The Town That Fell Into the Sea

Thank you again, Mr. Miller. Once again, good afternoon, everyone. I wish you the happiest of Sabbaths. It is an absolute pleasure to be here and to have the opportunity to be able to gather here locally in the Salem area. It's nice to see a few new faces this week as we have rotated in and out. We're very appreciative of all of you being here. Welcome all of you gathering with us on the webcast, too. We're glad to have you all here with us. Looking forward to getting the congregations and the other areas up and running here in the near future.

Once again, we thank you for your ongoing patience. As I mentioned in the announcement, Shannon and I had an opportunity to enjoy the Oregon Coast for a couple of days this past week as we belatedly celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. This is the first anniversary that I've been in town in about five years.

I've been in Africa for all the other ones. It was especially nice to be able to have the opportunity to go and just spend a couple of days together and have a chance to just... her and I. It was very wonderful in that regard. You know, I don't know what it is about the Oregon Coast, but I absolutely love it. And I know a number of you do as well.

Prior to moving to Oregon in 1999, I'd never been to the ocean before. Actually, I'd never been to the ocean before. I was 19. I'd never seen the ocean. We had spent some time around Puget Sound when I was a kid, so I'd seen the sound, which is technically the ocean, but not really.

It doesn't have quite the same coastline. I'd never seen the Pacific coastline before. And there's something about it. Those of you that have been there and those of you that love it, you know that it has an unparalleled beauty. It has a certain raw, untameable power that's present. And it has a way of being able to capture one's heart. Now, I have certain sections of the coast that I really appreciate. And interestingly, as I talk to other people, other people are much the same way. Everybody has... think about this. You probably have your own favorite part of the Oregon coast. I mean, think about where...

if you have an opportunity to go to the Oregon coast and it's like, where are we going? The car is on autopilot and you're probably heading to that part of the Oregon coast. Now, you may not have enumerated it before. You may not have realized that you had a favorite part of the Oregon coast, but you do. I tend to prefer I'm finding the areas that are a little further off of Highway 101. Shannon and I have concluded, I think, as we talked this week, I think we've concluded that while I love the Oregon coast, what I really want is my very own private Oregon, meaning I want the beach with no one else on it, which is impossible.

Although we found it, we did find one that was very, very isolated. I love Astoria. Astoria is one of my favorite places. I love the city, kind of like little San Francisco. It's just a beautiful area, even though there's a lot of people in Astoria, especially this time of year. Bowie 10 was running and the fishing fleet was out. Boats just as far as the eye can see. But the area that I really love, I can do without Seaside, I can do without Cannon Beach, and I know for some of you that's like anathema, but the area I love is the area surrounding Tillamook Bay.

I love Garibaldi. I love that whole stretch, you know, of Rockaway and Etarts, Oceanside. My favorite beach in the entirety of the Oregon coast is Oceanside. Absolutely love that beach. And I think why I love it so much is that many of the folks just kind of blow right past it and go to Seaside.

I think that's part of why I enjoy it as much as I do. But Shannon and I grabbed dinner at a restaurant outside of Garibaldi on Tuesday evening, and on the wall of that restaurant was a photo of Bay Ocean. And I don't know why, but it jogs something in my brain, and I told Shannon, we're going to go find that tomorrow.

We're going to go figure out where that one was at. We're going to go track it down. So she'd never been, neither had I, so we decided that we would go check out Bay Ocean, Oregon. For those that are unfamiliar with the story, Bay Ocean, Oregon was a town that was built in the early 1900s along the Tillamook Spit.

And that spit is a narrow sandbar that extends out from the southern side of Tillamook Bay, kind of parallel with the coastline, and extends all the way up to just about Barview. In fact, it kind of, as Tillamook Bay kind of comes in, that peninsula comes all the way up and forms the mouth of Tillamook Bay. In 1906, a guy by the name of T.B. Potter, who was a wealthy real estate developer, purchased the land, and he purchased it with this vision that it was going to become a playground for the wealthy of Oregon.

That this area, Bay Ocean, was going to become the west coast version of Atlantic City. And so he had these grandiose dreams, he had these incredible, you know, ideas of what he was going to do with this place. And so he platmapped it, he bought the spit, platmapped it, and began to develop what would become Bay Ocean. He sold 1,600 individual lots to folks from around the country, built a huge fancy hotel, never got the full-size hotel built, but it never got any further than that.

But it was a pretty good size, upscale, fancy hotel. He had a hundred or a thousand-seat movie theater, tall, and a structure called a naturatorium. Now, naturarium basically is just an indoor swimming pool. In this case, it was salt water, complete with a rudimentary wave machine, and for the time, early 1900s, this was huge. This was advanced technology for the early 1900s. Now, despite Potter's big dreams for Bay Ocean, the actual delivery was significantly less than what he had promised. They did have a phone system in Bay Ocean, which is pretty incredible for the timeframe, but that phone system did not connect to the mainland.

So they could call each other, but they couldn't call out. There were water pipelines that provided water to the houses in Bay Ocean, but no boosters, water lines. So if you were the house at the end of the line, you got the trickle that came as a result of the lack of pressure. There were no roads that connected Bay Ocean to the mainland, even though there were cobblestone roads in and around Bay Ocean. And for a number of years, there was no rail line into Tillamook from Portland to be able to bring all these wealthy individuals here to Bay Ocean in order for them to purchase property and to vacation.

So at that point in time, as you might imagine, early 1900s, the journey from the valley to the coast was substantial. It's not as quick and easy as it is today. You know, it's a two-hour drive with traffic. You can get there an hour and fifteen if it's not so much traffic, right? But in those days, it took quite a bit of time. And at that time, there was not a rail line from Portland to Tillamook.

And so Potter decided to remedy this problem by having a steamship built. He called it the SS Bay Ocean. And he used it to ferry people from Portland down the Columbia, across the Columbia River Bar down the Oregon Coast, across the Tillamook Bar to the sheltered side of Bay Ocean. And that steamship could do that trip in 12 hours' time. So he could do that in 12 hours on a good day, on a bad weather day, which many of you have been to the Oregon Coast in the wintertime. Most of the winter is a bad weather day on the Oregon Coast.

That trip could take days by steamship if the weather was bad. The Columbia River Bar crossing is arguably one of the most dangerous in the world. It still kills eight to ten people a year, even today. I've been across it a couple times, and it is nightmarish in certain bits of weather. It's absolutely frightening at times. Tillamook Bay crossing at that point in time was just about as bad. In fact, you could almost argue it was a rougher crossing at that point in time for those going by boat, because there were constantly moving shoals of sand that were preventing the channel from being able to be seen.

Now, for the folks that were coming from Portland, most of them were pretty fancy folks. The final crossing into Tillamook Bay was enough to make them think twice about purchasing lots and vacationing at Bay Ocean. So, Potter got a hold of the Army Corps of Engineers and said, hey, we need to do something here. Nobody wants to come and buy this place because it's so rough and it's so nasty. What can we do? And they said, well, for $2.2 million, you can construct a dual jetty system here at the mouth of Tillamook Bay, and ultimately, you can calm the water down and everything should be fine. Potter said, 2.2 million. We don't have that kind of money. And so, they said, what can we get for half that? He said, one jetty.

All right. And so, ultimately, what was done was there was one jetty that was constructed on the north side for those that have been to Camp Magruder. If you stand on the beach at Camp Magruder and you look to the south, you're looking at the North Jetty. That is the North Jetty of Tillamook Bay. Pardon me. I'm eating my mask. One second. There we go. I think that's a little bit better. So, there's a little lighthouse there. There's a nice jetty. It's got a whole bunch of rock along it. It's all very well done. But that jetty was what went in first. And, ultimately, the construction of that jetty enabled the local industries in Tillamook to be able to more effectively ship their goods to the world and made for an easier ride for those coming in from Portland.

Now, in the years following the construction of the North Jetty, the folks in Bay Ocean started noticing some substantial changes that started happening to the spit. They noticed that the surface water, while it was calmer, there was a stronger undercurrent that went along the coastline. Significantly stronger. Kind of a back eddy that had been created. What they didn't realize at the time—pardon me, my mask is like climbing in my mouth today. It didn't do this last time. That's a little bit better. What they didn't realize at the time was that by not installing that second jetty, they had created a backcurrent that was slowly and surely eroding out the bottom of the Bay Ocean Peninsula. By 1920, two of the vacation homes had fallen into the Pacific Ocean. The dune that they were resting on was undercut and washed, and the two homes fell in, and the sea claimed them. The hotel began to collapse room by room, starting to fall into the sea. The natatorium in 1932 got hit by a massive storm that surged across the beach and ultimately collapsed the natatorium entirely. Great Depression put the final nail in the coffin of Bay Ocean, and those that remained kind of were holdouts, hoping and praying for things to stabilize so that they didn't lose their homes. By 1938, 59 of the homes had been eroded away and the spit had been breached. Many of the locals began moving their homes to Tillamook and to higher ground to be able to ultimately protect them. Finally, in 1952, during a huge winter storm, three-quarters of a mile of the peninsula was wiped out and breached, and ultimately took all that sand and threw it in over the top of the oyster fishery in Tillamook Bay, destroying a multi-million dollar fishery. All of this because of the erosion that was occurring underneath where people couldn't necessarily see what was happening. They tried to put band-aids on the problem. They tried to fix it, but ultimately it was too late. They finally decided we're going to put the, you know, the second jetty in. Finally went through in the 1970s and installed that second jetty, which stabilized the erosion, and the peninsula began to rebuild again. But at that point in time, it was too late. The final structure on the island, or on the on the peninsula, was a garage of one of the houses fell into the ocean in 1971.

Today there is absolutely no trace of Bay Ocean's existence on the Tillamook Spit. Now you can go there. You go in between Neat Tarts, essentially, kind of Cape Mears, Cape Lookout area, and and, come on, brain, what's the name of that town?

Nope, it's not coming to me, but it's right there on the way to Cape Lookout. There's a little spot and you take a little dike road out, and that's Bay Ocean. And you can go out and you can go hike around and take a look at the beach. And it's an interesting, it's an interesting little walk, but the town of Bay Ocean, the dreams of its residents, the, the, all those things eroded slowly away, fell into the ocean. Bay Ocean is now known as the town that fell into the sea.

And that's the title of the message today, the town that fell into the sea.

Now I wanted to give you that backdrop, and I wanted to give you that history, because often many Oregonians have never heard of it, and realize that that city existed. For a time 1950, everybody knew about Bay Ocean. It was the biggest news on the, in Oregon at the time, the city that had just disappeared. But as time goes, as history goes on, you don't remember it. People don't talk about it. You might notice a little blip of it here and there, but you don't always get an opportunity to take a look at the specific issue itself.

But the title again for today is The Town That Fell Into the Sea. And you probably saw this coming from a mile away, but let's turn over to Matthew 7 to begin today. Matthew 7, as I continue to fight with my mask, my apologies, at some point I'm just going to put it in my mouth and speak through it. The things that we have to do that we didn't used to have to do.

Matthew 7, and we're going to pick it up in verse 24. We'll read to verse 27, but Matthew 7, verse 24 is where we're going to pick it up at. Now, prior to this point in Matthew 7, you know, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, we have what is known as the Sermon on the Mount. And this is a section where Christ is talking to those who are gathered, and he's going through, and he's discussing his various teachings, some have kind of spoken of the Sermon on the Mount as being a collection, so to speak, of Christ's teachings. That these are kind of the collection in addition to, and kind of explaining the law itself. Matthew 7, verse 24, says, therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. Verse 26, but everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell, and great was its fall. So this particular parable contrasts two different individuals, speaking of one who hears and does versus one who hears and does not do, and it contrasts the life, so to speak, that this individual builds as having been built on the rock for those that hear and do and those that hear and do not do, having been built on the sand.

Christ kind of says, hearing and not doing is really kind of tantamount to building your house on shifting ground, to building your house on ground that shifts underneath you. It's not solid, it's not rock. He makes the point hearing the words are important. Hearing the words are important, but the follow-through of the action based on the sayings that were contained prior to this set of passages through that Sermon on the Mount is absolutely critical.

For example, it's not enough to know that we have to love others. He says you actually have to do it.

You can't just know it, you actually have to do it. So this is not enough to know that you're a light to the world, you have to actually be a light to the world. Certainly there's lots of passages that talk about what that looks like for us as Christians. When we talk about this particular passage and when we look at this particular passage, we recognize we're talking very specifically here of building one's life based upon the teachings of Jesus Christ. That for us to be a man whose house stands and is not washed away requires us to ensure that our life is built on the right thing.

Ultimately built on God, built on His teachings because anything else is sand. It's not solid. It doesn't support. You can't build on it and expect the structure to last. Now there's times I think we take a look at this passage, we consider the wording of it, we talk about the rain's coming, the flood's coming, the wind beating on that house, and read about how it's full and kind of we think about that. I don't know, it's easy to think about that, I think, and consider that to be these huge storms of life. You know, these massive storms of life. These big things that swoop in and they kind of take us by surprise. It's a total wipeout.

Sometimes it's a diagnosis. Sometimes it's loss of a loved one. You know, these incredibly challenging moments that we face in our life and realistically we might face a small handful of those during our lifetime. Hopefully only a small handful of those during our lifetime.

And I hope that when we do, when we face those things, that we're able to successfully take strength in God as our foundation. But brethren, it wasn't one storm that destroyed Bayocean.

It wasn't even two or three storms that destroyed Bayocean. It was the regular, everyday wave action of the Oregon coast. Of course, altered by the construction of the North Jetty that weakened that spit little by little by little until eventually when the storm did come, it destroyed the spit. It completely destroyed the peninsula, letting in three-quarters of a mile of sand into Tillamook Bay. It is this everyday wearing away little by little that spelled the end for Bayocean. And so if we think about it, if building on the teachings of God is founding one's house on the rock, then our operating in contradiction to God and His teachings erodes that foundation little by little by little, turning it into sand.

You know, erosion is a fascinating process. It's generally defined. If you look up erosion in the dictionary, it's going to tell you that it's a gradual destruction or diminution of something.

It's slow. It's often imperceptible at the rate at which it operates. You know, through the natural forces that occur with wind and waves, small incremental changes can result in massive changes over time. Huge changes over time.

You know, small incremental changes we can have, they can be punctuated by large events. For example, you know, a canyon, you know, can have a huge flood that washes out enough sediment to make up for five years of normal sediment wash, right? So you can have these big events that occur, but it's through these natural geologic processes that the Grand Canyon was formed.

The arches and the hoodoos of southwestern Utah, for those that have had a chance to go down and see the arches and the hoodoos. Coastal rivers, watersheds, streams, shorelines, all those things were formed. And ultimately, it's through these forces that we see the Oregon coastline that we experienced today. But what we have today on the Oregon coast is not the way that it was 50 years ago. And it's not necessarily what it's going to be in 10 years or even 20 years, because the earth is always building and receding based on these geological forces. And Tillamix spits, no exception. Yeah, it's there now. We went out and we hiked on it. We went and hiked the trails, went down to the beach, and kind of stood generally where Bay Ocean was. It's not there now, but it was. It's there at the moment. The sand is built back up. But interestingly enough, the tip of the southern jetty that they installed that stabilized that is disappearing.

The ocean's taking the jetty out. And so to continue to keep that safe the way that they need to, they have to build that jetty back up and maintain that jetty. If it's not kept up, all that rock that was put in there will eventually wash away, just like Bay Ocean did, and the spit will be destroyed again. Even the strongest of foundations needs maintenance.

So, brother, I'm going to ask you a question today. Is it possible that through the daily grind of life that we can be worn down bit by bit? Is it possible that through the worries and the temptations and the discouragement that we experience, or the desires that we have for more in life that life throws our way, various sins that we experience, can we end up in a situation where we allow our foundation to erode? Where we allow our foundation to erode? And that's not to say that somehow God or His power can be eroded. That's not possible.

That rock is a rock. But is it possible that we can allow God to become eroded as our foundation?

Meaning that as we're operating contrary to His teachings, that little by little, that thing that we have founded ourselves upon, that strength that we founded that life on, we chip away at it, at our connection to it. That through a lack of upkeep and maintenance, that foundation can be eroded right out from underneath. And while things may look great on the surface, the part of our life that can't be seen as being eroded away until eventually it collapses. Let's go a little further back towards the back of the book here, Matthew 24.

Matthew 24.

Turn here to the Olivet Prophecy. Matthew 24. We'll take a look here at the response to a question that was asked to Christ by Peter, James, and John as they asked Christ what the conditions and the signs of His coming would be, what the earth would be like, what the world would be like at the end of the age.

Matthew 24, and we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 4.

Matthew 24, in verse 4, it says, Jesus answered and said to them, Take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, says, See that you're not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. Verse 7, For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. And then he says, all of these things, or all these, are the beginnings, or beginning, of sorrows. We recognize these things have been going on for some time. You know, there have been false Christs. There have been, you know, Antichrists that have come and gone. There have been nations that have risen against nation. There have been kingdoms that have risen against kingdoms. There's been famines. There's been diseases. We're in the midst of a disease outbreak right now, right? Experiencing this pandemic that we've all been subjected to. There's been earthquakes, large-scale earthquakes, across the world for millennia, and Christ makes the point to His disciples, these are the beginnings of sorrows. These are the beginnings of sorrows. And the word translated sorrows in the Greek is odein. O-d-i-n, and it means birth pangs. Some translations write it as such, but it means birth pangs. Christ is telling His disciples that you're going to see these things, and that's only the beginning of the labor. That's only the beginning of the labor.

That these things would grow. They would intensify as time went on, as these pangs progressed, but that these things were the beginning of the process. He goes on in verse 9, then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will be offended, and will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many, and because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. Verse 14, the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to the nations, and then the end will come. So He tells Peter, James, and John that there would come a time that the believers were to be delivered up to tribulation and killed, that they would be hated by all the nations for His name's sake. And it's important for us to consider as we look at this passage that throughout this passage, He's talking about the believers. This is not solely an indictment on the world, so to speak, even though the world is involved here, but this is the church.

This is upon the church. Then many believers, we can put in parentheses, many believers, will be offended. We'll betray one another, and we'll hate one another. We just got done with a series on what that looks like, baseless hatred, sennach ha-nam. It says, too many false prophets will rise up and deceive many, pulling them away from the truth. Lawlessness will abound, and because of the lawlessness that will abound, the love of many, and again we'll put in parentheses, believers, will wax cold. And then Christ says, he who endures to the end shall be saved.

And so we see Christ makes the point here, lawlessness, and I think we can interpret that as actual lawlessness, the breaking of both, you know, spiritual and physical laws, but I think we can extend that to a general attitude toward law and authority that is exhibited. Might even call that a little bit more of like a rebelliousness, so to speak, and that as a result of those things, the love of many will wax cold. Now, brethren, as we look at the world around us today, this spirit of lawlessness is on full display.

Take a look at how many different crimes have been committed on news, video, over the past six months, and then have individuals say, oh, that's not a crime.

That's a peaceful protest. It's not a riot. We're not trying to burn down a federal building. It's a peaceful protest.

Lawlessness abounds. It absolutely abounds.

But it is so important for us to recognize, as we look at this passage, as we consider this passage, that again, Christ's warning was to the believers that this spirit of lawlessness would find its way into the church, and that as a result of that, the love of many, the agape of the brethren, would wax cold. You know, Christ then says that he who endures to the end shall be saved. That word endure in Greek is hupomeno, sorry, hupomeno, and it's translated as remaining or staying behind, particularly when others have departed.

It also means to continue firmly, to hold out, to remain constant, and to persevere.

In fact, the English translation and the definition of endurance is enduring the fact or power of enduring an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way, without giving way. We might say to stand firm upon the foundation.

We might say to stand firm upon the foundation. When we think about spiritual erosion, lawlessness erodes that foundation. It erodes our foundation and threatens to topple that which we've built. Often what we see is not immediate. We see a subtle eroding away over a number of years.

Maybe we don't notice it at first, or if we do, we try to justify its existence.

We say, oh, I'm tired. It's just really hard. I'm tired. At some point, services just becomes another part of our routine. We keep going to church. We attend the feast. We keep doing the things that we've learned to do. So, in addition to, like, kind of lawlessness and moving away from some of the teachings of God that we see, where's the erosion at? Erosion comes from our heart, not really being in it anymore. That enthusiasm, that zeal, that fire for God and for His ways, it's just not there. Our Bible study, our prayer, suffers. And if it does happen, it feels clinical.

Maybe we've begun to compromise. We've begun to allow more and more of the world to creep in, resulting in sin. Maybe we've developed an unhealthy relationship with material things.

We just decide, I'm going at it on my own. I'm not going to ask God, not going to pray to God to ask His will and our major decisions. Perhaps we fall into habitual sin, or we become too entangled or busy with the affairs of this world to have time for God. Or we start to place our trust in our faith in human institutions other than God Himself. Erosion is a slow and methodical removal of sediment until eventually it can no longer support the structure atop it.

It's a death of a thousand cuts. It's a little here, it's a little there, but the end result is the same.

The people of Bay Ocean learned this lesson the hard way, as the spit that they built the town on disappeared over a period of about 15 to 20 years. By 1930, the vast majority of folks who'd resided there left for higher and more stable ground. Those abandoned structures that remained were looted, they were vandalized, they were otherwise destroyed. There were a few holdouts, but the town of Bay Ocean had become a ghost town by about the late 1930s, 1940s. Again, a few holdouts, but it was a ghost town by and large up to the point that the ocean reclaimed it.

That regular wave action, that current, that wind that comes on the Oregon coast just constantly on the Oregon coast, eventually caused the town to topple into the sea. It had been undermined.

So how do you combat that erosion in your spiritual life? How do you combat that? How do you fight against it? How do we make sure that we're upholding that foundation of God in our lives?

That we're maintaining it and that we're keeping it appropriately?

Well, as with most things, the first step is recognizing that there's an issue, you know, recognizing that there may be a problem. It's a self-examination.

It's ensuring that we are analyzing our lives objectively. It's ensuring that we're taking a look to make sure that we haven't allowed that foundation to crumble. We haven't allowed that spirit of lawlessness to invade our lives and to cause us to become calloused toward God's authority in our lives. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 10. 1 Corinthians 10. We'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 1. 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 1.

Apostle Paul here addresses the congregation in Corinth.

Kind of relates to them a little bit of portions of their history.

You know, relates to them a little bit of what their history was and what it was like.

And he uses that history to give them a warning. He uses that history to give them a warning.

1 Corinthians 10. Again, we'll pick it up in verse 1. He says, Moreover, brethren, I don't want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud.

All passed through the sea. All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. All ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them. And that rock, Paul says, was Christ. But with most of them, God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

You know, Paul largely admonishes those in Corinth that he's writing to, to kind of go back and recognize their history. To look back over things and to recognize the various things that happened to their ancestors. That they were all delivered by God from their slavery in Egypt. They were redeemed. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They ate the same spiritual food. They drank from the same spiritual drink. But he makes the point that nevertheless, despite all of that, God was not pleased with most of them and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. He goes on in verse 6, verse 6 of 1 Corinthians 10, says, Now these things became our examples. These things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. Do not become idolaters as some of them were. As it's written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did. In one day, 23,000 fell. Imagine that for a minute. 23,000 people just gone.

Says, Nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents. Nor complain, as some of them also complained and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them. Why as examples? And they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Now, they made the decisions. They made the choices. And what did those things do for us? They provided us with an example. Their example was provided for those in Corinth and ultimately preserved down through history for us. Their idolatry, their sexual immorality, their grumbling, their complaining, their pushing against God, their kind of testing and pushing back against God. These things were recorded as warnings both to the congregations in Asia Minor, specifically that of Corinth, but also down through time to us. As well as all of those whom ends of the age says have come, verse 11, upon whom the ends of the age have come.

The Israelites allowed their foundation in God to crumble. They allowed it to be eroded by disobedience, by grumbling, by loss of heart, by testing of God a number of times in the wilderness.

And as time went on, it reached a point where they rebelled even against the authority that God had ordained, Moses and Aaron. You remember the story? There's a point where they threatened to stone the both of them and install another leader to lead them back to Egypt. Paul states in verse 12, and this is where the self-examination piece comes in. Paul states in verse 12, therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he falls. And brethren, that is an admonition for every single one of us. He who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

And implied in this statement is the idea that the Israelites at the time thought they stood firm.

Thought they were in pretty good shape. Thought their foundation was strong. It was secure.

But it wasn't, and they fell. In fact, that entire generation, those that came out of Egypt, died in the wilderness.

He goes on in verse 13, no temptation is overtaken you, except such is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. You know, I know a lot of times we joke about the trials we face and we say, God must think I can handle a lot, right? We look back over the things that we that we go through, but the reality is God is with us through all of these things. You know, these things that we experience, these things that erode at our foundation, they're common to man. They were common to Israel. The desire to lead, desire to be in charge. How many different splits have happened because somebody wanted to be in charge? Happens. The desire for what we can't have, which leads to idolatry, leads to immorality, the relationship that we have with the world and how we interact with the world, how much of that world we let rub off on us, the complacency that we experience, these things are common to man. They happen with Israel. They can happen to us too if we don't maintain and keep up the foundation of our lives. If we don't continually keep up that foundation and ensure that we point ourselves in our life to God. We know God is faithful. We know He'll provide a way of escape so that we can endure it to really stand firm in the face of it. But brethren, that can only happen if we are standing strong and firm in Him. Not in anything else in Him. Not on our own power, not on our own strength, not on some other power, but relying on Him and His teachings as our foundation. So brethren, how is your foundation? Is it strong? Is it shored up? Have you counteracted the everyday wear and tear that comes from living this way of life day in, day out, as the waves of the world pound us? Or has that foundation began to erode? Have you allowed the worries and the pressures of life, the discouragement, the challenges of it to eat away at that foundation as time has gone on weakening it, stealing the joy from this faith? Has that foundation held up in this latest storm? Or is the building that we've built in danger of toppling as this COVID-19 crisis has exposed areas in the foundation where maybe it wasn't as shored up as it should be, exposing these large areas of concern? Do you still have zeal for God and for this way of life? Do you still have zeal for His church and His people? Or has that waned over the years? Do you still look forward to Bible study? Still look forward to prayer? To fellowship with His people? To getting together?

Do you turn to Him in your most difficult times?

When that world has you wearied? Or do you turn to something else?

This erosion process that we see happen in the world around us and that can happen in our spiritual lives is it's slow. It's subtle. But brethren, it's deadly. It's incredibly deadly.

It can catch us by surprise. And before we know it, the structure that we built is toppled.

It doesn't always take a storm to topple it. Sometimes it's just that everyday gradual undermining of that foundation. If we're not being watchful and if we're not counteracting those things, just that gradual undermining based on our choices and based on our actions. It took three years for the first buildings in Bay Ocean after the construction of the jetty. It took three years for the first buildings in Bay Ocean to be washed into the sea. Jetty construction was finished in 1917. Three years later, 1920, the first two buildings right near the ocean. In about another 15 years, the handwriting was on the wall. People were beginning to realize this wasn't going to last. By 1971, 62 years after the first structures were constructed on the peninsula, there was no trace of Bay Ocean's existence. 62 years, the entire city was gone.

The ocean and the sands had reclaimed the town. Bay Ocean, Oregon, is the town that fell into the sea.

It was a resort community that never realized its full potential because the foundation upon which it was built eroded and was destroyed. Brethren, I hope the town of Bay Ocean can serve as a warning to all of us, as something for us to think about to help us consider the foundation that we've built, to help us to be able to examine it and to shore up where it's necessary. Hope you all have a wonderful Sabbath.