Exodus 17 • Squeezing Water from a Rock

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

 As you think about God's calling, I want to take you to the Scriptures, and I'll ask you to look in your Bibles at Exodus 17. Exodus 17. As you're turning, let me pray for us.



 "Heavenly Father, just as my friend prayed for me, I pray that you would equip this people



 with holy, Ghost power, even by their understanding of your Word and its critical nature for the eternities of those that you put in our lives and for our own heart's sake.



 Grandfather, your Spirit now to guide us through your Word, we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen."



 Exodus 17, verses 1 through 7. We say it so easily, "Three strikes and you're out."



 This is strike four.



 Three times already, Moses has recorded that the rescued people begin to grumble against God because they are not getting it all the way they want.



 Last week, we get manna in the morning and meet at night.



 What's the problem now?



 Where's the water to wash it down?



 And they begin to grumble again.



 Here is what the Lord says, Exodus 17, verses 1 through 7. "All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord and camped at Rephidim.



 But there was no water for the people to drink.



 Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water to drink." And Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me?



 Why do you test the Lord?"



 But the people thirsted there for water and the people grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?"



 So Moses cried to the Lord.



 What shall I do with this people?



 They are almost ready to stone me.



 And the Lord said to Moses, "Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel and taking your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. Behold 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."



 And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel and he called the name of the place Masah and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel and because they tested the Lord by saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"



 Now keep your finger right there and turn to the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 10, verses 1 through 4 where Paul is going to comment on this very event to explain it. 1 Corinthians 10, verses 1 through 4, if you're using the grace bibles at your seats, that's page 957.



 1 Corinthians 10, verses 1 through 4, Paul's explaining the meaning not just for them but for us.



 He writes, "For I do not want you to be unaware, 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."



 Now a lot of you know the old preacher story.



 There was a Sunday school teacher that wanted to explain to her children the importance of storing up the Word of God in their hearts. "Thy Word have I stored in my heart that I might not sin against thee." And she thought, "Storing up in your heart, what's an example of that?" Oh, squirrels, the way they score up acorns. And so she said to the children, "Chill, I'm going to tell you something, I'm going to describe it, and what I want you to do is when you know what I'm talking about, raise your hand."



 What I'm thinking about gathers acorns in the fall and eats them in the winter.



 No hands went up.



 Well children, it lives in trees and chatters and chases its friends up and down the limbs.



 No hand went up.



 Children it has gray fur and a bushy tail.



 No hand went up.



 The teacher began to look lost and exasperated, and finally one of the Sunday school kids lifted up his hand and she said, "Mikey, what is it?" He said, "I know the answer is Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me."



 Now most of you have heard that before.



 Here's a variation.



 It's made of mineral.



 It's craggy and hard, big as a boulder, and found in the desert.



 What is it?



 Paul the Apostle says, "I know it sounds like a rock, but it's really Jesus."



 Isn't that what he said? The rock was Jesus.



 How do you get from a stone to a Savior?



 And why is God squeezing Jesus out of a rock? Maybe a better question.



 Why is he sharing Jesus with a people whose hearts are hard as stone?



 After all, they are the people who are grumbling again because even though God has released them, rescued them, given them freedom from their chains, all they can perceive in the moment is the immediate crisis.



 And as a consequence, they forget everything that has passed and put God on trial. Do you care or not?



 What is God teaching us?



 That even though we know gratitude is supposed to be in our hearts, even though we can look back and say there's been freedom from my sin, provision for my family, rescue for our lives, it's the immediate crisis, my job, my family, my hurt, that totally eclipses our thoughts.



 And so we complain against God, even though we know gratitude is supposed to be in there. What is God teaching us and how?



 You know, most of the time when we work in the Scriptures, particularly in the Old Testament, we are moving toward that "aha" moment when we see that the meaning of a text is ultimately revealing some aspect of the gospel that will culminate in the New Testament.



 But for now, let's cut to the chase.



 How does a rock become Jesus in the mind of the Apostle Paul? Think of the situation. You already know most of it. God has freed the Israelites from their chains, which have been of their own cause. It was the betrayal of Jacob's son that got them into Egypt in the first place. It was the response of their idolatry that has kept them enslaved before Pharaoh. But now they have been rescued and they have riches that have come from Egyptian households as they are saying, "Just get out of here."



 And not only riches, but rescue from the Egyptian army through the Red Sea divide. And not only the rescue through the Red Sea, but now provision in the desert daily, meet at night, man in the daytime.



 You would think they would be grateful.



 But they say, "Does God care or does He not?



 Because we do not have water to drink."



 We get it, but we may not see what is actually happening until we look at the words closely. The end of verse 2, as Moses is listening to the new grumbles, the new complaints, he actually asked the people a question at the end of verse 2, "Why do you test the Lord?"



 Always before when the people were grumbling, God said, "I will test my people to see if they are really committed to me." In this particular place, the test is reversed.



 God says, "They are testing me." And Moses actually says it, "You are putting God on trial." And not only is the grumbling reversing the test, it is turning up the volume. What are the people willing to do because they are upset? Moses actually says at the end of verse 4, "They are almost ready to stone me." There are stones on the desert, and here is the rescuer of God's people, and they are ready to kill him because they are frustrated with his God.



 It's not only reversed order, it is high intensity hate because the people are not getting what they want. How will God now respond? Verse 5, "The Lord said to Moses, "Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel."



 Go to the head of things, pass by all the other people, take the elders with you so they can observe and the people can observe you all.



 Then take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile. Remember when you touched the Nile and it turned to blood so the plague came upon Israel that they could no longer sustain life by the means that they chose?



 Take that same staff, verse 6, "And behold, 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."



 We have to picture it as we now know the events are unfolding. When God is appearing to his people at this time while they are in the wilderness, they are being led by a pillar of fire at night, but one in the daytime, pillar of cloud. They are being led by a cloud. Now God who's appearing to his people in the cloud says, "I'm going to stand on the rock," which means for God to stand on the rock, He must surround the rock.



 And the word that He uses, describe His posture, "I will stand upon the rock." We don't hear it in the English. It's the actual word for the posture of a servant.



 "I will stand in humility before my people upon the rock, and then you take the staff of my authority, knowing I have ordered this, and you strike the rock."



 For Moses to strike the rock, what does he have to hit first?



 He's got to hit his God who is in a posture of a servant before his people in order to provide for their salvation.



 I know it's a rock. It sure sounds like Jesus to me.



 Here is God bowing before his people at the authority of God, allowing himself to be struck in order to provide life for his people.



 What God is teaching them as well as us is the magnitude of His grace so that when we are facing the difficulties that threaten to overwhelm us, that He clips all other goodness of God, that we will still understand the rock. When the psalmist looks back at this event in Psalm 78, he actually says it specifically, the people of God remembered that God was their rock and the Most High their Redeemer. What are the takeaways? If I say here are the people grumbling, and God who could just turn and walk away instead provide salvation for his people through his own humility, what am I learning? First take away, the power of our God is great.



 He can bring water out of the desert. He can divide the Red Sea. He can overcome the gods of Pharaoh. He can overcome the chariots of Pharaoh. My God is so great.



 He is so strong and so mighty, there's nothing my God cannot do. Those of you who had kids, you may remember how your kids sang that song, right? My kids sang it looking like Hulk Hogan.



 My God is so great, so strong and so mighty, there's nothing my God cannot do.



 But it's not a child's song we are to remember.



 It is the actual power of our God.



 Moses take that staff with which you touched the Nile in such a way that an entire river could no longer sustain life and instead touch a rock in the desert so that the desert can no longer deny life to my people. I don't just have great power. I have the power of life and death. I have the power to accomplish my will in all the earth. The rocks and the rivers are mine and I control. My God is so great, so strong and so mighty, there is nothing my God cannot do. And I need that when I have a week like this past one. You're enough of my church family. I will just tell you that for some of us in the room, this was one of the most disappointing ministry weeks of my time here at Grace Church. We had a true ministry setback that deeply profoundly disappointed us. And when that happens, I must tell you my own mind rushes to, "Where did God go? What is He doing? Is He here?" And I need in my own heart to hear the words again, "My God is so strong, so great, there's nothing my God cannot do." My blessing was going to the mayor's prayer breakfast and listening to Carl Cannon, who works with the elite program for children's development in the inner city of this town. And to listen to Carl talk about his own story where so much could have gone wrong, where God rescued him out of the abyss of his own experience and his own pride, so that now not only does he have ministry of God, he has this ministry touching the lives of young people and they, more people, for the rescue of not just their lives, but maybe much of our own town.



 Why does he work for their sake?



 Carl was so clear. He said, "What I hope the kids that I work with walk away with, whether they see my life or recognize where they are down the road, is they will look back and say, we are here



 because somebody helped us.



 Not my power, not my doing. We are here because somebody helped us." And I got to remember that too. If we are in this ministry, if I have family, if I have salvation, if I have eternity secure, then it's not the day that's supposed to overwhelm me. It is the reality of the greatness of my God that's to capture my thought, capture my thinking, capture my songs, and uplift, capture my heart again. Who after all is that somebody who is here to help us?



 Paul said it so clearly when looking back on this event, "That rock was Christ that followed after them."



 The language is hard on us. The rock that followed after them was Christ.



 How does a rock fall after you? Is it kind of rolling through the sand of the desert? You know, is this some sort of R2D2, BB8 who's kind of following after them? What's happening?



 Notice what Paul just described.



 He said, "Remember, when you went through the Red Sea, there was God who was ahead of you, who then parted the waters on both sides of you, and then went behind you as a rear guard to protect you from what was behind you, the Egyptians."



 Here is God surrounding His people wherever they go. It's kind of like if you can picture it, this may not be a real holy example, but I think of my kids when they started playing soccer. You know, whenever kids start playing soccer, it's magnet ball, right? There's the ball, and all the kids gather around it. And no matter where the ball goes, you get those kids grouped all around it. And here is God following after the children of Israel, no matter where they go, as if to say, "I'm not just ahead of you. I'm not just to your right and to your left, but I am your rear guard, protecting you from what is behind you as well. That is how great I am." And I think why we need to hear that. Of the moms who at the end of a day with children they love, nonetheless, in frustration and fatigue and exasperation snap and say or do things they cannot even imagine was true of themselves and now cannot sleep at night because of remembering what I did. Don't you want to know that my God is not just ahead of me, but behind me, protecting me from what was back there? How much I need to recognize and you need to recognize? God is saying, "Your past is not defining you. I'm the God who is ahead of you. I have plans for you, but I am the God who has cut you off from your past by my great power. It's not the past that controls you. My God is so great, so strong and so mighty. There's nothing my God cannot do, as I believe He can even move me beyond my past." I think of one of the most compelling sermons I ever heard from John Piper was he was just honestly unveiled before young men and he was saying, "How many of you who are blessed by God, able, know the Scriptures, desire to be used in ministry and mission for the glory of God, but you have checked yourself out because of the pornography that characterizes your life day after day?



 You must believe your past does not define you.



 My God has cut off the past so that we can move forward in the grace and plan that He intends for us. Our past does not define us." I think of my own children at times when they have faced the huge disappointments of not getting into the grad school that they might have wanted and believe because there is that failure in the past that there's no future.



 And I need to be able to say, we need to be able to say that child to grandchild to what your potential minister, missionary, moms, dads, your past does not define you. The God who is ahead of you and on both sides of you has said, "I am your rear guard too."



 And what would promise to attack you and destroy you from the past? God says, "I have cut that off. I am the God of the yesterday as well as the God of tomorrow. Trust me because my power is so great."



 And He's not just telling us here that His power is great. He's telling us how great is His provision so that we will trust Him. We read so simply the words that are in the middle of verse 6, "And water shall come out of the rock and the people will drink."



 And we just fly right past it. The people will drink.



 What people?



 How many people?



 Do you remember that when the Bible is describing the number of people who come out of slavery in Egypt, it describes them as 600,000 fighting men, men of warrior age. It doesn't number their children and there would have been large households. It doesn't number their spouses. It doesn't number granddaddy or grandmother.



 Those who do the estimates say coming out of Egypt had to be between two and even six million people.



 And of course that's not all that has to drink in the desert. You have all of their animals as well, the goats and the sheep and the camels. And if you just kind of in common estimation say, "All right, so you look at there's somewhere between four and eight million creatures that have to be watered in the desert." Each of them being, you know, just a rough estimate, a gallon of water a day to survive in the desert.



 You have millions of gallons of water that have to come out of this rock. It's blowing away our image that is in all the Sunday School literature. What did it look like when the water came out of this rock? Well we all know, we've seen the picture, you know, this little gentle stream coming out of the rock. There the sheep on the hill behind, children kind of wade in the wading pool and mom is gathering in old little picture of water out.



 Do the math.



 You have at least a quarter million gallons an hour. You have at least four to eight thousand gallons a minute. You got a tanker truck a minute coming out of this thing. This is not a stream. This is not a fire hydrant. This is a flash flood.



 When the psalmist describes it in Psalm 78, he simply says, "A river came out of the rock."



 God is providing overwhelming blessing to whom?



 To the people who are putting Him on trial, who have turned from Him, who are accusing Him, who want to murder Moses because they are not getting what they want. What are we learning? Not just our common humanity, but the response of God to sinful, broken, weak, frustrated, exasperated, complaining, grumbling people.



 He is saying to them and He is saying to us, "I will get your heart.



 I will do what I must to get your heart." And so He is telling them of the preparation that has to come in order for them to fulfill the purposes He has for them. The preparation of grace, just think where we are in the book of Exodus. Some of you know, this is Exodus 17. We are three chapters from the Ten Commandments where God is going to say, "This is how you honor Me. This is what will be required for obedience to glorify and honor My name in the land to which I call you."



 But we may have missed verse 8 as well. I didn't take you that far.



 We learn as well in verse 8 of Exodus 17, "Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephadem."



 Israel is running. The Amalekites are coming. Do you remember? For 400 years, God has not sent Israel into the Promised Land because He says the iniquity of the Amalekites was not yet full. Those who are sacrificing their children, those who are wicked, evil, but powerful warriors, so much so that when Israel comes up to the banks of the Jordan ready to go into the Promised Land, they are so terrified that they say, "We can't go in there. We will look like grasshoppers next to those giants."



 And here we are being told that God is dealing with a people who are whining, grumbling, complaining, wanting to murder Moses, who are going to be his warriors to claim the promises of the future. So what does God do with these people?



 He gives them profound, overwhelming grace.



 Here is watered abundance. You're complaining again. Here is my love again. You are thinking, "I cannot do it. I am so great.



 And I am so gracious that you can trust me and turn to me and honor me no matter what comes." It is so important that you see the grace comes before the commands. The grace comes before the war as God is saying, "I will claim your heart before I ask anything else of you."



 Maybe that sounds easy to believe.



 Even in the church, we struggle with it. Is God really going to be gracious to me before I meet His commands and His requirements? Is He really preparing me by claiming my heart before He claims the need of my obedience?



 I think of a long and dear friend of mine who in our terms of today struggled with same-sex attraction.



 Wanted to honor the Lord, sought counsel, sought help.



 And by God's great grace found a significant measure of victory over the lifestyle patterns that He had pursued until He lost His job.



 And then the depression and the despair weakened Him.



 And seeking some relief, He turned back to the lifestyle.



 I did not hear from Him for months.



 And then the phone call, request for an appointment, our time together.



 And He told the story.



 Brian from the time of my sin, God has given me a new job.



 And it's in a different place where I'm not tempted by the same friends that I've been tempted by before.



 And I have a church that loves me and people who support me knowing about me.



 Brian, I betrayed you.



 And I rebelled against God.



 And all God is doing is blessing me and blessing me and blessing me. He said, "It's not supposed to work that way, is it?"



 And I had the privilege of saying to Him what I would say to you.



 God will do whatever is necessary to get your heart. He may show overwhelming blessing in order to pull you back from the abyss, in order to show you what His real nature is like. I am not saying that God will never discipline sin, because God disciplines those that He loves.



 But His love is to say, "Do I need to turn you this way? Do I need to turn you that way? Is it by overwhelming blessing? Is it by the deprivation of the things that you are counting on for blessing?" God will do whatever is necessary to get your heart.



 And I say that recognizing it's difficult for us even to believe in the church. I am haunted, I must tell you, I am haunted by the experience of, you know, being in a room and walking into a room where sometimes young people or older people, suddenly because the pastor's in the room, you know, the conversation changes and the language cleans up. Because you know, I've never heard those words.



 And the impression so often is, as long as we maintain some level of behavior that is acceptable in the church or to the pastor or to my parents, then I'm a Christian.



 And we begin to base our status before God on how bad was our language or how good is our pattern of who we're sleeping with or not. And we begin to assess we're okay with God because other people don't know what's really in our hearts.



 What we're really struggling with, what we're really willing to do if other people did not know.



 And so God, instead of saying, "Do you not understand? I am not evaluating our relationship based upon your behavior, not upon the pattern that you're just artificially putting upon yourself so that you'll get other people's approval or stay out of trouble."



 God is saying, "I am saying I do not want the obedience that is mere begrudging following of standards that you do not believe in." God is saying, "I want you to believe that I love you and I have a plan for your life and I have such zeal for your own heart that I will do whatever is necessary to claim you so that your heart is not just saying, "I will do this out of begrudging slavery to God." No, you have been freed from slavery. What we are being called to do is to love God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we do so because we have seen how great is His grace toward us.



 It changes us. It changes our world. When we recognize we are not just kind of meeting some measure of acceptance in order to be Christians, God is saying, "I will not even accept that basis of your standing before me. I will have your heart first before the commands, before the battles. I will have your heart."



 And that is tough because of the people that He's dealing with. You have to recognize not just the provision of grace that is preparing people for the commands. As they love God, they will now want to follow Him, preparing them for the battles. Because they love and trust God, they will face whatever enemies they must face.



 They have to learn to trust God's pardon as well.



 And so He teaches them that grace also. Verse 2, right at the end, "Why do you quarrel with me?" said Moses.



 Why do you test the Lord?



 Not so obvious to you in your English Bibles. The word "test" is actually the word for a lawsuit.



 Why are you taking the Lord to trial?



 Not only do they have a lawsuit against God, they know what the verdict will be. They have said what God is trying to do. Into verse 3, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?"



 So much are they bringing an accusation against God that Moses will later call this place "masa," which means place of trial, and "miraba," which means dispute.



 This place where you dispute with God by putting Him on trial, despite the fact that He has shown you how great is His grace toward you. You complain. No, you do more than complain.



 You call God a murderer, and that same God gives them living water in response.



 It is not the first time.



 It will not be the last time that God provides for people who cannot provide for themselves, who deserve it none at all.



 In the play, "The Sign of Jonah," a group of refugees like these Israelites is struggling to understand what they must endure in a broken, fallen, and cruel world.



 And ultimately because they cannot explain it, they also put God on trial.



 God is to blame. Our children are suffering. God is to blame. We don't have the food that we want. God is to blame. We don't have the homes that we like. God is to blame.



 So they put God on trial, and God is found guilty.



 So this becomes their judgment.



 The crime is so severe that there will have to be the worst of all possible sentences for God.



 He has to suffer as his creatures have.



 God has to live on the earth as a human being. Let him know what it's like to be obscure and poor. Let him be born as a refugee on the backside of nowhere with a peasant girl for his mother.



 Let there be suspicion and shame about his birth for all of his life.



 Let him know what it's like to feel disappointment and failure without others understanding. Make sure he suffers pain and let him be executed as one who is betrayed, isolated, friendless, and abandoned.



 And the lights go down and the play is over.



 As we are made to understand, the sentence was carried out against God by the authority of God.



 He sent his son to bear the verdict that you and I should have paid by our sin. And he who would come in obscurity and poverty, he who would be rejected of man, he who would die upon the cross in excruciating pain, he would be betrayed and isolated and abandoned. He did it all willingly for you and for me who deserved none of it and could not have made it happen by any work of our hands.



 Why?



 So that our hearts will say, "How great is our God!



 His power is amazing. His provision more amazing still and His grace amazing beyond my comprehension and beyond my sin." He has cut me away from my past. It need not rule my life. He has said, "I will provide what is needed for you before you can even obey me. And when your obedience has failed me, I will still go after your heart with everything in me.



 Because I am the great God who redeems the broken and claims the brokenhearted and forgives the sinner.



 And in Jesus Christ my son, I have shown you that. He took the verdict for you that you might have grace from me."



 Father, I pray for the people who are here this day, recognizing that as we are on this journey of grace, we hear and see things that confound us as you are so zealous for the gospel from the beginning that you will make your people face the reality of your provision that is so beyond their deserving or their doing.



 And I pray for that even now, Father. We cannot be in this number of people without there being young people and older people who are thinking, "I'm okay with God because of how I'm doing."



 Or "I cannot be okay with God because of what I've done."



 Teach them again. Teach my heart again how great is my God who can separate my future from my past.



 Teach me how plentiful is the grace that is greater than all my sin.



 Teach me how amazing is the grace poured out on those who do not deserve it and could not claim it except for a God who claims their heart. Go after hearts right now, Father, in this moment.



 If there are people who simply need to say, "Father, I am a sinner in need of a Savior, I complain against you, I try to make things look good before other people, but I know my heart is somewhere else."



 Father reach down right now and claim their heart by letting them know not only how great is their sin, but how much greater is your grace that turning to you in faith they might even this day say, "God, I know I don't deserve it, but you provided it, so I claim it, the gift of Jesus for me.



 I believe He died for my sin. I believe that He rose to show that that penalty was paid, and I trust Him to separate me from my past and to guide my future so I will live for Him, responding to this grace in Jesus' name. Amen.