Exodus: The Feast and the Failure · Day 14 of 21
Water From
the Struck Rock
Behold, I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. And when you strike the rock, water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel.
Exodus 17:6 · BSB
This verse comes out of a crisis at a camp called Rephidim, where there was no water at all and the people were nearly ready to stone Moses (Exodus 17:4). God's solution followed a sequence. Moses was to take the staff in his hand and strike the rock at Horeb, and then the water would come out for the people to drink. The striking came first, and the drinking came second.
Two details in God's instructions are worth discussing. First, the staff was not a generic walking stick. Verse 5 identifies it as the very staff with which Moses had struck the Nile, the instrument of judgment against Egypt (Exodus 17:5). Second, God said, "Behold, I will stand there before you by the rock." God positioned Himself at the rock as the blow fell on it. The same staff that had once turned a river to blood now struck the rock, and what came out was not blood but water for a complaining people.
Centuries later the Apostle Paul explains what that scene meant. Writing about Israel's wilderness journey, he says they all "drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4). Notice how intentional Paul was. He does not write that the rock resembled Christ or pointed toward Him; he writes that the rock was Christ. At the cross, the judgment our sins deserved came down on Jesus, with God's full knowledge and presence, and what has flowed out to us ever since is the Spirit, whom all believers have been given to drink (1 Corinthians 12:13).
This sequence really matters for our drinking today. The rock was struck once, and it did not need to be struck again, because the judgment fell once and the supply has flowed ever since. Paul adds the detail that the rock accompanied them, meaning the supply traveled with the people through the whole wilderness. The Christ who was crucified moves with His people in the same way, and the water is available at every stop along the road.
Drinking also differs from eating in one practical way. Meals have set times, but the body asks for water all day long, and our souls work the same way. We feed in the morning, but by the time afternoon arrives, we are dried out. The supply from the struck rock suits this exactly, because a drink requires no Bible in hand and no closed door. A brief, genuine turn to the Lord, anywhere, reaches the water.
Today's question is one of thirst: when the day runs dry, where do I go first?
Today's practice
This afternoon, when the slump arrives and you reach for coffee or your phone, take sixty seconds first and drink from the better supply: "Lord Jesus, You were struck so that I could drink. Refresh me right now."
The rock was struck once, and the water traveled with them ever after.
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