Sermon Tone Analysis

Moses Is An Unusual Character

Get Ready to Go to Canaan

Trust God Or Fear People

God Speaks to Moses

And this is God’s turn to complain.

Complaints and Consequences

Moses Retells the Lord’s Purpose

What Happened at Meribah?

Israel Returned to Kadesh—after 37 Years

The name of the place is called Holy; or the place of holiness.

The Israelites had been a nation of nomad shepherds as the old guard that saw Yahweh’s miracles slowly died out over these years.

Miriam died there

The place was now dry.

It was now almost time for the Israelites to mover out.

Miriam’s death is one of the signs that the 40 years was up; for she was one of the older generations that would not see the land of promise.

But unlike when they were at Kadesh before, the springs were now dry.

Israel Complained—Again

Moses and Aaron Went to Hear God

God Gave Moses A Solution

The staff that Yahweh told Moses to take with him was the same staff that God told him to throw down at the burning bush; the same one that was used in front of Pharaoh, which turned into a snake and devoured the “snakes” from the magicians of Egypt; the same staff that Moses held at the dividing of the Red Sea.

This was the same staff that later had Aaron’s name carved on it and then budded and bloomed and bore almonds overnight when it was set before the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant with the staffs of the other tribes of Israel to prove God had chosen Moses and Aaron as his spokesmen.

God told Moses to take the staff and get the people together.

Take them to the rock there, at the oasis of Kadesh where the springs must have dried up: Then Moses and Aaron were to speak to the rock in the sight of the people so the water would flow.

And Moses took the staff and went to do as God said.

But something must have happened on the way to gather the people there.

Because things didn’t go exactly the way that God had commanded.

Moses and Aaron At the Rock

It sounds OK to start.

Moses and Aaron got the people together at the rock.

But then Moses turns on the people, just like they had turned on him so many times, and like the complaint that Moses had made to God in earlier chapters, Moses felt that he had carried Israel on his own back through all the ups and downs of the past 40 years.

He was tired, and it wouldn’t have taken much to get him really angry.

And something must have irritated his tired nerves—as the nomads were called to settle and prepare for the battle-march into the lands of Canaan.

“Listen you rebels!” Uh-oh.

Not so much the “people of Israel” as a pack of renegades.

“Must we bring water out of this rock for you?” Uh, Moses…wait a minute… who does the water-giving?

God told them to speak to the rock in the presences of the Israelites.

Instead, like he was working magic instead of proving Yahweh God’s work for his people, Moses hit the rock.

Nothing.

I have no idea what he might have muttered under his breath, but then Moses hit the rock a second time.

And God made the water flow in great abundance.

BUT. . .

Yahweh Chastised His Prophet and Priest

So this is the story as it is recorded in the timeline of events in Numbers—and it reads differently than how the event is remembered by Moses when he shared the summary of the Law in Deuteronomy that we looked at a few minutes ago.

In Deuteronomy 1:37 Moses said “The Lord was angry with me also because of you and said, ‘You will not enter there either.”

Because of you, Moses said, I don’t get to go to Canaan.

What Went Wrong at the Rock?