Title: God Calls the Thirst
God calls the thirsty
“21. When the LORD made them pass through the desert, he did not thirst for them; he made water flow out of the rock for them, and he split the rock so that water gushed forth” (Isaiah 48:21).
I. Text Commentary
This text is the story of the prophet Isaiah as he apologised for God's love for the people of Israel. Although God was faithful to the people, Israel often loved idols and led a life of rebellion. But God, by beating them and turning them back, through their hardships, purged them, carried out to the end what he had made his people. And while defending how God mercifully led Israel, the Prophet recalls an important event that the people experienced in the wilderness.
II. put to the test with thirst
A. When passing through the desert
It is an event in which the people were put to the test because of their thirst as they passed through the desert in the wilderness. The people escaped from Egypt and came to the Wilderness of Sin, and when they left and reached Rephidim, they were thirsty because there was no water. Because of this thirst, the people eventually resented Moses. However, this resentment includes hatred for the God who placed him in such an environment.
B. Trying God with Thirst
They tested God with thirst. Exodus says: “He called the name of that place Massara or Meribah, because the children of Israel quarreled, or they tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not” (Exodus 17:7). The meaning of these words is to obtain water from God through Moses.
C. Long-remembered wrath of God
Here the people are saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” In other words, if you give water, God exists, and if you don't give water, then God is not there because you can't. This is not faith. Faith is trusting and relying on God to do all things in need, and these are to see if God can do it or not. Israel's attitude of unbelief was remembered for a long time in God's heart. That is why Moses used it as a whip to warn the people in the same three places in Deuteronomy 6, 9, and 33, 'Do not put the LORD your God to the test as you did at Massa'. Faith is deeply relying on God when faced with difficulties while facing your own incompetence with all your heart. The reason God didn't give water so that the people would become hard enough to stone Moses is to let them know what it is like to be inside the people, which they can't see in the face of prosperity. If God had brought water to meet at the right time, the people of Israel would not have known that they were human beings who went down to the bottom.
III. water from the rock
A. God on the Rock
How to solve the problems of the people of Israel presents us with a great challenge. God has commanded. ‘Take the staff that worked miracles and stand on the rock of Horeb. I will stand on it too. And I will stand face to face with you. Then you must strike the rock and give it water.' To get water, you have to go down to the valley and dig wet ground to drink even a sip of muddy water. Instead of solving all the problems that arise in the world with faith ascending to the rock, if you find a worldly way to go down, you will forget your faith and the things of the world. God delivers us in a completely different way than we thought.
B. Jesus Christ Suffering
Then why did he tell us to go up the rock instead of going down? This rock is Jesus Christ. Paul sang, “Our fathers all drank from a well of water from the same rock, and this rock is Christ.” So, through this incident where the people of Israel thirsted in the wilderness, God said that human beings who are suffering as if they were going to die from spiritual starvation could not get water to quench their thirst anywhere in the world, but only through Christ Jesus that they could receive this life. He foretells that he will drink from the fountain.
IV. From the cross, the fountain of grace that never runs dry
God gives grace to those who drank the water of life of grace that flows from Jesus who tore himself on the cross like water gushing out from a rock that has been broken from a rock. And when he suffers, he thinks of the persecution and trials that Jesus suffered while he was on earth. When I prosper, the Lord is far away, but when I suffer, I experience the Lord in me and the Lord in me, and I experience Christ's suffering and Christ with me in my suffering. So the cross is a fountain of grace that never runs dry. All our rebellion is to quench our thirst with what is in this world, to dig unstorable cisterns and store water there. What we need is to get out of a parched soul. So that our hearts are filled with the fountain of God's grace, and the fountain of God's life overflows in us, overflowing with the Father's love for the glory of God.