There was no water, so the people complained. Remember that on at least two previous occasions there had been a water shortage and God had provided. The people complained that Moses should never have brought them up out of Egypt.
As before, Moses went to the Lord and fell face down before Him. The glory of God appeared to Moses and He said "take your staff ... speak to the rock and before their eyes it will pour out its water". So once again the Lord is going to provide them with water.
Moses took the staff. Moses gathered the people, rebuked them then raised his staff and struck the rock twice. Water gushed forth.
Next the Lord says to Moses, "because you did not trust in me enough to honour me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them".
The first question is "what did Moses do wrong?". Well he struck the rock when he had been told to speak to the rock.
The second question is "why such a harsh judgement?". First we need to look at why Moses struck the rock. Well, he had done this before and it had worked. He was also acting out of anger. Now both these reactions are eminently understandable, and none of us is in a position to consider ourselves better than Moses, but we need to trust in God completely. While we are considering this, we should remember that Moses did appear with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration, so though Moses was not allowed into the Promised Land, he did not lose his salvation. We need to fear the Lord.
What we can learn is that if we are to receive all that God has for us here we need to be very careful to honour Him as holy before men. We need to guard against times when our flesh rises up, whether it be through anger, fear, anxiety or whatever. We need to pray for the grace and strength to honour God as holy before the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment