WATER Exodus 17

God may test us, but we may not test him. Testing God means that we plan to do what we know to be wrong and see if God will do anything about it. Sinning deliberately is a terrible, terrible thing. It means we know what God has said about something, but we are going to go our own way.

Hebrews 10.26,27 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

Israel was trying to play hardball with God and get a better deal from him. They were attempting to force him into proving himself to them by giving them more of what they wanted. They had no genuine interest in God’s purpose for Israel – they just craved to have their individual wants satisfied. This attracted God’s anger.

Psalm 78

14 In the daytime God led them with a cloud, and all the night with a fiery light.
15 He split rocks in the wilderness
and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.
16 He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers.

17 Yet they sinned still more against him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert.
18 They tested God in their heart
by demanding the food they craved.
19 They spoke against God, saying,
“Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
20 He struck the rock so that water gushed out and streams overflowed.
Can he also give bread
or provide meat for his people?”

21 Therefore, when the Lord heard, he was full of wrath; a fire was kindled against Jacob; his anger rose against Israel,
22 because they did not believe in God and did not trust his saving power.

Today, we must take to heart what happened then in the desert. It has been given to us as a warning:

Psalm 95.

Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
11 Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”

_______________________________________________________________________________

Considering what we learned last week about God’s gracious and timely provision of manna for the Israelites, you would assume that when a shortage of water became an issue that they would have immediately recalled that God was already providing their daily bread! It seems reasonable that when the lack of water was discovered each family would join together to seek God in prayer – asking him to supply the needed water. But not Israel. They reverted to their usual behaviour of complaining. They quarrelled with Moses (even threatening him) instead of praying to God. They showed no interest in or understanding of the character of God. Even although God was providing them bread daily (manna), they doubted he would also provide water if they asked him. They denied that God was their Father. They hated him and were only reluctantly following Moses. They wanted to be ordered around (they still had the Egyptian slave mentality) because in a perverse way it is easier to be a slave. You don’t have to take responsibility for your actions. You don’t have to share the vision of your Master. You reserve the right to complain and blame if things appear to go wrong. This is one of the most damning and shameful characteristics of human nature.

Israel threatened Moses and demanded that he give them water to drink (2). In quarrelling with Moses they were complaining against God, because Moses was the one he had appointed to lead them. In effect, they were saying to God via Moses: “You brought us here – it was your idea – this is your project – so provide for us!” They were not at all committed to God’s plan for them. This generation had given their hearts to Egypt and they were being dragged towards the Promised Land against their will. Moses calls their behaviour: “Testing God” (8). They produced complaints and demands instead of humility and prayers.

Moses turned to the Lord; where else could he turn? God gave him an instruction and the capacity to carry it through. God told him to walk out in full view of all the people, with their representatives (elders) beside him. He was told to carry the staff, the instrument of judgement with which he had brought down the various plagues on Egypt. This stick had struck the Nile and brought disaster on Egypt. There must have been some concern among the people as Moses solemnly strode out before them with the rod of judgement in his hand. When he had wielded that stick in the past, God had acted decisively, and the sight of Moses with the rod in his hand implied that God was going to judge again.

However, there was so much more going on here than even the Israelites realised. God was about to provide them with water. Obviously this was not a sign of weakness on God’s part, nor was it a confirmation that people should challenge God and make demands of him for what they want or need. These people were testing God. They were trying to manipulate him into giving them what they wanted by demanding that he give it as proof of his presence. The audacity and disrespect of these people knew no bounds. They deserved God’s judgement and he sent Moses out with the rod and it looked for a moment as if judgement was about to fall on them.

But unknown to the people, God had told Moses that he was right there with him and that he (God) would stand on a massive rock there in that place; Horeb. God said: “I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” There was no image of God, no angel and no form of him standing on the rock; but God was identifying himself with the rock.

By beating the rock, Moses was striking God! God was himself bearing the disrespect and sin of these people – like a punishment he didn’t deserve. He was for the time being withholding his judgement on them (though it was surely deserved) and bearing it himself so that the people could have water and live. How would they respond to such astonishing grace? How will you and I respond to the grace of God who bears the deserved judgement against our sin? Will we consider his patience to be a kind of ‘softness’? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. Romans 2.4-5

The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 2 Peter 3.9

The meaning is clear: Don’t mistake God’s patience with you as ‘softness’ or unwillingness to deal with evil – even when it is found in you. His patience invites you to repent.

Israel was not receiving water as a reward for their good service; they were not even receiving it as an answer to their prayers (for they had refused to pray)! They were receiving the water because God had redirected his judgement from them onto himself - for the time being. God was very graciously giving them time to come to their senses and repent of their evil. Sadly that generation did not repent and nearly all of them died in the desert during the 40 years of wandering and never reached the Promised Land.

So on the day of their thirst and complaining God directed Israel’s attention to a rock that would burst forth with water sufficient for about two million people. There is much more to this rock than they realised. Paul plainly identifies Christ as the Person of God who was accompanying Israel in the desert.

1 Corinthians 10.1 For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. 6 Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.

Paul identifies Christ as the ‘spiritual Rock’ that followed them. This doesn’t mean that a large rock rolled along behind the Israelites as they traveled in the desert! It means that Christ was there and that he demonstrated his presence by ensuring they had a water supply and by twice producing a spring of water out of solid rock. The spiritual water they drank was the miraculously supplied ordinary H₂0 that gave them the strength to march on. That generation’s only success was being the parents of the next generation who would persevere into the Promised Land. Paul reminds us that although all the people shared in the water, they displeased God and were ‘overthrown’ in the wilderness. They never cared about God’s glory or his programme, so he abandoned them. Their bodies ended up strewn in the desert. You could retrace their path back to Egypt by following the bones of that rebellious generation – their own bones that they left in the desert.

There seem to be three levels at which this ‘rock and water’ incident can be understood:

First, at the most basic level of thirst: Israel arrived at a place with no water supply and was in danger of suffering dehydration and death. The people unjustly complained to Moses and blamed God for abandoning them. Moses called on God who instructed him to strike a rock with the staff he had given him. Moses did so and water flowed out to nourish the people. In this way, God graciously provided water as a rebuke to disobedient and faithless people. Israel had demanded to know if God was among them or not and God showed it by redirecting his wrath on the Rock instead of them. But they were blind to it all. They only saw water and felt satisfied that by complaining they had got what they wanted.

On the second, deeper level, Moses and a very few faithful individuals recognised that God had carried the iniquity (evil) of the complaining Israelites by having their punishment directed at himself (he had said to Moses that he was standing on the rock that was being struck). Though not fully understood by them, Moses and the faithful few realised that God was prepared to buy time for the rebels by absorbing their rebellion.

Going deeper than that, to the third level, we need to look at this incident using insights from the New Testament. There we learn that this incident was prophetic of what Jesus Christ would do for his people. Christ was present there with Moses, though even he did not grasp fully what that meant. The rod that struck the rock was prophetic of God’s judgement falling on Christ for the sins of his people. It was fulfilled at the cross when Jesus Christ was ‘smitten by God and afflicted’ and ‘upon him was laid the chastisement that brought us peace’ (Isaiah 53.4,5).

The day of the rock struck by Moses’ stick and producing life-saving water, foreshadowed the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is our Rock that was struck with the judgement due to us. He is the substitute who absorbed God’s wrath against us and who became for us a spring or fountain of life. John 7.37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. Jesus gained for us the Holy Spirit who comes to live in our spirits and by joining us to Jesus Christ becomes a spring of living water within the Christian. Jesus both deflects the sentence of death and supplies inexhaustible life.

Zechariah made a similar prophecy (13.1) “On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.

What should we learn from all this?

1. Christ is our Rock. He accompanies his own people in the spiritual desert that is this world. We live under the shadow of that Rock and drink from its life-giving water. Jesus is like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.(Isaiah 32). If Christ associates himself so closely in our life journey, to protect, nourish and provide – then we should ask for what we need. He promised that we would receive whatever we need simply by asking the Father in his name.

2. Complaining is evil. Humility and prayer is the right response to every trouble or lack.

3. If Christ actually bore the blows of God’s wrath against my evil and if he is the source of all my life and endurance, then the business with God that Christ did for me at the cross must be at the forefront of my thinking daily. I must retain my place of utter dependence on him, never asserting my own self or my own selfish wants.

4. If the bones of a whole generation of Israelites that saw and tasted God’s power and help were left in the desert, then I must learn from their serious errors. I must never test God by planning to do what I know to be wrong. At all costs I must avoid becoming the bleached bones of failed Christians on the path of life.

5. When Paul taught the Corinthians (1 Cor 10) about Christ being the Rock in the desert and about Israel’s terrible failure to respond properly to Him – he gave these applications:

· Don’t desire evil (10.6). Sort through the things you love to do, to have, to experience and to long for; are these godly desires? If they are not, and if any of them are things that cannot be received by faith in Jesus Christ – then ditch them immediately. Seek holiness. Long for perfection.

· Don’t be an idolater (10.7). That generation of Israelites loved Egypt and we might love the things and experiences available in the world. This really is idolatry and it is dangerous. John chimed in on this when he said: If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 Jn 2.15. He said this because the world has death at its core – rotting, destructive ruin. Strive to see through the world’s attractions – get insight and wisdom to perceive what lies beneath the veneer. Don’t be deceived by the packaging. Don’t be sucked in by the images only to feed on the ashes of death.

· Don’t indulge in sexual immorality (10.8). The Israelites were easily distracted by one another’s bodies and quick sensation of liveliness that sex promised. But they gave up their bodies to death because they never prized holiness.

· Don’t put Christ to the test (10.9).

· Don’t grumble (10.10). Complaining is the substitute for prayer. Complaining demands that God change to accommodate our plans. Prayer seeks God’s strengthening so that we can measure up to his plans.

Come, drink and live!