Saved By a Rock

We have two portions of the Word of God for our consideration today, one in the Old Testament and one in the New. Our Old Testament portion is Exodus chapter 17, the first seven verses, and the New Testament explanation of this in John 7, 37 through 39.

Reading from Exodus 17, And Moses said unto them, Why strive ye with me? Wherefore do ye put the Lord to the test? And the people thirsted there for water. And the people murmured against Moses and said, Why hast thou brought us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? They are almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel, and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go.

Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the striving of the children of Israel, and because they tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not? John 7, verse 37.

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. But this he spoke of the Spirit, whom they that believe on him should receive.

For the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified. We never thought it would happen, but it happened. Our world today is facing a water crisis.

Scientists tell us that there are some 326 cubic miles of water available. When you stop to realize that our world uses 2 trillion gallons of water a day, here in the United States, some 350 billion gallons a day, you can understand what's happening. Pollution is robbing us of water.

The industry is requiring more water. Population growth is demanding more water. We may see the day when water will become a very precious commodity.

Of course, all of these things have deeper spiritual meanings. Israel found herself very thirsty in the wilderness wandering. They had no sooner been delivered from the land of Egypt when they became thirsty.

This experience of the Jews and Moses with the rock has some spiritual lessons for us today on a much deeper level. The greatest thirst of all is not a thirst for water. The greatest thirst of all is a thirst for reality.

And that reality is found in God. So can we lift from this Old Testament experience four basic truths that you and I need if our lives are going to mean anything at all? Truth number one, all of us have thirsts that need to be satisfied. As you read the Old Testament scriptures and the account of the marching of Israel, you're looking into a mirror.

We're not reading ancient history and saying, they, they. We are reading contemporary history and we're saying, I, I. Because the Jewish people went through experiences such as we go through. No sooner had they been delivered on Passover night when the Jews faced the problem of the Egyptian army and they were afraid.

And we get afraid. There are people here today, perhaps at Moody Church, who have fear in their heart. Then they became hungry and God sent the manna from heaven to feed them.

Then they became thirsty and God gave the water from the rock to quench their thirst. You see, you and I are reading our own story. We're just like these Jewish people.

Now it comes as a shock to some people to realize that God made us to thirst. There's nothing wrong with thirst. God didn't rebuke these people for being thirsty.

God didn't thunder from heaven and send lightning bolts and open the earth and swallow up the people. No. When God made the first man, he made him with the need for water.

And thirst is a good thing. If you didn't get thirsty, you wouldn't know that your body needs fluid. And if you didn't know your body needed fluid, you would soon die.

God built into us a thirst for water and God built into us a hunger for food. It's a good thing you get hungry. Some people are always hungry, but it's a good thing when people are hungry.

Because hunger says to you, send down some fuel, send down some fuel. You can't keep working without the fuel. There's nothing wrong with fear.

Now, some fears are abnormal. We call these phobias. But fear is a good thing because when an emergency comes and you get afraid, it starts your glands working and extra power gets into your bloodstream.

And you can do amazing things when you're afraid. There's nothing wrong with a desire for success. God built it into us.

God didn't build us to be failures. God built into us a desire for success. Nothing wrong with love.

God said it's not good for man to be alone and I'll make a help suitable for him. And so love is a good thing. All of these thirsts God has built into us.

Now, someone says, Pastor, aren't these things wrong? No. Nowhere does the Bible condemn human nature. The Bible condemns fallen nature, but not human nature.

Nowhere does the word of God say it's wrong to be hungry. It's wrong to be thirsty. It's wrong to have a desire for companionship.

What it does say is you have a fallen nature. And if your fallen nature gets a hold of these desires, then you're going to have trouble. All of us have thirsts that need to be satisfied.

And these thirsts are built into us. God created us this way. When Jesus Christ became a man, he thirsted, he hungered, he knew what it was to be tired.

The Apostle Paul says, we have this treasure in earthen vessels. I think one problem many Christians face is they forget that they are earthen vessels. They think they're made of steel.

All of us have thirsts that need to be satisfied. I'm speaking right now to some people who have some thirsts that have not been satisfied. And that leads us to the second truth that we learn from this event.

All of us have thirsts that need to be satisfied. Truth number two, we cannot fully satisfy these thirsts ourselves. Most of the problems in the world today are caused by people who are trying to satisfy good desires in bad ways.

Let's just illustrate this. There's certainly nothing wrong with a desire for companionship. People want to have friends.

And people want to someday fall in love and get married. But there are people today who don't know the difference between popularity and character. And there are people today who think they're going to satisfy this thirst down inside for friends and popularity.

They think they're going to satisfy this by doing what the prodigal son did. The prodigal son took his credit cards and his money and he went off to the far country. And he had a lot of friends.

As long as the money was flowing and the parties were being held, he had a lot of friends. And then as soon as he was broke, he lost his friends. He didn't know the difference between popularity and success.

He didn't know the difference between reputation and character. And I'm speaking to some people right now who are trying to satisfy good thirsts with cheap means. I don't think we offend anybody if we talk about this matter of the ego.

God doesn't want to deflate the ego. God doesn't want us to become non-entity. Paul doesn't say, I can do all things by myself.

He says, I can do all things through Christ. But he does not negate the I. God had to use Paul to get some things done. You see, what's wrong is a person inflating his ego the wrong way.

If I use you to make me look good and big, that's wrong. It's dead wrong. If a father and a mother use their children to make them look great, this is wrong.

It's satisfying a normal thirst in an abnormal way. This is why as you drive up and down some of the streets of Chicago, you hang your head in shame as you see these pornography spilling over all around us. The sewage is no longer in the streets, it's in the shops.

Now what is pornography? Is there anything wrong with the deep desire for love that God has put into a human body? Of course not. God made man and God made woman. And God did not negate facts and God did not close his eyes and say, dirty, dirty.

He provided normal ways for this to be expressed. He says there's a thirst down inside and here is the way it can be satisfied. But what have people done? Well, they've tried to satisfy this thirst in the wrong way.

And consequently we have the awful things that are going on today. Is there anything wrong with possessions? No. God gives us richly all things to enjoy.

Jesus says your heavenly father knows you have need of these things. God knows what we need. Then what's wrong? That thirst for possession can drive a person to covetousness and lying and stealing and murdering and warring.

After all, what is war? War on the international scale is no different from two little neighbor kids fighting over the sandbox. It's the same basic problem. God has given to us certain desires.

All of us have thirsts that need to be satisfied. But we cannot fully satisfy these thirsts ourselves. Now, if there's one book in the Bible that spells this out in detail, it's the book of Ecclesiastes.

Solomon, you know, gave to us the proverb, the wisdom of God. And he gave us the song of Solomon, the love of God. But in Ecclesiastes, the Holy Spirit of God used Solomon as a philosopher.

And he looks at life from a human point of view. The key phrase in Ecclesiastes is under the sun. I beheld man under the sun.

What is life under the sun? Now, you and I do not live our lives under the sun. We are seated in the heavenlies with Jesus Christ. We have a heavenly perspective to our lives.

When you read Ecclesiastes, you find that he tries everything. He builds great buildings and he plants beautiful gardens, but he's not satisfied. And he studies philosophy, but he's not satisfied.

And he gathers together wealth untold, but he's not satisfied. In fact, look at Ecclesiastes. You have your Bibles before you.

Chapter 1, verse 8, he sounds the note immediately. All things are full of labor, man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

Isn't that interesting? Solomon, who was the richest man and the wisest man, and when he scanned his great kingdom, and when he sat down and took inventory of all that he possessed, he said, my eyes aren't satisfied, my ears aren't satisfied. When you get over to chapter 4 of Ecclesiastes, that same word comes back into the vocabulary. Verse 7, then I returned and saw vanity, emptiness under the sun.

There is one alone and there is not a second. Yea, he hath neither child nor brother. Yet is there no end of all his labor.

Neither is his eye satisfied with riches. Neither saith he, for whom do I labor and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is heavy travail. Why go into all of this labor? I'm going to leave, who's going to get it? Of course, he doesn't talk about spending it on a head, investing it in eternity.

But he makes this point here, the eye is not satisfied with riches. Over in chapter 5, verse 10. He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase, this also is vanity.

Jesus preached a sermon on that text one day. He said that a man's life is not measured by the abundance of the things that he possesses. And so how are people trying to satisfy this thirst? With things and with thrills.

With all of the artificial achievements of a vanity filled society. We've learned two truths. All of us have thirsts that need to be satisfied.

We cannot fully satisfy them ourselves. Tragedy is people are trying to satisfy their thirst with substitutes. Which leads us to truth number three.

Jesus Christ alone can fully satisfy us. Now the picture here is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul tells us this over in 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

He takes us through the experiences of Israel. They all went through the sea, they all were under the clouds, they all ate the spiritual food, they all drank that spiritual drink from the rock. And that rock was Christ.

It's an Old Testament picture of a New Testament truth. That rock was Christ. You see, what Moses is telling us and what Jesus is telling us and what Paul is telling us is this.

The basic thirst down inside is a thirst for God. Now at this point someone says, well, Pastor, you're getting very mystical. No, I'm getting very practical.

Would you pay the bill of a doctor who dealt only with the symptoms and not with the causes? Let's suppose you go to the doctor and you have a rash on your hand and on your arm. Terrible rash. My, he said, that looks very ugly.

I think it's being caused by an infection in your blood. But what I'll do, I have some cosmetics here and we'll just cover that rash over with these beautiful cosmetics and you'll be all right. Oh, no, you won't.

You'll be worse off. You see, a doctor doesn't want to deal simply with symptoms. He wants to deal with causes.

And so he looks at you and he says, my, you've got an infection in your blood and I have some medicine here and he gets his needle and he injects his serum and the miracle drug goes to work and the rash is cleared up. The problem people are facing today is that they are living on substitutes. They have a thirst down inside.

A thirst for power. A thirst for achievement. A thirst for love.

A thirst for companionship. A thirst for success. And basically it's a thirst for God because when you find God you have all of these things.

That's what the psalmist meant when he said in Psalm 42, My soul thirsteth after God as the deer panteth for those wonderful water brooks that are so clear and so refreshing. So my soul panteth for thee, O God. One day our Lord Jesus was at a well in Samaria.

And he was all alone because his disciples had gone to buy some food. And a woman came to that well to get some water. She was thirsty.

But she was thirsting for something far deeper than the water of the well. Because she had been galloping her way through a number of marriages and the man she was now living with was not her husband. She said there's a thirst down inside.

And she thought she was going to satisfy this thirst by trying this and trying that and making this change and plunging into that sin. And Jesus looked at her and said, You know, the thirst that you really have is a thirst for living water. You've been drinking at the dead, polluted cisterns of this world.

He said, I can give you living water. And he did. And she drank of that living water and became a new woman.

Jesus told the story about a man who was a wealthy man. Nothing wrong with wealth as long as you possess it and it doesn't possess you. And this man had a beggar right outside of his door.

And the beggar would like to have eaten some of the crumbs that fell from that rich man's table. But the rich man didn't care for him. All he cared for was his riches.

And the Bible tells us that the rich man died. And in hell he woke up. And though he was poor in hell, he was still thirsty.

He cried out and said, Please send somebody to bring some water because I'm thirsting. Ah, but he's been thirsting in life. My friend, if you thirst in this world and don't find your satisfaction in Christ, you'll thirst in the next world.

Hell is filled with people who are saying, I thirst. I'm thirsting for power and I'll never get it. I'm thirsting for love and I'll never find it.

The only real satisfaction we're going to find is in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ alone can satisfy our thirst. Now isn't it strange that Paul says Jesus Christ is a rock.

If I called you a rock, you might be a little bit offended. But not among Old Testament Jews. One of the great names for God in the Old Testament.

He is our rock. God is our refuge and our strength. He's the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

When you talk about a rock to an Old Testament Jew, you're talking about that which is stable and solid and eternal. See, the Jewish people didn't like the water, that is the sea. They're not mariners.

When you read about the sea in the Old Testament, the Jews aren't too happy about the sea. But oh, they like to get their feet on a rock. I will lift up mine eyes under the hills, under the mountains.

From whence cometh my help. You see, God is the rock. And so when Paul says that rock is Christ, you know what he's saying? Jesus is God.

That's quite a drastic statement to make. Jesus is God. And because Jesus is God, he is able to satisfy our needs.

And because he became man, he knows what our needs are. Somebody here today says, oh, that preacher up in that pulpit doesn't even know what I'm going through. But Jesus knows what you're going through.

And he's the rock. Now, Jesus is the rock, and the water that came out of that rock is the Holy Spirit. It's a picture of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said that. Jesus stood up at the last day of that feast. For seven days, they had gone down to the pool, and they had brought water in a golden vessel.

They brought the water back to the temple. They poured it out. It was a remembrance of God providing water in the wilderness for the Jewish people.

When the ceremony was all finished and the water had been poured out, Jesus stood up and faced that crowd in the temple, and he cried out. Jesus rarely cried out. Most of his ministry was very quiet and very simple.

But he cried out and said, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. As the Scripture has said, out of his, out of the Messiah's, out of the Lord Jesus' innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. And when you drink of this river of water, it begins to flow through you.

And John adds that little explanatory parenthesis, This spake he of the Spirit. You know, my friend, everything the world is offering you is a substitute for what the Holy Spirit can do for you. Our nation is greatly concerned, and rightly so, about the problem of narcotics.

It's an awful thing when a teenager blows his mind with some dope. But we have had a narcotics problem with us for years that no one seems to be weeping over. It's the alcohol problem.

That's just as much a narcotic as anything else. You know what the Bible says about alcohol? Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God is all that we need.

You say, Well, I need my alcohol. No, you don't. You need the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit of God is that refreshing water that came from that rock. And here were thirsty people, and they had a right to be thirsty. They were human, but they were looking to some wrong way of satisfying their thirst.

They were going to stone Moses. That would have helped. And Moses took that rod.

That was the rod that he smoked the Nile River with, and it turned to blood. It was a rod of judgment. Moses, the lawgiver, took the rod of judgment, and he smoked the rock.

Oh, my friend, do you know what he was picturing? Oh, those people didn't see it, but heaven saw it. As Moses stepped up and smoked that rock, God the Son turned to God the Father and said, One day that will happen to me. One day they will take me and nail me to a cross, and I will be smitten with the rod of judgment.

They will smite the shepherds. They will smite the rock. And Jesus Christ went to the cross and died for you and died for me that he might be able to forgive us.

That's the negative. And that he might be able to give to us the Holy Spirit. And when the rock was smitten, out came the water.

And when Jesus died and went back to heaven, down came the rivers of the Holy Spirit. And I say it again. Every thirst you have in your human anatomy or your inner man is satisfied by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

That's why we Christians look with disdain upon the cheap substitutes of this world. We have something better. We have tasted of the living water.

We have drunk beautifully of the living water that Jesus died to provide. And so we've learned three truths. All of us have thirsts that need to be satisfied.

We cannot fully satisfy them ourselves. Jesus Christ alone can fully satisfy. Which leads us to our final truth.

To be satisfied, you have to drink. Oh, you say, Pastor, tell me something hard to do. No, something easy.

Drink. Here we are, two million Israelites thirsting. I can just see mothers picking up their little children and saying, we don't have any water, but Moses will do something.

And Moses smites the rock and the rivers, the psalmist tells us the water gushed out. Not like some of the drinking fountains you see in public buildings where you have to get a cotton swab to get a drink out of the thing. The water gushed out.

In other words, when God provides the Holy Spirit, when God provides the Holy Spirit, He does not manger Him out with an eyedropper. The rivers of water are available. And here are two million Jews, and the water was available, and the water was adequate, and the water was free, and the water was right there for them to drink.

Anybody who died of thirst died at his own hand. And anybody hearing my voice today who dies of spiritual thirst and wakes up someday and says, I thirst, you're dying by your own hand. Oh, my friend, to be satisfied, you must drink.

Now, I trace this whole scene through the Scriptures. The first time they were thirsty, Moses smote the rock, and the water came out, a picture of Calvary. The second time they were thirsty, Numbers chapter 20, God said to Moses, speak to the rock.

You see, Jesus doesn't die over and over again. Moses didn't speak to the rock. He lost his temper and smote the rock again.

He ruined the whole picture, and as a consequence, didn't glorify God, and as a consequence, lost his inheritance in Canaan land. But first you smite the rock. That's the death of Christ.

And you drink of the water, and you're saved. And then the next day you say, oh, I'm still thirsty, and you just come and you speak to the rock, and the water comes out, and God provides what you need. You see, we Christians don't have to run helter-skelter looking for satisfaction.

We just speak to the rock. But in the next chapter, Numbers chapter 21, they dug a well. They moved along.

The rock didn't chase them around, but the water did. Wherever the nation of Israel went, the water was available, and the princes of Israel dug down Numbers 21. They sang a song, bring us a well.

Isn't that wonderful that God just sent the water wherever they were? But there's something even more wonderful than that. You speak to the rock, you smite the rock, you dig the well. When you get to the Gospel of John chapter 4, God says, look, you don't have to dig any wells.

I'll put the well down inside of you. That's the wonderful thing about being saved. Jesus said to her, oh, if you knew the gift of God and who's talking to you, you would ask of Him, and He'd give you living water.

The water that God gives you is a well of water, an artesian well of water, springing up. Is this not true? Have you not discovered that down inside the heart of the believer is this springing living water to satisfy? And then in John chapter 7, that well of water becomes a river of water. We don't just drink it ourselves.

We share it with other people because they're thirsty. In order to be satisfied, my friend, you have to drink. You know why people don't drink? They don't want to get down.

In order to drink, they had to get down, had to humble themselves. Some of you listening to me now, you say, oh, I'd love to have that living water, but I want to get saved my way. You won't get saved your way.

You'll get saved God's way. There is no difference. All has sinned and come short of the glory of God.

And the only way to have this inward satisfaction is just to come and drink. That's what it means to be saved. That's why Isaiah the prophet looked out upon his people and he said, why, why are you spending your money for that which is not bread? Why are you wasting your time on that which doesn't satisfy? Oh, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.

Come and drink without money and without price. There's no price to be paid for you to be saved. It's already been paid.

Jesus paid it all. That's why the last invitation in the Bible is something like this. And the spirit and the bride say, come.

And let him that heareth say, come. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely. You see, at the very end of the Bible, God is saying, you're thirsty.

You're thirsty. Come and drink. Come and drink.

And I'll satisfy. Now, I'll guarantee that if you keep drinking at the dirty test pools of sin, you'll never be satisfied. There is the pleasure of sin for a season that leads to the pain of sin for eternity.

But oh, if you'll come to the living waters that flow from the rock of ages, cleft for you, you'll always be satisfied. You and I have thirst that must be satisfied. God wants you to enjoy the blessings of life and of eternal life.

You cannot satisfy these thirsts yourself. If you deny them, you'll become a machine. If you live only for them, you'll become an animal.

God wants you to be a man and be his child. All of us have thirsts that need to be satisfied. We cannot fully satisfy them ourselves.

Only Jesus Christ can fully satisfy them. But if you want to be satisfied, you have to drink. And that's why we invite you to come now and give your heart to Jesus Christ and drink and discover how refreshing and wonderful it is to know him.

We come, our Father, with deep appreciation for the price that Jesus paid to satisfy the longings of our hearts. We're thankful that in him we have reality. We don't have to have that which is artificial.

We have that which is eternal. We're sorry, Lord, when we have tried to find satisfaction in sin. We're glad we have found satisfaction in Christ.

Now, for those who have never drunk, we pray, may they come today and stoop and humble themselves and drink of that living water that flows from Calvary. This we pray with thanksgiving in Jesus' name. Amen.