To Speak or To Strike

O. T. #341  "To Speak or To Strike"
August 12, 2014
Numbers 20-Part 2
And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also.  Numbers 20:11

LET IT GLOW

Do we speak or strike? Do we let irritations grow into indignation, developing into wrath, violent fury, and loosing control in a rage? Who controls our temper? Do we pray, asking for the Holy Spirit to control us? What will it take for us to loose it today?

Here we go again. The people were grumbling against Moses for their living conditions. They played the blame game. Problem: no water.
Why? Why? Why?

• If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the LORD! (Which ones, the 250 or the 17,700?)
• Why did you bring the LORD's community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here?
• Why did you bring us out of Egypt to this terrible place?
• It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates.
• There is no water to drink!

Such whining people. Moses and Aaron didn't reply. Perhaps they knew it would not do any good. So they went to the tabernacle and fell face down. The glory of the LORD appeared.
What were their directions?

• Take the staff.
• Moses and Aaron gather the assembly together.
• Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water.
• You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.

So they did and all was well, watered that is. No, it didn't go as God directed.

Even Moses, the great Hebrew leader, had his fits of uncontrolled anger. (Swindoll)

What about us? Does anger get the better of us?


LET IT GROW

Because of the Israelites unbelief, they wandered in the hot, dry desert an extra 38 years (Mt. Sinai and Kadesh included the other 2 years).

Moses had a track record of his hot temper erupting:

1. When an Egyptian beat a fellow Hebrew, Moses killed the Egyptian.
2. He departed from Pharaoh in hot anger (Ex. 11:8b). It was the tenth plague.
3. Coming down the Mt. Sinai holding the tablets, Moses saw the dancing around an idolatrous golden calf. (Ex. 32:15-19a)In righteous indignation, he threw the tablets to the ground, shattering them.

I am not trying to justify Moses' actions and rebellion. Just put another perspective on this. He was human like us.

How did Moses openly disobey God's instructions?

• Moses allowed his anger to burst out of control.
• He called the Israelites rebels.
• He asked, Must we fetch water out of this rock? (In Ex. 17:6, Moses struck the rock and water came out.)
• Moses struck the rock twice with the rod.

Moses, the earth's meekest man (12:3), loses control of himself, screams out at the carnal crowd, and disobeys God, not only by hitting the rock, but by smashing it twice.  (Falwell)

In spite of Moses' disobedience, water came out abundantly, so the people and their animals all drank.

This tragic incident had serious percussions:
Because Moses did not trust God enough to honor Him as holy in the sight of the Israelites, Moses would not bring them into the Promised Land. (verse 12)

This miracle would have pointed to the power of God. Moses turned the people's focus from the Lord and onto himself. (Swindoll)

Moses failed to take God at His Word and, thus, to treat Him as holy to the people. God's judgment of Moses for his sin of striking the rock was that he would not take Israel into the land of Canaan.
(MacArthur)

In many places in Scripture, God is pictured as a Rock; 1 Cor. 10:4 makes it clear that the Rock in Exodus and Numbers is a picture of Christ. God told Moses to smite the rock, (Ex. 17), picturing our Lord's death on the cross. Here he told Mosses to speak to the rock, for Jesus Christ died but once. Moses used Aaron's rod, the priestly rod of life, not his own. Christ our rock has risen from the dead; He is our living High Priest; He gives us the spiritual blessings we need as we ask for them. We don't need to be saved over and over, nor does the gift of the Holy Spirit have to be repeated. We receive the Spirit once when we trust Christ; we receive fillings of the Spirit many times as we come to Christ and ask. Unless we glorify God in all that we do, god will deal with us and we will miss the blessing He has planned for us.  (Wiersbe)

God is as concerned with the way He performs His will as He is in the actual will itself.  Moses would be allowed to see the land (Deut. 27:12-14) before his death, and visit it fourteen centuries after his death (Matt. 33:37). (Falwell)

LET IT GO

Your will, Your way, today, I pray.