Nathan E. Lewis

(sermon preached by Nathan E. Lewis at Chehalem Valley Presbyterian Church in Newberg and Evergreen Presbyterian Church in Beaverton, January 6, 2008.) Listen to the sermon.

Paul commands us twice to rid our lives of idolatry. Elsewhere in our studies of the Bible we have learned that idolatry is the worship of anything but God. We can devote ourselves to a good gift of God, worshipping it instead of God. Money is good, but when it is elevated above God as the greatest pursuit of my life, then it becomes Mammon, perhaps the greatest of all idols in our world. In our modern world, potential idols are innumerable and thus we are often tempted to privately worship human achievements along with all of its amazing results. In our postmodern world we have returned to the ancient world dominated by paganism, the outright establishment of idolatrous worship.
Paul tells us to use Israel’s idolatry as examples to instruct us. Paul briefly reminds us of Israel’s feasting and dancing in worship of the golden calf while Moses met God on the mountain to receive the law written in stone. The second example is recorded in Numbers 25 where Moses describes the details of Israel’s orgy with the Moabite women. Moses records 24,000 struck down by plague as punishment for this idolatry. Paul records 23,000. This has become in the modern world a prize proof of the Bible contradicting itself and thus a fallible text rather than the inerrant Word of God. In the ancient world of Moses and in the first century world of Paul, the difference in number would not be considered to be a discrepancy let alone a mistake. In our world, scientific accuracy includes precise measurement and calculation and rightly so. Both numbers stand sufficiently as testimony to God’s displeasure with idolatry and his wholesale punishment of it. I suppose we must have the discussion about whether or not God’s inspiration of his divine words includes the preservation of mistakes made by the human authors. But we should not allow such a discussion to distract us from the main lesson of the text, which commands us to flee idolatry. Can you imagine a member of the Church at Corinth, who knew the details of the Books of Moses from ardent study, correcting Paul as the letter was publicly read? “Paul doesn’t know what he’s talking about! The number is 24,000 not 23,000!” What would Paul say in response, “Thank you for correcting me, but you are making my main point all the more clearer: God does not tolerate idolatry, and so I am warning you to flee from it.”
The third example is recorded in Numbers 21 where Moses describes the details of Israel’s grumbling about the food God provided for them – the manna. They loathed it. God sent poisonous vipers to kill the grumbling people. But God also instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent affixing it to a pole. Any of the inflicted people would be healed as they looked in faith toward the bronze serpent. Paul once again shows that he believed Christ to be present with Israel in the wilderness. Christ is the manna, the bread of heaven! Christ was present as the rock from which the water flowed to save Israel from death. Christ was present as the bronze serpent. Anyone who looks by faith toward Christ is saved from death. Paul seems to assign the role of Lord to Christ in the wilderness as well as Savior. Christ was present not only as the bronze serpent, the Savior of Israel, but as the Judge of Israel’s hearts, the Lord who sent the vipers to strike the grumblers. This Lord Jesus, who is Judge is also Jesus our Redeemer, who has saved us from death. Jesus referred to his death upon the cross saying, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man shall be lifted up.” The Lord who does not tolerate idolatry or grumbling has saved us from ourselves and his punishment of our sin.
The fourth example is recorded in Numbers 16. (Why does Paul list these examples in a backwards order?) Paul borrows the language from this narrative of Korah’s rebellion. The Destroyer is the angel of the Lord sent by God to open the earth to swallow the rebels. These examples are designed to instruct those of us who live in these last days as members of the Church, followers of Christ. We are warned to flee from idolatry.
In (12-13) Paul offers his help to us as we rid our lives of idolatry. Firstly he tells us not to think that we are safe from falling into idolatry. “Let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” Sometimes our weakness is that we assume that we are strong in ourselves and in our spiritual location. We may think that our level of spiritual maturity protects us from ever stooping to crass idolatry. We may think that our many years in the faith have moved us beyond the baseness of idolatry. Twenty years ago I would have fallen, but not today. Paul warns all of us regardless of the amount of gracious work God has completed in our lives. All of us are in danger of reverting to idolatry. Secondly, he tells us that our personal temptations are not unique but common experience. Often, a person who becomes entangled in a habitual sin, which is nothing more than idolatry, thinks that his experience and case are unique. No one can help him. No one has ever seen this particular case before in the history of Christendom. A certain pride arises from this person’s idolatry. “I am the only one who has ever worshipped at this particular altar.” A little history lesson will uncover a long list of names for your particular god, every culture and each epoch assigning a new name to the same old idol. See how smooth is the stone of your altar? Millions of hands have polished it over centuries of idolatrous devotion. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.”
Thirdly, Paul tells us that God is devoted to us, working on our behalf so that we might be devoted to him alone. Paul writes, “God is faithful.” While we forsake God devoting ourselves to idols, God never leaves us nor forsakes us. He stands while we fall. He is ready to save, to restore, to strengthen, and to guide. How does he show his faithfulness to us? “He does not allow us to be tempted beyond your ability.” Any temptation I have ever faced, though powerfully alluring, is not as strong as the spiritual empowerment of my soul, mind, heart, will, and body. God has strengthened me and equipped me to say “No,” to whatever temptation comes my way. And so, when I fall to temptation, it is my own fault. God is faithful in strengthening us to withstand temptation. God is also faithful by providing for us a way of escape in every temptation. God gave Joseph two feet and Joseph used his two feet to sprint out of the grasp of Potiphar’s wife. God has given to many of us a Mother, who has told us that she will knock us into the middle of next week if we even think about breaking curfew. With Woody Allen we see and hear our mothers hovering in the clouds above us in our times of temptation and we do the right. God has given to us the church for accountability not only through her officers and courts, but also through member-to-member relationships. The greatest gifts God has given to us for our escape of idolatry are faith and repentance. We believe in the one, true God and return regularly in our minds and corporate worship to the creedal recitations of what we believe. We turn away from our idolatry with grief and hatred, running to the one true God to confess our sins and desires to do the right. Paul’s entire thought is this: “He will also provide a way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” God is faithful to provide a way of escape, but that way may not be a clean break, a sprint from the temptation to a safe place where you no longer have to face the temptation let alone think about it. God’s ways of escape are often in the midst of temptation’s fire where he gives us strength to endure the flames. We should not think, “God is faithful and so he will consistently and swiftly remove me from harm’s way providing for me a pleasant and happy Christian life.” God’s faithfulness often serves us during difficult times, through fiery trials. The Trinity Hymnal includes the following hymn under the category of “The Faithfulness of God”:
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord!
Fear not I am with thee, O be not dismayed; I, I am thy God and will still give
Thee aid; I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, upheld by
thy righteous, omnipotent hand.
When through the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of woe shall not
thee overflow; For I will be with thee thy troubles to bless, and sanctify to
thee thy deepest distress.
The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I will not desert to
his foes; That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no
never forsake.
In my life I have walked through deep waters, but as a pastor of this church I know that some of you have walked through deeper waters. Jesus walks with us to comfort us. “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.” Jesus is present with us to comfort us and to provide a way of escape for us, strengthening us to endure trials and to withstand temptation. Indeed, Christ has navigated deeper waters still. He has suffered the unimaginable, the very wrath of God so that we might escape it.
Paul moves from Old Testament examples of idolatry to a present idolatry among the members of the Church at Corinth. We may think that idolatry creeps into our private lives, on the fringe of the Church where we are less guarded. But Paul’s example of idolatry takes place at the very center of corporate worship in the church. If we partake of the Lord’s Table, then we cannot partake of the sacraments and rites of other religions. Paul quickly dismisses two issues he has already discussed: 1) Evil does not lurk in food or other material objects; it is not wrong to eat food, even food sacrificed to idols; 2) Idols have no real power and so we are not dualists believing that the god of Evil is as powerful and authoritative as the God of Good. With Isaiah, Paul agreed that an idol is nothing more than a manmade sculpture propped up with a shim so that it will not totter. When I was a child, my parents collected and read to me all of the Arch Bible Story Books. The story is told in metered rhyming lines. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego say to King Nebucadnezzer, “O King your god is not a god at all. It’s just a hunk of ugly junk outside your city wall.”
Having addressed these issues, Paul nonetheless warns against communicant members of the Church partaking in the religious rites of non-Christian worship. In the early 1990’s the mainline Presbyterian Church at its General Assembly added to its corporate celebration of the Lord’s Table, prayers to the goddess Sophia. Congregations of this denomination have welcomed Hindu priests and priestesses to officiate Hindu rites during worship meetings to celebrate the fundamental unity of all religions. This is not the modern idolatry of loving our sports cars more than God or trusting in the machine more than we trust in God. This is the postmodern return to pagan worship, to corporate observance of rites offered to the glory of demons, idols, and gods who are nothing more than human invention.
“Shall we provoke God to jealousy?” No. The gospel frees us to worship the one, true God alone. He is a jealous God. The exclusivity of our faith and practice is his design and command. “Are we stronger than he?” No. He is the Creator. We are the creatures. He is infinitely omnipotent. We are finite and weak. Our strength comes from God alone. Our escape from idolatry begins as we fall helpless before the one, true God and beg for his strengthening of us.