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.The Rock was Christ. The absolute profundity and boundless mystery of this statement extends beyond the realms of our finite comprehension and could not possibly be navigated by man alone. Truly, we can only echo with Paul, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" But still, it is ours to love the Lord with all our minds and test the limits of our mental faculties by seeking to know him through his revealed Word, the all-sufficient, certain, infallible epic drama of Scripture. Once we reach the very precipice of our understanding, we can humbly admit our finitude, worship those acts of God we have been able to comprehend, and then simply gaze at the vast glory of all that we cannot grasp in fascination and awestruck wonder. So, on with my point.
Paul is referencing events that transpired during Israel's wondering through the wilderness after the great exodus event. Two events in particular (besides Exodus 15) come to mind - the waters of Rephidim in Exodus 17 and the waters of Meribah in Numbers 20. In both instances, the people test the Lord who has incessantly provided for them at every moment of need by complaining of the lack of water to Moses. In Exodus 17, the Lord tells Moses to take the staff which he used to strike the Nile and use it to strike the rock, after which water will come out for the people to drink. During this entire episode, God told Moses that he would "stand before [him] there on the rock at Horeb." Next, in Numbers 20 at Meribah, the Lord told Moses to speak to the rock, and it would yield water for the people to drink. At this particular point, Moses disobeyed the Lord by striking the rock twice, and as a result, God forbade him from entering the promised land with the rest of Israel.
So the question that comes to mind is - why was God so upset at this seemingly minor incident? First of all, as the mediator between God and the people of Israel, Moses was to conduct himself in a manner that would be beyond reproach, obeying all that the Lord had commanded him. This is probably obvious. But it should not be overlooked that God said that he would be standing before Moses on the rock, as if to say, "My name is so associated with this rock and the purpose for which I am about to use it, that all that you say or do to this rock, you are saying or doing to me." This idea is something Jesus did quite often. For example, he tells Martha that he is "the Resurrection and the Life" in John 11, as if he were saying to Martha, "My life and purpose are so associated with the ideas of resurrection and everlasting life, that my name is inseparable from them. I am the definitive source and climax of both resurrection and life. You can have neither apart from me."
In the same way, the ever-present rock in the wilderness that followed these people, as well as the water that would inevitably gush forth to quench their thirst, not only came from the God who sustains and provides for his people, but goes even further to proclaim that his name and presence are actually associated with the rock itself. They are so indivisible that Paul interprets this part of the OT narrative by declaring this rock to be Christ himself, the second person of the Godhead who Jude claims to be the one who "saved a people out of the land of Egypt" (Jude 5).
What we should glean from this is that "these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did" (1 Cor. 10:6); that throughout the Old Testament, God used different mediums to teach and point his people to the great coming of his one and only Son; and that Christ has always been present with the people of God, never ceasing to be the Way and the Truth and the Life.
SDG
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