Water & Rock
Finding God's Presence in the Wilderness
Exodus 17:1–7
There are seasons in life when God's presence seems almost unmistakable. Things are growing. Doors are opening. Prayers seem to be answered, and we can look at what is happening around us and confidently say, “God is here.”
Then there are other seasons.
The way forward becomes uncertain. Something we thought would work falls apart. A need appears that we cannot meet. The future becomes difficult to see, and eventually a much more uncomfortable question begins to surface:
Where is God?
Or perhaps more specifically:
Is God really present with us, and if He is, how do we know?
It is a deeply human question, and it lies at the centre of Israel's experience in Exodus 17. The people find themselves in the wilderness without water, caught between everything God has already done and a present situation in which His provision suddenly seems difficult to see.
Their story reminds us that faith is not lived only beside the Red Sea when the waters are parting. Sometimes faith has to be lived in the desert when there appears to be no water at all.
The God Who Brought Us Here
By the time Israel reaches the events of Exodus 17, they have already witnessed extraordinary things.
God has brought them out of slavery in Egypt. They have crossed through the Red Sea. The Egyptian army that pursued them has been defeated. They have experienced God's deliverance in ways few generations ever would. And now they are thirsty. There is something almost painfully familiar about that sequence. Yesterday's experience of God's faithfulness does not automatically prevent today's anxiety.
Israel has seen what God can do, but the problem directly in front of them feels more immediate than the miracles behind them. The same people who walked through the sea now find themselves looking around at a dry wilderness and wondering what they are supposed to do.
Throughout Israel's story, this tension appears repeatedly. God is teaching His people who He is: the God above every other god, the Creator of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham and Jacob, and the God who will provide for His people.
The wilderness becomes one of the places where Israel has to learn to trust that truth.
Not simply when provision is visible, but when it isn't.
When the Problem Becomes Bigger Than Our Memory
Israel responds to the lack of water by looking for someone to blame. Egypt had been terrible, but at least it was familiar. There had been shelter. There had been food. Life in slavery was oppressive, but they knew what tomorrow would probably look like. Now they are free, but standing in a desert without water. So they turn on Moses.
Why did you bring us here?
In their fear, Moses becomes responsible for the situation. Yet their accusation against Moses also reveals something deeper about their view of God. The God who brought them out of Egypt, in their minds, might no longer be capable of providing what they need now.
Their immediate problem has become bigger than their memory of God's faithfulness.
That is not an experience unique to Israel.
We can do something remarkably similar.
When uncertainty arrives, our instinct is often to find the solution ourselves. We analyse the situation, identify who might be responsible and try to work out how we can fix everything.
And when there appears to be no solution, we begin wondering whether the situation might simply be too big.
Too complicated.
Too far gone.
Too impossible.
We remember what God has done before, but somehow this problem feels different.
Israel's question eventually becomes the question behind the whole passage:
“Is the Lord among us or not?”
Two Responses to the Wilderness
Exodus 17 places two responses to crisis beside one another. Israel turns toward blame. Moses turns toward God.
Moses is hardly calm about the situation. The people are furious enough that he fears they may stone him. But instead of attempting to become the solution himself, he cries out to God:
“What am I to do with these people?”
That difference matters.
Moses does not know where the water will come from either. He simply knows where to take the problem. And God's answer to Moses becomes His answer to Israel's deeper question.
Is God still among them? Yes.
God Uses What They Already Know
God instructs Moses to go ahead of the people and take some of Israel's elders with him. He must also take his staff, the same staff that has already been part of God's work through Moses. Then God directs him toward a particular rock at Horeb. Moses is told to strike it. Water will come out. And the people will drink.
There is something beautiful about the way God responds. He does not need to create an entirely new language through which Israel can recognise Him. Moses is still there. The staff is still there. The elders know the story of what God has already done. The same God who acted before is acting again.
God uses things that are already familiar to remind Israel of something they should already know:
He has not changed.
The God who provided for Abraham and Jacob is still their God.
The God who confronted Egypt is still their God.
The God who led them through the sea is still their God.
And the God who was faithful yesterday has not suddenly disappeared because today looks different.
Sometimes we search desperately for a new sign from God when His previous faithfulness is already part of the testimony surrounding us.
Water From a Rock
And yet, while God uses familiar things, the way He provides is anything but ordinary. He brings water from a rock. The wilderness is full of rocks. Rocks are not unusual there. But nobody looks at a dry rock in the desert and thinks: There is our water supply.
That is precisely what makes the image so powerful. God uses something apparently incapable of meeting Israel's need to demonstrate that their survival does not ultimately depend upon Moses, the staff, the elders or even the rock itself. It depends upon God.
The impossibility of the source points toward the One who provides through it.
Israel needs water, and God gives them water. Not because they have engineered a solution. Not because Moses has discovered a hidden natural resource. God provides because God is the One who gives and sustains life. The rock therefore becomes more than simply the location of a miracle.
It becomes an answer: Yes, I am still here.
We Cannot Be Our Own Saviours
That message remains uncomfortable for us because we generally like being able to solve things. When something goes wrong, our first question is often: “How do I fix this?”
There is nothing wrong with taking responsibility, working hard or looking for solutions. But underneath our desire for control can lie the assumption that ultimately everything depends upon us.
Exodus confronts that assumption. Israel cannot save itself. Moses cannot manufacture water from the rock. Their lives depend upon something they cannot produce for themselves. And in that sense, their story points toward a much deeper truth about our relationship with God:
We cannot be our own saviours.
The salvation we ultimately need cannot be achieved through enough effort, intelligence or control. It comes from God.
For Christians, we see the fulfilment of that promise most clearly in Jesus Christ. Through the cross, we are invited into God's promises. Salvation is not something we manufacture. It is something God has done for us.
Signs That Help Us Remember
The difficulty, of course, is that we forget. Israel forgot remarkably quickly. So do we. That is one reason the Church has been given visible signs that continually call us back to God's promises.
Baptism and Holy Communion remind us of something greater than what we can see in our immediate circumstances. In Baptism, we are reminded that we belong to God and have been brought into His community. We are not alone.
At the Communion table, we remember Christ and the promise of God's presence and grace.
These sacraments become visible reminders of an invisible reality: God has acted, God has made promises, and God's faithfulness does not depend upon the season in which we currently find ourselves.
The Holy Spirit is another assurance of that presence. God has not simply acted somewhere in the distant past and left us to continue alone.
He remains with His people.
God in Every Season
Perhaps that is why the language of seasons is so helpful. Not every season of faith feels the same. There are seasons of growth. Seasons of renewal. Seasons in which we can see God working almost everywhere we look.
And there are desert seasons. Seasons of uncertainty. Seasons of exhaustion or disappointment. Seasons when we pray and do not immediately see an answer. Seasons when the question “Is God really here?” feels much easier to ask than to answer.
Exodus 17 does not promise us that God's people will never experience the desert. Israel is quite literally in one. Instead, it tells us something far more important:
The desert does not mean God has left.
The absence of an obvious solution is not the absence of God. The size of the problem does not determine the size of God's power. Israel looked at its circumstances and saw no water. God looked at a rock.
Learning to Recognise God's Presence
Perhaps our difficulty is sometimes not that God is absent, but that we have already decided what His presence should look like. We expect the answer to come from somewhere that makes sense. Water should come from a river, spring or well. Not a rock. But God is not limited to the solutions we can imagine.
He can use familiar things in unexpected ways. He can provide through people, circumstances and places we would never have chosen ourselves. He can sustain His people through what appears impossible.
That does not mean every problem will disappear in the way we want it to. It does mean that the Christian response to uncertainty does not have to begin with panic. We can remember.
Remember the God who has acted before.
Remember the cross.
Remember our Baptism.
Remember the table.
Remember the Spirit who lives with God's people.
Remember that our lives have never depended entirely upon our own ability to keep everything together.
Is the Lord Among Us or Not?
That is the question Israel asked at Massah and Meribah. It is also a question many of us will ask at some point. Perhaps you are in a season of growth and God's presence feels close. Perhaps you are standing in a desert and wondering where the water will come from. Exodus does not shame us for recognising that the desert is dry.
Instead, it redirects our attention toward the God who remains present within it. The God who gives life is also the God who sustains it. The God who provided before remains capable of providing again. The God who made His promises to His people has not abandoned them. And ultimately, our confidence rests not in our ability to solve every problem, but in His character.
Whether we find ourselves in renewal or uncertainty, abundance or need, celebration or wilderness, the promise remains:
God is with us.
Sometimes the water comes from exactly where we expect it.
And sometimes,
God brings water from a rock.
Comments