The Means of Grace

Series on Exodus

III. The Commitment of God’s People

B. The Service of the People, Text:15:22-17:16

Title: The Means of Grace

Introduction

Moses has just sung the great song of victory in which the deliverance of his people is celebrated. They are saved from the bondage of Egypt just as God’s people are saved by a greater exodus in Jesus Christ from sin and death and hell. Thus we sing the song of Moses and the Lamb. For us as well as for them, this is only the beginning. Now we must traverse the wilderness of this present evil age, and to do this successfully we must be sustained by the God who delivered us from Egypt. In this section of Exodus we have types or examples of God sustaining his people, or of the means of grace. That they are written for our instruction is clearly stated by Paul in I Corinthians 10:1-6, For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. There are actually four incidents recorded in our text which can be subsumed under three headings: first the preaching of the word, second the practice of the sacraments and finally prevailing prayer. These have been recognized clearly since the time of the Reformation as the fundamental aids to our sanctification and growth in grace.

I The Preaching of the Word

The first incident is the bitter waters of Marah. For three days into their journey in the wilderness they found no water and then on the third day they found it at Marah as in Exodus 15:24 and 25, which was so named because the water was bitter and undrinkable, So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?” Then Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. The waters were miraculously healed because God told Moses to throw a certain piece of wood in and they became sweet. You might wonder what this has to do with the preaching of the Word. My conclusion comes from the law of the Lord. Here upon this occasion we read, that Moses threw the wood into the bitter waters and they became sweet. Following this experience God brought them to Elim where the waters were abundant, drinkable and sweet. It is not too far-fetched to find in this experience a parable of the Word of the Lord. In two places in prophecy the word of the Lord is pictured as sweet to the taste like honey but bitter in the stomach. This is Ezekiel’s experience as well as the apostle John’s in the tenth chapter of Revelation. Bitterness and sweetness symbolize the Word preached. In the case of these two prophets it was sweet to receive upon the tongue, but bitter in their stomachs to preach because those to whom the message came were unbelieving. To those who receive the Word gladly it is sweet in the stomach of both the preacher and the hearer. The Word of God is food for the hungry. I have noticed that Ezekiel’s sermons are not very long and neither are the Apostle John’s nor any other sermons in Scripture. Several years ago, The British Weekly published a provocative letter: It seems ministers feel their sermons are very important and spend a great deal of time preparing them. I have been attending church quite regularly for 30 years and I have probably heard 3,000 of them. To my consternation, I discovered I cannot remember a single sermon. I wonder if a minister’s time might be more profitable spent on something else? A storm of editorial responses ensued. . . finally ended by this letter: I have been married for 30 years. During that time I have eaten 32,850 meals–mostly my wife’s cooking. Suddenly I have discovered I cannot remember the menu of a single meal. And yet . . . I have the distinct impression that without them, I would have starved to death long ago. We may linger over a meal, but we don’t usually spend the whole day eating. One of the most powerful sermons ever spoken was by Roy DeLamotte who was chaplain at Paine College in Georgia, he preached the shortest sermon in the college’s history. He had a very long title–“What does Christ Answer When We Ask, “Lord, What’s in Religion for Me?” The complete content of his sermon was one word: “Nothing.” He said the one-word sermon was meant for people brought up on the ‘gimme-gimme’ gospel. When asked how long it took him to prepare the message, he said, “Twenty years.” If they heard the Word of the Lord and obeyed it they would experience not bitterness but sweetness as we read in verses 25 and 26, There the LORD made a decree and a law for them, and there he tested them. He said, “If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.” The power of the Lord to transform the bitter water into sweet is actually the power of his Word to make life sweet rather than bitter.

II The Practice of the Sacraments

The second two incidents are the food and water which God provided for the Israelites. The quail came down in the evening and the manna in the morning, and for their thirst in the desert God provided water from the rock. The food mentioned in Chapter 16 is in response to the Israelites’ complaint that Moses brought them out into the desert to starve. And in verse 4 God speaks, Then the LORD said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.” That this is analogous to our communion is set forth by Paul in I Corinthians 10 where he says the Israelites ate spiritual food, it was real food, but his point is that it had a spiritual meaning. What we learn from 16:8 is that they should have been so grateful for their deliverance that they would not have grumbled, for they were grumbling against God, and the point they were to learn from the provision of the Lord was gratitude. Moses also said, “You will know that it was the LORD when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the LORD.” When we come to the Lord’s table we are reminded of our deliverance and of the power of the Lord to save and thus we are prevented from grumbling about the circumstances of our lives. This is amply illustrated by the striking of the rock in Chapter 17 in order to bring forth water. In verses 5 and 6 the rock, which Paul calls Christ in I Corinthians 10, is struck because Christ is smitten for us upon the cross, The LORD answered Moses, “Walk on ahead of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. Later when God tells Moses to speak to the rock and he hits it in anger he is punished. it is a small thing in our eyes, but the point is that the rock once smitten is sufficient for all our needs. The Lord’s supper reminds us of this fact. in chapter 16 a great deal is also made of the provision of the manna on Friday being sufficient for two days so that they would not have to gather again until after the sabbath. Any manna ordinarily kept to the next day became thoroughly rotten. This is curious because when they gathered for two days on the day before the sabbath it kept fine, and none came on the sabbath. To emphasize this point they put a pot of manna in the holiest place in the tabernacle and it kept for forty years according to 16:33-35, So Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar and put an omer of manna in it. Then place it before the LORD to be kept for the generations to come.” As the LORD commanded Moses, Aaron put the manna in front of the Testimony, that it might be kept. The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan. Was God particular about the sabbath or not? The point is that when God sustains you you had better follow his rules because it is a sacred thing. Most of us think that small things like keeping the sabbath don’t matter. One commentator reminds us, “To give your life for Christ appears glorious,” “To pour yourself out for others. . . to pay the ultimate price of martyrdom — I’ll do it. I’m ready, Lord, to go out in a blaze of glory. “We think giving our all to the Lord is like taking $l,000 bill and laying it on the table– ‘Here’s my life, Lord. I’m giving it all.’ But the reality for most of us is that he sends us to the bank and has us cash in the $l,000 for quarters. We go through life putting out 25 cents here and 50 cents there. Listen to the neighbor kid’s troubles instead of saying, ‘Get lost.’ Go to a committee meeting. Give a cup of water to a shaky old man in a nursing home. Usually giving our life to Christ isn’t glorious. It’s done in all those little acts of love, 25 cents at at time. It would be easy to go out in a flash of glory; it’s harder to live the Christian life little by little over the long haul.”

III Prevailing Prayer

The third incident in Chapter 17 is the defeat of the Amalekites by Israel. this is accomplished only by prevailing prayer. Moses holding up his hands is a symbol of the dependence of Israel upon the Lord as Moses explains in 17:16, For hands were lifted up to the throne of the LORD. The story told in verses 9-13 makes clear that the outcome of the battle depended entirely upon Moses and not upon the armies of Israel. Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands. So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other-so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. In other words the victory was the Lord’s from start to finish. It was a memorable event and one which we do well to remember because we so often forget that the way to victory is through prayer. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a brilliant theologian whose sermons had an overwhelming impact on those who heard him. One in particular, his famous “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” moved hundreds to repentance and salvation. That single message helped to spark the revival known as “The Great Awakening” (1734-1744). From a human standpoint, it seems incredible that such far-reaching results could come from one message. Edwards did not have a commanding voice or impressive pulpit manner. He used very few gestures, and he read from a manuscript. Yet God’s Spirit moved upon his hearers with conviction and power. Few know the spiritual preparation involved in that sermon. John Chapman gives us the story: “For 3 days Edwards had not eaten a mouthful of food; for 3 nights he had not closed his eyes in sleep. Over and over again he was heard to pray, “O Lord, give me New England! Give me New England!’ When he arose from his knees and made his way into the pulpit that Sunday, he looked as if he had been gazing straight into the face of God. Even before he began to speak, tremendous conviction fell upon his audience.” Notice that prayer as a means of grace is not the task of one person. Moses became incapable of holding his arms up that long. if you ever tried to hold your arms up over a prolonged period you know what it was like. In fact I’ve worked on a project where I had to hold something for someone and after a short time. I not only thought my arms were going to fall off, I realized that my body was rebelling and it would soon be impossible to hold out any longer. So Moses needed help. Are you a prayer helper? In our modern struggle with the Amalekites do we realize that the greatest weapon we have is prayer? We need it just as we need the preaching of the word and the practice of the sacraments.

Conclusion

The Christian life is lived in a wilderness. Who have we to sustain us but the Lord and he does this through his appointed means. He sustains us through the word the sacraments and prayer. If we ignore these we will only end up grumbling at our circumstances as did Israel, and if we do it long enough, we will end up rejecting God as many of them did.