The Sin That's Keeping Us From the Promised Land (Part II)
Why misrepresenting the holiness of God is at the heart of all the Church's woes
This newsletter is part II of a two-part series on the foundational sin of misrepresenting the holiness of God. Part I can be found here.
Preamble from the peninsula
Greetings from the wilderness of Zin!
Consider this a big red “You are here” dot on the northeast corner of a map of the Sinai peninsula.
The follow-up piece on misrepresenting the holiness of God that you are now reading has turned out to be a real “barn burner” as we like to say around here. This hefty long-form essay covers a lot of ground in a fair amount of detail. In short, there’s a lot to take in. With such a rich and multi-faceted topic, we want to pause at this inflection point in the narrative of Moses and the waters of Meribah to make sure that we don’t lose our bearings somewhere due south of the Dead Sea.
As you read this article, you might wonder to yourself, “I get that there is an important lesson to be gleaned from this story, but why are are they laying the topic of God’s holiness on so thick? Are we pivoting from addressing issues in the Church to an in-depth mediation on the attributes of God?” Perhaps you might even be tempted to think that we are beating a dead horse.
We think not.
In fact, we believe that topics relating to God’s holiness are so neglected in the modern American Church that unless we go to painstaking lengths in laboring these points, we simply will not be able to accept what we want to eventually propose here to be the principle besetting sins of the American Church, much less entertain what repentance from these sins entails. Thus, we believe it is both timely and prudent at this juncture to set about laying a robust foundation in this most underappreciated of subjects. If we are accused of erring on the side overkill, then so be it: Can God’s holiness be overstated? Again, we think not.
Our general lack of seriousness regarding God’s holiness and its implications for our conduct as believers is costing both us and future generations dearly, as it did in the cases of Moses, Aaron (more on him in the next post), and the many they impacted. Had Moses better grasped the weight of God’s holiness, both he and an entire generation of Israelites may have entered more fully into the promises they missed out on. Had Aaron more firmly laid hold of these realities, he may have spared his sons their infamous fate (Leviticus 10) and held the line when the people cranked up the peer pressure (Exodus 32).
The judgments these men brought upon themselves and those they were given charge over were hard pills to swallow, and we’ll be offering some tough medicine of our own in future installments of this newsletter. If we do not first shore up our baseline understanding of God’s holiness, and embrace to the full His command to “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy” (Leviticus 11:44, 45, 19:2; Matthew 5:48; 1 Peter 1:16), then we will remain stuck in the largely low-level, mediocre-at-best Christian subsistence living that we have grown so accustomed to in our day.
So please hang with us. We hope that the methodical journeys through these topics will get us to Canaan land soon enough. Just bear in mind that, like the Israelites, we’ll have quite a number of fortified cities waiting for us once we arrive. Until then, we’ll try to keep the wandering detours to a minimum.
Muddying the waters
Let’s not be sanctimonious and act like we can’t relate to Moses’ transgression at Meribah. We all would have done something similar, if not worse, and probably much earlier on in the game. I’m certainly not in the running for “meekest man on earth,” are you?
And let’s also admit that what he did made sense, on a certain level. He struck the rock once the first time, so striking it twice the second time may have only seemed natural. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Stick with what you know has worked in the past. So goes our fleshly, merely human logic.
But Moses’ own words testify against him, and they hint at something a bit more unseemly going on here. Did you catch it? It happened quickly. Let’s replay the tape (Numbers 20:10, emphasis mine):
“Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, ‘Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?’”
This reveals the ugly underbelly of Moses’ sin. He was no longer standing in the gap so much as he was standing in the way. In this instance, he went from pastor to poser, from priest to pretender. Moses muddied the waters by taking partial credit for what was clearly an act of God. In hitting the rock twice, he polluted God’s pure intentions, delivering two ultimately futile strikes against God’s incorruptible, incommunicable glory: “I am the LORD; that is My name; My glory I give to no other, nor My praise to carved idols” (Isaiah 42:8). God’s glory, His כָּבוֹד (kabowd), His weightiness, His gravitas, is all consuming. It eclipses literally everything else. His glory is manifest in all His mighty works of creation and redemption: “On the glorious splendor of Your majesty, and on Your wondrous works, I will meditate” (Psalm 145:5). Next to God’s glory, nothing else really matters.
On this point, Moses’ actions were simply inexcusable: “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48b). He knew far better than his actions at Meribah portrayed. A brief excursus in Exodus proves the point.
Although the people had seen God’s mighty deeds, Moses was intimately acquainted with God’s ways (Psalm 103:7). He regularly conferred with God as one would with a trusted confidant: “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11a).
Amazing.
On Mount Sinai, Moses famously asked to see God’s glory, and God, in response, revealed His goodness and declared His name (Exodus 33:18, 19a):
“Moses said, ‘Please show me Your glory.’ And He said, ‘I will make all My goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you My name ‘The LORD.’”
Stunning.
It is no small coincidence that God temporarily hid Moses in a rock to shield him from the overwhelming, even deadly glory that would pass by him (Exodus 33:20-23, emphasis mine):
“‘But,’ He said, ‘you cannot see My face, for man shall not see Me and live.’ And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by Me where you shall stand on the rock, and while My glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.’”
More on the significance of this below.
Recall also what God had first revealed to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:13-15):
“Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And He said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The LORD [יְהוָ֞ה, Yahweh] the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”
In this iconic passage, God reveals His personal name to Moses, a name which He prizes above all else and which He intended to forever put on the map, as well as on the line, so to speak, through what He would do through Moses and the nation of Israel. At Meribah, Moses was once again tasked with upholding the glorious name of the covenant LORD of Israel as holy by drawing water out of the rock God’s way, a task he had every motivation to perform based on the exceedingly great revelations God had given him. Indeed, Moses’ very name derives from the Hebrew for “draw out,” as he was saved as an infant by being drawn out of the waters of the Nile (Exodus 2:1-10). This task had his name written all over it.
In spite of all this, Moses’ misdeeds at Meribah do justice neither to his name nor God’s. Unlike previous occasions, Moses here inserts himself between God and the people not as mediator, but as meddler. He had forgotten himself, getting too big for his sandals, as it were. The people’s beef was really with God, not Moses: “These are the waters of Meribah [Meribah means ‘quarreling’], where the people of Israel quarreled with the LORD, and through them He showed Himself holy” (Numbers 20:13). They had rejected God, not Moses (1 Samuel 8:7). God could handle the quarrelers Himself, and He did. He did not need Moses’ “help.” In fact, when Moses tried to improve on God’s explicit instructions by disobeying them, he joined the ranks of the very quarrelers he was taking umbrage with. Moses added his voice to their cacophony of vain contentions, thrusting his unruly staff like a stick in God’s eye.
Nor did Moses need to defend himself. He was God’s man, and God had made that crystal clear to all those who opposed him. God rebuked Aaron and Miriam for their insolence, giving leprosy to the latter (Numbers 12). God consumed Korah and his rebellious company with earth and fire (Numbers 16). Moses needed only to step aside and let God put the people in their place: “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). Moses’ indiscretion proved this proverb: “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).
Although God was provoked to anger by both Moses (Exodus 4:14) and the people (Exodus 32:10, 11; Numbers 11:1, 10, 25:4; Deuteronomy 9:18), He was never outmaneuvered. God is by nature "slow to anger” and is therefore always in control, just as He said to Moses on the mountaintop (Exodus 34:6). Like his Lord, Moses’ anger also waxed hot from time to time, and often rightfully so—he was dismayed at the hard-hearted, thick-headed disobedience all around him (Exodus 11:8; Exodus 16:20; Exodus 32:19; Leviticus 10:16; Numbers 16:15; Numbers 31:14). But unlike the Lord, at Meribah, Moses let his anger get the better of him (Psalm 106:32, 33):
“By the waters of Meribah they angered the Lord, and trouble came to Moses because of them; for they rebelled against the Spirit of God, and rash words came from Moses’ lips.”
Rash indeed. Moses had crossed a line that the people had pushed him to, a fact he was not afraid to remind them of from time to time (Deuteronomy 1:37, 3:26).
What a mess! One wonders why God brought water out of the rock for the people at all. After all, Moses botched his directives, so why not let him lose face? Why did God bail him out of what was sure to be a credibility crippling blunder? The answer is clear: Because it wasn’t Moses’ reputation that God was primarily concerned with, it was His own. Moses lost sight of this, but God never could (Ezekiel 36:22, 23):
“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate My holiness before their eyes.”
Although Moses had broken faith here, failing a test he had previously aced (Exodus 32:7-14), God didn’t skip a beat. “The LORD is trustworthy in all He promises and faithful in all He does” (Psalm 145:13b). Our failures do not prevent Him from holding up His end of the bargain: “If we are faithless, He remains faithful— for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). And when He cannot find a faithful mediator, He personally steps in to show us all how it’s done (Isaiah 63:5):
“I looked, but there was no one to help; I was appalled, but there was no one to uphold; so My own arm brought Me salvation, and My wrath upheld me.”
This is the mighty, unfailing God we serve.
With this background in mind, let’s revisit the incident at Meribah briefly, this time from Moses’ perspective.
Sanctified speculation
Although I can’t read Moses’ mind, I hope you will indulge a bit of sanctified speculation on my part to help us get a better feel for what his mindset might have been as he approached the rock at Meribah. Perhaps this exercise will help us better relate this story to events from our own lives.
I imagine Moses approaching the rock with God’s instructions in mind, yet wresting with a whirlwind of fleshly thoughts and passions. He’s looking a bit flustered as he struggles to work out his offense in real time. The test of a lifetime for the humblest man alive.
“I can’t stand the smug looks on their faces any longer. How dare they oppose us again! After all we’ve done for them! We provided for them in this exact situation before, and still they refuse to trust You Lord, putting You to the test yet again. We have to show these traitors who’s really in charge here…You, of course Oh Lord…and we your servants. I won’t let them walk all over us any more. We’ve taken enough grief from these grumblers. I’ll speak before the rock, as You mentioned, and choice words at that. I’ve got to meet strength with strength. If not me, then who? Aaron? Bless him, he certainly doesn’t have what it takes to stand up to them. ‘The golden calf just jumped out like that!’ Please. I’ll crack that rock into ten thousand pieces and make them chew every last shard. And then, we’ll fill their muttering mouths with such a torrent of water as hasn’t been seen since the flood. That will show them to dishonor their LORD and His spokesmen!”
Perhaps then Moses began engaging in moral self-licensing, believing that he had earned a pass for his record of exemplary behavior. Even now, to their credit, he and Aaron went straight to God at the tent of meeting to seek His counsel when the people gathered in opposition to them. And Moses had followed at least some of God’s instructions. He and Aaron had taken the staff, as God commanded them. They had assembled the people. And as for the next step, well, haven’t you heard of obeying the spirit, if not the letter of the law? Yes, God had said “So [that is, in this manner] you shall bring water out of the rock for them” (Numbers 20:8b), but would it really bother Him so much if Moses, how shall we put it, improvised a bit with the precise method? The ends justify the means, at least in some cases, don’t they? God wouldn’t nitpick on such a trivial technicality, would He? I mean, why would God even instruct Moses to bring the staff in the first place if not to use it? It is the “rod of God” after all (Exodus 17:9), so the people would understand that it was really God who ultimately delivered them, no matter how Moses depicted it.
There, that settles it. Time to run with it.
Emboldened, Moses makes his announcement (Numbers 20:10b): “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” This time, the miracle would be a team effort, with Moses as the point man, and Aaron and God as his swingmen on the wings.
This is going to be so sweet.
He strikes an intimidating, melodramatic pose with his arms lifted dramatically over his head, for effect. Can’t leave the fans up in the cheap seats out.
The crowd gasps. They spot an open, outstretched hand and another clasping God’s staff. Would a plague soon descend on their hairy scalps? Would the water that came out turn into blood? Their desiccated stomachs twist and churn within them.
He swings his staff toward the the rock, as before. A resounding “THUD” rings out.
Strike one.
Nothing.
A few seconds tick by for what seems like an eternity. Moses’ face flushes red with anger and embarrassment. Aaron’s eyes fix on his brother, widening in panic, seeming to communicate two contradictory messages at once: “That wasn’t the plan!” and “Do something!”
Moses’ conscience-stricken mind flutters back to God’s words: “Tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water.” In his heart, Moses hears the LORD’s voice: “Speak to it. It’s not too late to humble yourself. Show the people who their real savior is. Set the record straight. Leave no room for doubt.”
He hesitates. Beads of sweat streak down his brow and back as the heat of several million eyeballs sear through every pore of his body.
Then, he reaches the point of no return. The urge he had conquered so many times before now conquers him.
“THUD”
Strike two. He’s out.
There would be no third strike for Moses that day—God wasn’t playing games.
The stone of offense and rock of stumbling
“OK” you might respond, “I get the issues pertaining to God’s character, and even the high stakes of making good on His covenant promises, but why didn’t God merely place Moses on probation, rather than preventing him from leading the people into the long-awaited promised land? After all, at the end of the day, it was only a rock. It’s not like he had committed some serious crime or something. He hadn’t murdered anyone.”
Hadn’t he, though?
No, I’m not talking about what Moses did to that Egyptian before fleeing to Midian as a refugee (Exodus 2:11-15). That was serious, as shedding the innocent blood of any image bearer of God is (Genesis 9:6). As bad as that was though, it didn’t prevent Moses from eventually leading the people out. But Moses’ sin at Meribah was such an offense against the Image of God (Hebrews 1:1-3), that it precluded him from leading the people in.
Ladies and gentlemen, it was no ordinary rock that Moses defaced.
We’ve alluded to this passage several times, but let’s read an excerpt from the earlier account of water coming from a rock found in Exodus, for it contains an important clue that is not found in the second account, one that points to a reality far greater than Moses or anyone else grasped at the time. Exodus 17:1-7 (emphasis mine):
“And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.’ And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the LORD by saying, ‘Is the LORD among us or not?’”
Not only had the people and the elders assembled to behold these miracles (Exodus 17:5, 6; Numbers 20:8, 10), but God Himself had appeared before them there, standing, as it were, before Moses on the rock (Exodus 17:6). Striking the rock twice the second time, some forty years after this first episode, was so offensive to God because what Moses was really striking a blow against was a holy manifestation of God Himself, the Rock of offense (Romans 9:30-33; 1 Peter 2:4-8).
Folks, the rock was Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 10:1-5 (emphasis mine):
“For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.”
Oh.
Ooohhh…
Right. Now things are beginning to make a bit more sense.
The Rock that kept popping up in the wilderness to provide, sustain, and protect, with shelter and living water, was Christ.
Let that sink in like a smooth stone from the shepherd’s sling, lodging deeply into our Philistine skulls (1 Samuel 17:48, 49).
If we take this account typologically, as Paul did with Abraham’s wives and their children, whose life stories illustrated the Old and New Covenants (Galatians 4:24), we see that God was upset with far more than Moses’ unbelief. That was merely the safety pin in God’s revelatory truth grenade. It was what the unbelief failed to do: “Because you did not believe in Me, to uphold Me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel” (Numbers 20:12; cf. Deuteronomy 32:51). Here lies the sin beneath the sin. God was righteously angry at what Moses’ unrighteous anger failed to convey to the people who served as witnesses: the holy person and work of the Messiah, the Prophet who would one day supersede even Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15).
This is why it was so critical that Moses obey God’s instructions to a tee. Each step mattered, terribly. When it came to constructing God’s tabernacle, God insisted that Moses follow the specific instructions fastidiously (Exodus 25:9, emphasis mine): “Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.” And why? Because an accurate, worthy representation of a most precious heavenly reality was at stake (Hebrews 8:5, emphasis mine):
“They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: ‘See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’”
Butcher the copy, and you’ve just communicated to all who see it “God’s heavenly abode ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.” And if that is the case, perhaps the One who calls it home ain’t all He’s cracked up to be.
It’s not difficult to understand why God does not take kindly to those who play fast and loose with His most holy things. Those who do so are treating God’s glory, praise, and reputation as if they were no big deal, as if He were no big deal. And that’s as hideous a distortion of the truth as there is: God is infinitely awesome, fearful, powerful, wonderful, beautiful, wise, enthralling, and compelling. In fact, these poor, pitiful words do not even begin to do Him justice.
Those, like Moses, who have been privileged enough to catch a distant, fleeting glance of the edges of the fringes of His holy garments are so stupefied by what they witnessed that they practically came unglued at the subatomic level, pronouncing curses on themselves due to their utter sinful inadequacy in the light of God’s perfection.
So no, when it comes to rightly representing God and the heavenly realities about which our entire universe and all its most sacred institutions are but faint echoes, I’m afraid it won’t do to just “wing it” so long as your “heart is in the right place.” If it were, you would not have dared to play such a perilous game of ad-lib with God: His reputation and men’s eternal destinies are at risk.
Moses’ reckless disobedience muddled the divine metaphor, misrepresenting God’s holiness in His covenant to redeem His people not only from their bondage in Egypt to Pharaoh, but from their ultimate slavery to sin (John 8:34; Galatians 5:1) and that old liar the serpent (Revelation 12:9). Moses garbled God’s message of deliverance into the real Promised Land through the Joshua of Joshuas, Yeshu ha-Notzri, Joshua the Nazarene. In doing so, he treated this most holy living parable with an untoward, cavalier disregard. It is a wonder of God’s mercy that He did not turn right around and strike Moses twice for his double iniquity of misconduct and misinformation. God’s self-control far exceeds our own—Moses may have been the meekest on earth, but God is in heaven.
What God wanted to portray in a nutshell was this: Strike once, then speak. Strike the Rock once, and only once (Hebrews 10:11-14), for all people and for all time, to bring forth the eternal issues of the river of the water of life (John 4:10-14, 7:37, 38; Revelation 22:1). From thenceforth, you have only to confess with your mouth and be saved (Romans 10:9). By striking the rock twice the second time around, Moses was in effect “crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace” (Hebrews 6:6), a horrible bastardization of God’s intended message. For Moses, the Rock of Life had became a rock of stumbling.
The significance of the stone that Moses assaulted far exceeded his appreciation of it. It was and remains largely over our heads. God’s foolishness is over our heads (1 Corinthians 1:25); how dumb are we, and how brilliant is He? What Moses was really taking offense at was what Paul called “the foolishness of God,” especially as it is displayed in the cross of Christ (1 Corinthians 1:22-25, emphasis mine):
“Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
When Christ comes to us, “He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2b). I guarantee you that the rock of Meribah was a rough-hewn, craggy boulder if ever there was one, and not some stately, chiseled slab of polished marble. And rightfully so, for that’s just the way God wanted it (Psalm 118:22, 23): “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone. This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” After all, God often hides His treasures in earthen vessels (2 Corinthians 4:7)—and oh, what an inexhaustible storehouse of treasure lay hidden in this vessel!
Do you see it? Are you getting it?
Isaiah 43:19 (emphasis mine):
“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
This is God. And these are His ways.
Bow down! Worship Him! Here the words of your Master, Jesus, who got this better than anyone (Matthew 11:25, 26):
“At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what You were pleased to do.’”
Let this be your boast (Jeremiah 9:23, 24, emphasis mine):
“Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’”
God’s ways are not ours (Isaiah 55:8, 9), but He wants to share them with us so that we can make them our own. God “made known […] His acts to the people of Israel” but to Moses “He made known His ways” (Psalm 103:7). To know God’s acts is to hear Him thundering afar from the mountaintop; to known God’s ways is to speak with Him face to face.
But speaking is too simple, too difficult for us to obey. As Moses later told the people on the cusp of their entering the promised land and shortly before his death (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, emphasis mine):
“For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”
Salvation is on our very lips, if we would have it, but we would have none of it (Isaiah 30:15). None of this “salvation by grace through faith, so no man can boast” stuff (Ephesians 2:8, 9). Want to grab the bull by the horns. We want to get to work. As A. W. Tozer used to say, the problem with us American Christians is that we are activists. We want to climb into heaven and bring God down on our terms. As Paul notes in his commentary on the above passage from Deuteronomy 30 (Romans 10:5-10, emphasis mine):
“For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, ‘Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’’ (that is, to bring Christ down) ‘or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”
Strike the rock but once, then, believing, speak. This is the gospel we proclaim: Christ crucified, the Rock struck. This is not the message the world is looking for, but it is the message it needs, though it would not recognize it if the message Himself walked right up to it in person and tapped it on the forehead. Jesus “came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him” (John 1:11). A prophet it never accepted by His own, as Jesus well knew (Mark 6:4). This is our misunderstood, matchless, rejected, chosen Messiah, and we adore Him: “You are coming to Christ, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious” (1 Peter 2:4). Where the world sees a worthless, bothersome stone, we see the crown jewel of all creation. The natural man sees Christ and says, “Hard pass.” But God sees Christ and proclaims “Here is my Servant, whom I uphold, my Chosen One in whom I delight” (Isaiah 42:1a).
Truly Christ was “appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed” (Luke 2:34b). If we do not develop the discernment to read what the Lord has embedded of Himself and of His Christ into even the most unassuming (1 Corinthians 1:26-31) and at times even off-putting (John 6:52-66) of His most holy creations, covenants, and institutions, then we too may find ourselves unwittingly opposing God (Acts 5:39).
Let’s not forget Jesus’ words to the Pharisees: “what is prized among men is detestable before God” (Luke 16:15). Those who pervert the glorious riches of the New Covenant (Ephesians 1:18) into the tacky trappings of man-made religion, who would hold up the holy vessels of the Lord as mere trinkets, shiny objects to be treated like the “latest tech” that we use until it is obsolete and no longer serves our purposes, then God will surely hold our feet to the flames (Hebrews 10:26-31):
“For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge His people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Our God’s name is Jealous (Exodus 34:14) and when we treat Him and His most treasured possessions with callous contempt, His mighty nostrils flare with fire and fury (Psalm 18:8, 15). We have arrayed ourselves in battle against the majestic Trinity, and it won’t go well for us. Jesus warned us to fear the Father (Matthew 10:28; Luke 12:5), but have you not read of the “wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 6:16, 17)? And the outrage of the Dove is no small matter either (Hebrews 10:29).
It was Jesus Himself who took vengeance on those who reject Him in the wilderness. Recall the warning of Jude, the brother of Jesus, to Christians in his day (Jude 1:5):
“Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.”
After all, they too had been redeemed out of bondage by the blood of a lamb (Exodus 12:21-23). And thanks to the same mercy, we too owe our very existence as a people to Christ (1 Peter 2:10). The Israelites did not come close to fully appreciating these truths. Like the cloud that hovered above them by day, these concepts were mostly over their heads; like the irksome stones they stepped on along the dusty desert paths, they largely passed over them without a second thought.
But we ought to be able to discern these things. Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7). We have the whole counsel of God in the scriptures (Acts 20:27; 2 Timothy 3:14-17). We have been given the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth (John 16:12-15; Acts 2). If the pagans are without excuse for rejecting what God has revealed of Himself through creation (Romans 1:20), how much more accountable are we as believers if we reject what God has revealed of Himself through Christ? What makes us think we can sin and get away with it? What makes us think we’re so special?
Discerning the body
When Paul corrected the Corinthian church’s abuses of the body and blood of Christ in holy communion (1 Corinthians 11:17-22), he made the following eye-popping statements (1 Corinthians 11:27-32, emphasis mine):
“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.”
I’ll say. Talk about judgment beginning the the household of God (1 Peter 4:17). We are already being judged for for profaning the holy things of God. Apparently this has been happening for some time now.
Paul shows us that, like those careless Corinthians, Moses failed to discern the body. He did not know that the rock he was striking at Meribah was the Rock, Christ, and that by treating Him in such an unworthy manner, he was sharing in the guilt of those who crucified Jesus on that fateful hill called Calvary. This is why Moses was judged so sternly.
Lord, open our eyes, that we may behold wondrous things out of Your law (Psalm 119:18)! Open our minds to understand everything concerning You in all Your holy precepts (Luke 24:27, 45).
It turns out that Moses stubbed his toes on the very rock he once sheltered in on Sinai. As the LORD would later reveal to the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 8:13-15, emphasis mine):
“But the Lord of hosts, Him you shall honor as holy. Let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread. And He will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.”
Remember when God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock? This too was Christ. Have you not heard?
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee;
let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure.”
When Christ was cleft by the Roman lance for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:5), what flowed out of his side? Blood and water (John 19:34). 1 John 5:6-8:
“This is He who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.”
They sure do. These three, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, stream alongside one another in seamless fluidity, even in the dry wadis of Sinai.
Jesus represents the perfect confluence of these three mighty rivers. Unlike those who ate the manna and drank the water in the wilderness and died, whoever eats the Bread of Life and drinks His blood will live forever (John 6:22-59). Now that is real food and real drink (John 6:55). Only Jesus offers the living water of the Holy Spirit that eternally quenches our thirst (John 4:10-14) and He offers the Spirit liberally to all who are wandering the parched wildernesses of this world (John 7:37-39, emphasis mine):
“On the last day of the feast [of Booths or Tabernacles], the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’’ Now this He said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
The feast of Booths (or as the Jews call it Sukkot, meaning “hut” or “booth”) was instituted by God through Moses as described in Leviticus 23:33-43. The feast commemorates Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness, when the people lived in tents. This feast featured animals sacrifices and drink offerings known as water libations, a rite which culminated on the last and great day of the feast called Hoshana Rabbah, from words that mean “please save us now” and “great,” or combined “great salvation.”
You can’t make this stuff up. The living Rock Himself, in the flesh, offering water to His people during a feast commemorating God’s miraculous provision of water from rocks in the wilderness. And most of them turned down the offer. Had they only known what He was offering (John 4:10)! But they refused to see, and so it was hidden from their eyes (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34,35, 19:41-44). Like the Hebrews of Moses’ day “Though He had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him” (John 12:37).
As remarkable as these fulfillments are, I assure you this is but a small fragment of a massive monolith. For time would fail me to speak of all the ways the Rock was made flesh throughout the scriptures (Hebrews 11:32). For inspired, worshipful odes to the Rock, read Psalm 18, 78, and 105.
The allegory embedded in these geological and hydrological object lessons is as deep and as broad as the ocean. Like the sacred covenant of holy matrimony, which we likewise treat scornfully in our day, the surprising picture of Christ the life-giving Rock speaks of a profound mystery (Ephesians 5:31, 32). An inert, inanimate, impenetrable mass of minerals that saves the whole world from death through a stream of life so refreshing, so invigorating, that we can hardly stand it. Oh, my friends, this is water and drink that the the world knows nothing of (John 4:32). And we as believers have only sipped a droplet of it. As C. S. Lewis said in his masterful sermon The Weight of Glory:
“The faint, far-off results of those energies which God’s creative rapture implanted in matter when He made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, they are too much for our present management. What would it be to taste at the fountain-head that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy.”
It is on this Rock that we must fall, breaking into bits, or of a certainty, it will fall on us with the unfathomable weight of its glory, crushing us into dust (Matthew 21:44).
Yes, what was at first glance just a jagged bit of rubble turns out to be the Foundation on which we stand (Matthew 7:24; 1 Corinthians 3:11), the cornerstone (Isaiah 28:16) on which we as living stones (1 Peter 2:5, 6) are being built up into God’s house (Ephesians 2:19-22)! Like Jacob, we must awake to the shock of glory all around us (Genesis 28:16, 17):
“Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’”
It was no average place he happened upon, and it was no common stone on which he had rested his head. The stone became an anointed pillar, a monumental mountain that would fill the whole earth and rule over all its kingdoms (Daniel 2:31-45).
All creation will marvel at this Stone.
Tell them “I am holy”
At the waters of Meribah, Moses forgot what God told him at the burning bush (Exodus 3:4, 5):
“When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’”
And so it was that the rock that God stood on later at Horeb, by virtue of His standing on it, became a holy rock. The rock which God stood on was “the rock at Horeb,” the land of God’s holy mountain, Mount Sinai. This was the mountain where the Christ-like “angel of the LORD” first appeared to Moses in the theophany of the burning bush, the same landmark that God promised to bring the people back to after the Exodus (Exodus 3). The same place where the LORD entered into a solemn covenant with the people and handed down to Moses the tablets of the testimony etched with the ten commandments (Exodus 19-20). This entire land was practically holy ground! To paraphrase and reappropriate God’s warning at the fiery bush: “Moses, Moses! Come no further until you carefully heed my instructions. For you are in grave danger unless you tread carefully. For this rock that you approach is a holy rock.”
Given their close friendship (Exodus 33:7-11), it was probably not long after the events at Meribah that Moses asked God to elaborate on the elephant in the tent of meeting. We know that Moses was even so bold as to ask God to reconsider his sentence, but the verdict was final: Moses would see the promised land from atop Mount Nebo, but he would not set foot into it (Deuteronomy 3:23-29).
In time, Moses came to a greater appreciation of the gravity of his error and the glory of his Rock. We know this because later, in his soaring masterpiece “The Song of Moses” he writes throughout of God “the Rock” (Deuteronomy 32:4):
“The Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is He.”
Just, even in His sentence to Moses. Now that’s taking your licks like a man of God. “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3:4) was the lifeblood of Moses’ heart. God was perfect and upright, even when Moses wasn’t.
In total, Moses refers to God as a “Rock” five times in his song and compares Him to other “rocks,” either false gods (Deuteronomy 32:31 and 37) or rocks God provided sustenance through (twice in Deuteronomy 13) four times. He is the Rock that saved Israel (Deuteronomy 32:15), that carried her to birth (Deuteronomy 32:18), and that gave her over in defeat to her enemies as discipline for abandoning Him for other gods (Deuteronomy 32:30). Indeed, how else could the nations and their impotent deities of stone prevail over Israel, “For their rock is not as our Rock; our enemies are by themselves” (Deuteronomy 32:31).
Moses had learned his lesson. He got it. And he loved and worshipped God his holy Rock all the more for it. Make no mistake about it, although Moses forfeited the promised land of this world, he will enter the Promised Land of the next world, where Jesus the Rock will Himself “give from the spring of the water of life” to all who are thirsty (Revelation 21:1-8).
I wonder, do we modern Christians get it? Have we tasted the bitter test of Marah (Exodus 15:22-27) and absorbed the moral of Meribah?
This is the Church’s most fundamental sin today: Through our unbelief and disobedience, we are failing to uphold God as holy in the eyes of the people.
As was the case with Moses at Meribah, we are misrepresenting the holiness of God to a watching world.
Like the wistful, cynical lyrics of the song “One of Us” that wonders “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us,” when we claim to follow a holy God, but contradict that confession with lives replete with unholy thoughts, words, and deeds, we are communicating to others “God is not holy; He’s just a slob like one of us.” Are we surprised then when they reply to us dismissively, as the song goes on to say, “Yeah, yeah, God is great…Yeah, yeah, God is good…yeah, yeah, yeah.” Or, as the Bible puts it, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:24).
Through our unholy lives, we are giving God a bad name. And God takes His good name, His character, His reputation, with the utmost seriousness: “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain” (Exodus 20:7).
Deuteronomy 28:58, 59 (emphasis mine):
“If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, then the LORD will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting.”
We are condemning both ourselves and our children by what we approve of (Romans 14:22), by what we allow ourselves and fellow believers alike to get away with (Romans 1:32). We are saying that God is OK with things He is most certainly not OK with. We are, for the most part, living our lives indistinguishably from the world, when we should be distinctly different, “a peculiar people” set apart for God’s holy purposes (1 Peter 2). We are giving people the wrong idea about God, saying He’s “just one of the boys” when nothing could be further from the truth (Psalm 50:16-23, emphasis mine):
“But to the wicked God says: ‘What right have you to declare My statutes, or take My covenant in your mouth, seeing you hate instruction and cast My words behind you. When you saw a thief, you consented with him, and have been a partaker with adulterers. You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done, and I kept silent; you thought that I was altogether like you; but I will rebuke you, and set them in order before your eyes.
Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver: Whoever offers praise glorifies Me; And to him who orders his conduct aright I will show the salvation of God.’”
And lest you comfort yourself saying “Yes, but that was just the ‘god’ of the Old Testament; surely ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ would never utter such harsh threats to his followers,” I present these words of Jesus to you from Matthew 24:45-51 (emphasis mine):
“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over His household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when He comes. Truly, I say to you, He will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
The man who lives in such a way denies the Master who bought him (2 Peter 2:1). When we embrace the ways of this present evil age (Galatians 1:4), we fail at the core mission for which God raised us up as a people set apart: to be the light of the world, drawing all nations to God by our holy example and the blessings that attend it. As Moses himself said (Deuteronomy 4:5-8):
“See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon Him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?”
In his classic book The Knowledge of the Holy, A. W. Tozer stated:
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself […]. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid […]. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.”
As God’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20), what we say about Him through our words and works forms the world’s opinions of Him, for good or for ill. But we cannot convey to the world a high and holy word from the Lord if we have not first heard this word ourselves. And what God wants to tell the world, above all else, is this: “I am not like you. My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. I am altogether holy. There is none like Me.”
Therefore, what God is telling the Church is this: “Tell them ‘I am holy.’ Tell them ‘There is no rock like our Rock.’”
This is the very message that Jesus was sent into the world to proclaim, for He came to reveal the Father, to show us what He is really like: “This is the message we have heard from Him [Jesus] and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). God is pure, holy, perfect, and dwells in light unapproachable (1 Timothy 6:16). To know the Father, in all His holiness, and Jesus Christ whom He sent, is to know eternal life (John 17:3). It’s why Jesus came and it’s the raison d'etre of the Church (1 Peter 2:9, referencing Exodus 19:5, 6):
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
To proclaim God’s excellencies, we must first see Him and His works for who and what they are. As Job (Job 42:5, 6), Isaiah (Isaiah 6:5), Peter (Luke 5:8), and John (Revelation 1:17, 18) saw them. We must share in His holiness by submitting to His sanctifying discipline (Hebrews 12:10). Then, knowing the holiness of God both from scripture and personal experience, we can do the work of a faithful priest, discerning good from evil, clean from unclean, holy from profane. This is how priests show the world what God is like. This is how we, as Christians, who hold to “the priesthood of all believers,” are called to mediate the knowledge of the Holy One to the world. Only be relearning this lost art can we hope to restore the Church’s proper role in the earth.
We must embrace the offense of Christ, the “stone of offense” and “rock of stumbling” (Isaiah 8:14). If we believe He is who He says He is and that He will do what He says He will do, even against all the evidence of our five senses, then we will see miracles (John 14:12-14). And all the world will see that we serve a God of infinite genius and unlimited power.
The church of the Living Stone need stumble no longer (Jude 1:24). He who preserved every sole in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 29:5) is able to reward with eternal life all who refuse to shrink back in unbelief, but instead believe to the saving of their souls (Romans 6:22; Hebrews 10:39; 1 Peter 1:9). Psalm 91:11, 12 (emphasis mine):
“For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Living God! Bring us back to you! Soften our stony, proud hearts. Cast our entrenched mountains of unbelief into the seas of the knowledge of You. Turn the bitter gall of Golgotha into the sweetness of Mount Zion.
Thanks for reading the League of Believers.
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