Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Today's Passage : Today's Passage:Water from the Rock
Bible Verse :Exodus 17:1-7
"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. 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?”
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?” So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”
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. 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. 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?”
Exodus Map - Hammond Exodus Map 2"
Message:
Although place names in Exodus, especially the Sinai, are nearly impossible to locate with any accuracy, the Israelites have certainly moved into the lower half of the peninsula and are still in the west. It is a land filled with deserts, and the Hebrews have found a good one; there is no water at all.
water of life John 4
By now, the dynamics of the journey are becoming familiar. The Hebrews seem to face certain death. They complain loudly, for their trust in God is weak and their tribulation considerable. God, communicating through His prophet Moses, intervenes; and in this case, the miracle God brings, to reinforce the lesson He intends to pound into their minds for forty years, is spectacular.
Moses' act is, in itself, spectacular: striking a hot, bare, dry boulder in the middle of a scorched desert, whereupon a spring of potable water gushes forth, sufficient for 30,000 people and their livestock. But even more, it demonstrates God's fundamental creative power. Fresh water determines where life can exist on earth, and thus creates a natural and frequently-used Biblical metaphor for God's grace, without which spiritual life cannot exist. E.g.:
Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” John 4:13-14
Moses performs an act of physical salvation; but layered onto it is a broader message of spiritual salvation, looking ahead to Christ and even Peter, the founder of Christ's church, the "rock upon which" Christ would ensure the continued salvation of the faithful after His ascension.
The desert has come to embody a retreat into a state of spiritual openness, for being there deprives one of physical distraction. It symbolizes (and brings about) what Jesus called becoming "poor in spirit", that is, being free of internal suppositions and thus open to God's word. And so the water of life gushes into the Hebrews, when they are the most thirsty, setting the stage for God to bring His commandments to humanity.
Meditation
:
Prayer :
All through this day, O Lord, by the power of your quickening Spirit, let me touch the lives of others for good, whether through the word I speak, the prayer I speak, or the life I live.. ...Amen
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