Did the Easter Story Begin in the Desert with Moses?
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The Stones in the Desert
We live in a dry and thirsty land. Our hope is always cast on the next thing that will quench our thirst. It has been this way since the beginning of time. Before Jesus came and spoke of living waters, God was already telling the story of His answer totour thirsty soul.
The stones were searing the flesh of their hands, but their fists were no less clenched. The din of shouts. Chatter among the people raising like a storm cloud of accusations over the weary travelers heads. Unquenching as the clouds that led their weary trek; no rain fell during these long days of walking.
Little ones were faint, the grown men were parched. The frenzy of panic broke out among groups and spread like the fissures in the hot sands they walked on.
Hot blood from cracked lips split from shouting, mingled with spittle and curses, even this flew to the ground and evaporated in the hot sand. Gathered away with their reason.
A group of appointed leaders stood before Moses. Their robes fluttering as they weighed stones in their hands. Would this stone be adequate to kill the one that promised them freedom.
Did we kill the one that called us to the promise land?
Did we rise up in our distain and fury? Did we look out upon the destruction of our little ones and call for someone to be held accountable, to pay the price. Yes. I collectively shouted with the voices in the wilderness.
There was once a people who cried out, “Did you lead me here to die, unquenched, parched and denied the fulfillment of your promise?”
Moses looked at the crowd, unseeing. The stones promised death. The stones were man’s answer to the law. The price for sin was to be buried under your guilt, never able to escape. Death is mans only answer for sin.
God whispered to Moses.
Moses; the shepherd without sheep, leading only angry men. Men now poised to destroy him. He alone listened and followed God’s instructions and raised his staff, his shepherds staff, the lone remnant, the last token of his life as a herdsman and brought it crashing down on a great boulder.
A boulder, the weight of which, the sin stained hands of men could never move.
A rock heavy with the weight of sin, a rock that held the crushing promise of death, greater then all of those hastily gathered to stone their shepherd Moses.
God speaks of the “Stone that traveled with them” in the desert. Christ Jesus. In the desert, Moses crushed the stone to save Gods people. From the strike that made no sense to the crowd, water flowed out of the stone. Water enough to quench every one of them.
In this, God points out man’s inability to reconcile his sin. Our inability to enter into God’s holiness is not an act of hostility to alienate us but an open initiation. An invitation to show God provided the much needed, but impossible way out.
We need water in a vast desert. Christ, the great stone in the desert, stood before us and was broken, struck, cleaved, to cleanse us. There, in the desert, holy water flowed. We thirst, so we seek the face of Christ.
You would thirst forever if the stone was not struck for you, broken for your iniquities, to cleanse you from your sin.
As the thunderous crack still hung in the air, men dropped their stones of accusation and flung themselves at the rivers edge.
God makes great use of those of us that realize we need both hands to bring water to our face.
Deeply still, we drink from the stream of God’s promise because of our great thirst.
I myself, have come to the rivers edge, nearly 20 years ago, with hands full of the stones of accusation. My offenses were many, my anger righteous, but at the waters edge, I found I was only deeply thirsty.
I was unquenchably thirsty.
My hands full.
I could not drink.
You can find my stones at the waters edge, where I dropped them. I laid my stones of sin, wrath and vengeance down and gathered both hands to drink, and I thirst no more.
Isaiah 43:19-20 …I will make a road through the wilderness of the world for my people to go home, and create rivers for them in the desert…so that my people, my chosen ones, can be refreshed.
John 7:37 …”If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink…”
Do you thirst? Dip both hands and drink until you thirst no more.
Most people think that the Easter Celebration begins with Ash Wednesday, or Lent, or Good Friday, but the fact is Easter Sunday was the plan from the beginning of time.
God was leading every step of the Biblical account up to this very pinnacle moment, but it began much further back.
The Bible says Jesus was in the desert with Moses calling to the thirsty just as He calls today.
