First Corinthians 10:1-5 The identification of Israel with Moses
1 Corinthians 10:1-5 · Roger Henderson · Feb 7, 2021
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 44
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261921451999

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're starting a new chapter. We're marching on through 1 Corinthians. So now we're up to chapter 10. In chapter 10, the first part, the first 13 verses is kind of a reflection back on the nation of Israel. So it's kind of neat to go back and look at how God miraculously provided for the nation of Israel.

So we're going to be looking at that. And it's given, as Paul says, as an example for us. It's given for our instruction. We're going to see that. And it actually helps us understand a lot of interesting areas in Scripture. Okay, with that in mind, let's go on to the outline. I like to use Macaulay. So the first, so we're going to be covering the first five verses today.

Israel's blessing. We're going to talk about their deliverance out of Egypt. They were in bondage in Egypt. And Moses was God's man on the scene, so to speak. He was God's man to deliver Israel. And we're going to see how that worked out. He delivered them from the hands of the Pharaoh.

And we're going to see about their daily provision in the wilderness. But then we're going to see, unfortunately, Macaulay and Elizabeth, they fell. They And it's an internal thing, it's interesting. So often we think that, well, they made big, it's a big thing externally. No, God provided all their external needs, but they fell in their hearts. They didn't trust God, they didn't follow after God. And we're gonna see that in the remaining verses here that we'll cover next week and the third week. So it's an interesting section. So let's just kind of look at the verses here. So I'll go ahead and read these first five verses in chapter 10.

For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not well pleased, for they were laid low in the wilderness. All right, so we're just gonna start with verse one and kind of go through here. A lot of interesting things come up as we go through these verses. So let's look at verse one here. So it starts off for I do not want you to be unaware.

So as typical with Paul, and this he's talking to the Corinthians, remember he's writing to the Corinthian church and he's writing to us. He doesn't want us to be unaware. And this is kind of like a little flag, you know, little bells and whistles all to go off in your mind, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. If he says I don't want you to be unaware, that's code, it's like you like to say, that's code for I want you to know this. This is something that Paul wants us to know. He wants the Corinthians to know this. He wants us to know this as well.

Every believer in the Lord Jesus is to understand these kind of important things in Scripture. So actually let's look at a couple other cases just to kind of get our feet in the ground. Here's other cases where Paul uses the same terminology. I do not want you to be unaware. So the first one is just a beautiful verse. Actually it fits in well with today.

Romans 6.3. Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? So there's a very important usage of this phrase.

And then in, later on we'll be studying this in chapter 12, 1 it says, now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware. And the third one I chose, actually it's in our Thessalonians book we're studying, in chapter 4 verse 13. But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. So as Macaulay, he says this is an important verse. Verse one, he says this is an important section. He's flagging this as an important message. Okay, so let's get into the message here. So he says, Our fathers, all of them, were under the cloud and went through the sea. So two parts, they were all under the cloud. And I had all these pictures.

I was trying to think of some clever little statement, you know, like we got this was Moses is doing selfies and, you know, and this is some guy painting out there. Well, it's none of those, obviously. And actually you can find all these pictures. This is no great I'm no great whiz.

I went out on the internet and did picture of the cloud following the Israelites. And boom, hundreds of pictures pop up. And your challenge is, which one matches scripture the closest? And hey, I don't think I necessarily picked the best, but I picked one, so this is my thought. So here's a picture. Our fathers were all under the cloud and went through the seas. Look at the cloud first.

Our fathers, that's speaking of the nation of Israel. And Paul was speaking to a mixed group of people. Some were Gentiles, some were Jews. So he was saying, when he said our fathers, he's speaking of the nation of Israel. And here's an important word. It shows up a bunch of times in these first four verses.

What he's trying to point out is that when God delivered the nation of Israel out of Egypt, it was a total deliverance. He delivered every man, woman, and child. None were accepted. It didn't depend upon how faithful they were to Moses. how little they complained or how much they complained. He delivered them all.

And that's like us. Every believer, whether he's a grumpy believer or a joyful believer, as long as he's a believer, he's in the total control of our Father's hands. He's in his total protection. And that's what we're going to see, this wonderful comparison between the protection of the nation of Israel and our protection as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's why it's such a cool section.

We're all under the clouds, so what is that kind of? And this verb here is a verb, eimi, the state in which someone continuously exists. It could be a thing to, in this case, is someone continuously exists. So you could put it like this. All the Israelites continually existed under the cloud in the wilderness.

And so what that kind of connotes is the fact that God provided His, His glory to guide them and protect them. That's kind of the other point I have here is that from this verse it talks about that pillar of cloud. It says you, speaking of God, in your great compassion did not forsake them in the wilderness. the pillar of cloud did not leave them by day to guide them on their way. And if you read the narrative of the Exodus, you'll see that the cloud guided them by day and the pillar of fire by night.

And we'll also see the cloud, it moved around. It protected them too when they went across the Red Sea. It blocked the Egyptians. It put them in darkness and the Israelites could move on. So that was God's guidance for them in the wilderness, the cloud.

Okay, so let's go on here. So the second part, and all went through the sea. And this is the idea, to go or to pass through. It's Aristan's Passpoint fact. A couple of verses here. In Nehemiah it says, you divided the sea before them so they pass through the midst of the sea on dry ground.

And then in Exodus 14.31 it says, So what's interesting is, this God's great power, when they saw him divide the sea, I mean, that's just, you know, people have tried to come up with all kinds of secular ways for how this could happen, but by any account, it is beyond, you know, any human thing can do it, to divide the sea and have the water standing on both sides and people could walk through on dry ground. But one of my questions is, how'd the ground get so dry? And there's another miracle there, God dried the ground out. If you walk through, you know, some place that's been a lot of water, it's you know you need your muddy boots on and you probably might get them stuck it says they walk through on dry ground so there's another miracle in the midst of all this so pretty pretty amazing stuff and now i like this verse here it uses the same word the idea of the Lord Jesus passing through the heavens, and we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God.

So there's many pictures here, many pictures of things that we see in the New Testament about God delivering, and the man who delivered, it was a man, and we think of the man Christ Jesus, he's delivering us, and you have the man Moses who was delivering Israel here. pictures and what they call types. So let's go on here.

Okay, and all, notice the word all again, not one excepted, all were baptized into Moses. So now you think, all were baptized into Moses. And that's kind of a head scratcher. If you haven't been around Holly Hills, you think, wow, all baptized into Moses.

What in the world does that mean? Well, let's look at the definition of the word first. Remember, baptized is not, they never really translated, as some have said, they never really translated baptized. They just made it, you just pronounce it differently. The original word is baptizo, and it's the idea to put or to place into something. And the context of the statement, so in this case, they were put or placed into Moses. So what does that mean? And verb tense helps here a little bit. It's an aorist tense again, but it's passive voice. So God is the one who's acting and he's placing them, putting them into Moses. So let's think about that for a little bit.

So the idea of baptizo is to identify them with what you have been placed into. So from the context again, In the context, God identified the Israelites with Moses, in a sense, with their Savior. He was going to be the one that God had chosen to take them out of Egypt and to take them through the wilderness journey. And this was a dry baptism.

Think about it. They walk through a dry ground. So don't think of baptism or baptized so much as water. Don't think about its placing into, being immersed into. And then Hal had a good definition here of identification. Identification means a living union or a life-sustaining union. Just think about this.

By following Moses, by the Israelites following Moses, he sustained their lives. I was looking back and reading through the size of the Egyptian army, and it was massive. They had 600 chariots. 600 chariots. They don't give a count of the army size, but it was a massive army. Can you imagine? You're out there and you're basically defenseless. You have no weapons. You have no, a million people and here comes this 600 chariots that they can mow you down in a second. But God provided for that. So it's pretty amazing.

So they were placed or identified with Moses and he sustained their life. So let's just think about also it says, it kind of seems to repeat itself a little bit in the cloud and the sea. So the cloud kind of displays the glory of God and the cloud also demonstrates its protection. Like I said, it moved around, it protected them from the Egyptians when they were coming to chasing them. The sea was God's means of deliverance. He delivered them and He delivered them and took care of the Egyptians.

They all drowned. And then this verse in Hebrews talks about that, about their faith. It says, By faith they, the Israelites, passed through the sea, through the Red Sea, as though they were passing through dry land. and the Egyptians, when they attempted it, were drowned. So faith was involved in what the Israelites, they put their faith and trust in Moses. who is God's representative for them there.

So I thought it might be just appropriate as we're talking about being baptized into Moses, just because it might be a little confusing, let's just remind ourselves about spiritual baptism and water baptism. And Mike, I was talking with Mike during this and Mike sent me this great paper by Miles and it just had some great points so I decided to use it. You know, I think we all could probably put down verses that talk about our spiritual baptism and our water baptism, but this kind of summarized it pretty well, and it's basically just bullet points here.

So every believer in the Lord Jesus, when he believes, is baptized by the Holy Spirit into the Lord Jesus. He's placed into the Lord Jesus, into this living union, and that's irreversible. Once a person believes, he's placed into Christ and can never be taken out. God is maintaining him.

So that's part of the point here. I'm going to digress just for a second. The part where we see that Israel fails and we fail is not on God's part. God totally protects us. He totally, He gives us His Son and He gives us a spirit to show us the things of Christ. It's the internal battle we have with our sin nature that causes us to fall.

So that's just kind of an aside. We'll see that later on here. So continuing on with spiritual baptism. By this spiritual act of baptism, the Spirit places us into this union or living union with our Savior, the Lord Jesus. We are taken out of our environment, our old Adam, and placed into the new Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, a totally new environment, a grace environment. And the next point is the spiritual baptism occurs once at the new birth and it's forever. And then the last point, so what's water baptism? So when you think about what's, so he just answers it in a simple paragraph here.

The act of water baptism is meant to be our practical testimony. It's a testimony, it says, I have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I know from his word I've been baptized into the Lord Jesus Christ. So we're testifying to that fact by undergoing water baptism.

It illustrates our spiritual baptism into the rhythm Lord Jesus Christ so hopefully that's helpful and if they're not you know actually there's a paper that's available that Mike has we could let you look at too but it's important thing to kind of distinct baptism is used a lot in scripture and it's very important concept and you need to understand it so let's carry on here Okay, so now they've come out of Egypt, they've been guided by the cloud, protected by the cloud, they pass through the sea, and now they're into their wilderness journey, which lasts 40 years, and it says, and they all ate, this is the nation of Israel, they all ate the same spiritual food.

Oh, that goes too fast. So the Amplified Bible has, and all of them, all ate the same spiritual or supernaturally provided food. So what we're gonna see here is that we're gonna see two pictures, God's providing physically for their needs. But we're also going to see that he provides for their spiritual needs because we're going to see in the text it talks about the Lord Jesus Christ following them in the wilderness journey and being involved in this whole process. So there's a physical part and there's a spiritual part.

And it says, so the food God provided was as follows, and this is kind of cool if you haven't thought about this in a while. Then the Lord said to Moses, behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather it a day's portion every day. And this lasted a while. The sons of Israel ate the manna for 40 years until they came into the inhabited land. So as we know, God wasn't dropping loaves of bread out of heaven, right? He didn't drop, okay, I get some, you know, whatever. Lord, I want whole wheat, no, sourdough. No, he didn't. No, he didn't do that.

Actually, if you read the text, you go back and look in that, it's actually a wafer kind of thing. like coriander seed, which I'm not sure I know what coriander seed is, but it says it tasted like a wafer with kind of a honey taste. Sounds kind of tasty, but after 40 years of that, the Israelites, they wanted something different. Anyway, but that was God's provision. And that actually kind of speaks to us, you know? Maybe we think, well, God, you're providing for me, but, you know, couldn't I get steak? I don't know.

Anyway, that's kind of, Alright, so, and then the spiritual aspect of this, you know, bread is the sustainer of life. So Christ is called the bread of life in the New Testament. And just this beautiful passage that is talking about the Savior. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger. He who believes in me will never thirst. So God was providing for their physical needs, their hunger, and providing for their spiritual needs as well.

Now we come to the next part of this. And they all drank the same spiritual drink, the super naturally provided spiritual drink. Another cool photo. This one I liked about this photo, yeah, photo, what am I saying? Characters at drawing, whatever it is.

It showed a lot of water, and the Lord just didn't provide a few little drops here and there. He provided a lot of water. I mean, when the Lord does it, He does it right. He provided tons of water here. So the verses kind of speak to that. Behold, I will stand before you on the rock of Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, and the people may drink it. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders. So the next verse here says, He, speaking of Moses, split the rock in the wilderness and gave them an abundant drink like the ocean depths.

So there was plenty of water, except sometimes there was not, and they complained about that, and there were some issues about that, which are for another day. So we see both the physical drink and the spiritual drink kind of portrayed here. So now let's carry on. So here's the part where we kind of discuss the part about for they Israel were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them. So now we kind of see, it kind of shows us that the pre-incarnate Christ was kind of involved in this whole process.

It's just kind of the terminology, spiritual rock, spiritual drink. So Paul talks about the spiritual rock, and it's the idea of deriving from spiritual life, and just a beautiful verse here, and the verb tense is continuous action, they continually, God was continually providing for their needs in terms of water. But here's a verse that, I think this is the woman at the well. Jesus was talking to this woman at the well and Jesus answered and said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I, Jesus, will give you shall never thirst, but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water, springing up to eternal life." Interesting, Roy had quoted the same verse this morning. I was kind of interested to see that. It's a pretty cool verse. Okay.

From the spiritual rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ. So the spiritual rock followed the wilderness and it's Christ. This picture is Christ. Another verse that kind of ties this together is, so we have the picture of Christ as the bread of life. We have him as the water. And now we're going to see the picture of Christ as the rock. And that comes across in Matthew chapter 7.

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine, and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rains fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and slammed against the house. Yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.

So I thought it just, I'm just gonna put them all up here. So if you look carefully through the text. You'll see in the first four verses, you'll see he talks about, he includes everyone. All under the cloud, all through the sea, all baptized into the cloud, all baptized into the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink. So Paul wants to make sure that we don't think that God is, God in his great love and mercy and grace provides for everyone who puts their faith and trust in him without exception. Okay, so let's go on here. So now, actually I decided to borrow a couple charts from Hal. And this is what he's trying to do here. He's trying to compare what happened in the wilderness to our Christian walk. So that's what he's trying to do.

So it's the Jews with Moses and the believer in Christ. So all with Moses, all were baptized or identified into Moses in the cloud, the glory of God, the representation of his glory. For us as believers, we were baptized into the person of Christ. And he is the true glory of God. And secondly, in the sea was the deliverance. They were all baptized into the sea. Deliverance for the Israelites. And we're baptized, the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is baptized into his death, his burial, his resurrection.

And he's delivered as a result of that. He's separated. He's delivered from his sin nature. So what you'll see is that the picture we have in the Old Testament is so much about a physical deliverance. We see our deliverance is a spiritual deliverance from the power of sin and our sin nature. So total provision, I'll just put both these up.

So he provided the manna and the water and the wilderness. He provides the bread of life and the water of life. Notice that all the solutions, all the solutions to life are Christ. Everyone, all these names that come back to Christ, the bread of life, the water of life, the rock, they're all about Christ.

And then keep, so the total protection, I'm just gonna put these all up here. So there is total protection for both the Israel and for us. There is no external force that could overthrow them. It's the same with us. Nothing externally can touch us. Once we have put our faith and trust in Him, He will take us home to glory, guaranteed. The question is, will we be, you know, how will that life that we live with Him as we walk in, how will that life be? That's the question. So there are difficulties. So the point here, and I kind of got a little bit off track here, the point here is that the largest and strongest army, I was mentioning those 600 chariots, that was the biggest army out there.

They couldn't, God took care of them all. They all drowned in the sea. And God has provided for us. There's nothing externally that can touch us. There's trouble, perplexity, all that stuff has been taken care of. And those verses talk about that. I could read part of that if I, Of course, I never can find it. There we go.

So, you know, we are afflicted but not crushed. We are cast down, not forsaken. We're not destroyed. And then the last part here is that no nation in the world could overthrow Israel. When Israel went into the Promised Land, God said, I'll fight your battles for you. I will take care of them. The angel will take care of these people.

But what happened is that they didn't believe him. They didn't trust him. And we can fall in that same path. We can go down that same path. But it says, you know, what can separate us from the love of God? And it talks about all the things that cannot separate us from His love. We cannot be separated from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So we're under the total protection of God, both the nation of Israel in that picture in the Old Testament and the believer in the Lord Jesus. And we're going to see more of that as we go along. We're going to see more of that flavor. So let's look at the what's been called their fall.

Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not well pleased. So it's a strong contrast that he, talking about the blessings they had, now he transitions into the fact he wasn't pleased with them, was not well pleased with the majority of them. So the final result of God's displeasure, Only, if you think about it, of the original group that left Egypt, when they got to the Promised Land and go in, and they were reluctant to go in. There are giants in the land. Only Joshua and Caleb were the only two that went in. Moses didn't go in. Now their children went in after 40 years, but after that generation died out. So God was not pleased with the majority of the Israelites.

Next we're going to go through these verses 6-10. There's four points that are going to be talked about. I'm not going to tell you those quite yet. One of them is murmuring, speaking against God. And they murmured a lot, right? They murmured over a lot of situations. And maybe some you could say were justified, some were not. And they did things they should not have done. So, but we know from the passage, the first 13 verses, God wants us to realize what happened to Israel and to learn from their failure.

That's the whole reason for this section here. And as a result of that, they were laid low in the wilderness. The idea of laid low here, the word is to, not a pretty word, to spread down, to overthrow, it's use of persons. of the person that were scattered as corpses in the desert and were destroyed according to Zodiates. There's a verse here in Numbers 14, 16, it says, because the Lord could not bring this people into the land which he promised by the oath, therefore he slaughtered them in the wilderness.

Okay, so one, so this chart's kind of looking forward to next week a little bit. So what are the, so how I'll label this is vulnerabilities. And this kind of speaks to the fact that we're vulnerable, internally we're vulnerable. We're internally, because we have a sin nature, because we have a fallen nature from Adam, every believer still has that, he's vulnerable to be overthrown. They were overthrown and we can be overthrown.

And it says with a majority, God was not well pleased. We're vulnerable to grieve the Holy Spirit, to walk contrary to what God has asked us to do. And the location was in the wilderness, even though God had his total protection and provision for them. In our case, in our Christian walk, even though under God's total protection, and we're bound for glory, we're bound to be with him, but we can still, we're still vulnerable to walk after the flesh. So how are we overthrown? I kind of mentioned this already, we're overthrown by the fact that we have a sin nature and the focus is on self. It was the same in the wilderness for the children of Israel and it's the same for us. Okay. All right, so a final thought. Okay, so this is from Constable.

He said, Paul points in these first four verses, was that Israel were his chosen people of God just as the Christians are chosen people of God God accomplished and provided for them faithfully in the past just as he does for all Christians now so we're going to see a verse in the next couple weeks here probably the third week It's a warning, one that, you know, one that I recite many times to myself, therefore let him who thinks he stand take heed lest he fall. We're going to study that a little more in detail. But sometimes we can think, well, I got this, you know, I trusted the Lord. I'm sure of his provision. And we should be. We shouldn't be doubtful of his provision.

But we should be aware as Israelites fell, we can fall as well. So a closing prayer, and then we'll have our music. Dear Father, we thank you for our time today, Lord. We thank you for the blessings that we have in our Savior. Thank you for your care for us, Lord, for just a marvelous care. Thank you that you provided for everything that we need for life and godliness, and we pray that we would keep our eyes on you. In Christ's name, amen.