Meribah

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

We are gonna be finishing up, not finishing up, we're gonna be continuing our Bible World Tour that we're gonna be in all summer. And this morning we're gonna be in two different places. We're gonna be in Exodus 17, and then we're gonna be in Numbers 20. We're gonna be in Exodus 17 and Numbers 20. Whenever we're jumping into Exodus and Leviticus in Numbers, we need to see a particular context, that the structure, the way it was written, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, it was written so that there would be parallels. So there are parallel stories at the beginning in Exodus 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and then there's parallel stories at the end of Numbers. So some of those stories would be like Moses' father-in-law, for example, or manna. So you see manna both in Exodus, and you see them on either side of the wilderness. So for all of this, for all of Exodus, or about half of Exodus into Leviticus,

and then halfway through Numbers, God's people are in the desert, they are in the wilderness, and things are happening to them. And what you see, biblical scholars have been very kind of keen to point this out, what you see is you see parallels on either side. For those parallels, they are meant for comparison, so it has the effect of a before and after picture. So we're gonna see, for example, we're gonna see today, we're gonna see Meribah. Meribah, the waters of Meribah. They're gonna be in Exodus 17, but they're also gonna be in Numbers 20, and they're not gonna be the same. There's some things that are gonna be the same, and some things that are gonna be different, and we're gonna kind of bring that out, we're gonna look at that. So, if we're gonna get the before and then the after, let's do Meribah. Let's do Meribah take one, Exodus chapter 17. Okay, and it's the first couple of verses there,

so Exodus chapter 17, they are in the wilderness, we know this, they are in the wilderness, and they are getting thirsty. So they're in the wilderness, they're getting thirsty, and they are looking around, and Exodus 17 verse two says, therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink, and Moses said to them, why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? So, quarrel, it's a funny word, and it means, it's kind of an old word, we don't really use it a whole lot, but it means to heap abuse upon somebody, to revile them, to blame them and ridicule them at the same time. So quarreling would be what we would call verbal abuse, we'd call that verbal abuse, quarreling, and it's essential saying you've missed the mark, you shouldn't have missed the mark, and you're stupid. Okay, that's quarreling. Here's how Israel puts it, verse three,

here's kind of their quarrel, right, it says, but the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, here's what they said, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? Okay, you ever had somebody ask you a question and you kind of figured out that they knew the answer and they were just trying to say something with their question? Okay, that's what's going on here. So they're really in for it, they're testing the Lord, testing the Lord is kind of frowned upon, and Moses, in kind of a move of just what, just throwing his hands up, he says, what do I do? And this is what God tells him in verse five. Verse five, God says to them, the Lord said to Moses, excuse me, pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which

you struck the Nile and go, okay. Couple of elements here, go in front of everybody, take the staff that you struck the Nile with and strike the rock, okay. So verse six, God keeps going, says, behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb and you shall strike the rock and water shall come out of it and the people will drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. So God, in this moment, is driving an object lesson. You teachers out there, you know what I'm saying. God is giving Israel a manipulable, okay. He's helping them understand what's happening. He's saying, take the same staff that you struck the Nile with, the same staff that kind of kicked off the 10 plagues, the same staff that helped you understand that I was delivering you from bondage, take that staff and make sure that you're doing it in front of everybody. I want everybody to see this, okay.

God is doing this on purpose in particular. He didn't just tell Moses to kind of go over there and kind of in secret. God is driving this object lesson into his people, okay. And then the situation kind of is over. In verse seven it says, and he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel and because they tested the Lord by saying, is the Lord among us or not? So Meribah means quarreling or of quarreling.

And they are asking the question, is the Lord among us or not? And it's not, there's a lot of ways you can kind of read that but this, we need to understand this is a quarreling way to read it. This is a, I'm not really sure the Lord is among us. I'm, we are questioning the provision of the Lord. We don't know where this water's gonna come from and we're definitely blaming him. Is the Lord among us or not? Okay, you now have Meribah take one, okay.

And in Numbers 20, after Israel has been in the wilderness for a really long time, they come back to the waters of Meribah. And remember, these are parallels that are meant for comparison. So we got the before, now we got the after. This is Meribah take two. Look at similarities and differences. Numbers chapter 20, so if you wanna take a second but it's also gonna be up here, Numbers chapter 20, we're gonna start in verses, in verse two. It says, now there was no water for the congregation and they assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, okay. So Moses and Aaron both catching heat and it's an organized kind of conversation, right. In other words, this isn't some offhanded comment at the water cooler. This is, we've assembled everybody and now we're coming against you, okay. God's people are thirsty but there's an edge to them and you can see it in the questions that they ask.

And if you thought Exodus 17 was tough, here we go. Numbers chapter 20 verses three through five. And the people quarreled with Moses and said, listen to these questions. Would then we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord? Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness that we should die here, both we and our cattle? And why have you made us come up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place? It is no place for grain or figs or vines or pomegranates

or anything else that was in Egypt and there is no water to drink. Okay. There is something that happens to us, people, humans. There's something that happens to us when we thirst. When we perceive and we feel it in this passage. We feel it whenever people are asking these kinds of questions, they aren't just wondering. They're mad. And I'm sure, I'm sure that you have been in a position like this where you have asked this question and you have been upset. And you've been just, what's going on? We have these needs, right? We thirst. We have these needs that we cannot meet on our own.

Israel in the wilderness had no way to get water. None, it's the wilderness. And they are asking for water. They need water. We can't really blame them for being thirsty. Can we? We would be thirsty too. In some sense, we understand what they're asking for. We understand that it's a real need. All of us have these deep needs that we cannot meet on our own. Even something like a promotion at work. Okay? You want a promotion at work, you want something that comes along with that. More money, more prestige, more something. Just an advancement in your career. But you can't promote yourself. I mean, not really. You can try. You can't actually give yourself a raise. You can't make yourself more prestigious. That's something that has to be given to you. For some of you in relationships, right? You're gonna find someone to date or someone to marry. And you can't just go out and make somebody do that.

That's illegal. You can't make somebody marry you or date you. That's called something else. So we don't want that. You need somebody else to do that for you, right? Do you understand? So you need it. We have these relational needs. I mean, not even just with boyfriend or girlfriend, but even just with friends. We have these needs, but we are incapable of fulfilling them in and of ourselves. For some people, this is why not being able to have children is such a thorny, emotional issue because you can't do anything about it. It's frustrating.

You wanna do it and you can't. And what happens is often, often, these desires that we have are very good desires. There's nothing wrong with wanting any of those things that I just listed. But something happens whenever we begin to idealize that solution, that it's going to solve more problems than it should. So I was speaking with a single mom recently, a friend of mine, and we were talking about this subject. And she was talking about owning her own home. And she actually recently bought her own home, single mom, two boys, bought her own house. And for her, it meant, it wasn't just, I asked, why was that such a big deal to you? And there was stability and good investment, et cetera, et cetera. But what it meant for her, and what she eventually told me was that it meant breaking the cycle that she grew up in. She grew up in a very transient home. She didn't want that for her boys.

She wanted to do better than her mom did. She wanted that. And when we sometimes are in a position where we have a problem, we have a need, we can't meet on our own, the solution is there, we wanna get to the solution, we can't do it, we're frustrated because we have lifted that need up to a supreme status that whatever, fulfilling that need is going to solve way more than we think it will. And when we do not get that desired solution, when we are passed over for the promotion, when somebody that we love and we wanna marry breaks up with us, when the housing market does what it did the past four years, right? When you are being blocked from that position,

what we do is we quarrel, we quarrel, we shift into despair and we say things like, this is never going to happen. I'm never gonna get this. I'm never going to amount to anything. This isn't going to be how I imagined. I just wanna quit. I just wanna walk away from the whole thing and we begin to blame. You are holding out on me, God. Why don't you want me to have this? And mind you, some of us are not maybe the blame kind, some of us are like the negotiation kind, right? The negotiation, just what can I do, God? What can I do for you to get me what I need? What can I give you? What can I say? What do you want from me so that I can get what I need to get? Because the implication is, when you are negotiating, the implication is, God, you are holding out on me because I'm not good enough. You're holding out on me because I haven't said the magic formula. You're holding out on me because I haven't

prayed the prayer of Jabez, okay? You're holding out on me because I need to somehow do something magical. What do I need to do? And that negotiation, that blame, that turns into something pretty horrible. And like God's people in the desert, just like in Exodus 13, it turns into blame, reviling pretty fast. And so this is God's people in the desert. Again, very similar to Exodus 17, and then just like also in Exodus 17, Moses and Aaron, they are looking at, they're pleading for the people, they go before the Lord, they get on their face before the Lord, and they ask, and God answers them. God answers them in a very similar way. Look at Numbers chapter 20, verse eight. It says, this is God talking to Moses and Aaron, it says, take the staff and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock, tell the rock, before their eyes to yield this water,

so that you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle. So God, again, is going to miraculously provide. And he tells them here, he says, take the same staff. It's the same staff that struck the Nile. It's the same staff that was used in Exodus 17. It's the same staff. Take that staff and gather everybody, like before. Get everybody around. Take the staff, get everybody around. But this time, don't strike the rock. This time, you're gonna speak to the rock. You're gonna speak to the rock. Last time he struck it, this time he needs to speak to it. Look at Numbers 10. Oh, so you can see Numbers 20, verse 10. It says, then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, here now you rebels. Shall we bring water for you out of this rock? Okay. There's a little edge to this.

Moses, it's interesting because it sounds like now he's quarreling, right? Moses is quarreling with the people, you rebels. Okay. And if you've ever led people before, I'm sure that you've been in this kind of position. Maybe you're in a classroom and you're thinking to yourself, like, okay, you rebels, it's time for a pop quiz, and yes, I'm gonna enjoy this.

Moses here is quarreling. He's blaming them, even in provision. It's like, okay, you're getting what you want. Idiots, rebels, ungrateful. Moses has an edge to him. And maybe it's that edge. I don't know, I'm not really sure. But in verse 11 we see, it says, and Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice. And water came out abundantly and the congregation drank and their livestock. Okay. Moses did not do what the Lord asked him to do. Which is a pretty big deal, honestly. It seems like a, maybe like a, like, oh, does it matter? Because he struck the rock twice and God told him to speak to it. Maybe he spoke to it and struck it. Maybe he, no, I mean, from what we can read and what we will read, we understand this is not what God asked him to do. It's disobedience. But notice, the water comes out just the same.

People still drink, right? The same thing happens in Exodus 17. It's happening in Numbers 20. In Exodus 17, people are quarreling. They're wondering, they're blaming, they're saying, is God with us or not? And then in verse 20, sorry, in Numbers 20 what we see is, we see the same thing happening that you have people that aren't, nobody's being reverent here. Nobody's saying, oh, Lord, would you please, I mean, Moses and Aaron are reverently pleading to the Lord but that's it, that's it.

Moses is quarreling with the people. The people are quarreling with God and God gives water anyway. He gives water anyway. What I wanna see though is not just that Moses gets punished because he's begun to quarrel, he's striking rocks now, he should get punished and God immediately deals with Moses. He doesn't really deal with the people right this second but he does deal with Moses and I want you to notice why. Look at verse 12. And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them. I want you to see that because you did not uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people. God is telling Moses you're being punished but the occasion for this is his holiness. And I don't know about you, I mean, I'm reading the same story you are.

That seems to come out of nowhere. He didn't say God wasn't holy. He just prayed to him. He just spoke for him. It seems like he is portraying God as holy. And so God's holiness kind of comes out of nowhere there in verse 12 but it's also there in the next verse. Look at verse 13, it says, these are the waters of Meribah where the people of Israel quarrel with the Lord although he showed himself holy. So Moses and his quarreling is not upholding, God is holy and in Israel's quarreling it's also pointing to God's holiness.

That God's saying that despite their quarreling he's still showing himself as holy. God brings up holiness later in whenever he's talking with Moses in Numbers 27-14. So this is a couple of chapters later and God's reviewing why he's not gonna see the promised land, Moses is about to die. And it says, Moses because you rebelled against my word in the wilderness of Zin when the congregation quarreled failing to uphold me as holy at the waters before their eyes. Failing to uphold me as holy. Listen, this is a really big connection here and it's confusing why? What is the connection between holiness and what happens at the water of Meribah? Well, I think we can find a clue, there's several clues, I think we can find a clue in Psalm 95. Psalm 95, six through eight, it references Meribah but look how it talks first. It says, oh come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our maker

for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massa in the wilderness. Okay, look, God's holiness doesn't just include moral purity. When we think of holiness, when we call somebody holier than thou, what we mean is that they think they're better than us, okay? So we think of holiness, when we talk about God being holy we think of him as its moral purity. It's somebody that is perfect, okay? But really the word holy means set apart. It means that God doesn't have the same constraints that we have. Just look at the first couple of verses, it says that in Psalm 95, it's six and seven, it says that God has made us, that he's able to sustain us and what does it call us, it says we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. All of that is provision.

All of that is provision. God is holy, he's our God, this is who he is. Okay, we just sang it, I swear. This is our God, this is who he is, he's holy, he sustains us and when it talks about God being holy, it means that he's not worried about anything. He doesn't fret, he doesn't wonder when something's going to happen, time never runs out on him, he doesn't sleep late through his alarm, ever. And what that does, what that should convince us of, whenever we talk about we're gonna sing, we're singing about how we're gonna rest in his faithfulness, in his promises, there you go, I was like what's the lyric? We're gonna rest in his promises, our confidence is in his faithfulness, okay? We just sang it, I swear. So if we're gonna rest in that, what we need to understand is this, God's never late and so when you feel like God is late with something, he's not, it's you,

it's not God, that everything that comes into your life, whatever time, whatever you think is unlucky or lucky or however else you're explaining it, no, no, that is the God in heaven who is holy, is not constrained by anything, is putting things all in order and is unhurried by whatever deadline you made up at some point or whatever expectation somebody else has laid upon you, God in heaven is never, ever under that constraint that everything, everything, even the things that you hate, even the things that are frustrating to you, even the things that have ruined your life are on time and from him. Here's what I want you to hear this morning, God in his holiness is the only one that can satisfy your soul.

God in his holiness, he's the only one who can satisfy your soul. When you and I quarrel and we fixate on a solution, on the path forward, on how we see all this stuff working out, it has to work out this way, it has to look just like this and when it doesn't happen, we get mad and we blame and we revile and we trash talk God. At best we're negotiating. We are tempted to become embittered. We are tempted, those questions that Israel's asking in the desert at Meribah, those are the questions that we're asking, like wouldn't it have been better if this never happened to me? Wouldn't it have been better if I'd have never said yes to this thing that's now ruining my life? Wouldn't it have been easier had I done this? Wouldn't have, and we start wondering, we start playing out other scenarios, we start getting very embittered over choices that we made or choices that were made for us.

Look, I'm not pretending like all of us are living the life that we just totally have chosen, right? People back up the sewer line in our own yard, okay? Like sometimes we walk out in the front yard and it's just filled with other people's mess. And we gotta deal with that too. Look, even that, even that is from the hand of the Lord. When we are tempted to become embittered, this is what I want you to tattoo on your soul.

That in His holiness, God can satisfy all your needs. He's the only one who can satisfy our souls. And what that really means, when I talk about how He satisfies our soul, what I really mean is that He can satisfy the need under the need. When we quarrel, it's never just the need, ever. I mean, you can see that, it's actually pretty easy to see if you're having a fight with a spouse. Like you're fighting about, you know, you didn't hang up one shirt, but you're not fighting about the shirt, right? Like you're fighting about other things? Okay, you can see it. Maybe another way to see it, we can actually see it in the questions that Israel is asking in the desert. By the way, I saw like five husbands just like look at their wives and go like, I'm sorry. Okay, like I'm just saying, sometimes I see, you can't see, and it's funny. Okay, all right. That was cute, it was great.

Nobody hit anybody, that was fine, okay. Whenever you consider what God's people are asking in the desert, look, they're thirsty, but what are they really asking? They're asking like, did you bring us out here for nothing? Did you bring us out here to die? If we're out here to die, why didn't we just die in Egypt? At least we had food in Egypt, it's more comfortable to die there. And really, they're asking the question, what's all this for? Why are you stringing us out here? What's this like, what's this about? And they're halfway through, like they're just,

they're just trying to look around and go like, this doesn't make any sense, God. Why? Why are we thirsty in the desert? There's no figs and there's no pomegranates and there's no vines and there's no nothing. There's just manna. I'm sure they're sick of manna. It's like that mother that I was speaking to, the single mom that wanted to own her own home. And there were several reasons, obviously, several reasons to own her own home, but what was at stake? What was at stake for her? She said, I don't wanna struggle like my mom did. I don't wanna just be in the same cycle she was in. I want to improve my station. I don't wanna do what my mom did and suffer the same fate because if that happens, what was it all for? There's a need under the need. There's a need under the need. Ultimately, we have no control over those things, right? These things that come into our lives,

that we can't achieve on our own, but I would posit to you this morning that those things are in our lives so that we can depend on God. They are in our lives so that we will pray. Our limitations that we are dealing with are not torture. They are an invitation, they are a chance to pray and to ask. And look, I'm not up here saying God's gonna say yes to every prayer you ask, okay? I'm not saying that the Lord just wants you happy your whole life. Lord doesn't want you happy, Lord wants you holy. Lord wants you in his likeness, okay? In his likeness. Sometimes that means being unhappy. Sometimes that means dealing with some severe frustration that you would not wish on your worst enemy. Sometimes that means you are wrestling with an existential question you do not have the answer to. You can't control and it's just gonna haunt you. The more you think about it,

the more it's gonna haunt you. And so you're stuck, you gotta do something with it. You're in the wilderness and you're thirsty and there's no water. What do you do? What do you do with that? Maybe a way to say it would be this, that the need that is under the need for all of us, it's one thing, truly, it's rest. The need under the need is rest. And I don't mean a nap. Some of you need a nap. But I don't mean a nap. I mean soul rest, soul level rest, deep and abiding rest. A rest that quiets our gnawing anxiety that asks the question, will I accomplish all my goals? Will I find someone who loves me? Will my children turn out all right? Am I okay? And it's not questions that you ask all the time, but whenever those questions do come up, man, if you're like me, you don't wanna be haunted by that, you just wanna run. You don't wanna deal with that. You wanna sleep.

You wanna get something else done, you don't wanna stare at that in the face. When those questions are kinda breathing down your neck and you're trying to figure that out, you need rest. This is why Jesus, in Matthew 11, 28 through 30, says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. In following Jesus, it doesn't mean we don't have needs. It doesn't mean every day is happy, and it doesn't mean that we're always smiling, but it does mean, it does mean that when you and I, if we're following Jesus, when we lay our head on our pillow at night, we can find rest in him. We can know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we are, not perfectly, not even close, not even close to perfect, but we are living the life that the Lord has set before us. It doesn't mean we're perfect, doesn't mean we're super, we're absolutely faithful in everything we do. I'm not trying to say we find rest in our own work. I'm saying that we find rest because God in heaven has our lives mapped out, and we can trust him with it. When life seems chaotic, we can trust him with that. It doesn't matter if you don't know what's gonna happen next week, the Lord does.

It's going according to a plan, and that plan is good. That good, it's for your good and God's glory. All at the same time, it's going to happen, whether you like it or not, whether I recognize it or not, it's going to happen. And that, friends, is a rest that will allow you better than eight hours of sleep. It'll allow you to push away anxiety, to push away the fretting, to push away the worrying, because it's real.

It's not coping, it's real. It exists outside of you and me, outside of what you and I think about it. God in heaven has it in control. You might say, well, I don't like the plan, okay? Who does, right? Like who, I mean, I'm not asking you to raise your hand, but I mean, if I was in a, I don't know, if I was just in public, I'd be like, who is just living their best life and never has any problems? Nobody's raising their hand.

We're all dealing with that kind of frustration level. At Meribah, the quarreling is out of control, the people are thirsty, and Moses is beaten down by the people. Things aren't good. People have needs that cannot be met. Here's my question. Where is your Meribah? What's just outside of your control that you just wish were not? What's that thing that you want that you cannot grasp on your own? Personally, so confession time. Personally, a lot of that stuff for me lies in the future. It's things that I want, that I can't have, that aren't available to me right this second, that I wish I just had. I don't have to work for it, I have to wait for, but this is the Lord's plan for me, that from my perspective, things are gonna move slow.

And I've gotta be okay with it. From your perspective, things might not be slow, things might be scary. From your perspective, things might move too fast. Things might be too volatile. And so you're gonna deal with different things as you're coming to the Lord. Here's my question to you, what I really want you to consider, where's your Meribah? Where is your thirst in the wilderness? Where are you at a place where you want something and cannot grab it? Because there, exactly there, there at the water,

there the Lord wants to provide. And the Lord's not gonna withhold water from the rock. The Lord's gonna give you water, but he wants to give you a lot more than water. The Lord there, the Lord can display his holiness to you. He can display to you that he is unhurried, he's unworried, he's going to provide, in his time, at exactly the right moment. Our choice is to trust him or not. That's my encouragement to you. Wherever you're at right now this morning, okay? And we're just gonna enter into a time of response. Wherever you're at this morning, the need under the need at Meribah is rest.

What we all need, what we all want, is to rely on the Lord. And for the Lord to work it all out, and for us to be able to just lay our hands down on that, to put our head on that pillow. My encouragement, as you are considering those things, man, my encouragement is that when I do that, when I engage in that rest that the Lord has already provided, I find the deepest satisfaction I have ever found, ever. I find a satisfaction that beats any other thing. It's like going home. It just, it feels good. Even if I'm upset, even if I'm kind of surrounded by a little bit of chaos, even if I don't know what the future holds and I want it, and I don't have it, I can find deep rest, satisfaction for my soul on that level. My encouragement to you is if you've never felt that, that's never, if I just describe something that you've never felt at all, then it's available. It's there.

Following the Lord is deeply satisfying. It doesn't mean your problems go away. Sometimes it means you get more problems. But in those, we find deep satisfaction. After we pray, I'm gonna be back there where those couches and those chairs are, and where those lamps are. I'm just gonna be there if you want prayer, if you wanna talk, if you had questions, I'm gonna be there during the last song. I'll be there after the service. I'm just gonna be hanging out. So I would love to pray with you to talk with you, and really just help you understand kind of what it is to find your satisfaction in Him. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the ways that you deliver us, the ways that you bring water from the rock, even though we're quarreling, even though we're frustrated. You are faithful. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for providing. Lord, capture our hearts. Help us be satisfied in you.

And then we pray, amen. Would you please stand as we sit.