Sermons 2026

Text: Exodus 17:1-7 

Theme: Complainers, is the Lord with us?

 Outline: 

1. People grumbled. 

2. We Grumble/complain 

3. God still had mercy upon His people, provided water for them, provides us with all great blessings. 

4. God's mercy in our Lives

Sermon 

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the Old Testament Lesson of Exodus chapter seventeen verses one through seven. Beloved lambs, I pray that you are doing well today. Do you know what I have here? I have a box of chocolates, would you like one? Give kids a “chocolate” and see their reactions. What do you think? Do you like this chocolate? No! why not? Because it is not actual chocolate. It only appears to be chocolate. Just like how you complained, when you did not get what you wanted, so too we see in our text the People of Israel complain when they do not get what they want. How does God react to their complaints? How does He react to ours? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you. 

1. Israel Grumbles 

The People of Israel are wandering in the wilderness. The Lord tells Moses to tell the people of Israel to turn back and appear to be wandering in the wilderness for a very good reason, so that Pharoah would leave them alone. The Israelites have been following the Pillar of Cloud by day and the Pillar of Fire by night wherever it leads. It sets down, they set up camp. It departs, they break down camp and follow in their ordered groups. They “left the wilderness of Sin by stages according to the command of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim.” This area “is a long circuitous defile about forty feet in breadth, with perpendicular granite rocks on both sides. The wilderness of Sin through which they approached to this valley is very barren, has an extremely dry and thirsty aspect, little or no water, scarcely even a dwarfish shrub to be seen, and the only shelter to the panting pilgrims is under the shadow of the great overhanging cliffs. ” 

Imagine walking through a desert, there’s no green grass, everything is scorched by the heat of the sun and freezing at night. There is no food and very little water. The people have been complaining about the lack of food, even going so far as to desire to return back into slavery in Egypt. So, the Lord provides for them Manna, literally called what is this? A bread that covers the land in the morning like the dew of the ground. It melts in their mouth and tastes sweeter honey. The Lord does this every single day providing for His people. Yet now, the complaints have gotten worse. The people ryb, they bodily struggle with Moses to the point that Moses fears for his very life. He says that the people are about to stone him. 

The people are rebelling, not against Moses but against the Lord. They desire water and they doubt whether the Lord is among them, because they are wasting away with thirst. They doubt His divine care and provision for them, even though they have seen His gracious provisions every morning, as well as His might arm stretched forth to save them with the plagues upon Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea on dry ground. 

2. We Grumble/complain 

This should not surprise us. How often do we doubt when the Lord leads us where He will? When it seems as though there is no food, no water, absolutely nothing. How often do we grumble against the Lord when it does not seem as though things are going the way that we want them to go? When cancer, sickness, and pain get worse. We do not get that promotion that we have been working hard for. The kids need braces and the bank account is already stretched thin. Food needs to be put on the table and the cupboards have been bare for days. Gas prices keep going up. Medication and doctor’s appointments fill up the day and the expenses keep getting worse. We complain. ‘God are you really at work?’ ‘You say that you are providing, where is it in my life?’ ‘Why does John have such good things and I am barely scrapping by?’ “Why do I have to suffer so?’ 

We doubt that God is really active in our world. We doubt that even if He is, He either does not care about us, or does not have the almighty power to work for our good and for our wants or desires. Even if it seems that the Lord is not with us at all, will we continue to believe his word that he is our God and we his people? 

3. God’s Mercy 

What is the Lord’s reply to the complaints of the people of Israel? He tells Moses to pick up the staff with which he struck the Nile, not to beat the Israelites over the head and pay back their complaints in their own blood, but rather to strike a specific rock. The cloud rested on a particular rock, just as the star rested on the house where the infant Saviour was lodged . When Moses does so in the presence of the Elders, water gushes forth. Enough water to satisfy them, their children, and their livestock. It is perhaps the greatest miracle Moses performed and bears a resemblance to that of Christ. As our Lord says in John 4:14, “But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”” 

As Saint Paul states, this rock is Christ and it followed the people of Israel throughout their wanderings. As he states in 1 Corinthians 10, “I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:1–4) ” 

The reply of the Lord is to shower grace and mercy upon sinners. Both then and now. He graciously provided water for the people of Israel in their wanderings. Even more graciously, He provides for all of our needs of body and soul by sending His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus took God’s wrath fully in our place. He died our death upon the cross, making atonement for our transgressions. He rose from the dead that we can have life with Him forever and ever. 

4. Mercy in our Lives 

We do not have to wonder if the Lord is among us. He has shown in Jesus Christ that He is! The mercy and grace that God shows to us in Christ is not merely in our minds as knowledge. The Lord being with us in grace and mercy, shows itself in our daily lives. Just as our Lord gives us every blessing under the sun, we use them. How? Not for our own gain or glory, but to meet the needs of those around us. To thirsty ones we give water, to hungry food, to those who are depressed, anxious, hurting in conscious or spirit, we show them the grace and mercy of God. We remind them that Jesus is with them, even in the valley of the shadow of death. He gives them the comfort of sins forgiven, death, Satan, and Hell vanquished and destroyed, and life with Him forever and ever. By actions such as these, and many more, we confess that the Lord is among us with grace, mercy, strength, and, forgiveness. 

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.