Result. Yet most fell in the desert. Sharing the outward signs of rescue is not the same as sharing its life.
- Warning. Baptism and the Lord's Supper cannot make a person safe. They are the signs; only faith holds what they picture.
and all were baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
Paul reminds a confident church at Corinth of something that happened to Israel at the Red Sea. He calls it a baptism. So what does it mean to be baptized to a man? And why press that old story on people who already had Christian baptism and the Lord's table?
One writer traces the whole idea of baptism in Scripture back to this scene:
Take up what Scripture teaches about baptism, and I think you will find that it nearly always, if not always, means being brought into a place. "They were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea." That is, they were brought right into relationship with Moses as their leader. The cloud and the sea marked that connection. It stood in contrast with their earlier slavery to Pharaoh.
The same point holds for the Christian side of the picture:
At that point they definitely committed themselves to the authority and leadership of Moses; just as in Christian baptism, which is in the Name of the Lord Jesus, we are definitely committed to His authority and leadership.
The small preposition carries weight. Israel could hardly be baptized into Moses, and that fact settles how the same Greek word should be read elsewhere:
The Greek preposition means "unto" (or "to") as often as "into." Which sense it carries depends on the context, or on the nature of the case. Water baptism is plainly in view in 1 Corinthians 10:2, as a warning to the baptized at Corinth. It is impossible to think that the Israelites were baptized into Moses… Baptism is the symbol of profession. Reality depends on faith, which might, or might not, be true of the person baptized. To say "into" therefore goes beyond God's word. It implies that the rite itself gives life, and Scripture gives no warrant for that.
Each of the two had its own work, and each has a Christian counterpart:
They began their wilderness journey as a people baptized in this way… In other words, in picture they were a people dead to Egypt and to everything that belonged to it. The cloud and the sea were to them what the cross and grave of Christ are to us. The cloud kept them safe from their enemies. The sea separated them from Egypt. In the same way the cross shields us from all that could be against us, and we stand at heaven's side of the empty tomb of Jesus.
The order matters. Blood had already sheltered Israel, and they were still in Egypt:
They were under the shelter of the blood. But they did not get out of Egypt until they had crossed the Red Sea. That crossing pictures the death of Christ and the destruction of all enemies. They are safe, but not saved. The blood shelters them from judgment. Yet they must pass through the waters of death before they appear as a delivered people.
Israel walked across on dry ground; the water stood on either side and the cloud was overhead. Neither one soaked them.
The force of "baptism" in the New Testament does not depend on the manner at all. When Israel were "baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea," they were not immersed in either. To read immersion into the passage would turn its solemn meaning into absolute folly. In that wonderful way they were broken off from their past in Egypt and taken into Moses' school.
Four times in these verses Paul says all — and then says most of them fell in the desert. That is the point of the comparison:
Israel stand here as a warning to those who professed Christ. Did the Corinthians boast of their privileges and gifts? This passage shows how little security such institutions as baptism and the Lord's supper give to those who rest in them… To presume on the Lord's institutions is fatal, whether the one that begins the Christian path or the one repeated after it… To my mind the aim is to guard those who were baptized, and who joined in the Lord's supper, from the illusion that all was therefore right and safe. The warning stands so that they may not sin grievously and perish miserably.
- Leader. Baptism to Moses brought Israel out from under Pharaoh and into open connection with Moses as their leader. Christian baptism commits us in the same way to the Lord Jesus.
- Unto. Commentators read the word as "unto," not "into." Baptism is the symbol of profession. Whether that profession is real depends on faith.
- Cloud and sea. The cloud shielded them; the sea cut them off from Egypt. Together they were to Israel what the cross and grave of Christ are to us.
- Safe, then delivered. The blood sheltered them in Egypt; the sea brought them out. Shelter from judgment and deliverance from Egypt are not the same thing.
- All — and yet. Every one of them was under the cloud and passed through the sea. Yet shared privilege gives no security to those who rest in it, and that is why Paul set this story before a confident church.
and all ate the same spiritual food,
Paul warns the Corinthians by pointing back to Israel in the desert. If God Himself fed that whole crowd, why did most of them never reach the promised land?
The word "spiritual" is doing real work here.
Thirdly, Paul writes, they ate spiritual food. This stresses two things: the manna came from a supernatural source (Psalm 78:25), and it carries a spiritual meaning. As the Lord Jesus explains in John chapter 6, He is the Bread of Life, and only those who feed on Him have life (John 6:31-32).
If the manna stands for Christ, which Christ does it show?
The manna, I need not say, is Christ, the bread of God from heaven, to be our food. It is Christ come down, Christ in all the circumstances of an earthly life, to sustain the life of His people... So here we do not have a Christ in glory, but a Christ humbled. In His blessed person there is everything needed to support and nourish us on our wilderness journey.
Notice what the verse does not tell us about the people who ate.
The subject of 1 Corinthians 10 is privilege, and the responsibility that comes with it for everyone who shares in it, whoever they are. So the words "all ate the same spiritual food" and "all drank the same spiritual drink" say something about the food and the drink. They say nothing about the people who took them, except that they did take them... Yet in the end many of them proved to be unworthy partakers, and we are to take warning from them.
Some have read "the same" as putting Israel's manna on a level with the Lord's Supper. Kelly reads the grammar differently, and the argument with it.
As a question of interpretation, it is clear that when Paul says they all ate the same spiritual food, he is speaking of the fathers, not of the Corinthians or other Christians. His point of warning and instruction is that God took no pleasure in most of them, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. So in these verses he speaks only of Israel. He is in no way saying that their manna and water were the same as our signs of Christ's death, or what men call the sacraments... They held the title of God's people, and they shared in sacred privileges — the very privileges Paul plainly likens to the two institutions so familiar to us in the Christian world. Yet none of this saved the mass of them from being overthrown by God's judgments in the wilderness.
Smith names the mistake this passage rules out: treating religious rites as a guarantee.
Now he warns those who profess faith that it is possible to be baptised, to share in the Lord's Supper, and yet be lost. He does not say that we can have part in the death of Christ and perish. He says it is possible to have part in the symbols of His death and perish. So he exposes the trap that most of the Christian world has fallen into: a sacramental system that makes salvation depend on having part in baptism and the Lord's Supper.
That distinction is what keeps the passage from unsettling a believer's confidence.
This passage is not a warning against having a thing and in any way perishing, but against having the signs of the thing and then perishing.
Israel gathered this food morning by morning. Mackintosh carries that habit straight over to us.
The manna was so pure and delicate that it could not bear contact with earth. It fell upon the dew (see Numbers 11:9) and had to be gathered before the sun was up. Each one, therefore, had to rise early and seek his daily portion. So it is with the people of God now. The heavenly manna must be gathered fresh every morning. Yesterday's manna will not do for today, nor today's for tomorrow. We must feed upon Christ every day, with fresh energy of the Spirit, or else we shall cease to grow.
- Gift — The manna came from a supernatural source, and it meant more than food. It pictures Christ come down from heaven, humbled, to sustain His people on the road.
- Given to all — The verse describes the food, not the faith of the eaters. Everyone in the camp received it; that fact alone proves nothing about them.
- Sign — Kelly holds that "the same" compares Israelites with each other, not their manna with the Lord's Supper. Paul likens the two only as privileges that did not save.
- Snare — You can share in the symbols of Christ's death and still be lost. The danger is holding the sign without the reality, not losing the reality.
- Sustenance — You must eat what the sign points to, and eat it today. Yesterday's portion feeds no one this morning.
and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of a spiritual rock which followed [them] (now the rock was the Christ;)
Paul looks back at Israel's years in the desert. He tells the Corinthians that everything they drank there came from one source — and that source was a Person. So the verse raises two questions. How could a rock "be" Christ? And what does it mean that it followed them?
The food and the drink in the desert were real, yet Paul calls both "spiritual." One writer gives two reasons for that word:
They are probably called "spiritual food" and "spiritual drink" because God gave them both. They were the direct gift of His grace, and in no sense natural products. But there is another reason: what they picture. The food speaks of Christ meeting the needs of His people on their journey. The drink speaks of life in the power of the Holy Spirit, and without that the journey could not be made.
We are not left guessing at the meaning of the desert water. The rock was not divine in itself. It stood for a Person, and the order of events pointed to Him:
The words "and the Rock was Christ" work the same way — that is, the rock represented Christ. The rock was struck before the water flowed out. In the same way, Christ was struck on the cross before the Holy Spirit was given.
No water came out until the rod struck. That blow is the heart of the picture:
Some explain the rod as a symbol of God's power. So when it strikes, it shows His judicial power at work. In this striking of the rock, then, we see the stroke of His judgment falling on Christ at the cross. The struck rock is a crucified Christ. And it was the people's sin, remember, that led to the striking of the rock. It is a vivid illustration of the truth that "He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities."
Israel's history holds two rock scenes, many years apart:
Paul treats the rock of Israel's history as one rock, though many years passed between the two episodes, and it pictured Christ. Christ did not need to be struck twice. Once was enough, and rivers of life-giving water flowed to us.
Did the stone itself travel? One writer answers that the water, not the rock, is what followed:
Wherever they went, the overflowing streams followed them. I do not think the rock moved, but that what came from the rock followed them. Behind, in their track, that shining river came right along. Morning by morning down came the bread, and day by day the water followed them.
The supply never failed, and there was nothing else to drink:
Whatever they needed, it was there — a drink, water for cooking, for washing, for all kinds of uses. It kept flowing, ready for every call and every camp. And there was no other resource in the wilderness. No other stream fed that river, and it never ran dry.
The Rock was more than a picture. Christ Himself was there in the desert, long before His birth in Bethlehem.
It was Christ who followed, as the Rock, His redeemed people in the wilderness, and whom they tempted by their unbelief. It was the holy Person whom we know as the Christ of God, who was there with them in Egypt and through all their wanderings. It was God, God the Son, who was there with them — not shutting out the presence of the Father and the Spirit, but giving prominence here to the Eternal Son.
The word "all" runs through this passage. Paul uses it as a warning, not a comfort:
The sense is not that they were in the very same condition as we are, or had the same sacraments as we have. It is that they all shared the same spiritual food and drink, and yet God had no pleasure in most of them. They held the title of God's people, and they shared in sacred privileges — the very ones Paul here likens to the two practices so familiar to us. That did not save most of them. God's judgments still struck them down in the wilderness.
- Struck once. The rock gave nothing until the rod of judgment fell on it. That blow pictures the cross, and it never needed repeating.
- Then flowing. Water came from the struck Rock — a picture of the Spirit given, life for people who had no other source.
- Always following. The supply was not a single day's mercy. It was a stream that tracked them through every camp of the journey.
- Christ Himself. The rock represented Christ. He was there with them in the desert — the same Person they tempted.
- Yet not enough alone. All drank; most fell. Carrying the title of God's people did not save them from His judgment.
yet God was not pleased with the most of them, for they were strewed in the desert.
Israel left Egypt with every visible advantage: the cloud, the sea, the food, the drink from the rock. Then the verse turns on one word — nevertheless. Why did God take no pleasure in people who had received so much from Him?
The apostle is writing about the fathers of Israel, not about the Corinthians. And the weight of his warning sits on one word: most.
When the apostle speaks of all eating the same spiritual food, he clearly means the fathers, not the Corinthians or other Christians. The point of his warning is this: God took no pleasure in most of them, for they were overthrown in the wilderness... He speaks here only of Israel. He does not say that their manna and water were the same thing as our signs of Christ's death. They held title as God's people. They shared in sacred privileges, which plainly match the two institutions so familiar to us in Christendom. None of this saved the mass from being overthrown by divine judgments in the wilderness.
The size of the loss is the warning.
Only two of that whole generation came out of Egypt as grown men and lived to enter Canaan. That is a serious warning about what may come from testing Christian profession this way. It is a warning for us all. We have no right to say, "Well, but we are true Christians, and so we need not trouble about these things."
The problem was not a shortage of blessing. It was the absence of faith.
By faith God's people please Him, and by faith and patience they obtain His promise. But Israel, as a nation, did not have faith in God. So when God brought them into the wilderness, their hearts turned back from Canaan to Egypt. They knew God only through their natural senses. The fire and the cloud gave constant witness, yet they failed to see that He was truly with them in that desert place. Because of unbelief they could not enter into His rest.
Something changed at Sinai, and it changed the way God dealt with their failures.
When we look back at Israel's story, we must remember this: their destruction was the natural and just result of the change they had freely made at Sinai, from grace to law. Up to that time they had complained and provoked God, yet not a hair of their heads had perished. It is the law that works wrath.
The same pattern can repeat under a Christian name.
The great mass of Israel had the outward forms of their holy religion. They had no faith, so they missed its vital power. They did not keep their bodies under control. They gave themselves up to their lusts and perished miserably. Seen this way, they were types of people firmly settled in the profession of the Christian religion. Such people are still not true believers, and they perish.
Commentators differ on how far the warning reaches. Some read it as aimed only at empty profession — a person can carry all the signs and be lost. Others press it on true Christians too, who have no right to think the warning does not touch them
This passage is not a warning about having the real thing and then perishing. It warns about having the signs of the thing and then perishing. It speaks to saints, and to all those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus, however bad they might be at Corinth. It would be very dangerous to say that people stand outside these warnings and dangers just because they are so bad.
Israel failed a test, and the warnings that follow trace the failure back to the heart.
When the test came, they fell short: they did not finish the race. Where the reality is missing, it will show in the end. If that was true in Israel, it is true today... This is the first of five negatives. It deals with the state of heart at the root of all the evils that follow. The positive antidote is of course keeping "first love" toward the Person of Christ.
- Privilege. Cloud, sea, food and drink were all real gifts, yet none of this "saved the mass from being overthrown by divine judgments in the wilderness."
- Proportion. God's displeasure fell on most, not a few. Only two of that generation reached the land, so the warning touches everyone.
- Reason. What was missing was faith: they "knew God only through their natural senses" and so could not enter His rest.
- Parallel. People can hold the outward marks of Christianity and rest on them where there is no life. The danger is "having the signs of the thing and then perishing"
- Remedy. The chain of failure starts in the heart. The antidote is "first love" toward Christ Himself.
But these things happened [as] types of us, that we should not be lusters after evil things, as they also lusted.
Paul turns from Israel's privileges to Israel's graves. Two questions follow: how is that old story an "example" for us, and why does the list of dangers start with wanting the wrong thing?
The word behind "examples" also means a type or figure. So Israel's collapse in the desert is not just sad history. It is a pattern set down for us to read.
What "happened" to Israel is "written down for our instruction." So their failures become warning beacons for us. They are also pictures of the kinds of error that we, as redeemed people, can fall into.
The verses just before this one list everything Israel received, and then say God was not pleased with most of them. Outward standing saved nobody.
The Apostle has already warned preachers that a man can preach and still be disqualified himself. Now he warns those who profess faith that a person can be baptized, share in the Lord's Supper, and still be lost. He does not say that we can have part in the death of Christ and perish. He says it is possible to have part in the symbols of His death and perish. So he exposes the trap that most of the Christian world has fallen into: a system of sacraments where salvation depends on sharing in baptism and the Lord's Supper.
Five warnings follow in this chapter, and craving comes first. That order is deliberate.
Lust heads the list, because, as the Apostle James tells us, "desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin" (James 1:15). Lust leads to idolatry, because what we crave becomes an idol between the soul and God. Then the idol ties us into an unholy alliance with the world. That alliance destroys all sense of God's presence with His people, and it leads to murmuring or rebellion against the ways of God.
If the trouble starts in the heart, the cure must start there too.
This is the first of five negatives, and deals with the state of heart that is at the root of all the following evils. The positive antidote is, of course, to keep "first love" for the Person of Christ.
The phrase sounds like it means obvious vice. The answer given here is wider than that.
There is, first, a general warning against "evil things." And if we ask, what are these evil things? The Spirit's answer is this: whatever faith does not seek and find in Christ… Faith is the root of godliness. It waits on the living God for its blessings, and is content with what He gives. But Israel craved the meat pots of Egypt, because their souls were "dried up" instead of fed by the food God provided. In the same way, some people profess Christ and yet think that godliness is a way to worldly gain.
Israel's craving also had a source. It started with the mixed crowd travelling with them, and spread through the camp.
One of the first lessons given about the saints is that "bad company ruins good morals." We are all prone to complain about God's dealings with us. But craving Egypt's food is the sure result of mixing with the world. The children of Israel followed the example of the mixed multitude (Num. 11:4); and no Christian mixes with the world without going down to their level and sharing in their desires.
One easy defence is to say the warning is for other people. This writer closes that exit.
This warning is for all of us. We have no right to say, "Well, we are true Christians, so we need not trouble about these things." As principles, these things matter enormously for us to grasp. There are evil things we may crave, just as they craved. If God keeps the extreme result from us, that is His mercy. But when we ignore the warnings, our lives may be, alas, how greatly spoiled and disfigured, and made quite other than He would have them, by our carelessness!
- Type — the "examples" are types. God set Israel's desert history down as a pattern, so their failures become warning beacons for us.
- Privilege — Israel had every sign and symbol. Sharing the symbols of Christ's death is not the same as sharing His death.
- Lust — craving heads the list because it is the seed. What we crave becomes an idol, the idol ties us to the world, and the world's grip ends in grumbling against God.
- Egypt — "evil things" are whatever faith does not seek and find in Christ. Israel wanted Egypt's food because God's food no longer satisfied them, and they caught the appetite from the company they kept.
- Us — no Christian is outside the warning. Ignoring it leaves a life spoiled and disfigured. The antidote is first love for Christ Himself.
Neither be ye idolaters, as some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.
Paul warns the Corinthians about idolatry by pointing back to the golden calf Israel made while Moses was away with God. The line he quotes — about eating, drinking, and playing — raises the question the chapter turns on: what makes someone an idolater?
The words come from the day Israel made the calf. What makes the story so unsettling is the mood of it. Nobody thought they were leaving God.
Aaron announced, "Tomorrow is a feast to Jehovah." How subtle sin is! ... He himself had no idolatrous object in what he did, and idolatry was not the intention of the people either. Aaron's announcement, "Tomorrow is a feast to Jehovah," did no good. The calf, and not Jehovah, had the worship of their hearts.
Paul does not quote the making of the calf. He quotes the meal and the play that followed, and that is where his argument rests.
The real character of what followed comes out in Exodus 32:6: the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Paul quotes this in 1 Corinthians 10:7 as proof that they were idolaters, and a later verse shows how such idolatry at once sinks into loose living and indecency.
The verse traces a downward path. Paul sets it against the dangers the Corinthians faced.
The warning before this one is general. Then Paul names one by one the things that were dangerous to the Corinthians. "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.'" First came a giving in to bodily appetite. Then came the excitement of pleasure. That brought the result you see in the verse quoted — the judgment. Were the Corinthians not in danger?
The verse says "some of them" were idolaters, though the sin spread through the whole nation. At its root the sin was a swap: Israel had lost sight of Moses, their mediator, and wanted something they could see.
Only some were idolaters, but "the people" were drawn along after their example. The sin became national when Aaron, acting as Jehovah's priest, recognized the calf. Look at the true character of this idolatry, and its essence is not a formal rejection of the living God. It is putting human inventions in the place of the one mediator God chose. The people who had been "baptized unto Moses" now asked for other "gods who should go before them." They had lost Moses, because Moses was with God. Their hearts had too little faith to follow him there, though it was for their sakes that he was hidden from their eyes.
Paul aims this command at Christians. That alone tells us something about ourselves, and it stretches the word "idolatry" well past statues.
We know that the Spirit of God does not warn us against things we are not in danger of. He would not say to us, "Do not be idolaters," if we were not capable of being such. Idolatry takes various shapes. So it is not a question of the shape of the thing, but of the thing itself; not the outward form, but the root or principle of it. We read that "covetousness is idolatry," and that a covetous man is an idolater. That is, a man who wants more than God has given him is an idolater. He is guilty of the very sin Israel committed when they made the golden calf and worshipped it. ... Whatever commands the heart is the heart's idol, whether money, pleasure, power or anything else.
If the danger is permanent, the protection cannot be a rule against images. It has to be a rival attraction strong enough to hold the heart.
"Do not be idolaters as some of them were." It is a standing warning, not a temporary one. Let us give it its proper place in our souls. There is only one safeguard: the soul taken up with Him "who is the image of the invisible God." Does the person of Christ have its rightful place in our hearts? Has He no rival there? ... Even service that looks like it is done for Him may draw our souls away from Him.
- Substitution. Idolatry did not start with denying God. It started with a human invention put in the place of the true mediator. The calf got the heart; God kept the name.
- Disguise. Aaron said over the calf, "Tomorrow is a feast to Jehovah." A religious label does not change what the heart bows to.
- Sequence. Appetite first, excitement next, judgment last. Paul quotes the meal and the play, not the making of the calf, because that is where the idolatry showed.
- Reach. This warning is for Christians, and it covers every shape idolatry takes. Wanting more than God has given is the same sin as the golden calf.
- Safeguard. The danger stands, and so does the answer. Keep the heart taken up with Christ Himself, with no rival — not even a religious one.
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
Paul's warnings in this chapter walk through Israel's desert history one failure at a time. The third is the sin at Baal-Peor, a god of Moab. How did people God had blessed fall so fast? And what keeps us from the same fall?
It happened near the end of Israel's forty years in the desert. Balak, the king of Moab, hired the prophet Balaam to curse Israel. The curses failed.
This scheme failed because God guarded His people. So, on the advice of the wicked prophet, other ways of harming Israel were tried. The people were led "to join themselves" to Baal-Peor and to share in the sensual rites of the gods of Moab. Thousands of them died from the plague that followed. This was a dark page in Israel's history, and Scripture warns about it often.
What curses could not do, seduction did.
The five failures Paul lists are not in the order they happened. They are in the order the heart travels.
The order in which these evils are stated is clearly moral and not historical. Lust heads the list, for, as the Apostle James tells us, "when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin" (James 1:15). It leads to idolatry, because whatever we lust after becomes an idol between the soul and God. Then, through the idol, an unholy alliance is formed with the world. That alliance destroys all sense of God's presence with His people. It leads on to murmuring or rebellion against the ways of God.
This verse names the step that follows the idol.
Commentators differ here. Some take Paul to mean plain immorality — the danger sitting on the Corinthians' doorstep:
Our warning is not the events as pictures for us, but the judgments that came from them.
Others see a picture of the church's compromise with the world. They point to the letter to Pergamum and to the image of the church as a bride:
An unlawful union with the world follows. The message to Pergamum in Revelation 2:13 puts this in striking words. The church had shaken hands with the world, so to speak: "I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is." The church, "betrothed to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:2), had given herself to another.
The two readings do not compete. One warns the person; the other warns the church.
The account in Numbers gives twenty-four thousand dead. Paul gives twenty-three thousand, and adds something Numbers does not: they fell in a single day.
In the history, twenty-four thousand are said to have died in the plague. But there it is not said "in one day," as it is here, where we hear of a thousand less. To me such a difference implies the greatest accuracy.
Writers explain the missing thousand in different ways. One says "the other 1,000 died on a different day" (Leslie M. Grant). Another points to the ringleaders put to death earlier in the same chapter (Arno C. Gaebelein). Either way, the two accounts count different things. Neither is wrong.
Paul writes "we must not," not "they must not." That is the sting of the whole passage for anyone who feels secure.
The Apostle, in searching words, goes on to apply these warnings to professing Christians. He warns us against the natural self-confidence of the flesh: "Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall." We have taken part in the Lord's Supper. Let us not think that this makes us safe from falling into the grossest sins. But, we are reminded, God is our resource... God never allows us to be tempted without making a way of escape, though, sadly, we may neglect the way.
The same watchfulness applies to what people excuse as harmless fun:
It shocks those who tremble at God's word, and the pure in heart who see Him by faith, to watch the sinful liberties too often excused as "play." So it is play — but remember, "the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." The saints need to watch against the flesh in the very things their own spiritual judgment and conscience condemn.
- Lust starts it. Wanting what God forbids is the first step on a road that ends in judgment. Every later failure in Paul's list grows out of it.
- The idol invites it. Whatever we crave stands between the soul and God, and the idol at Peor came with immorality attached.
- Alliance seals it. Israel joined itself to Moab's gods. The church at Pergamum shook hands with the world in the same way.
- Judgment ends it. Twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. Paul's wording differs from Numbers because it counts something different, not because it is wrong.
- Escape survives it. No privilege, not even the Lord's Supper, keeps a person from falling. God always gives a way out — but we have to take it.
Neither let us tempt the Christ, as some of them tempted, and perished by serpents.
Paul lists Israel's wilderness failures as warnings to the church. The third names a sin that sounds strange today, and it raises two questions: what is tempting Christ, and how could believers be guilty of it?
The word does not describe open rebellion. It describes a heart that will not trust God to meet its need.
Let me remark in passing. When we are walking in His ways, it is sin not to have confidence in the Lord. It is sin not to be quite sure that He will help us, whatever the need may be. The record counts it as sin in the children of Israel that they tempted the Lord when they said, "Is the Lord among us, or not?" ... Whenever there is real need in the wilderness, it is sin to doubt whether God will help us or not. In the middle of the sandy desert we should be as sure of water as if we could see rivers running through the land. If we are not, we are tempting God.
One writer points back to Numbers 21, near the end of the forty years. There the people called God's daily bread worthless.
Next, we are told not to tempt Christ. Israel did this by despising the manna as poor, unsatisfying food (Num. 21:5). But the manna is a picture of Christ in His humiliation, as the lowly Son of Man. They played into Satan's hands by doing his tempting work, and serpents destroyed them — the serpent being the symbol of satanic deceit.
Paul has already said that the rock which followed Israel was Christ.
It was Christ who followed, as the Rock, His redeemed people in the wilderness, and whom they tempted by their unbelief (1 Cor. 10:4, 9). It was the holy Person whom we know as the Christ of God, who was there with them in Egypt and during all their wanderings.
Commentators differ over the wording here. Some read "the Lord" instead of "Christ." One writer weighs both and keeps "Christ," since the danger reaches us either way:
Another reading here, also very well supported, is "the Lord" instead of "Christ." But there is no need to adopt it. Christ is for us the Lord, the one Lord, and there is no other. We can plainly commit Israel's sin in this very way. We can refuse the light food that Israel asked about — "What is it?" — though it held so much for them.
The judgment fits the offence. Turn away from what God provides, and you step onto ground the enemy owns.
The Lord allowed the enemy's power to show itself in the serpents that killed them. The same power of the enemy will still show itself against us when we turn away from Christ to the world. It is there that his power is found. He is the prince of this world.
Verse 9 is not a random item. It sits in a chain, and each link explains the next.
They lusted after evil things, and this led them into idolatry. If I allow my heart to go after any evil thing, that thing will control me. Then comes fornication. If any evil thing controls my heart, it will lead me into sinful ties, and so I lose the presence and support of Christ. The result is that I shall be in danger of putting Christ to the test — of tempting Christ, as they did when they said, "Is the Lord among us or not?" ... If I lose the presence and support of Christ I shall find the way hard and shall murmur.
Israel collapsed at the border of the land, after God had fed them the whole way. One writer reads that timing as a picture of the closing days of Christian profession.
It cannot help reminding us of times that are certainly near, if they have not come already. The Israelites, right at the borders of the land, turned away in complaint from the bread that had kept them alive until that hour. In the same way, people who have long claimed to live on God's gospel will turn right away from it ... On such people the serpent, which seemed dead at the start of their course, will come again with deadly and destructive power at the end.
- Doubt. Tempting Christ is not open rebellion. It is refusing to be sure He will supply the need, and asking whether the Lord is among us.
- Bread. Israel called the manna worthless. That manna pictures Christ in His lowliness, so the sin is finding Him unsatisfying.
- Presence. The One they tested was the Rock that went with them — Christ Himself, there through every stage of the journey.
- Serpents. Turning from Christ moves you onto the enemy's ground, where his power lies, and the bite follows.
- Chain. The failures form a chain: evil desire, idolatry, immorality, testing Christ, then murmuring. Guard the first link and the rest never starts.
Neither murmur ye, as some of them murmured, and perished by the destroyer.
Paul lists Israel's wilderness failures one by one. This is the last of them — complaining. The warning falls on people who had everything they needed from God. And it ends with a name found nowhere else in the list: the Destroyer.
The five failures Paul lists are not in the order they happened. One writer traces them as a moral sequence, where each sin makes room for the next:
The order in which these evils are stated is evidently moral and not historical. Lust heads the list, for, as the Apostle James tells us, "desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin" (James 1:15). It leads to idolatry, for that which we lust after becomes an idol between the soul and God. Then, through the idol, comes an unholy alliance with the world. That alliance destroys all sense of God's presence with His people. And it leads to murmuring or rebellion against the ways God uses to chasten men for their evil ways.
One writer ties the warning to the moment Israel refused the promised land:
The solemn moment came when all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. "And they said to one another, 'Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.'" Here was the complete giving up of the Lord and His servants. And this came at the very moment when those faithful men, men of a different spirit, were urging them to go up and take the land. They despised the pleasant land. They proposed to choose a leader and return to the land of slavery once more — and they were destroyed by the Destroyer.
The people aimed their words at Moses and Aaron. One writer insists the target was always someone else:
We generally find out where we are by a murmuring spirit. Nothing is easier than for a murmuring spirit to get into the heart of a believer, or a whole assembly... The murmuring was really against God, and not against the servants of God. Examine any murmuring honestly. It is not against the circumstances, and not against fellow believers. It is always the outcome of downright unbelief towards God. That is the point.
Paul does not repeat the language of the previous verse, where snakes did the killing. This time he names the Destroyer:
The last of the five warnings here is no less serious — do not grumble. Such murmuring was a dreadful evil. It judged God as untrustworthy, when He had assured them He would enable them to conquer the land. Let the believer remember that all mere complaint is in its essence against God. Is He not caring rightly for His people and all their interests? Notice that here it is not the serpents destroying, but the destroyer. God Himself sent it. It was His own judgment.
Grumbling can look like the mildest item on any list of sins. One writer ranks it the opposite way:
Don't murmur, Christian, for it is a most unchristian, a most ungodly thing to do. Nothing dishonours God more, nothing does greater damage to the soul. It was the chief of all the sins Israel committed in the wilderness. It meant they did not believe their God was fit to be trusted. It did not change His merciful care for them, but it aroused His just anger against them.
Their complaint did not match the facts:
These children of Israel were so discouraged that they said there was no bread and no water. God rained bread down from the sky, and still they said they had none. The wilderness is indeed a very dry place. Yet here was the stream from the struck rock that followed them wherever they went, stubborn and rebellious as they were. God's goodness never abandoned them for a single moment. Yet they grumbled and murmured. Why do people murmur? Because they are not content. And when people are not content with God's best, it shows they are in a very sad condition.
Verse 11 tells us why these old stories are here at all. One commentator calls that statement a rule for reading the whole Old Testament:
No rule matters more for reading these Old Testament Scriptures with understanding and profit. The facts happened to them. But God cast them in ordered pictures, or forms of truth, to warn us who live at such a critical point in the world's history. They contain therefore far more than moral lessons, however weighty.
- Discontent — grumbling starts when the heart is not satisfied with God's best. His supply keeps arriving daily all the same.
- Unbelief — that discontent is unbelief in disguise; it says God is not fit to be trusted.
- Misdirected — the words fall on circumstances, leaders or fellow believers. The complaint is always against God Himself.
- The Destroyer — not snakes this time, but God's own judgment. The mildest-looking sin on the list drew the heaviest name.
- Written for us — God had these events recorded as patterns. We are meant to see the road from discontent to ruin and never walk it again.
Now all these things happened to them [as] types, and have been written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.
Paul has just retold Israel's wilderness story. Now he says why God had that history written down. The verse gives a rule for reading the whole Old Testament. It also places believers at a point in time that no earlier generation held.
One writer treats this verse as the key to reading the older Scriptures:
There cannot be a more important canon for our intelligent and profitable reading of these Old Testament oracles. The facts happened to them. But God cast them into a system of figures, or forms of truth, to warn us who live at such a critical point in the world's history. They contain therefore far more than moral lessons, however weighty. They do show man's heart, and they reveal God's mind and affections. But they also carry the larger and deeper lesson of events that illustrate immense principles.
The same verse also sets limits on that kind of reading:
When we use Old Testament facts as figures or types, we must hold our imagination in check. We can never insist on such readings as doctrine. But one passage helps the mind here: 1 Corinthians 10:11, where the word "ensamples" means types or figures. This gives the principle. Then we must only look to the Holy Spirit and divine guidance to use them soberly and rightly.
Older translations read "the ends of the world." Commentators correct that to "ages." The phrase marks the close of a whole series of trials of man:
It is not the "ends of the world" but the ends of the dispensations that are past. Those were the ages of testing, in which man was under trial: in innocence, without law, under law, under law tempered by mercy, and under kings, priests and prophets. Every one of them proves the same thing. Man's sinful state could not be cured or mended. So God had to step in with grace reigning through righteousness, if man was to be blessed.
Because those ages have closed, the older Scriptures read differently now:
Since these ages have ended, the types of a past dispensation have begun to speak as never before. This matches what the apostle says elsewhere (2 Cor. 3:16): the veil that was over the Old Testament is now done away in Christ.
One writer draws the line between what Israel saw and what we read:
The ends of the age have come upon us, as the apostle says. But we who live in them do not now receive the same outward displays of God's will as Israel of old had. Things happened to them, but words are written for us — from what happened to them we get admonitions.
One writer traces how each evil Paul lists pulls in the next:
The order in which these evils are listed is moral, not historical. Lust heads the list, because, as the Apostle James tells us, when lust has conceived it brings forth sin (James 1:15). It leads to idolatry, for that which we lust after becomes an idol between the soul and God. Then the idol draws us into an unholy alliance with the world. That alliance destroys all sense of God's presence with His people. It leads on to murmuring or rebellion against the ways of God.
The point of the warning lands in the next verse, which one writer reads together with this one:
What a wonderful place to stand in, with instruction of this kind from every past generation! How important that we should heed its warning, and how guilty we will be if we ignore it! "Therefore," says the apostle, "let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall." That, surely, is a great part of the admonition… All self-confidence is confidence in the flesh. All true confidence is confidence in God alone. That is how we find the ability to stand. We stand indeed, but we stand as He holds us up.
One writer applies the warning to anyone who leans on religious privilege:
The apostle applies this principle to people who might enjoy privileges such as those of God's house, and who rest in a false security in its outward forms, without having any part in the divine nature. He uses what happened to Israel in the desert as types written for our admonition, and warns against resting in a mere outward profession.
- Types, not tales. The events happened to Israel. God shaped them into figures, so the Old Testament carries far more than moral lessons.
- Types, checked. The verse allows this reading. But hold imagination in check, and never press a type as doctrine.
- Ages ended. "Ends of the ages," not "world." Man's ages of trial are closed, and the veil over the older Scriptures is gone.
- Theirs happened, ours is written. Israel got outward displays; we get words. From what happened to them we draw admonition.
- So stand humbly. Lust breeds idolatry, alliance with the world, then murmuring. Outward privilege did not hold Israel up. All self-confidence is confidence in the flesh; we stand only as He holds us.