There is something deeply human about the story we encounter in Exodus 17.

The Israelites are in the wilderness. They are thirsty. There is no water to drink. And once again they begin to grumble against Moses.

“Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”

It is easy, thousands of years later, to criticise them. But perhaps before we judge the Israelites too harshly, we should ask ourselves a question: What do we do when we are thirsty?

Not only thirsty for water. What happens when we are thirsty for answers? Thirsty for relief? Thirsty for employment? Thirsty for healing? Thirsty for reconciliation? Thirsty for some sign that God has not forgotten us?

Because the wilderness is not merely a geographical place. The wilderness is a place of testing.

It is that uncomfortable place between where we have come from and where God has promised to take us. The Israelites had left Egypt, but they had not yet reached the Promised Land. Behind them was slavery. Ahead of them was promise. But between the two was wilderness.

And wilderness can make people forget.

They had witnessed the mighty hand of God. They had seen the plagues in Egypt. They had crossed the Red Sea. When they were hungry, God provided manna. When they wanted meat, God provided quail. Yet now there was no water, and suddenly they asked: “Is the Lord among us or not?”

How quickly we can forget yesterday’s provision when confronted by today’s problem.

We do the same. We remember what God has done when things are going well. But let a crisis come. Let the money run out. Let sickness enter the home. Let relationships break down. Let the future become uncertain. Suddenly we ask: Where is God now?

The wilderness exposes something about us. It reveals how easily faith can become dependent upon circumstances. But it also reveals something about God.

God did not abandon His people because they grumbled. He provided water. And He provided it from the most unlikely place imaginable: a rock.

That image stayed with me. Jesus is the Rock.

Paul later looks back upon this wilderness experience and writes in 1 Corinthians 10:4 that the Israelites “drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.”

A rock looks hard. Dry. Lifeless. You would not normally stand before a rock expecting water to come from it. Yet God says to Moses: strike the rock. And water flows.

Perhaps somebody reading this is standing before a rock today. Something immovable. Something impossible. Something that appears to contain absolutely no answer to your need.

Do not underestimate what God can bring out of a rock.

The same God who brought water from the rock can bring provision from unexpected places, hope from despair, reconciliation from brokenness and life from situations that appear completely dry.

And this takes us to the well in John 4. Jesus meets a Samaritan woman who has come looking for ordinary water. But Jesus begins speaking to her about another kind of thirst.

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”

She arrived carrying a water jar. But Jesus knew there was a deeper thirst inside her.

Is that not true of us? We spend so much of our lives trying to satisfy thirst. We thirst for money. Recognition. Security. Success. Possessions. Acceptance. Status.

We tell ourselves: If only I can get this... If only I can achieve that... If only this problem can disappear... then I will be satisfied. Yet we drink, and eventually we become thirsty again.

Jesus offers something the world cannot provide: Living Water.

Water that reaches a thirst far deeper than the throat. Water for the soul. Water for the person exhausted by life. Water for the person carrying shame. Water for the person who has been searching everywhere for meaning. Water for the person walking through a wilderness.

And perhaps this is where Exodus 17 becomes deeply personal. Moses was surrounded by people grumbling against him. He cried out to God: “What am I to do with these people?” God told him to take his staff, go to the rock at Horeb and strike it. The rock was struck, and water came out.

But later, in Numbers 20, there is another water crisis. Again the people grumble. Again Moses goes before God. But this time God’s instruction is different: Speak to the rock.

Moses, however, strikes it. Water still comes out, but Moses’ disobedience has consequences.

There is something profound here. Sometimes we become so accustomed to the way God worked yesterday that we assume He must work in exactly the same way today.

Yesterday God said, Strike. Today God said, Speak. The Rock had not changed. But the instruction had.

That challenges me. How often do we keep striking situations which God is asking us to speak to? How often do we respond to frustration with anger? How often do we grumble, complain and quarrel when God is inviting us to pray? How often do we carry yesterday’s method into today’s wilderness without listening for today’s instruction?