In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Welcome back to Purify the Heart. This is Pastor Zachary Courie. In Exodus 16, the Lord rained down bread from heaven (called “manna”) and blew quail in from the sea for meat. In Exodus 17, the Lord provides water for His grumbling people from a rock. Joshua, the assistant to Moses, is introduced who will take down a new enemy of Israel by God’s miraculous use of Moses. Here we go!

Exodus 17

17 All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” 4 So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

8 Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. 9 So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” 10 So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. 11 Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. 12 But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. 13 And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword.

14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” 15 And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner, 16 saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Exodus 17:1–16, ESV)

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

When the Lord told Moses that He would stand on the rock and then commanded Moses to strike it so that water would come out, the Lord is pointing us to Christ. St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, “For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” (1 Corinthians 10:1–4, ESV) Notice there that St. Paul doesn’t say that the spiritual rock was “like” Christ, or that it “represented” Christ. Rather, he states, “the Rock was Christ.” (In the original Greek, St. Paul is using the past tense of the verb to be or is.) This is odd for us to consider, but long before the incarnation of the Son of God into our human flesh, he took on the form of a rock in the wilderness. This is like when the Holy Spirit takes on the form of a dove at the baptism of our Lord. The dove really was the Holy Spirit, even though all other doves are not. The rock that the Lord commands Moses to strike really is Christ, even though all other rocks are not. But they do all point us to Him.

The command of the Lord to Moses to strike the rock, in order for it to produce drinkable water, points us specifically to the crucifixion. There Christ was struck a heavy blow by the staff of God’s Law against all sin and unrighteousness, not to mention the physical torture by the various instruments of the Romans. Even more specifically, when Christ is pierced in His side by the soldiers’ spear, St. John recounts that from Christ’s side came forth not only blood, but also water.

The early Church Fathers connected that water to that of Holy Baptism. When the word of God is combined with plain water and applied to us for our salvation, our thirsting souls are quenched! Remember the quote I read to you yesterday from John 6:35 where Jesus says, “whoever believes in me shall never thirst”? In John 4, Jesus told the woman at the well, “‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:10–14, ESV)

To many Protestants, the sacraments like Holy Baptism can’t exist, because they see God as working only internally, that is, within our hearts. They often are looking for “movements” of God within them, to give them certain emotions, like instincts, as to whether or not they are worthy or forgiven. To be sure, the Lord dwells within every Christian and forms and reforms every one’s conscience; but even the understanding that He gives us about those things are found in His external Word.

Throughout Scripture, from beginning to end, the Lord is attaching great power to mundane, common, and sometimes odd things by His Word. This is what’s going on with Moses raising His hands in order to make Israel prevail against Amalek. Though we’re not told of the specific word of God in this particular moment, we’ve seen it since Moses was first called by God and told him to throw his staff on the ground to become a serpent; so the assumption should be that God told Moses to do this. This is like God commanding the parents of Samson to have him grow his hair out long. You may remember, so long as Samson had long hair, he had a supernatural strength. When his hair was cut, he lost that strength. It wasn’t the hair in and of itself that gave him strength, but the Word of God combined with the hair. So it is with Moses raising his hands and Israel prevailing until his arms grew tired and when he lowered them, Amalek prevailed.

Many things in Holy Scripture are simply because God has declared them to be. This is why we cling to the Holy Sacraments of Baptism, Absolution, and the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper, which are all supernatural. They are instituted by God to give us certainty, not within ourselves, but to those things to which He has attached His Word and His sure & certain promises, most especially the certainty of the forgiveness of sins.

Let us pray. O God, You see that of ourselves we have no strength. By Your mighty power defend us from all adversities that may happen to the body and from all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting God, You despise nothing You have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent. Create in us new and contrite hearts that lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness we may receive from You full pardon and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Thanks for joining me to Purify the Heart! Tomorrow, in Exodus 18, we see the Lord use Moses’ father-in-law to ease his burden. Until then, grace be with you. Amen.

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