Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Waters of Meribah

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Waters of Meribah

Genre:

Track: 38

Dictation Name: RR181U38

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly father, we thank thee that thou art the same yesterday, today, and forever, that thy truth endureth unto all generations, the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that all the pettiness, the sin, the evil of men shall be shattered upon Jesus Christ, the rock of ages, that He is our life, and that in Him, we know eternal life. Strengthen us by thy grace and mercy. Make us mighty and effectual in thy service, and grant, O Lord, that the triumph of thy kingdom be furthered through our lives and our work. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Our scripture this morning is Numbers 20:1-13. The Waters of Meribah. Numbers 20:1-13. “Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there. And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron. And the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! And why have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there? And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? it is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink. And Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell upon their faces: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto them. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink. And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them. This is the water of Meribah; because the children of Israel strove with the Lord, and he was sanctified in them.”

According to Psalm 81:7, God tells Israel, “Thou callest me in trouble. I answered thee in the secret place of thunder. I proved thee at the Waters of Meribah.” Three things are referred to here. First, Israel and Egypt cried out to God in its troubles. Second, in the secret place of thunder, Mt. Sinai, God answered and instructed Israel by His law, and third, He tested them at the Waters of Meribah.

Now the important question for us is this: We know that Israel failed the test, but how did Moses and Aaron fail? Before coming to this, we should make mention of Miriam’s death. A truly great woman, she had failed her testing by becoming jealous of Moses’ second wife by her moral failure, she had receded into the background and her death ended a remarkable career rather sadly. Here now, her brothers, Aaron and Moses, were to tested and also to fail. First of all, there was no lack of provocation. Sooner or later, we can all be provoked enough to move others to anger, and we can be provoking enough to make others angry, or to be made angry, but this is no justification for ungodly actions. Another person’s sin gives us no excuse for sinning, even if it be no more than an angry response. A temper tantrum cures no evil.

In this instance, Israel returned with the old refrain: “You, Moses, have brought us here to die. Life in Egypt was better. There is no water here for us and our livestock.” Now we must not take this complaint too literally. What we are told in the text was that there was no water for the congregation as a whole. There was apparently not enough water, in other words, to supply two million people and all their livestock, but there was most likely some water and above all, the same wonder-working God. They seemed to believe that things happened, not that God did them.

Then second, in no small grief, Aaron and Moses went to the sanctuary and prostrated themselves there, and the glory of the Lord appeared unto them. God had already sentenced all the older generation to die in the wilderness. Further evidence of their ingratitude and unbelief was unnecessary. The people’s whining was clearly repulsive. They complained because the Kadesh area had no sown or planted fields. They wanted ready-made blessings in spite of their apostasy.

The third, Moses was instructed to take his staff of leadership from the sanctuary, a religious scepter, to summon the people to a great rock and there, “speak ye unto the rock,” and the rock would give enough water to keep all the people and all their livestock in an abundance of water.

Fourth, instead of speaking to the rock, Moses struck it twice angrily. Moreover, he called the people rebels. This was not what God had ordered him to do. His description of them was valid, but God had already judged them, and it was not within Moses’ jurisdiction or instruction to do more than speak to the rock. When a man is sentenced to die, you don’t go on repeating to him what the death sentence is.

Moses also said “Must we fetch you water out of this rock?” Moses was assuming God’s prerogative and power. More than a century ago, R. D. B. Ronsley very ably set forth Moses’ offense, “Moses had failed in his duty toward God and that in three particulars. First, he had failed in strict obedience. God had bidden him “speak to the rock,” and he had smitten it twice. Two, he had shown temper and used hard language, “Here now, ye rebel!” and third, he had taken to himself the credit of supplying the Israelites with water. “Must we fetch water for you out of the rock?”

The first lesson to be learned from Moses at Meribah is the danger of departing and the least jot or tittle from any law of God. The second is the immense importance attached to temperate speech. The necessity of keeping a check on temper and not letting ourselves be moved to hot and angry words. The want of self-control was very heavily visited upon Moses and upon Aaron, termed here the saint of the Lord. Because of it, they were shut out of Canaan. Third, the scene at the rock of Meribah is further useful as carrying our thoughts upward to Him which is the source of all our hopes, the nourishment of our soul, the very life of our religion, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The rock in the desert was but a type and a shadow. The reality it typified is represented in Jesus Christ. All other waters after awhile must fail. The water that Christ can give shall be in us as a well of water, springing up unto everlasting life.”{?} By way of excuse, it can be said that Moses and Aaron were worn out by the rebelliousness and moral blindness of the people. They were exhausted and they were angry. This explains but it does not excuse sin.

Now, we must look again at this text in terms of its place immediately after Numbers 18. In that chapter, tithing and the required support of God’s clergy and scholars is very strongly stated. Now we have an incident as a warning to all such leaders and in fact, to anyone in a place of authority. The blindness and indifference of people to their own welfare, let alone their religious duties, is sometimes startling. It can be both painful and aggravating to see. More than a few people have lost all patience with the present, and all hope for the future.

From 1931 to 1932, a trilogy was written in Germany, The Sleepwalkers, by Herman Brock. He subsequently came to this country. The author himself admits he is, and this is his expression, bleeding to death intellectually.” Commenting on the disintegration of values, he wrote, because his novel was a story, and then he’d stop to give a long essay on his time, “Can this age be said still to have reality? Does it possess any real value in which the meaning of its existence is preserved? Is there a reality for the non-meaning of a non-existence, and what haven has reality found its refuge? in or in the uncertainty of an ever-questioning logic, whose point of plausibility has vanished into the infinite.”

Hegel called history, “the path of liberation of spiritual substance, the path leading to the self-liberation of the spirit, and it has become the path leading to the self destruction of all values. The conclusion of the disintegration of values,” said Brock, “is the individual. He disintegrates after disintegrating everything else, and he said, Brock said, “We ourselves are split and riven in our souls and we hunger for a leader to give us meaning and motivation.” He saw, without faith, the need for “the mad and dreamless anti-Christ. First the world must become quite empty, must be emptied of everything in it, as by a vacuum cleaner. Nothingness.”

When the book, by the way, was republished in this country, after the war, Time Magazine regretted that so pessimistic a thing had been published. This kind of despair is very easily come by. Whether we are like Moses among the ancient Hebrews or facing the world of our time, but we have a responsibility in Christ to walk by faith, not by sight. To walk by sight will leave us in a despairing state, whether in a rage or in a sense of hopelessness.

Paul, in writing to a church marked by very serious problems gave God’s counsel to the Galatians. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” What Paul tells us here is that God’s meter is always ticking. Nothing escape His knowledge or His justice. Therefore, the duties are ours but the results are God’s, in His hand and time.

Knowing this, we are not to be wearing in well doing, but Moses and Aaron had become weary in well doing. They wanted results in their time, not God’s time, and they paid a price for this. We cannot dictate God’s timing, nor control His hand. The temptation is there to push God into acting as we would have Him do. As His servants, we grow weary over the toll and prevalence of sin, and I can remember as a young man, very brilliant scholars who saw the future clearly, but with a sense of hopelessness and bitterness, and they died. They could not look ahead in terms of God’s purpose. We do grow weary sometimes over the toll and prevalence of sin. God’s command was simple. “Speak to the rock,” and so God tells His people, His clergy, His clerisy, those who are working for Him, “Speak to the rock.” Now, that’s as hopeless a thing as you can counsel someone, humanly speaking, but out of that rock came a stream that watered two million people and their livestock.

Well, this too often seems to us to be our own task, to speak to rocks and sand, to empty unhearing minds, but such judgments are not allowed to us. That’s the meaning of this text. So God simply tells us, in the most provoking situations, “Speak to the rock.”

There was a startling conclusion in verse 13. This is the water of Meribah because the children of Israel strove with the Lord, and He was sanctified in them. God vindicated Himself as holy. In Exodus 17:1-7, Moses had been commanded to strike a rock, here to speak to it. The word was to suffice. As things grew more difficult, as what the people were became more obvious, Moses was given a command. “Speak to the rock,” and in speaking to the rock, he was to speak to the people and to us, and to the generations yet to come. “Speak to the rock.” The word was to suffice, because when we speak to the Lord, the purpose of God goes with that word, and the power of God. God’s grace and special favor is no ground for presumption on anyone’s part. God metes out justice without respect of persons. The greater our responsibility, the greater our culpability. This is the meaning of the waters of Meribah, whether it’s parents, whether it’s people in the community, whether it’s clergy or scholars, we do God’s work, we speak to the rock, and we thereby have acquitted ourselves of our responsibility. Even as Isaiah was commanded to speak, and yet told “Hearing they will not hear, seeing they will not see,” but yet the command was clear; speak, and that’s the command to us. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee that thou hast commanded us, each in our particular place, to speak to the rock, to speak by thy spirit and in the patience and knowledge that thou art God, thy will shall be done, no word spoken in faithfulness to thy word and spirit shall ever return unto thee void. Strengthen us, oh Lord. Bless and empower us as we speak to the rocks thou hast placed before us. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson?

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