Breaking From Idolatry

1. Idolatry’s effects seen in Israel’s tragic example, vss. 1-5.

The people of God can practice idolatry, and persisting in idolatry will have dire consequences. 

The similarities of the experience of Israel and the church in Corinth bring about this warning.

A. Israel’s blessed advantages, vss. 1-4.

Each group had its own baptism and remembrance meal.

Five advantages of the Israelites (Paul enlightening the Corinthians)

1.        the cloud represented the protective, loving care of God for His people and His prolonged supernatural guidance.

2.        red sea crossing demonstrated God’s supernatural deliverance of His people.

3.        They were all identified (“baptized”) with Moses, who was their leader and God’s instrument in their redemption, providing supernatural leadership under God to His people.

4, 5. All ate the same bread and drank from the same rock, eating supernatural food and receiving supernatural sustenance and refreshment throughout their sojourn.

B. Israel laid low in the wilderness, vs. 5.

Verse 5 – in spite of all these advantages, God was not pleased with most of them. Only two of the first generation of Israelites who left Egypt who were twenty years of age or older at the time of the exodus entered into the land of Promise—Joshua and Caleb.

How did this happen?

2. Reviewing and Applying Israel’s Example, vss. 6-13.

Idolatry was the main cause of Israel’s failure, the focus of Paul’s warning to the church in Corinth. There were four other evil characteristics of Israel that also seems to mark the Corinthians as well. These characteristics also resulted in the Israelites dying in the wilderness.

A. Israel’s examples of evil characteristics are lessons we should head, vss. 6-10.

Israel’s experiences provide lessons for us today. Their participation in spiritual food and drink did not protect them from God’s discipline when they craved evil things. Participating in baptism or the Lord’s Supper will not immunize us against the discipline of God when we as believers sin against Him.

1. Improper attention or behavior to people or things other than God, vs. 7.

The behavior surrounding the worship of the idolatrous golden calf is the first evil characteristic which would be inappropriate for the people of God. It probably does not refer to sexual immorality since that is addressed in the next verse. This may picture some of the current activities of those in the Corinthian church when they attended the celebration feasts in the temples. It is very easy to compromise our commitment to God when we participate in sinful pagan celebrations – which may include some forms of entertainment. We can make an idol out of just about anything when we give it too much attention in our lives.

2. Practicing sexual immorality, vs. 8.

The second evil characteristic is the practice of sexual immorality. Israelites were caught up in sexual immorality as they participated in Moabite idolatry by participating in one of their religious feasts. 23,000 died in one day of the plague; 24,000 died during the duration of the plague.

3. Testing the patience of Christ, v. 9.

The third evil characteristic: testing Christ by taxing His patience. The best manuscript evidence points to “Christ” as the correct word here. If so Paul is again stressing that both the Israelites and the Corinthians were testing Christ Himself.

The Israelites dared God to live up to His promise to discipline them if they doubted His Word.  God faithfully provided for them, yet they complained all the more, despising His provision. His provision, in their eyes, was never good enough.

The Corinthians had given evidence of their dissatisfaction with God’s prohibition of participating in pagan feasts through their opposition to Paul’s teaching on this point.

            As Christians, we can become dissatisfied when we fail to appreciate God’s provision for us. We can test the Lord by demanding that He perform for us, doing what we want on our timetable, rather than waiting on Him to work in His own time and way.

“Indulgence in some forms of amusement, not in themselves sinful, and in practices which other persons regard as harmless, may make us discontented with our lives of more rigid morality, until continued dissatisfaction deepens into disloyalty and ends in actual defiance of God.” Erdmans, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 91.

4. Continual grumbling against God, v. 10.

The fourth evil characteristic: continual grumbling. Moses records 10 times that the Israelites grumbled. Paul points at one particular example that he may have had in mind; the time when God sent a fire that destroyed those around the outside of the camp. The term destroyer seems likely to refer to an angel; the writers of the LXX used the same term to describe the angel of death in the 10th plague in Egypt.

The Corinthians were dissatisfied with the messengers God sent, They seemed dissatisfied with Paul; they preferred others more. They did not appreciate Paul’s earlier instructions to break off from idolaters and the sexually immoral.  They also were impatient with those who were weak in their faith.

Grumbling is a telltale sign of our own selfishness, as well as our own discontent with what God has given us. We can easily get caught up in grumbling about our church leaders, something our pastor says, about others in our church, or even our lot in life.

2. General Principles and “the way of escape,” vss. 11-13.

These examples Paul has given from the Israelites experience are specific; now Paul restates the general principle. These lessons from history we should take heed, for the time of God’s fulfillment of His plan for the ages is very soon.

Paul’s word of warning: Self-confidence could lead to a spiritual fall.

But failure is not inevitable. Verse 13 is a general promise of victory over any temptation. God has promised us that He will enable us to do His will in each and every temptation. Every temptation that God allows to touch us has “the way of escape” that He has provided, the divine power to overcome every temptation, His enabling grace.

That does not mean can put ourselves into the path of temptation—that would be testing God. There may be several different actions we can take to escape temptation, we need to act upon just one. For the Corinthians, it was” Flee from idolatry.” But many times we are like the little boy Dr. J. Vernon McGee describes:

“One of the reasons we yield to temptation is that we are like the little boy in the pantry. His mother heard a noise because he had taken down the cookie jar. She said, ‘Willie, where are you?’ He answered that he was in the pantry. ‘What are you doing there?’ He said, ‘I’m fighting temptation.’ My friend, that is not the place to fight temptation! That is the place to start running.”[2]

3. Idolatry is incompatible with Christianity, vss. 14-22.

A. Flee from Idolatry, Understanding the Danger, vss. 14-15.

Having been told to flee from fornication, the Corinthians are told now to “Flee from idolatry.” Non-moral activities are all right for the Christian but if they involve or lead to idolatry, we should avoid them.

The believers in Corinth have claimed to have knowledge; Paul wants them to apply their knowledge to what he has said so that they may know the truthfulness of his words.

B. The question of solidarity: Who are you aligned with?, vss. 16-18.

Rhetorical questions are used by Paul once again to make his point. The bread and the cup are usually referred to in this order in the NT. By reversing the order, Paul draws attention to the bread. The “cup” may refer to the vertical relationship with God; the “bread” referring to the horizontal relationship with others.

The ”cup of blessing” was the term used for the third of four cups in the Seder meal which was drank just before the eating of the bread. In the Lord’s Supper there is only one cup which follows the eating of the bread.

By blessing the cup, we give thanks to God for what it signifies, a sharing of the benefits of Christ’s shed blood (death) for us. The eating of the bread symbolizes our unity as one body through the effects of the killed body of Christ (11:24).

Paul is stressing the unity of many people who eat from the same one loaf symbolizing the solidarity of our relationship as a redeemed people in Christ. And just as Christians eat the bread, thereby showing their solidarity with other believers and with Christ, the Jews ate the meat of the sacrifices offered in Judaism showing their solidarity with one another and with God. Implied here is the crux of the issue: Christians who participated with pagans in the ceremonial feasts in the idolatrous temples were showing their solidarity with the other worshippers as well as with the idol(s). Paul will now clarify why this is dangerous.

C. The Danger of Participating in Idolatry, vss. 19-22.

Paul understands that sacrifices offered to idols were not in themselves sinful nor were the idols real entities. However, these man-made figures of wood or stone represented supernatural beings, so the cultic meal celebration had genuine significance.

The power behind pagan religions is demonic. Sacrificing to idols demonstrates solidarity with demons; to celebrate the cultic meal is to involve oneself in the worship of demons. This is incompatible to the Christian believer. He cannot participate in the Lord’s Table and then choose to also  participate in the temple festive meals. What the Lord promotes is diametrically opposite of what the demons promote.

Remember that the Israelites provoked God to jealousy when the participated in Moabite worship. We are to learn from their experiences.

To provoke the Lord is true folly; because we are not stronger then He is, we can count on His chastening, since He is a jealous God.

1 Erdman, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, p. 91.

2 McGee, Thru the Bible Vol. 44: The Epistles (1 Corinthians)