3.12.23 Exodus 17:1-7
The entire Israelite community set out on their journey from the Wilderness of Sin as the Lord had commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 So the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why are you quarreling with me? Why are you testing the Lord?” 3 But the people were thirsty for water there, so they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you ever bring us up out of Egypt to let us, our children, and our livestock die of thirst?”
4 Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me!”
5 The Lord said to Moses, “Go in front of the people, and take the elders of Israel with you. Also take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Watch me. I will stand there in front of you on the rock in Horeb. You are to strike the rock. Water will come out of it, and the people will drink.” Moses did that in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 He named the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
The Rock Remains the Same
How much does it take to set you over the edge? I can recall one instance like that when trying to teach one of our children how to drive stick shift. Everything was going great, until we were on our way home. He kept on killing the car at a stop sign, and we had a line of about three cars behind us waiting to go. In the course of 30 seconds I went from calm, cool and collective to being panicked, angry and agitated. Somehow he put it in reverse, and the lady behind us honked. That was it for me. I had hit my breaking point.
That’s what happened with the Israelites in the desert. It wasn’t something so fickle as being honked at.
They didn’t have any water to drink at Rephidim. Water is kind of an important thing! You can only survive maybe 2 or 3 days without water. Rephidim was near the mountain range of Horeb, not far from Mt. Sinai. The hills would have been getting higher and the valleys would have been more narrow and full of huge rocks. They weren’t riding in air conditioned cars. They were WALKING with children and animals and carrying their stuff on their shoulders. The Israelites had reached that point, and Moses knew it. They were beyond a little testy. The gloves came off. We get a little snippet of their conversation here in vs. 2-3. “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why are you quarreling with me? Why are you testing the Lord?” 3 But the people were thirsty for water there, so they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you ever bring us up out of Egypt to let us, our children, and our livestock die of thirst?”
Notice first of all how they went after Moses. There were no magic words here and no humility. “Give us water to drink.” The word for “quarrel” means to accuse, to be in a state of hostility. Imagine someone pointing their finger at you, yelling and accusing you. They blamed Moses. Moses had led them out to this deserted area and they needed water. They didn’t have any. But it wasn’t even Moses’ fault. God told him to do it and God was the one leading them. When they complained to Moses, they were complaining against God.
The same thing can be true when we complain to our parents or our bosses or our teachers, and it’s not always all their fault. If your parent is asking a lot of you and maybe a little bit rude, maybe they have some health problems. Maybe they aren’t sleeping well. Maybe they’re under pressure to meet quotas that you know nothing about. Maybe they’ve been handed an impossible situation. So what do you do when their failures affect you? You lash out at them. You get angry at them. “Why can’t we get a new car?” “Why do I have to use this old junky phone?” “Why don’t we have any decent food in the house?” “Why can’t you find someone else to work?” You threaten to leave, or maybe even violence. But then you forget the Fourth Commandment. Honor your father and mother. Who are you to get so angry and demanding with people that God has placed you under? Are they trying to make your life miserable? Or have they been placed in an impossible situation?
They said, “Why did you ever bring us up out of Egypt to let us, our children, and our livestock die of thirst?” This is just dirty pool. They accused God of purposely and maliciously bringing them out of Egypt to die of thirst. “Yes, that’s it! God loves seeing people starve! He had that in His grand plans!” It’s so malicious. Accusations can fly in the home. “Why do you hate me?!?” “You love your job more than you love me.” “You never loved me.” “Why did you marry me?” Accusation after accusation, filled with vitriol and anger, assuming the absolute worst in a person. That’s what the Israelites were doing to God, accusing Him of malicious intent.
What did this show? Something was wrong inside of them. Their love of God was only there if He gave them what they wanted. They didn’t really trust that He wanted what was best for them, even in the hard times. Not only this. The Israelites were about to get violent. Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me!”
Here’s one other thing they said, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Now the LORD had literally and physically traveled over them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He was RIGHT THERE hidden in the cloud. Not too long before this God had just fed them with quail and manna. That was miraculous as well! Yet they STILL questioned God’s presence in spite of all of that.
Are we any better? Aren’t we the same as they? We have been told that the Holy Spirit is present in our baptism, making His home in us through water and the Word. We have been promised that Jesus is here with us in the Lord’s Supper, giving us His body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Jesus said that where two or three gather together in His name, here at church, He is right here with us. When we stay in the Word and sacrament in repentance and faith He says, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” He promised to send His angels to look over us and protect us. He promised to answer our prayers and even commanded us to pray, that’s how much He WANTS to help us. Do we turn to God in prayer for strength in a time of weakness? Do we take the Lord’s Supper for forgiveness and assurance? Or do we only measure God’s presence by how much money or happiness we have? When things don’t go our way, more often than not, we tend to doom and gloom and assume the worst of God. We have the same type of sinful nature.
Moses had a simple question for the Israelites. “Why are you testing the Lord?” Why are you poking the bear? Are you sure you want to do that? Every child that has a loving and patient parent can sometimes get away with a lot of garbage. Other parents see the child sassing back and say to themselves, “That child needs some discipline.” Sooner or later everyone has a breaking point. Even the most tolerant and giving parent runs out of resources sooner or later. How far will you take it? You think of videos you see on Youtube of people getting near a wild moose or buffalo. They look mild and beautiful, but you know what’s coming next. They think they’ll be safe, until they get trampled.
God is not a wild moose or buffalo, and that is a good thing. He is patient, far more patient than any human would ever be. He is kinder than anyone you could know. He is more giving than the most giving person. But you still should be careful not to push Him too far. Psalm 2:12 says, “his wrath can flare up in a moment.” That final moment seems quick, but in reality it was years in the making. When the Israelites complained years later, some of them were bitten by poisonous snakes and died.
As a good and faithful leader, Moses didn’t want the Israelites to be punished by God. So Moses cried to the Lord. Even though they were ready to stone him, Moses prayed for them. Prayer is important, especially for those who are testing the Lord, and even for those who are ready to attack you! God quickly and graciously answered His prayer. The Lord said to Moses, “Go in front of the people, and take the elders of Israel with you. Also take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Watch me. I will stand there in front of you on the rock in Horeb. You are to strike the rock. Water will come out of it, and the people will drink.” There’s no complaint from God. No threat of violence. Just pure gracious action. He wants the elders to be front and center. This is how God chooses to deal with human threats and rebellion.
Take your staff. That’s the staff that God had chosen to work through with the 10 plagues. He used the staff to strike the ground so that the dust would become gnats. He used the staff to turn the water to blood. He used the staff to have the Red Sea come crashing down on the Egyptian army. This staff was used multiple times by Moses to perform miracles in order to save the Israelites, and so it would happen again.
Go to the rock in Horeb. Was it a well known rock? It seems to have been. Did it stand by itself? I don’t know. But by simply striking a rock, God would have water come out of it. How logical is that? But that’s exactly what happened. Imagine the people standing around and a huge gusher came sprouting forth from the rock! Or maybe it was a trickle that flowed from beneath and turned into a lake. Either way, the people and cattle were given water to drink and live another day, another week, another year. It was more than enough to feed two million people. That’s a lot of water!
What does this show us? When you test God’s patience, what do you find? You find that He’s far more patient than you could ever imagine. When you doubt His giving, He gives all the more. His limits are far more than we could imagine. Think of when James and John wanted to call down fire and brimstone on some people of Samaria for rejecting Jesus. Jesus rebuked them. He was far more patient than they were. And that’s how God is with us, too. He’s not a God who is easily angered. It takes a lot for His anger to flare. Think about all of the things that the Israelites were doing prior to Him sending them into captivity. They were worshiping other gods, divorcing their wives for nothing, sacrificing their children alive. They were persecuting and killing His prophets for YEARS and years. It took a long time for God to finally say, “That’s enough.” God hasn’t changed. Yes, there are instances like Ananias and Sapphira that scare us and definitely keep us on our toes. Yet at the same time, He proves Himself to be far more patient than we can imagine most of the time.
What does this show us? If you’ve had those snotty moments with God, times that you’ve pushed His boundaries and gotten demanding of Him and even angry with Him, don’t fear that He’s so upset with you that He’d never let you back. Even if you’ve made a mess of your life, don’t think that you’ve gone past a point of no return. No matter where you’ve been He still wants EVERYONE to be saved all the time. He wants EVERYONE to repent, and that includes you, as long as you’re alive. Don’t fear that He won’t answer your prayer if you don’t say it with just the right attitude. God said through Ezekiel, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die? (Eze 33:11) In our Gospel lesson for today the woman at the well had had five men that she committed adultery with. He was MORE than patient with her. Yet Jesus waited for the right moment, reached out to her, and saved her, even after all she’d done. That’s grace.
The good news is, the Rock remains the same. Paul uses this story of the rock and the water and he says by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “That’s Jesus!” 1 Corinthian 10:4 says, “They drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.” He wanted the rock to be a picture of Jesus, and how He feeds and gives us the spiritual drink of forgiveness and mercy that keeps our hope and our souls alive. Jesus provided this water of mercy by His death on the cross. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (Jn 4:14) Jesus is the water Himself. We drink of Him when we see Him die for us and believe in Him. We drink of Him when we come to the Supper and receive His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. He quenches our thirst for grace and mercy when He says, “It is finished.” He quenches our hope for life after death when He comes from the grave and says, “Because I live, you too will live.”
They say that history repeats itself. It’s kind of interesting if you think about it. God used a rock, a piece of wood, some water, and the prophet Moses to graciously save the Israelites from starving. Years later, Jesus was baptized with water to enter into the public ministry and take our place. Jesus then died on a piece of wood called a cross to suffer and die for the sins of the world. Three days later, the angel rolled away the stone of the grave to prove His resurrection from the dead. Similar items, same grace that flows from the same merciful God.
Today we stand at the feet of Jesus, and history repeats itself again. We confess the same types of sins that the Israelites did. We bathe in Him at the waters of our baptism. We see His blood flow from the cross. We drink of that body blood in the Supper. We find grace and mercy from the same God, through similar means and the same Word. We look forward to the day that the stones of our graves are rolled away, by the grace and mercy of our patient and glorious God. History repeats itself with us and our children, as we go back to the same faithful source of mercy, grace, and forgiveness. On Christ, the Solid Rock I Stand. The Rock Remains the Same. Amen.
