Bible Passage: Exodus 17:1-7
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: March 12, 2023

Bulletin March 12, 2023

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

We’re kind of spoiled when it comes to water.  We have it in abundance.  If you want a drink of water, you have choices.  You can have tap water, or bottled water, or spring water, or purified water,  or flavored water.  Did you know that the Village of DeForest has four groundwater wells that supply our water?  Between 400 and 700 deep, these wells keep us well supplied.  Every time I have turned on my faucet for a drink of water in the four years I have lived in DeForest water has flowed for me to drink.  We just don’t worry about water much, do we?

Very few, if any of us, can really relate to “thirst.”  I mean real thirst.  The kind of thirst experienced by the children of Israel in the Desert of Sin in our text.  There they were.  No water.  No faucet to turn on.  No Red Cross to bring them pallets of water.  No real prospects of water.  Situation critical.

Yet, they get water.  Water!  Cool and refreshing!  Life-giving and life-saving!  And they got it from a most unlikely place.  They got their Water from a Stricken Rock.

The Israelites have “exodus-ed” Egypt and are on their way to Mt. Sinai where the Lord will meet with them and give them his Law.  They are nearly to Mt. Sinai.  They are in a place called in our text Rephidim.  It’s toward the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.  It is pretty barren country.  You wouldn’t want to be stuck there without water.  And yet, we are told, They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. (v. 1)

The first thing we ought to acknowledge about this situation is its seriousness.  It’s not like they are kids sitting in the backseat, “I’m soooo thirsty, mom!  I’m gonna die!”  And you’re only five minutes from a Kwik Trip.  Israel is out in the middle of nowhere with no water.  Average yearly rainfall in the Sinai Peninsula is about 1.5”!  They are a desperate people.

What would you do?  Would you send a prayer heavenward and ask God to help?  That is not what Israel does.  They corner Moses.  Grab him by the lapels, as it were.  Give us water to drink! (v. 2)   There is something about what they said that doesn’t come out in English.  “Give” is an imperative.  A command.  In the Hebrew, it is a plural imperative.  It is a command given to more than one.   So who, in addition to Moses, are they commanding?  The LORD!  They are giving an order to God!

This is clearly the way Moses understands their command.  Why are you quarreling with me?  Why are you testing the LORD? (v. 2)  Their test is stated this way in the last verse of our text:  They tested the LORD by saying, Is the LORD among us or not?  They wanted the LORD to “prove” himself.   They were playing the tune and telling the LORD to dance.

Time to pause again.  Isn’t this a strange thing we see in Israel?  At one and the same time they are desperate and dying, and also defiant!  Like a senseless animal caught in a trap that tries to bite the hands that are trying to release it, Israel snarls and snaps at God.

That is why what happens next is so startling.  Moses goes to the LORD.  The LORD tells Moses to get his staff, the one he had used in Egypt to strike the Nile and turn it to blood, and the elders of Israel.  Then the LORD says, Watch me.  Literally, he says, “Behold!”  That is a word that means, “You are about to see something that is going to blow your mind!”  And the LORD stands on a rock.  He instructs Moses to strike the rock with the staff.  He does.  And water begins to pour out of this rock!  Desperate, dying, defiant Israel gets water!  Water from a stricken rock.

Moses memorializes this place by naming it Massah and Meribah.  “Massah” means “testing” and “Meribah” means “quarreling.  Do you have a Massah and Meribah in your life?  Do you have your little place where you gripe and complain?  Is your backyard your Massah?  You look over the fence at all the toys and stuff your neighbors have that you don’t and complain.  Is your car your Meribah?  While you are out driving you see the cars of others and you gripe that you are stuck driving a car that has 175,000 miles on it.  Is your home office your Massah?  You pay your bills and gripe about how little you have.  We act as if we’re dying!  We are.  Not for lack of stuff, but because of sin.  We show we can be just as desperate, just as defiant, as Israel at Rephidim. We need water.

Behold!  God shows us something that will blow our minds!  The Lord Jesus stands on a rock.  There he is stricken, smitten, and afflicted.  And water pours forth!  Water of life.  Forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.  Gushing, flowing, splashing, refreshing!  Quenching the deepest soul-thirst of desperate, dying, defiant sinners like you, like me.

Friends, let’s always remember where we find this water of life.  When you are fearful, sad, overwhelmed by guilt, by life, by death.  You need water!  The water Jesus gives.  When our kids were little and they were thirsty we would say, “Drink water!”  They always wanted juice or soda.  When you’re thirsty, drink water!  Friends, drink water.  “Come to Calvary’s holy mountain, sinners ruined by the fall.  Here a pure and healing fountain flows to you, to me, to all.”  Drink in Christ.  Take a cool drink of Jesus in Holy Communion.

When you are desperate and dying, trapped “between a rock and hard place,” you need a drink!  Not the sugary, syrupy garbage the world has on tap, not the numbing and dumbing “strong drink” to which so many flee.  Drink some water!  The Water that flows to you, to me, to all, from the Stricken Rock, Jesus.

Amen.