So numbers 20 is where our reading
will be from. And just as we prepare to have
that reading, just one or two little thoughts by way of introduction
here for our younger listeners. is a very busy chapter and in
fact it's a chapter that is really the beginning of another stage
in the history of the children of Israel. It kind of brings
a number of historical incidents together, as we'll see as we
begin to do our reading. In this chapter, we're told about
the death of Miriam, who was sister to Moses and Aaron. And also separately, at the end
of the chapter, we're told about the death of Aaron as well. And perhaps we'll come back to
Aaron's death another time. We're told also in this chapter
about an incident with the people of Edom. The Edomites were the
children of Esau. You'll remember that Jacob and
Esau were brothers and twin brothers. And the children of Israel expected
that they might be helped by the Edomites as they were on
their journey through the wilderness. They looked to them to give them
passage, access through their land on their journey to Canaan. And we discover here that the
people of Edom refused permission to the children of Israel to
pass through their land. in part of their journeys and
the children of Israel are forced to turn aside from the borders
of Eden and continue in their wilderness journey. They had
to go on another route as a result of that towards Canaan. Despite
offering very reasonable terms to the Edomites for anything
that they might use or damage or any loss that the Edomites
might have as they passed through their land. However, the verses
that I want to concentrate on today are verses that mention
the problem of water once again. And specifically, it's the verses
from 7 to 11. So if you want to go back and
read the whole chapter at your leisure sometime, you can do
that. We're not going to read the whole
chapter at the moment. But I need to set the scene a
little bit for you. The last time we spoke, well
we spoke about Aaron's rod that buddied, but the context of Aaron's
rod that buddied and the things that we said there was that the
children of Israel were on the borders of Canaan, but they had
refused, because of unbelief, to enter into the country. They'd
sent in some spies, 10 spies said, don't go in there, the
people are too strong, we'll be defeated. Two spies, Caleb
and Joshua, said, no, no, we should go into the country, the
Lord will deliver this country into our hands, as he promised.
But the people went with the 10 naysayers. and they turned
around and went back into the desert. And we were told that
the Lord, as a punishment to the people, said that none of
those who had made that decision would ever enter into the promised
land. That only the two faithful spies,
Caleb and Joshua, and all those who were under the age of 20
would go into the land. But otherwise, the people would
wander in the desert for, well, another 38 years and they would
all die in the desert. And actually, this chapter takes
place towards the end of that 38-year period. Now that might
be a little bit surprising that we're not going to hear very
much about that period, but very little is recorded in the Bible
about those 38 years. A little bit later in Numbers,
we're told of the various staging points that the people stopped
at where they camped, but it does appear that they were just
wandering and waiting to die in the wilderness. And here we
come to this chapter 20 in the book of Numbers. And most of
the original people are now dead and a new generation have grown
up. All those who were under 20 at
the time of leaving the borders of Canaan are now well into their
30s and approaching 40 and a new generation has grown up and all
the older people have died off or the vast majority. And the
people are once again to be tried by the Lord about a lack of water. So you'll remember that their
parents had had the same problem almost 40 years before in what's
called the Wilderness of Sin or Mount Sinai. And it's noticeable
when we go on to read this little portion just how similar the
responses of this new generation of people to the things that
were said in those past times. They even used the same phrases
and the same arguments that they learned from their parents to
criticise God's ways and to criticise God's servants. It's almost as
if history was repeating itself. And by this we may learn that
children exhibit the same waywardness and defiance before the Lord
as did their parents. They hadn't learned anything
by the experience of their parents, so that it really hadn't mattered
whether the Lord punished the people or whether he had blessed
them with wonderful miracles. The same mistakes were made time
after time, and the same attitudes were displayed time after time. And when the people complained
to Moses and Aaron, we find that these two men who had been faithful
so much to the Lord, once again took the problem to the Lord. And we read about that in verses
2 to 6 of this chapter. And then we discover that the
Lord speaks to Moses. So look at your Bibles if you
have them open there at numbers 20 and this is what the Lord
says in verse 7. And the Lord speak unto Moses
saying, Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, that's
the assembly of all the people, thou and Aaron thy brother, and
speak ye unto the rock before their eyes, and it shall give
forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out
of the rock, so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts
drink. And Moses took the rod from before
the Lord, as he commanded him. This was Moses' own rod, it wasn't
Aaron's rod, it was Moses' own rod, which was kept close by
Aaron's rod. Moses took the rod from before
the Lord, as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered
the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them,
hear now ye rebels, must we fetch you water out of this rock? 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. So here in these few verses that
we've read, we can see that once again, the Lord provided water
for the people and their animals, as he had done 40 years previously. And indeed, in a very similar
way, it was water that came from a rock, just as it had done at
Mount Sinai, here it did again at Meribah. And in fact, that
word Meribah, it means to strive with the Lord, was used with
reference to both places. It wasn't the same event, it
was two different events 40 years apart, but they both go by the
same name because here the people strove with the Lord concerning
water. He tested them again. and they
showed their same opposition. And despite the complaints of
the people, the Lord was faithful to preserve them and their cattle. However, perhaps the saddest
part of this whole episode is not the attitude of the people,
ungrateful and dishonouring as it was, but what we subsequently
learn about Moses and Aaron personally. These men are themselves now
guilty of unbelief and the Lord tells them that they too shall
not enter the promised land. So not only would all the people
over 20, 20 years of age and over, die in the wilderness except
Caleb and Joshua, but Moses and Aaron would be amongst those
who died. They would die in the wilderness
because of their unbelief and because they did not sanctify
the Lord before the people. Now we read about that in verse
12 and 13, so once again just turn your eyes to the scriptures
if you have them there, and verse 12 says this, And the Lord spake
unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not to sanctify
me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall
not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them. This is the water of Meribah
because the children of Israel strove with the Lord and he was
sanctified in them. So I'm not sure which part of
what Moses and Aaron did or said this day was wrong. I'm not sure what it was that
was wrong here. Some people suggest that it was
because Moses hit the rock, and indeed hit it twice, when he
was told to speak to the rock. But then we might wonder why,
if that was the problem, that the Lord explicitly told Moses
that he was to take his rod with him. Some say that it was because
he hit it twice when it should only have been hit once as it
was at Sinai. But then again, we find that
both Moses and Aaron are told that they were guilty of unbelief
when it was only Moses who struck the rod against the rock. Some think that it was to do
with the fact that Moses said, must we fetch you water out of
this rock? As if this was some joint effort
with God on his part and not the Lord's own doing. Or perhaps
it's because he called the people rebels. Maybe it was a mix of
all of those things. Maybe it was something to do
with Moses' anger on the occasion. But the Lord was displeased with
Moses and Aaron because the glory of the Lord was not more clearly
honoured and set forth on this occasion. And both Moses and
Aaron, we're told, were guilty of this lack of faith. "'You
believed me not,' said the Lord, "'to sanctify me in the eyes
of the children of Israel.'" And because of this, neither
Moses nor Aaron would lead the people into the promised land.
We might discover a bit more about that on another occasion,
but that would be a responsibility that fell to Joshua. Here are
a couple of lessons that I want to leave with you just with respect
to this. And the first one is this. These
trials that the children of Israel faced were trials that God sent
to test the people. And trials are sent by God with
his knowledge to serve his purposes. And it's our response to the
trials and God's calling for us to trust the Lord's wisdom
in bringing those trials upon us that is the reason why these
trials come. They're tests to see how we will
respond. Will they cause us to doubt the
Lord's goodness? To doubt His wisdom and His power? Or will they encourage us to
trust the Lord more? Proverbs chapter 3 verse 5 says,
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine
own understanding. In all thy ways, that is in your
trials and in your good times, in all thy ways acknowledge him. and he shall direct thy paths. When we have troubles in our
life, when we have problems, when we have anxieties, when
we have stress and pressure, let us take that trouble to the
Lord. This trouble has been sent in
order to test us and it is as we lean not on our own understanding,
but acknowledge him in all our ways that he will direct our
paths and lead us through. And here's another application.
We've seen before that there are pictures of the Lord Jesus
Christ in these passages. And we've seen before, 40 years
ago, that the rock struck by Moses was a very clear type of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus was struck
by the rod of God's justice, the rod of God's justice against
our sin. Here in the wilderness, life-giving
water flowed to a thirsty people. And in the Lord's death at Calvary,
life-giving blood flowed from Christ's side. cleanse our sins
and to justify our spirits and reconcile us to God. But let
us remember this, that these types in the Old Testament are
not simply pictures. but they're pointers. They have
a purpose. They have a direction. They point
us to the Lord Jesus. As they pointed the people in
past ages to Christ the Messiah, the Old Testament people believed
that Christ would come, bless them, and deliver them. And by
the types, the Lord showed how the blessing would be obtained. and how that longed for deliverance
would be accomplished. The very striking of that rock
spoke of the fact that there would be a striking and an opening
up of the body of that rock in order for the life to come forth. And it was necessary for the
Lord Jesus Christ to be struck on our behalf. It was necessary
that God's justice and judgment should find in the Lord Jesus
Christ a substitute and a sacrifice for sin. It was necessary that
he be bruised and killed for the redemption of his people.
Paul could say, the life which I now live in the flesh, I live
by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself
for me. Because Christ loved his people,
he gave his life. He suffered and he died. These
people lived by the water that flowed from the rock. And we
live by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave
himself for us. And just one final point and
then we're done today. Let us never take the mercies
of God for granted. Let us not become presumptuous
or careless with them. After all the things that Moses
and Aaron had seen, all the mercies that they had been shown, and
all the blessings they had been given, and the services that
they had performed, these two men, to some extent, to some
degree, according to the word of the Lord, failed to honour
and sanctify the Lord as they should have done. And every time
we come into the Lord's presence, each time we come to worship
the Lord, every occasion when the Lord evidences Himself in
our presence, in this world, be it in the preaching of the
word of God and the gospel that's declared, or the circumstances
of our lives, or his dealings with us in the world, we ought
to be looking to discern and acknowledge his hand, his purpose,
his glory. Maybe it was that this people
wearied Moses and Aaron with their unbelief and their disrespect. And yet, like wayward children,
they had to be reminded time after time of the Lord's glory
and the Lord's goodness. And that's true for us as well. I will not be allowed to lead
the Lord's people to the promised land, and to pastor the Lord's
flock in this wilderness world, if I do not constantly sanctify
the Saviour. That is, lift Him up, honour
His name, honour His words, His works,
and especially His sacrifice and His death for our salvation. When it comes down to it, sanctifying
the Lord before you in the things that I do and say is the only
job I have. It is my greatest responsibility
to lift up the Lord Jesus Christ before His people. May we never
become self-satisfied and smug in our own opinions about our
faith, but may we constantly remember it is of the Lord's
mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail
not. Amen.