![]() By the rod, Jesus was smitten, and by His stripes we are healed (Isa. The rod is a symbol of judgment-in this case, divine judgment, for Moses was God’s representative. Christ would stand in our place, the place of the accused, and bear judgment for the sins of His people. In 1 Corinthians 10:1–4, we read that the Rock (of Horeb) was Christ. The Rock is one of the titles of Jehovah (Deut. God would take the place of the accused and receive the punishment of the rod. God Himself would stand on the rock and be identified with it. He told Moses to go to the rock of Horeb, and to smite the rock. While it would have been His right to destroy the people then and there, the Lord was gracious to them. Despite the many ways God has cared for us, protected us, and delivered us, we still doubt Him. We learn from this how distrustful is the human heart. Yet the Israelites called His faithfulness into question. His word alone should have been sufficient. What folly was this! The God who had delivered them from Egypt, parted the Red Sea, made the bitter waters sweet, and provided quail and manna had certainly proved His faithfulness. Even though they murmured against Moses directly, they called God into question because Moses was God’s representative on earth. Moses told the people that they were tempting the Lord, not him-that they were, in essence, putting God on trial for abandoning them and breaking His promises. God’s design was to wean them of every earthly dependence, to teach them to trust Him, but their response was one of murmuring and of questioning the faithfulness of God. But notice how the Israelites turned this situation, a time of their own testing, into a testing of God. The illustration before us reveals that the man of faith walks along a path of trial. Here again Israel is faced with a trial of their faith and of their trust in God’s faithfulness to provide for them.
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