Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Exodus 17:1-7; Numbers 20:8-13, NASB
- Series: Jesus in the Old Testament (2024), no. 5
- Date: Sunday, November 10, 2024 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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God Provides in the Wilderness
This morning, as we continue our series of studies on Jesus in the Old Testament, we come to a story just one chapter after where we left off last week. It is the story of Moses, with God’s help, bringing water from a rock for the people of Israel to drink. We are going to be in Exodus 17.
I have noticed that with a lot of Old Testament miracles, people try to find naturalistic explanations for them. That is okay, I guess. It does not change the fact that they are miraculous, and I will explain why.
In skeptical circles, people have gone from saying, “That is impossible; that could not have happened,” to explaining why it could have happened without God’s help. The example I always think of is the exodus, when the Israelites were being led out of Egypt and the Red Sea parted. Scientists have found a ridge under a certain part of the Red Sea, and they say if the wind blows at just the right speed in just the right direction, it could push the water back.
Okay, but has the wind ever blown that hard in that direction? Not that they know of. And even if that is how God did it, how do you explain that it happened at exactly the moment the Israelites were standing there on the edge of the Red Sea waiting? Even if you can come up with a naturalistic explanation for how it happened, you cannot explain why it happened when it did.
The water from the rock is one of those stories. I did some reading this week and found out there are some explanations for how you could get water from a rock. There are certain kinds of rock that are more porous than others, and they can absorb water. I found that out when some of the river rocks I keep in my grill were a little wet, and then I went to light the grill at Falls Creek. They started sizzling, and some of the rocks split in half because of the water inside them.
Rocks can hold water. There are also things called karst formations, where water can seep through the rock and drip down. But for either of those to explain how Moses got water from the rock, you have to be in a situation where there is plenty of water around. There has to be water, humidity in the air, or some source nearby. You are not going to find that necessarily in a dry desert climate where the rock has plenty of water to soak up.
If there were plenty of water around to soak up, they would not have needed to split the rock. They could have gone down to the creek and gotten water. But even if you said they found the one rock in the whole desert that was saturated with water, you still cannot explain why the water poured out when Moses struck it with his staff.
This story is recorded in God’s Word because it is a miracle. People look at it and say, “That cannot happen. That does not happen every day.” That is what makes it miraculous. If water came out of a rock every day, they would not have written about it. They would have said, “It is another Tuesday.”
We are going to look at this story of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. If you were with me last week when we talked about the manna, this is 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 left us to die.” Then God provides what they needed.
When I say, “Why would they complain?” I am not saying I would not have complained too, because I complain to the Lord a lot. But they complained, and the Lord provided. That is what we are going to look at, because this is a miraculous provision, but it is also one that points ahead to Jesus.
Israel Thirsted and Tested the Lord
The Israelites were in the wilderness, and they once again complained that God had abandoned them to die of thirst. Never mind that they had just seen the manna. They had already come to Moses with the complaint that God had led them into the middle of nowhere so they could die of hunger, and then God provided manna. Now they come back and say that God had Moses lead them out there so they could die of thirst.
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 it.” I am not suggesting you try that. “God, you led me out here to die without a new truck.” I do not think it works that way.
In this case, they did need the water. They whined about it, and God gave Moses a command on what he was supposed to do. When Moses followed through with this, God would provide the water.
God told Moses to go out with the staff he had used to strike the Nile. This was the staff Moses used when God was bringing the plagues on Egypt so Israel would be set free. The staff represents authority. That is easy to miss in the story, but the staff represents authority.
For Moses to go out with his staff, God is telling him to go with His authority. Specifically, if you had a staff, it represented the authority to execute judgment. You had the authority to do something with it. You had the authority to judge and decide. That becomes important in the story because this was the authority to carry out justice.
Look at something in verse 6 that is easy to miss. This is God speaking to Moses, and He says, “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 have always missed the point that God Himself says, “I will stand on the rock.” I thought, “Why in the world would God stand on the rock?” As I began to research it, it looks like God is identifying Himself with the rock, which becomes important later.
God identifies Himself with this rock by standing on it. He is saying, “This is My rock.” Then He tells Moses to go out with that staff, that symbol of judgment, and strike the rock. So Moses goes out in front of the children of Israel and strikes the rock with the staff.
Remember, that staff represents judgment and justice. Moses is striking that rock. It is symbolic of carrying out justice on the rock God has already said is His because He is going to stand on it. What popped into my mind when I read that is that the rock was not guilty of anything. God certainly was not guilty of anything. And yet here is an act being carried out that represented judgment against the rock.
That would have been confusing to them. It would be confusing to us if we did not see the rest of the story. Then comes the miracle. When the rock was struck, water poured out from it, giving life to the people of Israel.
That is miraculous because rocks do not simply give water like that. Again, you can have rocks that drip with water. We come in and out of the house down Highway 49, and they have that exposed rock on the side. Sometimes when it is rainy, the rocks will drip. It is really cool sometimes in the winter when you see frozen waterfalls down the sides of the mountain there.
Those are not coming from inside the rock alone. If it is not raining, you are probably not going to get any. I watch those hydraulic press videos on Instagram where they squeeze stuff. You might get some water out of that, but you have destroyed the rock. You do not just hit the rock and water comes out.
That is what is so miraculous about this. Not only did water gush out, it was not just a trickle. It was enough to provide for the people. Water poured out of the rock to give life, and it happened right when the staff struck the rock.
The Rock Was Not to Be Struck Again
That story is miraculous enough, but God tells us more about the rock in Numbers 20. Israel is doing the same thing again. They are saying, “You brought us out here to die without water in the wilderness. Why have you done this to us?”
This time, God tells Moses, “Take the rod, and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock and let the congregation and their beasts drink.” There is a big difference here. He tells Moses to take the staff with him, but the first time He told him to strike the rock. The second time, He told him to speak to the rock.
So Moses took the rod from before the Lord, just as He had commanded him. Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock, and Moses said to them, “Listen now, you rebels.” That is a good way to win friends and influence people, is it not? “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. Water still came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank.
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.” So sometime later, when the people were complaining again about the lack of water and complaining about what they thought was God’s failure to provide, God sent Moses back out. But this time He told him to speak to the rock.
There was no need to strike the rock again. God was very clear about that. But Moses went out and failed to obey God. Instead of speaking to the rock like he was told, he went out there and struck the rock.
I am puzzled why Moses would do this. God said, “Speak to the rock.” Moses had already seen that God could provide water out of the rock in a way that did not make sense. Why second-guess God? It seems to have something to do with Moses’s sense of pride, because when he speaks to the people, he says, “Shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?”
At no point was Moses producing water out of the rock. Moses is not a magician. This is not a trick. He just happens to be the guy God said, “Go stand here and do this, and watch what I do.” But Moses says, “Listen now, you rebels,” and then he strikes the rock twice.
Here again, God had reason to be angry at everyone. It was not just Israel; it was Moses too. Israel was doubting His ability to provide and His goodness to provide because they were saying, “You brought us out here to die.” Moses failed to obey what God had told him to do. God had reason to be angry 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 even in the Old Testament.
In verse 12, He tells them that the point here was for them to believe. The point was for them to trust Him. When they could not do that and would not do that, God was still gracious to provide for them.
The Struck Rock Points to Christ
Aside from this being a miracle in and of itself, it is doubly miraculous because it points to Jesus and the salvation He would provide. If you have been here through this series, you expect that the sermon is going to take this turn, that we look to Jesus. But I have noticed that in each of these stories from the Old Testament, they point to Jesus, but they tell us something a little different about what He did.
Each of them has a different emphasis. We do not want this study to be merely an intellectual exercise where we name all the times Jesus appears in the Old Testament and say, “That is interesting information.” Each story is teaching us something.
We started by looking at Isaac and God providing a sacrifice. Jesus is the sacrifice. God sacrificed His own Son, like He initially asked Abraham to offer Isaac. 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 as the refuge, the only refuge from the judgment of God.
In the manna, we see Jesus as the source of life for us. In the water from the rock, it is a little different. Here we see Jesus as the source of life for us because God’s justice and judgment were poured out on Him.
God still provides living water from the rock today. If we look at what Jesus and His apostles said about Him, it is clear that this story points to Him. Jesus goes through multiple conversations where He tells people that He provides living water.
On top of that, the apostles call Jesus the rock on multiple occasions. At least three times in the New Testament, somebody calls Jesus the rock. Twice Paul calls Him that. In 1 Corinthians, Paul compares Jesus to the rock that the water came from in the Old Testament. In Romans, Paul quotes the Old Testament and calls Jesus the rock of offense, a stumbling block to those who would not believe. Peter quotes the same passage and calls Jesus that rock, that stumbling block.
So let us look at some parallels between Jesus and the rock and the living water that comes from both. First, Jesus came not because we deserved it, but because God is gracious. Just like with the manna, these people were whining, complaining, doubting God, doubting God’s provision, and really impugning God’s character when you think about it.
They were saying, “You brought us out here to let us die,” as though this was God’s evil plan all along. They seemed to think God had given them hope by setting them free from slavery in Egypt just so He could bring them into the wilderness and let them die slowly of thirst. I am not sure what god they thought they were praying to, but that is not the God one should want to pray to.
They were slandering God and making accusations against Him that were not true. Yet God continued to give them water. In a verse that has come to mind over and over throughout this series, Paul tells us in Romans 5 that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus did not come because we deserved Him. He came for precisely the opposite reason. He looked at us in our sin, wickedness, and fallenness, and not because of anything in us, but because of His goodness and love, He chose to come and pay the price for us. Just like the Old Testament water was given because of God’s grace to those who did not deserve it, Jesus was given because of God’s grace to those who did not deserve Him.
The Rock Bore Judgment for the People
When Jesus came, God was identifying with man for the purpose of bearing our punishment. That is like the detail in verse 6, where God stands on the rock. The rock would bear the judgment that was meted out with the staff.
Jesus came to identify with man. 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. John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
He became man. He identified with us so that He could bear our punishment, so that He could bear the justice and judgment of God on our behalf, just like that rock symbolically did for Israel. The punishment inflicted on Jesus was done with divine authority.
God said to Moses, “Take the staff,” the symbol of authority, “and go out and strike the rock.” It was all done by God’s design. Jesus said the same thing about His crucifixion.
Do not ever think that Jesus was not an active participant in His crucifixion, as though it was simply something that happened to Him. Jesus was in control the whole time. When Pilate said, “Don’t You know I have authority to crucify You, and I have authority to release You?” he did not like 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.”
That is a pretty gutsy claim to make to the man who can crucify you. It is as if Jesus said, “You are only playing into My hand here.” At the first sermon at Pentecost, Peter looked at the very people who had crucified Jesus 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 did not realize it was His plan. It is what He came to do.”
The judgment executed on Jesus was not a coincidence. It was not something man caused apart from God’s purpose. It was God’s plan for that justice to fall on our rock.
Just like the rock, Jesus was innocent, but He was struck anyway. That is why Paul tells us that God made Him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. That rock struck with the staff of judgment had done nothing wrong. It is a rock. What can it do? Even if it falls on somebody, it did not plan it.
Jesus was just as innocent as the rock, and yet He bore the weight of our sin. Now our rock, Jesus, flows with living water, eternal life. That is why He told the woman at the well, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst.” The water He gives becomes “a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
That rock in the wilderness, when struck, gave them water and gave them physical life for a little while. The rock that was struck for us gives spiritual life for all eternity.
Speak to the Rock Already Struck
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 is call out in repentance, seeking His forgiveness, believing that God has provided eternal life through Him.
It was a one-time thing. He does not have to be sacrificed over and over. Nothing else ever has to be done, earned, or accomplished for our salvation. The rock has already borne God’s justice.
Hebrews 10 says we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The rock was struck one time. First 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 is no more penalty left to pay. You may think, “I have to work a little harder, and then I will be right with God.” You may think, “You don’t know what I’ve done. I have to pay for this before I can be right with God.”
Understand this: there is no more penalty left to pay. The rock has already been struck once. 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 is necessary for you to be right with God is to believe that Jesus died on the cross to accomplish everything needed for you. He paid your penalty in full. He bore all the judgment that you deserved. He rose again, and He brings eternal life.
Believe what He claimed about Himself and ask for that forgiveness, and you will have it. There is no need to keep striking the rock. Speak to the rock that has already been struck.