“The Hope of Horeb”

Scripture: Exodus 17:1-7

“Hope for the best, expect the worst, and be happy with whatever comes.” Have you ever heard that expression? Some of us may have even used it upon some occasion or other. Think about those words, though – what kind of hope do they express? The truth is that they aren’t very hopeful, are they! The “hope” is simply expressed as some subjective desire, with no expectation of a pleasant outcome. As a matter of fact, this phrase would encourage us to have a yearning for the best, but don’t expect that it will come about - the only certainty, the only expectation that we can ever have, is the “worst”! And when the best eludes us, just settle in and be happy with whatever you get.

The expression is, at best, defeatist in nature, and is not a worthwhile attitude for any Christian. We talk about the Hope of Christ. Is that a defeatist “hope”, an elusive “hope”, a questionable “hope”? Of course not! The hope that we have in Jesus Christ is a certainty and we can never see it in any other way.

But how about the Hebrew children? Was the hope that they placed in Yahweh elusive? Most of the time they seemed to see it as questionable, but only because they never quite came to grips with God’s all encompassing and undying compassion for them. Yahweh saw them safely through the sea, and then closed the waters up right on top of the entire Egyptian army (Exodus 14:5-31). When they ran out of food and were hungry, he would send them nourishment in the form of manna and quail – not once, not once in a while, but manna every morning and quail every evening, every day of their desert journey (Exodus 16:11-26). And then they ran out of water and got thirsty.

Read Exodus 17:1-1-4

“Expect the worst!” That’s exactly what Israel was doing – “We’re all going to die! Don’t you care what happens to us?” And just who do they direct their demand for water to? Moses! What did they expect the man to do for them? He wasn’t a magician, he wasn’t sorcerer, and he definitely wasn’t divine. Moses couldn’t get water to bubble up out of the sand anymore than the people could! But he knew that God could, and so he confronts the tribes with the truth of where their question is really being directed - “Why do you put the Lord to the test?”

But they don’t hear him, they don’t get it, and they accuse Moses of bringing them out into the desert (actually it was God who did that), and claim that it was Moses’ only desire that they should all die of thirst, which, of course, was never anyone’s desire or intention!

Didn’t they know that they were in a land that was filled to overflowing with God’s promise? And that his promise isn’t up for interpretation – it’s sure and firm. In God, “hope” becomes the expectation, not a simple desire. The problem was that they weren’t satisfied with having trust in their Lord – they wanted God to anticipate their needs and to proactively provide them. They didn’t want adversity in their lives, they didn’t want trials to come, they didn’t want to humbly play out the hand they had been dealt, they didn’t want to simply trust that the Almighty would provide for each and every need, that he would guide each and every step, and that he would do it at the very moment that his help was needed the most.

A man, returning home late one night, stopped at a roadside diner in a Texas hill country town to snag a quick cup of coffee. As is typical of many men, he quickly used all the sugar packets the waitress had left on the table for him, but wanted more. As the waitress came near his table again, he called out, “I want some more sugar, please.” The crusty old gal defiantly put her hands on her hips, leaned over toward him and snapped, “Stir what ya’ got!”
-- Howard Edington, Downtown Church: The Heart of the City (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 27-28.

Israel didn’t want to “stir what they had”, they wanted more and they wanted it yesterday! And that attitude has survived through the centuries, and permeates our present day society. John D. Rockefeller was once asked “How much is enough?”, and his reply was “Just a little more!” A Rockefeller can’t be satisfied, even with all that the Lord has already blessed him with? So why should we be any different? And the truth is that both Israel and we aren’t!

Where is the “hope”? Where is the trust in God? Israel had placed their hope in the physical world, and it wasn’t looking very promising. They had been crying out to the Almighty for many years, and he heard their petitions. But when he began the preparations for their relief, they could only see the probability of more pain and suffering, and they never heard the promise of relief that was already on its way.

Read Exodus 17:5-7

“Is the Lord with us, or not?” We might as well ask “Where is God in all of this mess?”, or “Why is God doing this to me?” That seems to be a relatively common theme for those who are experiencing some great trial – it certainly was the question that Israel seemed stuck on. “Why hasn’t he fixed our problem already?”

Why does God wait until the situation is so desperate that we tend to lose our trust in him? The Lord has an infinitely benevolent nature – why don’t we fix our gaze on that? I don’t think that it is so much that he wants to test our faith, as it is that he wants to show us what a little faith can do. Faith, just like Hope, is not a desire, not a wish, not a craving – Faith and Hope, for those who trust in the one and true God, must be an expectation. It isn’t a confidence, though, that we will never have a need, but rather that God will meet our every need, when it is needed.
It’s also interesting to note that Yahweh doesn’t bring the water out of the rock all on his own. He could have, but he uses Moses to strike the blow. It certainly is the power of God that produced the result, but it is through the faith of the man. God tells Moses “I will stand before you at the rock”. Moses didn’t have to do the work all by himself, and he didn’t even have to take the lead, but he had to take that one important step in faith – a step in expectation - that the water would come.

Mount Horeb is the mountain of Expectant Hope in God. And it would be proved over and over again.

Moses and Elijah are both strongly associated with Mount Horeb. For Moses, Horeb was not only the place that water was found, but also the site of the burning bush (Exodus 3:1), and the giving of the Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 4:10).
For Elijah, it was the site of his crisis of faith, where God sent an earthquake, a rushing wind and an all consuming fire, before speaking to him in “a sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:8-12).
- Homiletics On Line

When we look at our own church, this place of worship — our holy mountain, as it were – the place where we are rested and restored and renewed for this life, the same question applies. Do we see this place as our Horeb? Are we the “faithful” through whom God works many miracles? Are we the “hopeful” who expect to see great things happen when we reach out with the common every day gifts that Almighty God has given us?

The lesson of Horeb is before us today, and that lesson is this – “Hope for the best that you can possibly imagine, and then expect even more.” The Lord has proven this over and over - in Moses’ time, in Elijah’s time, in Peter and Paul’s time, in the time of the early church, and he continues to prove this in our time. But we have to do more than just believe and expect – we have to take that step in faith that places us in a position that is immediately behind the Lord. We have to be prepared to go where he asks us to go, to do what he asks us to do, to trust as he asks us to trust, to surrender to Christ as he surrendered to the will of the Father.
Romans 8:24-25 – “For in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently.”

That is the hope of Horeb. A hope that can not be seen, and yet is the hope that will save us. Horeb is the commandments. Horeb is our sustenance. Horeb is our assurance. Horeb is our trust. And Horeb is our patience.

Know the Hope of God that is in Christ Jesus, the one who is not only our Living Water, but also our Living Horeb.