Worthy Brief - 2/5/2026
Friend, learn the lesssons of the cloud and the sea!
1 Corinthians 10:2 all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,
After seeing God’s presence in the cloud and His power in the sea, Paul now brings us to the meaning of those experiences. He says Israel was baptized in both. That word is intentional. Baptism is never merely symbolic -- it speaks of identification, burial, and emergence into a new life. God was not only delivering a people; He was initiating a process meant to permanently change who they were.
Being baptized in the cloud and in the sea means God was working both around them and within them at the same time. The cloud surrounded them with God’s nearness and direction, while passing through the sea marked a decisive break with the old life. Together, these were not separate moments but one divine act: God bringing a people out and remaking them into something new.
Baptism always involves death before resurrection. The sea closed behind Israel, declaring that what once enslaved them no longer had the right to follow. Egypt’s power was broken, its authority ended. Yet the wilderness revealed a deeper struggle -- while Egypt could no longer pursue them, its mindset often still shaped them. Fear, complaint, and unbelief surfaced because the old life had been escaped, but not fully buried.
This is the tension Paul wants us to understand. A people can pass through baptismal waters and still resist inward transformation. They can experience salvation without fully walking in resurrection life. Baptism was meant to mark not only a change in position, but a change in nature. God’s intention was never partial freedom -- it was complete renewal.
This remains true for every generation longing for revival. We celebrate deliverance, but revival requires resurrection. We rejoice in what God brings us out of, but hesitate when He calls us to leave old patterns behind. Yet baptism declares that the old life no longer defines us. What was buried is not meant to be revisited. What died is not meant to be resurrected.
The Exodus teaches us that God never intended His people to live between deliverance and promise. Baptism was meant to move them into new life -- formed, transformed, and ready to inherit. Promise is entered by those willing to let God finish the work He began, allowing the old to stay buried and the new to rise.
Friend, this is the hour to live what baptism declared. God is not calling us to remember deliverance -- He is calling us to walk in resurrection life. Revival will not be sustained by those who only celebrate freedom from the past, but by those who have been transformed for the future. If we allow God to complete the work baptism began, we will rise as a renewed people—no longer shaped by what we escaped, but prepared to carry revival and usher in the harvest.
George & Baht Rivka (Melbourne, Florida)
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