A. Starting to understand why we use the worship that way. Maybe we used to know something. It's not trying to shine, but it'll do. Graham Kendrick's going to have to answer for that one. So this is the passage this evening comes from First Corinthians, Chapter 10. And I'd like to read verses one through thirteen, but the preaching portion is only verses one through five. But just to give a sense of context. First Corinthians ten, one through five. And I call this passage one church, one grace, one God. First Corinthians ten. God's holy, inspired, inerrant, infallible and unchangeable word. Well, I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. We must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did, and 23,000 fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now, these things happen to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed, lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure. Thus far, the reading of God's Word. May he write this word on our hearts and may he give us true faith to believe in. Congregation of the Lord Jesus. The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians here in chapter ten. in anticipation of a theme that he is going to take up again in chapter eleven, beginning in verse seventeen, when he says, But in the following instructions, I do not commend you because when you come together or perhaps whenever or every time you come together, it is not for the better, but for the worse. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and he goes on to rebuke them and instruct them and correct them in their observance, celebration and administration of the Holy Supper. But in order to lay the foundation for what he wants to say in chapter eleven, he begins here at the beginning. of chapter ten. And as I say, he makes three points here in these five verses, one through five. First of all, that we are one church. Second, that there is one grace and third, that there is one God. Now, this is a passage with which you may or may not be familiar, but some of the Some of the verses in this passage are among the more amazing and astounding things in all of the New Testament Scriptures. And I wonder if you noticed, as I did even again this evening, reading the passage for you and with you. Did you notice that he said in verse eight, We must not indulge in sexual immorality. As some of them did, and twenty three thousand fell in a single day. Verse nine. Now look at verse nine. We must not put whom to the test. We must not put Christ to the test. And then look at the next clause. As some of them did. That's an amazing thing, because you could read this passage in many, many congregations. And people would be shocked, not here, of course, but in many, many evangelical congregations, people would be shocked to learn that, according to the Apostle Paul. The Israelites had anything to do with Christ and the Apostle Paul says they had everything to do with Christ, not only and not only in a negative way, as we're thinking about here in verse nine, but also in a very positive way. So let's start from the beginning of the passage. But I wanted to try to orient you to the apostles way of thinking. And why do I want you to do that? Well, first of all, obviously, to understand the word of God. But I want to be plain here about what my intent is. My intent is to trouble those who don't see the unity of the people of God in all times and in all places. And the other thing that I want to do, particularly in this first part of the text, is to lay an axe to the root of one of the more persistent and dangerous errors in the Ney Park Communions, and that is this error of the federal vision. And I want to lay the axe to the root of the federal vision error by getting you to pay attention to what the Apostle Paul says. About what it means to be a member of a visible covenant community, what it means to be baptized into or in that visible covenant community, what it means and what it doesn't mean. And I'll come back and explain that in a minute. But first, let's look at verse one, for I want you to know brothers. So he addresses them, first of all, as family. He addresses them as family, and then he uses another familial noun. He says that our fathers were all under the clouds. The first thing that we need to grasp from this text is that in the mind of the Apostle Paul, as I've already suggested, there is a profound and fundamental unity in the people of God in all times and in all places, such that in Paul's mind The Corinthians, who were very much members of the new covenant church, were part of the same family as the old covenant church. Some of you with some of you. I've had some interesting discussions over the last few days about the old covenant and the new covenant and how those things relate. And one of the things that I think is very important for all of us to to keep clearly in our minds is the way the Apostle Paul speaks about the old covenant in second Corinthians three. Paul explains how he is a minister. Of the new covenant. And what and what is the new covenant or relative to what is the new covenant? Well, the new covenant is new relative to Moses. And how do I know that? It's new relative to Moses because in Second Corinthians three seven the apostle says now if the ministry of death carved in letters on stone came with such glory that the Israelites Israelites could not gaze at Moses face because of its glory which is being brought to an end. Will not the ministry of the spirit have even more glory. He goes on to explain how The glory of the Old Covenant, the glory of Moses, was fading. In verse 15, he says, Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. For Paul to think of the Old Covenant is to think specifically of Moses, and then we don't have time to do it tonight, but it would be an exercise, an edifying exercise, simply to read Hebrews chapter 7, Hebrews chapter 8, chapter 9, and chapter 10. where the author of the writer of Hebrews makes that very same point. So there's a very real difference in the Word of God between the old covenant, which is, according to Hebrews, inferior, fading, obsolete, and the new covenant, which is permanent, which is eternal, which is the reality of which the old covenant was a mere shadow. So there are very real differences. And I want to remind us all that In Jeremiah 31, when the new covenant is promised, it's promised relative to the old covenant, namely Moses. If you read Jeremiah 31 very carefully, he points to Moses. It won't be like Moses. That's important. So I want us to have, on the one hand, a clear sense that there is a distinct difference between Moses and Christ. And we are Christians in the new covenant with all of the blessings that attend to the new covenant. Nevertheless, there is a profound spiritual unity in the church in all times and in all places, whether it is the Church of Abraham, as we were thinking about this morning in Galatians 3, or whether it is the Church of Moses, about which we are thinking here in 1 Corinthians 10. So he writes to a new covenant community, and he says, On a very important level, we are all members of the same covenant of grace. That's the message here. That our fathers, we are all brothers and the Israelites were our or are our fathers, and that makes us family. We have a family bond, so this is family history. This is our family tree. And another way of describing this is the language that I use. Here it's the language that the New Testament uses elsewhere in Ephesians that there is one church. There was an Israelite church. And whereas most American evangelicals are minded to think that was then, this is now, Paul doesn't think that way. Paul thinks that those are our people and that was the church that then was, and we are spiritually linked to that church, and that's why he calls them our fathers. He doesn't say those people. Then he says our fathers. That's very important. Our fathers, he says, so there's a fundamental unity of the covenant of grace, I mentioned as part of the conference that one of the one of the great and urgent tasks of the ancient church in the first, second, particularly the second and third centuries was to was to combat the idea that was widespread in that time. It was the message of Gnosticism, which said, in effect, that was then. And that God, Yahweh, he's nothing more than a Demiurge, not a real God. We have a secret knowledge about the real God, these ions that lie behind the Demiurge. And we are truly spiritual and you poor people, you poor Christians, you poor Catholics, they were called you people who attend the visible institutional church. You're not truly spiritual. You don't know what we know. Pastor was telling me that apparently there are people in Colorado Springs who still think that way. They think of themselves as Christians and Bible believing Christians, but they and they say they serve Christians and even serve the church, but they don't attend to the church because somehow they are above the church. I tell you tonight, loved ones, that the word of God knows nothing of any such Christianity. They can mock it as churchy entity all they want, but our Lord Jesus Christ instituted a visible institutional church in which he instituted officers and a message and a means and discipline and sacraments and the whole nine yards and to that institutional church and to no other organization or entity. Did he give the keys of the kingdom? So our evangelical friends who are above going to a visible institutional church, they think of themselves as spiritual. But they've spiritualized themselves right out of the visible representation of the Kingdom of God on the Earth, whatever they may think or say. The Book of Hebrews is written to people who attempted to think that very sort of thing, and he said, Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together, and the context there makes it clear it's the visible covenant community. And so, for Paul, he's writing to a visible covenant community and he links them to an older visible covenant community, the typological church, the Mosaic church, the old covenant church. And he's speaking here now of the particularly of what our older theologians used to call external, the external aspect of the covenant of grace or the external aspect of the church. And here's where I want to begin to lay the axe to the root of the federal vision heresy and the federal vision heresy. The root of the federal vision heresy or error is this. They teach pretty uniformly, quite uniformly, I should say, that in baptism, All baptized people and in circumcision, all circumcised people were, by virtue of circumcision or by virtue of baptism, united to Christ head for head. That's the language of a Dutch reformed theologian from the early 20th century, Klaus Skilder, said that we're all in the covenant of grace head for head. It's all or nothing. There are not two ways of being in the covenant of grace. There is only one way, and if you are baptized, you are baptized into Christ, you are united to Christ, and Christ creates that relationship by virtue of baptism. And they argue that from Romans chapter six and other places, despite the fact that Paul isn't teaching that in Romans six, and he's clearly not teaching that here in first Corinthians ten. And it's helpful when we read the Apostle Paul or any portion of Scripture that we bear in mind one passage of Scripture as we read other passages of Scripture. The Apostle Paul says in Romans. Chapter two, he says, for circumcision is indeed of value. We could substitute baptism there if you obey the law. But if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. If it if it is the case that you're attempting to use this as the basis of your righteousness. So if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? And he was physically uncircumcised. Physically uncircumcised keeps the law. He will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision, but break the law. Now listen to this for no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly. Nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart. by the spirit, not by the letter. Those categories inwardly and outwardly were fundamental to the Reformed Reformation. And our theologians repeatedly appeal to this distinction between being a Christian outwardly by baptism and being a Christian also inwardly by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, receiving the benefits that were signified by baptism. And now I want you to look at the at the rest of verse one of first Corinthians 10. Verse two, that our fathers were all under the cloud. Right, they were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea. They all went Right. They were all under the cloud. They all went to the sea. And look at verse two or verse three, excuse me. And all were and I want you to look at this verb very carefully. Baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. People could say to Paul, But I am baptized. I'm a Christian. Well, that's true. Outwardly, you are recognized as a member of the visible covenant community. That's fine. Baptism is proper. It's instituted by our Lord himself. No one should denigrate the holy sacrament of baptism, but no one should denigrate the holy sacrament of baptism by trying to make it do more than our Lord ever intended it to do, made it to do, or uses it to do. There is no promise in God's Word that the moment you are baptized, you are necessarily united to Christ or made elect, as the federal vision says. And the reason they say that baptism makes you united to Christ and makes you elect and confers, they go on to say, confers upon the baptized person all the benefits of Christ. Justification, adoption, sanctification. That's what they teach in their books and in their articles and on their website. Scripture never says that. I have only one question for you. Was Esau circumcised? Was he baptized? Yes. Was he elect? Was he justified? Was he adopted? Did he have the benefits of Christ? I've had people tell me, well, he did temporarily. Really? Romans chapter 9, verse 13, as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. Esau was a member of the visible covenant community. He was baptized, as it were. He was initiated into the covenant community, just as you are, just as the Corinthians were, just as the Israelites were. Now, you may be thinking, now, wait a minute, Clark, you keep moving back and forth between baptism and circumcision. That's cheating. I know what you're thinking. And I say, no, it's not cheating, it's reading the Word of God in the light of the Word of God. Colossians chapter 2, verse 11. In him, that is in Christ also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh. How? When? By the circumcision of Christ. When were you circumcised? You were circumcised when Christ was circumcised. When was Christ circumcised? When he was cut off, as the writer to the Hebrews says, outside the city walls. He's talking about our federal relationship with Jesus when he was circumcised. He was cut off for us outside the city. We were circumcised in Christ's circumcision. Circumcision was an identification with the death of Jesus. Circumcision was nothing more or less than a typological. That's just a fancy way of saying sermon illustration. It was a giant sermon illustration, a repeated sermon illustration, a bloody sermon illustration, a painful sermon illustration. Just ask the men at Gilgal. They were incapacitated for a few days because they didn't have anesthesia. Circumcision is death. I'll be circumspect here. The circumcision is death. It's to take a Flintstone and sharpen that Flintstone. And I always think about poor old man Abraham. Keep sharpening. Keep sharpening. You're going to you're going to you're going to use that for a scalpel. Keep going. Keep sharpening. Because you're going to you're going to perform surgery and then you're going to take the most vital part of your one of your vital parts and expose yourself to imminent harm and death. Trust me when you're in that situation and you've handed to someone or in many cases handed to someone a sharp rock and you've said now circumcised me you're pretty much defenseless. You've said kill me. I'm as good as dead. It was a ritual death. It was an identification with death. It was an anticipation of death, and every Israelite male that was circumcised was identified visibly with the death of the mediator of the covenant, and that's exactly the range of thought that is in the apostles mind, not only in Colossians 2, which I want to finish here quickly, but also in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. Notice how Paul goes on after he talks about circumcision. Look at verse 12. It's a participle there. It's a circumstantial participle. It's it's a participle that signals something that explains the circumstances in which something else happened. How were we right? How were we when did all this putting off and identifying with Christ happen? Verse 12, having been buried with him in baptism. in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God. You see that you see the thought of Paul circumcision is a ritual death. It's an identification with death, which leads us to the death of Christ, which leads us to baptism, which is the new covenant identification with the death of Christ. Which leads him to think of the resurrection, which is accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit. The connection between baptism and circumcision is this. It is linked in the circumcision slash death slash baptism of Jesus outside the city. With which our baptism and the mosaic circumcision identified. the people of God. You understand how Paul is thinking here, how he moves from from a typological anticipation of the death of Christ to the death of Christ to a new covenant, bloodless remembrance of the death of Christ. But neither baptism nor circumcision is anything. It is faith in Christ. and union with Christ, which is wrought by the Holy Spirit, to which baptism testifies, to which circumcision testified in the Old Covenant. And so that's the background, that's the conceptual background to the language that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 10. Now look at this again. These are Israelites. And by the way, and I don't want to dwell on this, but I want you to look at verse two very carefully. How many, how many Israelites does the apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, say were baptized? Some of them? Does it say that believers who had made a credible profession of faith were baptized? Does it say those who walked the aisle were baptized? No, it says they were all baptized. How many Israelites came out of Egypt through the Red Sea on dry ground. One million. Two million. Some people say three million. Let's say it's 500,000. Just for fun. In any gathering, any community of 500,000, statistically, are there going to be infants? Doctor, are there going to be infants in any gathering of 500,000 people? Absolutely. People say to me, Clark, I believe in infant baptism when you can show me an infant baptism in the New Testament. It's right here. First Corinthians 10, verse two. Paul teaches infant baptism, infants were in that community of Israel, the Church of Israel, when they went through the Red Sea on dry ground and they were all baptized. And by the way, how many of them were immersed? None of them, none of God's people were immersed. They went through on dry ground. They got sprinkled. There was a great wall of water on either side. Don't you think there was sprinkling going on? Sure, there was. But who got immersed? Pharaoh and his hosts. I tell my Baptist students, you want to be immersed? Great. You want to identify with Pharaoh and his hosts? Be my guest. It's just like Noah and his family. Who got immersed? Not Noah and his family. They went through the flood. They were saved through the flood. They were saved through the judgment. Who got immersed? Everybody but Noah. You want to identify with everybody but Noah? Be my guest. As for me and my household, we'll identify with the Israel of God, whom God delivered through the Red Sea on dry ground with the church of Noah in the ark in Christ delivered through the flood. Just a small point, but a significant point. There's one church, there's one grace administered now, I want you to notice this. God has always had covenant signs and seals, which we call the means of grace. People say to me, Pastor, oh, if I could only if I could only have a direct experience of God, of Jesus, then I would really know. And our answer in the reformed churches is to say, brother and sister, you need only to go through on dry ground to make due use, we say in the Westminster Confession of the ordinary means. You want to know, you say, I just don't have any assurance. I'm not sure God loves me. I'm not sure it's really for me. Oh, I believe, but I'm just not sure. And because I'm not sure, I just can't bring myself to come to the Lord's table because I don't have the right the right feeling yet. That's like saying, you know, I'm really, really hungry. And I just can't bring myself to eat. Because I just don't have the right feeling yet. God has always administered his grace, whether under Moses or under Christ, through the due use of the ordinary means of grace. If you are a member of the covenant community in good standing, you don't get to stay in Egypt and say, you know, I just don't feel like going through the Red Sea today. I don't have the right feeling. God says, Children, I have a promise for you. Moses raised his staff, I part of the Red Sea, I've made a way of salvation, I've given a covenant sign and a seal whereby I have promised to work through which I promise to work, whereby I promise to give you confidence and strength and to confirm the promises for you. That's why we celebrate the Lord's Supper frequently. That's why we celebrate the sacrament of baptism. You moms and dads, when when God blesses you with the baptism, you hold those children up so they can see there's a child going through the Red Sea on dry ground and he's getting sprinkled just like God's people always have. And he's being initiated into the visible covenant community. He's being identified with the death of the covenant mediator, just like the Israelites. And all were baptized into Moses. What does it mean to be baptized into Moses? It means to be identified with the death of the mediator of the covenant. And Paul is saying to these Corinthians, you people, there's nothing new or distinct or unique about your life. You people are baptized. You were identified with the death of Jesus. Well, guess what? The Israelites were baptized. They were identified with the death of Moses. You're not different. You're not special. There's nothing new under the sun. The Lord's Supper that you people celebrate, it's not new. There's always been a covenant sign and seal of renewal. Baptism was the sign and seal of initiation into the into the visible covenant community, just like circumcision is the sign and seal of initiation. Circumcision is once for all. You can only be circumcised once. After that, Paul says it's mutilation. Someone says to me, well, I was rebaptized. I say, no, you weren't. It's not possible. You might have had a bath, but it wasn't a baptism. You might have had a sprinkling, but it wasn't a baptism. Either you're baptized or you aren't baptized. Either you're circumcised or you aren't circumcised. Either you have a foreskin or you don't have a foreskin. Either you've been identified with the death of the covenant mediator, or you have not been identified with the death of the covenant mediator. But it's once for all, and you only are inaugurated, initiated, identified into the visible covenant community once. It's the sign of initiation. But there's another sign, and here's where our federal vision friends further confuse the faith. They confuse the sign of initiation with the sign of renewal, and they want to give the sign of renewal to their infants, and some of them won't give the sign of initiation to their infants. There is a denomination that calls itself a confederation of reformed evangelicals where that admits Baptist into their communion when they will initiate their children into the covenant community, but they can feed communion to their infants. It's a confusion of the sign of initiation with the sign of renewal baptism and circumcision were signs of initiation identification ritual external identification with the death of the covenant mediator. The feast structure, there was a feast every month in the Israelite calendar, and then there were the great annual feasts. And those were typological administrations of the Lord's Supper. All of them, not just Passover. All of them. They had frequent communion. And in fact, I'll go so far as to say that every time the covenant community gathered as a national people, as the church all together in one place at one time, they celebrated the Lord's Supper. It was a big church. It was hard to get them all together. They didn't gather very often. But when they did, they celebrated the Lord's Supper. And that we call in our old theologians who used to know a thing about the Bible, they maybe weren't as clever and as insightful and as brilliant and as gifted as our federal visionaries. But they used to know something about the Bible, and they called the Lord's Supper the sign and seal or the sacrament of nutrition. You only get initiated once. You get fed regularly. You get fed regularly. You get fed frequently. And it's in the sign and seal of nutrition that God strengthens you for the journey in the wilderness until you reach the promised land. That's God's intention. And so he says they all ate the same. Now notice that adjective, the same spiritual food, same as whose same as the Corinthians. Don't tell me that was then, this is now. Paul doesn't know anything about that was then, this is now. Same spiritual food and they all drank the same spiritual drink. They had the Lord's Supper, just like you Corinthians had the Lord's Supper. And in fact, let me let me take you down to verse seven, just to go back over that for a minute and do not be idolaters as as some of them were. It's a mixed covenant community. As it is written, the people sat down to drink and they rose up to play. What does it mean to sit down to drink? It means to sit down at the feast of covenant renewal, at a sacred covenant meal. And they profaned it by turning it into a pagan debauchery. And if you read chapter 11, the Corinthians did exactly that. He's saying, you people are no different than the Israelites. You've been taken out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, out of bondage by the sovereign outstretched hand of Almighty God. And that God, the Son who delivered you out of Egypt, He became incarnate and He was born of the Virgin. Do you understand that in our creeds, in our Catholic creeds, we repeatedly describe the Blessed Virgin? And she was the Blessed Virgin. Not that we pray to her. She's just a lady. She's glorified, but she can't hear any prayer. She can't see anything other than what other glorified people can see. But when she was on this earth, she is and was blessed among all women because she carried in her womb the God-man. And do you know what the early church called her? They called her the Theotokos, the God-bearer. Do you understand that God the Son was in the womb of the Virgin? He wasn't just passing through the way the Docetists and the Anabaptists say. He was in her and he was of her. Do you understand that God the Son had an umbilical cord? And that some nursemaid, or in this case, Joseph, Mary, held that child? and cut that umbilical cord that tied him to her. She was feeding what she ate, God the Son ate. She fed His flesh with that umbilical cord. And what came down that birth canal was God the Son in the flesh. That very God who led His people through the wilderness. Who overshadowed the Blessed Virgin? It was the same cloud that overshadowed God's people in the desert. They were all under the cloud. Who was that cloud? It was God, the Holy Spirit, who always overshadows. Go back to Genesis 1. The Spirit hovered over the face of the deep. Go to 1 Peter 4. The Spirit of God and the Spirit of glory dwells upon you, hovers over you. The triune God, one church, one grace, one sacramental system, one means of grace, one triune God. God, the Father who created. God, the Son, the agent of creation. God, the Holy Spirit who hovered over the face of the deep. God, the Father who provided for his people in the desert. God, the Son who delivered his people in the desert. God, the Holy Spirit who protected his people in the desert. One God, Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One Holy Trinity. One church, one grace, one God. Now, I want you to look with me at the passage again. For they drank from the same spiritual rock. Now, when he says spiritual, he doesn't mean immaterial. It was a real rock that produced real water. Moses struck it. Real water came out. It wasn't magic water. It wasn't invisible water. It wasn't water you can't see. And when Moses struck the rock, he struck Christ. He didn't strike a rock, he struck Christ, he says, and you're thinking to yourself, how do you know that? Well, keep reading. And the rock was Christ. The spiritual rock that followed them. Read Exodus. Read Numbers. You won't read anything about a rock following the people. Why? Because Moses or Paul doesn't care about the physical rock. The rock was Christ. Now, notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say the rock became Christ. Paul's not a Roman Catholic. He's not teaching transubstantiation. He didn't say at the moment of consecration that the essence of the rock became the essence of Christ, and it was only a rock accidentally. That rock wasn't transubstantiated. That rock was Christ. Notice what else it doesn't say. It doesn't say that rock symbolized Christ. Paul's not a Zwinglian. Paul doesn't say that when we think of the Rock, we really remember Christ and we have a really intense remembering and that we think of a funeral and we cry like we're at a funeral. He doesn't say that it symbolizes Christ. Paul is not a Zwinglian. It doesn't say that Christ was in the Rock. It doesn't say that Christ was with the Rock. It doesn't say that Christ was under the Rock. In this respect, the Apostle Paul was not a Lutheran. He says the rock was Christ. Of all of the approaches to the Lord's Supper and baptism, who says that this is my body or that rock was Christ? It's the Reformed faith. The rock was Christ. It's not even a subjective was. Paul is not a subject to this. He's not saying it became Christ to them when they decided it was Christ to them. That rock was Christ. Our federal visionaries have a point there is an objectivity to the covenant and you can talk about the objectivity of the covenant and the sacraments so long as you make the distinction that Paul makes between being in the visible covenant community externally and being in the visible covenant community externally and internally by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone not all the Corinthians were in internally, not all the Israelites were in internally. Nevertheless, they all ate the same spiritual food. They drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them. And that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased. With all of them. Or with most of them, for they were overthrown. in the wilderness. It is a good and necessary thing to be initiated into the visible covenant community by the divinely ordained sign and seal. If you are not initiated into the visible covenant community by virtue of the divinely ordained sign and seal of baptism. You have no right and interest to the sign and seal of covenant renewal. And that is the Lord's Supper. Just because, however, you are initiated into the visible covenant community doesn't mean that by that fact you necessarily are qualified to come to the sacrament of covenant renewal. That is the Lord's Supper. There are things that are necessary. discernment, understanding and realizing what is taking place when one comes to the holy table that at the holy table, we are not simply remembering. We are being fed by the true, real and in the Belgian confession, we say proper and natural body and blood. How does that happen? I can't tell you. I only know it's true. How do I know it's true? Because the word of God says that rock was Christ, they ate the same spiritual food, drank the same spiritual drink. That rock was Christ. They were eating Christ. How? By the work of the Holy Spirit, through faith. How did that work? I don't know. You'll have to ask the Holy Spirit. He hasn't explained himself. How did God make everything that is out of nothing? I don't know. You'll have to ask God. I just know it's true because it's what the word of God teaches. It is good. It is necessary to be initiated into the visible covenant community. And if people are outside of the visible covenant community, they are outside of the kingdom of God. They are outside of the place where God has entrusted the means of grace and the marks of the church. It's a very serious thing to be outside the visible institutional church. I don't know anything about unchurched Christians. Because I don't think you can be unchurched and call yourself a Christian. James 2 says you say you're a Christian, and I say with James, show me some proof. It is necessary and sufficient to be initiated, it is necessary to be initiated and good to be initiated into the visible covenant community, but it is not sufficient. How do I know? Twenty three thousand of them were killed. You can be in the visible covenant community without being of the visible covenant community, you can be in the visible body of Christ without being a Christian, truly reckoned spiritually without being one inwardly. How are you one inwardly? You say, Pastor, I'm concerned. I want to be one inwardly. I have two words for you. Repent and believe. It's that simple. All you have to say is, Father, I'm a terrible sinner and your law tells the truth about me. But I believe the gospel and I believe it's for me. I believe Jesus came for me. He died for me. He was raised for me. And if that's your prayer, that's your faith, that's your hope, that's your trust. You are a member not only externally, which is good and necessary, but now you have the sufficient condition to be a Christian inwardly. Grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone. God grant us all, all of our churches, to grab hold of these basic truths. That a Jew is not one who was merely a Jew outwardly, but it was a Jew inwardly. That circumcision is not merely outward, it's inward. Baptism isn't merely outward, but inward. By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. That's what we learned in the Reformation. God grant us grace to relearn what we learned 500 years ago and deliver us from the bright and the brilliant who would seek to take away from us those basic and glorious and foundational truths in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.