How To Water Down Your Faith And Experience The Wrath Of God Series

1 Corinthians

How to Water-Down Your Faith and Experience the Wrath of God

1 Corinthians 10

April 27, 2003

Intro:

A. [Withholding Life-Saving Truth, source: USA Today (8-28-01)]

In August of 2001, a Kansas City pharmacist was charged with diluting cancer treatment drugs, Gemzar and Taxol, in order to make a larger profit.

USA Today reported that there had been 20 felony counts against the pharmacist, Robert Courtney.

He admitted to diluting the drugs during a period of time spanning from November 2000 to March 2001.

This man held life-saving power in his hands and for the sake of personal gain diluted it to the point where it could not help people.

We can do the same with God’s life-saving truth.

B. Today, I want to tell you four different ways you can water-down your Christianity and experience the wrath of God; first…

I. Be ignorant of history

1 Corinthians 10:1-12 (NIV), For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. 6 Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things 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 got up to indulge in pagan revelry." 8 We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did--and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. 9 We should not test the Lord, as some of them did--and were killed by snakes. 10 And do not grumble, as some of them did--and were killed by the destroying angel. 11 These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. 12 So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!

A. People who believed in God were destroyed.

1. It may sound hard to believe by our so-called enlightened minds of the 21st century, but it is true.

2. God destroyed people who claimed to believe in Him.

3. There are many in our day and age that have a difficult time believing that God would destroy people who don’t believe in Him.

4. There are those today that don’t understand that although God is a loving God, He is also a God of wrath.

5. And the reason that they don’t understand the wrath side of God is simple: they are ignorant of history.

6. People who are ignorant of history have a very difficult time understanding that God destroys some people—even people who claim to be believers when they are disobedient.

B. Their stories were documented in order to be examples to us.

1. God intended that we know and understand these stories.

2. God intended that we know and understand history.

3. God intended that we know and learn from history.

C. But if you want to water-down your Christianity and experience the wrath of God, then be ignorant of history.

1. Many historians say that those who don’t know history are bound to repeat the mistakes of history.

a. Sounds a little silly.

b. Most parents teach their children to learn from their mistakes, so they don’t make them again.

c. We teach our children to do such, but yet as adults we forget it.

2. America seems to be bound and determined to make some drastic mistakes.

a. America seems determined to make some huge mistakes that she has never made before, because we seem to want to ignore our own history.

b. The historians are re-writing the history books to take out the Christian beliefs of our pilgrim forefathers.

c. They seem to want to ignore the facts of why they came to America in the first place.

d. They want to ignore the facts about the pilgrims wanting religious freedoms.

e. They want to ignore the facts about the pilgrims being devout Christians.

f. Therefore our Supreme Court has come up with this separation of Church and State myth and people believe it.

g. Since no one seems to know the truth about what the pilgrims believed anymore, we can be lied to about the forefathers wanting a separation of Church and State and so we believe them.

h. Since we don’t know our own history we can very easily be lied to.