This sermon is based on what you might consider a... “creative” interpretation, i.e., that the “big picture” meaning of the event where Moses struck the rock and water came forth for the nation is the sacrifice of God Himself for the salvation of His people. Following on that, the reason for God’s severe punishment of Moses the next time Moses struck the rock, which God never told him to do, is that Moses distorted and ruined the whole theological lesson (otherwise called a “revelation”) with which God intended to invest the event. The lesson: don’t play games with God’s revelation. As I said, you may consider this take to be “creative”, but I feel there is compelling evidence in the scriptures for it. The ideas may be a bit complicated, but I tried my best to make the sermon – since it is a sermon – conversational and “folksy”. In order to bring home to my listeners from the very get-go just how significant it was that God told Moses to strike the rock where HE was standing, I present the notion of Moses, at his first encounter with God, attacking the burning bush with his staff.
Let’s begin by reading Exodus 3:5 (read).
What if Moses hadn’t obeyed God? What if, even, he thought he was having an hallucination, and to snap out of it had taken his shepherd’s rod and starting flailing away at that bush? What then? Why is it so shocking, so inconceivable, even to suggest such a thing? Because we know that God’s holy presence sanctified that place. Moses had to revere the place of God’s self-manifestation. He had to take off his sandals, because it was holy ground. Consider what 2 Chronicles 30:27 says about God’s dwelling place (read) – it is a holy place. Psalm 2: 6 says (read) and Psalm 11:4: (read). What makes the temple holy? God’s presence, just as it made holy the ground where God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush.
When God appears, you can’t even touch the place where He is, much less do violence to it. At Mount Sinai the Lord said, “Be careful not to go up on the mountain of even to touch the foot of it; anyone who touches the mountain will be condemned to death.” Why? Because God is there.
But then how do you explain the place in scripture, and the event in history, where God says to Moses, “You will go to a place where you’ll see Me standing and you’ll strike that place with your staff.” Such a thing happened. It’s described in Exodus 17:4-7 (read).
The nation had risen up against God and His servant. They were ready to kill Moses and return to slavery. God would have been perfectly justified in wiping out the nation. On the contrary, though, He says, “Strike ME.” Well, He didn’t say it in exactly those words. But if in every other instance to violate the place of God’s presence was the same as violating God Himself, then I think we are right in saying that striking the rock on which God was standing was the same as striking God Himself. Moreover, just think about what it was the Moses had to do this with: “The staff with which you struck the water, take in your hand and go” – the staff with which God judged Egypt’s sin and brought death to the River Nile, the Egyptians source of life! There on the River Nile the staff became an instrument of God’s wrath, the channel of His power over all the forces of evil. And now, Moses is supposed to walk right up to God, where God is standing on the rock, and with that same staff, strike it. Only this time, Moses won’t be punished – as he would have been if he had done something similar at the burning bush; and the nation won’t suffer death, as the Egyptians did when the River was turned to blood. No, this time, the outcome of such theologically shocking behavior is a river of saving water gushing forth from the rock for this stubborn and rebellious people!
There’s only one other place in the Bible, one other statement of the Lord, that I can compare to this. It’s what Jesus Christ said to the Jews: “Destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days.” Or perhaps also these words (John 12:32): “’And I, if I am lifted up, will draw all people to Me.’ He said these things to indicate the kind of death He would die.”
Destroy my body, lift Me up on the cross, and I will give living water, the bread of life, to all who come to Me.
Who else can we possibly see here but the God Who once said, “You will strike the rock where I am standing and from the rock will come water for the people”?
Like the staff, the cross became simultaneously the instrument of wrath and salvation, of punishment and propitiation, of humiliation and power. One cross, two effects: judgment and mercy. it reminds me of what the apostle Paul said in 1st Corinthians (1:18): “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Perhaps these similarities (correspondences, parallels) can help us understand why God reacted so severely to what Moses did the next time water was supposed to come from the rock, as we read in Numbers 20:7-12 (read).
Notice, this time God said absolutely nothing about striking the rock; nor, for that matter, did He even broach the topic of Himself standing on it! My point is that what we have here is a drastically different picture, a drastically different theological object lesson, in almost every way, and for a good reason. This is no longer a picture, or illustration, of punishment, of judgment. Since the picture is so different, I can only conclude that the divine intention is correspondingly different (which reminds me of C.S. Lewis's depiction of Aslan, who "never does the same thing twice"). Everything God does is something new. Just as it is written in Hebrews 10:10: “By this same will we have been sanctified by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”, Moses was to strike the rock, the first rock, “once for all”. The second time, what was he supposed to do, by God's direct, explicit revelation? He was to speak to the rock, and in response the rock would have poured out life-saving water immediately. Let's not underestimate the significance of the fact that what God told Moses to do was what God intended to reveal Himself through. To mess with the instructions is to defile the revelation.
So why did God react so severely to Moses’ misdeed? He says, “Because you did not believe Me, to display my holiness before the sons of Israel, you will not lead the nation into the land which I am giving them.”
Some say that God punished Moses because Moses got angry, or proud. But the Scripture simply doesn't say that. Besides, even people like Samuel and Elijah got pretty mad in their time, and we don’t see God punishing them like this. Or some say it was because Moses sinned. Well, excuse me, but Moses happened to be a sinner! You could say that King David sinned even worse, not only against God but against the whole nation. I'm sorry, but...it happens.
Nevertheless, something made this transgression uniquely, even incomparably, momentous and grave.
“You did not believe Me,” says God, “to display my holiness.”
The stunning paradox is that when Moses took his staff and hit the rock where God was standing, (which, any other time, would be unspeakable violation of God's holiness), Moses was in fact believing (trusting, obeying, submitting to) God and displaying God’s holiness – exactly because that’s what God said to do. In that case, Moses was correctly carrying out his role in God’s historical, redemptive plan. He was telling the story right.
But this time, the second time, he wasn’t supposed to hit the rock--because, for one thing, that was not what God told him to do, but because, also... Christ cannot be crucified twice.
Those rocks, the first of which was to be struck and the second of which was to be spoken to – they were Christ, Christ foreshadowed. As the apostle Paul asserts (1 Corinthians 10:4): “And they all drank the same spiritual drink: for they drank from the spiritual rock that was accompanying them; the rock was Christ.” And just as it was forbidden to strike the rock a second time, so Christ cannot be crucified a second time.
(Read Hebrews 7:25) Christ intercedes for those who come to Him with their needs and tell Him about them, just as Moses was to speak to the second rock, not strike it. (Read Hebrews 7:26-27) Just as Moses had to strike the first rock, Christ had to be struck before the water of life could flow from Him to His people. But just as Christ now lives forever and is with us always, so the Rock, figuratively, accompanied the nation through the wilderness, never to be struck again but to answer when the nation called upon Him. That Rock was Christ. God appointed these events, and Moses' role in them, as a holy depiction of our salvation. Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 10:6, “And these things were pictures for us.” And you don't mess with God's object lessons....
Perhaps now we begin to understand why God reacted so severely to Moses’ striking the second rock. Just as much as God cherishes the accomplishment of redemption through His beloved Son, that much, too, does He cherish the correct foreshadowing of that redemption, in the way He intended it, in history.
Moses, in a burst of frustration, distorted and violated one of the holiest images of Christ - yes, even the very presence of Christ - in the Old Testament. That touches the very holiness of God. And Moses committed this error because he failed to believe God. God’s instructions weren’t enough; Moses thought he could do better. Trying to do better, he only ruined a holy revelation.
He failed to believe, and it is no coincidence that faith is the key to the salvation that Jesus came to give. In every way, Moses’ failure ruined a holy moment in God’s historical revelation of redemption. For that, Moses was prohibited from entering the promised land.
How does this relate to us?
Just as the Rock, figuratively, accompanied the nation all through the wilderness, so we, in a greater, more glorious way, are accompanied all through life’s journey by Him who said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Just as Moses was only to speak – not strike! – the second time, so we need only to speak to Christ in faith and He will hear and respond to our need. Just as every place where God appeared in the Old Testament was holy, so His dwelling place today is holy. And what place is that? The apostle Paul says (2 Cor. 6:16), “We are the temple of the living God.” It is no less dangerous to violate this temple than it was to strike, for the second time, the Rock that was Christ.
Let us do nothing that could bring harm to the people of God, the Bride for whom Christ shed His blood and for whom He is now preparing the marriage supper of the Lamb.
When the people of Israel doubted God and demanded water, God gave them water, but He also rebuked them for testing Him (Exodus 17:7): “And [Moses] called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the LORD, saying, ‘Is the LORD among us or not?’” Let us not tempt the Lord by doubting Him or causing quarreling and strife among His people!
If the manifestations of God in the Old Testament were great, and they were only foreshadowings, how much greater is it now that Christ has come to live in our hearts? We should never think that, because they were eyewitnesses of such direct demonstrations of power, the Israelites had a higher responsibility than we do to revere the Lord’s holiness and to sanctify His name in their lives. On the contrary, we have the higher responsibility, for what was then a foreshadowing is now a reality, what was a holy depiction is now, in the fullest sense, a holy experience. You could say that what happened with the nation of Israel and the Rock in the wilderness has now happened with us again, only fully, and perfectly. So that in our case we can say that (read the whole passage of Hebrews 12:18-29) “you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire....”
