A bored traveler walked up and down the platform waiting for his train, when he spotted a weight and fortune machine. He inserted a penny and waited for the card to drop into the slot at the bottom. It read 169 pounds. On the other side was the warning: "You should avoid traveling this month. Keep your insurance paid up and keep close to home." "Bunk!" said the man as he tore up the card and resumed his pacing. But when he again passed the machine he put in another penny and got exactly the same weight and advice. "Rubbish!" he said and discarded the message. But something drew him back to the machine, and for the third time he inserted a penny. His weight was still 169, but this time the card read: "Lay off, man. We’re not kidding you" (Modern Handbook of Humor 21:6).

We’re not going to put any stock in weight and fortune machines or tarot cards or any other means of telling the future, but Paul has the same persistent warning for the Corinthian church and for us. Instead of going back to a machine, he takes us back to Sinai. In our Second Reading and in the verses that follow he relates the fate of the Israelites, and he concludes that he’s not kidding us. We need to be LEARNING FROM OUR HERITAGE.

First, we look at the heritage of Israel. Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians of the high privileges God’s people enjoyed in the Old Testament. They were all "under the cloud." Today I suppose that phrase has mostly negative connotations. We talk about being "under a cloud of suspicion," or we think of those cartoon clouds that seem to follow and constantly rain on a particular character. But Paul’s reference is exactly the opposite. He’s talking about the cloud of God’s presence in the Exodus – the pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:21). Every Israelite knew the story of God’s deliverance from Egypt, the passage through the Red Sea. They were all under or led by the cloud of God’s presence. They all passed through the Sea. None was lost as God worked his mighty deliverance for his people Israel.

The children of Israel enjoyed other blessings. They all ate the same spiritual food. Every Israelite – in fact, no doubt that everyone in the Corinthian church – knew that referred to the manna in the wilderness. They all drank from the spiritual rock that followed them. And again, everyone even in Corinth would have passed the "confirmation test" and would have known that referred to the time in Numbers 20 when Moses struck the rock at Kadesh and water poured forth to satisfy the thirst – and silence the grumbling – of the Israelites. By the way, if you’re wondering how the spiritual rock could "follow" the Israelites, the rabbis repeated at legend that a portion of the rock at Kadesh broke off and accompanied the Israelites for 40 years, continually supplying them with water (Toppe, First Corinthians, p. 90).

But the Israelites failed to exercise the kind of self-discipline Paul urges in the closing verses of Chapter 9. In the verse right after our lesson Paul says they desired evil. In Milton’s Paradise Lost Satan fell when he said, "Evil, be thou my good" (III:108). Examples of how the Israelites desired evil are in verses 6-13 following our lesson. The point of all this – the reason, as Paul puts it, that these things occurred and were recorded – is that "God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness." There’s something to be learned from Israel’s waywardness, from the fact that because of their rebellion God allowed only Caleb and Joshua to enter the Promised Land.

What can we learn from our heritage? As with Paul’s approach to the Corinthians, we are first reminded of God’s many blessings. The cloud of God’s presence at Sinai calls to mind our Lord’s promise, "I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). The Exodus from slavery in Egypt brings to mind the Gospel message of God’s great deliverance of us from the bondage to sin and death.

Paul draws a bold comparison between the Red Sea and our baptism. As they were "baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea," so we are baptized into Christ in the water and the Word of Holy Baptism. With Martin Luther in his Small Catechism we proclaim that the blessings or benefits of baptism are forgiveness of sins, rescue from death and the devil, and eternal salvation. We are fed with spiritual food in the Lord’s Supper. In John 6 Jesus draws that connection between the manna in the wilderness and his gift of himself in the Eucharist. "Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. I am the living bread that came down from heaven" (verses 49-51). That’s the heritage of blessing we have – the high privilege as God’s people rescued from sin and death and nourished in his Word and in his Supper. We could probably also think of the heritage of blessing we have in terms of our congregation or other congregations that have touched our lives, or maybe individuals who have been a blessing to us.

But on the other hand, there is Paul’s warning based on the example of old Israel that we also have a heritage of failing to respond to God’s blessings. The fact that God was not pleased with "most" of old Israel should warn us not to make our decisions and our moral choices by simply going along with the majority. God calls us to self-discipline. He calls us to mission and ministry in his Church, and so often we seem to end up taking a poll before we’ll decide what is right or wrong. We so often let the media or our own selfish desires determine what should be acceptable in God’s sight. We seem to do that in everything from bio-ethics to personal relationships to our tax forms. Following that path, it’s pretty easy to end up saying along with Mark Twain: "We’ve got all the fools in town on our side. And that’s a big enough majority in any town" (Handbook 275:33). How foolish for eternity it would be if finally God were to say to us, With most of you I am not pleased.

Looking at these first five verses of 1 Corinthians 10 (even adding verse 6), it might appear that this is one of those days in the church’s lectionary when we need to look beyond the lesson for the Good News. We don’t need to look very far. Today we remember Simon Peter and especially his great confession of faith in today’s Gospel (Matthew 16:13-19). Others around us may say different things about who Jesus is. Others may say a lot of different things about what is appropriate behavior. But we’ll say it boldly with Peter, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Then we’ll learn from our heritage that holds onto that rock-solid confession. We’ll learn from our heritage that has held onto and has found confidence in Jesus’ promise that not even the gates of Hades will prevail against his Church. We’ll learn from our heritage that confesses Jesus is the Messiah and that takes hold of those "keys of the kingdom" that release us all from sin’s grip.

Amen.