“Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” (1 Corinthians 10:11, KJV)
When I worked for a company in Europe, I often traveled there for a month or two. On one visit, I had a conversation with an engineer regarding missionaries and God. He gave me his opinion on God. He stated that God was a little old man sitting in a rocking-chair in a distant part of the universe. He went on to say that He, God, did not care what we did down here as long as we were nice to each other.
My engineer friend just expressed the attitude of our world in apostasy. The world is trying to rewrite the story of God and it goes like this. People can do anything they want, and God will forgive us because He loves us. That is true freedom and God wants us to be happy.
The sentiment of our culture is not limited to the unsaved world alone. I sat in a Christian conference one time and heard one of the speakers make this statement. “I don’t preach about bad things because people encounter enough bad stuff all week long.” I am sure I heard him correctly. In other words, his view was to throw them some fluffballs so they would feel good. Now, the Bible does give us a lot to feel good about. However, to preach fluffballs alone is not the precedent of the Scriptures.
In this section of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he writes of some difficult and “bad” things. He listed some of Israel’s moral failures and the negative repercussions of them. Paul began this section with this thought, “Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.” (1 Corinthians 10:6, KJV) Then in verse eleven he wrote that these things were specifically “written for our admonition.” Yes, the Scriptures contain words of blessing and words of warning for our own good. Nowhere in Scripture do we see that God says it is ok to do whatever we want by violating the moral precepts of God.
Consider the nation of Israel in these verses. Verse seven refers to the episode where Aaron made a golden calf and the people committed the sin of idolatry and three-thousand were felled by the sword. In verse eight we see that Israel engaged in sexual immoral conduct with the women of Moab, which resulted in twenty-three-thousand dying by a plague in a single day. In verse nine, we see where the people complained against God and Moses, which caused the Lord to send poisonous snakes that bit the people resulting in many deaths. In verse ten, we see the nation’s constant grumbling resulted in many being destroyed by the Destroyer.
What is the point of this? It is twofold. First, God hates sin. It is not a light matter. Every one of the moral precepts written in the Scriptures are absolutes and unchanging regardless of cultural views. Man is not the determiner of right and wrong.
Second, there are repercussions when people characteristically transgress the absolute moral standards of God. When people adopt evil practices as the norm of permissive behavior, there will be severe repercussions. In the example of Israel, there were plagues, bloodshed, famine, oppression by enemies, etc.
The Scriptures are clear “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” (Galatians 6:7–8, KJV)
Renewing the Heart 