Numbers 20:1–13 (NIV)

In the first month the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died and was buried.

Now there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. They quarreled with Moses and said, “If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the Lord! Why did you bring the Lord’s community into this wilderness, that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!”

Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the tent of meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”

So Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”

These were the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites quarreled with the Lord and where he was proved holy among them.

You’ve Got the Wrong Keys

Introduction

Losing your keys is the worst way to start the morning, isn’t it?

You all know what I am talking about.

You can set your alarm early, set out your lunch the night before, have your work bag and your gym bag ready to go, but if you don’t have your keys, you are not going very far, are you?

How do you feel when you HAVE TO GO or you are going to be late, and you are looking for your keys?

You are flipping the couches upside down, you are blaming your kids, you’re arguing with your spouse because the keys are lost.

If you lose the keys not only can you not open the door to were you are going, but you may not be able to lock the door to where you are leaving.

Those keys are everything. Without them the doors that you need to open can’t be opened.

Transition

And today I want to give you some keys. I want to give you some keys that you didn’t know you needed, and you might have even been looking for. I want to give you some keys to help you open some doors.

Text

Exodus 20 is an interesting passage of scripture because it re-starts the journey of Israel in the dessert. Let me give you context so that you understand when this is happening in the story of Israel.

Israel sojourned in the land of Egypt for 430 years. The beginning of that time was peaceful and Israel dwelled in the land to avoid a famine. But in time a Pharoah would begin to persecute Israel, and the entire nation was made the slave labor of Egypt.

God raises up a deliverer named Moses who would come back to Egypt, and through the Lord’s power, free Israel from Egypt.

Israel would then begin a journey that would lead to their Promised Land, which is the land of Canaan. Where present day Israel is located now.

But the journey to the Promised Land was called “Wandering in the Wilderness.”

Why is that?

During their journey to Egypt, Israel failed to trust God and the journey that should have taken this congregation weeks, and at most a couple of months, took them 40 years.

Tell your neighbor, that’s a really long detour.

Now what you need to understand about the over arching story of their wandering is simply this…

God used Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, but God used the wilderness to get Egypt out of Israel.

You heard the old saying, “You can take the girl out of the hood, but can’t you take the hood out of the girl.”

God used the wilderness to confront Israel so that they would leave their old ways behind and finally become the sons and the daughters that he created them to be.

That’s the larger story of the wilderness…

But within the larger wilderness story there are smaller wilderness stories, like the one we see here in Numbers 20. When we get to Numbers 20 it is the first day, of the first month, of the 40th year of their wandering. The bad news is that they have been wandering for a long time. The good news is it’s almost time for them to enter into the Promised Land.

The Land of Kadesh

Israel is in the land of Kadesh. This place, Kadesh is actually where Israel spent the majority of their time while they were wandering. It is believed that up to 37 of the 40 years of wandering was actually spent in Kadesh. It might seem as though they’ve taken up residency, but that’s not the case.

Kadesh is the place where the Lord was killing off an entire generation of Israelites. When the Lord said that an entire generation of Israelites would die in the dessert due to their unbelief, this happened in Kadesh. As a matter of fact our first verse tells us that Miriam died. Miriam was the first one to sing, and dance, when Israel was finally free from Egypt, but now that she has died, she represents all of her generation who died with her.

But can I talk about Kadesh a little bit more?

Do you want to know what Kadesh also represents?

Kadesh represents “the middle.” Can you tell your neighbor “it’s the middle”?

The middle represents that they were no longer in Egypt, and that’s a good thing. But they also weren’t in the Promised Land. That’s not a good thing.

They are no longer in slavery, that’s a good thing. But they were not in Canaan yet, so they aren’t inhabiting a land that is not theirs.

This is like when we realize that we are not who we used to be, and thank God for that! Come on, how many of you thank God that you are not who you used to be! Some of us are glad about that too. But at the same time, you don’t feel as though you have arrived at the place that you are supposed to be.

Kadesh is the place where we are in the middle of where we used to be, and where we are supposed to be.

A Water Problem

But something happens here in Kadesh. The water dried up.

Uh Oh. Honey, we have a problem.

Kadesh, although it wasn’t ideal, was tolerable as long as they had water. But now, there’s no water.

So the people come to Moses and they start to complain. They are so upset, they are starting to say, “I wish I would have died like my uncle who just died.”

Think about that for a second… for the last 37 years God is allowing a generation to die in Kadesh and the survivors are like, “I wish that was me!”

So Moses and Aaron do exactly what they are supposed to do. The two of them go to the Lord and they begin to pray about how they should handle this water problem. And the Lord tells them, “Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water.”

So Moses gets his staff and he makes his way to the rock. And now Moses strikes the rock two times.

Um, Moses, what are you doing? Why are you hitting the rock? The Lord said to speak to the rock, and here you are striking the rock. Why in the world would you strike that rock?

Moses know what to do…

To answer that question, you have to go back 39 years, in the first year of Israel’s wandering.

In Exodus 17 we come across a very similar story in Israel’s history.

Can we read this so that you can see just how similar this situation is?

Exodus 17:1–6 NIV

The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?” But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front 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.

So Israel is in the exact same predicament. They are having the same problems that their parents had 39 years earlier. And Moses, he can’t forget how God did it the first time. The first time this happened, Moses struck the rock, and when he did that, water came gushing out.

But this time, God didn’t say to strike the rock. No, God said to speak to the rock. This one action cost Moses his ability to enter into the Promised Land.

And this story is packed with truth that I need you to get right now.

You cannot open new doors with old keys

What Moses did in one season, was not meant to be done in the next season. And likewise, some of us are trying to open new doors with old keys.

You want old methods to open up new doors.

You want old habits to produce new results.

The reason old won’t work with the new is because God is always in the present, and never in your past. Your refusal to do what God is asking of you today, so that you can do what God asked of you yesterday, is saying, “God I can do this without you!”

Why? Because God is always present and he’s calling out to you to join him in what he is doing right now.

So how do we remain in step with God?

Our new birth begins when we become followers of Jesus, but then there comes a point when we need to become disciples of Jesus.

We need to make the move from being a follower of Jesus to becoming a disciple of Jesus.

This is not a play on words. There are a lot of followers of Jesus, but there are not enough disciples.

Disciples grow in the discipline of being like Jesus. When we fail to become disciples of Jesus we miss out on the deeper things that we are invited to be a part of.

I want to read a verse to you from Paul’s writing that illustrates his frustration with the early church for failing to grow in their walk with the Lord.

1 Corinthians 3:1–2 NIV

Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.

Paul wanted to feed the church a deeper diet of the word of God, but they were still drinking from a bottle. They were going back to what they knew, rather than walking in stride with what God was doing now.

So what happens when we don’t make this kind of move is we wander in Kadesh. We don’t advance to where we’re supposed to be, and we settle for not being where we used to be.

And here’s the truth…

You cannot wander out of wandering.

You don’t advance in life on accident.

Let me trying saying this another way… you don’t accidentally get a six pack.

That would be nice, wouldn’t it!

You cannot open new doors with old keys.

GROWTH TRACK PLUG

Moses put himself before God

When we read the story there’s a few more take homes that I want to share with you.

In Exodus 17, when Moses went before the people and was ready to hit the rock I want to you notice how the scripture reads.

“I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out…”

In Numbers 20, I want you to see Moses posture in the text.

“Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?”

The key word in that phrase is ‘we’.

Moses, what do you mean, we?

Moses, you aren’t going to do anything. It is the Lord who is going to do it. Your role is to be obedient to what God is telling you to do, but try and do this without God and see how it goes…

It doesn’t.

In this moment, because it looked similar to the last time, Moses failed to rely on God. He stood before the people and he side stepped the Lord.

Every time we do it our way we are saying to God that we can do it without Him.

You’ll never see the promised land doing it your way.

Doing it God’s way requires us to do what Jesus modeled for us to do…

Not my will, but your will be done!

(Conclusion) Jesus, Our Rock

Moses, who had done so well up until then, can only see the Promised Land from a distance because of this day. It seems as thought the punishment is harsh, until we see the full picture of calvary.

You see Jesus is our rock. The New Testament calls Jesus the chief cornerstone upon which everything else is built on. That day in Rephidim Moses struck the rock, which is a symbol of Jesus on the cross. Jesus was struck once so that he could die for all of mankind.

When Moses struck the rock again, it is inconsistent with the narrative of scripture. You cannot strike Jesus again, because he only needed one time to defeat death. He only needed one time to defeat sin. He only needed one time to defeat the grave.

And when you decide I don’t need Jesus, you strike the rock again.

Moses stood in front of the crowd and tried to open a new door with an old key.

And God has brought some of you to a new door, and you’re holding on to old keys.

It’s not that God doesn’t want you to walk through that door, it’s that you’re holding on to the wrong keys.

Some of those old keys are:

Old ways of thinking about yourself

Listening to who the world says you are, and not who God says you are.

A circle of people who can’t walk you into your new season

Undisciplined prayer, bible reading and fasting

Isolation from your church community - CONNECT GROUPS

These are old keys and they do not open new doors.

Today, I want you to take your keys and lay them down. I want you to confess that you’ve been doing it your way, but now you are ready to do it God’s way.

Call

Make the decision to surrender your life today, and pick up the key of salvation. Pick up the key to a new life in Christ. Pick up the key to a new life, that will unlock new blessings in this New Year.