Christian, Misrepresent God at Your Own Peril and Lose Your Dream.

Numbers Chapter 20: A Big Chapter in which Miriam & Aaron Die; Israel & Moses Sin; God Commands; and Edom Refuses Passage to the Israelites

Numbers 20:1-29

Day 73. Minneapolis is “burning”, and a police officer was charged with 3^rd degree murder and manslaughter. Murder is either first degree or second degree, except in three states (Florida, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota). There were violent riots last night in Atlanta, New York, Washington, and Minneapolis. The world is no longer a safe place. Racism is still rampant. Love is still missing big time. I can’t speak for others, but I feel the church is silent. It was, for all intent and purposes, silent as Hitler was implementing his “final solution”.  The Church of Jesus Christ has the only true “final solution” that works for mankind and it needs to take bigger risks to share it these days. I recently was asked on social media if I was prepared to actually admit that I “talk with God daily, etc.” I said “yes, I do” and the person proceeded to ridicule me. That’s okay. But the message got out there. Franklin Graham of the Billy Graham Association is using this Covid-19 experience as an opportunity to share the Gospel – clearly and simply.  I congratulate him. We need to put our money where our mouths are. Let’s be a blessing to someone today.

On a positive note, today NASA/SPACEX (the latter being owned by Elon Musk who owns brought us Tesla cars) has successfully launched American astronauts into space again, after nearly one whole decade. We wish them godspeed.

Thank you for joining us in our study of Numbers. Chapter 20 is a chapter with lots of events. Read on.

The Passage

20 Then the sons of Israel, the whole congregation, came to the wilderness of Zin in the first month; and the people stayed at Kadesh. Now Miriam died there and was buried there.

² There was no water for the congregation, and they assembled themselves against Moses and Aaron. ³ The people thus contended with Moses and spoke, saying, “If only we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord! ⁴ Why then have you brought the Lord’s assembly into this wilderness, for us and our beasts to die ^[a]here?⁵ Why have you made us come up from Egypt, to bring us in to this wretched place? It is not a place of ^[b]grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, nor is there water to drink.”⁶ Then Moses and Aaron came in from the presence of the assembly to the doorway of the tent of meeting and fell on their faces. Then the glory of the Lord appeared to them;

⁷ and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ⁸ “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.”

⁹ So Moses took the rod from before the Lord, just as He had commanded him; ¹⁰ and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock. And he said to them, “Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” ¹¹ Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank. ¹² But 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.”¹³ Those were the waters of ^[c]Meribah, ^[d]because the sons of Israel contended with the Lord, and He proved Himself holy among them.

¹⁴ From Kadesh Moses then sent messengers to the king of Edom: “Thus your brother Israel has said, ‘You know all the hardship that has befallen us; ¹⁵ that our fathers went down to Egypt, and we stayed in Egypt a long time, and the Egyptians treated us and our fathers badly. ¹⁶ But when we cried out to the Lord, He heard our voice and sent an angel and brought us out from Egypt; now behold, we are at Kadesh, a town on the edge of your territory. ¹⁷ Please let us pass through your land. We will not pass through field or through vineyard; we will not even drink water from a well. We will go along the king’s highway, not turning to the right or left, until we pass through your territory.’” ¹⁸ Edom, however, said to him, “You shall not pass through ^[e]us, or I will come out with the sword against you.” ¹⁹ Again, the sons of Israel said to him, “We will go up by the highway, and if I and my livestock do drink any of your water, then I will ^[f]pay its price. Let me only pass through on my feet, ^[g]nothing else.” ²⁰ But he said, “You shall not pass through.” And Edom came out against him with a heavy ^[h]force and with a strong hand.²¹ Thus Edom refused to allow Israel to pass through his territory; so Israel turned away from him.

²² Now when they set out from Kadesh, the sons of Israel, the whole congregation, came to Mount Hor. ²³ Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron at Mount Hor by the border of the land of Edom, saying, ²⁴ “Aaron will be gathered to his people; for he shall not enter the land which I have given to the sons of Israel, because you rebelled against My ^[i]command at the waters of Meribah. ²⁵ Take Aaron and his son Eleazar and bring them up to Mount Hor; ²⁶ and strip Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eleazar. So Aaron will be gathered to his people, and will die there.” ²⁷ So Moses did just as the Lord had commanded, and they went up to Mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation. ²⁸ After Moses had stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eleazar, Aaron died there on the mountain top. Then Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain.²⁹ When all the congregation saw that Aaron had died, all the house of Israel wept for Aaron thirty days.

Footnotes

1. Numbers 20:4 Lit there
2. Numbers 20:5 Lit seed
3. Numbers 20:13 I.e. contention
4. Numbers 20:13 Or where
5. Numbers 20:18 Lit me
6. Numbers 20:19 Lit give
7. Numbers 20:19 Or no great thing
8. Numbers 20:20 Lit people
9. Numbers 20:24 Lit mouth

Thoughts on the Passage

A packed chapter indeed. Verse 1 tells us where they are and when they got there and simply that Moses’ sister, Miriam, died there. Miriam was the first of the three siblings to die (Aaron and Moses were to follow). This was in keeping with God’s promise that none of the original generation of those who left Egypt, save Joshua and Caleb, would enter the promised land.

In verses 2-6, we find out that the people grumble again, this time for water. They approach Moses and ask the same questions, “why, why, why”. And of course, Moses and Aaron go towards the doorway of the tent of meeting, fall on their faces, and the glory of the Lord appears to them and God speaks to Moses. He instructs Moses on how to deal with the situation. Let’s look at the instructions carefully because this event is a lead-up to the most critical or key verse of the entire book of Numbers.

David Guzik says the need was real, but the reaction of Israel smacked of unbelief and a bad attitude. Sometimes, as we all know, we overact to what we think is a pressing need in our lives rather than to take the matter to God.

God says: i) take the rod; ii) you and Aaron assemble the congregation; and iii) speak to the rock before their eyes, so that it would yield water. Simple. Three requests. Nothing else was needed. The rod that Moses was to take, according to Robert Jamieson, was the one that had been deposited in the tabernacle as we are told in Numbers 17:10. It was the rod of Aaron. There was no request to ‘use’ the rod to strike the rock as God had instructed Moses to do back in Mount Sinai when there was a similar need. Just talking to the rock this time would produce the water needed and the congregation and their animals would have their thirst satisfied. But what happened?

Moses i) takes the rod (so far, so good); ii) Moses and Aaron gather the assembly before the rock (even better); and iii) – oh oh, Moses doesn’t speak to the rock! He speaks to the people (verse 10) and he calls them rebels. He asks them if he and Aaron were to give them water out of the rock. And then, only then, does Moses strike the rock twice without speaking to it. The water gushes forth and the people and their animals drink as much as they want.

What was Moses guilty of from a human perspective? First, he added his own approach to the process that God had given him to deal with the situation. Second, he chided the people and was angry at them. His emotions or attitude took over his heart. And finally, as Guzik says, he over-magnified his part or potential part in the solution – “shall we give you water?” Who’s “we” Moses?  You can’t do anything. Did you forget that?  That’s our lesson here. When God wants us to do something – stick to what He tells us to do and we must not exaggerate in our minds or with our words, our role in that. And then he strikes the rock not once, as if he were a magician, but twice, out of shear anger and frustration.

We need to note how gracious God was to the Israelites. Even though Moses didn’t follow the instructions, God didn’t deny His people what they needed. The thought that comes to mind is how we often see God taking care of His people in local church when their leaders are not following God’s exact instructions. God loves us and He will take care of us regardless of leadership. And then He will deal with the leadership.

And the God speaks to Moses and Aaron, and here comes the most critical or key verse in the whole book, verse 12, “Because you guys did not believe me and you did not treat Me as holy in the sight of the people, you both will not have the privilege of leading them to the promised land.”  The rock did not need to be struck; it only needed to be spoken to. Come on, God. We’re talking about Moses and Aaron here. These are you chosen servants.  They have gone through so much in obedience to you. One little mistake and that’s it, they’re out?  That’s it, they are out. And not only that, they, or at least Moses, still has a lot of work to do for God. No exceptions, not even for Moses.

We have to understand what God was upset about here. It was the fact that He was misrepresented to the people by Moses and Aaron. He says, “because you did not believe me.” Because God said that, we can know that Moses did in fact have a problem at that very moment with his belief in God being able to deliver the water by Moses simply speaking to the rock. And as a result, Moses lost out on his life’s dream – the promised land. The lesson? Don’t ever misrepresent God. Don’t ever doubt God. Don’t stop believing in what God tells you directly. Leaders, pastors, elders, deacons, church staff take note – don’t ever do that. And that goes for the rest of us, too.

Now, here’s the comparison to Christ the Rock. In order for Christ to accomplish His work for the Father, He only needed to be struck once – to be crucified. He did not need, in order to save us all from sin, to be struck twice. Guzik says Moses in striking the rock twice, “defaced a beautiful picture of Jesus' redemptive work through the rock which provided water in the wilderness”.

Verses 14-21 relate the account of Moses sending messengers to the king of Edom requesting permission to pass through his land on their journey. Notice these messengers referred to themselves, to Israel, as “Edom’s brother”. Guzik says, “The nation of Israel was brother to the nation of Edom, because the patriarch Israel (also known as Jacob) was brother to Esau (also known as Edom), as related in Genesis 25:19-34.

They give him the story about all the hardships they’ve been through and that they will not harm their land at all. The king of Edom says no, and if they try anyway, he would go after them in battle. They tried again asking if they could even just go by one highway and again, he said no, at which point the Israelites turned to travel away from Edom’s territory and they got to Mount Hor (verse 22). The refusal was truly unnecessary. It would have cost Edom nothing to agree. But what was the lesson for the Israelites? It was the same as it is for us today: when people do not support our work or cause and set up barriers for our service to God, leave them to God and don’t try to avenge their actions. In my own life, I’ve seen God take care of those kind of uncooperative sorts appropriately soon after their refusal to help.

God once again speaks to Moses and Aaron. This is important because now God is telling them that it is time for Aaron to die because they both rebelled against God at Meribah (where the water miracle took place). And Moses was to take Aaron and his son Eleazar up to Mount Hor. God uses the phrase “bring them up” so we could assume that He was going to be there as well. Moses was to strip Aaron of this high priestly garments and put them on Eleazar. And then Aaron was to die there. And that’s exactly what happened. Then Moses, after supposedly burying Aaron (we don’t know for sure), along with Eleazar went back down.  The whole congregation connected the dots and realized that Aaron had died, and they all wept and mourned for 30 days.

Several things to note here. Aaron’s death had been announced prior to the trip up Mount Hor. So, there was time for an orderly and appropriate transition from Israel’s first High Priest to their second. Also, we must remember that as good as Aaron was, he was also involved negatively in the whole situation with the Golden Calf. He, like sister Miriam, and later Moses, could be said to have had a mixed record in serving God. What’s the lesson? Guzik suggests that many times the office and the work is more important than the man (or woman) carrying it out. [I can’t but think of how so many Christians today complain about the personal sins of a president but fail to see what that president may be doing that God wants done. We need to think about that as we verbalize our opinions.]

What is not lost on us and Matthew Henry is that these same people who time and again came out and complained about Aaron, now mourn 30 days for his loss. That is human nature. That is the fickleness of people. That is the hypocrisy of people. I can go on.  I won’t. Our job is to work and live throughout our lives for an audience of one – our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is my prayer for you and me today.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

God is Not Subject to Pay Equity

Rest – On God’s Terms and His Bottom Line

Exodus 33:17-23: And the Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight, and I have known you by name.” Then Moses said, “I pray Thee, show me Thy glory!” And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” Then the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”

God tells Moses He will grant his request to go with the people because Moses had found favor in His sight and because God knows him by name. This latter condition may be a reference to God speaking with Moses face to face, and knowing him as a friend. We are also tempted to think that God has bought Moses’ arguments.  Perhaps so, but Moses wants to make sure and asks God to be shown His glory. But let us be sure of one thing – whatever God does (and what He does, He does abundantly), He does on His own will and desire because as the text implies, Moses had found favor in His sight.

Chuck Smith marvels at how wonderful it would be if we each sought the heavenly glory of God rather than being so ‘earthbound’ in our thinking about Him. He writes, “We get so bound up in the things of man, the things of man’s creation, the work of our own hands; oh, that we might see the glory of God.” Moses in the Old Testament and then Paul and John in the New got a glimpse of the glory of God and their lives were changed forever. Smith goes on to say that seeing God’s glory (or getting a real glimpse of it) will create in us a dissatisfaction with earthly things. It will make us feel as if we can never settle into the old routine again. He writes, “I can never be happy again with just the old mundane material world around me, but there'll be that longing to enter into that glory, and the presence of God.” That’s the extra assurance that Moses was looking for as he had a real hunger for a closer relationship with, and a greater knowledge of, God. And you will remember that Moses had many years earlier already seen something of the Glory of God when God’s glory had appeared in the cloud (Exodus 16:10) and when it had rested on Mount Sinai like a consuming fire (Exodus 24:16-17).  Still, or maybe because of that, Moses wanted more of seeing and knowing God’s Glory. And God responds.

And God says, “I’ll let My ‘goodness’ pass before you.” And, “I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you.”

Moses wanted to see God’s glory and God offers to show him His goodness. To commentator David Guzik that makes a lot of sense because God’s glory, he says, lies in His goodness. The most important thing for us to understand as we seek to know God and His glory is that God is good. If we fail to grasp that, we will fail to learn much about God.

Matthew Henry suggests that God denied that which was not fit to be granted, and which Moses could not bear. And God does so out of compassion for man, for “A full discovery of the glory of God would quite overpower the faculties of any mortal man in this present state, and overwhelm him, even Moses himself.” When we ask things of God, we must be thankful that sometimes He denies our request. Henry goes on to say that seeing the face of God “is an honor reserved for the future state, to be the eternal bliss of holy souls...In the meantime let us adore the height of what we do know of God, and the depth of what we do not.” It is also of note to Henry that “Sinful man dreads the sight of God his Judge; but holy souls, being by the Spirit of the Lord changed into the same image, behold with open face the glory of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:18)”

On the aspect of proclaiming the name of the Lord, David Guzik reminds us that “in the thinking of the ancient Hebrews (and also in other ancient cultures), the name represented a person’s character and nature. God promised to reveal His character to Moses, not merely a title.” Moses was asking to see more of God’s glory, but God was offering him infinitely more than just the mere visual grandeur of His glory. God was offering Moses what he needed to know, not what he wanted to know.

Smith says this is

“a name that was highly revered by the Jews, so highly revered but that they would not even attempt to pronounce it. So the name of God became non-pronounceable. When the scribes would come to the name of God in their text, . . .  they would not put in the vowels, only the consonants, Y-H-V-H. Now try and pronounce Y-H-V-H, unpronounceable, can't pronounce just the consonants, you need the vowels for pronunciation. We don't know what the vowels are. That is why we don't know if the name of God is Yahweh, or Jehovah, pronounced with a "Y" not sure how to spell it. We don't know what it is. We guess at what the vowels might be, but we don't know because the name of God was not pronounced by them.”

If he is correct, then for centuries now we seem to have taken a risk or perhaps compromised and deemed that God’s name is both Yahweh and Jehovah.  And if that’s not enough, here’s what else Smith suggests took place each time a scribe was about to write the name of God:

But the scribes when they would come to these consonants, before they would write them in the text, they would go in and take a bath, put on fresh clothes, wash their pen completely, dip it in fresh ink, and then write the consonants. Now can you imagine how many baths you'd have to take in some of these passages where the Lord's name is mentioned several times? Yet that is the kind of reverence in which they held the name of God, feeling that it was such a holy name that it should never pass the lips of man. Thus it was never to be pronounced by man.

Readers, he says, when they would come to the name, “rather than attempting to pronounce the name, they would bow their head in reverence and they would just whisper the name.” Nothing was held in higher respect than the name of God. My, haven’t we come a long way – when we often hear the name of God being used so abhorrently today, not only by adults, but also by very young children. What’s your practice? What do you let your children or grandchildren get away with in your presence? I remember once being in the midst of negotiations and someone took the name of Jesus in vain. I very politely asked him, “Jesus Christ is not whom we are discussing right now, so I would appreciate it if you would keep Him out of it.” The man got the message; didn’t apologize, but changed his vocabulary going forward.

When God said, “I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you”, was He really saying He would pronounce His name before Moses? Smith says that as far as the Israelites were concerned only the High Priest knew how to pronounce the name of God and he would do so once a year on the Day of Atonement.

God knew that Moses had to be protected when He showed him His goodness, and Moses tells us in verses 21-23 of this passage how God intended to do that. First God gave Moses a very specific instruction as to where to stand in order to see what he was being allowed to see. Then as He passed before and by Moses, God would hide Moses in the cleft of the rock he was told to stand on and use His own hand to shield him from seeing God Himself.  It is this passage that prompted Agustus Toplady to write the famous words many of us have sung, Rock of Ages, cleft for me; Let me hide myself in Thee.

David Guzik gives us a list of people who have experienced a glimpse of the glory of God while being protected by Him.  They included Isaiah, the apostle John, and Paul, from our Bible. And post-Bible times, Jonathan Edwards, David Brainerd (the great apostle to the American Indians), and D. L. Moody. We may not be given that honor, but that should not stop us from having an earnest desire to experience God deeply, in whatever way He chooses to allow us to do so. We can all see something of the glory of God, even though we will not see it fully, or clearly, or even comprehend it.

Even Moses was only allowed to see God’s back. But let us not forget that indeed what God allowed for Moses was more than what He had allowed for any other man. There’s also suggestion here, I believe, that while we can never see God, we can see “behind God”, that is, we can see where God has been and has left His mark. Have you seen God in nature, in the life of a newborn, in miracles that we take for granted? God’s been there. Watch to see His back as He moves on and move with Him and you will experience the after-effects of God’s glory and presence.

The message is that if we were to be allowed to see any more of God or all of God, we could not bear it, no matter how much we desire it. We have to understand the whole scene as another of God’s infinitely brilliant designs for our experiences – He reveals a certain amount of Himself while still concealing all of Himself; He blesses us with the revelation but at the same time protects us from any more. And that’s how God rewarded Moses and his desire to see His glory. And as Guzik points out, God does all He can to satisfy us as we seek Him. But the bottom line is that He would have us know Him more by His goodness and mercy, than, as Matthew Henry says, by His glorious majesty.

And it did not stop there for the believer.  There was more of God’s glory to be revealed when God gave us His Son, Jesus Christ (John 1:14 and 2 Corinthians 3:18).

God tells Moses He will be “gracious to whom He will be gracious.” God as absolute owner of all and everything, grants His gifts to whomever He chooses and in any amounts that He chooses.  He owes no one anything; nor is He accountable for His actions to anyone. That’s why the world had, and has, a problem with Him. The motivation for any of His decisions in this regard stem solely from within Him and not because of anyone meriting anything He gives to them. His gifts are strictly on the basis of His doing what seems right to Him and Him alone.  Now for those of us that have been taught that there must be “fairness and equality” in all aspects of our lives today, that is hard to swallow.  Yet, it is the very thing we need to grasp in our relationship with God. Telling God He’s wrong in doing so gets us nowhere fast.

 
You and I need to come to the place where we seek God without ceasing, accept the blessings He gives us, keep asking for more, and recognize His right to withhold our requests when He chooses to, which ultimately is for our own protection. We cannot invite or expect the Holy Spirit to work in us and through us, until we get to that place.

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Thanks for the Manna, But Our Throats Are Dry -- Exodus 17:1-7

Then all the congregation of the sons of Israel journeyed by stages from the wilderness of Sin, according to the command of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water that we may drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water; and they grumbled against Moses and said, “Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, “What shall I do to this people? A little more and they will stone me.” Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pass before the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand your staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.  Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.” And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.  He named the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us, or not?”
 

Having finally understood how God intended to provide for their nourishment daily, and for their physical renewal on each Sabbath, the Israelites continue their journey across the desert “by stages”.  Several Bible versions use this phrase.  The King James Version (KJV) talks about the fact that they “journeyed . . . after their journeys”.  Some translate it as “from place to place”.  Whatever the pace, the people were moving away from the wilderness of Sin where God first gave them the Manna.

And the text says all the moving about of the Israelites was “according to the command (or literally the ‘mouth’) of the Lord”.  There comes a point in time when a people as a whole realize they must live according to the command or instructions of the Lord.  Usually, but not always, that happens, if it is to happen at all, when two things have occurred.  First, the group or the individual have tried their own ways repeatedly and failed.  Second, they have seen God provide in their lives and realize that He can be depended on.  You would think that having undergone both these experiences, the people of Israel would have settled this matter once and for all.  But with them, as with us, it was not to be the case.  We will return to this later.

And again, at the “command of the Lord” the people camped at Rephidim.  This literally means "rests" or "stays" or "resting places" and this is its first mention in Scripture.  So they leave or go from the wilderness of Sin, and they go to Rephidim, all according to the command of the Lord.  You would think, as a result, things would go really well for them there.  But the next phrase says otherwise.  Whereas our NASB text connects the next phrase to the previous one with an “and”, the NKJV, NLT, NIV, and ESV versions connect them with a “but”.  Even though the people did all according to what God wanted them to do, they were taken to a place where there was “no water for (them) to drink”.

Have you ever been there?  Have you ever been at a place in your life where you believe you are doing all that God wants of you at that point in time?  And you allow Him to lead you to where He wants you to be as part of His will for you – to your Rephidim – “but” there He provides “no water” for you.  There your troubles double.  While your stomach is full of His Manna, your throat is dying of thirst.  Just when all was falling into place nicely in your life, tragedy strikes.  I have been there.  It is not the most inspiring place for a Christian to be.  Yet, if God calls us out of a place, and He calls us into another place, we must realize that He does it for a purpose.  It is there we must wait on Him and discover that very purpose.

In the case of the Israelites, it seemed to be a continuous need for them to trust in the Lord and to recognize His Almighty power.  They had been hungry and He provided them with Manna.  Now they had no water.  Do you remember when you wanted something of God and He gave it to you?  Was it a spouse?  Was it children?  Was it a job?  Whatever it was, God may have given it to you.  But now, you want something else.  Do you rely on Him as knowing what is best for you or can the old adage, “What have you done for me lately (God)?” apply to your attitude as it did to the attitude of the children of Israel?

So what did the people do?  The text says they ‘grumbled’ against Moses.  I looked up some synonyms for that word to give us a better picture of what form grumbling may take.  I came up with complained, moaned, groused, protested, griped, objected, muttered, and I love this last one, bellyached.  Do any of those verbs describe our actions when we are unhappy with our lot in life; when we want something more from God?

And notice, one does not have to direct his or her frustration to the Source or Giver of all things, but instead we can take it out on one or more of those in our lives that He has put there – our pastor, our boss, our spouse, or parents, friends, and even our children.  At times like this, we can forget about God in our lives, but God does not forget about us.  While we focus on others as the cause of our problems, God sees this as our testing of His provision for us.

For the children of Israel in the wilderness, it was all Moses’ fault.  To them, they knew what was causing their troubles; they felt so confident so they could have easily won the game of “Clue” had they be playing it: “It was Moses, in the Wilderness, with Thirst!”  They were convinced that he was intent on killing them off along with their cattle and this was entirely his plan.  They demanded water now.

Now what do you do when you are the leader and you are misunderstood, falsely accused, and have been given a demand you cannot meet on our own?  May I suggest that you do what Moses did.  You cry out to the Lord.  You ask for His guidance and His protection, admitting your fear as a human being.  And you do it not just for yourself, but for those you are leading, that is, you do it selflessly.  Here is what I have discovered albeit later in life than I should have: Total and utter unselfish dependence on God is the ‘living password’ for Him to come to your rescue.

And God did just that.  He now acts through Moses.  He gives him precise instructions on what he must do, how to do it, where to do it, and in front of whom to do it.  One could not ask for anything more.  And Moses knew that.  He knew that if he totally and utterly depended on God unselfishly, God would provide the solution to his need.  And God used the equipment that He had earlier provided and taught Moses how to use – his staff – as part of that solution.  Never forget what God has given or taught you in the past, He will use it again for His glory.

Moses was to strike a particular rock; the one at Horeb, and it would give forth water for the people to drink.  Do you remember Horeb?  That is the place that Moses had led his father-in-law’s flocks to in the wilderness after he had killed an Egyptian and had fled from Egypt proper.  Its direct translation is “dessert”.  It is referred to as the “mountain of God” and is also known as Mount Sinai.  God often takes us back to His mountain when He wants us to accomplish something for Him.  And sometimes that means, we have to go through or to a “dessert” to get there.   

And Moses did just what God had told him to do and the rock did just what God said it would do.  But let us not miss a very important phrase in this whole account.  God had said the following, just prior to giving Moses his instructions: “Behold, I will stand before you there” on the rock at Horeb.  That is critical to our success.  God must be in it.  God must be there.  And the ‘there’ is where He wants us to be, not anywhere we go or want to go.

So the water comes and Moses names the spot in that mountain of Horeb, Massah and Meribah.  Massah is translated “temptation” and Meribah is translated “strife” or “contention”.  He names it such, with two names, because there the people quarreled with him and tested God, their Lord.  As we end our study of this short passage, we may finding ourselves asking the same question the Israelites asked here, “Is the Lord with me, or not?”  But unlike them, we must answer it with confidence, knowing as Believers that He indeed is, and we can rely on Him fully to provide not only for our hunger, but for our thirst.

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[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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