“…all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 10:3–4 

Scripture reading: Exodus 17:1-7

If you have been to a desert, you know that you can get very thirsty in a short time. Now imagine a nation of hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, living in the Sinai desert for decades. The only way this was possible was that the Lord regularly provided them with water. At Marah, the Lord guided Moses to cast a tree into the water to make it drinkable. At Horeb at the beginning of their long journey and Meribah near the end, Moses struck the rock with his rod and water came out.

From this passage in 1 Corinthians 10, we learn that those two scenes were bookends to an ongoing reality. As Israel traveled with the pillar of cloud and fire in front of them, the “spiritual Rock” followed behind them. This is a mysterious truth. Through the Saviour and His work, they were always provided with and always within reach of life-giving water. None of the Israelites needed to be lost in the wilderness, none needed to starve and none needed to die of thirst. Every place they camped, there was water.

That scene, however, was not just about literal water. As believing Israelites went through those trials in faith, they were drinking of the living water. The Lord was supplying them with every spiritual need in Christ. What a picture of comfort this is! That the Saviour goes both before and behind His people, filling their every need! Jesus promised His people, “…whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst” (John 4:14).

Suggestion for prayer

Pray with thanksgiving for Christ our Rock! Pray that contentedness would take the place of complaining and that you would rejoice in the gift of living water

Pastor Robert VanDoodewaard currently serves the Free Reformed Church in Powassan, Ontario, Canada as a minister of the gospel.