The people of Israel had seen the sea split open. They had watched Pharaoh’s army swallowed by the waves. They had eaten bread from heaven every single morning for weeks. And now, camped at Rephidim, they were dying of thirst. So guess what they do?
“The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, travelling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 So they quarrelled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?” 3 But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” 4 Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5 The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarrelled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exodus 17 v 1-7)
It seemed they’d forgotten everything God had already done.
“Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” (v.3)
Today’s thirst has a way of erasing yesterday’s miracles. Present pain has a habit of making past faithfulness feel very distant.
Moses takes it to the Lord: “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me” (v.4). Leadership always carries complaints upwards. It never internalises them.
God’s plan is mirrored in the New Testament.
Paul later writes that Israel “drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). The rock that was struck (only once – important for what will transpire!) is a shadow of the cross. Christ, judged in our place, becomes the source from which grace flows freely to those who deserve judgement instead.
That’s what makes Massah and Meribah, “testing” and “quarrelling”, such a strange kind of memorial. The place named for Israel’s failure becomes, in the same breath, the place of God’s provision. He doesn’t wait for their complaint to become gratitude before He acts. The water comes while the grumbling is still in the air. The epitome of grace.
Missions Paul 