Who is this Rock?. Garrett Soucy

7 He is Caleb’s son, making the kinds of lineages represented in this battle strongly contrasted. We hear about Hur a couple of times. We hear about Aaron more so. They were both men that God had given Moses to help him in leading the people of God.

      Moses began to grow weary, and Aaron and Hur were the ones to place him on the rock, and to hold up his arms. They helped him show the people of God what dependency on God looked like. They came alongside him, literally, and helped him to do his job. This is kingdom leadership. It is leadership that cannot be accomplished without help. Kingdom leadership is encompassed on all sides by dependency: Moses is seated on the Rock, hands raised to heaven, arms held up by his friends. Now we begin to see what makes Moses such a great believer, his posture is that of a child.

      Here is the lesson of perseverance as well. Moses did not persevere. He was persevered. All endurance requires an external perseverant. For the believer, this is ultimately promised to be God himself.

      Being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. (Col 1:11–12)

      These hands that are being held in the air are the very hands that held the tablets of the Law. They are the hands that carried the Word of God to the people of God, and now God is fashioning them to show the people of God how to abide in him. Just as Jesus declared that the Word of God was a thing never to pass away, so the Rock stands as this fixed marker, unwavered by the years and the calamities. Should this all go on for millions of years from now, there will be men and women of God whom he raises up, who place themselves on the very same Word and will not be shaken. They will stand in the line of Moses, whom God established as an example for New Covenant believers throughout the world, of what it looks like to be shipwrecked upon the shores of the living God.

      I Need Thee, Every Hour

      (Annie S. Hawks, 1872)

      I need thee every hour,

      in joy or pain;

      come quickly and abide,

      or life is vain.

      I need thee, O I need thee,

      every hour I need thee.

      O bless me now, my Savior;

      I come to thee.

7. Josephus, Antiquities Book III, 69.

      Chapter 6

      If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. (Exod 20:25)

      There is a story that Melody Green tells in her book, No Compromise, about her late husband, Keith Green. They were passing a field one day and Keith made mention of how it was such a beautiful spot. Melody held her breath and waited for what would come next. Historically, he would remark that a field like that should be used to build a Bible college, or an orphanage, but this one time he made no follow-up comment. She says in the book that it was such a profound event, and one that showed that a true maturity was taking place. Keith was able to give credit to God’s creativity and goodness, without needing to perfect it with his own finishing touches.8 Beauty is sufficient in itself without a necessary utilitarian application other than pleasure. We approach something akin to this when we look at this passage in Exodus concerning the earthen altar.

      An altar was a place whereupon God was worshiped. In the Old Covenant, the act of giving the best part of one’s wealth, which was outwardly signified more in one’s agricultural assets than anything else, was one of the primary ways in which God was worshiped. The concept that God has required that he be worshiped in certain ways, and not in others, is an intertestamental concept. There are a number of ways in which God frames prerequisites for proper worship, such as the passage in question. It is safe to say that, in the New Covenant, this regulative principle is reduced to one sharp inward requirement: worship must be done in spirit and in truth.

      God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. (John 4:24)

      There are other passages that can make sense of this, in an applicatory manner, but the primary principle is that simple maxim of Christ’s. Jesus is speaking to the woman at the well. She has used the issue of the regulative principle as a divergent, in order to avoid having a conversation about her own sin. She is a great legalist in this sense. The fact remains that, in the Old Covenant, some aspects of the law carried the prophetic weight of symbolism. It’s not that God actually hates blended fabrics. He hates the tepid abdication of a person whose heart serves two masters. Blended wine and blended fabric were external props by which he could teach that lesson. It is why, when the New Covenant is issued, these external props begin to lose their efficacy—because the Holy Spirit was given, and the Instructor would reign in the heart. The lesson of being single-minded would leave the skin and enter the innermost regions. We are in similar territory in our passage about the unhewn altar. Here is the Exodus line of Scripture within the context of the verses around it: