Sermon Tone Analysis
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Are We There Yet?
I. - Bitter Water Made Sweet
II. - Bread from Heaven and Water from the Rock
III. - The First Battle
Moses and the Israelites had just celebrated God’s victory over Pharaoh and Moses and the Israelites sing a song of praise and worship to God.
Miriam led the women dancing and singing and worshiping God in faith and gratitude for His deliverance.
Well just three short days later the party is over.
The Israelites have gone into the Desert of Shur and for three days they traveled without finding water.
They are hot, thirsty and weary and when they finally reach a spring of water, the water is bitter so it is undrinkable.
And what do they do?
They grumble against Moses saying “What shall we drink”?
Their faith was already faltering!
Moses called on the Lord and God answered Moses prayer by telling him to cast a branch from a tree into the water.
The people witnessed the provision of God as the water became sweet and drinkable.
Three days!
72 hours!
They had just walked through the Red Sea on dry land and seen their enemy destroyed and still they grumbled.
They were grumbling TO Moses but they were grumbling against God.
They were being impatient, untrusting and ungrateful.
And yet God delivered and provided for them once again.
At this point, I tend to get a little judgmental about the Israelites.
How could they find it in their hearts to grumble?
I like to think that I would have been the one in the crowd that would encourage my fellow Israelites to remember God’s faithfulness.
This past weekend I attended a 4 day conference.
It was amazing!
My husband was working and could not attend so I went with my small group.
The worship was powerful, I could feel the Holy Spirit moving throughout the conference.
It was a mountaintop experience.
And then I left the mountaintop and went home.
I came home to a messy house, piles of laundry, an empty refrigerator and a grumpy family.
The descent came quickly.
As I was scrubbing the bathtub because my daughter had imported sand from the north shore all over the bathroom, I will admit, I was a bit grumbly myself.
Seriously, they are adults after all!
And then I felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
I should be thankful that I have a bathroom to clean, running water, clothes to wear, electricity, how God has provided for me!
It had been less than 24 hours and here I was judging the Israelites for 3 days.
Thankfully, the same patience, love and grace that God showed the Israelites, He shows me all the time.
God was testing the Israelites and unfortunately they failed this test.
The failure wasn’t in lack of water but of lack of faith.
However, God provided not only by turning the bitter water into sweet, life sustaining water but he led them to Elim where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.
I wonder if they would have arrived sooner at this beautiful oasis if only they had trusted God to be who He says He is.
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SLIDE
God is establishing a covenant between Himself and Israel.
Their obligation is to obey God’s commands and God’s obligation would be to protect them from the plagues that struck Egypt.
God promised to heal His people.
As we move on to our next division, the Israelites came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai.
It was vast and a hostile environment of sand and stone.
It was the perfect place for God to test his children and build their character.
In our next division
The people were complaining to Moses, but their real problem was with God.
After all, Moses was simply following the lead of God’s pillars.
Israel needed to realize that the saving God of the Red Sea would be the providing God of the desert.
Who could have imagined what a slow process this was going to be.
This time they would face a new test, the test of hunger, would they look to God with anticipation and trust that He would meet their needs or not?
The Israelites failed this test and grumbled to Moses and Aaron.
The Israelites grumbling reveals just how fragile their faith really was.
They were remembering the food they had in Egypt but amazingly they completely forgot the harsh lives they had as slaves!
They had chosen to forget what life under Pharaoh had been truly like.
Worse, they actually thought God might let them die of starvation.
A strong faith would have been continually praising God for redeeming them from slavering and trusting Him to preserve their lives.
Their problem was not just a lack of trust.
It wasn’t simply that they were whiny.
The people bridled; they were totally unwilling to submit to God.
And so they attacked Moses.
It was way easier to complain to Moses than it would be to verbally attack Yahweh!
SLIDE
And Moses did what God asks each of us to do.
He went directly to the Lord.
When we go directly to our heavenly Father with our needs and concerns it honors him for it acknowledges His authority and His involvement in our daily lives.
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There is a huge difference between complaining about God and complaining to God.
A healthy relationship with God also calls for us to go to the Lord with our complaints, frustrations and fears.
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God announced a test for the people.
He would provide food for them, but He would also see whether they would follow His instruction for gathering the food.
If they could not be trusted to obey in small matters, such as gathering food, how could they be trusted in much more important matters?
God would provide for His people daily and it would teach them to depend on God daily.
God will supply us with everything we need - but not necessarily with everything we desire or want.
We should trust God to know how much we actually need of what we want.
God will supply us with everything we need - but not necessarily with everything we desire or want.
We should trust God to know how much we actually need of what we want.
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Moses clarified for the people what the real issue was.
What was being tested was not the quality of Moses’ and Aaron’s leadership, but the degree to which the people would really trust their God.
They had grumbled against Moses and Aaron but in reality their grumbling was against God.
And more importantly, God had heard them!
However we see something truly amazing, each time the Israelites complain, God patiently provides for their needs!
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In God’s timing, the needs of the people for food were met.
The quail which visited the Hebrew camp were probably a migrating flock.
Huge numbers of quail migrate north during the spring after wintering in Africa.
When the fatigued birds stop to rest, they can be caught easily.
God had already made provisions for the meat, but the people grumbled before it was time for those provisions to go into effect.
It is hard to determine whether the quail and manna operated beyond or within the laws of nature.
Either way, God’s miracle of provision was His providing the exact amount needed on a regular daily schedule.
SLIDE
This chapter of Exodus closes with a reminder to the reader: “an omer is one tenth of an ephah.
As a unit of dry measure, the omer was a little more than two quarts.
Basically, it was about one and a half water bottles.
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