Is God With Us or Not?

“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. And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exodus 17:5-7, NIV)

It seriously boggles my mind how quickly Israel could forget God’s goodness, mercy, and provision towards them. The Jews left Egypt and began their journey in the wilderness in Exodus 15, and here we are in chapter 17 and already we’ve seen 3 different iterations of them having a need, shaking their fists and Moses and God about it, not trusting in God to fill it, and God supernaturally proving Himself by fulfilling their need with a miracle. 

And what’s worse is that those are just a couple of chapters at the beginning of a 40 year-long journey! We know that there are still many, many more times that Israel repeated that same pattern.

But we are the same way. And just think: If Israel found it hard to rely on God and constantly fell into habits of questioning Him despite the miracles and wonders they witnessed, how much more so is it for us? 

Even still. God reveals Himself to us in awesome ways. Maybe we’ve never seen a sea split down the middle to escape an angry Pharaoh and his army, but we have seen Him protect us from other enemies. Maybe we’ve never gathered food from heaven or baked bread from manna from God, but we continue to see our needs met.

Maybe we’ve never drank water spouted from a rock, but we’ve drank from a well of living water, sprung from the Rock of our Salvation.

Last time, we talked about how Jesus was foreshadowed in the manna that came from heaven, being the Bread of Life that satisfies our spiritual hunger. We looked at how even the gathering of manna and the consuming of that God-given bread speaks directly into our need to obediently cultivate His Truth in scripture daily, consuming it in our spirits and ruminating on it as spiritual sustenance.

In a lot of ways, God revealed His plans for salvation and redemption many times over to Israel in their exodus from Egypt and their reliance on Him in the wilderness. We see Jesus in the blood marked on the threshold of each home during the Passover. We see Him in the unleavened bread they ate as they fled Egypt. And in a lot of the Old Testament law, we see an alluding to God’s plan to send His Son as a sacrifice to atone for the sin unleashed at the Fall in Genesis 3. 

In many ways, when God provides for Israel, He also leaves us all clues to what is to come. He provides in ways that continue to reveal His Son and the Gospel that He would come to impart.

Here, we see that Israel is yet again thirsty. And instead of remembering how God made potable water for them using a log in the desert, they go back to their grumbling. They blame Moses for leading them to a place where they are sure they will die. They begrudge him for taking them out of Egypt, where maybe they faced lifelong slavery and back-breaking labor, but at least there was water to drink.

They ask, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Simply because they feel that Moses, being led by God, didn’t anticipate their needs before they could start grumbling. So after the ten plagues, after the Passover, after the Red Sea and various miracles in the wilderness– Israel is still asking whether God was among them or not.

And God doesn’t act towards them in the way they deserve. He doesn’t throw up His hands, abandoning Israel for their fickle faithlessness or choosing to start over again with another nation with less trust issues. Instead, He tells Moses to take the people and their elders to a rock at Horeb. He tells Moses to strike that rock with the same staff God used to split the Red Sea, and that the people will have water to drink from that rock.

Most importantly, He says that He will stand before them at that rock. He will be there. His presence will meet them there and prove Himself yet again.

So where is the Jesus in this story? 

Jesus says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (John 7: 37-38, NKJV)

We see Jesus as our rock and our salvation (Psalm 62:1). He is the One who was struck by the Father, sacrificed as the propitiation of our sins, and out of Him flows living water that His people can drink. That water will spiritually satisfy us. It will fill our deep and desperate need for a God that not only saves, but comforts and restores. If we have spiritual thirst, there is no need to wonder, “Where is He? Is the Lord with me or not?”

Because not only is Jesus the rock, but He is the water. His Holy Spirit has the ability to cut through our hearts as hard as rock. Only God can strike us in such a way that we can be made a vessel holy enough to pour out His spiritual, living, restorative water for others to drink.

After all, it is just as miraculous for God to transform our hard, little hearts and bring His holiness out of us as it is for God to draw water out of a boulder. He can reveal Jesus and His work on the cross through anything, even hearts of stone like ours– even with lives as helpless and hopeless as ours– and it’s because He is able and generous to do it. 

So we don’t have to wonder whether God is with us or not. Like Israel, we have reason upon reason to show us He is and that doesn’t change. God doesn’t come and go from our lives, changing like the weather. He is always with His people, His chosen. He sees our needs before we can even start grumbling about them; it’s just His heart that we might rely on and trust in Him to do what He has always done.

So don’t ask, “Is God with me or not?” If you have to ask that, you should really be taking stock of your heart. And no matter how hard it is, it isn’t beyond the power of His living water to redeem. He has already promised to meet you at your Rock and your Salvation, so turn to Him and trust in Him to meet you there.