Bible Message notes
Sunday 9th March 2014Bible Reading: Exodus 17:1-7
Choices are important and often what we choose to do reveals the underlying values which drive us. As the Israelites journeyed through the wilderness they had choices to make, not just about whether they did what God told them to but choices about the attitudes they took in the circumstances they faced.
1. Rest or Rush
The place they came to was called Rephidim, It was supposed to be place of refreshment but when they got there, there was no water.
The immediate response was to rush to demand that Moses resolve the situation, there and then.
In their panic and under pressure they lashed out with the accusation that Moses had made them leave Egypt. Their quick analysis of what was going on was that they were going to die of starvation. Rushing to conclusions they came near to stoning Moses.
It seems a tall order to have expected the people to rest in such circumstances but that is what faith can do, even when there seems to be no way forward and it looks like we’re finished.
God would not have allowed His people to die of thirst, as they accused.
Had they but waited, God would have provided for them. Their lack of faith was manifested in their impatience.
Looking back on this part of Israel’s history the Psalmist wrote,
“But they soon forgot what God had done and did not wait for his counsel”. (Psalm 106:13)
In every instance where Israel lacked either food or water, Israel acted prematurely. God would have provided for His people’s needs in His own time, but this was too late so far as the Israelites were concerned. Unbelief is often hasty; faith is patient and endures.
2. Respect or Rebellion
The second choice that the people had at Rephidim was to show God the respect His person should command or to arrogantly rebel against Him.
In verse 2 Moses wanted to know, “Why do you put the Lord to the test?”
It seems the people of God are turning the tables on the Lord and assume that they can test Him. They put Him on trial.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “The modern man approaches God as the judge: Man puts God in the dock. Man is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the God who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.”
And we are wrong. We are not the judge. He is.
And He will judge rightly every single time.
So we’ve got to get the order right. He’s the Lord. He calls the shots.
They presumed that God must work according to their plan. They sought to demand that God do what they want.
When we demand that someone prove themselves to us we reveal our lack of trust in them.
God is not at our beck and call, a kind of heavenly servant to jump to our every tune. It finally will not be we who will test our God; it will be our God who will test us to see if that God can finally find faith on the earth.
Israel’s response to the lack of water is no mere repetition of their previous grumbling. Their attitudes had hardened.
When there was no water at Rephidim they went further than just have a moan. They went from grumbling to quarrelling. They turned on Moses who had put his life on the line for them so many times but more than this they asked the question; “Is the Lord among us or not?”
Based upon what was going on right under their noses that should have been a silly question.
They had been in the place where there was no water before and God had provided but even at Rephidim whilst there was no water, the manna still turned up every day and the cloud which was the visible manifestation of God’s presence was still there.
There was no water but there was still plenty of evidence that God was with them, if they could keep their hearts open to Him. But it seems that somehow the miracles of the past had become co-incidences, the supply of manna, a right rather than a gift of grace and the presence of the cloud an irrelevance.
It is normal to ask God questions and nobody wants to be naïve, but there is something so soul destroying about becoming reluctant to believe in the genuineness of people and ultimately that God is not out to get us but genuinely loves us and wants the best for us.
None of us want to be taken in, but if our first reaction is always to assume that people who are successful must be manipulating, or that a response to an altar call must be emotionalism, or that people who come to ask for help are really on the take, or that if a method, ministry or expression of faith does not fit my own experience it must be defective will eventually fur up our spiritual arteries and have a devastating effect on our relationship with God.
As a result Moses renamed Rephidim, and instead called it Massah which means test and Meribah which means quarrel, an epitaph which the Israelites would gladly have stricken from their history.
Thankfully, Moses kept his head. His choice when faced with an escalating tension between him and the people was not to run away but to cry out to God for help.
If it is not presumption to say so, God also had choices.
In the face of the rebellion and resistance God’s response could have been retaliation but instead we see a revelation of his grace.
God said, “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 this, in the sight of the elders of Israel.
The people are faithless but God is faithful.
This is not an encouragement for us to be faithless, it is an acknowledgement that we often are and that even in those times God meets us with one grace after another.
He is a good God. He is faithful. His constant supply and His boundless grace are intended to teach us that He can be trusted.
In the middle of their worst hour, God was there. And He still is and He still pours water from a rock.
Do you know that this story is a foretaste of what God provided through Jesus?
1 Corinthians 10:1-4 “For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.”
The rock that was struck and broken so that it released life-giving water reminds us of Jesus, whose body was broken so that salvation and life could be poured out upon a world that have no hope of life without Him.
Do you remember singing in Sunday School, Jesus is the rock of our salvation and his banner over me is love? I have tended to think of that as meaning that Jesus is a sure foundation upon which to build a life, but it takes on added meaning when we think of Jesus as a rock from which living water flows into our souls.
We face choices as the ancient people of God did, and like them at times our hearts become hard and dry but God’s grace is still the same and we can come to the rock which is Jesus to receive healing and new life.
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