Church History Repeats Itself: Learn From It

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

1 Corinthians 10:11-12



We can and must learn from the history of the church that went before us, so that we follow their good examples and avoid their bad ones. Such was the purpose Paul says of his writing this example from the Exodus for our instruction.

It shouldn't really strike us as that unusual that these Israelite church members of the Exodus saw and experienced first hand the Mighty Arm of the Lord who freed them from their slavery and delivered them from the hands of chariot army. Christ was with them,the text says, every one of them in the cloud and sea and spiritual food and spiritual drink. Yet they were not content with this Powerful and Merciful God leading them to the Promised Land. So they rebelled against Him by idolatry (verse 6-7 with the infamous golden calf incident) and they indulged in sexual immorality and grumbled against God's ways and leading. Result? God was not pleased with "most" of them and they did not enter the Promised Land.

Paul writes this example to the Church in Corinth as those that needed to here about deliverance from temptations of this world in the time after Christ had come to fulfill His promises of the true deliverance from slavery to sin and His leading the church through the wilderness of this world to the Promised Land of heaven.

Notice the punchline: Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. This is the unwise placement of one's trust and faith in one's individual strength and experience rather than in Christ's. It is resisting the idols that tempt us as the Corinthians and those in the first Exodus and turning to the body and blood of the Passover Lamb, Jesus, to keep us on the straight and narrow way that leads to Heaven. We must continually "take heed" of our idolatry and give it the Lamb who forgives us all our sins. We must "take heed" that the temptations we may experience as all Christians do and must, but that God is faithful to never tempt beyond our ability and always provides the escape (verse 13).

History repeats itself! Let us learn from the Biblical examples such as 1 Corinthians 10 to take heed. O Christ, have mercy upon us and forgive our sins of idolatry and lead us not into temptation, but into Your Paradise Restored. Amen.