God delivered the people of Israel from slavery, and by the hand of his servant Moses led them in the wilderness, watching over them and keeping them in his loving care. But the miracles that were wrought before Pharoah, and the supernatural means by which they crossed the sea on dry land, which afterwards engulfed the military might of the Egyptians, were all forgotten, as the need for physical sustenance replaced the hunger for God. The people murmured because there was no food to eat. So God instructed Moses to tell them he would rain down bread from heaven, as if they needed further proof that God was on their side as their champion and protector: “In the evening” Moses explained, “you will know that it was the LORD who brought you out of Egypt, and in the morning you will see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your grumbling against him…” (Exodus 16:6-7). A downpour of quail came that evening and, in the morning, a strange, round, sweet, milky-white substance, nourishing and filling, which the people called ‘what is it?’ because they didn’t recognise what it was. But at least they should have recognised the God who had sent it. He was their God after all, and they were his people.

Fifteen centuries later, when the true bread from heaven was sent into the world (John 6:32,33), ‘being made in human likeness’ (Philippians 2:7), there was no recognition of his heavenly origin, and as Israel’s Messiah and the world’s Saviour, ‘He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.’ (John 1:11). Yet, all whom the Father calls, the Son not only receives and accepts, but unites to himself, and, by him, to each other ‘to the glory of God’ (Romans 15:7). Tom Torrance explains: “As we feed upon Christ, the bread of life who comes down from above…he unites us and our worship with his own self-consecration and so offers us to the Father in the identity of himself as Offerer and Offering.’¹

After the people had their fill of bread, they again failed to remember the God who was leading and sustaining them. They grumbled for lack of water, in the sweltering heat of the desert, desperately thirsty but not seeming to have any thirst at all for God. So God instructed Moses to take the rod, with which he had smote the waters of the Nile, turning the flowing tide to blood, and strike the rock at Horeb, which prefigured the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4), but only strike it once, as it is written: ‘Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.’ (Isaiah 53:4). Not that the Father would punish his Son, but that by the will of God, Christ the sinless one, taking upon himself the sin of the world, would die in the place of sinners, that we might have life in him, by the power of his resurrection: ‘And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.’ (1 John 5:11).

The children of Israel should have known that it was God who was leading them in the wilderness, and that, in the abundance of his grace, he would supply all their needs. Despite their faithlessness and disbelief, Moses struck the rock as God had commanded, and their thirst was quenched. As Isaiah reminds us: ‘They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock; he split the rock and water gushed out’ (Isaiah 48:21).  

How often do we forget who our Saviour is, what he has done for us, and what he will yet do if we only place our trust in him, yield to his love and his grace, and ask the Father in Jesus’s name by that living faith which the Spirit provides (1 Corinthians 12:3). As Jesus said: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8). Do you believe?  Did you ask?  Did you receive?  Was the door opened?

¹ Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation, p.111.

Local congregation:
Grace Communion Peterborough
Farcet Village Hall
Main Street
Farcet
Peterborough
PE7 3AN

Meeting time:
Sunday 11.00 am

Local congregational contact:
Richard Dempsey
Email:  richard.dempsey@btinternet.com
Local church website: GRACE COMMUNION CHURCH PETERBOROUGH – Landing Page

Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church