Water from the Rock

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This morning as we continue our series of studies on Jesus in the Old Testament, we’re going to come to a story that’s just one chapter behind where we left off last week about Moses, with God’s help obviously, bringing forth water from a rock for the people of Israel to drink from. And so we’re going to be in Exodus chapter 17, and I’ve noticed that with a lot of Old Testament miracles, people try to find naturalistic explanations for them, which is okay, I guess. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s miraculous, and I’ll explain why.

But in skeptical circles, people have gone from saying, oh, that’s impossible, that couldn’t have happened, to explaining why it could have happened without God’s help. And the example I always think of with that is the exodus when they’re being led out of Egypt and the Red Sea parts. Now scientists have found a ridge under a certain part of the Red Sea that they say if the wind blows at just the right speed in the right direction, it would push the water back.

Okay, but has the wind ever blown that hard in that direction not that they know of? So how do you explain that it happened exactly, even if that’s how God did it, how do you explain that it happened just at the moment the Israelites were there on the edge of the Red Sea waiting? Even if you can come up with a naturalistic explanation for how it happened.

You can’t explain why it happened when it did. And the water from the rock is one of those. Now, I did some reading this week and found out there are some explanations of how you could get water from a rock.

There are certain kinds of rock that are more porous than others, and they will absorb water. I found that out when some of the river rocks that I keep in my grill were a little wet, and then I went to light the grill at Falls Creek, and they started sizzling, and some of the rocks split in half because of the water that was inside of them. Rocks can hold water.

Also, there are things called a karst formation where the water can seep through the rock and drip down. But for either of those to be the case, for that to be how Moses got water from the rock, you’ve got to be in a situation where there’s lots of water around. There’s water, there’s humidity in the air, you’re not going to find that necessarily in a dry desert climate where the rock is going to have plenty of water to soak up.

If there was plenty of water around to soak up, they wouldn’t have needed to split the rock. They could have just gone down to the creek and gotten the water. But even if you said they found the one rock in the whole desert that was saturated with water, even though everything’s dry, you can’t explain why the water poured out when he hit it with his staff.

This story is recorded in God’s word because it’s a miracle. People would look at it and say, that can’t happen. That doesn’t happen every day.

That’s what makes it miraculous. If water came out of a rock every day, they wouldn’t have written about it. They would have just said it’s another Tuesday.

But we’re going to look at this story of how the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness. And if you were with me last week when we talked about the manna, it’s going to sound a little bit familiar because the complaints are the same. You brought us out here in the middle of the desert and you left us to die.

Why? And then God provides what they needed. And by the way, when I say why, I’m not saying I wouldn’t have complained too, because I complained to the Lord a lot.

But they complained and the Lord provided. And that’s what we’re going to look at because it’s a miraculous provision, but it’s also one that points ahead to Jesus. And so we’re going to be in Exodus 17 this morning.

Hopefully you’ve turned with me there already. If you haven’t, please do so. And once you find it, if you’ll stand as we read together from God’s Word.

And if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Exodus 17, it’s on the screen for you there. Here’s what it says, starting in verse 1. Then all the congregation of the sons of Israel journeyed by stages from the wilderness of sin, according to the command of the Lord.

What a name, by the way, the wilderness of sin. According to the command of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, Give us water that we may drink.

And Moses said to them, Why do you quarrel with me? And why do you test the Lord? But the people thirsted there for water, and they grumbled against Moses and said, Why now have you brought us up from Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?

So Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, What shall I do to this people? A little more, and they will stone me. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pass before the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand your 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 will come out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he named the place Massa and Meribah, because the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not? You may be seated.

That was their big question. Their issue wasn’t really a lack of water. It was a lack of faith in God and His provision, because they’re not just asking, where’s the water?

They’re saying, is God with us or not? And so God showed them, yes, I’m with you. Now, if God was like me, and thank God He’s not, He would have just said, okay, I’m done with y’all.

No water for you. You know, just stop whining. But as much as God could have been angry, He wasn’t in this moment.

He decided instead to show them that He was with them, and He decided to provide. And so God miraculously provided water to His people in the desert. So just to recap, because sometimes as we read it, it can be difficult to keep track of what’s going on in the story.

They’re in the wilderness. they once again complain that God’s abandoning them to die of thirst. Never mind, they’ve just seen the manna. They’ve come to Moses with the same complaint.

God had you lead us out here into the middle of nowhere so that we could die of hunger. And then God provided manna. And now they come back and say, God had you lead us out here so that we could die of thirst. Or maybe they thought that was the magic formula, that they could get what they wanted from God if they just phrased it as you led us out here to die without.

I’m not suggesting you try that. God, you led me out here to die without a new truck. You know, I don’t think it works that way.

But in this case, they needed the water. They whined about it, and God gave Moses a commandment on what he was supposed to do. And when he followed through with this, God would provide the water.

Now, he tells him to go out with his staff that he used to strike the Nile. This is the staff that used when God was bringing the plagues on Egypt in order for Israel to be set free from Egypt. And the staff represents authority.

That’s easy to miss in the story, but the staff represents authority. And so for him to go out with his staff, God is telling him, go with my authority. And specifically, if you had a staff, it represented the authority to execute judgment.

it. You had the authority to do something with it. You had the authority to judge and to decide.

And that’s going to be important in the story because this was the authority to carry out justice. And look at something here in verse 6 that’s easy to miss. This is God speaking to Moses, and he said, Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb.

I have read this story dozens of times in my life, and I’ve always missed that point that God himself says, I will stand on the rock. I thought, why in the world would God, why would God stand on the rock? And as I began to research it, it looks like God is identifying himself with the rock, which becomes important again later.

God identifies himself with this rock by standing on it. He’s saying, this is my rock. And he tells Moses to go out with that staff, that symbol of judgment that he carries out, and he tells him to strike the rock.

And so Moses goes out there, he takes the staff in front of the children of Israel, and he strikes the rock with the staff. And remember, that staff represents judgment and justice. And he’s striking that rock.

It’s symbolic of carrying out justice on this rock that God has already said is mine because I’m going to stand on it. The thing that popped to my mind, though, when I read that is the rock wasn’t guilty of anything. And God certainly wasn’t guilty of anything.

And yet here’s this act being carried out that represented judgment against the rock. That again, probably would have been a little confusing to them. It would be confusing to us if we didn’t see the rest of the story that we’re going to get to in just a moment.

And then comes the miracle. When the rock was struck, it says, water poured out from it, giving life to the people of Israel. And that is miraculous because rocks don’t just give water like that.

Again, you can have rocks that are dripping with water, But we come in and out of the house down Highway 49, and they’ve got that exposed rock on the side. And sometimes when it’s rainy, the rocks will drip. So it’s really cool sometimes in the winter when you’ll see frozen waterfalls down the sides of the mountain there.

Those aren’t just coming from in the rock, though. If it’s raining, you’re probably not going to be there. to get any.

I don’t know. I watched those hydraulic press videos on Instagram where they squeeze stuff. You might get some water out of that, but you’ve destroyed the rock.

You don’t just hit the rock and the water comes out. That’s what’s so miraculous about this, that not only did it gush out with water, it wasn’t just a trickle. It was enough to.

. . water pouring out of the rock to give life, and it happened just when that staff struck the rock.

Now, that story is miraculous enough. But then God tells us more, God tells us more about the rock in Numbers chapter 20. If you’ll turn there, I’m not going to have you stand this time.

Take the rod, the staff, I believe they’re the same thing. And you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. By the way, Israel’s doing the same thing again.

You brought us out here to die without water in the wilderness. Why have you done this to us? You brought us out of the rock and let the congregation and their beasts drink.

There’s a big difference here. He says, take your stick with you and go out there. But the first time, he told them to strike the rock.

The second time, what did he tell them to do? Speak to the rock. You rebels.

That’s a good way to win friends and influence people, isn’t it? Listen now, you rebels. Shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?

Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Uh-oh. And water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank.

Because the sons of Israel contended with the Lord, and he proved himself holy among them. So, sometime again, when the people were complaining again about the lack of water, and complaining about what they thought was God’s failure to provide. Again, if you have enough faith in God, you’re not worried about where the water’s coming from because you know he’s got it.

So for them, it wasn’t really, the problem wasn’t their lack of. . .

complaining about it. So God sends Moses back out, but he tells him this time, speak to the rock. There’s no need.

There’s absolutely no need to strike the rock again. And God was very clear about that. But Moses went out and he failed to obey God.

He walks out and instead of speaking to the rock like he was told, he goes out there and he strikes the rock. And I know one of you is going to ask me to talk about it twice, so I need to research that this afternoon. But I’m puzzled why he would do this.

God said, speak to the rock. You’ve already seen that God can provide water out of the rock in ways that don’t make sense. Why are you second-guessing God?

But it seems to be there’s something to do with his sense of pride there. Because when we’re talking to his phrasing, but at no point was Moses producing water out of the rock. Moses is not a magician.

This is not a trick. This is just, you happen to be the guy that God said, go stand here and do this, and then watch what I do. But Moses says here, being wounded, people are doubting, so he goes out there, fine, and strikes the rock twice.

And here again, God has reason at this point to be mad at everyone. It’s not just Israel, it’s Moses too. Because here Israel is doubting his ability to provide and his goodness to provide because they’re saying, you brought us out here to die instead of being obedient.

God had reason to be mad at everybody. God had reason to cut off the water supply, but what did God do? He provided the water anyway.

God was beyond gracious to them. God is beyond gracious to us, and we see that it’s even in the Old Testament. He tells them in verse 12, the point here was for you to believe.

The point here was for you to trust me. And when they couldn’t do that, when they wouldn’t do that, God was still gracious to provide for them. Now, aside from this being a miracle in and of itself, it’s miraculous that God provided water out of a rock.

It’s miraculous in and of itself that God would provide that water in such a way. But it’s doubly miraculous because it points to Jesus and the salvation He would provide. Now, if you’ve been here through this series, you expect that’s the turn this sermon’s going to take, that we look to Jesus.

But I’ve noticed, I was thinking about this last night, I’ve noticed in each of these stories from the Old Testament, They point to Jesus, but they tell us a little something different about what He did. Each of them has a different emphasis. Because we don’t want this study to just be an intellectual exercise.

Let’s name off all the times Jesus appears. Oh, that’s interesting information. Each of these is teaching us something a little bit different.

We started by looking at Isaac and God providing a sacrifice, Jesus being the sacrifice. God sacrificing His own son like He initially asked Abraham to do. We see Jesus as the sacrifice.

In the story of Joseph, we see Jesus suffering on behalf of His people. In the story of the Passover lamb, we see Jesus and His blood being the refuge, the only refuge from the judgment of God. in the manna, we see Jesus being the source of life for us.

In this, it’s a little bit different because it’s not just Jesus being the source of life for us in the water from the rock, but it’s Jesus being the source of life for us because God’s justice and judgment were poured out on Him. And we see this in the fact that God still provides living water from the rock today. If we look at what Jesus and his apostles said about him, it’s pretty clear that this story points to him.

Jesus goes through multiple conversations where he tells people that he provides living water, which we’re going to talk about in a few moments. On top of that, the apostles call him the rock on multiple occasions, at least three times that I counted in the New Testament. Somebody calls Jesus the rock.

twice Paul calls him that. There’s an instance in 1 Corinthians where Paul talks about Jesus actually comparing him to the rock that the water came from in the Old Testament. There’s another time that Paul quotes in Romans, quotes the Old Testament, and calls Jesus the rock of offense, a stumbling block to those who would not believe.

And Peter, Peter quotes the same passage and calls Jesus that rock, that stumbling block. So I want us to look at some parallels. between Jesus and the rock and the living water that we get from both.

First of all, we see that Jesus came not because we deserve it, but because God is gracious. Just like with the manna, these people were whining, they were complaining, they were doubting God, doubting God’s provision, and really impugning God’s character when you think about it, saying, you brought us out here to let us die. Like this was God’s evil plan all along that I’m just going to mess with these people by giving them the hope that I’m setting them free from slavery in Egypt, just to bring them out here and let them slowly die of thirst. I’m not sure what God they’re praying to, but that’s not a God one would want to pray to.

And so they’re impugning God’s character. They’re making accusations against God that are not true. They’re slandering God, and yet God continued to give them the water.

And in a verse that has come to mind over and over throughout this series, Paul told us in Romans chapter 5 that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus didn’t come because we deserved Him. He came for precisely the opposite reason.

He looked at us in our sin, in our wickedness, in our fallenness. And not because of anything in us, but because of His goodness and His love, He chose to come and pay the price for us. So just like the Old Testament water was given because of God’s grace to those who didn’t deserve it, Jesus was given because of God’s grace to those who did not deserve Him.

When Jesus came, God was identifying with man. for the purpose of bearing our punishment. Just like that detail word in verse 6, God stands on the rock.

That rock that would bear the judgment that was meted out with the staff. Jesus came to identify with man, God with us. Matthew 1.

23 says that he would be called God with us because we believe he is literally God the Son who became a man without ceasing to be God. He is God in our midst. And John 1. 14 says, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And He did that. He became man. He identified with us so that He could bear our punishment, so that He could bear the justice and the judgment of God on our behalf, just like that rock symbolically did for Israel.

And then we see that the punishment that was inflicted on Jesus was done with divine authority. Just like that rock. God said, take the staff, the symbol of authority, and go out and strike the rock.

It was all done by God’s design. Well, Jesus said the same thing about his crucifixion. Don’t ever think that Jesus was not an active participant in his crucifixion.

as though it’s something that happened to him. Jesus was in control the whole time. When Pilate said, don’t you know I have the authority to crucify you or the authority to release you?

Don’t you know that I have this power over you? Because he was not liking Jesus’ answers or lack of answers. Jesus said to him, you would have no authority over me unless it had been given you from above.

It’s a pretty gutsy claim to look at the guy who can crucify you and say, you’re just playing into my hand here. And then at the very first sermon at Pentecost, Peter looked at the very people who had crucified Jesus, the group, and said, this man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross. He looked at that group of people and said, you nailed him to the cross, but you didn’t realize it was his plan.

It’s what he came to do. So the judgment that was executed on Jesus was not a coincidence. It’s not something that man caused.

It was God’s plan for that justice to fall on our rock. Just like the rock, he was innocent, but he was struck anyway. That’s why Peter tells us that he made him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

just like I pointed out that rock that was struck with the staff of judgment it had done nothing wrong it’s a rock what can it do right even if it falls on somebody it didn’t plan it there’s no point in putting jesus was just as innocent as the rock and yet he bore the weight of our sin and now our rock, Jesus, flows with living water, eternal life. That’s why he told the woman at the well, everyone who drinks of this water, pointing to the well, will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst, but the water that I give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.

That rock that was struck that gave forth the water in the desert gave them life for a little while, gave them physical life for a little while. The rock that was struck for us gives spiritual life for all eternity. The rock, this is true of both of them, both the physical rock in the book of Exodus and the spiritual rock who is Jesus.

The rock only needed to be struck once, and now the water comes to all who speak to the rock. All we have to do to call out in repentance, seeking His forgiveness, believing that God has provided eternal life through Him. And it was a one-time thing.

He doesn’t have to be sacrificed over and over. Nothing else ever has to be done or earned or accomplished for our salvation. The rock has already borne God’s justice.

Hebrews 9. 10 says, We have been sanctified through the offering of the Lord, once struck one time. And 1 Peter 3.

18 says, For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God. This morning, if you are separated from God and you recognize it, you also need to recognize that according to God’s Word, there’s no more penalty to pay. If you think, well, I’ve got to work a little harder and then I’ll be right with God.

I’ll come to God. Or you don’t know what I’ve done. I have to pay for this before I can be right with God.

Understand, there is no more penalty left to pay. The rock has already been struck once. And what God said of the Old Testament rock is also true of the New Testament rock.

Struck once, and now speak to the rock. All that’s necessary for you to be right with God, all that is necessary for God. Believe that Jesus died on the cross to accomplish everything that was needed for you to pay your penalty in full, to bear all the judgment that you deserved, and that He rose again, and that He brings eternal life.

Believe what He claimed about Himself and ask for that forgiveness and you’ll have it. no need to keep striking the rock speak to the rock that’s already been struck.