“The entire Israelite community left the Wilderness of Sin, moving from one place to the next according to the Lord’s command. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So the people complained to Moses, ‘Give us water to drink.’ ‘Why are you complaining to me?’ Moses replied to them. ‘Why are you testing the Lord?’ But the people thirsted there for water and grumbled against Moses. They said, ‘Why did you ever bring us up from Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?’ Then Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What should I do with these people? In a little while they will stone me!'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I remember going to music stores when I was in high school that were absolutely filled with CDs, the latest technology. There were rows and rows and stacks and stacks of them. It was glorious. Now, in an ironic time jump, records outsell CDs, and it’s not close. I haven’t bought a record from this generation yet, but I listened to plenty of them from their first go-round. I’m not sure if they still break like they used to, but in the past, records would occasionally get a snag in them that would cause them to stick in one spot and repeat the same phrase over and over again. That’s where we get the phrase, “like a broken record.” I say all of that to ask this: Have you ever been around someone who was like a broken record? Israel was. Let’s talk about how, why, and why perhaps we’re not so different.

If you haven’t already started to pick up on this, we are fully into a new section of the Exodus journey. New sections in a story often bring with them new themes, and the story of Israel’s journey to the land of Canaan is no exception. If the theme of the last section was the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart and the chaos that ensued because of it, the theme for this new section is the hardness of Israel’s heart as a nation.

Well, that is perhaps not totally accurate. Israel’s heart isn’t necessarily hard to the Lord, they are just exceedingly slow to trust in Him. In spite of everything God did to bring them out of slavery in Egypt, their first instinct in pretty much every situation they face from here on out is to complain to Moses that he brought them out into the wilderness to die. In spite of God’s miraculous help or deliverance in the face of every single obstacle they encounter (and complain about), when the next obstacle arises, they figure they are toast and are ready to give up and go home…except the only “home” they know is slavery in Egypt.

Why did they do that? What made them so slow to trust in the Lord rather than in merely what their eyes could see? There’s a clue to the answer in how I asked that question. Look again at the text here.

The people couldn’t find water. We’re not sure how long their journey had been since the provision of manna. Moses opens this section by noting that they travelled from place to place as the Lord directed. It’s not totally clear if that is a general statement of how their travels went from this point forward, or if it is intended to indicate an indeterminately long time between the last story and this one. Personally, I lean a bit in the direction of the former option.

There is also the option that the point here is not the length of their journey at all, but rather that God is the one leading them. This is a note for the reader to keep in mind that the same God who had just provided for them miraculously was still the one leading them. If they ran into a need (like, say, a lack of water), this miraculously providing God was able and willing to meet it. This serves as an indictment of the people right out of the gate. The Exodus narrative is actually going to do that a lot. It glorifies God and downplays Israel. The point is that God gets the glory, not them.

In any event, the pillar of cloud stops the people at a place called Rephidim. Archaeologists debate its exact location, but I am persuaded by an educated guess that puts it somewhere in modern Saudi Arabia. The location isn’t so important. What matters is that there’s no water there. Again. This is the second time we are told specifically the people didn’t have any water to drink. Well, the last time there was water, but it wasn’t potable. Either way, this was a perfect chance for the people to trust in the Lord. He had provided both water and food for them before by utterly miraculous means. There was not a rational argument to be made why this time would be any different. So, what did they do? They complained and accused Moses of attempted mass murder.

Again, why? Because all they could see was what was right in front of them. When they complained to Moses, he quickly professed his own inability to solve their problem and pointed his finger at the Lord. It’s as if he is trying to say, “Look, I’m not the one who led you here. Don’t complain to me. Take your requests to the Lord.” Look at what he wrote next, though: “But the people thirsted there for water and grumbled against Moses.” They wanted water and didn’t see water and that was the extent of their world. Nothing else mattered to them except that. As long as they were fixated on their own desires – even though those desires were for genuine needs and not merely frivolous wants – that was all they could see. Their thirst had driven from their memories entirely God’s provision in the recent past. They were on their own. This whole situation was Moses’ fault. They were all going to die out there in the desert.

As we have seen multiple times already on this journey, it is so easy to sit back and take pot shots at Israel over their pathetically small faith here. The record of God’s recent miraculous provision was as clear as it could be. How could they possibly doubt either His ability or His willingness to provide water for them at Rephidim? It doesn’t make any sense. And yet, as we have also observed before, we aren’t all that different. Our attention easily gets captured by what lies in front of us, and we lose the ability to see or even sometimes to conceive of anything else. When we are experiencing a need of some kind, whether felt or actual, until that need is met, nothing else matters. We want what we want and that’s all that we want.

Learning to trust in God in the face of a perceived need is a tough discipline to master. As Israel helpfully and pathetically demonstrates, our ability to choose to not trust Him even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the reasonableness of such a move is pretty remarkable. Or, at least, it would be pretty remarkable if it weren’t so pathetic and irrational. The trouble is that when we are facing a perceived need (again, whether felt or actual doesn’t matter), we want it met right away. That’s natural. Pain is an indicator that something is wrong and needs to be fixed right away. Thus, when we experience pain of some kind, we want it fixed right away. When God in His wisdom chooses to let us linger in pain for longer than a moment, we quickly turn away from Him, and start looking for help from someone or something else. Of course, we won’t actually find helpful help anywhere else, and the “help” we find in other places will actually wind up hurting us more in the long run, but that doesn’t stop us from looking.

What we need is to develop the discipline of trust. We need to work toward the place where our first instinct is to trust in the Lord; where patiently waiting on His provision is the thing that comes naturally to us. The only way to do this is through the experience of encountering a need and then intentionally waiting on the help He plans to provide. What can help us in this effort is devoting more time to engaging with the Scriptures and prayer and the body of Christ so that our frame of reference is full of attestations to His trustworthiness in hard situations. The more we surround ourselves with examples of trusting in the Lord even in the face of overwhelming need, the more likely we are to turn to that because the rest of our cultural context is pointing in that direction. What we see here as this next story begins to unfold is not a reason to roll our eyes at Israel yet again, but a reminder of just how quickly we can turn from the Lord. Let’s learn the lesson and trust Him more.