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‘They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.’
1Co_10:4
I. Guidance.—So He was their guide. Christ followed them in all the wanderings that the Guiding Pillar led them through. It was a great and terrible wilderness that God led them into, backwards and forwards, and into many a changing scene they were led for forty years. But wherever they went the Rock followed, them. It was always at hand. Its supplies were unfailing. So again with us. Be our needs what they may, be our lot cast where it will, change as may our spiritual requirements or our special temptations, so long as we are following the path of our probation the Rock follows us, and from It there is the never-failing stream which has an appropriate virtue of refreshment for every need. There is infinite comfort in this. It follows us everywhere, and It follows every one of us everywhere, and It has the special refreshment which each one needs. The wilderness is not exactly the same wilderness to any two of us. Our probations vary. No two of us are exactly the same in character; and no two of us are led by exactly the same track. So the wisest and the most experienced Christian cannot do more than give a general guidance to his brethren.
II. Vitality.—But the Rock follows each, and It gives more than guidance, It communicates vitality, the precise vitality required by the peculiar vocation in which we are called to follow our Guide and Leader. There is boundless comfort in this for the tried and the lonely, for those who are beset with heavy responsibilities or hard beset with difficulties where none can help them. The forms in which the Christian life is cast are infinitely various, but the essence of that life is one throughout, and the Sacramental Gift goes straight to nourishing the essence. It is not mere refreshment that our Smitten Rock communicates. We poor sinful men may oftentimes minister refreshment to one another. The Smitten Rock gives vital force. And perhaps this is what is set forth when in our Eucharistic elements we receive not water only, but the Blood of Christ. The Israelites could not receive the Blood of Christ. Our gift is greater than theirs, just as also our calling is higher. We receive the Blood, and the Blood is the Life. Be our special vocation what it may, be our place in the Mystical Body of Christ high or low, difficult or comparatively easy, whatever be the special form of Sanctity which He calls us to attain unto, the stream of the life-blood of the Smitten Rock is following us to communicate unto us of His own vitality to carry us onward to that completeness in Him which He desires us to attain. As the water from the Smitten Rock followed the Israelites through the winters and the summers of those forty years, so ‘the Water and the Blood’ follow us from our Rock smitten on the Cross. Their calling was a less lofty one than ours, but the principle was the same, an ever-present sustenance proportioned to the perpetual need of a special calling.
III. See that we fall not after their example of unbelief.—They were called to live their life in a land where it was a miracle that it should be supported, but they discerned not the miracle. For a long time it sustained their being, but at last they perished. Ours is no less a miraculous life. It is indeed a miracle that any one of us should be anything worth calling a Christian, should have any Christian vitality, any living faith at all. But we have a miraculous sustentation too. The pity is that so many do not ‘discern It.’ To ‘discern It’ is to separate It off as different in kind from all things else. We fail to ‘discern It’ when we look upon It as a mere reminiscence addressed to our human intellects, or human memories, or human sentiments and feelings. A sermon from a vivid preacher would serve that purpose. We fail to ‘discern It’ when we look upon It as what we may receive or not receive at our own pleasure or convenience. To do this is to count ‘the Blood of the Covenant’ as a mere common or unholy thing, and to do ‘despite unto the Spirit of Grace.’ From which sin may God in His great mercy deliver us for the sake of Him Who was smitten for us, Who gives us His flesh to eat, and Who ever follows us with the chalice filled with the Water and the Blood which flowed from His wounded side.
Illustration
‘The Manna laid up until the morrow lost its efficacy. It was no longer endued with the property of nourishing the bodies of those who ate it. It was to be taken and eaten as often as God gave it. So, in like manner, with the Eucharist. You cannot turn away from the Eucharist, and say that you will go on depending upon the spiritual sustenance afforded you the last time you partook the Bread of Life. It must be taken and eaten as often as God gives it you. Its power of nourishing you comes from God, even as the nourishing power of the Manna came from God; and God did not choose to extend that power of nourishing beyond the time when He provided the next supply.’
THE ROCK OF AGES
I. Water in extremity.—The rock was struck by Moses after the Israelites were likely to die of thirst in the wilderness, and were ready to stone their leader and appoint another. The water came, not only in time to preserve life, but just in time to rescue it. And so it was with the salvation of Christ. ‘When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.’ He came to seek and save that which was lost. How dreary and hopeless the world had become, and the Church as represented by the Jewish people, when Christ stood up and cried on ‘the last, the great day of the feast,’ as that sacred season also was passing away like the rest, leaving behind it utter weariness, ‘If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink!’ So, too, it is with the individual soul.
II. Water from an unlikely source.—How unlikely it was that from that rock in the wilderness the cool, sweet stream would flow! And how unlikely, or rather impossible, did it seem to the men of our Lord’s time, that all nations, or even His own kinsmen, could be blessed in Him! ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ How slow are many of us to acknowledge obligations to Christ!
III. Water drawn forth by strokes.—Moses struck the rock, and the water gushed out. Emblem of Him Who was ‘stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted; wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities.’ Christ poured forth His soul an offering for sin. It is this solemn fact in our Lord’s history and work which has ever given alarmed souls peace and joy—
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
IV. Water an accompanying and abiding blessing.—The stream of water from the stricken rock accompanied the Israelites on their way. And so, faith in Christ is an abiding principle and power in believers’ hearts. His promise is, ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.’