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Last updated on
Oct. 26, 2005
Oasis in the Wilderness
Delivered Thanksgiving Sunday,
October 9, 2005
by Pastor Werner De Jong
Text: Exodus 17:1-7
Main Idea: On this Thanksgiving Sunday we give thanks because God has provided for our thirst, both physically and spiritually.
Purpose: To encourage the listeners with the good news that God graciously provides what is needed for life. To challenge the listeners to drink with thanksgiving from the life-giving water God offers us.
Introduction: On this Thanksgiving Sunday we continue with our series from Exodus. At first blush our text may seem quite inappropriate for this day, for it again highlights the people of Israel complaining. At God's command they were continuing their journey through the barren, dusty wilderness, travelling from place to place, following the cloud. Then they camped at a place called Rephidim, where there was no water. So they grumbled against Moses saying, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?" There is no gratitude on their lips for God's previous provisions–whether it was the gift of manna or the purifying of bitter water at Marah. Rather, they return to the same stale complaint: life was better in Egypt, why did we ever leave? But then God did something amazing–God provided an oasis in the wilderness. God asked Moses to strike a rock with his staff, and life-giving water streamed out of it. This action says so much about God, and it gives us every reason to be grateful. The root of our thanksgiving is not how sinful people respond to God; it is how God responds to sinful people. The root of our thanksgiving is that God provides for us on the journey of life.
The Gracious Goodness of God: What we have before us is a very concrete story of grace. Israel was on a journey and needed water to drink. "The whole point of this story," as Brevard Childs has written, "turns on the gracious and surprising provision of God who provided water for his people when none was available" (The Book of Exodus, Old Testament Library, p. 308). It is just as we saw last week. When the people complained about hunger, God rained down bread from heaven. And now when they complain about thirst, God makes a stream flow in the desert. Slowly but surely God is demonstrating to Israel who he is. "I will be who I will be," is the name God revealed to them. In other words, watch and see who I will be for you, and then you will know who I am. And now with the passage of time they are learning who God is. God is the one who sustains his people as they journey though life. God is merciful, patient and concerned for his people's needs. In response to his people's hardness of heart, God brought water from a hard rock. At Rephidim the people of Israel asked the question, "Is the Lord among us or not?" And God responded by providing a spring of life-giving water.
This morning we praise God because God brings life to people. In a place inhospitable to life, when all hope depended on God, God came through, even though his people still didn't trust him. As pilgrims travelling through this world, it is good to remember this lesson: life is not sustained by our faithfulness; rather, life is sustained by God's faithfulness. That is ultimately what Thanksgiving is about. When the first pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock they thanked God because God provided for them after they journeyed across the sea. The native people shared with them, and taught them how to grow their own crops, and they were thankful, and rightly acknowledged God as the ultimate source of their providence. We thank God because God provides all that is necessary as we travel through life. We thank God this morning because we have an abundance of fresh water to drink; we thank God because we have plenty of healthy food to eat, as our Thanksgiving display demonstrates. We thank God because God sustains our lives. We depend on God, and God provides for our sustenance.
Spiritual Bread and Water: But there is, of course, more to life than food and water. Jesus said as much when he himself spent some time in the wilderness, at the end of a 40-day fast. Then Satan came to him and tempted him to turn stones into bread, but Jesus replied: "It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God'" (Mt. 4:4). Satan's temptation was for Jesus to seek life solely in physical things. But Jesus had come to obey his Father's will. In his reply he taught us that there is more required to sustain human life than physical sustenance. We also need spiritual sustenance. Abundant life depends on relationship with God.
By the grace of God the people of Israel had their physical thirst quenched. But our text hints at the fact that they had a deeper thirst. The very question they asked, "Is the Lord among us or not?" suggests that they thirsted for God's presence. They didn't want to travel without God. Sometimes we go through periods in our lives when we are tempted to ask the same question: "Is God among us or not?" Are we walking alone, or is God accompanying us? When all is going well this question is not usually on our minds, but there are times in our life journey when we feel like we are wandering in a desolate wilderness. There are times when we feel dry and barren and very thirsty inwardly. When that happens we, like Israel, may not feel very much like offering up thanksgiving. When that happens, it is much easier to grumble and complain. We may even feel like that today. If we do, this story may be just what we need to hear. For it speaks of God's grace. It hints at the possibility of an inner oasis to refresh our soul. We find the fulfilment of this promise in the New Testament. If thirsty travellers through desert wastes were kept going by the provision of an oasis, the good news is that there is also an oasis for spiritual pilgrims. Only the water it provides is even superior to that which flowed from the rock. For Jesus, in his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well spoke of giving living water which becomes "a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:14). Just as Israel was sustained by God during her physical journey, so too on the journey of faith God has provided life-giving water for us to drink. God not only provides for our physical needs; God provides for our spiritual needs–our need to find meaning in life, our need to know we are loved, our need to know how to overcome death. All of these needs are met in Jesus Christ.
Christ the Rock: In a very intriguing passage the apostle Paul makes a connection between Israel's journey through the wilderness and Jesus. Listen to these words from 1 Corinthians 10: "Our forefathers...all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ" (vv. 3-4). In this fascinating interpretation of the Exodus account Paul identifies the rock with Christ. In other words, Paul is writing that Israel's needs went beyond the merely physical; Jesus nourished Israel spiritually on its journey. Paul draws a simple application from this to the church, implying that, in the same way, the church is nourished by Jesus on the road of faith. If we want to be inwardly sustained, we need to draw our life from Jesus, for it is through Jesus that God quenches our inner thirst. If we ignore Jesus, our inner thirst will never be quenched. But if we make Jesus the centre of our lives, we will find abundant life. Inasmuch as we need to drink water to sustain our physical life, we need to drink the water Jesus offers to sustain our spiritual life. It is not to enough to acknowledge Jesus only at our conversion, just like it is not enough only to drink once on a long journey.
Before we move on, let's take a little aside, and return to Paul's illustration, for it is a very interesting one, but it may leave us scratching our heads. Paul actually wrote that Jesus accompanied Israel on its journey via the rock that followed Israel around. It is an intriguing picture, because it suggests the people could continually be sustained by Jesus. But where did Paul ever get that idea? Exodus records that Moses struck the rock, but the rock appears to be quite stationary. Nowhere in Exodus or anywhere else in the Bible is it written that this rock then accompanied Israel on its journey. The idea is not found in the Bible, but it is found in rabbinic tradition, in the teaching of the rabbis. They taught that the rock which Moses struck thereafter followed the people and continued to give them water to drink in the wilderness. That was a legend which all of the Jews knew. It may have been a legend, but it was a beautiful one, pointing out that God's care for his people was not just a one-time event, but continuing and ongoing.
For his purposes Paul simply made use of this legend. He knew his readers could relate to it. There is no indication whether or not he literally believed it, but that is not the point. The point that Paul is making is that Christ was the spiritual rock of his people. If the rabbis taught that a literal rock followed the people, Paul taught that they drank from a deeper well, for Jesus accompanied them on their journey. They did not travel alone, and Jesus sustained them with spiritual food and drink. In the same way, we as the church have our own miraculous rock in the wilderness. That rock is Jesus. He is the rock of our salvation, and as we travel through life he provides the church with a never-ending stream of living water.
And so on this Thanksgiving Sunday we not only praise God because God has made provision for our physical life, but above all because God has made provision for our spiritual life. Because of Jesus, and because of the life he offered up for us on the cross, there is hope for those who are dry inwardly, and are wandering around in a spiritual wilderness. It is not that the wilderness is necessarily a bad place to be. As we saw last week, God deliberately led his people into the wilderness, to teach them to trust and to depend on him. The itinerary Moses chose to follow after having left the Red Sea is not one you would ever find in a travel brochure. Brian e-mailed me a joke this week that he heard on CBC, which said that if Moses were a woman, he would have asked for directions. But it was ultimately God, of course, who set the agenda. And God wanted his people to spend some time in the wilderness, to teach them valuable lessons about faith. As our faith journey progresses God at times will lead us into dry places, for the same purpose. But we never need despair that we will wither and perish, because Jesus our rock accompanies us. Therefore we can be thankful even for the wilderness. It alerts us to our thirst, to our need of Christ. There is an inner refreshment available to all who would receive it.
Gift of Grace: And this gift, just like the stream of water for undeserving Israel, is a gift of grace. God didn't send Jesus to our world because we human beings are obedient and grateful people who never complain and always gladly acknowledge God as our Creator and the source of life. God didn't send Jesus to us because our hearts were soft and full of gratitude for the gift of life. Rather, God sent Jesus to human beings who are self-centred and prefer to go their own way. God sent Jesus to human beings who complain easily and are slow to return thanks for all their blessings, if at all. God sent Jesus to human beings with hard hearts who prefer living in slavery to freedom, if freedom means we have to trust God and not ourselves to find life. In short, God sent Jesus to people who were just like Israel complaining in the wilderness. It might not be a good reflection on us, but it makes God's love all the greater. As the apostle Paul wrote, "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). As pilgrims travelling through this world, it is good to remember this lesson: life is not sustained by our faithfulness; rather, life is sustained by God's faithfulness.
Application and Conclusion: Soon we are going to be sharing communion. It is God's grace we celebrate when we participate in the Lord's Supper. Let the bread you take remind you of the manna God graciously provided to a complaining Israel, and above all let it remind you of Jesus, the bread of life, who laid down his body for us while we were still sinners. And let the cup remind you of God's desire to quench the thirst of his people by providing them with water from a rock, and above all let it remind you of the refreshment that is ours through the blood of Christ which washes away all our sin.
As we come to the Lord's table may we drink deeply of the grace Jesus offers us because, just like Israel's journey through the wilderness was difficult, so too the journey of faith is not an easy one. As we journey we know what it is to experience fatigue, stress, impatience and fear. But we are invited to plunge ourselves into the grace of God and to emerge from it refreshed, healed and consoled. So let us avail ourselves of the life-giving waters Jesus offers us. Let us joyfully receive the bread of life and the stream of living water. We will obtain spiritual refreshment when we sincerely worship God for who he is, patient, merciful and loving, and when we offer up genuine thanksgiving for all that God has done for us. Our thirst will be quenched when we spend time with Jesus and deepen our commitment to him, and when we identify ourselves with what we know matters to him. Therefore let us resolve to know our travelling companion better as we travel along the road of faith. For we are truly not alone; the living Christ journeys with us. May we trust him and commit our lives to him. Amen.