Sermon - Trinity IX 2021 - 1 Corinthians 10:6-13

The Brazen Serpent, James Tissot, 1836-1902

If you were to die today, are you absolutely sure you’d go to heaven? That’s a question often asked by door-to-door evangelists of unbelievers. Unsurprisingly, it’s an ineffective question for an unbeliever, because they don’t even believe in the premise of an afterlife, so they could care less about heaven or hell. But for us Christians, it’s a rather relevant question and something many of us think about from time to time. If I died today, would I go to heaven?

Some Christians answer that question with uncertainty; they’re not sure where they’re going when they die. That’s a sad state for a Christian. Our salvation is certain because our salvation is dependent on God, not us. God paid the price for our forgiveness, He paid it with His own priceless blood, and therefore our forgiveness is certain. This salvation is apprehended through faith, and yet our faith is also dependent on God, not us. God the Holy Spirit gives us faith as a gift; we don’t create our own faith or choose God by our own powers.

Therefore, you, dearly beloved children of God, can be absolutely sure that should you die tonight, you, like the thief on the cross, will be with Jesus in paradise. You don’t have to doubt your salvation. You don’t have to doubt whether or not you’re going to heaven. Your salvation depends on God, and God is perfectly dependable, therefore you can joyfully live your life knowing that God has saved you and you’ll go to heaven.

However, there’s also another side to this issue of believing you’ll go to heaven when you die. This is perhaps the more pressing issue for many people in our day. Many believe that they’re once saved, always saved. In other words, they believe that they’re going to heaven no matter what they do, say, or believe. They believe that they can’t lose salvation. Or to nuance it, they believe it’s extremely difficult to lose salvation and that it would be very unlikely that God wouldn’t save them.

Afterall, they say, God is loving and would never send anyone to hell, or at the least, He would never send me to hell. Well they’re half-right: God is loving. But they’re wrong to believe that they can’t be unsaved. This is the main thing St. Paul teaches us today: “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Sin absolutely can and does separate us from God, both in this life and in the next.

To make this abundantly clear, the many sins of the Israelites are recorded for us as examples of what happens when those once saved fall into sin. “These things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” The Old Testament Bible stories aren’t just cute little stories for children to hear about in VBS and Sunday School, but they’re written so that we might see that God takes sin seriously. Four examples are given us today:

1. “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.”” In Exodus when Moses ascended Mt. Sinai to receive God’s law directly from Him, the people idolized their worldly living, eating, drinking, and playing, epitomized in the golden calf they made. So Moses ground up the golden calf and made them drink it, 3,000 were killed, and the Lord additionally sent a plague.

2. “We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.” While the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, they began to sleep with pagans who worshipped Baal. So the Lord sent a plague upon the Israelites, and the plague wasn’t ended until Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, killed an Israelite and a pagan in the act. Before that happened, the plague killed 23,000.

3. “We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents.” Again, while the Israelites wandered, they began to grumble against God and Moses, complaining about what God provided for them. So the Lord sent fiery serpents who bit and killed those thankless Israelites until He provided them with a bronze serpent which would heal them when they looked at it (and even that they later turned into an idol).

4. “Nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer.” When the Israelites came to the promised land, they refused to enter it because they were afraid of the inhabitants, so they rebelled against God and Moses, demanding a different leader and to go back to Egypt. So the Lord forced them to wander in the wilderness until all of that generation died in the wilderness, thus punishing them for their faithlessness. 

“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.” As we heard from those Old Testament accounts, God does absolutely take sin seriously and those who once were saved can lose their salvation. The same could happen to any one of us. Should we enter into sin and fall away from God’s Word, and stay in such a state, we would lose salvation. We can fall away from the faith. We aren’t once saved, always saved. 

So St. Paul admonishes us, “let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” We must be ever on guard against sin and faithlessness. For us Christians this is the great battle that we fight, there are a plethora of temptations surrounding us constantly. It seems the next one is always more alluring than the previous, yet no less dangerous. 

This is a frightful danger for, and dare I say especially, regular church going Christians. Since we belong to the Lord, Satan must attack and tempt us at every turn. The Devil sees that we’re built upon the rock of Christ and are safe from the storm. So He is constantly tempting us to build our faith upon the shifting sand. 

Like Jesus teaches us: “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” Those who build upon the sand aren’t those who have never heard the Word of God, they are those who have heard the Word and don’t do what He says. Jesus is talking about Christians who fall away from the faith through sin, who refuse to live according to His Word.

What is the prevention to keep us from falling away? “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” What is the rock? The rock is Jesus Christ. Instead of trusting in ourselves and believing that we could never fall away from the faith, we must humble ourselves and cling to Jesus all the more.

In Jesus there is hope for us. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” God provides the way of escape, He provides the way by which we will endure the temptations and trials, that way is Christ our Lord and His Word which He has taught us. 

We should be absolutely sure that we’re going to heaven, but our reason for such certainty is not because we are so strong. It’s just the opposite. It’s because we’re weak and when we’re weak then we must rely upon the Lord for our salvation. God is faithful when we are weak, and when we are weak then we seek God’s Word, we hear God’s Word, we rely on God’s Word, and we live by God’s Word. He provides the way of escape from temptation. It’s always through the Word. Jesus, in His Word, speaks to our doubting hearts and confirms that we are forgiven.