Sunday, September 4 - Hope For Thirsty Souls
2022-09-04
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSmgrn9SyV8

The 17th chapter of the book of Exodus this morning. Before we do that, let's go ahead and go back to God in prayer. Father in heaven, I thank you for the grace you have bestowed upon us. I ask that you would help us this morning with our text. Help us to see the warning and the hope that is there for your people. Help us to be encouraged and to see your goodness, especially for those who do not deserve it or maybe do not want to help us to be refreshed and strengthened by your Spirit. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. One of the things that I think probably most of us know, whether intellectually or simply instinctually, is that water is essential to our survival. We know that if you stop drinking water, it generally does not go well for you.

And depending upon, you know, the weather that you're in, the conditions, whether you're exerting a lot of energy or not, your time of survival without water is measured generally in just a few days, right? You can go without food sometimes for weeks and weeks and maybe months. Some of us can go for months. But water, right, we're talking just a few days. Water is essential for our survival. And if you've listened to much news over the past several weeks, one of the interesting things that we've seen is this theme develop about water, right? So down in Jackson, Mississippi, a town of 150,000, they have no drinking water for the town and have not had drinking water. And there's not really a lot in the future that is hopeful for them, right? This has been a major news story.

And if you think about it for a minute, it would change our whole life if we went into our kitchen and turned on our tap, and that water for us was toxic. But there's also been places around the world where water has receded because of the current season. At the end of summer, it's been hot, and so in the Danube, they're seeing wrecks of World War II. German boats that were sunk at the war. As the water sort of recedes, all of a sudden these boats start popping up. I saw another picture this week of an ancient Roman bridge that had sort of collapsed flat into the water. And as the river had sort of dried up due to the season, you can see this ancient Roman bridge sort of laying flat across the bottom of the river.

And so we tend to focus on water. We want to have enough water. We want clean water. We understand that water is essential to our lives. Now what happens in our text, these seven verses in Exodus 17, is water is sort of at the center of it, specifically the lack of water. And so our text is sort of divided into sort of four sections, right? We're going to have a sort of a place where people realize this, how they respond to it, what God does, and then what Moses does, sort of to deal with this lack of water. And so I want to start by sort of walking the road into the wilderness with the people of God. And if you remember their story, they have been slaves in Egypt for a little more than 400 years.

God has brought them out with great strength and with great power, and they are wandering in the wilderness, not wandering like we would think, but God is leading them through the wilderness, ultimately their destination. And this part of the trip is Mount Sinai. And in Exodus chapter 17, verse 1, we read this: "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 kept at Repedim; and there was no water for the people to drink." And so this congregation has moved into the wilderness. There's like four, I think, wildernesses they will sort of encounter. These are regions. This is in the southern Sinai Peninsula. It takes its name lightly from the fact that Mount Sinai is nearby. You can sort of see those pieces together.

And so God has brought his people out of Egypt and is leading them into the wilderness. And it seems like, on their journey, they've encountered problem after problem. They leave Egypt, and they encounter the Red Sea. They cross the Red Sea, and immediately the water they have to drink is bitter. They move on from that place, and they run out of food. And God provides food, and so now here they are, once again, in the middle of nowhere, with no water. And the lack of water is a big deal, because this group of people, this nation on the move, will die if there is no water. Now, we don't tend to think about the seriousness of that very much. I think it was 10 or 11 years ago, and my brother and a couple of friends, we were camping over the 4th of July weekend.

Because we like to plan ahead, we reserved a campsite, the only campsite we could find like three days before, and it was up in the middle of Pennsylvania. And so we drove up there, didn't really do any research, just kind of threw our tents in the back of the car, and drove like four hours to get to this place. And we got there, realized we were the only tent sites in the entire place. Everybody else was in big RVs, which will come into play later. And what we found is there was no drinkable water in the entire room. In fact, there was no facilities whatsoever. There's a little building with a hole in the ground, and that was it, right? And this was not really what we were planning on. And the reason for that is because everybody else had an RV, right? They've got their water, their bathrooms, their showers with them.

And then us hobos in our two little tents and the two little campsites on the side with no water. Now, for us, that was an annoyance but not a big deal because we just got in the car and went and bought a bunch of water and brought it back and problem solved. Now, the Israelites here, they're showing up to their campsite that God has led them to, and there is no water. And remember, they don't have a water truck they can bring. There's no commercial cases of water. You have what you can carry, and the idea is you get it in the morning, and by the end of the day, when you stop the camp, you refill your water. So this is a big deal. But there's more than just showing up at a campsite with no water.

Listen to why they are there. It says this: "They moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord." So why are they at this place with no water? Because God has led them to the wilderness where there is no water. Now think about that for a minute. God has led them to the campsite with absolutely no water. And here's the reality of life, is that sometimes you and I, we will find ourselves in those dry, barren wildernesses. God will lead us to that place or that time of difficulty and struggle. And the question for us, I think, is not "Am I ever going to be in the wilderness?" But what do I do when I find myself in the wilderness? And this text is not a primer for what you should do, but rather the opposite for what you should not do.

What happens next? And probably most of us have traveled, maybe we have traveled with people, and there are some people that it is better to travel with than others. I remember taking a road trip, it was like the junior year in college, and my roommate and our other roommate and a couple of friends decided we decided to road trip home to Vermont. And I remember I got along really well with my one roommate, but the other guy, it was just, I was just so glad when we got there and I didn't have to talk to him ever again, right? We got back to college and I was like, "I am never, ever, you know, one time, it's the middle of the night, we've been driving for like 20 hours, we had the radio up real loud."

And you just hear this voice from the backseat going, "Hey, can you turn that down so that I can sleep?" And my co-pilot just turned around and goes, "Turn it down, we're going to die, because we're all going to be asleep," right? This is the kind of guy we were traveling with. He was an incredibly annoying travel companion. And here we find the Israelites, and what you find about them were that they're incredibly annoying travel companions. So you have all of this idea of no water, right? And people react differently when there is fear, right? It's understandable to be upset. It's understandable to be disturbed. How am I going to live? Before we look at their reaction and how terrible of traveling companions they are, I want you to see just a little bit of context and history for these people.

The book of Exodus begins in Exodus chapter 1 with this picture of the suffering that God's people are going through, right? It uses words like afflict, and burden, and oppressed, and ruthlessly, and slavery, and a hard service. In fact, at the end of verse 14 it says, "In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves." So the people of Israel are not in a good situation as Exodus begins. And in Exodus 2 you find that they pray to God, it says this, "During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God." And so God is going to set about saving them, and God hears and He answers prayer, but He does it in a very unexpected way.

So they pray to God, and what God does is He raises up this guy. His name is Moses, and he's born to two parents at a time in Egypt where all firstborn male children are to be killed. His parents disobey God, and what they do is they eventually belt Him a little basket, set Him in the reeds of the Nile. Pharaoh's daughter finds Him, and for the first 40 years of his life, this young baby, Moses, who grows into a child, a teenager, and ultimately a man, is raised in Pharaoh's household. And as a 40-year-old, he begins to identify with his people in captivity, despite the fact he has all the privileges, all the wealth, all the education, all the good things in Egypt. He stands up for his people, kills a man, and runs into the wilderness, into the desert for the next 40 years.

It's remarkable that God's plan, first of all, you see it through the life of Moses, but it's also interesting that he chooses an 80-year-old God to be the one to lead people out of Israel. And so there's part of that that should say to us, I think, when we say, "Well, I don't know if I can do that or if I'm able to," to take a look at Moses, who at 80 years old leads God's people out of Egypt into the wilderness. And you see, Moses, as he returns, as God sends him back, he immediately engages in a spiritual battle with Egypt. And there's ten plagues, and these aren't just sort of miracles to show the Egyptians that God is in control, but God is directly confronting the gods of Egypt and saying, "I am stronger."

Eventually those ten plagues culminate in the death of the firstborn. And Pharaoh says, "Get out." And so God's people, they get out of Egypt. Now it's interesting, in Exodus 12:35, God tells the people this, "The people of Israel had also done as Moses had told them, and they asked the Egyptians for their silver and gold jewelry and for their clothing." And so literally, what happens as they're getting ready to leave, they go around to all their neighbors and go, "Hey, I'll take your clothes, your silver, and your gold." And all of Egypt goes, "Okay." And so as Israel leaves, it's not just all the manual labor, but it's all the riches and the wealth of Egypt. If you're wondering where, several chapters later, they have enough gold to build an idol of a calf, it's because they've stolen all the gold of Egypt at the command of God.

Not stolen, but they've asked for it, Egypt has given it to them, and so they head into the desert with great wealth. God then directs them in the wilderness. The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night a pillar of fire to give them light. The cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart before the people. God will then deliver them by splitting the Red Sea in half. He'll give them water in the wilderness, that's in Exodus 15. He'll give them bread in Exodus 16, and now once again we're without water. And what's remarkable, think about what the people have been through. The ten plagues in Egypt, leaving Egypt with the wealth of Egypt, seeing God split the Red Sea in half.

They've had bitter water made sweet, they've had bread from heaven, and here's the remarkable thing. The time from the Red Sea being split to right now, Exodus 17, is six weeks. We're not talking about we heard that in past history God has done this amazing thing. We're talking about these people saw the Red Sea part with their own eyes. They tasted the bitter water made sweet. They ate the bread from heaven. They have seen God provide and protect and care for them in the wilderness. This is not a distant concept to them. They have seen it, felt it, tasted it, and experienced it. They've seen God's deliverance. Look at how they respond. 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 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?" They respond not well, right? They argue, they demand, they grumble, and they accuse. These are terrible travel companions. And I want you to think about what Moses says to them when he says, "Do not test the Lord." So growing up in Vermont, occasionally it would get pretty cold, and there would be water that would be frozen over. Especially as kids, and usually it was like a puddle or a runoff, or like a little runoff channel down, and it would freeze over with ice. And so if it was cold enough, we would go out, and we would try to see if that ice was strong enough, right?

So you put kind of one foot on it, and put a little weight on it. If it doesn't crack, you do it with the other foot, and you kind of jump up and down. And that's how you determine whether or not you're going to fall through this. Does it sort of support your weight when you test it? When we talk about testing God, what we're talking about is sort of doing that to God's boundaries and His rules and guidance. By saying, "Does God really mean this? Does God really mean that I shouldn't do this?" And we kind of push against those boundaries, or that guidance, or what God has called us to do. And what the Israelites here are doing, having seen God free them from Egypt, part of the Red Sea, giving them water and bread in the wilderness, they're now saying, "Does He really even care about us?"

And they're trying to test God's love, but not in a good way. Listen to their question: "Why did you bring us out of Egypt? To kill us and our children and our livestock?" Their question is not, "Will there be water?" Their question is, "God, why do you hate us? Why are you trying to kill us?" Their declaration and what they're asking, they're saying to God, "You are not good." They're not asking, "Can there be water? Will there be water? Where is the water?" They're saying, "Why are you trying to kill us?" They're not just upset. They are responding with accusations about the goodness of God. Now, how would you respond to that? I know how I would respond. I've just saved the people. I've provided for the people. And not ancient history, like in the last six weeks, they've seen these things.

And all of a sudden, they begin to attack me and criticize me. I don't know about you, but for me, that relationship is, we're going to like, "No contact. You're done. I'm going my way. You go your way." God could have done that in that room. Because God doesn't need you. You need Him. God doesn't need the Israelites, but they need Him. I want you to see the contrast between what we would do and what God does. Look at verse 4. So Moses cried to the Lord, "What shall I do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me." And the Lord said to Moses, "Pass before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, taking your hand, your staff, with which you struck the Nile, 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. So, in part, we see what the people should have done in Moses, right? Moses, in this moment, doesn't accuse God, but he goes to God in prayer, right? A prayer for guidance, a prayer for help, a prayer for protection, and I think, in part, a prayer of frustration, right? I don't know what to do with these ungrateful people. And God answers his prayer, and he responds to the grumbling and the accusations and the anger of his people with a public testimony of his grace, his love, and provision. He doesn't say, "You know what? You want to act like this? You're on your own. I'm going to go my own way." God instead, making sure that they can see it in front of the people of Israel with the elders there as witnesses, sends Moses to the rock to provide water.

And I want you to hear what God says because there's something remarkable. "Go, behold, I will stand before you on the rock." God doesn't remove his presence from his people. But he stands there in the midst of them, and in his grace gives them what they need. Now what Moses does next is surprising. I want you to think just a little bit about biblical names, because especially biblical place names are generally named to commemorate something good that God has done. If you remember Hagar in the wilderness, when God comes to her and makes her that promise, and she says, "You are a God who sees me." And she names the place where she saw God a place of seeing. Or Jacob, when he has the dream of the presence of God later on in Genesis.

And he names that place Bethel, or house of God. Listen to what Moses names this place. And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?" And so he names this place Massah, which means testing, Meribah, which means quarreling, right? And so Moses essentially names this place where God stands in the midst of his people and graciously provides them with water. He names it after the failure of the people, right? He erects a monument to their failings, right? He could have named it, "Hey, you all messed up." That's what he does to these people. He doesn't name it as a monument to God's grace, but rather a failure of God's people.

And imagine that if monuments, not to our victories, right? We understand the commemorative plaques and certificates and monuments for things that people do well. Now imagine you go into work and they say, "Hey, we have an award for you. Here's the biggest mess-up of the year." Right? That would not make us feel well. But this place is named after their failure. So what's the point of all this? I want you to think about this. What is the point of God's people being led into the wilderness, a place with no water, a place where they respond badly, God provides with grace, and then is named after their failures? The first thing is, in this text, we find a warning for us, right? These seven verses seeming very simple. I've got a small chunk of a very great period of time.

But what's remarkable about these verses is they echo through the entire Bible. Let me just point you to a couple of those echoes. Remember we read Psalm 95:1-5. Let's pick it up in verse 6. "O 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 Meribah, or on the day of Massa 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 to them, "There are people who go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways. Therefore, and I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my wrath."

The psalmist takes this and says, "Guard your life, that you don't grumble and complain like these people did." Moving forward a little further into the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. In Hebrews chapter 3, we find this, "Therefore, today the Holy Spirit says," and then he'll begin to quote from the 95th Psalm, and what he's saying is, "God said this in the Psalms. God is saying this now. 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 40 years." And then in Hebrews 3, as it continues, "Take care, my brothers, lest there be any in you an evil and unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.

But exhort one another, as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." And what you'll find is the writer of Hebrews from chapter 3 all the way down to chapter 4:13 points back to these seven verses in Exodus and unpacks them as a warning for the church to guard our hearts against grumbling and complaining and turning against our Heavenly Father. 1 Corinthians 10, speaking of these events and more in the Exodus, "Now these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did." That these things are written for us. So when we find ourselves in those barren places, do we look to what we do not have? Or do we look back and see how God has provided and responded in faith,

knowing that He provided in the past and will care for us in the future? Now while this is written as a warning to us, ultimately these verses are not about us, right? They're for us, to help us guard our hearts, and as an example to understand. But ultimately, the center of this story is not the rebellion. It's not the Israelites. It's not Moses. But ultimately the center of this is Jesus. Listen to Exodus 17:6. Therefore, I will stand before you, there on the rocket board, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and people will drink. God is present in the rebellion, but 1 Corinthians takes it even a little further. For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea right six weeks before this event in Exodus 17.

They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, they all ate the same spiritual food, they drank the same spiritual drink, and here's the reference to Exodus 17: "For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ." You see, Paul, when he looks back on Exodus 17, and sees God saying, "I will be in the midst of them," he says, "The grace of God through Jesus." Just like in Exodus 17, in the midst of a rebellious people, stood in front of them and nourished them with water from a rock, and the grace of his presence to you and I in the church today, Jesus in the gospel has done the same thing. In the midst of a rebellious people, he has stood in the midst of us, and didn't just give us water from the rock,

but he gave his life on our behalf so we could be forgiven, saved, and welcomed into his kingdom. Ultimately, Exodus 17 points us to Jesus, the one who refreshes us from the wrong, the one who stands in the midst of his people. What we find is that even in those moments in the desert, even in those moments of failure for us, that Christ is in the midst of his people. Let's pray. Father, help us this morning to see Jesus, to see grace, to see hope. I thank you for how you have cared for us and forgiven us. Refresh us, strengthen us, and help us. It's in Jesus' name we pray.