17:1
¶ And all the congregation of the
children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys,
according to the commandment of the LORD, and pitched in Rephidim: and there
was no water for the people to drink. 2
Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that
we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with me? wherefore do ye
tempt the LORD? 3 And the people
thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said,
Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our
children and our cattle with thirst? 4
And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, What shall I do unto this people?
they be almost ready to stone me. 5 And
the LORD said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the
elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine
hand, and go. 6 Behold, I will stand
before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and
there shall come water out of it, that the people may 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
chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the LORD, saying,
Is the LORD among us, or not?
Again, the Hebrews complain. The complaint
seems legitimate. This mass of people and their animals must have water but
again they are doubting God’s provision, even His ability to sustain them or
His will to preserve them. Here they are, probably moving through the Sinai
Peninsula and very uncertain about their fate, having seen a tremendous miracle
of the parting of the Red Sea but now uncertain again of their survival. They
are afraid.
The body of the children of Israel are, in
type, examples of the individual Christian. In other words, we each are like
the children of Israel as a group. I am not talking about following God in how
you dress, what you view as entertainment, or whether or not your language is
raw or you drink so-called adult beverages. I’m talking about whether or not
you actually believe God’s promises as laid out in the Bible. God seems to be
underscoring to us, emphasizing that He places a great importance on our
trusting Him, and not only trusting Him, but accepting His timing and His
judgments even if they are not pleasant experiences to us.
One thing missing from the Christian’s
walk with God, one of probably many things missing, is trust. We receive mercy
after mercy, blessing after blessing, deliverance after deliverance, and then
complain loudly when faced with a problem. We complain so loudly you would
think we never knew God’s kindness at all. How many Christians have even
doubted the premise of their faith in God, even doubted His very existence,
because they are walking through a dry land and are thirsty?
Moses strikes the rock in front of the
elders and water came out of the rock.
Psalm
78:15 He clave the rocks in the
wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths. 16 He brought streams also out of the rock, and
caused waters to run down like rivers…20
Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams
overflowed; can he give bread also? can he provide flesh for his people?
Psalm
105:41 He opened the rock, and the
waters gushed out; they ran in the dry places like a river.
Part of our problem spiritually is that we
do not thirst after God’s righteousness but are always thirsty for the wrong
thing.
Matthew
5:6 Blessed are they which do hunger and
thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
The rock is Christ and in mankind’s first
encounter with Him they struck Him.
1Corinthians
10:4 And did all drink the same spiritual
drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock
was Christ.
Isaiah
53:1 ¶ Who hath believed our report? and
to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? 2
For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of
a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there
is no beauty that we should desire him. 3
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted
with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we
esteemed him not.
4 ¶
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did
esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he
was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and
with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we
like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the
LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he
is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is
dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. 8 He
was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation?
for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my
people was he stricken. 9 And he made
his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done
no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
10 ¶
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin…
This had to be, God ordained it so. There
is no other way for us to be delivered from the consequences of our breaking
fellowship with God by our sin than for God Himself to pay the ransom He
demanded for the sinner’s soul and to be the propitiation to appease His own
wrath.
The Bible contains many pithy sayings that
stick in your mind. There is I believe;
help thou mine unbelief in Mark 9:24 and Be still, and know that I am God in Psalm 46:10 among many others
that should ring in our brains in practically every situation. Here also is one
of the great ones that may come to mind in many a church meeting where
contention and strife are present; Is the
LORD among us, or not?
The Sinai Peninsula is 150 miles wide and
contains a million and a half residents today. If this mass of people in Exodus
is moving at the rate of only ten miles a day they could traverse the peninsula
in half a month, of course. We will get a little more information in the next
passage on where they actually are at this point. Do not be confused by
traditions or where some Christian group has placed a monastery. It was not
uncommon for Christian groups to read back tradition into the Bible and declare
a place as the location of a Bible event when the truth is not known for sure.
Traditions have placed Mount Sinai in the southern part of the Sinai Peninsula
or in Arabia based on what Paul said when Arabia covered a huge area, larger
than we think of today. Arabia Petraea was a Roman province that encompassed
parts of present day Jordan, the northwest Arabian peninsula, and the Sinai
peninsula from the second century. It was also bordered by Arabia Deserta and
Arabia Felix so obviously this area was known as Arabia in Paul’s time.
It is also the same with unbelievers who
say that Mount Sinai must have been a volcano and there is no volcano in the
Sinai because they don’t believe in the truth of God’s presence and the power
He displayed as per the Bible. These same people call Ezekiel’s vision a UFO
because of their unbelief.
What comes next suggests the Hebrews
travelled more easterly than southerly.
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