Our Fathers
1 Corinthians • Sermon • Submitted
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Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
Run to obtain the prize. Don’t let your personal preferences and opinions get in the way of people hearing about Jesus. Your liberty must be subservient to the cause of the gospel.
These are the things we looked at last week. But as we turn to this evening’s text, we might wonder how those points relate to what we find here. In fact, do they relate at all? The answer is yes. Tonight’s text is a negative example of how not to run the race. God led the Israelites through the wilderness. He gave them all the same baptism and the same spiritual food, but only two men from that first generation — Joshua and Caleb — finished well. The rest of them were overthrown in the wilderness because God was not please with them.
Although it’s true that we need positive examples, it’s often the negative examples that leave a firmer impression on our minds. On the first day of metalworking class in high school, the teacher showed us a film about a man who was working at a grinder without safety glasses. While he was grinding, the grinding wheel flew apart and pieces of it landed in his eyes, blinding him for the rest of his life. The rest of the movie was about how he learned to cope with not being able to see — how to choose clothes, how to fry an egg, how to cross a street. It was horrifying. From that day forward, I have always been meticulously careful to wear eye protection when doing shop projects.
But today’s text is really more than just a negative example. It’s also a positive reinforcement of the necessity of genuine faith. The ancient people had seen all the great works of God in Egypt — powerful plagues that proved Jehovah was in control, yet they still bowed down to a golden calf. They didn’t trust God to accept their worship on his terms, so they decided to worship him on their own terms. This is not faith. True faith teaches us to humble ourselves before the living God.
Baptism
Baptism
In the first two verses of tonight’s text, Paul directed his readers to think about those who left Egypt under Moses. He wrote,
Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
As you think about these words, remember that the church in Corinth was mostly Gentile converts. When Paul arrived there on his second missionary journey, he tried to preach to the Jews in the synagogue (Acts 18:4), but they rejected him, so he turned instead to the Gentiles. This means that the original readers of 1 Corinthians were not Jews with a thorough knowledge of the Old Testament, but Gentiles who were probably still largely unfamiliar with it. But what did Paul say to them? First, that he wanted them to learn the lessons of the Old Testament. He wrote, I would not that ye should be ignorant. Second, that, although they were not Abraham’s seed by birth, they were his seed by faith in Jesus Christ. Look how Paul addressed them. He called them brothers in verse 1. He said that those whom Moses led out of Egypt were their fathers. The fact that they were extracted from a Gentile root didn’t keep them from becoming members of the household of faith. Furthermore, Paul never once suggested that their status was any less than that of Jewish Christians.
Here we see that Paul never missed an opportunity to highlight the importance of godly unity within the church — a unity grounded in the truth of the gospel, and not the opinions and preferences of men. Consider, for example, what he wrote in the fourth chapter of Ephesians:
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
In our text, the Corinthians were to consider what to learn from the fathers who left Egypt with Moses. The fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. That is, they all enjoyed the special, covenantal presence of God among his people and the blessings that came with it. The cloud protected them from the heat of the sun. The pillar of fire provided light and warmth at night. The Red Sea stood upright like a wall and allowed them to pass over on dry ground.
There was something about this that the Israelites probably didn’t understand at the time, and that is that they were all baptized in the cloud and in the sea. The mighty Egyptian army was immersed but not baptized; every Egyptian drowned, but the people of God were sprinkled with the gentle mist of God’s favor. They were baptized unto or ‘into’ (εἰς) Moses, who acted as God’s agent in delivering them from bondage. They became his dissolves, just as Christians today are baptized into Christ, who redeemed us from sin and death and hell, and now we are his disciples.
The evidences of God’s covenant blessings both in the cloud and in the sea are obvious. The cloud distinguished the people of God from everyone else, especially the Egyptians. It was a visible marker. Exodus 14:19–20 puts it this way:
And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night.
In the same way, your baptism marks you as one who belongs to the Lord. It’s God’s promise of love and blessing, if you truly embrace the finished work of his Son.
Likewise, the sea was a defensive boundary. When Pharaoh’s army tried to cross it in pursuit of the people of Israel, the Lord destroyed every single one of them. And your baptism is God’s pledge to protect you, and it should give you the confidence that Paul expressed in Romans 8:28 —
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
From an even broader perspective, the wilderness baptism of God’s people was a new beginning for them. But once they crossed the Red Sea and all the Egyptians drowned, their slavery was over. They were a new nation, devoted to the service of God. Your baptism also testifies to the fact that the Lord gave you a new beginning when your Savior called you out of a death in sin to the fulness of life in himself. You have been consecrated to serve the one true, living and eternal God, now and foreverr.
Spiritual Meat and Drink
Spiritual Meat and Drink
And not only were the Israelites baptized, they also fellowshiped together with spiritual food and spiritual drink. Verses 3 and 4 say,
And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
During the exodus, God provided well for the needs of his people. He gave them bread from heaven (Exod. 16:4), which the people called manna because they didn’t know what it was (Exod. 16:15). The Hebrew word manna (מַה־ה֑וּא) literally means, ‘what is it?’ Manna was their primary food until they crossed the Jordan and ate bread made from the grain of the conquered land. Joshua 5:12 says,
And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.
God also gave his prime water from a rock, the most unlikely place to find water. This happened first at Horeb (Exod. 17:6) and later also at Kadesh (Num. 20:11). And the water didn’t just trickle out of the rock; it flowed out as a massive river. It has to because there were a lot of people and animals i needing it — at least 600,000 military-age men in the army, plus women and children and livestock. Psalm 78 describes the amount of water. It says,
He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths. He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.
No doubt, the plenteousness of water given to the Israelites reminded them of the refreshing power of God’s grace. That’s why our text says emphasizes that God gave them spiritual food and spiritual drink.
But what are we to make of the rock that the water came from? Verse 4 says that it was a spiritual Rock, that it followed them, and that it was Christ. But what does this mean?
The rabbis of old believed that the rock that first gave water to the people at Horeb literally followed the Israelites around in the wilderness, rolling along with them as they traveled from place to place. They even thought they knew what it looked: it was filled with holes like Swiss cheese, which is where the water came out. Calvin’s view is a little better. He argued that it was the water, not the rock, that followed the Israelites. That is, the Israelites always had water everywhere they went. But I still don’t think this is the best interpretation. I think Charles Hodge had it right. He argued that it was neither the rock nor the water that followed the Israelites, but Jesus Christ. As the people wandered from place to place, Jesus was always there to take care of them. The emphasis, in other words, is on God himself being among his people.
And isn’t this what Paul said, viz., that the rock was Christ. But we have to be careful here too. One modern commentator goes so far as to say that the actual rock that water came out of was an ‘incarnation’ of Christ. Of course, the rock wasn’t literally Jesus, just as the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper are not literally his body and blood. Rather, the bread and the wine, and the rock that gave water in the wilderness, direct our attention to the indisputable fact that that our whole salvation is in Jesus Christ alone. That's why the psalms often connect the fact that God is our rock with deliverance. Listen to these verses:
He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence; I shall not be greatly moved.
He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.
And they remembered that God was their rock, and the high God their redeemer.
and,
O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
The same rock provides well for our needs, too. Jesus is the water which, if a man drink, he shall never thirst again (John 4:13–14). He is the bread of life that came down from heaven and gives life to the world (John 6:32–33, 35–40). And any man who builds his house on that rock will never be disappointed.
And that, brothers and sisters, is why we must never be lax in holding to the truths of the gospel, why we must run the race to win. We must propagate it strenuously for our good and the good of those around us.
We’ll conclude today with verse 5. The blessings that God poured upon the ancient fathers ended up not benefiting most of them. The writer of Hebrews identified the problem. He said that the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it (Heb. 4:2). Their problem was a lack of faith. Because the people lacked faith, God was not pleased with them. Instead, he turned away from them and overthrew them in the wilderness. Literally, our text says that bodies were scattered (κατεστρώθησαν) all over the desert.
What makes this especially noteworthy is the fact that Paul used the word all throughout this evening’s text. All our fathers and all passed through the sea in verse 1. Were all baptized in verse 2. Did all eat in verse 3. All drank in verse 4. That is, every single person who left Egypt with Moses had access to all the covenant blessings of God. The Lord didn’t reserve his favor for an elite few, the aristocrats, the wealthy. He poured it out generously. Yet, so few people from that first generation actually took advantage of it.
This leads to the warning that's coming up in verse 12:
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
All of us must constantly examine ourselves to make sure that we’re really appropriating the blessings of Jesus for ourselves, that we’re running the race like we really believe that we’re going to win.
And if we belong to Jesus, we will always win. He’s never lost a single soul that belongs to him. Amen.