The whole issue of how God interacts and works with humanity fascinates me. I have a friend who wrote a song about God and one of the lines goes “You are at once an enigma, and then you’re plain as day, I will never claim to understand, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.” For me, these words so appropriately capture what it’s like knowing God. It’s not always easy understanding God and how He operates in this complex world, but it’s wonderfully breathtaking nevertheless! Today I want to consider the issue of when we follow Jesus, are there times where He in turn follows us? That’s an incredible thought!
The Bible is clear that signs and wonders follow those who believe. (Mark 16:17) This is God following up the preaching of His Word with the demonstration of His power. Mark 16:20 tells us “Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.” Jesus worked with the disciples and followed up the preaching of His Word with miracles and He is still doing it today!
This concept of God following us can also be found in 1 Corinthians 10:1-4 which says: “For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”
God led Moses and as many as two million Israelites out into the wilderness, they had no food or water and no means of sustenance. God did it for His own reasons. It says in Deuteronomy 8:3: “So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live on bread alone; but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” In the heat of the desert, food and particularly water are essential for survival. God’s leading was to a place of extremity, He knew the children of Israel would die without food and water.
In Numbers 20:3 the children of Israel came to Moses and said “If only we had died; when our brethren died before the Lord! Why have you brought up the assembly of the Lord into the wilderness, that we and our animals should die here?” Moses was under pressure. He was between a rock and a hard place. Between the rock of Meribah and the desert.
Most people would have packed it in at this point, but Moses went to the Lord in prayer and God gave Him the answer he needed. God was not intimidated by the impossibility of the situation, He simply said “speak to the rock and it will yield its’ water.” (Numbers 20:8) And while Moses didn’t obey the instruction perfectly, a miracle happened. Literally millions of people were saved by a miracle of God. Their lives were spared. If God had not intervened, they would have died.
Now Paul writing to the Corinthians, draws a parallel between Jesus here and this Rock. He says Jesus was the Rock that followed them and sustained them. Now obviously in the natural the children of Israel came across this great rock it was not following them, but in some wonderful way this immovable object was part of their destiny. It was part of their future and their sustenance. God said speak to the rock and it will yield it’s water. In the natural rocks don’t yield water, but this rock was a special rock because it represented Christ and his nature and ability to bring Living water!
When we talk of Christ’s life and nature being like a rock, we refer to His unchanging nature, His immutable character, His faithfulness and His steadfast love. We can look to the Cross and say that Christ’s finished work is the bedrock of Christian faith and life and we should never allow anything to move us from it. When your life is built on Christ the rock, you won’t be moved by even the greatest storms of life. Your faith will be unshakeable if it’s based on Christ, His Word and His finished work. (Matthew 7:24-27).
The Hebrew word for faith is Emunah. The word Emunah does mean to have faith, but it has a broader meaning that has implications for what God calls us to as people of faith. It contains the idea of steadfastness. In Exodus 17 Moses raised his hands all day long until the Israelites won a key battle. It says that “his hands remained steady (Emunah) until sunset.” (Exodus 17:12) In this sense it means steadfast.
We are called to have a steadfast and unshakable faith in our steadfast and unshakable God! Christ here as the rock accompanying or following them is the one who backs us up as the steadfast one, the faithful and dependable one! Now, the Rock here also refers to the one from whom the blessing and provision of God flows. The miracles of God are always close whenever we follow Jesus.
And then this passage refers to the Rock as the One from whom the rivers of living water flow. Jesus said to woman at the well “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14) So many people and places need this living water! We need to be those who bring the life changing living waters into spiritually drought stricken areas.
In our second time into the nation of Brazil. I remember we led the Mayor of the city to Christ and he asked us to pray that the three years of drought over the land would be broken. That night at the Crusade we all prayed and in a few days it began to rain in the City for the first time in three years. I believe this was a natural sign of a spiritual phenomenon happening in that town. Jesus came as the Rock to that town to break the spiritual drought into that region and as we followed Him into that city, He followed and accompanied us to do just that, what a humbling thought!
Today I want to encourage you that as you follow Jesus, He is following you! He is backing you up with His faithfulness and His steadfastness! He is following you with His miracle provision. He is following you as the Source of Living water, the well that never runs dry. He wants to follow you into the dry places, the needy places of life and bring Living water to a world in need of hope!
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