Colin Gale reflects on two “ancient, slightly weird” stories of God’s gracious provision for human life.
Give thanks
A sermon preached on Exodus 17 by Colin Gale at St Luke’s, Ramsgate, on 16 July 2023
Give thanks with a grateful heart! That is the title and first line of a simple song of thanksgiving and trust written by someone called Henry Smith in 1978, and ‘give thanks’ is the life lesson emerging out of the two ancient, and – you may think – slightly weird stories that we have heard read from Exodus chapter 17 this morning, stories from the years that Israel spent in the wilderness, having been led by Moses out of Egypt.
Memories of ‘the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites quarrelled with the LORD and where he showed himself holy among them’ (Numbers 20:13);
memories of ‘what the Amalekites did to [the people of Israel] when [they] came out of Egypt, when [they] were weary and worn out’ (Deuteronomy 25:17-18);
memories of what happened next –
these memories are all revived in the later books of the Old Testament, and the books of the New Testament as well.
These stories echo down the centuries and the millennia, and they have never been entirely forgotten. They are reminders that are still needed today, reminders to re-set our own hearts and minds away from their default setting, which is one of self-reliance, and to perform the re-set by giving thanks to God.
Let’s start with the account of the rebellion at Massah and Meribah in verses 1 to 7 of Exodus chapter 17. The people of Israel, having been led out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, are wandering in the wilderness and have no water to drink. So they quarrel with Moses, saying in verse 2, ‘Give us water to drink’, and in verse 3 ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt to make us an our children die of thirst?’ They are so desperate that Moses believes they are almost ready to stone him. The default setting of their hearts and minds is self-reliance, and self-reliance can go one of two ways: toward self-congratulation and pride, if you think you have what it takes to survive and prosper, or toward despair, if you don’t think you have what it takes. Either way, these are both expressions of self-reliance. Wandering in the wilderness, without any access to water, the people of Israel knew they did not have what they needed to survive. They were facing death by dehydration. It is no wonder that they got desperate. It was a massah, which is the Hebrew word for test, and it led to a meribah, which is the Hebrew word for quarrel.
Moses had no secret water supply of his own to offer the people, and rather than being self-reliant, he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD’s answer is given in verses 5 and 6: ‘Walk on ahead 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 – back when the river turned to blood, in the first plague – 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.’
If we try to read this as a description of water divining, or if we look for “modern parallels of water breaking through the crust of rock in the desert”, we will miss the “whole point of the story”, which is “the gracious and surprising provision of God who provided water for his people when none was available”.1 If the discovery of water in the desert was purely accidental, or if it were the result of the resourcefulness of Moses or the people of Israel, this would be a story about the role that either chance or human ingenuity plays in life. But in the way it is told, it is clearly a story about the provision God makes, seemingly against all the odds, to preserve human life, and the life lesson for us is to ‘give thanks with a grateful heart’, give thanks to the one who has shown himself to be holy among his people.
The fact that the Earth is just close enough to the Sun, and also just far enough away from the Sun, for the sustenance of human life is just as miraculous as the waters of Meribah. The fact that water and a non-poisonous, breathable atmosphere clings to the Earth in a way unlike any other known planet is just as miraculous as the waters of Meribah. We are the beneficiaries of these and many other things essential for human life, in the same way as the people of Israel were the beneficiaries of the water provided by God in the desert. These are conditions necessary for human life, which humanity has itself done nothing to bring about. So the only rational response is not self-congratulation on the one hand, as if you have yourself to thank for your continued existence, or despair on the other, as if you think you don’t have what you need to survive. The only rational response is gratitude. ‘Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One’.
This episode takes place near the beginning of Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness, and there is a very similar episode recorded near the end of their wanderings in Numbers chapter 20. These stories at the beginning and end are a way of indicating the obvious point that the people of Israel would have needed water supplies from the beginning right through to the end.
In the New Testament, in I Corinthians 10, the apostle Paul tells us that they had continuous access to water and their lives were preserved through a spiritual rock, and ‘that rock was Christ’ (I Cor 10:4). I suppose this saying would surprise anyone who has read the Old Testament but not the New Testament. How can Paul possibly identify the rock, from which water flowed, and which sustained the lives of the people of Israel in the desert, with Christ? From the perspective of the Old Testament, this is not an obvious identification, but from the perspective of the New Testament, it makes perfect sense. “A good story is one in which events occur unexpectedly but on account of each other, so that before each decisive event we cannot predict it, but afterwards we can see it was just what had to happen”.2
The New Testament insight, the thing that would have been impossible to predict beforehand but is obvious in retrospect, is that the spiritual rock from which they drank, and which kept them alive, was Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ was himself with God, and was God, from the very beginning. Everything they needed to live ultimately came from him, whether they knew it or not: ‘that rock was Christ’. Likewise, everything we need to live ultimately comes from him, whether we know it or not. The decisive events of Jesus’ death and resurrection set his people free from sin, and made it possible for us to know him. It is good to know him, and to give praise where praise is due, not to our own selves in misguided self-reliance, but to him, and in reliance on him. That is why our prayers are made ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord’. ‘Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One, give thanks because he’s given Jesus Christ, his Son’. That is the test, and that is the life lesson of the waters of Meribah.
Let’s look now at the second story in Exodus chapter 17, the account of the defeat of the Amalekites in verses 8 through to 16. The life lesson we will find in this second story may be summed up in the words: ‘And now let the weak say “I am strong”, let the poor say “I am rich”, because of what the LORD has done for us’.
This is how the story goes. The Amalekites launch an unprovoked attack on the people of Israel, who are wandering the desert at this time, without a home and highly vulnerable not only to attack but to actual annihilation. The struggle they are thrown into is one for their own survival. Joshua led the troops, and “Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill” overlooking the battlefield. What happened next was nothing short of miraculous, as recorded in verses 11 to 13. “As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up – one on one side, one on the other – so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.”
If we treat this as a reminder of the importance of prayer, or of lifting our hands in worship, or of anything else we contribute to the equation, in times of testing and trial, we will miss the whole point of this story. The point of the story is the contribution God makes to the equation in times of testing and trial. If the victory won over the Amalekites was the result of chance, or the power and skill of Joshua’s fighting force, then this would be a story about the part played by happenstance or human agency in life. But in the way it is told, this is clearly a story about God’s agency, not about human self-reliance. There is no suggestion that the fighters look up and are encouraged to fight harder by the sight of the uplifted arms of Moses, and are then discouraged by the sight of his hands being lowered, and so on through the day. Something totally inexplicable within a purely human frame of reference is spoken of here, just as it was in the previous story about water gushing from a rock. This is not a story about human capacity, but about the capacity of God. ‘Now let the weak say “I am strong”, let the poor say “I am rich”, because of what the LORD has done for us’.
Subsequent references to the Amalekites in the Old Testament, such as we find in Deuteronomy chapter 25, record the generational conflict that prevailed between Israel and Amalek as a result of this first unprovoked attack. However, the subsequent decisive events of the cross and resurrection of Jesus make it possible for us to see in retrospect that the promises of blessing first made to Israel have been extended to Amalek, along with all the people of the earth. We can now see clearly that there need not be any more war between nations. The fact that wars continue is an indictment on the human race. But the strength that was once needed on the battlefield, and which God then miraculously provided on the battlefield, is now required to live the Christian life, and it is given to us by God so as to live the Christian life. The author of Hebrews chapter 12 verses 12 to 14 probably had this chapter of Exodus in mind in writing: ‘Lift up the hands that hang down, strengthen your weak knees, make level paths for your feet, and make every effort to live in peace with all and to be holy’.
You have probably heard the saying that ‘God helps those who help themselves’. But according to these two stories in Exodus chapter 17, ‘God saves those who cannot save themselves’. That is the life lesson for us today: let us re-set our hearts and minds away from their default setting of self-reliance. Let us give thanks with a grateful heart, knowing that we rely on him.
This is not an excuse for doing nothing at all. An old preacher once wrote: “In vain shall Moses be upon the hill with his hands held high, if Joshua be not in the valley doing the fighting”.3 Spiritual food and drink have to be sought. The Christian life has to be lived. It is not an excuse to do nothing at all. It is instead a re-orientation of our trust, away from us and towards the LORD. Self-reliance leads inevitably to pride when we think we’re doing well, and despair when we think we’re doing badly. Renewed, re-set reliance on the LORD leads to gratitude and thankfulness for his work in our lives. Gratitude and thankfulness nourish our Christian lives from the start, through the middle and to the very end.
I do not presume to know what this looks like in anyone’s life in particular, but I can tell you the story of Henry Smith, who wrote the song ‘Give thanks with a grateful heart’, alongside 300 other Christian songs in his life, none of which were published, apart from ‘Give thanks’, and at first ‘Give thanks’was published without any acknowledgement of his authorship or royalty payments. Henry went to university after school, so to that extent he was privileged, but after his graduation, he struggled to find gainful and meaningful employment, and during this struggle he was diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition with eventually left him legally blind. In short, Henry Smith had many reasons he could call upon, if he wanted to, to complain, to be discouraged, and to despair. No doubt, his default expectation starting out was of a bright future, but his life did not pan out the way he had expected or had hoped.
Yet without these challenges, we would not have had his song. Without these challenges, perhaps Henry Smith may not have been able to distinguish between living a life of gratitude to God for his goodness and grace in Jesus Christ, between that and living a life of privilege, opportunity and comfort.
I’ll stop there with the story of Henry Smith, because I don’t know any more about him, but I can relate to this desire for a life of comfort and smooth sailing. There are only two problems with this desire:
The first problem is that we can learn little or nothing about ourselves, or about God, from a life of uninterrupted smooth sailing. In that state, we may find it difficult to tell the difference between self-reliance and trust in God.
The second problem is that none of us actually experience lives free of set-back, disappointment, grief and heartbreak. We have never been promised such a life, and in practice we can never live such a life.
And these problems are actually blessings, because thankfully, the LORD knows what is good for us, just as he knew what was good for the people of Israel, whom he led into the desert where they were vulnerable to thirst and to attack. Let us learn to trust the LORD in the wilderness. It is right to give him thanks and praise.
St. George's Church Ramsgate 