study our series of this biblical theme of the presence of God. And we followed the whole plot line so far up to this point of the Bible with the presence of God at creation and in the garden of Eden, before and after the flood, during the days of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and also with the Israelites in Egypt. That's where we left off a couple of Sundays ago And we come this morning again to the Israelites as they are making their way out of Egypt, through the sea, out into the wilderness. Is the Lord still with us? Is the Lord still with them? And I pray that this theme of God's presence is an encouragement to you. We've just gone through Christmas and it's a new year. And for some of us, of course, the holidays are difficult times. So it just reminds us every year we have lots of excitement and joy and happiness. But for some of us, maybe even for all of us, there's a little bit of hardship and difficulty as well. during holidays. We remember a parent or our spouse who's no longer with us or perhaps the difficulty of being a believer in a family of many unbelievers and they won't cease, right? During times like Christmas when it's a time of great faith but they won't let up about your faith or perhaps the heartache of an estranged son. or daughter, a child. Knowing that God isn't just present in some generic sense, but that he is present right there in the struggle, in the sorrow, is what it's all about, amen? To know that God is with us, to know that God's with you. He's with me, that's what it's all about, and that's what we're learning here. God was with Adam, he was with Eve, he was with Noah, he was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and the Israelites, he's with us. He's here with us too. And so we pick up after the plagues are over and the Passover has just been accomplished in Egypt, and now the Israelites, God's children, his people, are on the move out into a desolate wilderness. Is God still with us? But we see that God's right there. God is right there. The presence of God was with Israel, first of all, in the wilderness, we see in the pillar of cloud and fire. That's chapter 13, beginning at verse 17. You should have a sermon notes page, help you follow along, you can see the passages that we're gonna look at just quickly this morning. So we see God's presence with Israel in the wilderness in the form of the pillar of cloud and fire. And notice this juxtaposition in verse 17 of Pharaoh letting the people go, on the one hand, with God leading them out. On the other hand, it just reminds us, as we've seen a few times already, reminds us of this biblical teaching that while human actions are free at the same time, we can attribute things like leading us to God. So Pharaoh kicks them out. Yet it's God who led them out. We see this theme throughout the Bible. We see it, for example, in the very death of our Lord Jesus where the Apostle Peter in Acts chapter two said it was the foreordained plan of God that his son Jesus would die upon the cross for our salvation. Was it God's plan that Jesus would die? Yeah, absolutely. But yet Peter says in Acts chapter two, yet you with wicked hands, delivered him up to death. And so those who betrayed him, those who arrested him, those who beat him and flogged him, those who tried him and those who crucified him were responsible 100% for that act. And so we see here, Pharaoh letting them go, yet it's God. Yet it's God. In other words, while Israel left Pharaoh's tyrannical grip in Egypt, they were firmly in the grasp of God's grace. So they're leaving that tyrannical hand of Pharaoh where he's made them make bricks without any straw. He's beat them to death. He's tried to decimate them and put them out of existence, yet they're right in the very place that God wants them to be, right in the grip of His very hand and grace. And so we read in verse 18 that God led the people by way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea or the Sea of Reeds, verse number 18. And then look at this little interesting mention in verse number 19, which says that Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because the sons of Israel, they solemnly swore, way back when, the days of Joseph, 400 years previous, the sons of Israel, the sons of Jacob, the tribes, they solemnly swore that one day the Israelites would come back out of Egypt and they would go back to the Promised Land and they would take Joseph's bones with them and bury those bones in the Promised Land. Why? Look at what Joseph said there way back when in verse number 19, God will surely visit you. That's why you do this. God will surely visit you. So again, the presence of God is everywhere. But when the Bible speaks of God's presence, particularly, especially, most importantly, The Bible is saying that God is with us, with us, his people, his children, his chosen ones, in a special way that he's not everywhere with everyone else. I made the point that one time I said, if God is everywhere, kids, can we go down to the beach and can we experience the presence of God? And what's the answer to that? Absolutely, God is everywhere. So then why are we here in church? Because God says that when we gather, especially in particular places and times like this, he's present here in a way that he's not present down there, right? He's present in his blessing and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the word, the sacraments, we pray, we gather, we assemble. There's something different about that. We can't really quantify that, we put it on a scale. God's presence is everywhere and maybe we can't quantify that and put our finger on it. What exactly it is that God's different here than he is somewhere else, but he is. But he is. And so he, Joseph was saying to the sons of Israel, take my bones with you because God is going to visit you. Not them because they would all be dead too, but the Israelites, their descendants. the sons and daughters of Father Abraham. And so this entire exile time in Egypt for 400 years, and now this exodus, Joseph had already prophesied that this was going to be an occasion for God to do something. God will surely visit you. And he means grace, right? He means salvation. He means redemption here. Again, more than just the general presence of God, something else, something special, more particular. Now back to the wilderness, notice, the Lord went before them. We read there, verse 21, the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light. Notice it's one of the same pillar. They're not pillars, plural, of cloud and another of fire. It's the pillar, singular, of cloud and fire. By daytime, it looks like a cloud. At nighttime, it looks like fire. I think I've mentioned before, but many moons ago, and we were on the big island of Hawaii, and we went to go see at night the volcano, and it was active. And as you see, a big cloud of steam rising from the ocean, because the lava is pouring out into the ocean and making the island bigger. You see steam, you see a cloud, but when the sun goes down at night, you don't see the cloud anymore. What do you see? You see a glow, right? You see fire. And so was that glow not in the cloud? Well, it was, you just can't see it during the daytime because of the sunlight and refraction of light and so forth. Same cloud, pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night. So where are we seeing? So far, it's only been a few messages, but where have we seen so far God appear as fire? So far in the story of the Bible, where are we seeing God appear as fire? If we just go back a couple of chapters, we should remember Moses met with God somewhere on Mount, well, the burning bush, right? The burning bush. God met with Moses and he appeared as fire in a bush and the bush wasn't consumed. Way before that, how else did God appear as fire? Where else did God appear as fire? the flaming pot, the smoking fire pot, the flaming torch with Father Abraham. He had a dream at night and he saw this oven smoking with cloud of smoke and a torch passing through this sort of ceremonial, sacrificial animal thing that was going on. Way before that, where else do we see fire in the Bible? The first time we see fire in the Bible. God sends Adam and Eve outside of the garden and they could have easily just walked right back in, right? There was a cherubim right there, a cherub, and it had a flaming sword. going back and forth, guarding the entrance. This is the gate into God's presence. And fire again shows up as a symbolic manifestation of, in this case, judgment. You can't come back. And if you do, you're dead. So fire has been a recurring theme. We see it again here. And this is how God manifested His active and dynamic presence with this flame of fire. The great Jewish commentator Nahum Sarna speaks here about God manifesting His active and dynamic presence. But also notice that God isn't identified with the cloud and fire. God isn't a cloud and God isn't fire, right? We're not Zoroastrians. We don't believe that fire is God. No. But God identifies himself or manifests himself in this strange way for the sake of his people, that they could see something of his presence. They could know something about where he was when they doubted his presence. They could look and see, oh, don't forget, there's the cloud right there. Oh, there's the fire at night. God's still here. God is still with us. But what about us? We're all going to leave and we're going to go out into the world and we're going to go back to work or do whatever it is we do tomorrow. And we're going to go out and when we're driving to work tomorrow or to school or to the store or wherever we might be going, is there going to be a cloud on the five leading you down the five? Get off at La Costa Avenue, you know, where the Lulees live down in glory right down there. You know, drive up north, you know, and there's a cloud, and it just leads you. And then at nighttime, is there going to be a fire that tells you, and is it going to rest over the certain house? You know, that's my house, because the cloud and the fire is right there. No, no. Now, on the one hand, the church of the Lord, now, here, in this new covenant time, as the Bible describes, we're in the new covenants, the church has matured and the body of Christ, the people of God, have entered a stage or a phase of maturity, as Paul describes in Galatians 3 and 4, right, in the time of the exodus and the wilderness, the people of God are kind of like in their infancy, and now the church has reached an age of maturity. But on the other hand, so they have this pillar of cloud and fire, we don't. But on the other hand, we're no different than them. We're the same kind of people. So how do we have God's presence? How do we know that God is with us? How do we know that he's leading us? Well, we have the power of the Holy Spirit, the presence of the Holy Spirit in us and with us. In addition, God makes himself present to us in our baptism, but especially, especially the ongoing sign and seal, the ritual, the sacraments of communion of the body and blood of Jesus. This is how we see and touch and taste and experience. We can hear the word, we remember our baptism, but we have especially the signs and seals of Christ's body and blood, the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. The pillar of cloud, verse 32, by day, the pillar of fire by night, did not depart from before the people. How much more so now? the presence of the Holy Spirit, who is, as Paul describes, a down payment in our hearts of glory to come. How much more so has he not left us, nor forsook us? How much more so now the presence of Jesus, who promises never to leave us or forsake us, to be with us always until the coming of the kingdom, until the end of the age? How do I know this? How do I see this? How do I touch this? We see it right here, loved ones. Here is the pillar of cloud and fire in a sense, but it's in the ordinary elements of bread and wine. Hold these things today, see these things, touch them, taste them, even the sense of smell that God is present, that Jesus Christ is here with you, guiding you and leading you, amen? Now we see secondly then, moving on a little quickly here, God's presence at the Red Sea. So if you have your Bible open, just stay there, maybe the same page or the next page, to Exodus chapter 14. The Lord said, verse one, to Moses, don't forget, we've seen throughout the series, you can go back and listen, all the times where God describes himself as being present in his word, right? The word of the Lord came to Abraham, to Isaac, to Moses. The word came, right? God came. God spoke again to Moses. And they're camping and they're commanded to camp facing the sea with their backs to Egypt. That's gonna be important here in a second. Their backs are to Egypt. Now the Lord's gonna do something, he says, verse four. I will harden Pharaoh's hearts. Notice that. And the result would be, verse four again, I will get glory over Pharaoh. So God is gonna harden his heart to change his mind so that he would then pursue them. That's why their backs are to Egypt. But notice verse five, the mind of Pharaoh was changed. So did God harden Pharaoh's hearts? Or did Pharaoh change his own mind? Yes, right? Yes. That's the answer, right? Again, just like in Acts 2, God, by his foreordination, has his son was sent, was put up to die on the cross, yet with wicked hands, you've done this? In the same way, it was Pharaoh who kicked them out of Egypt, yet Moses writes, the Lord led them out of Egypt. The same thing here again, that the Lord hardens Pharaoh's heart, yet it's Pharaoh who changes his mind. And later on, it's gonna be said to us as well that it's Pharaoh who hardens his own heart, just as the Lord hardens. See that again, verse number eight. So it's both, it's both. Now, when Pharaoh overtook them, as they were encamped at the sea, verse nine, chaos ensued, as you would expect. But pastor, verse 10 says, at least they cried out to the Lord. Doesn't it say that, verse 10? They cried out to the Lord. How is that chaos? They prayed. They prayed. Was it genuine? Their cry is hypocritical. We're going to see this pop up a few more times. They complained, notice, to Moses. Verse 11. They complained to Moses. They cried out to the Lord, but notice how they did that. They complained to Moses. And they did it in fear and in doubt. Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? So here's Pharaoh kicking them out. Here's the Lord leading them out. Here's Moses, and they're all marching out into the wilderness, and they camp there by this sea. There's pillar of cloud and fire, and it's all the Lord who's leading them. But here they complain, they grumble, to quote that great theologian, D. Snyder, we're not gonna take it. What have you done? Take us back. At least we have a grave there. Who do you think you are leading us out, taking away our free will and our ability? Fear not, Moses preaches. Verse 13, fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. Verse 14, the Lord will fight for you. So they're camping facing the sea, which, of course, they can't swim. They have no boats. Their back is to Egypt and all of a sudden they see clouds on the horizon because they see the cloud of dust from the chariot wheels and the infantry coming after them. What are you doing? Who are you, Moses, to lead us out? Take us back immediately. We're not going to take it. The Lord was present with Moses, again, telling him, lift up your staff, verse 16, and stretch out your hand over the sea. All the while, the Lord says that he would harden the heart to the Egyptians and get glory, verse 17, over Pharaoh. That's this big theme, that God is gonna get glory. He's gonna be the one who's magnified in his power and in his grace. But then, notice what's interesting in all this. Notice verse number 19. So we've had this pillar of cloud and fire going before them, and now we're gonna see this pillar of cloud and fire also goes behind them to lead them, to protect them, right? To lead them, to protect them. Pillar of cloud, pillar of fire. But notice verse number 19. The angel of God who was going before, beforehand we're told it was the cloud that went before, but now it's the angel of God that was going before them. But now this angel goes behind them. And the pillar of cloud moved from before and stood behind them. Notice how the angel of God here is identified with the cloud, the pillar of cloud and fire. In fact, the next time we read about the pillar, it's in the morning. After the Red Sea crossing, verse 24 describes, the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down. The clouds have eyes, kids. Does fire have eyes? No. But the pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire looked down and it threw the Egyptians into a panic. But then look at verse 25. Look at what the Egyptians said. Let us flee from before Israel. Why? For the Lord fights for them. So what's going on here? I mean, is it an angel of God? Is it a pillar of cloud and fire or is it the Lord? And this cloud has eyes, it's looking down. And the cloud itself is causing them to be in an uproar. But the story goes on to say that it was the Lord who threw them into a panic. It's just like these strange descriptions that we've already seen. Abraham there at a tent with his wife, and all of a sudden these three strange characters show up. Two of them are angels, one of them is the Lord in some form. It's just like with Jacob, he wrestles with a man that's described as the Lord, described as God. Or the angel of the Lord, which speaks out of the burning bush as the Lord. I am who I am. The Bible's weird, isn't it? The Bible's weird. It says strange things, why? Because God is, his thoughts are not our thoughts, his ways are not our ways, he's God's. If you could quantify God and if you could describe God in an adequate way that described everything about God, or if you could conceive of God in every conceivable way, He wouldn't be God. You would be God. God is God. With all reverence, God is weird. God is strange. God is mysterious. God is beyond us. And so sometimes it's the Lord who speaks. Other times there's an angel. Sometimes it's a cloud. It's fire. But it's the Lord. It's the Lord. Notice the presence of the Lord with them. Verse 31, God's presence with them led to their faith in the Lord. God's presence with them led them to believe. Verse 31 says, Israel saw the great power the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses, but they believed. Has anything changed since then? God has visited, to use that language, God has visited our world to fight and to save by the death and resurrection of Jesus. The same God has visited this world to fight and to save by the death and resurrection of Jesus. God has visited this world on the day of Pentecost, and the Spirit of God is still with us, and we can experience, again, the presence of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word and the sacraments. And in fact, even more than that, more personally than that, Well, that was 2,000 years ago when Jesus, there's all this debate and all kinds of controversy about whether or not he is who he says he was, and how can I know the Holy Spirit has been sent? I can't see the Holy Spirit. God manifests his presence. not just in the coming of his son, not just on the cross and in the empty tomb, not just in preaching and baptism and the Lord's Supper, but God actually manifests himself, his own presence, in and through your love for one another. Do you know that? Didn't Jesus say that? That's how the world is going to know that he has been sent, is that we love one another. That's a manifestation of the presence of God in your midst, in your life, your brother and sister sitting next to you. Love is a manifestation of God's presence. If you're here today, you've yet to put your trust in Jesus, I pray that you would experience, perceive that there's a love amongst brothers and sisters here, and I pray that you would experience that love that we have for you, and most importantly, that you hear that God loves you. in his son Jesus. And so join with us, be loved by God, be loved by another, and love in return. Now, God's presence was then manifested again in chapter 15, just a little story here, verse 22 and following. There was this strange tree that healed. They set out from the Red Sea, and for three days they wandered out, verse 22 says, and notice the problem, they found no water. It's kind of a big deal if you're out in the wilderness to have some water, isn't it? I'm not a camper, maybe Danny Nguyen can fill me in, but I'm assuming you need water in the desert. Okay, I'm assuming that, right? I'm not an expert, but I'm assuming that. They found no water, verse 22, big problem, crisis, again, another crisis ensues. And so at a place called Marah, which means bitter, they couldn't drink the water. There was something about the water that was bitter, verse 23 says. Once again, the people grumbled against Moses. Don't overlook that little detail. They grumbled against Moses. They were too pious to grumble to God, you see. Isn't that how we are? We're too pious to tell God that we're mad. We're upset. We're angry. We're confused. We're disillusioned. We're too pious. We're too good for that. And so we just complain and moan to each other. I don't know. That seems to be kind of one of the morals of the story. But that's one of the things that we're learning and perhaps relearning on Sunday nights as we're going through the Psalms is that God invites us to pour out our hearts to Him, to complain to Him. And no matter what we say, but we do it to Him, we say it to Him. He wants us to do this. He wants to take our concerns, make them his own, and to help us. So they're complaining to Moses, they're grumbling against Moses again. They should be doing it to God, because God understands and can help. So on their behalf, Moses cries out to the Lord, verse 25 says, and the Lord shows Moses this log, this tree, this piece of wood, and Moses takes it and he throws it into this pool of water. And in contrast to the water being bitter, marah, the water became sweet, became drinkable. And then comes this theological lesson that God wants them to learn. Verse 26, if you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God and do that which is right in his eyes and give ear to his commandments and keep all of his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians. And then comes the punchline, look at verse 26. For I am the Lord your healer. The problem of bitter water, after three days of finding no fresh water, became again an occasion for God to show up. and to do something and to proclaim this good news. I am the Lord, your healer. I am the Lord, your healer. Now, it's conditional kind of language, right? If you do this, then I'm going to do that, right? We have that going on in the Old Testament. Dr. Horton mentioned that last Sunday. I encourage you to go back and listen to his sermon on Psalm 44 about this sort of Old Testament language of, you know, if you're perfect and if you're holy and if you're obedient, X, Y, and Z, then God is going to be your healer, right? We have that kind of language in the Old Testament. Now, on the one hand, this is describing a believer. Because believers are those who listen to God's word and who believe God's word and seek to obey God's word. And so believers in this time of the Old Testament were going to be protected from these kinds of plagues. But on the other hand, there is this conditional kind of harsh, strange, difficult language. There's something going on in the Old Testament and the Old Covenant. And the simplest way to understand this is what Rabbi Saul or the Apostle Paul said, was that all the Old Testament language of conditions and if this, then that, and you gotta be perfect as your father and heaven is perfect, you gotta be obedient to the law and so forth, all of that was to teach them as little children, that was their tutor, that was their teacher, to bring them to Jesus Christ. To show them, you know, I haven't listened to his voice as I should. I've not believed in him 100%. I've not obeyed him from my heart and even in my thoughts, let alone my thoughts, my words and my deeds. All of this was meant to humble them. You can't do it. and to drive them to their knees so that they would cry out for the sweetness of Jesus' mercy and grace. And so we see a little picture here, a foreshadowing here of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's interesting, isn't it, in these weird Old Testament stories that it's a tree. I mean, didn't God in the beginning just simply say and it was? Didn't God say and it was? Does God need a tree? No. But God tells Moses, see that tree over there? Throw it in the water. Bitter water becomes sweet water. It's interesting that it was a tree that was thrown into the bitterness of the waters, even as Jesus one day would come, drink down the bitter dregs of God's wrath on the cross. It's through the cross, the foolishness of a tree, that God takes upon himself in Christ his own bitter wrath and pours upon us his own sweetness, his mercy, and his grace. And so we see this presence of God again. They're out in the wilderness there. It's been a month and a half since the Exodus and the Red Sea. And verse 2 of chapter 16 tells us they grumbled against Moses and Aaron again. Would that we had died, 16 verse three. Would that we had died at the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full. And we see the Lord's presence in that story in his providential provision of meat and manna, which is called, verse four, the bread of heaven. You will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt. When they complained about having no bread, God was gonna give them bread. They would know. This was how they would know it was the Lord who brought you out. And so look at verses 9 through 12. Israel summoned to come near before the Lord. There's language of his presence there, verse number 9. How would they come near before him? Look at verse 10. They would look out into the wilderness, outside the camp, and they would see again the glory of God in the cloud. So there's the presence of God. There's God in that cloud-like presence. And this bread was going to be provided for them every single morning. The bread the Lord has given you to eat. Verse 15. Now, of course, Jesus comes and Jesus once taught his disciples that this story was all about him, didn't he? Doesn't Jesus say that the story of the manna is all about him? How does he describe himself? I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. I give you the bread that lasts and endures for eternal life. They ate bread day by day, and if they took too much and they didn't eat all the bread, the next morning it was filled with maggots, it was disgusting. On the day before the Sabbath, they would gather up two days' worth. They could have that one day, and then God would provide and preserve the bread for the Sabbath day that they wouldn't have to do any work But only in that one day would God preserve that bread. The rest of the time, they would just get it and have their fill and their daily bread, even as Jesus once taught his disciples. And we pray this morning to give us our daily bread, just as the manna. He's the living bread that came down out of heaven from God that endures for everlasting life. And so we pray, we sing in one of our hymns to Jesus, bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more. Right, this is the story of the presence of God and he's with us again, he's with us. They had bread from heaven and we have this ordinary bread and wine, but it points us to the extraordinary presence of Jesus Christ with us. Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more. And so after all of that, after all of that, They complained because they were brought out into the wilderness because apparently there were no graves in Egypt for us. What'd the Lord do? He split the sea in two. Go through, have life. They complained that they had no fresh water to drink. The Lord turns bitter waters into sweet waters. They complained no bread, no meat like we had back in Egypt. The Lord gave them quail. The Lord gave them manna. Finally, they're gonna learn the lesson, right? Finally, they're gonna learn the lesson. They come to this place called Rephidim, chapter 17 says, verse one. There's no water there, right? It's like the same song and dance here. This is Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, right? He wakes up, it's the same thing every day. No bread, no meat, no water, hit, repeat, wake up, it's the same thing all over again. There's no water to drink, verse one says, and like clockwork, the people quarreled with Moses. They quarreled with Moses. I mean, how could they do this? How could they do this? Well, as one song says, people are people. People are people. They're sinners. We don't learn our lesson. And notice Moses' very perceptive question. Again, this is after all the other events. and don't forget the Passover, and don't forget the plagues, don't forget the burning bush, don't forget the smoking fire pot, the flaming torch of Father Abraham, don't forget all that stuff. After all that, notice verse two, why do you test the Lord? Why do you test the Lord? Just kind of hold on to that quickly here as we come to an end. And so they grumble. Like Groundhog Day, Moses cries out, just like he's done before, like Groundhog Day. And the Lord responds with a trial. You're not getting the point. You're not getting the point. And so God sets up a trial here. Moses and some of the elders are to stand before the congregation as witnesses, and they're on one side, verse five describes. And on the other side, facing off with Moses and the elders, are the Israelites. Right, so imagine that scene. Moses and the elders are lined up in the wilderness as witnesses against the Israelites who are grumbling against Moses and Aaron, but ultimately the Lord. Okay, so just imagine two lines of people. Moses, the elders on one side, the Israelites on the other. Where's the Lord? Well, he's the judge, obviously, isn't he? He's the judge, obviously, in this trial. And so, verse six, this is what the Lord says. This is where he's gonna be in the trial, right? Up on his high dais, right? On his chair, his judgment throne. Verse six, I will stand before you, Moses, there on the rock. Where's the Lord in this scene? So Moses, Aaron, the elders over here, over there, the Israelites, where's the Lord? He's in between them. He's before Moses, meaning in between Moses and the Israelites. And more than just that, he's standing on this rock. He's standing there on the rock. Somehow, he says he's gonna stand there, whether it was the pillar of cloud and fire, we're not told, but he's there on the rock. And what is Moses supposed to do? He takes the staff that God gave him that once struck the Nile River, which was one of Egypt's great gods. He judged the river and turned it into blood. It killed the river. Take the same staff that you once stuck the Nile River with, judge the gods of the Egyptians, and notice what the Lord says, verse 6, you shall strike what? Who's on the rock? God's there. That's an act of judgment. But who deserved the judgment? The Israelites, right, this trial is set up. Elders, Moses, witnesses against these grumbling, unfaithful, good-for-nothing Israelites. But yet I'm gonna stand upon the rock between you, in front of you, Moses, take the judgment staff, strike the rock like you struck the Nile. Strike me, he says. The Lord took their judgment upon himself. How could he do that? Well, I mean, didn't Rabbi Saul say the rock was Christ? Where do you think Paul got that from? Right here. And the rock was Christ. He was judged. And the result was at the water. of life flows out to these Israelites out there in the desert. They deserve nothing but judgment, but receive this refreshing water of life instead. The Lord took upon himself the judgment to pour out his blessing upon guilty sinners like them. And so Moses names the place Massah and Meribah, because notice they tested the Lord. Look at their question, the very end, last verse. Is the Lord among us or not? Is the Lord among us or not? The test about being out in the wilderness and the chariots coming after them, are there no graves? The test about there being no water to drink, the test about there being no meat, the test about there being no bread, this test again about there being no more water, again! It's all about this. Is the Lord among us or not? The presence of God. That's what they were questioning. That's what they were doubting. That's what they were grumbling about. We don't see God. Now, it makes no sense to us because they had the pillar of cloud and fire. But they didn't believe. That's the point, they didn't believe. Is the Lord among us or not? What a question. And we see his presence. We see his presence. The believer sees his presence in the pillar of cloud and fire. The believer sees his presence at the Red Sea, sees his presence in the healing tree, sees his presence in the manna, and sees and believes his presence in that water that came forth out of the rock. Is the Lord among us? Is the Lord among you? Is the Lord among me or not? That's the question. And the Lord says, 100%, yes, I am with you always to the end of the age. Amen? Let's pray. Lord, write your words upon the tablets of our hearts that we might not sin against you. And Lord, give us faith to believe in your son, Jesus, your presence, in human form. We bless and praise you that knowing that we are constantly doubting you, constantly grumbling against you, constantly, Lord, worrying about the enemies that are coming at our back. And so, Lord, you've given us this bread and wine this morning as a further as a further guarantee and assurance that you're with us. Yes, you say to us, I am present amongst you. Give us faith to believe that. Another day we ask it all in Jesus' name and all of God's people say, amen.