This is a sermon on Exodus 17:1–7 preached 3.12.23 at Redeemer Church (watchable here).

In 1998, I made the foolish decision to drop back from twelfth grade to eleventh grade and change schools. I went from a private school that I had attended since fifth grade to a brand new public school, one that had just been built. In-and-of itself the decision wasn’t necessarily bad, but it did not turn out well for me.

So why did I do it? Well, I never liked school, and the tiny private school I attended was far from ideal. My neighbors and some close friends were headed to this new school, and by dropping back to eleventh grade, I would also gain an extra year of basketball that could lead to better opportunities for scholarships.

And so I went to my dad and presented my case … and he bought it. I was kind of shocked, but I was excited. This was a whole new, exciting world, but it turned out to be one that I was completely unprepared for.

Navigating the halls and massive buildings was genuinely difficult, and it led to embarrassing situation after embarrassing situation. I wasn’t prepared academically or socially, and the basketball coach seemed to have a chip on his shoulder against me based on the school where I came from. There was a history of some rivalry. It was a miserable, humiliating experience, and at this point in my life I was not a Christian. There was nothing to lean on. I was spiraling and struggling in such a way that people began to notice.

I don’t remember all the circumstances that led to the conversation, but my dad came to me one night, and he sat down in my room and he asked me to level with him. You see, we didn’t regularly have conversations like this. For him to come in and sit down in my room, look me in the eyes, tell me he knew something was wrong, and ask me to be honest — this was big, and I broke down. I told him I hated that I had asked him to let me change schools, and that I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t imagine how the problem could be fixed. Remember, I hadn’t just changed schools; I changed grades, too.

There’s one phrase that sticks out in my mind about this conversation from over twenty years ago — “I’ll eat crow.” I think it must have been the first time I had heard it. I didn’t know what it meant, but he said something like, “I’ll have to each some crow, but I’ll do what I have to do to get you back to Victory,” the school I came from. Apparently in my departure, he had said some things to the admin that he would have to back track on.

This episode in my life came to mind as I thought about the message of our text this morning. The Israelites have a real, painful problem, and they didn’t handle it well. While it’s far from a 1:1 parallel, my story and their story, the real parallel is seen in the way my dad responded to me. He wanted to hear me in my mess and he helped, even when I had created the mess I was living through.

That night, my dad modelled the character of the heavenly Father we all have. If you are in Christ, you have a real, true, new father who will listen when you cry, and he will help. The LORD provided for Israel time and time again, even when they failed the test.

We are in Exodus 17 this morning, and we are going to look at the first seven verses in four movements: (1) the setting and the problem, (2) the response of the people, (3) Moses’s response, and (4) the LORD’s response.

The Setting and the Problem

Exod 17:1 — All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the LORD, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

The passage says Israel “moved on” because this is the third scene in Israel’s journey since they passed through the Red Sea. After the Red Sea, Israel was tested in mundane, basic ways related to food, and water, and the posture they took in their relationships with Moses and Aaron and God. They were tested with respect to groceries and relationships, mundane stuff.

In the second half of Exodus 15, they were three days into their journey, and they didn’t have water. They grumbled against Moses (Exod 15:24), Moses cried out to the LORD (Exod 15:25), and the Lord provided.

In Exodus 16, they grumbled against Moses and Aaron (Exod 16:2), and they added, “It would be better for us to have died in Egypt than to go through this lack of meat business! How can you keep meat from us?!” (Exod 16:3). The LORD covers the camp in quail and manna.

And now we come to Exodus 17, and there is again no water to drink. How could God possibly be in their midst if they keep running out of food and water? You see, the mundane struggles of life can cause you to wonder if God is really in your midst. I mean, aren’t we supposed to be struggling with “spiritual battles”?

When we think that our particular struggles mean God is not among us, we often turn to other ways of occupying ourselves. We say there is no way the LORD is actually in the midst of my life so I’ll just put my head down and do the week’s work. I’ll navigate my relationships and spend my time like every other person in the world. We lower our eyes below the sun. Our passage this morning shows us that the mundane struggles of life matter and that God will help us in them if we cry out to him.

I have one point this morning: Crying out to the LORD through the difficulties of life is not wasted breath.

Let’s turn back to our passage and take a look at how the people responded.

The People’s Response: Fighting and Complaining

Exod 17:2–3a – Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD? But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses …

Now, you might hear those verses and wonder what exactly they did wrong. I mean, surely the people are right; they need water. Or you might say, “Well, obviously the issue is that they grumbled and complained. Complaining is never ok.” As parents and teachers, fourteen times a day we say “Stop complaining!” Or as I tell my students, “noli lacrimare; labora!” — “Don’t cry; work!” Complaining frequently comes from a less than ideal place within the heart and mind.

But I want to push a little on the idea that what we frequently call “complaining” is always wrong. Have you listened recently to the songs in the middle of your Bible? Psalm 44 says,

All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face … All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant!

“This isn’t fair!” cries the psalmist. So what gives? If the Psalms can talk like that, why then is Israel indicted here for grumbling and fighting with Moses?

And there lies the heart of the matter. Did you hear it? Israel fails their test at least in part because they turned and fought with Moses, rather than bringing their complaint to God. You are supposed to bring your complaints to God. Live with the Psalms over the next couple weeks and months, and listen to how they talk. Let them guide you into voicing your complaints to the LORD, rather than turning those passions into verbal fights with those around you.

The People’s Response: A Posture Issue

One problem with Israel’s response was the person to whom they directed their complaint, but there is a posture issue here, as well. Look back at verse 3. I’m going to read verse 7, as well.

Exod 17:3 – But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” …

Exod 17:7 – 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?”

You hear a sharpness in their tone, and the text says they tested God. I don’t think it is immediately clear what it means to “test God.” We have talked multiple times about what it means for the Father to test us and to test Jesus, but what does it mean for us to test God?

In Exodus 17, the people demand that Moses, God’s servant, act or else. “Give us water to drink,” they say “or clearly God is not among us!” In effect, they say, “God must act now or else it is all irrelevant.” That’s a test.

They wrote God a demand, put blank lines on the page for him to fill in his answer, they rang the bell, handed out the test, and said, “Clear your desk, Moses. It’s time for you and God to act … or else.”

This is the same posture Satan tried to get Jesus to adopt in Matthew 4. He took Jesus up to a high place and said, “Hey, Jesus. How about that scripture that says,

Matt 4:6 // Psalm 91:11–12 – He will command his angels concerning you … on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.

“So why don’t you throw yourself off this high place; God will have to save you. This will prove he’s really with you!” Don’t you know that Jesus too was hard pressed with the problem of how the Father could possibly be with him if life is so hard? That’s a big part of the point in his wilderness temptations. Jesus responded by saying,

Matt 4:10 – “Again, it is written, you shall not put he LORD your God to the test.”

Satan was trying to get Jesus to adopt this Exodus 17 posture. If Jesus would have given into that ridiculous test to prove himself, he would have been saying, “Act now, God, or else.” That’s the posture that earned Israel’s location the name Massah, from the Hebrew word נסה, to test.

We too are tempted to adopt this posture towards God in difficult seasons. “God, if you can’t make life any easier, or at least remove this trap that I keep failing into, then I’m looking down below the sun for my help.” We convince ourselves there is no way he is among us if he leaves us to thirst for “water” like this.

Exod 17:7 – They tested the LORD by saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”

If there is one point we are making through these Lenten sermons, the one that is echoed week-in and week-out, it’s this: Failure does not mean you are excluded from God’s people. Abram failed. Israel failed. Moses was a murderer, and if you keep reading, you’ll see he is not done failing. Lent focuses not just on recognizing our failure but on recognizing God’s mercy in the midst of our failure. We don’t deny that life is hard, but we adamantly deny that because life is hard that means God is not among us. He’s with us in the hardships, even the mundane ones.

Moses’s Response

Let’s turn to Moses’s response. Take a look at verse 4.

Exod 17:4 – So Moses cried to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

So often, we see in scripture that crying out to the Lord is what prompts his action. Abijah defeated Jeroboam in unlikely circumstances because he cried out to the Lord in 2 Chronicles 13. Asa “cried to the LORD his God … and the LORD defeated” his enemies in 2 Chronicles 14. Jehoshaphat cried out, and the LORD helped him in 2 Chronicles 18. “Hezekiah and Isaiah cried to heaven” and the LORD delivered Jerusalem from the king of Assyria in 2 Chronicles 32. Jesus was scorned and mocked on the cross. He was thirsty. He suffered and he hurt, and he cried out with a loud voice to the Father.

That’s the call this morning: Cry out to the LORD! He will help, even though our cries for help are mingled, at the same time, with words like “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Or “My God, my God, why is life so hard?”

Maybe you hear this call and think, “I can’t do it. It’s too hard.” It might be that you misunderstand what’s being asked of you. Let me tell you about one of my favorite songs.

Johnny Cash is a master story teller, and some of the stories he tells best are in sad songs, really sad songs. A good example is the song “Give My Love to Rose.” The opening line goes like this:

“I found him by the railroad track this morning.

I could see that he was nearly dead.

I knelt down beside him, and I listened …

Just to hear the words the dying fella said.”

So the singer walks up to the dying man by the railroad tracks, and he listens to him tell how he just got out of prison and was trying to make it home to his wife and son, but both men know he’ll never make it home. It’s such a sad song, but as you listen the dying man whimpers out his last requests to the passerby. He’s so grateful that in his broken state someone has come along to listen.

Do you feel like that this morning? Like you’ve been hit by a train? Well, can you whimper? Even the dying man in the song was able to whimper out some last words. Whimper to God! Can you cry tears? Cry them to God. Can you write or type words? Type them to God. Write them. Sing them. Cry out to the Lord however you can!

Like the man walking by the train tracks in the song, Jesus will stop and listen, and he can do so much more than listen. What do you have to lose by speaking words to God? This sermon is God’s invitation for you to pray to him even in the very particular and personal type of difficulty and hardship that darkens your days.

I don’t want to make it sounds like a slot machine or something where you pull the lever and “try it,” but try him! Isn’t this what we naturally do when we want to know if someone is there? You walk in a house, and you wonder if someone is there. What do you do? “Noelle, are you home?”

Call out to him. Ask him if he is there. He’s not fragile. He isn’t easily offended. You can speak all your heart and mind to him.

How many times this morning or this week have you called out to God for help in the mundane struggles of life? If you don’t pray help-me-prayers multiple times a day, I have a good word for you: You can, and it will help even if you can’t imagine how.

The LORD’s Response

In our passage, when Moses cried out, the LORD provided water, but he did it in a strange, unexpected way.

Exod 17:5 – And the LORD said to Moses, “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. 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.

Every part of the way the LORD provided was strange and unexpected. And this brings us back to the story where we started. I had no idea how in the world to get out of that school I had chosen to attend, and I didn’t really initiate the help.

My dad entered my room and sat down just like the LORD has drawn near to you this morning. My dad asked me to tell him what was going on, and on the Lord’s behalf, I say to you this morning, he wants to hear from you what’s going on.

God knows who we are and how we are made, that we are but dust. He knows we make messes and need help getting out. As one ancient author outside of scripture wrote, in the book of Tobit,

“Everyone who worships you has this hope for sure: If they enter a time of correction, they will be allowed to approach your mercy. After a storm, you make peace, and after crying and tears, you pour out joy” (Tobit 3:21).

Cry out to the Lord. Cry out to the LORD for your daily bread. Cry out to him for water, even when all you can see are rocks.

O God, make speed to save us. O Lord, make haste to help us.

☩ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

Amen. ☩