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We begin our study this evening by reading from the book of Exodus chapter seventeen and we begin there at verse one. And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin by their journeys, according to the commandment of the Lord, and pitched in Rephidim. There was no water for the people to drink. Wherefore the people strove with Moses and said, Give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why strive ye with me? Wherefore do you tempt the Lord?
And the people thirsted there for water. And the people murmured against Moses and said, Wherefore hast thou brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst. And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? They be almost ready to stone me. The Lord said unto Moses, Pass on before the people and take with thee of the elders of Israel, and thy rod wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it that the people may drink.
And Moses did so in the sight of all the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Mesar and Meribah, because of the striving of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not? Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out, men, and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in mine hand. So Joshua did as Moses said to him, and fought with Amalek.
And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed. And when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat thereon, and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses built an altar and called the name of it Jehovah-Nissi, and he said, The Lord hath sworn, the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. God give us good understanding of his holy word. In our last study, we were considering together the first lessons which God taught Israel after they came out of the land of Egypt.
Those lessons were necessarily at the elementary level, and therefore God taught them these lessons at the level of their daily food and drink. They had recently been delivered from the wrath of God in Egypt by the shedding of the blood of the Passover lamb, but now they must be delivered not so much from the wrath of God, as from that state of heart and that attitude to life, for which sake the wrath of God came upon the land of Egypt. In other words, the wrath of God came on Egypt because of Egypt's worldly attitude of heart.
Now Israel had been delivered from the wrath of God, they must also be delivered from that same worldliness of heart, that same false attitude to God and to life. They must learn, therefore, that there is much more in food and drink and in the work that is required to get them. There is much more in food and drink than the mere matter of keeping our physical bodies alive. They must learn, to start with, that our daily bread and butter come from God himself. And they must learn, secondly, that the prime reason why God makes us hungry and therefore makes us go to work to earn our daily bread and butter, the prime reason is that God might develop in us Christian character.
He might develop in us what he calls the kingdom of God, the rule of God, and its righteousness. And so, as I say, God began at this stage to teach them these elementary lessons in life in the kingdom of God. And as we saw on the last occasion, they began to learn these lessons very shakily, and at the first they failed, and they murmured. But that is understandable. They were but a race of ex-slaves, not long delivered from that slavish way of life.
It is understandable that they should make mistakes. But they did learn, and they learned remarkably well for ex-slaves. They learned, for instance, so chapter sixteen and verses seven to eighteen tell us, they learned the grace of sharing what God gave them. We read that each man went out each day to get the manna. Some of them gathered more, some of them gathered less. Nevertheless, when the manna was eventually measured out with the omer, it was found that whether a man gathered more or whether he gathered less, nobody had anything over and nobody lacked.
Now, there are some people who suppose that this happy state of affairs was brought about by some miracle, that when the manna was gathered and was being measured out, God did a miracle in the basin, and somehow or other the excess disappeared and the lack was made good. Well, maybe there was a miracle of that kind. For myself, I am disposed to think that if there was a miracle, the miracle lay not in the measure in which the manner was measured, but in the hearts of the Israelites themselves. I take my cue from the second epistle by Paul to the Corinthians in chapter eight where Paul makes reference to this matter of the manna.
In that context, you may remember, Paul is exhorting the Corinthian Christians that they should join in the fund that he is collecting, in order that they might help the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. In recent times, there were difficulties in Jerusalem. There had been a famine, and a lot of the Jerusalem Christians were hard up for money and could not buy enough food. Therefore, Paul determined to ask the Greek Christians to give of their excess so that they might send the money to Jerusalem and the need of the Jewish believers in Jerusalem be thus met.
And he explains to the Corinthians that he is not wanting that they should scrape and go short themselves so that somebody else might be supplied. That is not the idea at all, he says. The idea is like it was in the wilderness, where some people had more than they needed, and some people had less, and therefore, when all was gathered in, they shared it out so that the surplus should be used to supply the deficiency of the other. In the same way, he says, I would like you now to take what you do not need, your surplus, and send that to Jerusalem so that the, the need of the Jerusalem believers, the shortfall in their income can be met by your surplus.
As it is written, he says, quoting Exodus chapter sixteen, they who gathered much had nothing over, and they who gathered little had no lack. In other words, says Paul, one of these days it may be the other way round. It may be that the Jerusalem believers have more than they need, and you in Greece have less than you need. We hope that when that occasion arises, the Jerusalem believers will then do what now I call on you to do. They will take their excess and use it to meet the shortfall in your income.
It's not a question, then, of some supernatural miracle in our bank balance. It is rather that the believers should learn the grace of the Lord Jesus, to regard what he gives them as a sacred trust, and not just hug it to themselves, but be aware that God gives us sometimes more than we need, in order that we might share with him the joy of using our surplus to meet the deficiency in other people. Contrary-wise, if we are short, then we shall need to know the proper grace and humility in being willing to accept from others what God has given them in excess, that not only may God have the joy of giving to us, but that our fellow Christians may share in God's joy and learn the graces of true stewardship as they minister to us in our need.
And then Israel learned another lesson. They learned the lesson of the Sabbath. It was told them that on Fridays they were to go out and gather twice as much as they did on ordinary days. For on the Sabbath, no manna would come. Therefore, they would need this extra amount on Friday to ca- carry them over until Sunday. At first, of course, they found it difficult to trust God like that, and some anxious souls went out on Saturdays as well to see if there were anything they could gather, and God had to rebuke them for this lack of faith in God himself.
God was writing into these early lessons the need of Israel to learn to rest upon him as a faithful God who would undertake their for their need. We still need to learn that lesson in principle. We are no longer required to keep Sabbath as a matter of the law, but it is for the good of our souls and our nervous systems into the bargain to learn to rest on God in our daily work. Of course we have real needs to earn enough bread and butter. Of course we need to go out and work.
We must not fall, uh, into that mistake at the one extreme of imagining that because we have become Christians, there is no longer any need for us to go out to work. Some Christians in the early churches did in fact fall into that mistake. They thought that becoming Christians meant that now God would supply all their needs, and they would not have to demean themselves or soil their hands with ordinary secular work. And time and time again, Paul had to speak to them quite plainly and directly, telling them that they were to go to work.
It is not a specially spiritual thing to abstain from working. If a man will not work, says Paul, neither let him eat. Let our people, that is the Christians, learn to develop honest trades and professions so that they might have enough for themselves and enough over to give to the needs of others. They are not to sit around and do nothing under the guise of being specially spiritual, for it isn't spirituality, but sheer laziness. We are then to go to work. On the other hand, it is easy for some of us to go to the other extreme and to let ourselves be burdened down with our daily work, as by some great gigantic load, ever anxious, never able to stop from working, never able to relax and to trust God.
We are so anxious for the needs of tomorrow and next week and next year, and the children's education and whatnot, that the whole thing becomes an intolerable burden and hard labor. In that too, we are dishonoring the Lord. It is God that has made us, it is God that has set us our daily task, and God our Father would not have us to be overburdened like slaves. Why, he had just redeemed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and a God who set them and sets us our daily lesson of work is no taskmaster, no tyrant, no prison officer.
He gives us our daily work that in it we might learn spiritual lessons and develop s- Christian character. But he wants us with all to trust him, from time to time to lean back on him, to dare to believe that he who has given us our task will support us. It is he in the end that supplies our need. It doesn't hang altogether upon our own terrible, difficult efforts, but in the end our bread comes from him, and we may trust him. Now and again he lays us aside that we might learn to trust him, to learn that when our own efforts can no longer be made, and we must hang helplessly and dependent upon God himself, then God is faithful.
God is Jehovah Jireh still, the Lord who sees and the Lord who supplies and provides for our need. And then we learn, following on this, that Israel discovered in the desert God's faithfulness. We are told that God, who rained the manna down upon them in the beginning, continued to give them this bread from heaven all the way across the wilderness until at last they arrived in the promised land. God was faithful, in spite of all their murmurings and disobediences and their wanderings and their shortcomings, even though they were oftentimes unfaithful, God remained faithful and supplied their daily bread until they arrived home in Canaan at last.
Obviously, God's purpose was that they should come to Canaan. Unless he supplied their daily bread, they wouldn't arrive. And we may take comfort for the God who lived in Moses' day is still the same today. He has pledged himself that if in our daily work we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all these other things that we need shall be added to us. God's prime aim in our daily work is, as I say, the fashioning of our character. He is preparing us for the enjoyment of our great inheritance that lies ahead, and all those many spiritual blessings with which he has blessed us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
But God himself is aware that we cannot learn our spiritual lessons unless first we have enough food to keep our physical bodies going. We will not arrive in heaven taught and complete in our lessons, unless we've had enough food to keep us through the time of our schooling here on earth. And so even the humble Kellogg's cornflakes are necessary if we are going to arrive in heaven duly prepared, as we should be. And God, who has the greater aim in view, has guaranteed that he will supply our need, that all these things shall be added at the physical level, so long as it is necessary to keep us here in school.
Now, that doesn't mean that no Christian will ever die of starvation. You will remember, for instance, that when the Lord Jesus was teaching these lessons in Matthew chapter six, he bade us consider the birds, how that they have no storehouses nor barns, and yet God feeds them. God is faithful. That doesn't mean that no bird ever dies of starvation. Why, in the depth of winter, you'll see many a bird frozen to death in the woods and perhaps even in your gardens. And at the same time, we mustn't be starry-eyed about God's promises to us.
One of these days, we shall die, unless the Lord comes first. The time of our schooling here will finish. God will take us home to our glorious inheritance. If the Lord doesn't come, God will use various means to take us away. Maybe he will allow, allow us some illness, some cancer, maybe. It won't necessarily be very pleasant. The opening of the door, the walking out of our physical bodies and home to glory isn't always at the time a very pleasant operation. Whether God takes us through illness or through starvation, it will make very little differ- difference.
Neither of them are particularly pleasant. But we shall not then be upset when our schooling is done. I've known plenty of boys who, when they came at last to the last form in school and the last day of school, were glad to have finished with the whole business and go out into real life. They didn't cry because they had to leave school. They were jolly glad. One of these days, our lessons on earth will be done. We shall have no more need of food, of the Kellogg's cornflakes and the roasts of beef, no longer need of our houses and our clothes. The time for schooling will be over, and the doors will open and let us out, and we shall go home to God.
Until then, God has guaranteed that he will supply enough for our needs. As we think of that lesson, our hearts perhaps are moved to think of these things at a deeper level. God rained down manna, literal manna, from heaven upon the Israelites and maintained them. But as we think of that and of our daily bread, we think also of that spiritual manna, the real bread from heaven. That bread that is given us to maintain our spiritual life, without which we should perish spiritually.
What about that supply? Will it come always regularly and faithfully and carry us through and nourish us spiritually and maintain our spiritual life throughout this wilderness, or what? We observe, after all, that when Israel went through the wilderness, God gave them bread from heaven to eat, the literal manna, and man did eat angels' food, but in spite of it, many of the Israelites perished in the wilderness and never got in. How glad we must be as Christians that we have the words of the Lord Jesus on this matter.
In the Gospel of John chapter six, he tells us that he is the true bread from heaven. I came down from heaven, he said. And we pause at that statement to survey its wonder. He came down from heaven, not now as the manna simply from the skies. He is the true bread of God, who came down from that other world, from the presence of God, onto our planet, that we might believe him and receive him, that he might impart to us eternal life and maintain that life constant and eternal within us, until he takes us eventually into that spiritual realm from which he first came.
It isn't merely, therefore, that Christ has given us certain information about heaven, so that we are to believe it and follow its rules and regulations in the hope that we may eventually arrive. It is that Christ himself has come down from heaven, so that we might receive him. We may eat him, so to speak, until he become part and parcel of us. We who have trusted the Savior have known within us the beginnings of that great miracle. We have received the Savior, and daily we eat him.
As he himself remarked, as the living Father has sent me, and I live by the Father, even so he that eateth me shall live by me. We are thereby assured that we shall never perish. Our eternal life will be maintained all through this wilderness and on into the eternal state, because all who have trusted Christ have the living Christ within them. Just as you ate your food this morning, and that food became part of you and thus gave you the strength to go about your daily business today and to come here this evening.
So our blessed Lord has become part of all those who trust him, and his divine and eternal life abides in them and shall never grow ill or feeble, but shall remain in them, shall never perish, and shall bring them home to God at last. Indeed, our Lord Jesus took the trouble to point out the difference between the believer in this age and Israel in the wilderness. I am the true bread, says he, that came down from heaven, that a man might eat of me and live forever, not as your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and died.
They ate that physical bread from heaven, angels' food, the Bible calls it, but in spite of that fact, they died. They died because they sinned. Then what about us? For we are far from perfect. We have indeed received the Lord Jesus, but alas, from time to time we sin, we fail, we fall. Does that mean that we shall be in danger of not getting in at last? How comforting the word of the Lord Jesus, and how clear. With you, he says, it is not as your fathers did eat bread in the wilderness and died.
He that eateth of me shall live forever. I am come down from heaven, he explained, to do my Father's will, and it is unthinkable that our Lord Jesus shall fail to do that will. Then what is that will? Whatever it is, he will do it perfectly. That will is, as he explains, here is my Father's will, that of all who see the Son and believe on him, I should lose nothing. I will raise him up at the last day. So then we have our Lord's guarantee that the manner shall not fail until he has brought us home at last.
He has come down from heaven. He will lose none of us. He will lo- raise up every believer at the last day. Strengthened by these glorious promises, by this heavenly food, we may now turn to face the next lessons that God taught Israel and through them teaches us still. But when we come to chapter seventeen of our book, we find that God now took Israel into the next form, into the next standard in their school, so to speak.
They must learn the next lesson. And the lesson is simply this, that they must learn to fight. Now that is a very interesting thing, for on a previous occasion we discovered that when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt first, he didn't let them fight. They were not prepared for it, of course. So he took them a roundabout way in the wilderness so that they should not meet any Philistines, so that they should not see war. He was afraid that if in those early days they had been faced with the need to fight, they would not have been able to stand up to it, and they would have returned and gone back to Egypt.
Do have compassion on them. For years now they had lived in Egypt, their fathers before them, until the slave mentality had died them through and through. It is a sad thing about slave labor camps, that in the end they take away something out of the human spirit. When people first go into captivity, they very often make some effort at resistance. But when they find the terrible suffering that is incurred by trying to resist, then in the end they give up resisting.
Their sole thought comes to be for survival. When any attempt at violent resistance will bring you torture, when even so much as an angry look or a resentful spirit will bring down the taskmaster's lash upon your back or put you in solitary confinement on bread and water for so many days, then you generally give up any idea of resistance, and you do what you are told, whatever you think. And of course, it does something, does something terrible to the human spirit. And Israel had been in the slave labor camps. When first they came out, God did the fighting for them, and they didn't have to fight.
But he couldn't let things go on like that forever. He had eventually to start to deal with this side of their character and to build into it what the years of slavery in Egypt had suppressed. He must build into them the ability and the willingness to fight, to fight evil, to join with God in fighting the enemies of God. And we may learn from their lesson that God is intent on teaching us to fight as well. Of course, nowadays we are not to fight with carnal weapons.
As believers, the New Testament tells us quite plainly that God does not wish us to fight with carnal weapons. In fact, he forbids it. When Peter drew his sword to defend the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus told him to put the sword back again into its sheath. Peter had mistaken the nature of the kingdom of God. He sought to defend the kingdom of God and its king by the literal sword, and Christ forbade it. If my kingdom were of this world, he said to Pilate, then my servants would fight with literal weapons so that I should not be delivered from the Jews.
But my kingdom is not now of that sort. My kingdom is a spiritual kingdom. It is not to be defended or promoted by the use of physical violence. And it been- had been a happy thing for the church if the church had always remembered that. Alas for those travesties of Christianity that have taken place down through the centuries, when Christians, sometimes with goodwill and sometimes otherwise, have taken to the sword and cut people's heads off and maimed their bodies, ostensibly in order to promote the kingdom of God, to defend it or promote it.
These occasions have been, as I say, ghastly travesties of the true nature of the gospel. For since Israel's times, things have happened that have changed the nature and the level of the war in which believers fight. In Israel's time, they had to fight with literal weapons at the level of the physical world. Since those times, God himself has become incarnate. The Prince of Righteousness has been born in Bethlehem. He has joined in the battle himself.
He has fought it at Calvary. He has fought it at the level of the grave, and has risen now and gone back to heaven and sent forth his Holy Spirit. That has transferred the battlefield from the physical level to the spiritual, and the weapons of our warfare, says Paul, are no longer carnal, but spiritual and mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. But though we fight at the spiritual level, the fighting is no less real, and we must be taught to fight, taught to join with God in the fighting of his enemies and our enemies.
You'll see, it is part of our spiritual character that we should be both able to fight and willing to fight and keen to fight the battle against sin. And we must learn to fight here on earth before we are taken home to God's heaven. We must learn to face sin, to know what sin is, to see the terror of it and the evil of it, and of our own accord and voluntarily to wish to fight sin. Otherwise, when we get home to heaven, it might be that some of us wouldn't be altogether convinced that sin was sin, and we might want to take a little time off from heaven to indulge some of the things that we haven't time to indulge on earth.
It has sometimes happened to me, I confess in my stupidity, that I have regretted that I got saved quite so early on in life. These times of feeling have come over me, for instance, when I've been listening to some people giving their testimony, how they got saved. And they make it all sound so wonderful, not merely what, uh, happened to them after they got saved, of course that was marvelous, but even, you know, what happened before. They describe it in such glowing terms, what marvelous sinners they were and what tremendous things they got up to. And here am I feeling to myself, you know, what a stupid I was to get saved so quickly.
I too could have experienced all those wonderful things and enjoyed them to the full, as obviously the speaker did. And then when I got tired of them, then I could have got converted and had a marvelous and spectacular conversion, and everybody would think me wonderful for having such a lurid past, and then for getting converted in such a spectacular way. And of course, after my conversion, here am I, the most marvelous Christian on earth. So I've had it always round. And I said to myself, you were a stupid gooding to get converted so early when you hadn't a chance yet to indulge in these marvelous things. But as you can see, such reasoning is altogether nonsensical, and if I indulged in it seriously, it would be wicked.
It shows that I would have a faulty idea of sin, that in the back of my mind I should still be thinking that somehow, while sin is a bit naughty and we oughtn't to do it, it is attractive, it is, uh, uh, uh, spectacular, it is challenging, it is interesting. And I avoid it if I avoid it, not because in my heart of hearts I don't like it, but because I know the elders wouldn't approve of it, or other Christians would say it bad, or something of the sort. And if I got any tra- trace or taint of such an attitude in my heart, then of course God has to deliver me from it.
What a terrible thing it would be if I got home to heaven at last, and at the end of one of the choir pieces, I put up my hand and ask Michael or Gabriel or somebody if I could be excused because, um, there was a certain activity down on earth that, uh, uh, is not done up in heaven. Nobody does it up in heaven, but, um, you know, I would like time off just to go and have a, a few years indulging in that activity. Well, then, uh, not only would heaven itself be aghast, my own enjoyment of heaven would be seriously lessened. No, God is determined that by the time I go home to heaven, I shall say goodbye to sin.
Not because he tells me to, merely, but because I want to. Because I don't want to sin anymore. I know sin for what sin is, and I determine to have done with it. And therefore God leaves me here on this, in this world, surrounded by the flesh and surrounded by the devil and surrounded by temptation. He doesn't always deliver me and put me into some sinless world. No, he wants me to face sin, to be attacked by it from time to time, so that I might learn what it is and how to face it, and learn to fight it.
Hence, he leaves me to struggle and to strive and to fight. He doesn't arrange things so that I never get tempted. He allows me to be tempted, so that I might develop a strong Christian character and attitude, and by the very necessity of fighting, learn to fight. So now then, Israel were going to be taught to fight, and on this occasion they learned two lessons, two fundamental and vital lessons. The lessons they learned were so vividly etched upon their memories that they named a couple of places after their experience, determined never to forget these experience.
The one experience that they had at Rephidim, and they called the name of the place thereafter Mara and Meriba. And the other lesson they learned, and in order not to forget it, they called the name of an altar Jehovah Nissi, the Lord is my military standard. In the first lesson, they made, first of all, a colossal mistake. And the mistake was this, that while they were prepared to fight, they mistook who the enemy was.
Instead of fighting the real enemy, they got it into their heads that the enemy was God himself. God was the enemy, and they fought with God. They murmured against Moses, and they strove with God, saying, is the Lord among us or not? It was a ghastly mistake. And when they found it out that their murmurings and their fightings had not simply been against Moses, but had been fightings against the Lord himself, they called the name of the place Masar and Meribah because they strove with the Lord.
In the second lesson, they learned that in spite of all their failings, God was not against them as originally they had thought. God was for them, and that in their fighting, God was prepared to be their commander in chief. God was prepared to fight still and fight for them and fight with them. Indeed, they weren't expected to fight on their own account and by themselves. It was God's battle. All they had to do was to join up with God under his colors, under his standard, and fight along with him under his generalship.
And they called the name of the place Jehovah-Nissi, the Lord is my military standard. Let's look at these two stories. The first one, when they fought against the Lord, thinking he was their enemy. It was an experience full of bitterness. And perhaps we can understand the bitterness they felt. For this time, they journeyed by the commandments of the Lord. It wasn't now as it was before, when they came to Mara.
There too they had grumbled. When they had found bitter water instead of sweet, they had grumbled, thinking it was God's fault. But now on this occasion, things went very much deeper. When they rang out of water this time, they didn't merely say it was God's fault. They came to wonder whether God was with them at all, whether there was anything in his promise that he would be with them and guide them and provide for their needs. And they were driven to saying, is the Lord among us or not? Is there anything in the whole business?
Does God exist? And if he exists, is he really with us? Or is the whole thing some psychological deception, and God has never been really with us at all? It was an exceedingly bitter experience. It came about, as I say, because they had been taking their journeys by the commandment of the Lord. Notice that phrase. You see, they had honestly made an attempt to follow the leading of God. If they had been rebellious, if they had been careless, if they had just gone on through the desert regardless of the Lord's wishes and gone their own way and made their own decisions, why then, of course, when they came into difficulty and the water ran out, they would simply have had themselves to blame.
And they might have said, well, of course, we were stupid. We, we never prayed, we never consulted the Lord, we just went on without prayer, a prayerless life, doing our own will and never considering the Lord's guidance. And of course, now we've got ourselves in this muddle, and it's high time we got back to the Lord in repentance. But it wasn't like that. They had made an honest attempt to seek the mind of the Lord, and they'd prayed about it, and they'd consulted Moses, and they had followed the cloud, and step by step they had gone, honestly believing that they were journeying just where the Lord would have them go.
And it was that that added to their bitterness. For presently, they ran out of water, and there was no water for the people to drink. And when it happened, they they thought it odd, of course, but then they said, well, perhaps this is a little test that God has brought upon us. God is leading us, so tomorrow there'll be water. I'm sure there will be. He won't let us down. But then tomorrow there was no water, nor the day after. And day after day went by, and still there was no water. And the be- people beca- began to be very puzzled, and they prayed, and they doubtless, and they approached Moses, and they were assured, yes, well, God hasn't forgotten you. Be patient, and he will supply.
But still no water came, and it got to the point when it was beginning to be very serious. What was happening? I mean, it's no fun to be in a wilderness without any water. And what do you say when the children come around, and you can see that their poor little lips are all parched and their tongues are swollen, and they're crying, Dad and Mum, give me some water, water, Dad, I, I, I want some water. And Dad or Mum has to explain, well, sorry, there, there is no water. And what do you say when the child turns around and says, well, dad, pray, dad, ask God. I mean, doesn't God love us? You ask God. God will, God will give us some water if you ask God.
Go on, dad, pray to God, and he'll give us some water. What do you say to the child then? It isn't funny, is it? When the Israelites got to this stage, now beginning to feel the results of excessive thirst and driven almost crazy with the demand of their children, uh, uh, and the demand of their cattle and frightened out of their wits, it was then that the bitterness began to seep into their spirit. What's happening, they said? We've been honest on our part. We've tried to follow the guidance of the Lord. Why doesn't he give us water? It's all right making promises about tomorrow and the next day.
We want water today. What's the good of telling us that the Lord is with us? If there's no water for us. We're not asking for excessive riches. We're not asking to be millionaires. We're simply asking for a little cold water, and if God can't give us the cold water, well, what's the good of telling us that he's with us? Well, you try telling the children that God loves them. What are we as parents going to say to the kiddies when they say, Dad, give us some water, pray to God. God loves us, doesn't he? And if he loves us, he'll give us the water. What are you going to say to them.
The water didn't come. And then the old reaction came. You see, it wasn't now as it had been the first time. It wasn't merely that they said it was God's fault. Things went more seriously. As they strove with Moses and strove with the Lord, they said, is the Lord among us or not? They tempted the Lord. Please observe what they were doing.
This wasn't a meeting of humbled hearts gathering for prayer and saying, we better search our hearts before the Lord for perhaps we've gone wrong and the Lord is speaking to us and disciplining us. It may be that he can't show us his normal favors because we have sinned and his presence isn't with us. Let's come in contrite hearts back to the Lord and wait upon the Lord that he might come again among us and lead us. It wasn't that. It was defiant. It was sulky. It was full of unbelief, so full of unbelief now that an inch or two more and they would have gone over the precipice of apostasy.
They said, look here, this doesn't make sense. If the Lord is around, well, we're fed up with waiting. We've come to the point where we very much doubt, Moses, whether there's anything in this business at all. You say the Lord is with us. All right for you to talk, Moses. You haven't got any kids like we have. The Lord is with us. Well, we've heard that before. Well, why on earth doesn't he give us enough water? We're not asking... standing there and saying the Lord is with us, when we can hardly speak because we lack water. We very much doubt whether the Lord is, is here at all, whether there's anything in it.
All right, if he's here, and here they began to tempt him. If he's here, he better make himself known and give us some water, and if he doesn't give us water, we're not prepared to believe there's anything in it at all. I say, oh dear. How near they came to the precipice of sheer apostasy. They strove with God. You at once see how serious it was, because if in that sense God wasn't with them that day, never had been, had he?
If God didn't love them that day, he never had loved them. A God who loves me, who loved me yesterday but doesn't love me today, well, he isn't God, is he? So that if I must come to the conclusion today that God doesn't love me, that God has forgotten me, that God has forsaken me, then I must also come to the conclusion that God never did love me. And I speak with sympathy, I trust.
Sometimes good Christian believers strike such bitter experiences in life, that in the emotional turmoil of the moment, they just don't blame God, they begin to wonder whether there's anything in Christianity at all. I remember an elder coming to me at one stage, younger man though I was. A man who had been very busy and active with young people's work, God bless him. And underneath, over many years, a haunting, haunting problem.
His wife had taken cancer, a very serious cancer. He told me, David, he said, when my wife first took cancer, we both of us prayed, and we prayed hard that God would spare her life. He didn't. When the cancer became so hideously bad, then we both prayed God to take her life, and he didn't do that either. David, he said, what's the good of our praying? Is there anything in it? What we say?
Come, what did God do? Why did he allow it? How should he cure it? Ah, we come here upon one of the remarkable battlegrounds. Sooner or later, we shall all have perhaps a battleground like this. Where the sheer basic issue between a human created soul and God is fought out. Dare I trust God?
Will I trust God? When trusting God means I gotta trust him simply because I will trust him. I trust God rather than I trust myself. And when everything seems to point to the fact that I'm right, and God isn't being fair. Do I then trust God or trust myself?
We better make up our minds before we get home to heaven, hadn't we? Because if there is a God, then God is infinite in power. And you know, if it should be that, uh, in certain circumstances I am wiser than God, then heaven itself will be a hell. Because to have a God around who's infinite in power, but not quite so wise as I am, will mean that even heaven itself won't be ordered the right way round. If there's a God around of infinite power, and he doesn't love me just quite as much as I love myself, and therefore there would come times when what
I could see would be good for me, he wouldn't be interested enough to give me. The issue's got to be fought out sometime or other. Abram will have to climb his Mount Moriah, and Job will have to sit on his dunghill. While they make up their mind, what they think about God. Ah, have compassion with these folks. Don't write them off as though they were some deliberate ungodly folks. This is a painful lesson to face. Bitterness, sheer bitterness of it.
Oh, how they wished it had been different. Oh, how they wished everything had gone so well that they could, without any hypocrisy, have stood there singing praises of hymns to God. The fact they couldn't understand what on earth God was doing only made it all the more bitter. But in their bitterness, they strove with God. You know, that's a, that's a hard thing to have to do, isn't it? We've never done it? You've never been driven to have to try and tell God that he's making some mistakes?
Never been driven to feel that if he loved you a little bit better, he would have ordered things differently. Never in your prayers tried to twist his arm? Well, then you are a saint indeed, nearer heaven than I am. I confess to you that I envy Christians who can honestly sing, He is not a disappointment. I would have to take my stand with John the Baptist, who on certain occasions found that Christ didn't do what he expected him to do. And John was disappointed.
Ah, but to strive with God, it'll wear you out, my Christian friend, if you attempt it. He's bigger than we are. And it only adds to the burden and misery of life, doesn't it, to strive with God. Oh, what shall I do if I can't trust him? It were better for me, weren't it? Though I can't see how, but it were better for me that I be wrong and God right, then there's a heaven in front.
Oh, if only I can say it and believe it, in spite of all the circumstance. Yes, by definition, it must be that God is right and I'm wrong. Oh, if only I can say it, then praise God, there's a heaven for me. Whereas if it should ever happen that I'm right and God is wrong, then there's no heaven anywhere. How then would he cure this outcrop of rebellion? How what a merciful God he is.
He knew the bitterness of it. I long before he created our world, he knew the kind of battles that the human spirit would have to fight before they would get a victory, and had planned what he should do to deal with the rebel in the human heart and mind. Moses said to he, gather the people together. See that rock? Moses, I will come down and I will stand on it. Gather the people around it, Moses.
Moses, you know that rod of yours that you took and smote the waters with. Take it, Moses. And if we have any imaginations, our hearts begin to chill. Yeah, we do remember the rod, indeed we do. When Moses took that rod and hit the waters, they turned to blood. Oh God, what are you going to do? The people are rebellious, I know, but they're rebellious because there's no water to drink.
Will you turn the last few drops into blood? Merely increase their rebellion further. We watch as God comes down and stands on the rock, and Moses takes the rod. Lift it, says God, lift it, Moses. And in sight of all the people, Moses, smite the rock on which I stand. That's a funny thing to do, isn't it?
Well, perhaps so, but it's pretty obvious what it meant, surely. If I One of these days they erect for Her Majesty the Queen some great platform in Hyde Park and assemble her citizens around her while she comes and stands upon the platform. And presently, as she is about to deliver her oration, some citizen rushes out of the crowd with a long stick in his hand and begins to belabor the platform upon which the queen stands. How would you interpret it? Well, I know how the British police would interpret it.
The man will be accused of treason. Go on, says God, Moses, in the sight of all the people, I come and stand. Hit the rock, Moses, hit it, hit it hard. You might as well. That's what they've been doing with their tongues. That's how they feel in their hearts. That's how they feel about me, Moses. Ah, we often do with our tongues what we wouldn't like to do with our hands, but what's the difference?
Or pray consider. Ah, there was another time when God came down and stood upon a hill, wasn't there? In the sight of all men, in the sight of a world gone from God and rebellious in its heart. For the mind of the flesh is enmity with God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. And into such a world packed full of rebels, God came down, and he stood upon a hill, and they call it Calvary.
Jehovah lifted up his rod. O Christ, it fell on thee. Thou was sore smitten of thy God. All for my sake. My peace to make. And that is the story of the ages. God couldn't save them the bitterness of that lack of water, nor the bitterness of spirit as they went through their dismay.
Oh, but God loved them. Though he must chide with them and allow them this bitter experience, he himself would bear the rod that he might spare the rebel. And I see at length what God is like. Oh, no tyrant God. He must break my rebellion. Or if my re- rebellion be persisted in, there can be nothing for me but a lost, lost hell.
But oh, how his heart yearns for the human spirit, and the difficulties of circumstance, and the painfulness of the battle. And he shows himself, there isn't a rebellion you've ever had. There isn't a word spoken against God too bitter. But God himself was prepared to take it, suffer it, and forgive you. If you'll drop the rebellion.
Where else shall rebellion be stopped? There is only one place twixt earth and heaven, that is Calvary. Where rebels find their rebellion broken and their hearts reconciled to God. They who can go past Calvary unrepentant will find the rebellion in their hearts never broken, though they suffer an eternity of pain.
And that day Israel discovered something. Her rebellion broken. She discovered a glorious thing, that now as she moved, the waters came out from the very rock that had been smitten, the rock where God stood. It was a miracle. Yes, it was a miracle. And they had discovered this, that their water supply in the wilderness was no longer an accident of geography. The water came where God had stood. Thus does God want to tell us.
Our supplies, be they of daily bread or be they what they will, are not in fact accidents of statistical curves, of fluctuations in the market, chances of geography, or what have you. Our supplies come from the God who spared not his own son. How shall he not with him freely give us all things. The rebel was broken.
Then came Amalek. Well, of course he did. What do you expect him to do? Amalek anyway, you say, who's Amalek, and what's he doing butting in upon this, uh, sacred moment? Why, he had his eyes on it long since. Amalek, you know, among those early tribes that met and resisted Israel, Amalek has this distinction in the Old Testament, that when Amalek is referred to, the Amalekites are described as the sinners, the Amalekites. Well, now, of course, all men were sinners. Ah, yes, I know, but Amalekites, if you please, they were sinners.
Real sinners, I mean. These are the sinners who in the wilderness stood bang in front of Israel and defied them to go any further. Though God said go, Israel said, uh, Amalek said don't go. Amalek was the king who in the end opposed Israel in the time of Saul. It was an Amalekite at last who took the s- crown of Saul's head, wasn't he? These sinners, the Amalekites. You say, why did they come just now? Well, I'll tell you.
If you excellent citizens of Northern Ireland, and I count myself one nowadays and proud to be one, uh, should adhere to democracy, you may find that Marxists are kept at, kept at bay. But suppose in your heart of hearts, in your schools, colleges, factories, and where have you, inwardly you nurture the principles of Marxism, you shouldn't be surprised if one of these Monday mornings you wake up to find Russia on the doorstep. Of course not. And if, as dear believers in God, rather than question God, we deny ourselves and trust him, we may keep the enemy at bay, the old Satan himself.
But suppose, um, we start complaining against God and murmuring against God and beginning to fight against God and question God's wisdom, you mustn't be surprised if, when you're looking round, you see his satanic majesty himself come to help you in that rebellion. And the world falling in like a flood, because the world is no friend of God. And Israel had been indulging in the luxury of striving against God. Well, Am- Amalek came, he thought he might help. Decisions had to be taken.
Should they fight or shouldn't they? And now they've had a vivid experience of God and their rebellion for the moment was broken. Ah, yes, but at this level in the pilgrimage, there's another side to it. If the rebellion is indeed broken, then they will be given the chance to show it and stand on God's side and fight God's enemy, the Amalekites. Christianity is not all a question of sitting in pews, even for a long time, battle as that may be. It is getting up on Monday mornings and facing the enemy, be he found outside or inside our own heart, and daring to look our self-pity in the face and say, you rotter, you, you traitor against God.
I will have none of you, you old self-whining, you whining self-pitier, I finish with you. Now stop, stop your nasty little suggestions, your complaints, uh, your supposedly injured righteousness and all that nonsense. You're going home to heaven, aren't you? Christ died for you, didn't he? What are you doing going around with a hand dog hair as though you had been hurt by God and God somehow was in your debt or something? Oh yes, Monday morning will give me chance to, to fight the old enemy, won't it? When I find a fellow Christian who's been through the mill and is full of doubts and difficulties and pains, there'll be chance to discern what the true enemy is.
Not that dear soul's emotions for the time being, but the pressure of a Satan who attacked Job at his weakest. And I shall have a chance to mediate something of the love of God that can break that rebellion. Right now, Israel is given a chance. Ah, but now finally, notice what the text says. Amalek came and he fought, and God said? Yes, what did God say? Please notice he didn't say, now tell Israel and write it in a book, Israel is to have a war against Amalek forever.
No, he didn't say that at all. He said, write it in a book, the Lord will have a war with Amalek. Oh, I like it that way round. It's God's war, not my war. And God is going to have a war to the end and forever. And you know, God never began a war, but what he won. Said, God is going to be my war. Would you not like to come and enlist on my side, under my colors? And they lifted the standard, and they put upon it not Israel, they put upon it Jehovah Nissi, the Lord, my military standard, and they enlisted in the war under God's colors.
Thus were they certain of victory in the end, weren't they? And not content with that, there were three provisions that God made. I must leave them with you. First of all, there was Moses, beard and white hair, sitting upon the mountain with his hands uplifted. Can you see him there, noble? Oh, thank God for Moses. There came Amalek down the road. No, you shan't, said Moses, and he put his hands up like that. Oof. Well, then when when Moses stands in front of you, you know, and puts his hands up and says, oh no, you don't. Moses is a force to be reckoned with. I hope you hadn't dismissed him. You'll need him.
We are not under law as a system of earning salvation, thank God, certainly not, but we need our Moses yet, don't we? When the enemy comes along to my unsuspecting and careless soul and puts this little attraction in front, you know. Cool, uh, in those moments when I would give in and disobey God, I need old Moses to say, no, you don't, Gooding. No, no, no, you don't. Good old Moses, sitting up there on his rock. But Moses' hands were weak. Yeah. And Moses and his law combined would be weak, wouldn't they? Because of the weakness of the flesh.
I shall need something more than Moses. And so there came those two priestly men, Aaron and Hur, and they held up his hand. Oh, thank God for a high priest. Those days when the battle is hard, and it's difficult to go against my feelings, difficult not to side with my own rebellious heart. Oh, thank God for that ever vigilant high priest who intercedes and sends me the succor that I need to prevail in the fight.
And then not only the priest up above, but there was Joshua the Savior, wasn't there, down on the ground, bearing his lovely name of Savior because God designed him to be a picture of that greater Savior, our Savior, who though he is in heaven interceding for us, yet when the battle is passed, he's down here with us, are indeed in us, that we might get the victory.
The Lord encourages by his word. God is going to win the battle, but it is God that worketh in you both the willing and the doing of his good pleasure. God, give us the grace to cooperate with him in his war and work out our own salvation thereby. Shall we pray? Father, we thank thee for thy word.
We are under no illusions. If the going has been easy and our hearts have been full of praise, yet we would be warned by thy word that the flesh within us is an enemy still, not subject to thy laws, neither indeed can be. Help us, O Lord, to be alert, we beseech thee. We thank thee for thy provisions, that so we may prevail in the difficult day. Help us, Lord, make thyself known to us ever more deeply and nearly, that we may trust thee through thick and thin.
And give us such certainty in thine eventual victory, we pray, that we may with eagerness join thee in the fight and know the provision that thou hast given us, making us conquerors, yea, more than conquerors, so that, having done all, we may stand. Thy blessing be upon us, thus we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
