Sermon Tone Analysis

If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to Exodus 17 (page 112 in the Red Pew Bible in front of you).

And if you’re able and willing, please stand for the reading of God’s Holy Word.

Exodus 17, beginning with verse 1:

May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!

___________________________

A lot of this—our text for this morning—sounds familiar.

The people of Israel are grumbling, again.

Their grumbling is caused by their lack of water, again.

There’s no water to drink and the people grumble.

Hop in a time machine and travel back two weeks and you’d hear a very similar passage of Exodus read and then preached; turn back to the end of Exodus 15 and you’ll see something very much like this here in Exodus 17.

Some scholars believe that this text is merely a retelling of Exodus 15—but, really, the details are quite different, even if the circumstances are kind of the same.

Exodus 17 isn’t describing the same event as Exodus 15; this is a different, yet similar experience.

Once again, the people of Israel are out in the wilderness and they are out of water.

For the purpose of their sanctification (making them holy, making them into a people more and more like Himself, a people who trust Him more and more, a people set apart from the rest of the world)—for the purpose of their sanctification, God had led them away from the place of provision to a place where there was nothing to drink.

Again.

They were traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded.

All of this is of the Lord’s doing.

He has, in His providence, with His guiding hand, led them to this point and is leading them onward.

He wants them in this predicament; He’s working on them, testing them to see how they will respond to a familiar problem.

How are they going to react when they find themselves without water again?

One would hope they remember how the Lord provided for them the last time this happened, just days ago.

One would hope they would gather for prayer and then wait for God to provide as He had, trusting He always would.

Instead, the Israelites do what comes most naturally.

They complain.

But it’s more than complaining, more than grumbling.

Grumbling has morphed into demanding.

Grumbling has become quarreling.

This is not quarreling in the back-and-forth sense.

There’s no evidence that Moses is bickering with them, screaming and yelling at them as they’re screaming and yelling at him.

This is one-sided.

They are ticked, hostile.

This word—quarreling—suggests a new level of hostility.

They’ve turned their grumbling up to 11.

They might be quarreling with Moses, but they’re putting the Lord to the test.

The people take their complaints to Moses.

But their real beef is with God.

This, we’ve seen before: all our dissatisfaction shows our disappointment with God.

“We deserve better than this!”

“I don’t want this; give me that!

I want what she has, what he has!”

“I can’t believe the Lord brought me here; He must not care for me at all!”

The people demand that God provide for them, telling God what He had to do, or else.

The people don’t believe that God will protect them, either.

We’ve seen this before: “Brought us here to die, huh?

Great.

Thanks a lot, fella.

Gonna make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?

Good work.”

The people who had been saved by His hand now accuse the Almighty of intentionally putting them in harm’s way.

Again, all this so far is very familiar.

The questions of God’s provision and protection, though awful, are common in the Exodus story.

They’ve wondered if God would provide them with water, with food, and now (again) with water.

They’ve wondered why God would allow Pharaoh to rule over them, why He’d lead them into the desert to be overtaken by Pharaoh.

No doubt, they wondered why God didn’t strike down all the Egyptians immediately.

Will God provide for us?

Will God protect us?

These are questions we’ve seen before.

We’ll see them again.

But the other question they have…it’s new.

They’ve never posed it like this.

They’ve never asked it outright.

Is the Lord among us or not?

I want to raise my hand and say, “Um, yeah…just stop and think about it: what did you have for breakfast today?

Bread from heaven?

Manna?

What about the quail He just provided for you?

Or what about the pillar of cloud/fire that’s been leading you from place to place ever since you left Egypt?

Remember the sea opening up, allowing you to walk through on dry ground?

Or the plagues He performed against your enemies?

Is the Lord among you?!?

I think so!”

I want to interject, but I have the advantage of being detached from this story by several thousand years.

If I were there with them, hungry and thirsty, I can’t say I’d be any better; I’m not sure I’d be any less quarrelsome than they.

Circumstances cloud our judgment and we forget what He’s done for us, and so we ask: “Is the Lord among us or not?

Are you really there, God?”

My dad has suffered, struggling with cancer for more than a decade.

My beautiful wife and I are unable to have biological children.

Our best friends’ son has a rare and incurable autoimmune disease that will likely take his life before he reaches the age of 12.

Each and every week, members of my church family suffer loss and grief and sickness, they deal with pain and cancer, depression, financial stress.

The world is crumbling down around us—University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) beats Virginia…this world is upside down, chalk-full of hatred and racism, terrorism and murder, sexual exploitation and human trafficking, division (both political and otherwise), wars and rumors of wars...

Is the Lord among us or not?

Are you really there, God?

The lack of water (again) made them wonder if God was really with them after all.

They’ve seen His glory in the pillar of cloud.

He’s guiding them day and night, feeding them manna six days out of seven, and still they wonder if he’s there for them.

Their unbelief is unbelievable.

And yet, their unbelief is totally believable because I’ve been there.

I’ve asked the same questions of my Lord and Savior.

I’m ridiculously quick to forget His provision, His protection, even His presence.

Here’s a little mid-sermon application from Phil Ryken:

“When we are in need, we should recount all the ways that He has met our needs for food and shelter, for work and play, for love and friendship.”

Count your blessings, name them one by one.

“We should rehearse the times when He protected us, sparing us from physical danger or from the consequences of our own folly.”

We can, all of us, call to mind at least a handful of occasions when we should have, but didn’t, end up hurt or dead or in ‘the clink’ thanks to our own stupidity.

If the Lord hadn’t intervened, protecting us, where would we be?

“And we should revisit the places where He was close to us.”

I could pick literal places, physical places: Dr. Arroyo, Nueve Leon, Mexico where God called me to ministry, the campus of Southwestern College where He confirmed my calling, Greensburg Christian Church where I was commissioned into ministry by my church family...

Recount the times where He met our needs, rehearse the times when He protected us, revisit the places He was close to us.

“God is our provider and protector, our ever-present help in trouble.”

As the Psalmist sings:

>Much of Israel’s complaint at Massah-Meribah sounds familiar, with one significant difference.