And the complaining continues.
Not long after complaining about having no food, now the Israelites start complaining about having no water.
But God uses the situation to give a beautiful picture of Christ and his work in our lives. In 1 Corinthians 10, it says,
[The Israelites] all ate the same spiritual food (manna) and drank the same spiritual drink (water from the rock); for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:3-4)
Earlier God had sent bread from heaven, manna
This manna symbolized the True Bread of heaven, Jesus, who would come and give life to those who were spiritually starving.
Now, he brought water out of a rock.
He told Moses to go to the rock and strike it, and when he did, water came flowing out.
In the same way, when Jesus, our spiritual rock came, he was struck and nailed to a cross.
As a result, we can now have another kind of water.
Jesus talked about that when chatting with a woman in John 4. He said,
If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water…
Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:10,13-14).
Later, Jesus was in Jerusalem, and he cried out to the people,
If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.
Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. (John 7:37-38)
John then explains what Jesus meant: This living water is God’s Spirit coming to live inside of us.
Without God’s Spirit inside of us, we’ll always feel an emptiness inside. And we’ll always be seeking desperately to fill it with something.
Some try to fill it with money, things, success, power, sex, or whatever.
The “water” of this world will fill us for a while, but it will never really satisfy. It will always leave us thirsty again.
There’s a part of us that only God can fill, and when we come to Jesus and put our faith in him, only then will that emptiness be filled.
Later on in the desert, the people of Israel again complained about not having water.
But instead of telling Moses to strike the rock again, God told him to simply speak to it and water would come out.
Moses disobeyed and struck the rock again, but the picture God was trying to give is clear:
The rock was struck once. It didn’t need to be struck again. All you needed to do was to speak to it and water would flow.
In the same way, once Jesus died on the cross, he didn’t have to die again. He’s alive, and now if you’ll just speak to him, if you’ll just,
confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. (Romans 10:9-10)
Lord, I thank you that you are the bread from heaven that gives me eternal life. I thank you that you are the rock that provides living water in my life.
I pray that everyday, you would fill me with your Spirit. Fill me up with more of you.
And let your water flow from me and touch the people around me that they may know your living water too. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Moment to Moment (Bible blog) 