Rock of Ages
November 14, 2021
Preached by Ben Bechtel
Scripture Reading
Exodus 15:22-17:7
15:22 Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. 24 And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.
There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, 26 saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.”
27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.
16:1 They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. 2 And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3 and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” 6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we, that you grumble against us?” 8 And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lordhas heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.”
9 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’”10 And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lordappeared in the cloud. 11 And the Lord said to Moses, 12 “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”
13 In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. 14 And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.15 When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. 16 This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’” 17 And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. 18 But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. 19 And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” 20 But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. 21 Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.
22 On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, 23 he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’” 24 So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. 25 Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. 26 Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.”
27 On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. 28 And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? 29 See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.
31 Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. 32 Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’”33 And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations.” 34 As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. 35 The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. 36 (An omer is the tenth part of an ephah.)
17:1 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.2 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?” 3 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?” 4 So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 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. 7 And he called the name of the place Massah 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?”
This morning we come to a key turning point in our study of the book of Exodus. Thus far, this book has been about how God has worked mightily through his servant Moses to free his people from slavery to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. That is how we are trained to understand freedom, particularly as Americans. Freedom means freedom from any restraints that would keep me from doing the things I want to do and becoming the person I want to be. However, when we think about it and experience it, freedom defined like this begins to look like slavery. Gaining freedom from a harsh employer can quickly turn into financial slavery if you aren’t freed for another way to provide income. True freedom is found not just in being freed from something but freed to serve someone or something better than Pharaoh.
That is what the second half of the book of Exodus teaches us. If we have been set free from slavery to sin and death, what does it mean to find freedom in service to the Lord? This morning we will learn the first part of the answer to that question: that serving the Lord means we must learn to trust him as our master even when things don’t look like we think they should. We must trust God to satisfy our thirst, even when there is no water in sight.
1. The Initial Test (15:22-27)
We pick up the story on the edge of the Red Sea. Directly after God has destroyed their enemies and given them freedom, he begins to lead the Israelites through the wilderness toward the Promised Land. But then, three days into this trek they’re on the brink of dying of thirst. Let’s pick up the story in vv. 24-25:
24 And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them…
These two verses contain two keywords that are repeated throughout this larger section and inform the primary theme of this text.
a. Grumbling
Now, I want you to picture a hypothetical situation with me. Suppose you and your spouse plan a vacation for the family, maybe Disney World or the beach or a beautiful national park.[1] You prepare everything in advance, spend a large amount of money to make it happen, arrange lodging and logistics to get your children out of school. Then you set your children free from bondage to school and begin your trek to the Promised Land of your vacation. Now, in this purely hypothetical situation, how long does it take for one kid to start complaining about how they’re hungry or another to start complaining about the activities that you’ll be doing on vacation and how they wished they’d just stayed home? Purely hypothetical.
You may want to come to the Israelite’s defense here and say that’s not fair. They’re not like children. They’re about to die of thirst in the desert! This is understandable. I agree. Their situation is dire. But, remember what happened just three days earlier. God set them free from their enemies by means of water. If God has control over anything it’s the water! It doesn’t take them long to forget what God had done and get lost in their needs and circumstances. We’ll come back to this.
b. Testing
After God had Moses throw a log into the water and turn it from bitter to sweet, the Lord explains what he is doing in this account. This was all a test. What is the point of testing? Testing is like wringing out a sponge. When you wring out a sponge, you squeeze out the liquid it’s been soaked in. Testing, good testing anyway, reveals us and lays us bare. When you take a test in school, a driver’s test, or a CPA exam whatever you have put in will come out. Testing reveals your knowledge or lack thereof. Testing also provides you an opportunity to grow from this. God is wringing out the Israelites to reveal what is inside and to give them an opportunity to grow from it.
Now, what is the material that the Israelites are tested on? What is their testing intended to reveal? Read vv. 25-26:
There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, 26 saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.”
When they are squeezed by testing in the wilderness, God intends to reveal whether his people will keep his commands. In other words, he is testing whether they trust him enough to do what he says. He is testing their trust.
These verses provide a paradigm for how Israel and the Lord will relate in the wilderness. The wilderness is the place of testing, where God will squeeze his people through many difficult circumstances. The question is, will the people grow to trust their God and serve him, or will they grow hard and grumble against him?
Church, we are in the same place of testing. We have been freed from our sin. Those who have trusted in Christ are on the other side of the Red Sea. But that also means our life on this earth takes place in the wilderness land of testing. Some of you are new Christians and you are being tested as you begin to realize that serving Jesus really does lay rightful claim to all your life, even your checkbook, your work, and your sexuality. For others, there is a difficult person that God has put in your life who you need to learn to live with. For others, it may be physical suffering. These are all wilderness tests designed to help us grow in our trust that God will be as gracious in his provision as he has been in our redemption.
2. The Reoccurring Test (16:1-36)
The heat of testing is turned up in chapter 16. Let’s begin at verse 2 (vv. 2-5):
2 And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3 and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” 4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.”
Do you see the pattern emerging? The people grumble against Moses and the Lord sets out to test them. He promises to provide graciously by sending bread from heaven for his hungry people. The test will be in how they respond.
You might hear the word grumbling and think, what’s so bad about that? We all complain sometimes. Why is God making such a big deal out of this? This story reveals what’s truly going on in our hearts when we grumble. Grumbling is the symptom of a hard heart that doesn’t trust God. Think about what happens in this story. God miraculously makes this bread called manna fall on the ground and the people eat and are satisfied. However, he gives them clear instructions not to save any overnight because he will provide manna for each day. Yet, even though God has provided for them abundantly and promised to each day, they still try to stock up the pantry. They still don’t trust him.
Think about the posture of God toward them in this story. One commentator on this passage says that the truly shocking part about this story is not the charge that God brought them out into the wilderness to kill them, but that God responds to this charge with gracious provision.[2] God continues to move toward his grumbling people, teaching them slowly and patiently what it means to trust him day by day. What type of God do we have that he responds to ungrateful, complaining people with food and a revelation of his glory (vv. 6-7)?
I’m sure we’ve all heard stories before of starving children who are either brought into some sort of shelter or adopted. If you were a child who had been starving and malnourished and you see set before you a huge meal, not only are you eating as much as you can for today, but you’re also stuffing your pockets for tomorrow. This makes perfect sense because your whole life you didn’t know where your next meal was coming from. However, if a child in a middle-class American family stuffed his pockets after dinner on a Tuesday with his parents and siblings, this would be odd behavior. He has every reason to trust his parents to put breakfast on the table the next morning.
Israel is acting like a starving child when they have been cared for by their loving Father. They grumble when they should rejoice and trust. Times of testing often reveal grumbling, hard hearts that don’t trust God despite the many ways he has provided. When the Israelites are squeezed out in the wilderness, what comes out is Marah, bitter.
Friends, when we have a God who provides and cares for us like this, why do we act like starving children? Why do we not trust our God? Not only does he provide us with material things and not only has he provided for us by saving us from slavery to the pharaohs of Satan, sin, and death, but he has given us himself as our daily provision in the desert of testing. God’s testing is not cruel because he gives us everything we need to pass with flying colors! As we heard read in the call to worship this morning, Jesus is our true manna, given to us day by day to feast on in faith. Jesus does not give us everything we want, but he gives us what we need. What we need to keep from grumbling in the wilderness is Jesus himself.
For the family who is financially struggling, it can be easy to worry about where tomorrow’s bread will come from. Maybe you are struggling with self-doubt about your ability to provide for your family or just sheer exhaustion from working hard and having it never be enough. You could choose in that scenario to grumble, asking God why you don’t have as much as others. But you don’t need to because Jesus is your bread from heaven! He does not promise that you will be rich. But each day as you see his goodness and generosity toward you, you can grow in trust that each day he will be there and that is more than enough.
For the person who has a close family member battling with a serious sickness or disease, or if you are the one battling, it can be easy to grow bitter in the face of such suffering. It can be easy to worry about what tomorrow will bring. It can be easy to be consumed with despair and loneliness as you care for your loved one. Jesus is your manna. Each day he is with you, and he assures you that he will never leave you or forsake you. As you feast on him, you can grow more assured day by day of the reality that you truly have eternal life in him.
For the person, might we say this pastor, who lives for the approval of others, it can be easy to grumble when you don’t feel appreciated or seen by others. Maybe you feel small and unimportant. Jesus gives you himself. His is all the approval you need. Each day he gives you the provision of saying I see you, I love you, and I am with you. Jesus gives us himself, day by day, for all of our wilderness testing.
3. The Ultimate Test (17:1-7)
Yet, even knowing that Jesus is our bread from heaven, knowing that God has provided what we need for each day, so often we still don’t trust him. So often we fall back into grumbling. What are we to do about this? What is God to do about his grumbling people?
Chapter 17 begins with a bit of déjà vu. No water? No problem, we’d expect. Not quite. Let’s read verses 2-3:
2 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?” 3 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?”
Ah, some more déjà vu. This sounds incredibly similar, almost word for word with 16:3. Yet, there is a major difference.
That word quarreled in verse 2 is an interesting word. That Hebrew word, more specifically than just generic quarreling, refers to bringing a lawsuit against someone. In other words, the people have had enough. They want to put Moses on trial. However, just like in chapter 16, Moses realizes that their issue is not really with him. The people are putting God on trial. They want God to take his place on the stand and answer to them. God, you have some explaining to do. How could you make our lives this way? How could you cause us to suffer in the wilderness? Are you even present with us? This is the absurdity of grumbling. This is what hardened hearts look like. Using the very breath God gave them, with bodies nourished by the very provisions he gave them, they place God on trial. In our sin and unbelief, we do the same.
So, if a trial is what they want, then a trial is what they’ll get. Let’s keep reading (vv. 4-5):
4 So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.
Moses gets exasperated here, and rightly so. The people are about to string him up! He turns to God and says, what am I supposed to do with these people? We expect God to say, bring down the plagues on them. Give them a taste of what the Egyptians tasted. Their hearts are growing hard like Pharaoh’s. Remember the flipside of Ex. 15:26—if they don’t trust God, if they continue to fail the test, they will face the plagues of Egypt.
Sure enough, in verse 5 Moses grabs his staff, the instrument of judgment that inflicted the plagues on Egypt. He gathers the elders of Israel who would make up a court of law. Judgment is coming. Yet, notice the beginning of verse 5. Moses passed on before the people. The people will not be involved in this trial. Let’s read on (verse 6):
6 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.
What a bizarre scene. We are witnessing a trial here, and in fact it is a trial of God himself. God stands in the dock as the defendant. And as he stands over the rock, identifying himself with the rock, he tells Moses to strike the rock. When God is squeezed like a sponge, when he is tested, what is wrung out? Love. Satisfaction. Grace. God takes the judgment that should have befallen his ungrateful, unbelieving people and unleashes a fountain of satisfaction in the desert.
The most beautiful part about this story comes when a thousand years later. 1 Cor. 10:4 tells us that this rock was Christ. You see on the cross Jesus was squeezed, he was tested, and ultimately though he passed the test he took the rod of divine judgment. Jesus was the rock, struck by judgment in place of his people. Yet, when he died, what happened? What happened when a Roman soldier pierced his side with a spear? Blood and water flowed from the rock for the healing of the nations (John 19:34). When we see the rock, the crucified Christ, we can trust God because he gave gracious provision to his people even at his own expense. The cross melts hard, grumlbing hearts.
So, for us, trying to follow God in this wilderness of testing that we find ourselves in, let us drink deeply from the rock of Christ and may his water sweeten us and satisfy us. Come to the waters of Christ and satisfy your grumbling heart. As Psalm 95 warns, let us not harden our hearts and grow bitter towards God as we are tested. Rather, may our testing prove that we have drank deeply from the inexhaustible fountain of divine goodness we have in the rock of Jesus Christ. Let me close with these words from that great hymn Rock of Ages:
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee;
let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure.
[1] This illustration was inspired by Kevin DeYoung’s sermon “Bitter and Sweet.” https://www.universityreformedchurch.org/sermons/bitter-and-sweet/
[2] Peter Enns, 324
Family Discussion Questions
Talk more about the concept of being freed from something and being freed for something. How is freedom from something not freedom but slavery? What other examples can you come up with to illustrate this, maybe from your own life?
What are some ways in which you are tempted to grumble against the Lord at this time in your life?
How is Jesus daily bread for you right now in your life? What would it look like to trust in his provision today for those areas of life you often grumble about?
