Are We Listening to the Past?

In considering lessons to present or articles to write, I often turn to famous quotes for inspiration.  Recently, I ran across something that Winston Churchill said in a speech to the British House of Commons back in 1948 that resonated with me:  “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  All too often, that is indeed the case.  We fail to listen to and learn from the past.

The more I considered this, the more my thoughts turned to a warning the apostle Paul gave to the church in Corinth.  In the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 10, Paul draws the Corinthians’ minds back to the time of Moses and the experiences of the children of Israel (vs. 1-4).  Yet, as he points out in verse five, “But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.”  We learn why this was the case when we turn to Numbers 14 and read verses 26-35.  Complaining and a lack of obedient faith in the Lord led to the loss of many lives.

Returning to verses six through ten of 1 Corinthians 10, we have the Israelites’ sinful behavior spelled out: lust, idolatry, sexual immorality, tempting Christ, and complaining.  Housed within those accusations are warnings:  “we should not . . . as they also,” “do not become . . . as some of them,” “Nor let us . . . as some of them did.”

Where am I going with all of this?  We see within this text in 1 Corinthians why the apostle Paul brought all of this up, as examples for them (and us) to learn from.  Verse six begins by saying, “Now these things became our examples . . .”  Dropping down to verse eleven we learn why we need to learn from history, so we don’t repeat the mistakes from the past:  “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.”  In addition to this admonition, take note of Paul’s words to the saints in Rome, where he told them “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4).  May we, therefore, learn from the past lest we repeat the same mistakes and reap similar results.