Friends, we are still journeying with the Children of Israel through the wilderness. We have noted a number of object lessons, what we call types, which are fulfilled in Jesus Christ to the anti-type. Indeed, the bible is all about Jesus Christ, the hope of all the world. His crucifixion is the fulfillment of the bronze fiery serpent that Moses lifted up to provide healing for the Israelites beaten by the serpent. He is the fulfillment of the Passover Lamb sacrificed in Egypt to actualize the deliverance of the Children of Israel from the Egyptian bondage. We have also seen that Christ is the reality of the manner or bread from heaven that kept the Children of Israel alive in the wilderness. In all these God seems to be saying to us, look and live, listen and live, eat and live.

Today, we shall see another object lesson in which God is saying to us, DRINK AND LIVE.

PRAYER:

Father, we have come again to search the scriptures. We trust, dear LORD, that Your Spirit will bring out the truth, and that Your Word will engage our minds, and will produce healing in our lives, in Jesus Name. Amen!

Israel is facing another difficulty as they journeyed through the wilderness. They could find no water to drink. This is in Exodus 17. This is no small problem for a people with families and livestock. As in other instances, Israel did not handle the lack of water well.

Exodus 17:3

³And the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses, and said, “Why is it you have brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”

In verse 4, Moses says to God, they are almost ready to stone me to death. The Israelites were constantly suspicious of the intentions or motives of Moses in bringing them out of Egypt. Moses interpreted their attitude as, tempting God, because they were in effect asking, is the LORD among us or not – Exodus 17:7. “How can anyone ask such question after all God has done for them?” I suspect you would say. If I experience the kind of miracle God performed on their behalf I will not panicky as they did, or I would not panic as much as they did. Really, we all have the tendency of forgetting the last blessing of God when we are faced with a new challenge. Moses, as was characteristic of him, cried out to the Lord: as seen in Exodus 17:4. Friend, this is the wining way. Crying out to the LORD, is another way of saying Moses prayed to the God. It was not praying as a formality, it was a heartfelt prayer; it was a prayer of desperation, realizing that his life and that of his brother Aaron were in danger.

When was the last time you cried out to God? Some of us do not take prayer seriously; and when we do pray we pray a formality or as a matter of last resort. Others prefer to seek out prayer contractors. Friend, God wants to hear your voice. If you have a child who sends family friends or his or her sibling to you when he or she is in need…what would you think of such a child?

In answer to the prayer of Moses God told him what to do. When God shows you what to do, when God tells you what to do in answer to your prayer it is as good as done. I had a problem that seemed insurmountable, once, when I was in graduate school. I cried to God…it was a short prayer, and God showed me what to do, and my mountain-sized problem was leveled. I have proved God faithful in coming to my aid whenever I cry to Him.

What did God tell Moses to do? The answer is in

Exodus 17:5-7

⁵ And the Lord said to Moses, “Go on before the people, and take with you some of the elders of Israel. Also take in your hand your rod with which you struck the river, and go. ⁶ 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, that the people may drink.”

And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.

Striking a dry rock with a shepherd’s rod appears ridiculous, but not when the command is from God. Obedience to God’s commands will always produce the solution we need. The hymn writer, lamenting over our prayerlessness, wrote:

Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer

Recall that I said that this incident was an object lesson. Speaking of Israel’s wilderness experience in

1 Corinthians 10:1-4

¹Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, ² all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, ³ all ate the same spiritual food, ⁴ and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.

And all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. The rock they drank from was Jesus Christ, the antitype of which the rock was a type. It was not Moses or his rock that produced the water, it was Christ who gives the water of life: spiritual life. He said to the Samaritan Woman at the well in John 4:13-14,

¹³ Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

John 7:37-38

³⁷ On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. ³⁸ He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”

Friend, won’t you take this Water of Life from Jesus Christ? He offers it to you free of charge. On your part all He expects from you is to repent from your sins and accept Him as your Savior and LORD: you will never be the same again – for you will have everlasting life.

PRAYER:

Father, again we have heard Your Word. And as many as are yielding themselves to the Saviors Jesus Christ now, I commit them into Your hands and ask that You will do Your surgical operations in their lives, removing everything that is not of You, that is of Satan, healing them spiritually, healing them physically, healing them even financially, in the Name of Jesus Christ. Thank You, Father. Thank You for hearing us, for we have prayed in Jesus Name. Amen!