November 19, 2023
Have you ever read a verse or paragraph of Scripture and a word or a phrase that you have never really noticed before it jumps right off the page and into your heart? That happened to me today. In Exodus chapter seventeen and the first seven verses, God has led His people out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, into the wilderness. The people were hot, tired, and thirsty. The problem was, according to verse one, the place where they found themselves was waterless. How did they get to this dry, waterless place in the wilderness? Verse one tells us that YAHWEH commanded them to go there. God led them to this hot, dry, waterless place in the wilderness! Apparently, according to this verse, God sometimes leads His people into dry waterless places. This just in, people need water to drink. Their very lives depend upon it! Doesn’t God know that? God, what are you up to? Let’s keep reading. Verse two tells us Moses reminded the people that their argument and quarreling wasn’t against him, it was against God. In verse three, these same people accuse Moses, and indirectly God (they just didn’t have the nerve to say it that way), of bringing them out of Egypt into the wilderness just to kill them. In other words, is God really good? Does He have our best interests in mind? Moses then cries out to God, “You had better step in here, LORD, these people are going to kill me!” In verse five, God tells Moses to go before the people and take some of the elders of Israel with him (the people accused God and Moses in public and God would give the people an answer in public). Now, notice verse six. God says, “I will stand before you on the rock.” Here is what jumped out at me as I read this. Yes, God gave the people water, but He also gave the people what they needed more than they needed water, they just didn’t realize it. God gave them His presence. God could have said, “Listen you bunch of stiff-necked argumentative knuckleheads, I am going to go on top of this mountain, send down a lightning bolt and bust this rock wide open to give you water. I can’t allow my holiness to keep company with your unbelief.” Instead, God said, “I will stand before you, there on the rock.” Let that sink in. Sometimes, God leads us into hot, dry, waterless places. In fact, as we look around, sometimes it seems all we can see around us is wilderness. God leads us there so we will learn to trust Him. He also reminds us that He is with us, even when and maybe especially when, our faith seems to falter. God says to us “drink deeply, I am right here with you.”
Be blessed and then go be a blessing . . . Bro. Andy
