Manna in the Morning, Water from the Rock: Jesus in the Wilderness

Introduction

The Momentum preacher opens his message with an almost ordinary observation: back in 2020, during Covid, France 24 aired a program titled "The French, World Champions of Complainers." There are historical, cultural, and political reasons for that. Our schools value critical thinking over positivity, and our democratic culture treats protest as a civic duty. None of that is bad in itself. But the real question this morning isn't whether you criticize things. It's what spirit you do it in.

Today's passage, Exodus 15:22 to 17:7, answers that question, and rather bluntly. You're about to meet a people who have just been saved, who just sang praises to God for his power and kindness, and who, only days later, grumble. A people freed from physical slavery but still trapped in an inner, spiritual slavery. A people God deliberately leads into the wilderness to test them, to heal them, to teach them who they really are, and who he really is.

Three trials. Three revelations about the human heart. Three revelations about the heart of God. And at the bottom of the desert: a struck rock, manna falling from the sky, water turned sweet. Three pictures, all pointing to Jesus: the true wood, the true manna, the true rock.

Sermon outline

1. A bitter people, a God who heals (Exodus 15:22-27)

• After crossing the Red Sea and the triumphant song of chapter 15, Moses leads Israel into the wilderness of Shur. Three days of walking, no water. Then, at Marah, water the people cannot drink because it is so bitter, which is how the place got its name (Exodus 15:22-23).
• The preacher insists: this water shortage is no small thing. It's a public health crisis threatening hundreds of thousands of people. The reaction is exactly what most of us would have had: "The people murmured against Moses, saying, 'What shall we drink?'" (Exodus 15:24). This is the first appearance of a verb that will keep recurring through the story, a word meaning to grumble, to complain, even under one's breath.
• Moses cries out to the LORD. The LORD shows him a certain tree, which he throws into the water: the water becomes sweet (Exodus 15:25). We aren't told why it works. What matters is what God explains right afterward: "There he made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there he tested them."
• The test is no accident. It's pedagogical. God is teaching his people to listen to his voice, to keep his commandments, to trust him. And he adds a promise worth holding onto: "I am the LORD who heals you" (Exodus 15:26).
• The preacher points out a hard truth: morally, there's no difference between the Egyptians and the Israelites. Both deserve judgment. What sets them apart is that God chose Israel and showed them grace. And the people's bitterness over the bitter water reveals they still carry the same sickness of heart.
• The sequence closes at Elim, with its twelve springs of water (one for each tribe) and its seventy palm trees (Exodus 15:27), ten times the perfect number in Hebrew culture. A small, almost idyllic oasis. A foretaste of the promised land. God is able to provide perfectly, even in the middle of the wilderness.

2. A deaf people, a God who listens and provides (Exodus 16)

• Exactly a month after leaving Egypt, the food supplies run out. The grumbling starts again, but this time "the whole congregation of the children of Israel" murmurs against Moses and Aaron (Exodus 16:2). The discontent has spread like a contagion.
• And the complaint goes further. They say: "Would that we had died by the LORD's hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots, when we ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger" (Exodus 16:3). They would have preferred to die instantly under a plague rather than starve slowly. There's even a note of nostalgia for Egypt; they've already forgotten how harsh slavery was.
• The preacher observes how much this reaction resembles our own: longing for days gone by that weren't actually better, simply because the present is hard.
• God's response is neither anger nor silence. It's to listen and to provide miraculously. Three things happen, in an order deliberately reversed from Maslow's hierarchy.
• First, seeing his glory. God appears in the cloud (Exodus 16:10) because this people needs to be reminded who this God is, the one who saved them. When your heart fills with grumbling, the first thing you need is to rediscover the glory of God and the power of his salvation.
• Next, understanding the nature of their complaint. Moses and Aaron explain: "And who are we? Your murmurings are not against us, but against the LORD" (Exodus 16:7-8). If God is sovereign, then the events of your life aren't random. Your frustration at your boss, your envy of a coworker's vacation, your irritation at a late train: behind all of it may hide a cry against God, the quiet conviction that he isn't good to you, that he's holding something back. That's exactly what the serpent had whispered to Eve in Genesis 3.
• Finally, food. God rains bread from heaven. Each morning, a fine, flaky layer, like frost, which the Israelites call man, "what is it?" (Exodus 16:15). Each evening, quail cover the camp.

3. A school in the manna: daily dependence

• The preacher unpacks the lessons hidden in the manna, because this miracle isn't just a supply run; it's a course in a school.
• It's a fitting provision. It meets nutritional need. The people will eat it for forty years, all the way to entering Canaan, without deficiency (Exodus 16:35).
• It's a sufficient provision. No one goes hungry. "He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack. Everyone gathered according to his eating" (Exodus 16:18). A picture of fairness.
• It's a delicious provision. The text says it tasted like wafers made with honey (Exodus 16:31). Yet the Israelites have no ovens, no bakery in the wilderness, and honey was rare in that era since beekeeping wasn't yet developed. God gives them something better than what they could ever have made themselves.
• It doesn't keep. What's left over till morning breeds worms, except on the Sabbath (Exodus 16:20). God teaches them not to be greedy, not to try stockpiling in a way that replaces dependence on him.
• It melts as soon as it's hot. God teaches them to rise early, to be diligent, to gather it fresh each day.
• It prepares for the Sabbath. Every sixth day, a double portion (Exodus 16:22). And on the Sabbath itself, it doesn't spoil. God gives a former slave something he never had in Egypt: a day of rest to worship, with no need to march for it. As the preacher puts it: "It's as if God were actually good, and were actually Lord over everything."
• And yet, on that first Sabbath, some go out anyway to gather (Exodus 16:27). They fail the test. God exclaims: "How long do you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws?" (Exodus 16:28). A deaf, stubborn people, distrustful of God even when he provides in overflowing abundance.
• The preacher then turns the question back to you. God says in his word: "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). He says: "Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you have" (Hebrews 13:5). He says: "Flee sexual immorality" (1 Corinthians 6:18) and "Confess your sins to one another" (James 5:16). And honestly, aren't you, on plenty of points, just as deaf as this people? We all need to be healed.
• That's why God commands that a full omer of manna be kept for future generations (Exodus 16:32-33). Children and grandchildren need to know that this God is faithful, trustworthy, able to provide day after day, all the way into the promised land.

4. A quarreling people, a God who shows grace (Exodus 17:1-7)

• Third stage, at Rephidim. Still no water, not even bitter water to give the flocks (Exodus 17:1). And the rebellion escalates: the people no longer just grumble, they "quarrel" with Moses to the point that he fears for his life: "A little more and they will stone me" (Exodus 17:4).
• Moses explains once more that their quarrel is really with God. He will name this place Massah and Meribah ("temptation" and "quarreling" in Hebrew), "because the children of Israel quarreled, and because they tested the LORD, saying, 'Is the LORD among us, or not?'" (Exodus 17:7).
• The preacher highlights a Hebrew wordplay: the word translated "temptation" is the same word translated "tested" earlier. God had tested the people to reveal the state of their heart. Now the people are testing God. It's a total reversal of position, and a very serious one. Psalm 95 will echo this: "Don't harden your heart, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me, tested me, and saw my work" (Psalm 95:8-9).
• The preacher warns: God is extremely patient, but you don't want to test the limits of his patience. The people could have prayed in faith: "Lord, you know we're thirsty. You just sang of your kindness to us; please show it to us again." But no. What comes out instead is a bitter, unbelieving prayer: "Do you want to kill us?" They are, to use the phrase, like Pharaoh with a hardened heart, refusing to listen.
• And how does God respond? With grace. He tells Moses to take his staff, the very one he used to strike the Nile and curse it, and this time strike a rock: "Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb. You shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink" (Exodus 17:6).

5. The true wood, the true manna, the true rock: Jesus in the wilderness

• The preacher draws attention to a striking detail in verse 6: God says "I will stand there before you on the rock." God is present, but strangely present on the very rock Moses must strike. The rock about to take the blow.
• This scene foreshadows the moment Jesus would be struck for the rebellion of his people. Isaiah had announced it a thousand years in advance: "He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). How can God judge sin and save his people? By taking the judgment upon himself.
• The apostle Paul says it explicitly too: "They all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4). The water that quenches the people's thirst in the wilderness already comes from Christ.
• And the picture continues through the other trials.
• Jesus is the true wood that heals. At Marah, the wood thrown into the bitter water makes it sweet. The true wood, the preacher says, is the cross: "Jesus died on a tree, and it's through that tree that our bitter, hardened hearts can be softened. By his wounds you were healed" (1 Peter 2:24).
• Jesus is the true manna. "I am the living bread which came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh" (John 6:51). Daily bread teaches dependence; the true manna is Christ himself, to be received day after day.
• Jesus is the living water that quenches our thirst. "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life" (John 4:14).

6. Counting our trials as joy

• To close, the preacher quotes James, the younger brother of Jesus: "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing" (James 1:2-4).
• Your life right now is the wilderness. And you're traveling toward a promised land, your heavenly homeland. God uses the trials of this wilderness to teach you. He doesn't lead you into trial because he's against you; he leads you into it because he's for you and wants to transform your heart.
• The preacher returns to an image he likes: the tea bag. As long as it stays outside the cup, you don't really know what's inside it. But pour hot water over it, and every flavor is released. The hot water didn't create the flavor; it revealed it. That's how suffering and the heart work. "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). Our words reveal the state of our heart. We all need God to heal us.
• So the question this morning isn't first "why this trial?" It's: "What does this trial reveal about my heart?" Am I able, like James, to count it as joy because it serves the maturity God wants to give me? Or am I stubbornly, like the people at Meribah, grumbling, distrusting, hardening my heart?

Key takeaways

• The wilderness isn't an accident along the way: it's the school where God deliberately leads his people to test them, reveal the state of their heart, and heal them.
• Grumbling is never harmless. It's the symptom of a deeper spiritual sickness: a bitter, deaf, quarrelsome heart that puts God himself on trial.
• God answers grumbling not with anger but with the revelation of his glory, with an understanding of the true target of the complaint (himself), and then with concrete, pedagogical provision.
• The manna teaches daily dependence, the fight against greed, the discipline of work, and Sabbath rest as a gift, not a right to be seized.
• At Massah and Meribah, God stands on the rock about to be struck. That rock, says 1 Corinthians 10:4, was Christ. The cross answers the question: how can God judge sin and save his people?
• Jesus is the true wood that heals, the true manna that feeds, the living water that quenches forever. The Christian life is crossing your own wilderness, leaning on him step by step, day after day.

Personal application

1. What trial are you going through right now? What does it reveal about the contents of your "tea bag," about what's already in your heart?
2. When you complain (about the train, your boss, your kids, the church, the government), are you willing to hear what your complaint really says about your relationship with God?
3. What does your "daily manna" look like this week? How do you want to concretely depend on God day after day instead of stockpiling in ways that let you skip needing him?
4. The Sabbath God offers you (a day to worship him and rest), do you receive it as a gift, or do you keep going out to "gather" anyway?
5. Looking at the struck rock at Horeb, how do you want to look again at the cross this week, at Jesus, struck in your place, the source of life for your wilderness?

Verses cited

• Exodus 15:22-27 (WEB)
• Exodus 16 (WEB)
• Exodus 17:1-7 (WEB)
• Psalm 95:7-11 (WEB)
• Isaiah 53:5 (WEB)
• Matthew 5:44 (WEB)
• Matthew 12:34 (WEB)
• John 4:14 (WEB)
• John 6:51 (WEB)
• 1 Corinthians 10:1-4 (WEB)
• Hebrews 13:5 (WEB)
• James 1:2-4 (WEB)
• 1 Peter 2:24 (WEB)

FAQ

Why does God lead his people into the wilderness instead of taking them straight to the promised land?

The preacher answers that the wilderness is the school where God reveals and transforms the heart. Israel has been freed from an outward, physical slavery, but is still trapped in an inner, spiritual slavery. The trek through the wilderness isn't a detour; it's where God teaches his people to listen, to obey, to depend on him, which is the condition for entering and living in the promised land.

What do the names "Marah," "Massah," and "Meribah" mean in the story?

"Marah" means bitter, describing both the water the people cannot drink (Exodus 15:23) and the people's heart at that moment. "Massah" means "temptation" or "testing," and "Meribah" means "quarreling" or "strife" (Exodus 17:7). The wordplay matters: God had tested the people to reveal their heart; at Meribah, it's the people who test God, a serious reversal that Psalm 95 will later hold up as a warning to future generations.

How does the struck rock point forward to Jesus?

The text of Exodus says God stands "on the rock" that is about to be struck (Exodus 17:6). The apostle Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 10:4 that "the rock was Christ." The preacher draws out the picture of the cross: God himself takes the blow the people deserve. That's how he can be both just (sin is judged) and the Savior (the sinner is spared). The wood that sweetens the bitter water at Marah points in the same direction: the cross that sweetens and heals our bitter hearts.