This is a copy of my talk given at Ayia Kyriaki in the Anglican Church of Paphos on Sunday 23 March 2025. The Bible reading was 1 Corinthians 10:1-13.

Prayer

Heavenly Father,
I thank You for Your word.
By the power of Your Holy Spirit,
May You speak to my heart,
And change my life.
In the precious name of Jesus I pray.
Amen.

     Introduction

In my experience, few verses of Scripture are more misquoted than 1 Corinthians 10:13. Countless faithful Christians have paraphrased it as “God never gives us more than we can handle.” Yet while that’s largely true, it’s not what Paul actually wrote. It reads “God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.”

In this season of Lent our reading from 1 Corinthians 10 reminds God’s people to both confess their failings, to resist temptation, and to place our hope in the one who resisted all temptation.

1 Corinthians 10 follows 9:27 when Paul writes, “I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” Paul is stating his rights and responsibilities as an apostle. Paul asserts that he beats his body and makes it his slave in sharp contrast to the ways some of his ancestors lived with and before God.

  1. A Short History of the Exodus

In verses 1-4 Paul gives us a short history lesson of the Exodus of his ancestors. In verse 1 he straightforwardly recounts how the Israelites were “under the cloud” (cf. Exodus 13:21-22) and “passed through the sea.” (cf. Exodus 14:22 and 29).

However, Paul recalls much of the rest of the Exodus through a Messianic lens. So, he speaks in verse 2 of how all of his ancestors were “baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” In the waters and under the cloud God used Moses to lead the Israelites who’d been “baptized” into Moses’ situation, much as God’s Spirit leads Jesus’ followers who are baptized into his death and resurrection.

In verses 3 and 4 Paul says all of his Israelite ancestors “ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.”

Paul is basically saying that while it was Moses who led Israel out of slavery, through the wilderness and to the doorstep of the land of promise, God was working through him to lead God’s people. God’s Spirit nourished them for the journey. The source of their spiritual drink, writes Paul, was the second person of Trinity, Jesus the Christ.

Some of you may suggest that this seems to play a bit “fast and loose” with the Scriptures’ account of Israel’s Exodus. But Paul states a fundamental truth about the Exodus that while Moses was Israel’s human leader, the Triune God was actively at work throughout the long journey. As certainly as God nourished God’s people with the physical gifts of food and drink, God also nourished them with God’s life-giving spiritual gifts of accompaniment and mercy.

  1. The Tragedy of the Exodus

That helps make what Paul further observes about the Exodus tragic. While God graced God’s Israelite people with everything they needed, both physically and spiritually, “God was not pleased with most of them” (5). God, in fact, left their “bodies scattered in the wilderness.”

Israel’s failure to faithfully respond to God’s countless blessings left her corpses strewn across the path to Canaan. The Message paraphrases verse 5 as Paul’s lament that “Most of them were defeated by temptation during the hard times in the desert, and God was not pleased.”

The apostle describes Israel’s multiple failures to resist temptation in verses 7 onwards. He cites four examples of the Israelites’ failures to properly respond to God’s gracious generosity.  In each case God’s people were the beneficiaries of God’s good gifts. They, for example, “sat down to eat and drink” (7). Verse 8 alludes to God’s good gift of intimacy. Verse 9 alludes to God’s provision of everything the Israelite wanderers needed.

Yet in each case they responded badly to those graces. According to verse 7 after sitting down to spiritually and physically eat and drink, some Israelites got up to “indulge in idolatrous “revelry” Verse 8 grieves how others turned God’s good gift of intimacy into “sexual immorality.” In verse 9 Paul says that some Israelites “tested Christ” when they complained God wasn’t being generous enough with them. Verse 10 reports that other Israelites “grumbled” perhaps in response to God’s discipline of some of their rebellious leaders.

God’s punishment of such disobedience was swift, and, perhaps to us, harsh. Twenty-three thousand adulterers were killed in one day (8). What’s more, Israelites who tested Christ were killed by snakes (9). On top of that, grumblers were killed by the “destroying angel” (10).

These difficult stories summon us to humble gratitude for Christ graciously absorbing at the cross any punishment we deserve for similar giving in to temptation. Paul, however, also sees Israel’s wilderness failures to resist temptation as types of “object lessons.” “These things happened to them,” he writes in verse 11, “as examples and were written down as warnings for us.”

In other words, Paul recounts these examples of the Israelite’s disobedience in order to warn Jesus’ followers against similar disobedience. Paul continues in verses 12 and 13, “If you think you are standing firm be careful that you don’t fall. No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.”

Paul implies that the Israelite’s thought they were resisting temptation. They may even have assumed, as The Message paraphrases verse 12, that they were “exempt” from caving in to temptation. Yet, Paul grieves that God’s people did not stand firm. They succumbed to the temptation to sin against God by practicing sexual immorality and grumbling against God.

In fact, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes, Paul suggests that there’s no new temptation under the sun. We, in fact, see many of the temptations to which Israel succumbed already in Genesis’ earliest accounts of the first parents. Even Jesus’ most ardent followers are vulnerable to the temptation to doubt and blame God, as well as blame each other for their sins.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters Lewis recounts a conversation about temptation between Screwtape, the senior devil, and Wormwood, the junior devil who’s also Screwtape’s nephew.  Screwtape says:

“’You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy [God]. “It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their accumulative effect is to edge the man away from the light and toward the Nothing. Murder is not better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

  1. God is Faithful

But it’s as if Paul goes on to shout in verse 13, “God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” Whilst we are naturally unfaithful, God is completely faithful. God won’t let us have to deal with any temptation we can’t resist. God, according to The Message’s lyrical paraphrase of verse 13, “will never let you be pushed past your limit.”

In fact, the apostle goes on to insist at the end of verse 13, “when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” In other words, God doesn’t just strictly limit both temptation and the Tempter. God also always graces us with a way out of our temptation. God will always, says The Message, “be there to help you come through it.”

God is the one doing the action. He is the caring and loving One. Because the burden of sin was laid upon Christ, because He went to the cross in our place, we are made sure that even if temptations come, is not up to us, but up to Him.

     Conclusion

Paul in first Corinthians shows something different. “God is faithful”. “God won’t let you be tempted”. Is not about us receiving a burden from God and trying to handle it, to carry along. It’s about Him being faithful, caring, and merciful by not allowing us to go beyond our strength. Jesus is the source of all we need to face and overcome temptation. Also, when we fall, we have his forgiveness that lifts us up again and make us walk in His love every new day!

Will we still be tempted? Of course, we will. Will we face temptation alone? Of course, we won’t! As a fellow pastor wrote, “Our God gives us the way of Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the way He gives us, His forgiveness, through His Word and Sacraments, our spiritual food and drink.” God is love. God is grace. God is faithful.

As these words from Psalm 63:8-9 remind us: For you have been my helper and under the shadow of your wings will I rejoice. My soul clings to you; your right hand shall hold me fast.

COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER The text contained in this sermon (except where stated) is solely owned by its author, Revd Paul A. Carr. The reproduction, or distribution of this message, or any portion of it, should include the author’s name.