Share This Episode
More Than Ink Pastor Jim Catlin & Dorothy Catlin Logo

093 - Water and War!

More Than Ink / Pastor Jim Catlin & Dorothy Catlin
The Truth Network Radio
May 7, 2022 2:52 pm

093 - Water and War!

More Than Ink / Pastor Jim Catlin & Dorothy Catlin

On-Demand Podcasts NEW!

This broadcaster has 230 podcast archives available on-demand.

Broadcaster's Links

Keep up-to-date with this broadcaster on social media and their website.


May 7, 2022 2:52 pm

Episode 093 - Water and War! (7 May 2022) by A Production of Main Street Church of Brigham City

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Daily Platform
Bob Jones University
Matt Slick Live!
Matt Slick
Our Daily Bread Ministries
Various Hosts
Summit Life
J.D. Greear
Running to Win
Erwin Lutzer

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, I am absolutely loving these stories in Exodus. But are they just stories, like ancient stories, or do they have a relevance? Yeah, that's true.

Are they just history, or do they really mean something? So can we learn from them? I think we can.

We can learn from what happened thousands of years ago, and we're going to look at that today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning and welcome. We're sitting at our dining room table. I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim, and I have a half a cup of coffee. Oh, good for you.

We've been sitting here for a little while. And today we are continuing the story in Exodus 17. Last week we talked about receiving manna, and the grumbling that brought that about, and the purpose of manna being to test what was in their heart.

Would they walk in God's ways or not? God had a purpose in all this. And he continued to feed them for 40 years. And he gives them the Sabbath rest right on that day. They don't have to go out and gather.

Yeah, what a wonderful luxury. He gives them life as much as they need the day before so they can rest. And it's only been a matter of weeks, a couple of months, since they were slaves in Egypt. And so the idea of setting aside an entire day for rest is pretty significant.

It's radical. But they're continuing on their journey into the wilderness across this desert land toward the Promised Land. Pushing further and further into the desert. More sand, yeah.

Exactly. So let's just start reading. Let's do it.

Should I? Yeah, go ahead. I get to read.

Oh boy, okay. If you're following with us, we're in chapter 17 of Exodus. So all the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim. But there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore, the people quarreled with Moses and said, Give us water to 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 the people grumbled against Moses and said, Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? That sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Yeah. So Moses cried to the Lord, What shall I do with this people? They're almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said to Moses, Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. And behold, I will stand before you on the rock at Horeb, and you will strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.

And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he called the name of the place Masa and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel and because they tested the Lord by saying, Is the Lord among us or not? Wow. It's such a concise little story. It is, but it's another grumbling story. Well, it is. Quarreling, quarreling, grumbling, grumbling, grumbling.

And as we said last week, this repetition of this idea of grumbling against Moses when he says, Hey, it's not about me. Your quarrel is with God. Yeah. Right.

But, I mean, let's be fair. When you don't have water, it becomes your number one priority. Okay. Because you can't live very long without water.

Yeah. And so now they're in a place where there is no water. And remember, God never does anything capriciously. There's purpose and teaching behind everything he does. He brings them to a place that has no water, and in a sense, wonders how are they going to respond? Where are they going to look for resources? And so that's where we are here in Rephidim.

Okay. And if you think about what we've seen from water so far in Exodus in this wilderness journey, the first water he brought them to was the bitter, undrinkable water that had to be transformed. And then he takes them to the oasis at Eilim where there are 12 springs of water, right? Enough for everybody. And then now they're a little ways out from there, and suddenly they're not carrying much anymore. They've drunk it all up, and they start grumbling again. And we're out here in the middle of nowhere.

Out of it again. We probably need to mention, though, that this territory is not foreign to Moses. Yeah, that's right. He knows the road that they're traveling. The people do not, but he used to pasture sheep in this area. So he knows where they are. Yeah.

So yeah, that's exactly right. And so here we are, faced with this problem. And so where do you go when you come up short in life? I mean, what do you appeal to?

How do you figure out how to fix the situation? And it's interesting that in verse 2, they don't come to Moses and say, let's pray to God and ask for it. They say to Moses, give us water.

Give us water. They still think all these things come from Moses and Aaron. And they don't. They come from God.

They're appealing to the wrong place. And then Moses says, why do you quarrel with me? You know, you're actually testing the Lord is what you're doing. And last time we talked about the fact that this testing of the Lord is this whole idea is, is he with us or is he not with us? And the grumbling and quarreling reveals your heart doesn't really believe he's with you.

How many times does he have to provide what you need before you will quit grumbling and trust him? Yeah. Oh, exactly. Exactly. At this point, they have already been receiving manna every day.

Right. And they still are. I mean, the day that they did this grumbling, they were eating. They were eating manna.

They picked up that morning. So I mean, we look at that and go, how can they be so stupid? But, you know, we're there.

Yeah. They are us when you're faced with a desperate need and water is a desperate need. You know, you suddenly count your resources and see what's on your side. In this particular case, they didn't count the fact that God was on their side. That's that's the real sin of this entire thing. Well, and they blame Moses. Why do you bring us out of Egypt to kill us?

It was his idea. Yeah. And again, it's this idea that we're going to die out here.

When God had told them from the very beginning, you will not die. Right. I'm going to take you through.

Yeah. I'm going to provide for you. So it strikes me that this is a great example of what Paul called about the option of walking by faith or by sight. When you walk by sight, what you're doing is you're assessing where you're at and you're assessing the resources, you're assessing your needs and you're seeing if they match. Am I going to live tomorrow based on the resources I have at my command and control? That's living by sight.

And if the threat seemed to be much bigger than any possible source of resources, then you lay awake at night thinking we're all going to die. Right. And that's walking by sight. But by faith, by faith, walking by faith is the whole process of counting on the resources of the promises of God to bring you through and turning there. Which we cannot see. Which we cannot see. But God sees. That's why it's not sight, it's faith in that particular sense. In fact, the writer of Hebrews says it's the assurance of things you can't see.

You can't see. Yeah. So here what God is doing in a really practical sense is he's developing their faith. He's giving them an understanding based on God's documented faithfulness to meet their needs. He's building in them a faith that next time a need comes up, they say, well, we just need to turn to the Lord. He's been faithful in the past.

He'll be faithful in the future. Later on, God will demand of them huge things and they will show some growth, but God will have to remind them, listen, I'm the God that got you out of Egypt. So there's the documented thing. So I might point out just quickly is the fact that this kind of faith, this kind of faith where you act on the invisible is not unfounded.

No. It's founded on a track record of God. So God's track record, he brought us out of Egypt. God's track record, he purified the bitter water.

God's track record, he brought us food every morning. God has a track record and based on that track record, you can have faith in God's future faithfulness to us. That's just a really important point because a lot of people misconceive faith and think it's just hoping something happens. Well, we hear the term blind faith. Right. I just hope it happens.

Who knows? No, faith is not blind. God never requires of us blind faith. He always gives us enough evidence to stand on, to project an expectation that he will do what he's told us he would do because he always has done. Right. So faith is really a bridge between what God has done and what we can expect him to do in the future.

That's just our little site. Based on the concrete reality of his character. Yeah. And that's what he's teaching right here.

I mean he's building up these events where they can do that and yet still they're not quite there. Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock? There's some real farmers talking there. So when you're unhappy, you've got to blame somebody. You've got to blame somebody. Right. Where's the scapegoat?

Right. The motivation must be you hate us and you want to kill us because look right here in the desert and there's no water. But it's interesting what God tells Moses to do now.

We read it before but look specifically at it. The Lord says to Moses in verse 5, Pass on before the people, let them see you doing this, and take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. Now think about that. He says specifically, not just your staff, the staff with which you struck the Nile. What happened when he struck the Nile?

The water turned to blood and became undrinkable. So what was a source of life became a source of death for them. Right.

So they're out here saying we're going to die. So God says take your staff, your symbol of authority. That's the identified connection with God.

Right. And then the Lord says in verse 6, Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb. Now Horeb shows up first in Exodus 3.1. So again, this is familiar territory to Moses. This is around what is identified as the mount of God in Exodus 3.1.

Yeah, exactly. I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb and you shall strike the rock and water shall come out of it and the people will drink. So he struck the Nile in Egypt and the water turned to blood and everything in it died.

It was undrinkable. But here he's going to strike the rock and the water will come out and the people will drink and have life. And the connection with Nile is also one of scope because you think about the fact that what God can do, he can actually change the mighty Nile. I mean, that's a lot of water. I mean, it's a huge amount of water. And here he's saying, and I can provide a huge event of water as well. Because you've got to remember, we're talking about two million people in the desert. And so getting enough water to two million people plus all their animals, that's like a river of water.

It's a lot of water. So when he says rock, this is not just some granite stone sitting on the ground. The picture is a massive monolithic rock. Right. And the Psalmist uses the term rock for like a mountain crag.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they know that you don't get water from a rock. Hey, even we know that. So God's doing a very deliberate contrast thing right here. He doesn't say smack the sand and a spring will come out.

He says, smack a rock. And you've never seen this before. Right. It's very clear this is a supernatural thing. Exactly. God's doing this for contrast.

And it's a really great way to do it. And you shall strike the rock and water shall come out of it and people will drink. Wow. Are you going to make the connection to 1 Corinthians 10?

Water on a rock. I'm just opening to it right now. That's what I thought. I saw you flipping. I saw you flipping. So, yeah. This is interesting. So, you know, it's always helpful when we're reading these Old Testament narratives to look and see is there a commentary on it in the New Testament? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does Paul talk about it? Or does Paul talk about it? Or is it somewhere else in one of the Gospels?

Right, right. So here we find Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 making a fairly lengthy statement explaining. Yeah, this is interesting. Now, he's not taking away from the experience of the people in the desert, but he's saying, but here's what it meant. This is what it meant. Here's the significance for us. So he says in 1 Corinthians 10, I don't want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, right, the pillar of God.

Under the cloud, right, right. And they all passed through the sea, the Red Sea, and they were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea. So he's talking about not literal baptism. He's talking about being plunged into Moses, right, in that experience.

Being immersed in the experience. Verse 3, and they all ate the same spiritual food, right, the manna, the bread from God. Verse 4, and they all drank the same spiritual drink.

Now, listen to this. Spiritual drink. For they were drinking from a spiritual rock, which followed them, and the rock was Christ. That'll stop us in our tracks.

I got to think about that for a second. Now, all of a sudden, if I take that seriously, then when I go back and read this story in Exodus, God is, with these real people in real place and time having a real experience, giving us a picture of the rock of Christ being stricken for the living water to flow out. And that people will drink and have life. So Paul says, now, nevertheless, with most of them, God was not well pleased. And he goes on to talk about their grumbling.

The grumbling, yeah. The bad example. And he says, now, in verse 11, these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction. Verse 12, therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

Right? Pay attention. Because what happened to them was so that we won't do what they did.

We won't respond the way they did. Save us the heartache. So jot that down and go back and read after you've read this passage again. Turn to 1 Corinthians 10 and just start reading. 1 Corinthians 10. Paul's example, Paul's unpacking of this Exodus account.

Yeah, this is not an obscure account for Paul. This is a central picture of Christ himself. It made me think, too, about Jesus in John 7. He says, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Right. So when Paul says that Jesus is that rock from which it flows the water, Jesus says the same thing.

Come to me and you can drink. Yeah. So here in Exodus, God specifically tells Moses, now take your staff and smack the rock. Strike it.

Right. But later on, numbers will tell us there was a second time somewhere in this same region where God says to Moses, the people are grumbling again. Now take your staff in your hand, but speak to the rock.

Speak, don't strike. And Moses is so angry, he disregards God's instructions and he does strike the rock. And that has some lifelong implications for Moses. Lasting implications. So we'll get to that later on. So just take note of the fact that here he's told to strike.

It's important. Right. Which is the picture of Jesus Christ the rock being stricken for us, right, for the living water to flow. But that second event where Moses is just asked to speak to the rock, where God tells him to speak, sent me thinking of John 4, where Jesus says to the woman at the well, now if you knew who was talking to you, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Yeah. Exactly. So the water imagery here is practical and realistic, but in a spiritual sense is also practical and realistic and comes only from Jesus. Yeah.

Come to me and drink. What do you make of this Massa and Maribah titling of the place? Well, you know, you often name a place according to what happened there. Yeah. Right.

So the meanings of those two words are helpful, right? Massa means to test. Right.

Or there was a test. Yeah. And Maribah, to quarrel. He tells us right in the passage. Right.

He says. Oh, that's right. There it is.

There it is. He translates to forces in case we don't know because of the quarreling. You call it Maribah because they tested the Lord testing Massa. So that's testing and quarreling and that's what Moses named the place.

It's fascinating that Moses doesn't name it. God did water that. Right.

Water from the rock. But instead he says, we're going to remember this place as where you guys did really poorly. Right. And then he puts a cap on it in that last phrase right there.

Isn't it fascinating? Right. Not just testing and quarreling, but you tested the Lord by saying, is the Lord among us or not? Right. And there's the heart of the issue. Yeah. Prove yourself.

The heart of the issue. Is the Lord among us or not? Which I find fascinating based on the fact that they got this pillar of cloud during the day and at night you got the fire and still they're doubting the fact that God is with us when they come up with no water and they have no presumption that God's going to provide for them. It's still just astonishing. Yeah. God's given us this picture of living water flowing out of a hard rock. Right. Yeah. Which is what he does in us when he strikes our stony hearts and we repent and we're given the living water.

And he gives us living water anyway. Oh my goodness. There's so much in this picture. Yeah. And at another event at Massa and Maribah, those two names come up a couple other times I think in Deuteronomy.

They become shorthand for this event that the writer will just mention like Massa and Maribah and then the expectation is that you will fill in the rest of the story. Exactly. So his naming of this place stuck and people knew.

People knew when you say those two words, this is when you wondered if the Lord is among us. Yeah. Well, let's push on. Oh, we have to. We go from water to wars. Okay.

Start the commentary. Verse 8. Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. So Moses said to Joshua, choose for us men and go out to fight with Amalek.

Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand. So Joshua did as Moses told him and fought with Amalek while Moses, Aaron and her went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. And Moses' hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it while Aaron and her held up his hands.

One on one side and one on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Then Moses built an altar and called the name of it, the Lord is my banner, saying, a hand upon the throne of the Lord, the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.

Okay, so we're in the desert and we have our first very significant attack, unprovoked attack. We tend to think that they were all alone out there, but they weren't. There were nomadic peoples that passed through this area. And who were the Amalekites because they just kind of appear out of nowhere here.

See Amalek was from Esau. They are descendants of remote descendants of Esau. So they should know that the promise of the promised land, which went to Jacob instead of Esau, they should know generationally that these people coming through are really deserving this land. So they're actually warring against the promise of God coming true.

So there's history here. Which is actually was a characteristic of the peoples that descended from Esau. They became people who warred against Israel for generations. And Esau was characterized by the writer of Hebrews as godless and immoral. And those characteristics went forward into the peoples that grew from him. So we don't have time to unpack that, but I'm studying Genesis concurrently.

And so we've done a lot of work on Esau recently. This triggered another historical tidbit which helps you understand this in Deuteronomy 25 verse 17. Oh yes. You know remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt. How he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary and cut off your tail. That's the end of the people, the stragglers.

Those who were lagging behind you and he did not fear God. So he was actually nipping at the weakest people who were straggling. He was preying on the vulnerable. Yeah it was horrible.

It was really, really horrible. And so to fight them, these bunch of ex-slaves, not professional soldiers, God says I'm going to make a visual sign about the fact that you will prevail in battle as you look to me for help. And so he designs this idea with Moses. Okay so what's the deal with Moses sitting up where they can see him holding up his hands.

Where they can see him, yeah exactly. And for the benefit of Joshua, who will later on be the one who fights all those battles as they move in the promised land. I think this was as much for Joshua as for anybody else. So as Moses lifted up the staff, which is kind of a symbol of appealing to God for help, as long as they lift that up, they prevail and when it comes down they don't. So Moses has Aaron and her keep those arms up in the air. It's a tremendous picture of looking to God constantly without hesitation for help. Isn't it interesting that Moses gets tired and so they get a stone, a rock and he sits on it.

And he is steady resting on the rock, there's a little feel in the air. So much imagery in this. And on his right hand in the left, Aaron and her holding up his arms.

Yeah holding up his arms. Oh my goodness. I know, you could talk about this for days, the imagery is so powerful. So that the people would see this, that Joshua would see it, it's just fascinating. And I find it fascinating too that God didn't just wipe out the Amalekites like he did with the Egyptians in the Red Sea.

He's involving them in hand-to-hand combat. This is something God says I want you to be engaged in this, but by the way you're never going to be able to take credit for getting rid of the Amalekites because of your great swordsmanship and stuff like that. It's always going to be when you tell your grandchildren and their children, it's going to be, it wasn't because we were great soldiers because we were slaves, it's because God did this for us. But it's interesting that these peoples that grew out of Esau were going to continue to be trouble for Israel.

For a long time. And that's an important picture too, that the heritage of the godless people, the ones who did not inherit the promise, indeed rejected God, will continue to make trouble for the people who are walking into the promise of God. That is a picture of spiritual warfare.

Of a persistent nagging. Nagging at your heels, which is what the Amalekites did. That's what the Amalekites did.

The Edomites, the Moabites, these people had different characteristics in their struggling against Israel. And you know what I'd forgotten until I read this? We just went through Esther.

Oh yes. Haman, the bad guy. Haman was a descendant of Agag, the king of the Amalekites. Amalekites.

You're right. And he was trying to annihilate, genocide all the Jews. And that's hundreds of years after this. So the whole Amalekite problem goes on for a long time. I think he's the end of it.

I think he is too. When Haman is killed, that's the end of the line for those people. But it's a great symbol for us about spiritual warfare and the fact that there is a constant war going on and it's allied against us. And it's deliberately set to try and take us away from our dependence on God. But here with this symbol of Moses, with his hand in the air with his staff, with Aaron and her on both sides holding him up, we get this wonderful picture that as long as you look to the Lord for your resource, even though you got a sword in your hand, but if you look to the Lord for your resource, he will indeed be the one who fights the battle and wins on your behalf. And that is such a huge issue for Joshua that at the end of this in verse 14, it says, write this as a memorial in the book and recite it in the ears of Joshua. We don't want Joshua to forget that God's going to fight on your behalf and the Lord is my banner.

He's my Jehovah and he's the one who fights for me. And by the way, when it says this banner, that's what you put up in battle and you follow this banner and say, this is our leader. Because that's where your general is or where the king carries the banner.

So you know where your side is. Who's our general that's right underneath that banner? God himself is that general and that's what we got to remember. So now the ESV says this interesting thing in verse 16, saying a hand upon the throne of the Lord. Does that mean I have a hand upon the throne of the Lord or the Amalekites were trying to lay a hand on the throne of the Lord? That's how I've always interpreted it.

Yeah. There's a couple of different ways to read that. But in any case, it's the Lord is the one whose banner is over us.

Because that sentence makes sense. If the Amalekites are trying to put their hand on the throne of the Lord, the Lord will have war on Amalek from generation to generation and never prevail, never prevail. God's the one who is our banner under whom he wins the battle for us and we're his. He fights for us. He fights for us. So boy, we're out of time again.

I know. But I just encourage you who are listening as we read these accounts, read these stories to just sit still in them and think about, ask yourself, what is this narrative about? What's the main point? What is God doing? Because God is a central character in this story.

Exactly. And I like to think that because this is an oral history that they sat around the campfires and told these true stories and said, so kids, what you can learn from this is God fights on our behalf. So these are stories that are not just meant to be history, they're meant to be teaching tools to give us a deep understanding into the character of God himself. Not only are they learning it in the desert, but we are too. So we're glad you're with us and we'll find more stories as we go through the desert right here on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. That's exactly what we want to do. See ya, too soon, I jumped again.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-04-22 07:54:57 / 2023-04-22 08:07:22 / 12

Get The Truth Mobile App and Listen to your Favorite Station Anytime