Listen to Sermon
Pastor Tom Johnson, March 19, 2017
In our reading this morning the people of God are thirsty again. There is no water for them to drink. They are at the beginning of a difficult journey through the wilderness. This is a life-threatening thirst—serious dehydration. This is just another trial God wants to lead them through. They should have said to themselves, “Here we go again. Not long ago, God made the contaminated water drinkable. He provided the Manna and the quail. God will provide again. God has been among us through previous trials. He will be among us through this trial.” But they don’t. Instead things spiral out of control. And they test God’s patience and ask, “Is the Lord among us or not?” “Give us water to drink,” they demand. Instead of praying for God to deliver them as he had faithfully before, they verbally abuse Moses: “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”
When our relationship with God is weak…when our trust in God fails, anxiety sets in. Discord and broken relationships follow. And we begin to think irrationally. We blame others for our problems. We choose to attack and mistrust one another because we don’t trust in God. You’ll remember what happens immediately after our first parents fall into sin after eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam blames Eve. And Eve blames the devil. The Israelites lose sight of the God who delivered them from bondage in Egypt, and so they lose sight of the God who will bring them safely to the Promised Land. And so it is with us: When we lose sight of the God who created us, we will lose sight of the God who promises to sustain us. When we lose sight of the God who saved us, we will lose sight of the God who sanctifies us. And when we try to live our lives by our own strength…when we think with thoughts that lack faith in the God who provides…we become as hopeless as the Israelites who ask, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
And Moses and God’s answer to that question is a resounding “YES!” God tells Moses to take the same staff with which he struck the Nile—to take the same stick that God used to deliver the plagues to Egypt. You’ll remember that the Israelites were slaves and captives in Egypt under the tyranny of Pharaoh. You’ll remember that God sent Moses to tell old Pharaoh to let his people go. And each time Pharaoh said “No” God sent another plague. God tells Moses to take that same staff God used for the first of those ten plagues. Moses was instructed to strike the Nile with the staff so that “the fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile” (7:18). God himself contaminated the drinking water and drove the Egyptians to thirst—so much so that they had to dig new wells to find drinkable water. The rod that God used to contaminate the water of their enemies—the rod that God used to drive their oppressors to thirst will be the same rod that God would use to provide water and satisfy the thirst of his people.
God’s solution is to use the same rod of Moses that delivered them in the past to deliver them in their future. God is telling them a story. He is assuring them of God’s faithful past so that they will have a hopeful future. God struck the Nile with the wooden rod in judgment. And he will strike the Rock with the wooden rod in mercy. And that’s exactly what Moses does. He strikes the Rock and water comes gushing out. And they drink from that Rock and live. Centuries later in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 (v. 4), St. Paul says of this story that they “drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” This is the same Rock would later be struck again by the wooden rod of the cross. Calvary will strike Jesus with a deathblow—and grace, mercy, and love will flow—a torrent of God’s goodness will gush out for his people.
When the Samaritan woman meets the Rock at the well in our Gospel reading, we see how many barriers Jesus crosses to reach her—ethnic, religious, and gender. This Rock brings living water to all people now. There is even less reason for us to be anxious or doubt the presence of God now that the Rock and Living Water has come to us. “Is the Lord among us or not?” He was among us for the Israelites when they thirsted in the desert. He is among us and will be among us when we thirst in our desert journey. Maybe that was what the psalmist was thinking when he boasted in the Lord, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Thy rod and staff they comfort me.” The Lord is among us. The Rock of Ages will quench our thirst for our journey ahead.
I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Behold, I freely give
the living water, thirsty one; stoop down and drink and live.”
I came to Jesus, and I drank of that life-giving stream;
my thirst was quenched, my soul revived, and now I live in him.
(from hymn "I heard the Voice of Jesus Say" v. 2 by Horatius Bonar)
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