Water from a Rock

Good morning. Good morning to those watching online. It’s good to be with you today.

I’m looking forward to sharing God’s word from you. We’re still in the book of Exodus, so I get to continue that today. I’m so excited to do that today.

So looking forward to doing that, and I’d love to chat with you after the service. I’ll be out there around the Welcome Center if you’d like to chat or talk about what we looked at today. Today we’re actually in a new chapter.

We start chapter 17. Some of you have been reading ahead as well, so we’re gonna start chapter 17 today in the book of Exodus, and then we’ll move on next week for the rest of chapter 17, next Sunday when Pastor Tim will be back with us. As we’ve been doing, we encourage everybody to be present in worship, but also we provide you the scripture ahead of time so you can read ahead before you come to church, and we also have some digging deeper questions that are available for you too if you wanna explore and go deeper after today throughout the week.

So you can get all that on our website. We send out a Monday morning email that sends that information to you as well, so we encourage you to be involved, fully involved in this study that we’re doing in Exodus. It’s pretty wild, isn’t it? You guys liking Exodus so far? Lots of great stories.

There’s a lot of crazy stuff coming up too, so looking forward to that. Let’s jump right into chapter 17 today, okay? Are you ready? Again, the Israelites are in the desert, they’re wandering around, and this is another story from today. It says, the whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, that’s how you pronounce it in Hebrew, Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded.

They’re following the Lord’s lead. They camped at a place, a new place called Rephidim, that’s how you say it. It actually means, the word means in Hebrew, place of rest.

So let me ask you, if you come to a place of rest in the desert, what do you expect to be there? Water. Guess what wasn’t there? Water. So there was no water for the people to drink at the place of rest.

And guess what happened? That’s right, same old thing. It’s like, did we read this already? They quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink. No pretty pleas, nothing in there like that.

It reminds me of my Basset, we have a Basset hound, a four-year-old Basset hound. And when it’s dinner time, it’s just, she’ll look you in the eyes and she’ll just bark, bark, bark, bark, give me dinner now. How many have a dog like that? Just, how many have a teenager like that? Just saying, could happen.

Well, let’s see what happens here. So they’re quarreling with Moses, give us water to drink. And Moses replied, you know, I always, I was imagining this past week, Robert De Niro as Moses.

You talking to me? They keep bothering him, that would be great, I mean, Robert De Niro as Moses, this, coming this fall. I think it’d be great. He’d deal with them, he’d know how to handle these grumblers.

They say, why do you quarrel with me, Moses says. Why do you put the Lord to the test? Why do you keep testing God’s patience by crumbling and complaining? But they were thirsty. They were thirsty.

They grumbled against Moses. And they, once again, made this accusation. Moses, why did you bring us up here? You’re trying to kill us.

You’re trying to make us die of thirst. And they actually went a little further this time, they said, you’re trying to make our children die of thirst. And they even said, and our livestock, which is kind of like their pets.

Don’t mess with people’s pets. So what happens? Moses says, Lord, what am I about to do with these people? I think he should be Italian. Don’t you think? I mean, Moses should be Italian.

You know, that’d be great. They’re almost ready to stone me. The Lord answered Moses.

So the Lord finally said, okay, Moses, this is what you’re gonna do. Let me explain it to you. I want you to, first of all, we’ll go get some other people with you.

Get some elders of the Israelites. They’ll be with you. Go get your staff.

Remember that staff I gave you that you hit the Nile with and the water parted? Take that with you. And then you’re gonna go to this big rock at Horeb, which is the location, Mount Horeb. You’re gonna go there and you’re gonna smack the rock and water will come out of the rock.

I love this because I, remember, Moses writes this. Okay, so you’re thinking Moses is writing this and you’d think he would explain the scene of them drinking water from the rock, but he doesn’t. He goes right into telling them what he named the rock.

That’s kind of funny. So he says he struck the rock, water came out for the people to drink. That’s it.

And then he says, Moses did this in the sight of the elders and he called the place Massa and Meribah, which means Complainer’s Rock. That’s what it means. Complainer’s Rock.

That’s what he named it. Just so you all know, you’re all going to Complainer’s Rock. They tested the Lord saying, is the Lord among us or not? Maybe you’ve asked that question in life sometime.

God, are you with me or not? Are you here or not? I don’t think complaining is the real problem. It’s not the core problem, is it? Complaining always points to something deeper, doesn’t it? It’s a symptom. Complaining and grumbling is just a symptom of something deeper, something deeper going on.

And I think in this passage, and as we’re gonna see throughout scripture, when it describes this passage, is we’re talking about something other than physical thirst. Physical thirst is a metaphor for something deeper that we all experience. A spiritual thirst, a spiritual hunger, a longing, an ache for something more, something to fill the void, something to fill the emptiness, something to bring contentment, peace.

We’re all lurking, we’re all searching for it. I wanna share some stories with you that help me understand this, that give me an image of it, what this looks like. I was a youth director for many years, just like Pastor Tim, youth pastor for many years, worked with students.

And one year I was at a conference in Nashville, and I was walking around the downtown Nashville area. There’s a lot of homeless down there. We’ve been to downtown Nashville before.

And as my practice, if I’m walking somewhere and someone comes and asks me for money, I always ask them, what do you need money for? And sometimes they’ll say food. And I’ll say, okay, well, I will take you right over there and I’ll buy you something to eat. We’ll sit down together and get something to eat.

A lot of times, most of the time, they’ll say no thanks, they just want cash. But occasionally, it does happen. So I was in Nashville and this guy, he looked like he was strung up on drugs, like for real.

And I thought there’s no way he’s gonna, but he’s like, okay, so, okay, let’s go to McDonald’s. McDonald’s down the road, so we walked to McDonald’s together. I take him up to the counter.

I buy him some burger, whatever, burger and fries, whatever. I got something. We sat down just across from each other.

And I’ve never seen someone who hasn’t eaten in a long time and who’s been living off drugs eat, but it wasn’t pleasant. He was hungry, because he hasn’t eaten in probably weeks. Who knows how long, maybe it’s been a month.

I don’t know, he was really skinny. And every bite of the burger, he was choking and gagging on it. And it took him a long time.

And I was, it’s like the whole time, this is there watching him eat a burger. And he’s taking his, but he ate the whole, I mean, it took a long time and there was a lot of gagging. And the whole place is watching this happen.

And I’m just like, wow, here’s someone who, just I’m thinking about him and the drugs and trying to fill the need in his life. And now he hasn’t eaten, and it’s just like, blow my mind. I’ve actually had the same experience.

Now, this is gonna blow you away, but today is actually the day my dad died 24 years ago, October 18th. He struggled with alcohol and substances most of his adult life. And that’s how he died as well.

You know, I remember this one story that I wanna share with you. We would pick him up and take him to one of our houses, me and my sisters, and he would do some work on the house. He was a carpenter when he was working.

And then we would take him back home. He couldn’t drive, obviously it was too dangerous for him to drive with the drinking issue. So one day I took him back and he wanted to go to the store.

I was like, oh, so we go there and he bought a case of beer, which was what he would drink at night. And yeah, a case. And so I go to the house and I just wanted to go inside to say goodbye.

I don’t know if he was gonna live that night. So I wanted to say goodbye to him, just in case. And I followed him in the house and he went real fast.

And I got in there and before even, I just walked in the house, he had cracked one open and he just opened his throat and just like stuck the beer like this and he didn’t move till it was empty. Just straight down, you know, like he was dying of thirst. He did a second one and then a third.

And I’m just watching, you know, I just wanna say goodbye. Fourth, fifth, six. I remember just watching him just down six, like just that was like the first taste, you know? I’m like, I gotta get out of here.

But I just, that image is stuck in my mind of watching him and he’s looking really thirsty. He’s looking like he’s trying to fill something, but it’s not working. It’s not working.

You know, it’s making it worse actually. And as you know, if you struggle with addiction or know somebody who’s struggled with addiction, you have to constantly do more and more to try to meet that need. It’s like, it’s strange.

But it makes me think a lot about this passage of the physical thirst, but also the spiritual thirst, this searching for something more. And we end up, we’re always looking around us to see what can we use to fill us and to escape, either to escape or to fill us. And it’s hard to watch someone you love.

In fact, I would, you know, if that’s something you struggle with, I really encourage you to get help. It doesn’t just affect you, it affects everybody around you as well. It’s a big part of my story, maybe a big part of your story.

We actually have a strength and, on Tuesday night we have a group that meets here called Strength in Sobriety. It’s like a Christian support group. We have it every Tuesday night here.

It’s amazing. Maybe you didn’t know that. So I encourage you to utilize that or we have counselors here too that we’ve been filling, starting a counseling center here.

Get help, it’s important for you and your family. But whether it’s a substances or a relationship or there’s a lot of things we can look to fill that hole, that void, to fill that spiritual thirst other than looking to God because that’s what we tend to do. And we’re gonna get in this, in fact, the Bible talks a lot about this.

So I wanna go to the Saint Paul in the New Testament. He’s writing a letter to the Corinthians and he’s looking back at this passage from Exodus. The one we’re reading today.

He’s looking back at this passage from Exodus. I want you to look at his comments on this. This is Apostle Paul.

He’s talking, when he says, our ancestors, he’s talking about Exodus. Our ancestors, the Israelites, were under the cloud and they passed through the sea, the Red Sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea.

They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink. So even Paul recognizes it’s not just about, these stories are not just about physical thirst. There’s something else going on.

It’s a spiritual thirst. Paul’s recognizing, he says, they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them and that rock was Jesus. Jesus.

It was all about Jesus, what was happening with the water coming from the rock. It was a spiritual food that they were drinking, a spiritual drink they were drinking. That’s because Jesus is the only one who can quench your thirst.

He’s the only one that can quench your thirst. It reminds me of a story in the New Testament you’ve probably heard of, the Samaritan woman. Now, whenever I think Samaritan woman, I can’t, and this is weird, but I can’t help but thinking, American woman, but Samaritan woman.

Now, you’re never gonna think of it the same. Give me a drink, Samaritan woman. Okay, imagine that.

Lenny Kravitz as Jesus. No, we don’t want, that’s fine. Probably not a good one.

It’s a great story, Samaritan woman. She’s coming to the well in the hot part of the day for a reason, nobody else is there. She’s trying to be hiding and Jesus approaches her at the well, which was breaking a lot of social norms there because he’s a man, she’s a married woman.

Well, she’s actually not married, but we’ll get to that. He’s a Jew, she’s a Samaritan, and so she’s surprised at this because Jesus says, can you give me something to drink? Well, they go through this whole conversation. Jesus reveals her life to herself.

He tells her her life and lets her know that he knows that she’s on her fifth relationship and the number five, she’s not married to him yet, and she’s just amazed that he knows her whole life, and Jesus says to her at this one point, he says, you know, if you were to ask me for a drink, I would give you living water and you would never be thirsty again, and she says, give me this water, right? She understands what he’s saying, give me this water, because she’s been searching for it, she’s been looking for it in relationships. She wants this water and Jesus gives her this water and her life has changed. If you read the rest of the story, Jesus is that living water that quenches your thirst.

Now, I wanna go back to St. Paul, because St. Paul is gonna go into something, he’s gonna say, look, these things have happened in the Old Testament, this book of Exodus we’re studying, he says, all that has occurred for you as an example to keep you and to keep me from setting our hearts on evil. The actual Greek word is craving, to keep us from craving evil, from craving things that are harmful to us and harmful to your spiritual life, just as they did. Now, he goes on to describe some of this, he actually starts with the word idolatry, so he says, don’t be idolaters like some of them were.

As it’s written, they sat down to eat and drink and they got up to indulge in revelry. So they enjoyed the food that God provided for them and then they turned away from God and deserted him. And idolatry simply means that, it’s you when you put something or somebody in place of God in your life, okay? When you take God out of that first place and you put something or something else in place, that’s what an idol is, that’s what idolatry is.

He goes on to say, we should not commit sexual immorality because that’s another thing that we look to, to fill. It’s another kind of addiction, actually, you can have an addiction in this as well. He says, and in one day, 23,000 of them died, wow.

He goes on, we should not test Christ as some of them did and were killed by snakes, what? Do not grumble as some of them did and were killed by the destroying angel. Exodus is weird, man, and it’s gonna get weird. You should not miss any Sunday in Exodus.

You never know what story Tim’s gonna be teaching on. It’s gonna get wild, all this stuff is coming up, this crazy stuff that’s happening. But all this happens to them as an example for you, as a warning for you and me.

We live in the last days, we’re living in the last age. Jesus is the rock, Jesus is the living water. He’s the only one that can quench your thirst, amen? What happened in Exodus, what happened in Corinth is nothing different than us.

We also look to things to fill us and to fill that emptiness and that void. And sometimes it turns into an addiction or just life falls apart and things don’t happen. And a lot of times, when we look to the things of this world to fill that spiritual thirst, it doesn’t work out, and then what happens? We get upset, we complain, we blame God, others.

So we’re trying to fill a hole that only Jesus can fill. We’re trying to satisfy a thirst that only Jesus can satisfy and quench. I wanna tell you a World War II story.

Last week, Tim shared a World War II story, right? I got one for you today, you ready? Some of you may have seen, this actually was turned into a movie over a decade ago. How many have seen Unbroken? It’s an amazing story of these three pilots. Their plane went down in the Pacific Ocean.

It’s a true story. They survived on a life raft, well, two out of three of them survived. They were on a life raft, they had no water and no food, and they were out there for 47 days.

Imagine that, 47 days. They’re surrounded by what? Water. Imagine that, as far as the eye can see, water.

They’re dying of thirst. They can’t drink that water, can they? In fact, if they drink that water, their condition will even get worse. It might taste good for a second, but actually, it’ll make their condition worse.

It’s not that different from us today. We’re surrounded by water. We’re dying of thirst, literally.

We have a spiritual thirst and we’re dying, and we’re surrounded by water. The things of this world, lots of things, but all that stuff is hurtful to us. It might satisfy for a second, but ultimately, it’s hurtful.

So how did they survive? Well, how did two out of three of them survive? They survived because of water from above. They collected rainwater in their raft. They drank the rainwater in their raft.

That’s how they survived. Water from above, water from heaven. Isn’t that amazing? And that’s how we’re gonna survive, too.

It’s water from above, the living water. Jesus doesn’t just teach you how to survive. The Bible’s not just about how to survive.

It’s not just about strategies, about what you’re supposed to do to survive this life. That’s not the message of Christianity. The message of Christianity is this.

Jesus gives himself to you. That is the message of Christianity. The creator of the universe, because he loves you, gives himself to you.

He’s the answer. Amen. There’s no strategy.

There’s no thing you can do. He is the answer. He says through the prophet Isaiah, if anyone thirsts, let them come to me and drink, because he has the living water.

He’s the answer. He’s the food. Someone say to someone next to you, Jesus is the answer.

He’s the living water. He’s the food. He will give you life.

He has the life, the fullest life, eternal life. The Old Testament, not just in Isaiah, not just in Exodus. There’s also a place in Jeremiah that talks about the same exact thing.

It’s amazing. This is God speaking through the prophet Jeremiah. He says, my people have sinned twice.

The first sin is deserting God. Leaving God. The second is turning to the things of this world.

He says, they deserted me, even though I am the spring of water that gives life. And they’ve dug their own wells. Anybody ever dig a well? Some of you may have actually dug your well, a well.

He says, the wells that they dig, that we dig, are broken. They don’t hold water. See, we spend a lot of time and energy digging wells that are broken, because we’re broken.

And the wells we dig can’t hold water. They can’t give us water, because they’re broken. And we looked at all the things around us.

We’re surrounded by options, but they can’t hold water. You can dig the well of being rich and famous. Maybe that’s the well you’re trying to dig.

Guess what? You can watch a lot of documentaries about how it doesn’t work. It’s not gonna give you what you think it’s gonna give you. You can dig the well of your dream car, your dream house, or some amazing possessions.

It’s not gonna do it. Alcohol, substances, we know that’s not gonna work. In fact, some of these things make it worse.

Relationships, it’s not gonna do it, it’s not gonna work. A person can’t give you that, they can’t fill that hole. Don’t put it on that person.

These are all broken wells. You need Jesus, I need Jesus. Jesus is the answer, he is the answer.

He’s the living water. So how do we access it? This is the question I wanna close with and focus on, is how do we access Jesus’ living water? Because it’s like the woman at the well, right? She said, Jesus, then give me this drink. She says to him, give me this drink, I want this drink.

Who doesn’t want a drink that enables you to never be thirsty again? Jesus, give me this drink. See, we always receive Christ’s living water, we always receive him through faith, amen? That’s what the scriptures say. We’re saved by grace, by God’s doing through faith.

It’s always through faith. You say, well, what do you mean faith? Well, I mean, believing God’s promises. It’s believing God’s promises because he’s made some amazing promises.

He’s given you many promises. He promises to give you everything you need. You know, this temptation to search for things outside of God, outside of Jesus, it’s the same temptation the devil gave Adam and Eve in the garden.

Look, Eve, take your eye off God. Look at this, look at this beautiful, wonderful, shiny apple. Look at how good it’s gonna taste and how it’s gonna meet all your needs.

It’s gonna be everything you need. You know, it’s the same argument. It’s the same thing he does in our minds, trying to get us to desert God, to look away from God and to turn to all these things.

All this salt water that doesn’t work. It just makes the condition worse. Keep your eyes on Jesus.

He’s the living water. And God wants to bring this to you. In fact, he tells us the ways in which he brings this to you.

You receive it in faith, but the gift is there through word and sacrament. That’s what we believe, that’s what we teach here. You say, what do you mean by that, pastor? Well, I mean, the Bible says, faith comes by hearing the word of God.

It’s the power of the word of God that works in you and through you. Always the power of the work of God, it’s always his word. Christ brings us this water through his word and sacrament.

We’ve got a lot of opportunities here. Let me just say this. Not just Sunday morning, we try to really dive into the Bible, but we also have a lot of Bible studies that are available to you as well here.

We’ve got men’s, women’s, we have a co-ed Bible study starting on Wednesday night coming up, I think, this week on Wednesday night. We’ve got our Sunday morning Bible studies that we’ve started. In fact, right now, I think they’re finishing up a study on how to study the Bible right now in room two.

Next week, I will start a three-week class called All About the Bible from 10.30 to 12, so you’re welcome to join and sign up for that next week. So a lot of opportunities for you to dive into the scriptures and learn and grow and receive God’s gifts and his living water through his word and the sacrament. You know, why do we say sacrament? Sacrament is a word that means a sacred thing.

It’s the way that God mysteriously unites you to Jesus, how you meet Jesus. You meet him in baptism. Yes, we meet him in communion.

He’s present, and he gives us the forgiveness of our sins. So I’m here today to encourage you to enter into these things frequently. You know, Sunday mornings probably is great, and you should be here, and we should be here.

I look forward to it, but there’s a whole six other days, too, that are important to receive. We need it every day. I need Jesus.

Do you need Jesus every day? I need him every day. I need to be reminded every day. I need to look to him every day because the devil is there every day.

I can tell you that right now. He’s there every day, tempting me, and it might be the same temptation over and over, but he’s still there. He’s not giving up.

Look to Jesus. He brings his living water through word and sacrament. As we enter into this time, we’re gonna have a time where we actually meet Jesus in his body and blood, in communion.

Before we do that, I think let’s take a moment, I think it’s important, after we’ve talked about some pretty heavy things here, maybe it’s brought up some memories of you, of your past. Maybe it’s shown you a little honesty about your own life right now. Maybe you are looking and trying to access that salt water that’s around you.

You’re trying to dig your own well that’s broken. Maybe you’ve placed someone or something in the place of God in your life. Take a moment right now to just be honest with God about it.

Ask his forgiveness. So let’s bow our heads and bow our hearts and do that right now in the quietness of this moment.