1. The fact is, brethren, baptism and partaking of the bread and wine, and your membership in the Church of Christ show forth your status as the spiritually elect of God — but remember, you are not thereby perfected. There may yet come another falling away, as with those who were called in the old days in a similar manner to us.
2. What though they were all under the cloud in the moment of revelation, and all passed through the sea,
3. and all ate the spiritual manna
4. and drank the spiritual drink which flowed from the rock. The rock is said to have followed them wherever they went. That rock means the Christ.
5. Now mark and learn the lesson. Many of those original founders of our faith “were slain in the wilderness” (Num. xiv. 16).
6. The perfect will of God was not fulfilled in them and thereby we can discern the truth about ourselves, for they are types. They teach us not to lust, as some of them “lusted” (Num. xi. 4, 34).
7. Yes, our fathers took part in that great piece of history, they witnessed that divine manifestation of God, and yet though part of all that, they were not all elect. There took place in their midst a corresponding reprobation and apostacy of some. They worshipped idols, and made an image to Jehovah, and made a pagan rite of his sacrifice. “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” (Exod. xxxii. 6)
8. They committed fornication, and 23,000 fell in one day.
9. They tempted the Lord, and were destroyed by serpents.
26-27. Similarly, you can dine with friends not of the faith, and eat whatever they set before you. That is our freedom. “Is not the earth the Lord's and the fulness thereof?” (Ps. xxiv. 1).
31-32. Seek not your own point of view, lean not to that, although you know yourself to be as free as Christ has made you in all such matters of eating and drinking, or whatever other things you may be doing, but seek the glory of the one God, seek to commend yourself to all men, whether your company be Jewish, Greek or those who are of the faith. O think not of yourselves, but of them!