Hi, I'm Jonathan Pennington, and this is the Human Flourishing Podcast. This podcast is a repository of a wide variety of sermons, lectures, interviews, and other resources that I've recorded over the years. Today's episode is a sermon I preached at Sojourn East in Louisville, Kentucky. Our scripture this morning comes from Exodus 17, 1-16, if you're able, would you please stand for the reading of God's Word? The whole Israelite community set out from the desert of sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Refinem, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink. Moses replied, why do you quarrele with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test? But the people were thirsty for water there and they grumbled against Moses. They said, why did you bring us out of Egypt to make us and our children and our livestock die of thirst? Then Moses cried out to the Lord, what am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me. 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. I will stand there before you by the rock of Horib, strike the rock and water will come out for the people to drink. So Moses did this in the side of the elders of Israel and he called the place Masa and Maraba because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, is the Lord among us or not? The Amalakites came and attacked the Israelites at Refinem. Moses said to Joshua, choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalakites. Tomorrow, I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands. So Joshua fought the Amalakites as Moses had ordered and Moses, Aaron and her went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning but whenever he lowered his hands the Amalakites were winning. When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and her held up his hands, one on one side, one on the other so that his hands remained steady until sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalakite army with the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it because I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Moses built an altar and called it, the Lord is my banner. He said because hands were lifted up against the throne of the Lord, the Lord will be at war against the Amalakites from generation to generation. This is the word of the Lord. You can be seated. Morning, friends. My name is Jonathan. I'm one of the teaching pastors here. We're so glad you are here with us. I just wanted to reiterate the men's retreat coming up and one thing we didn't say in the announcements about it is that a good friend of mine, Kelly Capick, Dr. Kelly Capick, are we coming to talk about what it means to be human. So you men really want to encourage you to come along to that. We hope to see you there. Well, next weekend, the 11 Pennington's, that's my wife and I, our six adult children and three spouses will be making the long drive to Iowa for a family wedding. And I'm complaining about it quite a bit already. The gas, just ask my family, the hotel rooms, the 10 hour drive, which I don't really like, but especially 10 hours stand up in central Iowa. I have no shame on Iowa. I'm from Illinois. It's not much different. But the point is, the good drive, 10 hours would be nice to be simply fancy, right? But at least, I think it'll be much easier than when we, when our kids were little. We spent many, many summers for over a decade or more driving all of our kids and our eight passenger van, eight of us. Either to Fort Collins or to Orlando for me to teach for Gamps Crusade. And lots of good times. I mean, lots of good memories and lots of complaining and grumbling as you might imagine as well. Are we there yet? Classic question. He's thumping me. Tell him to get his thing off of my seat. All that is happening all the time, even though there were good times as well. And yet, as I think about that, I think, you know, that's probably not nearly as bad as I was when I was a kid. I think I was probably much more annoying. I remember very stinking when we were 12. We took a trip to Alaska. My stepfather, I think I didn't really get along very well. And our flight got canceled. And so then we missed the cruise ship departure. So we had to catch it later in them when we did catch it. We didn't have our rooms anymore. It was a disaster. And then imagine me this 12 year old Midwestern boy. I didn't like seafood. And so I often describe it as cheeseburgers across Alaska because all I wanted to eat was a cheeseburger. And I complained. I'm sure at every single meal of the Alaskan king crab that was being served that I now I would love to have, right? So there's my kids or myself or all of them. You know, traveling can be stressful for me, especially drive-throughs are especially stressful with all the kids. But why do we complain when we travel? Even if it's for an amazing vacation, why does it often happen? Adults and children, we end up grumbling and complaining. Well, I think it comes from stress. It comes from uncertainty being a new environment. And I think especially when you have expectations that things are going to go a certain way and be good. And then they inevitably aren't perfect. Sometimes they're really bad. That stress that anxiety creates something in us that often comes out in grumbling and complaining as a way to kind of release it. It's very natural. It's not good, but it is very natural. I was thinking about that as we come to our text today from Exodus chapter 17. What's happening is the people of Israel are traveling in the wilderness. And if you've been around, you know that for the last few months we've been looking at Exodus. And what we've seen is that the people of Israel were in slavery in Egypt. It was horrible. They cried out to the Lord. He rescued them and delivered them. And just a few weeks ago we saw the song that they celebrated when he rescued them. Finally, kind of definitively from the Egyptians at the Red Sea. But the problem is there's a big desert between their slavery in Egypt and the promised land. And the joy of chapter 15 and the song of the sea quickly turns in the latter part of chapter 15 and chapter 16 and now into 17 as well as very desperate situations. I mean, they are literally in the desert. And I don't know what images come to mind for you. Probably for many of us is like, so here in desert. That's not what the desert is like exactly. We my wife and I were in Israel a couple months ago. It's not the same topography as here, but it's quite similar, I think. And the best way I could describe it is more like a barren Mars landscape. It's hilly and gray or brown and just nothing. Not a pleasant place to be. And I think complaining and grumbling and anxiety and stress would be very natural responses. We were driving through this place in an air-conditioned bus where they're handing us water and snacks. That is not the Israelites experience here as well. And here they are stressed, anxious and unhappy because they don't have water and have water. You and I get upset about somebody spilling something on our couch or whatever else it is. Many of us have not experienced seeing your eight-year-old child with parched lips or your elderly parents wasting away out of dehydration. It is an extremely stressful difficult situation for them. No one would be happy in this situation. And here we come in Exodus 17 to see yet another desperate situation where they have no water. And what ties the stories of chapter 17 together, there's actually two stories if you've caught that. They're in the same place, Refidim, and they're also tied together in an interesting little way with Moses' staff, which we're going to see why that's important. And before we get into these, I also want to point out that there's a beautiful symmetry to the Bible in that these stories in chapter 17 are happening in the region of Horeb, which is exactly where the whole thing started. It's where do you remember Moses and the burning bush? It's where Moses picked up that snake and became a stick or a staff. It's where God spoke to him and sent him to Egypt and all happened and now it's kind of come full circle back to this place. And here they are now again in this desperate wilderness wondering if God is going to take care of them. And so what I want to do this morning briefly is look at these two stories and then just ask the questions that are always good to ask. What do we learn about God from this and what do we learn about ourselves as well from this? And so let's look at these two stories and turn a Bible that exists 17. There's a Pew Bible in front of you. I think we said page 58 something like that. You pull it up on your phone. We'll put some of the verses on the screen as well. Let's look at these two stories and see what God has to say. Look at the first one starting in verse 1. It says the whole Israel community set out from the desert of sin traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped it, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink. And Moses replied, why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test? But the people were thirsty for water there so they grumbled against Moses and they said, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children in our lives that die of thirst? If you go back to the previous two chapters, this is just a repeat, the third in a row of the same kind of desperate situation. But this one is even ramped up more because not only are they desperate for food and water and drink, now they're not only just complaining around the campfire, they're actually deciding they are going to turn against Moses. You can imagine them saying this, don't you remember what it was like to be in Egypt? Who is this guy? Moses? Anyways, I always thought he seemed a little shady. After all, he grew up in Pharaoh's household. Maybe this is just an elaborate plan to kill us all. In fact, I bet Moses and Aaron, they probably have plenty of water tucked away in their tents. And this is what happens when we're under stress. Stress, I want to honor that they're very stressed out, it distorts our perception of things. It really does. And we can only see the negative out of self-protection. Have you ever found yourself in that situation? Maybe you're afraid, you're concerned about your future, it's super easy to turn against leaders when our fear and our anxiety and our stress gets ramped up. We all do it, I've done it. And this is what's happening here, it's escalating. And the word that's used to describe how they're responding to Moses is not just that they're like registering some complaints in the complaint box. The word that's used there is the legal term that they're basically ready to make a case against him and you serve him. In fact, that's what Moses says in verse 4. He says to the Lord, what am I to do with these people? They're about to stone me. So this is very tense. The people are accusing Moses, trying to kill them and then they are planning on killing him and then look at what God does in verse 5. The Lord answered Moses, go out in front of the people, take with you some of the elders of Israel, take in your hand the staff which you struck the Nile and go. And I will stand there before you by the rocket where I've been strike the rock, water will come out of it for people to drink. And so Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. This is a movie scene ready to be made. They're almost certainly gathered at a wadi and a wadi is just like an imagined like a hilly Mars landscape. It's like a ravine that comes down where during rainy seasons or if there's a lot of rain, it will have water and it normally there's nothing there. It's dry as a bone. And so that's probably whether they've gathered there and hopes of finding water. It's their only hope of finding any water. There's not any there. And then God directs Moses to walk in the midst of them. And several scholars have kind of seen this as like it's like the god way. You can imagine everybody's there. They're even leaning down and picking up stones kind of thinking about what they're going to do. And he walks right in the middle of them with the staff. The same staff that was the snake, the same staff that he struck the Nile with the same same staff that part of the Red Sea. It's a reminder of God's power, but he walks through in the middle of this. You can just feel the tension of this whole situation and he walks up to this big rock and he hits it. And then water life giving fresh life saving water pours forth probably down the this ravine and that you can imagine everybody's grabbing every bucket. They've got in wine skin and putting their mouths in it and their save their rescue. So it's good and tense to commemorate this intense scene. Moses gives the place a name as you see it there in verse seven. He called the place Massa and Maribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, is the Lord among us or not? Where it's Massa and Maribah are ways of poetically remembering with a sting to it that this was a place where the Israelites did not respond well to Moses or to God. I look at the second story as doesn't tell us how long afterwards but it's the exact same place. It's probably not too long afterwards. This huge group of Israelites are there. The food and water disaster has been averted for now, but then something just as bad or worse happens. This group of people begin to attack them and if you look at ahead in Deuteronomy 25 when the story is retold later. We learned that the people that were attacking the malchites started attacking the outskirts of the large encampment and picking off the stragglers because they had no fear of God. It's a horrible situation and if the starvation and the water wasn't stressful enough now to be attacked by somebody and who were these malchites? Well, we know that they were a nomadic tribe of people that lived in the southern part of Canaan and what nomadic people did, a big part of the way they lived was by attacking other peoples to get their livestock and people for slave labor women to become wives. This is what their goal is and I think of them like the Tuscan Raiders or some Star Wars. They're like these intense warrior nomadic people and what they have in front of them is this plumb of a gift. These Israelites who are not trained, they're X slaves, they have tons of livestock, they have tons of food. Now that God's been providing them the coil and the mana and they are just there for the pickings and so they attack. Now the plot thickens though because the amalchites are not just some random nomadic tribe. If you go back to the book of Genesis, we learned that Amalach, who's the father of the amalchites, is actually the grandson of Issa. River Issa, the twin brother of Jacob, who becomes Israel. And so what you have here is this, if you go back and look at Genesis in the 30s chapters, you'll see that Jacob and Issa had a lot of conflict between them. And there was a point at which Jacob is then traveling through wilderness and Issa is decided I'm going to get back at him and kill him and all his family. And miraculously has a change of heart and instead of killing him, they reconcile, but there's bad blood. It never fully reconciles. They kind of just decide to go in peace. And now here we are, several generations later. This is a family fight. The descendants of Israel, or Jacob, and the descendants of Issa, and the descendants of Issa, the amalchites are, they're going to win. There's no doubt. They have all the power here. And if you keep reading the Bible, the amalchites really then become the quintessential enemies. Fast forward, book of Esther, Heyman, who's going to destroy the entire people of Israel. Guess what? He's told, we're told he's an amalchite as well. So this is an intense scene. These are the enemies of Israel. And so the weary Israelites are attacked. Moses, commissions Joshua, it's our first time to meet Joshua. And he goes up on a hill to watch it and look at verse 10. So Joshua fought the amalchites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron, and her, went to the top of the hill. And as long as Moses held up his hands, Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the amalchites were winning. And Moses' hands grew tired. They took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, and then Aaron and her held his hands up one on one side, one on the other. So those hands were made steady until sunset. So Joshua overcame the amalchite army with the sword. Now, if you think that's a weird story, you're reading it correctly. Because if it weren't for the bloodshed and the loss of light that's in this story, this would be ridiculously humorous. I mean, do you see the scene here? Moses is up on the mountain looking at him. They're looking down, and he's standing originally holding the staff. It's a sign of victory, et cetera. And then naturally he gets tired, and his hands start to go down, and then they kind of look, wait a minute, then we're losing. But his hands, how did they figure this out? It's quite almost a comedic scene. Is that what's happening? And it is. That's clearly what's happening. And so they realize, well, we don't know what's happening because over the Lord must be doing this, so get me a stone. I'll sit on it, and then you guys need to hold my arms up the whole time. It's an absurd story. But that's what happens. God delivers them, rescues them against all odds, against the much more powerful amalchites, and then he tells them to remember this, to write this down, and to remember what God had done. So those are our stories. What are we to make of this? Well, if you read in the Bible in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul on a couple of different places, thinking about these exact same stories tells us that these stories and all the stories of the Bible were written for us, for our instruction. In fact, today, us here in Louisville, these stories were written by God in a way that they actually have an impact on our lives if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. And so what does it mean for us? Well, I want to give you two kind of applications, two ways in which these stories are meant to be instruction for us. First one, negative, and the second one, positive. Let's look at the negative application first, a warning. These events of the Exodus are so important to the history of Israel that when you keep reading in the Old Testament and the New Testament, you see that they're going to be retold over and over. So when we're trying to figure out what do these stories mean? We actually don't just have to think about them ourselves. We can look at other parts of the Bible because they often interpret these stories for us. The Psalms refer to these events a lot and give us interpretations of them. Nehemiah chapter 9, for example, gives us an interpretation of these texts. And one of the things that you see in a lot of those places is that this story and these stories from the Exodus are meant to serve as a very humbling warning to us, a warning that it is possible to respond to God in such a way that we actually make an absolute wreck of our lives. In fact, if you keep reading in Exodus, it's not going to be too many chapters later, where the same Israelites are in a similar situation again, they're stressed, they're anxious. And this time, because Moses is up on the mountain, they put all their gold together and they build a calf and dance around it and worship it. And the result is God's judgment comes upon them in a very heavy way. You see, it is possible the whole Bible makes clear that any person could have some kind of spiritual experience or maybe some limited knowledge of God and then actually turn away from the Lord. Jesus makes this clear, for example, in the parable of the Sewer, he talks about how people respond, some don't respond at all, some respond for a little while and then fall away or aren't interested. We see this in real people. One of Jesus's closest friends, Judas Iscariot, turned away from him. We see in the book of Acts, chapter 5, for example, two people that were involved in the church, turn away and an Iscensifier for selfish gain. And the Israelites here are on the cusp of this very same thing in our story and these words are meant, these events are meant to be a warning to them and to us, because you see, the people are not only stressed out which is understandable. They're not just stressed out, they actually, it says, test the Lord or challenge God. Look at verse 7 again. He called the place Massa and Maraba because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, is the Lord among us or not? And you see, the previous stories just had concerns, anxieties, complaints. This story really pushes it all the way that they tested God. What does that mean? Well, it doesn't mean tests like an algebra test or a driving test. It's more like a skeptical challenging. To test the Lord means to basically say, God, we're only going to believe in you if you do something that we think you should, that are trusted you as contingent. It's a challenging, it's like putting God himself on trial, just like they were putting Moses on trial, they're actually putting God on trial. And you can see that in the summary phrase, is the Lord among us or not? That's not said in a humble, querying way. This is said in a skeptical, challenging way because it's really just a summary of what they'd said before to Moses. Did you bring us out here to kill us? They're stressed, their anxiety has turned into this challenge of God himself. And notice again, how stressed just distorts the memory. Egypt was horrible. For hundreds of years, they had many of their little baby boys, lives taken. They had no rights, no freedom, no ability to worship. They were literally slaves building. And they cried out to the Lord constantly and he heard them. And now that he's delivered them, this is their response. And this is exactly how many of the later Psalms interpret this story. Psalm 95, for example, says at this moment, they harden to their hearts. It sounds like Moses, remember? Psalm 78, it says they repeatedly send by challenging God. And so this stands as a challenged us. But there's something really, really nuanced and important I need to understand about this though. It was a very important nuance. The Israelites' problem was not their stress. It was not their need for water. It was not their anxiety about being attacked. Those are all completely natural responses. That was not their problem. Those are natural responses. And in fact, it's okay to be afraid in those situations. It's okay to wonder even what God's up to. It's okay to lament and to cry out to the Lord. We see this all throughout the Psalms. Many of the Psalms, including in the 70s of the Psalms. And a bunch of others are constantly even saying, I'm pouring out my complaint to you, Lord, notice the nuance. It's not wrong to be anxious in this sense. It's not wrong to complain. In fact, we even see going into the New Testament, the Apostle Paul describes the amount of anxiety he had. The sentence of death he felt like was on him that he was full of anxiety about many things. Jesus himself. I think we can say he was anxious in the sense that he didn't know what was going to come. But he himself experienced incredible distress, knowing the pain and suffering and rejection that he was going to face, such that on the night in which he was betrayed, he sweated blood. So there's nothing inherently wrong with the very human natural response to difficult and stressful situations, even desperate situations. There's nothing wrong to have that response. Lament is part of what it means to be human, questioning uncertainty is part of what it means to be human. But here's the key difference. The key difference is what we do with that stress and where we look with that. Do we look up vertically or do we look sideways horizontally? The Israelites facing lack of water and their need to be protected was understandable, but instead of looking up to God and crying out, they looked sideways at their circumstances and blamed. The difference between looking vertically in our stress and looking horizontally is all the difference. That when we're aware of these things that are making us feel out of control, there's nothing wrong with that as a human response, as long as we learn to take it to the Lord. Who is willing and able and not afraid of that? What if the Israelites would have instead in this moment said, Moses, please cry out to the Lord for us, we need water, will he provide for us? What would God have done? Clearly he would have provided. He did all the time. What happened instead is instead of just expressing their fear, which is okay. It's even okay to talk to your friends or a counselor or a pastor or just anyone. It's nothing wrong to express fears and to express the lament. We see this all throughout the Bible. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to cry. It's okay to cry out to the Lord. What are you doing, Lord? How long will the Lord? Those are all words from the Psalms. Because remember, I love how one author put it, God's leading does not always move directly to the oasis. There is often a desert in our lives, sometimes very long deserts. It's not just that when we become a Christian like all of a sudden we're in the oasis, we have a desert in our lives, and there are times of desperation, large and small, lament, fear, need, and it's natural that we're going to have oscillations of faith and obedience and uncertainty. But it doesn't have to result in the kind of grumbling and unbelief that we see here. Because what happens is when we give ourselves to grumbling and unbelief, it actually becomes in a first complaining and then it becomes broader. It's like a poison that spreads out our souls and it can get to a point where we're actually challenging God himself. The thing that it's okay to do in front of him, to cry out to him, what's going on. But when we don't look up and look just sideways in our circumstances and others, we will just be involved in blame and it will rot our souls. That's a warning. To be faithful to Scripture, we just have to say that that it is possible, but it's actually not the main thing I want to say. I think the main takeaway from this is the more positive one. And that's what we can understand about God from this. And that is this. I can sum it up this way that even in the midst of our grumbling, God is gracious to us. Even in the midst of when we blow it, God is gracious to us. The warning against unbelief is there for sure. And we need to take that warning. We need to recognize that in many of us in our lives, there are ways in which we are just developing habits of complaining that then can lead us quite astray. But the hope, the beauty of this is in God's kindness leading us to repentance, that even when they are doing that, God still provides with them. Did you see that in these stories? Even when they are picking up stones to think about stoning Moses, God has him strike the stone, the rock and water comes forth and saves them. Even when they are being attacked and there's no hope that they're going to be rescued by these far superior warriors, God provides for them. And notice that the craziness of both of those stories is precisely for this reason. You don't hit a staff against the rock and then all of a sudden get fresh water. You don't win a battle because somebody's arms are up. This is the whole point of that crazy story is that there is no doubt that God provided. Nobody could visualize, could not look at either of these stories and say, oh well, good thing we have good geologists with us that fear that out. There are good thing we have such great warriors in Joshua. There was no doubt that God did these things and the point of that is, just like it is for us as well, is that even when we're eyes are blinded and when we're being dumb and not seeing God and vomiting it all out verbally and complaints, not in a way that's just dealing with grief and actually complaining and causing poison even in the midst of that God is gracious to us. Even in the midst of that. This is who God is. Psalm 78 is one of the places this story gets retold and let me just read some of the verses from it. It says, verse 18, they willfully put God to the test. They challenged him by demanding the food they crave. They spoke against God. They said God really spread a table in the wilderness. True. He struck the rock and water gushed out. Streams flowed abundantly. But can he also give us bread? Can he supply meat for his people? This is our heart. But if you keep reading these words are amazing. It says that even in the midst of this God shows up. Verse 36, but then they would flatter him with their mouths. They'd lie to him with their tongues to God. Their hearts were not loyal to him. They were not faithful to his covenant but then look at this next word. Yet he was merciful. He forgave their iniquities. He did not destroy them. Time after time he restrained his anger. He did not stir up his full wrath that would have been justified. He remembered that they were about flesh. We humans are a passing breeze that does not return. That's God. The warning is real, but God's grace is more real. God's grace is larger than our failures. The New Testament describes it the same way in the ultimate revelation of Jesus this way in Romans. Paul says you see it the just the right time when we are still powerless. Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone my possibly dare die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this while we were still sinners. That is enemies of God Christ died for us. That's the good news. And I think those two things that real warning and that even more real God's grace, even the midst of our failings leads us to, I think, finally an invitation from God. So what does this mean? I don't anticipate any of us here are probably going to be needing water in the desert this week. It's possible, I guess. But I know that we all have already this morning many people and this afternoon and things are facing things we're aware of and aren't aware of that have the tendency to make a scramble and complain. It might be small things. Somebody cut you off in traffic or annoyed you about this or something or you have to wait 20 minutes for a restaurant. It might be much bigger things. Job loss and cancer diagnoses and financial catastrophe, relational strife. It might be anything in the range of disappointments or depression, just uncertainty about acts. You fill in the blank. Whatever it is that you, if you sort of say what am I anxious about and you identify that whatever it is large or small, we have a choice. Is that going to lead us to just look substantially and down the path that could eventually even lead to lead to challenging God or is going to lead us to go to the Lord? And honestly, not denying the reality of the pain or the difficulty but actually crying out to him looking for him and asking him to provide. Here's a question. What if you had a father and a king who actually welcomed your honest needs? What if you had that? That's who God is. That is who God is. You may be in a desert. There may be more desert in front of you. But the invitation from God is to cry out to him, to look to him, to open our mouths and to fill them. And I love what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 when he's thinking about this story. He says God is faithful and will not let you be tested beyond what you can bear. Now the bomber is, it's going to feel like at times in our lives that this is more than we can bear. But God's faithfulness is that there is testing. But it's God's faithfulness means we actually, if we're willing to cry out to him, we won't be tested beyond what we can bear resulting in us actually testing him. Instead the father's invitation to us is one of kindness and grace. And so today maybe you're full of shame or guilt or anxiety whatever it is, God's grace is sufficient, you will not be tested beyond what you can bear. He is inviting to enlarge your soul by even in the midst of the desert looking to him. Thank you for listening to the Human Flourishing Podcast. To learn more or get in touch with me, visit my website, Jonathan Pennington.com.