6-10 The same thing could happen to us. We must be on guard so that we never get caught up in wanting our own way as they did. And we must not turn our religion into a circus as they did—“First the people partied, then they threw a dance.” We must not be sexually promiscuous—they paid for that, remember, with 23,000 deaths in one day! We must never try to get Christ to serve us instead of us serving him; they tried it, and God launched an epidemic of poisonous snakes. We must be careful not to stir up discontent; discontent destroyed them.

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Now these things occurred as examples(A) to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters,(B) as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.”[a](C) We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died.(D)

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Footnotes

  1. 1 Corinthians 10:7 Exodus 32:6