Our text this morning comes from Exodus 17, verse 7. Let's read that again together. Exodus 17, verse 7. We read that He, that is Moses, called the place Massa and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not? Congregation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Have any of you ever gone camping on an unserviced campsite in the middle of summer? From what I understand, when people go camping here in B.C., they often go in trailers or motorhomes. I'm not sure that that qualifies as actual camping, but some of you may have attempted it. Or you might even have gone backcountry camping. Now if you did this, you had to haul water for cooking and for dishes and for drinking. We typically use a lot less water when we camp because all of it has to be carried in by hand and that's hard work. Now imagine for a moment that there was no water within a 400 mile walk from where you were camping. Imagine that all of you were camping together that you needed drinking water and there was none available. Imagine that your children came to you all hot and fussy because they wanted something to drink and you had nothing to give them. What would you do, brothers and sisters? To us the question may seem hypothetical, but to the Israelites in the desert it was not hypothetical at all. They were precisely in that situation. and they were very frightened as a result. That situation was very serious. In our text this morning we see how that situation further unfolded and we are again reminded to trust the Lord who leads His people through the desert. So I bring to you the Word of God summarized under the following theme, trust the Lord who brings His people through the desert. We will see how the people challenged the Lord and how the Lord answered their challenge. The opening words of our text are like a wide-angle movie shot slowly focusing in on the Israelites trudging through the Desert of Sin in the Sinai Peninsula. If you read chapter 16 and you compare it with 19 verse 1, you realize that they had left Egypt about two and a half months ago. They were only a day's journey away from Mount Sinai. Undoubtedly, it was visible from where they were, huge and dark, sprawling across the horizon. How did the Israelites end up here? Why were they traveling across this desert? We have to realize that everything that happens in these chapters happens against the background of the exodus from Egypt. The title of the Book of Exodus serves as a constant reminder of that. The Lord had staged the exodus from Egypt against an incredible background. He delivered his people from a brutal slavery, a slavery so harsh that King Solomon later compared it to an iron smelting furnace. This amazing God went ahead of them and he led them through the desert to Mount Sinai, where he would formalize his covenant with them. Throughout the Bible, the exodus from Egypt is the key event in God's relationship with his people. It permanently established God as deliverer of his people. And it also permanently established the role of God's people as a people who had been redeemed. That relationship between the God who redeems and the people he redeemed is often referred to in places like the Psalms and the prophets. It's pretty hard to overestimate the importance of the Exodus in defining that relationship. As the history of God's people unfolds further in the pages of the Bible, we come to realize that the Exodus symbolized the ultimate deliverance of God's people, their deliverance from sin. We see that symbolism reflected, for example, in 1 Peter 1 and in many other places in the Bible. The Exodus, in a way, was a promise. It was a promise of the deliverance that was to come. And we have received this deliverance in Jesus Christ. That's why our theme is in the present tense. God not only led his people through the wilderness, no, he has gathered for himself a people through Jesus Christ, and he continues leading them through the wilderness of this life to the promised land. That is a huge journey, the biggest that anyone could ever be on. And the destination is more spectacular than anything that you could imagine. The Israelite travels through the desert are in many ways comparable with our travels through this life. And that's why our scripture reading this morning is more than a piece of Jewish history. It also contains a message for us. What was that desert journey like for the Israelites? At first, they were very happy, of course. In 14 verse 8, we read that they marched out boldly. There was this sense of excitement in the air. They were even singing out loud after the Lord had drowned the Pharaoh and the soldiers in the Red Sea. But, three days after that, there was the episode at Merah, where the Israelites grumbled because the water was no good. Sometime after that, they grumbled because there was no bread and meat. So the Lord sent them manna and quail. And then we come to our reading in chapter 17. Again, this is about two and a half months after the Israelites have left Egypt. The novelty has worn off. The Israelites are beginning to resent their situation. Now they're short on water again. Why is the Lord doing this to them? Maybe by now you're beginning to wonder the same thing yourself. Why is the Lord doing this to them? He has the ability to give them all the water that they need, but it seems that He always waits until they're in the worst possible situation before He gives it to them. Why? Well, we find the answer in Psalm 81, verse 7. Here the Lord says, I tested you. I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Why did He test them? In Deuteronomy 8, verse 2, Moses is looking back on the 40 years that they spent in the desert, and he says, Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way into the desert, these 40 years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands. Testing is something that the Lord does to His people on the road to eternal life. He does it to humble them. to see what they're made of. Now, notice that he does not do it to humiliate them. The Lord will never humiliate his people, but he does humble them. In other words, he sends them difficult situations to deal with so that it can become apparent what they are really made of. Now, it could be that this doesn't sit well with us. Maybe you're even thinking, Why is this even necessary? After all, the Lord created his people. He already knows what they're made of, right? Why should he still need to test them? But that's the wrong way of looking at testing. You see, when we talk about testing, we don't mean testing in a schoolish sense, as if you are graded on the results. This one passed, that one failed. No, this is testing with the purpose of bringing what is deep in your heart to the surface over the course of time. The end result, as Moses also says in Deuteronomy 8 verse 2, is to see whether or not you will keep his commandments. How will you react in the flames of adversity? Will it make your faith stronger or not? Will you submit to the will of God Or will your heart rebel at this testing? And will you walk away from Him? Let me take an example from marriage. Some of you here this morning are married. When you said, I do, that day, you did not know ahead of time what you were getting into. But you promised to stay true to your spouse. That promise can only be verified through time and through experience. In one sense, time is the only way in which you can prove that you really meant what you said. You might have meant it when you said it at the time, but how real are your promises? What are they worth in the long haul? Well, only time will tell. And faith is a little bit like that. The reality of faith is that it too is tested from time to time to see whether or not it's real. It's not for God's benefit. He already knows. But it's for our benefit. And those trials can be very difficult. The road to the promised land is not always an easy one. We live in a fallen world, right? A world that's been broken by sin. And so these trials are hard. And the Apostle Peter writes about those trials in 1 Peter 1, verse 7. And he says, These trials have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, might be proved genuine, and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Testing proves that your faith is genuine. How you handle adversity says everything about the condition of your heart. We see in our text that the Lord sent his people physical adversity. We read that they camped at Rephidim, verse 1, but there was no water for the people to drink. Their situation is rapidly escalating to crisis proportions. But they've been in crisis situations before, haven't they? Their slavery in Egypt was a crisis situation, and that went on for 400 years. The Lord delivered them from that, When Pharaoh had them trapped with their backs to the sea, the Lord delivered them from that. As a matter of fact, we read in Exodus 14 verse 31 that when the Israelites saw the great power that the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and they put their trust in Him and in Moses, His servant. In Exodus 15 verse 13, we even read that they personally confessed their faith in Him. So, There should have been no doubt at all in their minds that the Lord was their all-powerful provider and that He would be able to deliver them from their current predicament as well. The Israelites really had only one option in this situation. They should have gathered together in a group as a congregation and they should have prayed to the Lord. They should have asked Him to graciously give them the water that they needed. But they didn't. They become frustrated, and they take out that frustration on Moses. It seems that they quarreled with him. Now, the verb in verse 2 that's translated as quarreled has legal overtones. So these are, in other words, people who believe that they have been grieved. It's not quite a full-blown lawsuit, but it's definitely a legal complaint of sorts. And they take that complaint to Moses because he's God's representative. So really, their dispute is with God. That's not with Moses. And they don't pray to God. They don't come to Him believing that He will change their situation, that He will help them, as He has done before. No, they come to Him complaining about their situation. They don't pray for grace or understanding. They come complaining. And they demand, they don't humbly ask, but they demand that God change it now. Moses recognizes that they cannot come before the Lord with that attitude. And so he warns them. Verse 2, why do you quarrel with me? Then he says, why do you put the Lord to the test? You can't talk to him like that, people. But these people are interested only in meeting their immediate physical need. Beyond that, they really don't care. They're not interested in seeing the bigger picture here. And we read, therefore, that they grumble. We don't need an illustration of what it means to grumble. We've all been there ourselves. I've been there too. To grumble means to complain, just for the sake of venting, without keeping things in the broader perspective of the Lord's great mercy towards us. And in verse 3, we see how badly they've lost perspective. They say, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst? Something interesting about the original language here. In the original language, all the verbs are in the singular. When you read this in Hebrew, the impression that you get The impression that you get is that a mob had gathered. And so random people were shouting accusations. One was shouting about his livestock, the other about his children. They're all shouting accusations. And this is a mob by now. They've gathered together. They're ready to stone Moses. This is a desert. There's stones enough lying around. You don't give us water now, we'll kill you. See what the Lord does about that. Now, you think for a moment that these were the same people who sang that beautiful confession of faith only two chapters ago. Moses sees that, he sees that awful contrast, and he says to them, you are putting God to the test. Now maybe it's not immediately obvious to us what he means when he says that. To put God to the test means to call His goodness, and therefore the goodness of His intentions into question. In verse 3, they essentially accuse Moses, and therefore God, of delivering them from Egypt just so that he can kill them in the desert. We find that thought echoed in verse 7, where they say, Is the Lord among us or not? Now, you see that the word LORD here, and in other places in this chapter, is in all caps. And that means that it's a translation of God's covenant name. We'll hear more about that this afternoon. His name is Yahweh. That is God's divine name, the name by which he had revealed himself to these people when he first delivered them from Egypt. Now they're taking that name and they're throwing it back in his face. Essentially, they're saying, God, we have no idea what you're doing here right now, but if you want us to keep on believing in you and your goodness, you better do something else because what you're doing here right now is not working for us. This is a reaction that comes out of a great bitterness, a bitterness that is completely unjustified in light of what the Lord has done for them so far. And to speak in that way, brothers and sisters, is to put God to the test. The problem with this kind of attitude is that it is a thinly disguised form of unbelief. What it says is that you only want to believe in a good God when He's good to you. And when the things that He does don't make sense to us, the question is, will we keep on believing? Turn with me, if you will, to Psalm 95. Let's look at Psalm 95 together. We sang the whole psalm this morning together, so you already have an idea of what's in here. Well, this psalm is a warning against that kind of unbelief. The psalmist says that the Israelites, that he's singing about, had heard the voice of God. And look at verse 9. He says, Where fathers tested and tried me, And this is God speaking here. Your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did. They challenged the Lord with their attitude and their attitude reflected itself in their deeds. In the face of his goodness, we read in verse 10 that they are a people whose hearts go astray and they have not known my ways. You know, you can walk through the desert together with the rest of the people of God, with His Church, but if you don't really believe what He says, then you won't fool Him either. And verse 11 reflects that. We read, So I declared on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest. That's the ultimate judgment over those who persist and their unbelief. Now, in case you think that the psalm only applies to people of that time, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews quotes the same psalm to the church that he's writing to. He says in Hebrews 4, verse 2, For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did. But the message that they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard it did not combine it with faith. That means they heard God's message, but they didn't believe it. And a few verses later he writes, let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. The dangers facing believers back then are the same dangers facing them now. We can experience challenges to our faith or situations that can tempt us to resent what God is doing in our lives. And the question is, how will we react when we are faced by those kinds of challenges? How will we react? Will we trust the Lord who leads His people through the desert, or will we challenge Him? Will we become bitter? The Israelites chose to challenge Him. Now let's look together in the next point at how the Lord answered that challenge. How does the Lord respond to His rebellious people? Well, His response is actually very moving. At this point in time, He doesn't become angry with them. If you go back to Exodus 17, and you look at verse 4, you see that Moses is in the middle of all of this. He's at his wit's end, and he says, What am I going to do? Now, what does the Lord tell him? He tells him to go ahead of the people with some of the elders. What does he have to take with him? His staff, with which he struck the Nile. Now, why would that part about the Nile be mentioned here? It's a rather ironic contrast, isn't it? The thought of that massive river of water in the middle of this desert. But there's a specific reason why the Lord mentioned that now. Boys and girls, do you remember the 10 plagues of Egypt? Do you remember them? What was the first plague? All the water turned to blood, didn't it? Do you remember what Moses had to do to make that happen? He had to strike the river with his staff, didn't he? That was the official public beginning of God's deliverance. By referring to that now, the Lord is gently reminding His people of His unlimited power and of His redemptive work on their behalf. In a way, you could say that He's reminding them to look back. He's done awesome things for them in the past, and He will continue doing them in the future. In verse 6, we read that the Lord will stand there before Moses on the rock at Horeb. The NIV translates it as by. Verse 6, I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. You can also translate it that way. But most translations render the Hebrew word as on. He will stand on the rock. And it's unclear whether only Moses would see the Lord or whether he would be visible to all of the Israelites. But one thing is unmistakably clear. It is absolutely certain to them, very clear, where their redemption is coming from. This water will flow from the very presence of God Almighty Himself, and the people will drink from it. Moses strikes a rock with his staff, and the water comes out. Now you see why those elders had to be there. They were there to witness the event. If the rest of the Israelites ever developed collective amnesia again, These elders would be there to testify to the Lord's goodness. That would be their responsibility. And He was good to them. There was water in abundance. All of the Israelites' complaints had been answered. The Lord had taken care of their immediate needs. He had shown Himself as the God who cares for them, and He had assured them of His presence. What does this event mean? Was it a concession to their grumbling? Did the Lord let his arm be twisted, so to speak? No. Remember that this was still before he further revealed himself on Mount Sinai. With the giving of the law, he wanted to teach his people that he will provide and he will protect and he will always be there for them. They had to learn to trust in Him. And they had to learn that sometimes trust in God means that you follow Him through unexpected places. But the One who brought us into the desert will also lead us out of there. Turn with me, if you will, one last time to Psalm 95. If you look at Psalm 95 again, you realize that the psalm was written by a descendant of those very Israelites, the same people that had been in the desert. And it opens with a joyful call of praise to the Lord. He writes, Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. These are not the words of a rebel. No, these are the words of somebody who has fully submitted himself to the will of God for his life. You see that reflected in verse 7 with that confession of faith, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pastor. In Christ, that confession of faith can be ours as well. Is the Lord among us or not? Ask the unbelieving Israelites. The Lord answered that challenge with a powerful manifestation of His grace by providing water from the rock And He provided His people with a final answer in the life and the death of His Son. Emmanuel, God with us. In the Gospel of John, chapter 7, Jesus, in the face of widespread challenges to His claims, says, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. We see here that in Jesus Christ, God again generously provides for His people. Those who believe in Him will never thirst again. and they can be the people of his pasture. We see that echoed so beautifully in the words of John 10. Here Jesus presents himself as the Good Shepherd. He says that the Good Shepherd calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out. When he has brought out all of his own, he goes on ahead of them. The sheep follow him. Why do they follow him? Because they know his voice. The comfort of the gospel is that the one who redeemed us also promises to lead us and to guide us. And that is a comfort that the world does not have. When unbelievers enter the valley of the shadow of death, they walk that valley on their own. Yeah, there might be family members or friends supporting them along the way, but what can they give them? Human comfort. And we have more. We have so much more, brothers and sisters. We have the voice of the Good Shepherd encouraging us through the darkest, saddest days of our life. We know that He will provide for us, and so, in faith, we can walk straight into those days. See, the Israelites did not accept God's provision and faith. They hardened their hearts. They rejected the work that He was doing in their lives. And as a result, they became bitter and hardened, and many of them eventually died in their sin. In 1 Corinthians 10, our second reading, Paul is writing about these events. Let's turn there together for a moment. 1 Corinthians 10, starting at verse 11. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 11, here he writes, these things, meaning the desert, all the events in the desert, these things happen to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. Well, what's the fulfillment of the ages? That's the coming of Emmanuel, God with us. What Paul is saying here is that if there ever was a reason to trust the Lord who leads his people through the desert, this is it. But that faith is something that we need to own ourselves. No one can believe for you, and simply going through the motions is not enough. In verses 1 through 4 of 1 Corinthians 10, he writes that all of the Israelites went through the desert together. They all drank from that rock. They saw what the Lord did, and yet most of them died in their sin because of their unbelief. So he writes in verse 12, If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. And falling is so easy, brothers and sisters, it is so easy to give in to bitterness, to harden our hearts against the work that God does in us through times of trial. So how do we prevent that hardening from happening then? That's a pretty crucial question. Well, in verse 13, Paul offers a solution. He writes, no temptation has seized you except what is common to man. Now, what does that mean? Is he saying here that that misery loves company? Be brave, suck it up. No. It's a gentle reminder to us not to think that our problems are insurmountable. Why? Because to believe that our problems are insurmountable means to believe that they are too big for God to deal with. And that's just a disguised form of unbelief, isn't it? Paul goes on to write that God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. What is the way out? It's the desert road, the road of faith, stretching on ahead of us, deeper and deeper into the desert. It's a road that runs beyond the challenges that we face today. It is a road we do not walk alone because our Savior walked that road ahead of us. Yes, there will be temptations. Yes, there will be bitter sorrow. I think we know about that in this congregation. Many of you have experienced sorrow as well. You know what that is. There will be heartbreak. There will be disappointment. But there is also a Father who redeemed us from the slavery of sin. There is a Son who died to make that redemption possible. And there is a Spirit who lives within us, and He sustains us on the way. That God put His sign on our foreheads. That God promised that He will never leave us. That God is leading us to the promised land. So, brothers and sisters, let's follow Him in faith, also into the week ahead. Amen.