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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Exodus 17:1-7
Well, this morning we begin chapter 17 as we continue our way forward to Mount Sinai in the giving of the Ten Commandments there as God makes a covenant with his people at Sinai. And as we begin chapter 17, we're entering further into this pattern, this refrain that is now beginning to emerge of despite God faithfully leading and providing for his people, the people murmur, groan, and rebel.
This is something that Numbers elaborates on in greater detail than Exodus, but of course it's still here and very evident in verses 1 through 7 here in chapter 17. So we want to consider not only that this morning, but perhaps centrally that aspect of Israel's contention despite God's provision, something that I think is perennially needed by the people of God, but of course here we are at this time in this book for this very.
Reason.
And so we need to open up the ears of our hearts and reflect very deeply upon the mirror.
Of God's Word.
As James says, we don't want to be those forgetful hearers that at least for a little while this morning peer into that perfect mirror and see all the warts and blemishes therein, but then looking away we forget what we saw.
We don't want to be hearers only, but doers of the Word of God. Well, we've seen disobedience at the end of chapter 16. We've seen the Lord's people refuse to obey. Now it was only some of the Lord's people who went out on the Lord's Day and gathered manna when they should have been resting and keeping the Sabbath holy, but we see this spirit of disobedience, this spirit of refusing to heed God's Word and God's instruction begin to take root and now blossom and sprout in new ways, and that brings us to chapter 17.
Chapter 17 also brings us to another place of dire need. We've seen the Israelites thirsty before. We've seen them hungry. They're in the wilderness. There's no water that's at their right and at their left everywhere they look.
There's no food that's abundantly able to be harvested. God must provide both food and drink as they are led by Him, and He's faithful to do that, but He's also faithful to make them lean and depend upon Him, to limp after His provision.
So God is leading. We've seen that since chapter 15. The people are thirsty. We've seen that also since chapter 15, beginning in verse 1, chapter 17. Then all the congregation of the children of Israel set out on their journey from the wilderness of sin according to the commandment of the Lord, and they camped at Rephidim.
But there was no water for the people to drink. I just want to point out in verse 1, this dry spot that they've come to was where God had led them. We saw that with chapter 15 as well. According to the commandment of the Lord, they were brought to Rephidim.
So already, if God has commanded it, there should be this trust. God has not brought us out into the wilderness to die. If He's commanding for us to go to the place where there is no water, just as He's miraculously provided bread, chapter 16, we can trust He will miraculously provide water.
Unfortunately, that is not the response of the Israelites. Verse 2, therefore the people contended with Moses, and they said, give us water that we may drink. That's not a polite request, by the way. That's a very rude demand.
Give us water. There's no niceties or polite prologue for that. Moses said to them, why do you contend with me? Why do you tempt the Lord? And the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, why is it that you've brought us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?
Now just notice the complaint. We have it summarized here. Obviously, they didn't all in a uniform way say these exact words. This is sort of a faithful summary of the gist or the essence of what was being said by the Israelites.
And notice that there's no place for God in this complaint. First they contend with Moses, and then in their complaint they say to Moses, why have you, Moses, brought us up out of Egypt? So they have this flattened view, this need has pressed them in such a way that they're aggravated, they're frustrated.
They complain against Moses, and only Moses. Though God was the one who had brought them up out of Egypt, though they are the people of God, they make themselves out to be the people of Moses and they contend against Moses.
And this is how ridiculous the claim becomes. You've brought us out to kill us, and to kill our children, and to kill our livestock. In other words, you didn't bring us out of our bondage, you brought us to our death place.
You brought us, as it were, to judgment and to wrath, rather than into deliverance and redemption. So there's this flattening that has come about. The thirst is producing this aggravation, this frustration.
You know, we think of the believer as the deer panting after water, and it's such a pastoral image, isn't it? It's such a serene image. It almost flatters our faithlessness. Oh, I'm like this noble, soft doe, panting after the presence of God.
Well, sometimes the church is thirsty, and it's not a very flattering image. It's not this gentle-natured deer that's panting after water. Elsie's been tickled the past couple days. We found this little video from, I think it's Planet Earth, I'm not sure.
It's something that David Attenborough is doing his running commentary on. And it's this animal called the palace cat, P-A-L-L-A-S, which is considered the grumpiest cat, the crankiest cat on the earth.
It's this shaggy creature, and its face just looks angry. I mean, cats always look kind of peeved, but this cat especially is angry. And the little video clip that we've watched now, I don't know, four or five times, it keeps on trying to go and stalk these little vole that are running around.
In order to stay warm in the cold weather, they have to catch at least five a day. But they can't be quiet, and there's no place, no brush to hide behind, so 90 of their effort ends in failure. And they just sort of growl and hiss, and they just seem angry, you know, probably hissing at the cameraman.
And to me, it's just this picture, again, not this gentle, serene doe, but more like a palace cat. That's what the people of God are like when they're thirsty, when they're in need, cranky, angry, grumpy, you know, growling, sputtering, hissing, as it were.
And we certainly see that here with Moses in verses two and three. The people have gone from thirsty to hungry and back to thirsty. They're in the wilderness, day by day, they need food and water to survive.
This is still in the context of God providing for them manna. We read at the end of chapter 16 that until they went to the border of Canaan for 40 years, God gave them daily bread. So, notice that on the one hand, there's this miraculous provision of bread, simultaneous to this growling complaint, right?
They're not utterly deprived. They're going out, and as they're scooping up heavenly bread that is descended from on high according to God's own hand, they're grabbing that and stuffing it into their robe pockets as they're complaining and grumbling against Moses, as if God didn't exist, as if God wasn't their leader and provider.
So simultaneous to God's faithful provision is their faithless grumbling. Instead of submitting to the test of the Lord, and remember, he is testing them, Exodus 16, 4, that I may test them to see whether they will walk in my law or not.
So he gives them the bread and he says, I'm going to test you with the water, and they utterly fail that test. Psalm 106, and we're going to look at a few of the psalms shortly, but they love recounting this, and sometimes to positive praise of what God had done, and sometimes a negative reflection on the reaction of his people.
But Psalm 106 captures this negative reaction. They soon forgot his works. How soon? From the time they gathered to later in that day. From the time they're finishing manna and saying, if only we had some water to drink.
Let's go bark at Moses for the rest of the day. They soon forgot his works. They did not wait for his counsel. They had wanton craving in the wilderness, and they put God to the test. So this whole summary, as we'll come to in verse 7, this place is called testing as well as quarrel or contention.
And this testing is going to significantly stand out in the memory of God's people. We'll see it in the psalms shortly, as well as in Jesus' own experience in the wilderness for himself. Now, as we see here, the people do not explicitly contend with the Lord.
They explicitly contend with Moses. What Moses points out to them in the midst of their distress, in the midst of their frustration, is that they are leaving God out of their mind. And so he corrects them by saying, you're not contending against me exclusively.
You're also contending against the Lord. Insofar as you're complaining against me, you're complaining against the Lord. And so he puts these things together that they would drive apart. Why do you contend with me, he says.
Why do you tempt the Lord? We're not tempting the Lord, Moses. We're just upset with you. We can leave the Lord out of this. And Moses is saying, no, you can't. You can't separate what God has joined together.
God has appointed me as this mediator of your redemption. And therefore, to ignore me is to ignore the Lord. To reject my leadership as the Lord has led me is to reject the Lord's leadership of you. To reject delegated authority is to reject the giver of that authority.
To contend with the appointed leader, it's to contend with the Lord's appointment. This is what Moses keeps reinforcing to the people of God. And so we see here, pivotally, at chapter 17, this wretched pattern beginning to emerge of the people refusing to trust God.
And in the place of trust, rather, they test God. They tempt God. Now again, they're not even speaking to God. They're not even speaking of God. They're only speaking to and about Moses. So why does Moses say that they're tempting God?
Well, God has been teaching the children of Israel to live by grace as they follow his lead in the wilderness, trusting his wisdom where they don't understand his leading, to trust in his provision where they cannot provide for themselves.
This is how they will live by his grace. And please notice that he's teaching and training them in righteousness, teaching them how to live in grace before he gives them the law. It's very significant.
We'll come back to that. He's teaching them ways of his grace, character of his grace, provisions of his grace before he gives them the law. There's no way they could misconstrue that as a condition or contingency of their obedience, God will provide.
That is not the experience. It hasn't been in 15, 16, 17, through all the plague narratives. And so it is here as well. Living by grace is not just trusting God, but it's also trusting those that God has appointed.
That's part of living by grace. And so the sense that Moses gives of them not contending against the Lord, but actually more than that, tempting him, putting him to the test. It's almost like, it's almost like giving a shove or kind of drawing out a bluff and saying, what are you going to do about it?
That's the sense in which Israel's tempting God. They're provoking God to wrath. Why are you tempting him in this way? And as we'll see, God does respond in a very enigmatic way, God responds. But he doesn't respond against them, not here at least.
That kind of response, that kind of judgment will come, but they must have it in their conscience now. Why do you tempt the Lord? It's not me you're contending against, it's the Lord. You dare provoke him?
That's what Moses says. Verse 4, Moses does more than respond to them, he now cries out to the Lord. We read verse 4, Moses cried out to the Lord saying, what shall I do with this.
People?
They're almost ready to stone me. Be the first instance we read of stoning in scripture. There's really no good way to die, but of all the ways you could die, I think stoning would be one of the worst.
And here are the Israelites and he's noticing their pockets are quite loaded perhaps, kind of like some of our brothers that, you know, you can just see a bulge in the inside waistband or something. Well, here are the Israelites and they've got rocks loaded down and he sees these rocks and he knows things are getting a little bit dicey.
What am I going to do with this people? The first thing that Moses does is he responds with prayer. He responds with prayer. Moses cried out to the Lord. It's one of the greatest traits in Moses' life.
It's one of the greatest traits a Christian can have is that their immediate response to trouble, strife, or trial is to cry out to God. Not to respond in flesh, not to respond sort of by the seat of the pants, but to respond by turning to the Lord, calling out for the Lord, crying out to the Lord in the midst of that distress.
We can't imagine that any of the Israelites have had this as their immediate.
Response to thirst.
We don't read of them crying out to the Lord. We don't see them praying that God would provide. We don't see them coming to Moses and saying, Moses, we're so thirsty. We know that you are the one who beholds the presence of God.
Will you go pray for us? Rather they go and they complain against him. The prayerless people complain. And here, the mediator, the leader, is the one who turns in prayer. It's as that great hymn encourages us, have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere? Yes, Moses says, there's trial, there's temptation in how I'm going to respond. There's trouble everywhere. They're about to stone me.
Well, don't be discouraged.
Take it to the Lord in prayer. Cry out to the Lord in prayer. So the instinct of Moses, and we'll see this simultaneously emerging with this wretched pattern of Israel. Israel rejecting God, rejecting the leadership that God has provided, rejecting the provisions of God, even while Moses is faithful to not respond in flesh, but in grace to the people.
We see him constantly, almost sacrificially mediating between them and the Lord that they provoke to anger. And so we have this glorious display of Moses having this Christ-like instinct to pray rather than return spite.
He doesn't match evil with evil, but he returns good for evil. He cries out to the Lord, what shall I do? He is dependent upon the Lord in a way that these people should have been. This is very instructive for leaders in the church as well, not to answer spite for spite, not to grumble as an answer to grumbling, but to do what should have been done in the first place.
If they won't pray and would rather complain, then you better pray. If we do not abide in prayer, as John Owen warns, we will abide in temptation. We'll end up devolving and becoming the very thing that we're reacting against.
And so we must abide in prayer. We must daily intercede with the Lord. Preserve my soul. Keep me sober-minded. Give the devil no foothold in this matter. Help me to always remember I'm dealing with souls, not only my own, but the souls of others.
Prevent me from being selfish.
Help me to be sacrificial. Give me the mind of my Savior. This strife, of course, has damaged things. Moses is also a man. We can see it even in the way he speaks. We have this sort of glorious use of the demonstrative pronoun.
What shall I do with this people? There's a distanciation. Not my people. Lord, what should I do for your people? Or, Lord, what shall we do with my people? But what are we going to do with this people?
Over here.
There's already been a sort of damage in the relationship. Moses finds it hard to identify himself with people that are responding in this kind of way. So short-sighted about God's faithfulness. So quick to reject Moses when Moses, in a long-suffering way, is trying to be faithful and lead them in the footsteps God has prepared for them.
And again, look at the level. Look at the drama that they're willing to explore. These aren't hyperbolic words. They're almost ready to stone me. Mob violence is on the horizon. We're going to take matters into our own hands.
We have no confidence in the leadership of Moses. We have to act now or we're going to die in the wilderness. And Moses recognizes that. He sees that threat. Won't be the first time that Israel stirs up in rebellion.
Read of Korah's rebellion. Many such rebellions where they test God and reject the leadership of God. One thing we can take away is it certainly makes you grateful for peaceful business meetings in the church, isn't it?
I remember hearing of a church early on, early years. It's sort of been about, I don't know, 10 or 11 years ago, doing pulpit supply at a church up in Maine and having some time to talk with the pastor up there.
And he gave sort of a summary of some of the history of the church. And he said before he came, it was full of strife. And there were factions in the church. And they were vying for their way or the highway.
And there was just a mutual hatred, where there should have been a charitable love. There was a mutual hatred. And he said, one of the business meetings prior to his installation, they actually started throwing hymnals at each other during the business meeting.
Can you imagine that? Does someone have the wits about them to stand up and say, what is going on?
Get a grip.
And clearly, none among the Israelites are thinking in that way. They're drunk in their aggravation. There's no sobriety about how ridiculous it is that as they're scooping up manna, they're contending with God's leadership.
Verses 5 and 6, this is the Lord's response to Moses' great cry and to the people's great need. Go on before the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel. Take in your hand your rod, with which you struck the river, and go.
Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb, and you shall strike the rock. And water will come out of it, so that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.
What we see in this response of the Lord is that He doesn't immediately, explicitly, directly address the sins of His people. Now, we're not going to cover it yet, but toward the end of the sermon, we'll see He actually does, in a very profound way, address the sins of His people.
But here, so far as the Israelites are concerned, He's only addressing their need. He's not answering them with vengeance or with judgment for their disobedience or for their lack of faith. He takes the sin of the people, and He almost doesn't respond to it at all.
Here's the aggravation.
Here's the rejection.
Here's the testing of the Lord God, which is abominable in His sight. Here's the provocation of His anger. And how does God respond in Exodus 17?
He meets their need.
He saves their life in the place where they would wither. He gives them water from the split rock at Horeb. So notice that God is answering grace in place of sin. Where sin is abounding among the people of God, grace is superabounding.
Grace is meeting their need. While they're yet enemies, while they're resistant and defiant against God, He is meeting the needs of their great thirst. And notice, again, the way He brings this about.
God doesn't just say, I command the rock to break open. There's some pageantry involved here to great effect. Moses is first to go and gather some elders to go with him. God doesn't just say, I'm going to rain manna from heaven.
I guess I'm going to rain water also. There's a certain way He does this. It's very significant. He takes elders, and He says, I want to create an eyewitness testimony. I want elders to see how this has come about.
I want them to go forth, minister, and testify to what they have seen. Where there's this lack of faith, I'm going to restore and reinforce their faith so that they can shepherd the people of God. And so we see God not concerned with perhaps a demonstration to all of the Israelites, so much as the leaders of the Israelites.
Their faith must be restored so that they can be used of God to restore the faith of the people. That's very significant. It's repeated twice. Go take some of the elders, verse 5 and verse 6. He did so in the sight of the elders.
Very significant. Second thing is He instructs Moses to take the rod. Right there, Moses would be filled with memories of God's faithfulness. What happened last time He took up the rod? Last time He took up the rod, the Red Sea crashed upon the enemies of God.
It crushed the chariot force of Pharaoh. When Moses picked up this rod and saw the smooth parts that his hand had gripped so intensely when it was raised up over Egypt, God poured out all manner of judgment upon the Egyptians.
And here Moses is going to put his hands in the same well-worn timber, but when he raises it up and brings it down, it won't be bringing judgment with it. It'll be bringing merciful provision. And so we see this great contrast.
In fact, it's put there in the text for us that we can't miss it. Take in your hand the rod with which you struck the river and strike the rock. So the same verb that we saw in the first plague is put forth here.
This is the same kind of strike, but the effect couldn't be more different. Where the Nile, being struck by the rod of God in that first plague, was defiled, and as it were, the whole water supply of Egypt was shriveled up and the people could no longer drink.
Now God strikes, and rather than the water supply being shriveled up and the people becoming thirsty, now the water supply breaks open and water gushes forth unto life. The same rod, the same strike, to dramatically different ends.
What was darkness and death to Egypt is now light and life to the people of God. Though the same rod and the same strike was occurring. The stroke of judgment bringing forth life. You can see where we're going.
There's more to say, of course, along these lines, but we'll get there toward the end. Verse seven is a summary of verses one through six. And in summarizing verses one through six, it denotes the place names.
It tells us the significance of this place being named. He called the name of the place Massa and Meribah. Some of you have kids and you were torn between two. Why not both? Give your kid two first names, right?
That's what Moses does here. One just doesn't quite fit fully what is taking place.
You need both.
You need Massa, which means testing or tempting, and you need Meribah, which means contention or quarrel or strife. And Moses sees these both being significant. And so the place receives both of these names.
This is where the contention broke out. This is where strife and quarrel put enmity between the mediator and the people. But it's also where the people tested God. And so this dual name brings out the sin of the people of God.
And this is the sin of the people of God. In less than half a year, the ones who have been crying out for generations to be freed from slavery, the ones whose bondage had been intensified when the mediator finally came, the ones who were crying out as their backs were being broken and their children were being subjugated, as they were making bricks without straw, have now seen this miraculous deliverance through 10 plagues, being led by God as though led by a cloud, a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, seeing the sea that spelled death and the chaotic judgment of God be open for them like a corridor, only to be closed upon the enemies that were pursuing, to then be brought into a wilderness and yet find miraculous provisions of water, bread, and quail.
At every turn, God meeting their needs as they see the angel of the Lord encamping all around them, leading them to the promise that he had given to Abraham. And yet, in spite of all that they witnessed in less than six months, they have the audacity to say, is the Lord really among us?
Is the Lord really among us? How could they possibly ask this kind of question? And it's, of course, more a rhetorical question coming out of their complaint, coming out of their flesh, coming out of their strife.
Is the Lord really among us? I can think of nothing that would cause the wrath of God to boil over as a kind of faithless, hostile question like that. And here we have a mirror put before us of how fickle our flesh can be, and though God provide faithfully and renew His mercy morning after morning, in the mid-afternoon of our trial we can say, has God really been merciful to me?
Has God really acted on my behalf? Is God really good and gracious? Is God really wise? The people ask here, is the Lord among us? In the midst of the Lord, literally standing before them upon the rock.
As they're crying out, where is the Lord? Who is the Lord that we should serve Him?
Who is the Lord?
We were better off to die in Egypt than be out here. And as they're saying that, the Lord is at the rock of Horeb. The people contending with Moses, the people testing and tempting God, almost bluffing, almost drawing out.
If you're real, would you strike us?
Would rather be dead.
And so everywhere that this is recounted, the exhortation is don't be like them. Don't have this kind of spirit, this kind of reaction, this kind of way characterizing your walk. Everywhere in Scripture where this is recounted, there's nothing but a negative reaction, a red flag, a warning.
If you're like them, you too will die short of the promised rest. In 1 Corinthians 10, five verses earlier, this episode had been brought up, and in 1 Corinthians 10, nine, Paul says we must not put the Lord to the test.
He's applying this to the church at Corinth, and he's saying we must not put the Lord to the test. Remember Jesus being led by the Spirit of God, as the true Israel as it were, having been brought through the waters in His baptism and then thrown into the wilderness.
I'm not exaggerating here, Mark literally says He was cast or thrown into the wilderness by the Spirit. You remember in Matthew's version of the wilderness trial how Satan was, even in the same way he slithered into Eden to tempt the first woman and the first man, so here he slithered into the wilderness, not the paradise surrounded by provision, but the wilderness, the experience of Israel as God's Son.
And here the temptation arises in the need, the dire thirst and the hunger of Jesus, and well, don't you know, you have the power as the Son of God, you could make stones bread. In fact, why don't you throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple, because you know what God has said, and I know that you are a man of faith.
In fact, why don't you magnify your faithfulness? Why don't you show the care that your Father has for you? Cast yourself down, let Him catch you, because He can't go against His Word. He'll do it, He says He will command His angels concerning you.
On their hands, they'll bear you up. You'll never strike your foot against a stone.
Go show your Father's love,.
Go show your own faithfulness and trust in Him. Don't be like faithless Israelites. And Jesus wisely, seeing the serpent's temptation, says, no, I won't be like the faithless Israelites, because like you're wanting me to do, you're wanting me to put my Father to the test.
And so when He responds, He says, it is written, do not put the Lord your God to the test. I won't tempt, I won't provoke, I dare not question God's leading. He has me in this refidim, as it were. I wait upon Him to supply what I need.
I will not provoke, I will not put Him to the test. Jesus does not presume upon His heavenly Father. He makes no demand upon His heavenly Father. He submits to the leading, to the prompting, to the instruction of His heavenly Father.
He demonstrates His loyalty not by provoking, but by submitting. He doesn't make God's provision somehow conditional for Himself. So He recognizes the sovereignty of His Father is absolute. And for that reason, in responding to the tempter, He says, you shall not put your God to the test.
What is He doing? He's quoting Deuteronomy 6. And what does Deuteronomy 6 say? You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested Him at Massa. So here we have this whole episode of Exodus 17 now reverberated and ultimately fulfilled in the experience of Jesus in the wilderness temptation.
He will succeed where they failed, where Adam failed. They put God to the test at Massa. Jesus refuses to put His Father to the test. And so He stands learning from the Psalms as we as His people are meant to learn from the Psalms.
Or anywhere this episode is recounted. And again, it's recounted to both magnify God's faithfulness as much as to expose the people's faithlessness. Psalm 105, 39, we see this more positive praise. He spread a cloud for a covering, a fire to give light by night.
They asked and He brought quail. He gave them bread from heaven in abundance, right? We're recounting 15 through 17. He opened the rock and water gushed out. It flowed through the desert like a river because He remembered His holy promise that He made to Abraham.
So here this whole episode is recounted as a way of amplifying the goodness of God. But look at Nehemiah and Nehemiah's exhortation. Nehemiah 9, you gave them bread from heaven for their hunger. You brought water out of the rock for their thirst.
You told them, go, possess the land which you had swore to give them. But they and our fathers acted presumptuously. They stiffened their necks. They did not obey your commandments. The same emphasis is taken up by David in Psalm 95.
We didn't get there last week. We will get there when we get to the fourth commandment in due time. But Hebrews 3 and 4 is revolved all around this warning exhortation that comes out of Psalm 95. In Psalm 95, David is recounting, not just this episode, but using this episode as a lens to consider the danger of a faithless people acting presumptuously and hardening their hearts against God.
So Psalm 95 begins with this call to praise. Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Remember in Exodus 15, they'd all been singing to the Lord. Even the women broke out and danced and in instruments and they all, as a congregation of the Lord's people, sang to the Lord mighty songs of His deliverance.
And now what's coming forth out of their mouths? Not songs of praise. So David in Psalm 95 says, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. A little clue about where we're going in Psalm 95.
To the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving. Not with contention. Not with strife. Not with quarrels. Not with envy. Not with outbursts of wrath. Not with jealousy or dissension.
With thanksgiving.
With joy, joyfully.
To Him with psalms. For the Lord is the great God and the great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth. The heights of the hills are also His. The sea is His.
He made it.
His hands formed the dry land. Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker. I know He made all things. He's made you.
So respond with joy.
Respond with praise.
Why?
For He is our God. And we are the people of His pasture. The sheep of His hand. Again, this Exodus imagery. God being like a shepherd, guiding His people through the wilderness. And now, what the writer of Hebrews is so keen to impress and apply to His hearers today.
David writes, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness. What's that word? In the day of massa. In the day of trial in the wilderness.
When your fathers tested, testing, massa me. When they tried me, though they saw my work. So you have massa here. A triplet, a drum shot of testing God. And the whole thing is framed by praise, praise, praise.
And the only way you can praise is if you're not like this. Not like the people in Exodus 17. Not contending, not tempting or provoking God's wrath. Don't be like them in the wilderness. And so that's the great focus.
In fact, we have a triplet of our own here in verses one through seven. Three separate times this word contention has appeared. It's the great emphasis that is put before us in this text. And that therefore warrants some application.
How are we going to handle contention? Contention that wells up within us. Our minds, our affections, our discouragements, our needs. How do we contain that? How do we contain our contention so that we don't hinder the work of God or the leading of God.
And we don't somehow become a source of contention and dissension among the people of God. So that's the application. Then we'll bring it back to consider the rock as a picture of the gospel at the very end.
So first, just containing contention. Let's just get our hands around contention itself. Contention or strife. Or having a censorious spirit. A spirit that is critical, hypercritical. Not in any way clothed with meekness or graciousness, but blunt, grating, plucking, backbiting.
The people here are backbiting Moses. What an image backbiting is. We don't see the people praying, we see Moses praying. We don't see the people trusting, we see Moses trusting. All that's produced among the people and is ratcheted up as they interact with each other is strife, bitterness, and underneath all of that, ingratitude, underneath that ingratitude, amnesia.
Amnesia that can't remember the manna they took up that morning. Amnesia that can't remember the provision of water but two chapters ago when they had the same cries, the same complaints, and the same need.
Amnesia that can't remember the Red Sea deliverance. They can't remember being brought up miraculously out of Egypt. They still have Egyptian jewelry around their necks. Ingratitude, which allows there to be bitterness.
And strife, all God's mercies blotted out because they're being pressed with a certain need, a need of the moment, a crisis du jour. And we see, therefore, their stubbornness. They can't bow to pray because they're so stiff, they're stiff-necked.
You can't bow to pray when you have a stiff neck. They certainly can't come with that stiff neck and ask Moses in mercy to intercede for them. When we look at Numbers 11, Numbers 11 is a great parallel to this.
We find even more of what's going on in the life of the Israelites at this juncture. Instead of rejoicing over the daily miracles of God's provision, they want something more. Right, we saw that at the end of 16.
It's not enough, we want more. And if they get more, they want something different. We want something more, we want something different. We want something better, and if you can't have that, we want what we used to have.
We wanna go back to Egypt. We wanna go eat those cotton candy dreams of leeks and cucumbers and pots of meat that we never actually ate. And this is a picture of contention, brothers and sisters. The people of God having this ingratitude because they have no forethought, no depth of perception to see where God has brought them, how faithfully God has led them.
The trust area is that it's hard to be led, hard to submit, hard to trust, and yet you look back, you faithfully see His provision, you have your Ebenezers, you project that as a trajectory in front of you.
And it's so easy for that amnesia to become ingratitude or that ingratitude to produce this callous neck, and now you can't bow, and now you can't pray, and now all you can do is grumble and complain.
And what that grumbling looks like is, well, we should be doing more than we're doing. I want something more. All right, here's something more. It's too much.
I want something less.
Well, here's something less. I want something different.
It's all we ever do.
All right, well, we'll try something different. Can we just go back to the way things were? There's a restless spirit, a fickle spirit among the people of God. And that contention that arises from the flesh, it must be contained.
It must be contained. I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, Paul writes to the church at Corinth, so that there would be no divisions among you.
This is why he's pleading, and this is what he's desiring.
I don't want there to be divisions,.
And therefore you must all speak the same things. You must be perfectly joined together with the same mind, the same judgment. Because it's been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household, that there are contentions among you.
These contentions have burst forth like water from the rock in Corinth. And these contentions have developed into factions. And as we know, just by tracing the argument in 1 Corinthians, one through four especially, just looking at chapter four, there's this pride, this pride that has caused these factions to all be puffed up.
And here's these blimps, and they're sort of bashing and battering against each other. And this pride, this quest for wisdom, this differentiation that they have different practice, and they're knit together toward different ends, and so it's easier to be in an insular group within the church than to actually work toward unity as the church.
And so this boasting, this pride, this ingratitude, it breeds contention. As at Massa, so at Corinth. The people begin to get sucked into this vortex.
Of division.
It's inevitable in a situation like this. It's what the enemy always tries to do. If we sow to the flesh, we reap from the flesh. Contention is sowing to the flesh. And the powerful vortex that pulls us in to the enemy's trap, because this is how the enemy always seeks to trap and disrupt the people of God, divide and conquer.
Very hard for the prowling lion to go head-on to the soldiers of God when they're in unity, when they're fighting as a machine, as a united front, when they have the same mind and the same judgment. And so he splinters them.
He divides them. He sort of rolls over their front line, as it were. He causes there to be confusion and factions, and so dividing, he's able to conquer. It's what C .S. Lewis pointed out to us in his screw tape letters, right?
Where the demon screw tape, the older demon is giving advice to his protege, Wormwood. And here's this tactic that demonic entities love to use in the churches of Christ. I warned you before that if your patient, right, this subject that you're trying to possess and to hinder and to destroy, if your patient can't be kept out of the church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it.
And I don't mean on doctrinal issues, about those, the more lukewarm, the better. The real fun is working up hatred on things that are purely indifferent. And so it would have been, but for our ceaseless labor.
I love, Lewis is so good. Our ceaseless labor, right? Ceaselessly trying to promote this kind of strife, this kind of hatred by factionalism and division among the people of God. He says, without that, the Christian church would have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility.
So here's Lewis tipping the cap to the thing that prevents this kind of strife. If the pride that puffs up leads to this kind of factionalism and contentions among the people of God, then it's charity and humility that end up bursting forth those balloons of strife.
So we see this vital need for humility. William Gurnaw, an excellent sermon on strife and contention among the people of God. William Gurnaw, who famously wrote the Christian in complete armor, his exposition of Ephesians six.
And Gurnaw says, agreeing with Lewis, there is nothing next to Christ and heaven that the devil will grudge believers more than their unity and mutual love, right? What Satan hates the most and what occupies his efforts and his energies among the people of God as the prowling lion with his jaws open seeking to devour, what he occupies himself with most is to disrupt the mutual love and unity of the people of God.
He takes that far more seriously than any of you do, than I do. He's far more concerned about disrupting our unity than we are concerned about preserving it. For years now, every time I pray, I pray for unity in this church.
I don't remember a time that I've even had a personal or maybe even family prayer where I have not prayed for unity in our church. If he cannot rend them from Christ, if he cannot stop them from getting from heaven, getting to heaven, he'll take at least some pleasure to see them go there through a storm, like a shattered fleet severed from another, so that they have no assistance and no comfort all the way.
If he can't rip you away from Christ, he'll be satisfied to rip you apart from one another. If he can't prevent the fleet from getting to the destination, he'll at least batter and separate the fleet along the way.
That's the enemy of God. And when that satanic work has its part, has its effectiveness, what results is Exodus 17. What results is 1 Corinthians 1. What results is all the things that we're constantly warned against throughout all of the scriptures, what Nehemiah or what Psalm 95 or Psalm 106 or Psalm 78 is constantly warning us against.
What this looks like initially, almost indefinitely, is going to be backbiting among the people of God, particularly backbiting against the leadership that God has put over his people. I wanna be careful how I navigate this, but here we are for this reason, right?
I would not be doing justice to the text if I flattened out backbiting as some generic thing. They're backbiting against the leadership. They're backbiting against Moses. How often does the scripture condemn backbiting?
It has no place among the people of God. I love Jonathan Edwards reading his sermons on 1 Corinthians 13 in charity, and let me just actually read his version of Titus 3 .1 because the King James captures this picture of contention so well in the word that they choose.
Jonathan Edwards says, and so the apostle says to Titus, put them in mind, right, leaders, put the people of God in mind to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers. Now, modern translations, to not be contentious, right?
Not be quarrelsome, but I love the King James, to not be brawlers. What an image that is, to be a brawler. You have CCTV footage outside pubs in England. You can just tell there's just someone who's stumbling out of the pub and he's just looking to brawl.
You have someone that looks at him the wrong way coming down the sidewalk, someone that grazes his shoulder. He wants to fight, and this is a picture, someone who just wants to brawl, and it might look very different in the church.
It might be very composed and polite, but at base, at root, is this a reality that you want to grapple, you want to taekwondo your brother or sister? So what does Paul say? Put them in mind to speak evil of no man, to not be a brawler, but to be gentle and to show meekness to all men.
So this meekness, this gentleness, overcoming this fighting, contentious spirit, and this, Edwards goes on to say, must characterize everyone who's truly a member of Zion. Zion is the place, according to Psalm 15, where no one backbites with their tongue.
No one.
You have an image, it's kind of like the alien's tongue. The tongue can bite.
What image that is.
No one backbites with his tongue, right, with his speech. And Edwards says, inquire if you've ever been guilty of this and friar if you've frequently censored others. In other words, been needlessly critical of others.
Whether you've constantly expressed your hard thoughts of them, especially with those who you've had difficulty with or that you find yourself in a different leaning or party with, consider then how contrary this is to the spirit of Christ.
What does the scripture say about a contentious woman? It's better to dwell in the corner of a rooftop, right? It's like, go hide in the closet.
That's better, you husband,.
You know, than to try to go toe-to-toe with Mama Bear, you know, in a day of contention, right? Now, don't actually go and hide, you know, in a rooftop. That's not good marital praxis. You are a leader.
But it's just saying, like, boy, it would be easier, it would be better, all things being equal, to just avoid and run away than to actually have to deal with contention. Well, if that's true in a marriage, how much more true is that in the church?
The church is a bride, too, you know. So that same King James, you love, Proverbs 25, 24. It's better to live in the corner of a roof than to share the house with a brawling woman. Of course you're gonna hide, she's on a rampage.
She wants to put you in the sleeper hold. Well, the church is a bride of Christ, and at times the church can be a brawling bride. And what happens when the bride is brawling is people want to go to the closets in the corners.
They don't want to be around. Certainly we lose any possibility of being light, of being leaven, somehow being a draw or a sweet perfume or an occasion to see the glory and beauty of the bride of Christ.
When the church is brawling, she's hideous. She's ugly. She's as ugly as these UFC women that shouldn't have muscles where they have muscles. It's the most unfeminine thing there is. I'm not embarrassed to say that.
It's like, yeah, yikes. It makes me shrivel up a little bit. Contentions are hideous to the bride of Christ. An old Puritan says they stop the growth of grace. A contention is like a weed whacker. And whatever sprouts of grace, whatever fruitfulness is beginning to abound as God's word is being sown and people's lives are being interwoven, here comes contention, that old buzzing hacksaw of a weed whacker, and it just strips all that fruit away.
That's what contention is in the church of God. A Puritan says the body might as well thrive in a fever than prosper in the midst of contention. Look at what contention is synonymous with in the scriptures, right?
Again, like I said, Satan, I think Grinnell's right to say, Satan takes this far more seriously than we do. Satan is far more apt and energetic to break unity than to bring unity, than we are to keep unity or bring unity.
And look at what Paul says in Galatians 5, right? The works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions. Jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies.
Do you see what contentions are put along the list with? Sometimes we don't, you know, contention is something that has to blow over, or contentions are something natural, they're going to happen. And we don't view them in the way that Paul is asking for us to view them.
See them on a level, in a category, along the list of things like idolatry and sorcery and heresy. That's how abysmal contention is in the bride of Christ. And so the antidote, as we've seen, not only this morning, but in times past, the antidote is humility.
Humility, charity. John Newton writing a letter, you could look this up online, it's very profitable to read. John Newton, right? The author of Amazing Grace, the former slave ship captain, who with all that filth and guilt weighing upon his soul, found the liberation of Christ, he became a minister, a very faithful minister.
And Newton, writing some advice in a letter, which is called Controversy, if you wanted to look it up, partly says, of all people who engage in controversy, we who are Calvinists are most bound to be gentle and moderate.
Why is it that Calvinists have the reputation of being rowdy and chiding? We should have this reputation of being moderate, gentle, meek, patient, wise. If our zeal is embittered by outbursts of anger or abusive speech or scorn, we might think we're standing for the truth.
We might think that we're somehow doing a service.
To the cause of truth,.
When in fact we're discrediting truth. I would be glad, Newton says, if this were true, that those who are called Calvinists always had with them this token of a humble mind. A humble mind. There's a humility in the way they look at the church, at people within the church, at people outside of the church, at themselves.
This humility, this token of a humble mind. I remember we had a man who was a member of a different church, and he had been to a few different churches in his life, but as he became Reformed, he ended up at a church.
Lest they be puffed up, I won't say what church it is. It's not our church. And as I asked him about his experience and the things that he appreciated most and kind of reasons why he stayed at this church, and normally in our sort of Reformed way of approaching things, we assume, well, it's all sermon, right?
You only go to a church based on the teaching, right? And then hopefully you don't have that kind of naive view and you realize, no, a church is so much more than that, and hopefully some people, the reason they come to church is for the sake of the relationships, and within that, the sake of the mission.
These relationships make the way for mission, right? That has to come in due time, but usually people initially are attracted to teaching. That's just the way we are, the way we're wired, especially in the day where we listen to podcasts and YouTube sermons, we're always seeking after those things.
Well, this brother was very wise. He actually didn't mention anything about the teaching. He said, the reason that we came and the reason that we've stayed is the people there are really humble. He said, they're just a humble people.
He said, I've been at a lot of churches, but I've never found a church with people that are just humble, naturally humble. And so I know that the Spirit is at work in them. I wonder if that would be a report of visitors at our church.
I wonder if any of us say the reason that we're here is because of the charity and humility in our midst. Is that a reason any of you keep coming back? That is something to strive after. So how can we produce it?
How can we have that charity, that humility, that deference? Well, let me give two things. One's really short and quick, more personal, and then the other is more something that we do as a fellowship, as a gathering.
So first, Richard Baxter, who wrote the Christian Directory, and he had sermons that came off of that or led into that, including a sermon called Directions for the Cure of Sinful Censoriousness. In other words, how do you deal with contention?
And he gives several directions, and I just highlight direction five, right? Others we've recounted in times past in different ways. Wouldn't be anything new that would surprise you. But I like what he says here in his answer.
He says, think not of yourselves fit judges of those things that you do not understand. And don't think more proudly of the things that are difficult to understand. With your short and lazy study, then those who are in much reading, meditation, and prayer have spent more time searching after them.
In other words, this is still quoting him, let not pride make you abuse the Holy Spirit. So the issue he's attacking is pride. He's saying there's ways that naturally we come to things and a conviction comes forth, and then we think because there's this conviction, I now know something better than anyone else.
Maybe that's true, but don't abuse the Spirit because of your pride. Right, in other words, the pride will lead to the contention if you don't recognize now you're in a vulnerable area. I've come to see something, I have a passion for it, I have a conviction behind it, and now, Baxter's saying, be very cautious how you proceed.
Be very careful that you don't go as a warrior child to go bash and contend for this newfound thing that you have your hands around, right? And he does this in a blunt way, you have short and lazy studies.
Be especially careful that you don't contend or bring strife to those who have read more, thought more, prayed more than you. I remember a dear elder at First Baptist Church. I was just telling, I think I was telling Jack this last Sunday as we were talking, and he introduced some things that I had never thought about and I just had my knee-jerk reaction to, and then I perused a few things to kind of confirm my own bias or leaning, and I just was like, okay, I know everything that there is to know about this and he's bringing this up, and I came in short order to the place where essentially I was humoring him.
So he wouldn't, I don't think, well, he probably could, but I don't think he detected much of my sort of pride and resistance. I sort of was humoring him, oh, that's really interesting, I have to consider that.
But in the back of my mind, I was going, oh, it's so sad that this brother is pharisaical. So sad. So sad he just doesn't, you know, he's too old, he doesn't see the big picture here, he doesn't realize how things are different now.
And here I am many years later, coming to the same conclusion, if not further than he was, then at least where he was. But pride prevented me from realizing, though the spirit can be poured out on you in great measure, he does work in some ordinary fashion, and if someone has been a believer, wrestling with scripture, praying and meditating and walking in faith for two decades, don't think in a month that somehow you know a lot more and therefore can speak with conviction and strife against them.
And this is what Baxter's warning against. Let not pride make you abuse the Holy Spirit. Don't pretend that he's giving you more wisdom in a little time, with little means and little effort than others in the industry of their whole lives.
Don't say this, God can give more to me in a year than others in 20 years. It's a poor argument to prove that God has done it because he can do it, of course he can do that. He can make you an angel, but that doesn't prove that you are an angel.
Don't sell what he can do to what he has done. And so here's his closing advice. Prove your wisdom before you pretend your wisdom, and never overvalue it. Prove your wisdom before you pretend your wisdom, and never overvalue it.
When you recognize that your convictions and the things that make you differ from your brothers and sisters here, put you now on a vulnerable straight, a minefield as it were, where all manner of jealousy, envy, strife, outbursts of wrath and contention can arise.
So don't charge through and roll around and get blown apart. Proceed with humility and prayer and caution. The very next directive he gives goes right in line with this. He says, study to keep Christian love.
Don't study the things that will get you further from Christian love, further from your brethren. It's like the person who can't, they have no ability to turn off the conspiracy switch. And so they're obsessed with studying the things that have only further and further alienated them from their loved ones.
And so in the family, they're sort of that sore thumb. Now as Christians, we're always a sore thumb with unbelieving family, right? But I know of Christians, Christian couples, that one is completely beholden to conspiracy, and it's now alienating others in the family.
It's even having damage in their marital relationship. We can do the same thing, even with good things that we study, we can study and pursue in such a way that we're only making ourselves different and farther apart rather than studying for the sake of unity, for the sake of being patient and wise and helpful and discerning with all of the saints, contending for the faith once for all delivered.
And this is what Baxter says. A censorious spirit, in other words, contention, this work of the flesh, he's like it's a vermin which crawls into the carcass of the Christian love because the life of it is gone.
Right, when you lose, when Christian love has died and Christian love is this carcass, here's this little creature that crawls into that carcass. It's called contention. Well, here's the second thing that we do to contain contention.
We contain contention by contending together. I have no desire to put away from a contending spirit rather to redirect it towards something good rather than something evil. A contending spirit is a wonderful thing.
Better to be hot than to be lukewarm. I'm all for contending as long as we're not contending against each other but rather contending together for the faith. So in other words, we need to contend together for the faith rather than to contend with the faithful.
It's always a danger in the church. We contend with the faithful rather than contending for the faith. Contending for the faith is a work of the spirit. Contending with the faithful is a work of the flesh.
1 Corinthians 3, 3, wherever there's envy, strife, division among you, are you not behaving fleshly? Are you not just mere men? This is not spiritual. This is not what the spirit does. But you go to churches where there's serious strife, serious contention, and I bet you some of the ringleaders of that contention are convinced they're walking in the boldness and power of the spirit of God.
And I think Jesus would say to men cut from that cloth, you don't know what spirit you are of. Is the Lord among us or not? That's the question they ask in a provoking way. We need to ask it in a humble way.
Is the Lord, is the spirit among us or is he not? We know what the flesh wants to produce and we know what the spirit wants to produce. We know that these things war against one another, which is prevailing in the fellowship of GRBC.
So we contain by contending together. What is a contender? If you grew up like I did in the glory days of televised competition, you watched American Gladiators. What did American Gladiators do? Ice was the best.
You know, they had a tennis ball gun. Well, anyways, I digress. What do contenders do? What is a contender? A contender is someone who contends against others in order to achieve something, right? So the whole idea of contending against, it's there in every game, in every sport.
You're contending against. And we bring all of that into the church and we're so accustomed to contending against that it takes a work of the spirit to learn how to contend together. To say, though we're different, there's things that are central, vital, the very core of what it means to be a Christian and what the kingdom of God is going to advance by.
And we're going to join together in one spirit with one mind, striving after those things, contending for those things. We don't wanna pour all of our energy in contending against one another because then there's no energy and spirit to contend with each other for the gospel.
And so it's the words that Paul gives to the church at Philippi, stand fast in one spirit, one mind, striving, contending together for the faith of the gospel. And where we're not doing that, we've forgotten who we are, we've forgotten who we've been called by, what we've been called for, and so we become preoccupied with this rift, with that strife, with that slight, with this insult, with these discouragements,.
With this frustration,.
And all of a sudden that begins to sound a lot like Exodus 17. I want something more, I want something less, I want something different, I want what we used to have. And what happens in a church that gives itself over to this kind of contention and strife rather than giving itself over for the sake of the gospel, by the gospel, by the power of the gospel?
Christ has made the church a lampstand and he did not make us the light in the world so that we could use that light to study and fight against each other. Like here's this light and here's my word illuminated, great, now I'll study and fight against all of my brothers and sisters.
No, he's made the church the lampstand and he illuminates the word so that we can contend together for the faith, so that we can be united in our mission to advance the gospel, so that our worship will be pleasing in his sight.
That's why he'll go in the same letter and he implores you Odius, Syntyche, be of the same mind.
You're my fellow workers.
Why are you warring against each other? Or James in James four says whence comes war among you? It's the flesh, it's the pleasure of the flesh, the craving of the flesh. So we need to contend together in order to achieve something.
That's what contenders do. In the world you contend against people, in the church you contend with, together with people.
It's not easy.
Paul is contending for the faith. And in Acts 15, a contention breaks out between him and Mark and it becomes so sharp as Luke records, so sharp that they part ways. It's not easy, it's not even easy for an apostle.
Ministry always crosses the people of God in and out of Meribah, always. If there's a ministry that's never crossed in and out of Meribah, I don't even know that it's a faithful ministry. Because it's not a ministry that's under attack by Satan and therefore it couldn't be a ministry that's being led by the Spirit.
I don't think there's Meribahs in Unitarian fellowships. I don't think there's Meribahs in the health and wealth gospel. But the Lord knows there's Meribahs among the reformed and the evangelicals. A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, Proverbs 18 says.
Contentions are like bars on a castle. Contention's not easy to deal with in the life of a church. And so we all come to church with a spoon and the question is, what are we stirring up? You are a spoon in the midst of this fellowship and you're gonna stir up something.
Sinclair Ferguson had an infamous sermon where he talks about the divisive people being pot stirrers, stirring the pot. The question is always, what are you stirring? And Proverbs especially loves this verb of stirring when it talks about contention.
And look at the type of person that stirs up contention amidst the people of God. It's a person who has no meekness or graciousness in their speech. All they have is harshness, right? A soft answer turns away wrath.
A harsh word stirs up anger, stirs up strife. So if you come to the church and the spoon you bring with you is harsh words, words not clothed with humility, seasoned with grace, you're going to stir up anger, stir up strife.
A wrathful man stirs up strife, Proverbs 15, 18. He who is slow to anger delays contention. He who is of a proud heart stirs up strife, Proverbs 28, 25, 29, 22. An angry man stirs up strife. Do you see there's this picture of anger, wrath, a short temper, a sort of blunt attitude, harsh words, no meekness, no patience, no gentleness.
This is what leads to contention in a person's life and therefore in relationships. And this is what will infest the church of God. Are we stirring up strife? Or are we taking our spoon to church and are we stirring up both?
Stirring up good works? Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful and let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. There's a big problem if we consider each other only to vent grievances because scripture says you're to consider each other in order to consider how can I stir up love and good works?
I think of my brother, how can I love them better? How can I be fruitful in my good work to them and help them abound in good works? Wouldn't the bride of Christ be an amazing thing if that was the only reason we really considered one another?
So you ask yourself these questions, am I a blessing or am I a brawler? Do I minister to my brethren or do I mistreat my brethren? The church needs your grace, your graciousness, not your gripes, not your grumbling.
That's what Satan wants and that's what Satan needs if he'll have his way with the church. These things are not to characterize a Christian. We're to avoid strife, we're to avoid contention. 2 Timothy 2 says a servant of the Lord must not quarrel.
One who is going to be a servant of the Lord must be gentle to all, patient, with all humility correcting opposition if perhaps God will grant them repentance. And then that doesn't put too fine a point on it.
As I said, Satan is far more concerned about disunity than we are concerned about unity. Well, God is far more concerned about unity than either we or Satan. In fact, God is so concerned that he'd much rather see a contentious person be cast out from the church than to see a church slowly drifting apart because of contention.
In Titus 3, that's what Paul explains. As for a person who stirs up division, that's the spoon. And the spoon's not toward love and good works, the spoon is always toward contention, strife, division.
And Paul says, for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once, after warning him twice, don't have anything to do with him anymore. It's sort of the nuclear option that is given to the church.
It's something that any minister worth his salt would recoil from. I would dare never cast out someone that I consider a brother, however difficult they may be. And so it almost has to be commanded, no.
I care far more about the unity of my bride, and if someone who's been, I think this is a sort of formal discipline or formal rebuke, it's not something, by the way, because we all struggle in many ways, right?
This is something formal, the whole church has recognized this in a way. If that's happened once, if it's even happened twice, there's no 77 times seven here. That's how concerned God is for unity and peace in his church.
Have nothing more to do with him. That's Scripture. If that doesn't sober us up to the danger of these things, I don't know what will. That's how far God prizes unity and peace. So as we sort of come to the conclusion here, let's remember our actions and our attitudes have ripple effects.
Words should never be careless words, because a good name, Proverbs says, is more precious than silver or gold. And for that reason, words should never be careless words. Never be careless words. Let's remember that our unity is vital not only to who we are as a church, but what we're called to do as a church.
Let's remember that all of our selfishness insofar as it's part of ingratitude and therefore murmuring and contention will only ever hinder, disrupt, and pad the desire of Satan for our mission. And let's remember that the word that we've heard together this morning applies to us before it applies to anyone else, right?
No sideways glances. And then as we reflect on these things, let's remember more than anything that our sin is not just against one another. And as Moses reminds the Israelites, their sin was not just against Moses.
It was against the Lord. Even when we're contending against one another, our sin is against the Lord. Even when we're just dealing with strife between each other, our offense is before the Lord. And so we need to repent to the Lord if there's any hope of change.
There is no way to contain contention unless it's by the grace of God given to us in Christ. There's no way to contain contention unless God by His Spirit puts to death that work of the flesh in our midst.
And when we genuinely repent, when we own, when we acknowledge and say, I have not been right in your eyes, my God. I have not been right toward your bride, my God. I have not been right toward the leadership, my God.
When we repent in that way, we have this great promise. When we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You wanna be cleansed of contention, this is the way.
It's the only way. And if we ever had a picture of that, it's with the rock being burst forth. Right, we're called to have the mind of Christ. Hebrews 12 says, consider him who endured hostility from sinners.
And so we consider him in Exodus 17 enduring hostility from sinners. And as Paul highlights from 1 Corinthians 10, all the Israelites drank the same drink. They were drinking from a spiritual rock.
Which followed them.
That rock was Christ. So we have this beautiful entry point for us to look at Exodus 17 and say, what's really going on here is this presentation of Christ. If in Exodus 16, we saw Christ as this living water, we're even going a step further into what it means for him to be the living water here.
If his body is the living bread, we go a step further into what happened to that living bread. And so we've already recounted John 7 and John 4, but here we get even closer to this gospel imagery. If Exodus 16 showed us that bread must descend from heaven, we have, as it were, typically the bread of God, Jesus himself, the Son of God, descending from heaven, becoming incarnate, walking amongst us in our stead.
And then in Exodus 17, we go from that incarnation toward the passion. Remember, we said the sins of the people are not addressed upon them. But they are addressed. Moses is commanded to strike. We've already had that in Exodus.
When the rod strikes, it's wrath. When the rod strikes, it's judgment. There's not a lot of places where that verb is used. Moses goes, the elders are around him. The Lord is now standing upon the rock.
It's the angel of the Lord.
It's a Christophany. He's standing upon the rock. And Moses goes, this lawgiver, the one who by the strike of the rod brings judgment, brings wrath, brings destruction. And he goes to the Lord who stands upon the rock.
And he lifts up that rod of judgment.
And he strikes.
And we read in Isaiah 53 that he was stricken, smitten. That's the same verb, smitten. Afflicted by God. We look at Zechariah with Jesus' quotes in Matthew 26. Strike the shepherd, the sheep will scatter.
Well, here in Exodus 17, the shepherd is being struck. Here, the suffering servant is being smitten. Here, the rod of judgment is clashing against, as it were, the body of our Savior. And what's the result of that?
Water breaks forth, giving life to a people who would otherwise die. Smitten by God, when? When did God bring streams of living water for his people? Was it when they said, oh Lord, we are sinful people.
We own all of our sin before you.
Will you please give us water?
He says, oh, with repentance like that, how could I ever withhold? Is that how he did it?
No.
Was it people who said, Lord, look, we're gonna swallow our need and we're gonna clean up our act, Lord. Our worship will be really good and not a soul will be out on the Sabbath, Lord. And he says, oh, water's coming your way then.
Is that how he provides water?
All the people do is provoke God's wrath. They offend, insult God. They reject God and his faithfulness. They deny his mercies.
They desire his goodness.
They say, would rather die than be redeemed by you.
We hate you.
They're Adam running away from his presence in the garden. We like our fig leaves in your absence.
We don't want you.
And that's the moment where God says, get your rod, Moses. And Moses might be saying, yes, Lord.
We've had enough.
It's time to strike these people once and for all.
We'll start over.
But no, he goes to the rock and he goes to the Lord and he strikes the Lord. And so the people sin, their enemies, their opponents, their haters and despisers of the God who is redeeming them. And rather than wrath falling upon them, it falls upon the Lord, symbolized by the rock.
And I hope therefore with new meaning, we can all sing rock of ages cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy riven side, which flowed be of sin the double cure. It was not when we were bowing in worship.
It was not when we were crying out in prayer. It was not when we were thrilled in ecstasy of praises to him. It was while we were enemies that Christ died for us. While we were yet sinners, God redeemed us.
While we were joined in the chorus of the mockers and the scoffers and those who laughed, laughed when thorns were being pushed into his skull. That was the funniest gag they had seen. Those who worked really hard to bring up spit, any way they could insult and bring their maker and their savior, insult and injury.
Let me close with this because it's of course the whole point of this part of the narrative in Exodus. And I realize we've gone late again, but I do want to close with this. It's Psalm 78. It's taken on more meaning in my life personally.
In Psalm 78, we have this all recounted. In fact, the rock narrative is put forward in a few different ways. It's emphasized almost centrally. But the whole Exodus is being recounted. In fact, the whole history of Israel is being recounted.
And there's a constant refrain that is played as they recount seven times of God's faithfulness and mercy. Then there's the expected response of God's people and the only response is they sin. So Psalm 78 is this sobering picture of how fickle and faithless and sinful we are and how faithful and merciful the God we worship is.
All right, so Psalm 78, verse 14. In the daytime, he led them with a cloud. All the night with a fiery light, he split rocks in the wilderness, gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock.
Again, you have it repeated. Caused waters to flow down like rivers. Yet they sinned still more against him. They rebelled against the most high in the desert. They tested God in their hearts. By demanding the food they craved, they spoke against God saying, is he able to spread a table in the wilderness?
Though he struck the rock so that water gushed out and streams overflowed. You see the rock here. Exodus 17 is so central. The psalmist is sort of moving past the Red Sea deliverance and the bondage and so on, but he keeps coming back to this rock.
And we know for good reason. This is a picture of Christ's sacrifice. It's why he continues to show mercy. And it's been personal to me in part because I love listening to poor Bishop Hooper. I know we have some fans as well.
And their rendition where they go through the Psalms, they musically compose the Psalms. It's a husband and wife, incredibly gifted musicians. And what I love is they, in a very poetic and delicate way, they try to get to the core meaning of the Psalm.
And so they might not touch on every verse. They love quoting and exacting scripture. But where and how they try to get, even in the tone, even in the music, the way they compose it, they try to get the spirit, the sense, the sort of aesthetic awe of the Psalm out in front.
And they do a tremendous job with Psalm 78. Because as they constantly highlight and amplify all of the wondrous works of God, the chorus is always the same. In spite of all this, they sinned. In spite of all this, they sinned.
They rebelled.
In spite of all this, they rebelled again. And all we need to do as God's people is to insert we for they. As we recount the faithfulness of God and His ever-renewing mercy and say, in spite of that, we have sinned.
In spite of all that, we have rebelled. And that runs the whole gamut of Psalm 78 until you get to the final chorus and with it, a scale change. And then you have the final conclusion. When the chorus has only ever been, in spite of all this, they sinned.
In spite of all this, they rebelled again. The final conclusion is, and yet, the Lord, full of compassion, gave them mercy. So where sin abounded, grace much more abounded. And that grace has abounded to us.
This is a work of grace that no one can contain in themselves. It must spill over into our corporate life as a church. And if grace is not spilling out into our corporate life, what is spilling out is likely strife and contention and division.
Brothers and sisters, it cannot be that those who have been called by this all-renewing grace, that one day will sit and feast together, should before that great day, sit and fight against one another.
May God help us to walk in His grace. Let's pray.
Thank you, Lord. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for your mercy.
Thank you for the compassion that never fails us nor never lets us go. Help us to hate the work of the flesh with a holy hatred, with your hatred, and yearn for the work of the Spirit in the way that the Spirit Himself yearns within us.
Lord, we would be those who groan after your grace and your perfections, rather than be those who make your Spirit groan within us. Help us as a church to understand what this means for each member here.
Lord, as we next week bring several into covenant membership, may all of us see the significance of what that covenant has bound us to, which is not anything less than what you have bound us to, if we call ourselves your people, if we name ourselves with your name, if we deny the works of the world and the flesh and the devil, and if we are constrained by your grace.
And so give us that grace. Even now we pray in Jesus' name, amen.