1Cor 10:6-10 - Preserved Thru Perseverance

6-10 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.


It is a frightening thing to realize that it was the will of God that the deliberate disobedience of prior generations was ordained as a lesson for us. They were permitted to rebel. In fact there is a sense in which, though they were responsible for their rebellion, God marshaled, steered, over arched, guided and destined their rebellion, all for the greater good of His true people. In Romans, Paul brings this hard truth into focus concerning Jacob and Esau. {Ro 9:10-16}

For some believers these sorts of things as hard to receive, even though the Bible is clear on the matter. Yet in the end there are limited interpretive choices. If God is sovereign and omniscient He must necessarily have ordained all things from the beginning. If there are some things that He left outside of His control - things to which His will had to adapt over time - then He has abdicated (or never had) these attributes. A God who is not sovereign over all things, including the will of His creatures, is no longer God.

Where some people get stuck is in being unable to accept that God’s absolute sovereignty does not destroy or interfere with human responsibility. For them it must be "either/or," whereas it is actually "both". The Bible is also clear on this. God ordains - men are responsible. Who are we to say to God, "Why have you made us thus," even though we cannot resist His will? And, in any event, do we not make choices according to our own desires arising from our natures? Is not every human being twice condemned - once for his nature received from Adam and once for the willing sins he commits and loves that arise from that nature?

Does any person ever born, apart from the Eternal Son taking on human flesh, love God with all his heart and soul and mind and strength? For starters all are born spiritually dead with no knowledge of the God they are commanded to love. They grow up not loving Him as they ought, because they don’t know him. And when they are grown they continue - even the very best of them - to fall woefully short of the divine standard. All this when even the slightest momentary failure deserves eternal death.

This is precisely the condition of those Israelites who failed to persevere. They loved their sin, as all men love their sin - unless God Himself reaches down into their hearts and regenerates them in Christ. The outward observances do not necessarily evidence an inward reality. Form does not guarantee substance. There must be a new heart "put within them". It is not that they must get a new heart for themselves - nor that, with the old and rebellious heart they must somehow summon the will to accept a new heart when offered. Why would they do that when the old one is so pleasing and satisfying to them?

The Holy Spirit must first do a work to change the heart so that it is willing to embrace the things of Christ. Repentance and faith are included in the gift of God in Jesus Christ. They were bought, secured and fashioned by Him Who is both the author and Perfecter of our faith. God grants repentance. God gives faith. And He does these things to those whom He regenerates. Where there is no fruit of regeneration there is no spirit of Christ and whoever does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. {Ro 8:9}

But listen - it was through the preaching of Christ that anyone at all came to faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the preaching of Christ. {Ro 10:17} All those who came out of Egypt received the same law, witnessed the same miracles, heard the same commandments. All who did not truly believe had only themselves to blame for their ultimate demise. And all who persevered did so through the exercise of their believing wills. There were no robots. There was no forced overruling of the desires of their hearts. In the immortal words of that great ditty from Ernest Reisinger:

THE HORNET SONG

When the Canaanites hardened their hearts against God,
And Grieved Him because of their sin,
God sent along hornets to bring them to terms,
and to help His own people to win.

Chorus

God does not compel us to go, oh, no!
He never compels us to go.
God does not compel us to go against our will,
But He just makes us willing to go.

If a nest of live hornets were brought to this room,
and the creatures allowed to go free,
You would not need urging to make yourself scarce,
You’d want to get out, don’t you see!
They would not lay hold
and by force of their strength,
throw you out of the window, oh, no!
But they would just make you willing to go.

Chorus

When Jonah was sent to the work of the Lord,
The outlook was not very bright.
He never had done such a hard thing before,
so he backed and ran off from the fright.
Now the Lord sent a great fish to swallow him up,
The story I am sure you all know.
God did not compel him to go against his will,
But He just made him willing to go.

Chorus

The obedient Israelites were not constrained as men would constrain. They were made willing through regeneration. Their nature - their heart - was changed so that they willed what God willed. And it was the Lord Jesus Christ who wrought it all. For Israel it was future, but assured through a faith that looked forward. For us it is past (in a sense) and is assured by what has been done already. There is a wonderful symmetry to all of this - a beauty that is part of the beauty of Christ Himself.

So let us be clear that this "taking place of events as examples for us" is not happenstance; it is not serendipitous; it is not God going with the flow and making something out of whole cloth on the fly. It is God writing in history with His finger those things that, through Christ, are part of the very means by which His church is edified. It is, in and to and from and for the Lord Jesus Christ and, through the election of God from eternity is consequently for all those who are, or will inevitably be, in Him.

And, in this context, the specific point of God ordaining/permitting the apostasy in the wilderness is? That we might not desire evil as they did; that we might not be idolaters as some of them were. How? By the dire warning that such things end in death, yes - and more than death they end in destruction, as far worse fate than mere death. "Fear not those that kill the body but not the soul, but rather fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell," the Lord Jesus Christ said. {Mt 10:28} The Biblical meaning of destruction in a soteriological context is eternal conscious torment under the unappealable, final and settled wrath of God.

Now, there may be some kind-hearted and sensitive souls that see all this destruction of the disobedient in Israel as mere discipline. The individuals themselves were saved, but as if by fire. God mercifully cut them off so that they would not lose their salvation.

On the other hand, some might think that salvation itself can be lost, once experienced, so that their salvation was conditional upon their performance.

To these two objections I say the following:

Do you remember those destroyed by serpents? Could they not have been saved if they only looked upon the brass serpent on the pole and believed God? Why, then, did so many perish when the promise was there and the evidence of their fellows being saved was all around them? Is this not a metaphor for the lost condition and its ultimate end? Unbelief is the ground of remaining under sentence of death. Without faith it is impossible to please God. But I tell you most earnestly that if you think that, of yourself, you would have been one of those looking and believing you do not know your own heart. You would have done many things, including complain and scoff at the idea that looking at a brass idol on a stick could negate the effects of deadly snake venom. This was not discipline, but the judgment of God upon sin and unbelief, which two terms are virtually synonymous.

As to the idea that these souls, having been delivered out of Egypt, were actually saved - and then lost their salvation through disobedience in the wilderness... I trow not. As I said before, many are called, but few are chosen. Hearing the gospel does not save, but believing it does. Hearing the gospel is the necessary means of communicating faith, but not all who hear believe. The deliverance prefigured by the exodus is like the sufficiency of the blood of Christ - it must be mingled with faith for it to be effective, even though it is sufficient for all. There were always many in Israel who never believed God. They went along for the ride, for the freedom, for the deliverance from earthly problems, for relief - for any number of reasons. But when the going got tough the goats began to show their genetic makeup. They were never regenerated. They had all the benefits but one – salvation, because they did not mix it all with faith.

Those that persevered to the end were those who were saved. They persevered because they were saved - not in order to be saved. They believed God with the faith they had been given. They obeyed with the will that sprang from their regenerate nature. And the means by which that obedience was aroused was in the very commands that God gave to them. Faith coming by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

Immorality, unbelief and ingratitude are the sins mentioned here and manifested in the wilderness. All the guilty and unrepentant ones were destroyed. For the Spirit of God at work in His true people overcomes immorality, produces faith and humbles to gratitude those who know Him.