Exodus 17 "Streams in the Desert" Scott Hoezee

It is curious in life how at times similar streams of thought come together simultaneously from several different quarters. For instance, last week Sunday morning you may recall that the sermon from Romans 7 dealt at least in part with the law of God. Based on Paul's words we talked about what are sometimes called the first two "uses" of the law: namely, first the law is a guide for civil order that shows us the way life is supposed to work, and then second the law is something that accuses us, condemning us of the sins we have committed (and so, ideally, leading us to throw ourselves on the mercy of God).

But before that sermon was finished, I mentioned to you also the Reformed "third use of the law" which claims that after being saved by grace, we may find that the law turns into a delightful guide for grateful living. Because grace has already saved us, the law ceases to be a source of condemnation for us. But because grace has at the same time transformed us, we take a new approach to the law and see in it a chance to glorify God. Love makes all the difference, and so you may recall my kiss analogy.

When we are children, we sometimes need to be ordered to kiss various people and then do so only grudgingly. But the day may come when we grow up and find ourselves standing next to a beloved one at a wedding ceremony. At that time a minister may also order you to give a kiss, but in that case you are only too eager to do it! So also with God's law: before having the love of Jesus cascade over us by grace, the law looks like a set of grim duties as well as a pack of reminders of how lousy we are. After God's love comes to us, we see in the law a joyful opportunity to live in exactly the way we were created to live.

Well, no sooner had I finished working on that Romans 7 sermon the week before last and I received a letter from a friend of mine who is a Lutheran pastor near Chicago. He was wondering if I could help him to learn more about the Calvinist-Reformed idea on the "third use of the law." As you may know, Martin Luther disagreed hugely with John Calvin on this point, seeing no function whatsoever for the law in the life of redeemed people. So my Lutheran friend never really learned precisely what Calvin said on this point, only that Calvin should not have said it at all! So I then corresponded with my friend on this point.

Then last week, no sooner did I finish that correspondence, and I turned to Exodus 17 only to discover yet another set of themes relating to the law of God. This is not obvious to see in this passage, but it is wonderful and amazing what a good commentator can point out, as happened for me when I checked Terrence Fretheim's commentary on this chapter.

A casual reading of Exodus 17 seems to yield no more than yet another story about the people of Israel getting hot and thirsty in the wilderness, and so complaining to Moses about their lack of libations. In that sense, this looks like a mirror image of last week's passage of Exodus 16. In fact, much of what we said last week about life in the wilderness (and about God's abiding presence even in those desert periods of suffering and stress) could be repeated in connection to tonight's passage. Indeed, when I read these verses last Tuesday morning, my heart sank a bit, wondering what new I could say about this chapter that I hadn't already talked about a week ago tonight.

But then Dr. Fretheim stopped me in my tracks by highlighting one little word that I, to be honest, skipped lightly past when first reading this chapter: the word "Horeb" in verse 6. The so-called "rock of Horeb" on which Yahweh said he would stand when Moses and the elders of Israel arrived is apparently a reference to the region at the foot of Mount Sinai. Horeb is the same place where Moses was said to have been in Exodus 3 when God appeared to him in the Burning Bush. It is the same place to which at that time Yahweh told Moses he would return one day with the people of Israel in tow. And it is the location where ultimately God will give his law, chiefly the Ten Commandments. Horeb is, in short, a key location freighted with meaning.

In truth, this reference to Horeb in Exodus 17:6 creates a textual problem. We are not entirely clear about any of the precise desert locations referred to in Exodus. We don't fully know exactly what constituted the Desert of Sin, the region of Rephidim, and other such places. What we do know is that Exodus 19 will tell us that the people will have to journey some distance from Rephidim (where they are when chapter 17 opens) to Mount Sinai. If that is so, then how can the place that eventually got dubbed "Massah and Meribah" also be Horeb? If the people don't get to Horeb/Sinai until chapter 19, how is it that Moses gives them water in that same place in chapter 17? In the end we're not sure, though some have proposed that maybe "Horeb" was the name of that entire region--perhaps the whole area of foothills and mountains in the Sinai range was broadly referred to as the region of Horeb. That is a plausible enough explanation for the geography of this chapter.

But the geography is less vital here than the theology. The fact of the matter is that "Horeb" is a theological shorthand for the mountain of God, for the place where God revealed himself to Moses in the Burning Bush and the place from which God will definitively dispense his laws, commandments, and statutes very soon. Yet in this chapter Horeb also becomes a place of grumbling and testing. As we read in verse 7, the people are looking for an answer to the question, "Is Yahweh among us or not?" As proof that Yahweh is indeed among his people in also this desert and dangerous place, God once again graciously provides the people with life-giving water from the rock (and he does so without even the slightest hint of a rebuke, similar to what we noted in chapter 16 last week).

God causes streams of water to flow in the desert, not only proving his presence to the people but preserving their lives again as well. But why, as I have been hinting, might it be significant that this living water flowed from the rock called Horeb? Because listen: this means that when the law of God also "flows" out from that place called Horeb, that law will likewise be a sign that God is among his people. What's more, it will mean that all things being equal, the people should eventually be able to see in that law a blessing that is every bit as much about bringing and preserving true life as are streams of water in a desert place. The water gives life, the law gives life. The water shows God's love, the law shows God's love. Whatever flows from the Rock of Horeb, whether it is water or laws, is to be seen as a sign of God's presence and blessing.

Ah, but neither the Israelites nor contemporary people see things quite that way, do they!? When was the last time you heard someone pray something along the lines of, "O Lord God, if you truly love me and want to reveal yourself to me, send me some rules to follow!" Indeed, when was the last time you yourself looked for a blessing to come in your life in the form of laws? In truth what most people, ourselves included, want from God is on a par with streams of water in a wilderness place. We want health and wealth, we want good food and drink, we want to get a meaningful job that allows us maybe to buy a nice house, take some nice vacations, and sock some money away for our retirement years.

Although I don't watch too much religious television on cable, I've seen enough over the years to know that when those televangelists get rolling in promising people this or that great blessing of God--this or that sign that God is really present in their very lives--the kinds of things that get mentioned tend to be material blessings and not the great joy that can be found when God hands you a list of rules to follow. The Ten Commandments are things to post in public schools, according to some people, as a way to make kids behave, shape up, and get serious. And if showing people this list of rules really does manage to make a difference in how they behave, then that's wonderful but even still we would not see that on a par with having God answer our prayer that we can get that promotion we put in for at work. Rules may whip you into shape, but a promotion is a true blessing of God.

Yet despite the geographical problems it introduces, Exodus 17's reference to these streams of water flowing from Horeb is a clever way to remind us that there are more ways than one by which God can show his presence and more ways than one by which to perceive just what constitutes a true blessing of God. But already by the time you get to Exodus 19-20 when God gives his law from Mount Sinai, from the Rock of Horeb, you know right away that the people of Israel did not see law and water as being at all similar.

When God begins to thunder his law, the people stop up their ears and run for cover, telling Moses to go fetch the law in private. Once Moses does this, and then takes a good long while doing it, the people get impatient, conclude Moses is dead, and so revert to pagan revelry around a golden calf. When waters flowed from Horeb, the people lapped it up gratefully and happily. When the law flowed from Horeb, the people were alternately bored and scared and finally also impatient.

They were like little children who defined worthwhile things rather narrowly. When I was in Kindergarten, I remember going trick-or-treating on Halloween. At most of our neighbors' houses there in Alger Heights I got exactly what you would expect: candy bars, suckers, milk duds, and M&Ms. But I vividly recall the one house we went to. This man was very well-meaning but ultimately highly disappointing to a 6-year-old. After opening the door in response to my "trick or treat," he began not to give me candy but rather a small lecture on needy children in other parts of the world. I found this to be merely odd and not a little boring even as it delayed my getting at other houses. In the end what this man dropped into my little pumpkin bucket was not a piece of candy but a brochure telling about the work of UNICEF.

As a little kid, I no more saw a blessing in that UNICEF brochure than Israel perceived initially any blessings coming from God's catalogue of laws, rules, and regulations. Candy in your bucket and streams of water in the desert are one thing, discourses on life are a rather different thing.

But by telling us that the waters of Meribah flowed from the same place as the law of God, the author of Exodus is reminding us to recalibrate our perceptions. Eventually in the Hebrew and Judaic tradition, this happened. The Torah or Law of God was later viewed by Israel as indeed a great gift. It is finally a loving thing that God did by giving Israel a heads-up as to how life operates the most smoothly. When my father taught me how to drive the tractor and run the manure spreader on our farm when I was young, he was very careful to warn me about the dangers of the power-take-off shaft, about being careful not to jackknife the spreader when backing up the tractor, and other key safety rules for operating the machinery. It was first and last a loving thing he did. Obviously it would have been not just careless but very unloving had my Dad cut me loose with potentially dangerous equipment yet without giving me a clue as to what the dangers were and how to avoid them.

So also for Israel in the wilderness: when God told them how life works as reflected in his list of Do's and Don'ts, he was trying to protect them from the harm that could come were they ignorant of life's pitfalls and dangers. But this aspect of law is something many people forget about, not just these days but all through history.

As we have noted together before--and as we will have occasion to ponder more in a few weeks when we arrive at Exodus 20--the word "law" can be defined in at least a couple of different ways. In one sense a law or rule can describe how life should be based on some mutually agreed upon standards or arbitrary decisions. If I own 100 acres of land out in the country, it's up to me what to do with it. If I put up a "No Trespassing" sign, that means I have decided to keep strangers off my land and the "No Hunting" signs I also post serve to shoo gun-toting folks away. But I might just as easily opt not to do that, posting instead some notice that although hunters are welcome, they should just check in with me first for formal permission. Similarly, not so long ago in the State of Michigan, you never saw a Speed Limit sign higher than 55 MPH. That was the law. But it had been somewhat arbitrarily decided on and so once enough folks agitated to change it to 70MPH, it was done.

Many rules and laws in life are like that: they describe the way someone wants things to be, but it could be otherwise. One teacher forbids the chewing of gum in her classroom, the teacher right next door allows it.

But there are other laws that do not describe the ways things can or should be but rather the way things simply are. When physicists talk about the First Law of Thermodynamics, the laws governing orbital mechanics, or the law of gravity, they are describing not the way they'd like things to work in our world but the way they flat out do work. And in the case of this type of law, it's not up to you to decide whether you like that law or not. A majority vote will not succeed in changing the law. If you walk off the edge of a cliff, the law of gravity says you will fall (and while you are falling, it won't do you any good to whip out your cellphone, call your lawyer, and file an appeal to get the law changed!). There are some laws that, although you may break them if you choose to do so, you will suffer as a result.

What we too often forget is that in the main, God's laws are of this latter type, telling us not the way someone arbitrarily desires life to work but the way God knows life works because he is, after all, the Creator who fashioned the world to begin with. Rules such as you find in the Ten Commandments are not little hoops to leap through like some trained circus animal and they are not something God invented out of thin air just because he likes to spoil our fun or watch us dance to his little tunes. When God lays down some universal absolute, it is a reflection of the ways things are. And if the good Lord takes the time to let you know about all that, then it is finally a loving and life-giving thing he does--just possibly as loving and life-preserving as streams in the desert. Amen.