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Reading Ex.17:1-7

Is God big enough to cope with the demands of modern life, our modern life? And does He really care enough about us anyway?

You know how any minister of the gospel will answer such questions when he stands in the pulpit don't you? But that doesn't stop us being troubled from time to time in our own personal experience.

When we meet, for example, with bitter disappointment we are can be tempted to doubt whether God is really with. One more difficulty may prove to be the straw that broke the camel's back and we practically behave as though God didn't exist!

That is what happened to the Israelites at Rephidim. They had been following after Moses as the LORD led from place to place and now they had arrived at Rephidim and there was no water! There wasn't even any brackish, bitter water that might be made drinkable at Rephidim there simply wasn't any water all!

Yes, the situation was serious and their concerns were both legitimate and understandable. How easily it is in such circumstances it is to fall prey such frustration and disillusionment. Instead of taking it all to the LORD in prayer and exercising faith towards Him the people quickly become hostile towards to God.

Now, let me point out to you that what happened to the Israelites then at Rephidim has happened time and again to the LORD's people. There isn't always an obvious abundance of resources capable of satisfying our needs and desires. Life at times as a Christian will be hard and spiritual refreshment may well appear hard if not impossible to come by.

How are we to react at such times? Well, let's remember that forewarned is forearmed! To know that such situations have been experienced by others of the LORD's people in the past and may well be our lot too from time to time should help preserve us from the knee jerk reaction of complaining that the LORD can't be with us as these Israelites did.

Let us remind ourselves of what the LORD has already done for us – hard circumstances led the Israelites into a sort of denial concerning what had happened to them up till then. They quarrelled and contended with Moses as though it had been Moses who had brought them out of Egypt – they make no reference to the LORD at all. Leaving the LORD out of the picture will certainly make a whole lot more difficult for us.

Now that doesn't mean that we can claim to understand exactly what the LORD is doing all the time and there may well be times when we neither "see" what He is doing nor "feel" that He is present with us. But that is just the time when we most need to take our feelings in hand and remind ourselves of what He has already done and what He has promised to do!

And really the procedure is oh so simple. It really isn't rocket science. In fact it is so simple that we may waste lots of time and energy needlessly looking for some more sophisticated solution.

What is this simple thing that we should do?

Pray!

And that is just what the Israelites didn't do! They preferred to criticise their leader and to instigate proceedings against his leadership. Why pray when you can take it out on some vulnerable individual? How easy it is to act like that!

Instead of pouring their hearts out to the LORD making their requests known to Him the Israelitesy busied themselves with grumbling and complaining. We can be just like them too.

Maybe you come to a service here or in some other church when you're away on holiday and you get nothing out of it. How are you going to react? You could go away mumbling and complaining and you could start asking the question Is the LORD really amongst us. Or you could go away and pray.

How easy the LORD has made it for us! Listen to some of the straightforward instructions contained in the Bible:

Phil.4:6  do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

Lk.11:9 "And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."

1Pet.5:6-7 "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you."

Jas.4:2-3 "You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions."

This was the way that Jesus faced up to His temptations in the wilderness. He refused to listen to Satan and to put the LORD to the test. The Israelites at Rephidim caved in and did just that.

Moses has been severely and unfairly criticised by the Israelites. It isn't easy to respond positively at such times! Moses responds to the criticism of the people with some probing questions – he wants them to realise just what the yare doing in reality – they may be contending with Moses but the LORD is the One they are really calling into question.

His questions were aimed at producing clear thinking. If they thought clearly they would act differently but they refuse to pay any heed at all. All they do is to counter with a question of their own that shouts their stubborn unbelief.

Are you like that? You are talking with someone who is trying to help by reminding you of some Bible truth which they think will help you but you snap back. You might protest that you know all that or you may react in a different way but the results are the same – you refuse to allow truth to enlighten your situation, you refuse to allow light to expose your wrong thinking, your wrong attitudes.

So Moses does the only good thing he can do, he turns to cry to the LORD. He knows he can't provide for the people himself the LORD must provide for them all. It has all become so urgent as the people are ready in their disgruntlement to stone Moses!!

How often we call feel that everything has got catastrophically out of control! But the LORD is not at all fazed by what turns up.

Moses prays and instructions are simply and clearly given concerning what he must do and how the LORD promises Himself to meet their need.

Moses must lead the way further forward. The people have doubted that the LORD is in their midst so when He provides for them in a miraculous way He will not do in their midst and only the elders of the people will actually witness what takes place.

The people have doubted His power to provide for them and called into question His care for them. So He will provide in a way that will demonstrate in the clearest possible manner His ability to take care of them – He will bring fresh drinking water gushing out of the rock for them to drink. How impossible it is to squeeze water out of a stone – but the LORD will not provide just a few drops but gushing torrents as Moses obediently strikes the rock with his staff.

There is an irony here too. The staff that Moses was to use now was the same staff that he had used to strike the Nile – then the staff had been an instrument of death as the waters of the Nile were made undrinkable but here that same staff is used to provide life giving refreshment!

And it all takes place as the LORD stands on the rock before them witnessed by the elders of the people.

God provided for His people and vindicated His name and reputation! His power had been made evident and His care for His people amply demonstrated. This is of such importance that it must not be allowed to be forgotten – the place is named Massah and Meribah! It will be a reminder of the time when the people questioned and tested the LORD!

And the name of the place was not forgotten.

In Ps.95 we read:

Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. 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.” Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”

These verses7+8 are further picked up and quoted as instruction in the NT:

Heb3:7-11 "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.”’"

The writer of this letter goes on to urge his readers and us to learn from the example of the Israelites in the OT:

Heb.3:12-14 "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end."

And it is not the writer to the Hebrews alone who links this episode in some way to Christ. Paul writing to the Christian church in Corinth wrote very explicitly about it:

1Cor.10:1-4 "I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ."

The happenings that were commemorated by the careful naming of the place as Massah and Meribah pointed back to how faithful the LORD had been in meeting the material and temporal needs of His people.

We have temporal needs but we also have far greater spiritual needs and Paul points us to how these are met for us by Christ.

Roger Ellsworth, in his helpful book Moses: God's Man for Challenging Times, points out a number of parallels between the rock Moses struck and the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

ü  The Israelites would have perished without water, sinners will perish eternally without the salvation Christ offers

ü  The rock was an unlikely place to get water – the Cross appears an unlikely way by which God would provide eternal salvation:

1Cor.1:18 "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

ü  Moses had to smite the rock for the blessing of water to flow – the Lord Jesus Christ had to be struck on the cross in order that salvation might flow.

Is.53:5 "But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed."

ü  Moses had to strike just once – 40 years later he struck the rock again when he should only have spoken and was judged severely – similarly Christ would suffer just once!

Heb.9:27-28 "And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him."

ü  The water that flowed from the rock was more than sufficient for satisfying the need of the Israelites – similarly the salvation flowing from Christ's death is ample to deal with all our sins!

Heb 9:14 "how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God."

ü  The water from the rock had to be drunk by each individually if their thirst was to be slaked. The salvation offered by Jesus Christ must be personally appropriated and received by faith.

The rock in the wilderness suffered by being struck by Moses' staff but it was struck because the LORD God determined that this would be the way He would provide for His people. The Lord Jesus Christ was struck because the LORD God determined that this was the way by which He would provide salvation for His people.

Just as the rock being struck in the wilderness was no chance happening neither was the death of Christ but purposed and planned by the LORD God.

If you have come to understand what has been done for you on the Cross of Calvary, that it was indeed the will of the LORD to crush Him, having laid upon Him the iniquity of us all, then go on your way rejoicing and trusting Him to go on providing for you.

Amen.