The edge of the Sinai Peninsula. A barren, rocky landscape with very little vegetation, lots of hot sun, and no source of water. That’s the setting for our story today.

The people, naturally enough, are thirsty, and they cry out to Moses. Moses asks God for help. In an event that will be remembered throughout the history of Israel, God leads Moses to strike a rock, and streams of water flow from the rock. Then Moses renames the place. It had a perfectly good name, Rephidim, but Moses renames the place Massah and Meribah, which literally mean “quarrel” and “test,” because there was something about the behavior of the people of Israel that was so inappropriate that it called for a name change.

This picture of rock and water are echoed throughout the Bible. In the Old Testament, God is often called “our rock and our fortress.” We saw that in Psalm 95, God is identified as “the Rock of our Salvation.” In I Corinthians 10, Moses picks up on this picture and says that the rock in the wilderness was really Christ, because he is our salvation.

Likewise the image of water in the desert is found throughout the Bible, particularly in the Psalms and Isaiah. Over and over, the biblical writers say that God will bring streams in the wilderness and pools in the desert. Water in the desert is usually an image of God’s ability to do new things, bring fresh and life-giving change into a stale and dead situation.

In John chapter 7, Jesus builds on this image. The scene is the Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of Booths. It’s in the fall, and during this festival Israelites long and ago and Jews today remember that their ancestors wandered in the desert. Jewish families build shelters in their back yards – “booths” – and eat their meals there in order to remember that their ancestors lived in tents in the desert. A part of this festival is remembering God’s provision of water in the desert.

So, Jesus is in the temple in Jerusalem during the Feast of Booths, and he talks to the crowd. He says that to the one who believes, streams of living water will flow from them. This is a clear reference to Exodus 17. After Jesus stops talking and the Gospel writer, John, takes over, John explains that Jesus was really talking about the Holy Spirit, which God would later give to the disciples.

So we have this vivid miracle, a rock in the desert, with water flowing out of it. Not just a few drops of water, but a rushing stream. And the rock can be a symbol for Jesus and the water can be a symbol for the Holy Spirit. I encourage you to go home this week and think about all the ways God has been a rock for you, and all the ways he has been like clear, refreshing water in your life.

Frankly, I would like to stop the sermon here. This image is so powerful and beautiful that I really don’t want to go on and deal with the other aspect of the story: the grumbling of the people that was so significant that Moses had to rename the place “quarrel” and “test.” But the story does raise questions, and I want to consider those questions.

If the Israelites were so thirsty, then wasn’t it right for them to ask God for water? What was it about the nature of their asking that was so offensive? What did they do wrong?

When a passage raises a question like this for me, I try to find out if there are other places in the Bible that address the same issue. Before I look at commentaries or other books, I try to let the Bible interpret the Bible. In this case, we are fortunate because there are two significant passages that address what happened at Meribah and Massah: Psalm 95 and Hebrews 2 and 3.

Psalm 95 begins with a delightful call to worship of God, the Rock of our Salvation, our Shepherd, the one who cares for us. When I was growing up, we heard the first half of Psalm 95 every other week in worship, so I was very familiar with it. When I got older, and read the second half of the Psalm, I wondered why the psalm writer had to get so negative.

I’ve come to understand that the second half of the Psalm is there to help us understand how important it is for us to listen to the wonderful God described in the first half. Listen to these words from Psalm 95:

O that today you would listen his voice!
Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
As on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
When your ancestors tested me,
And put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.

In Hebrews 3, the writer quotes verbatim from this section of the psalm, and again stresses the importance of listening today. In fact, the writer to the Hebrews tells us that a Christian really can lose the possibility of entering God’s heavenly rest if they continually harden their hearts when God speaks.

So what does this mean for us today? How can we communicate honestly with God without quarreling with him and testing him?

There’s one possible answer that I do not recommend, but I want to lay it out for you because it seems to be such a tempting answer for so many people. It goes like this: Because I might fall into quarreling or testing God, and because there are such powerful consequences for that, I’d better not ever express any frustration to God. I’d better not express my needs. I’d better not ever ask questions or tell God I’m angry.

This is a bad way to respond because it’s not honest or authentic. Besides, there is a strong biblical model for bringing our emotions and questions before God in honesty. Throughout the Psalms, the writers express a variety of negative emotions. “Out of the pit I cry to you,” says one psalm writer. Several psalms are full of tears. Psalm 73 recounts all the questions the psalmist has about why the wicked prosper when so many good people don’t.

In addition to the Psalms, Job wrestles with God and asks lots of questions. At one point his wife suggests that he curse God and die. Job doesn’t do that, but neither does he stop asking questions.

We were talking about this very issue in our Alpha small group this last Thursday night. The topic of the evening was prayer, and we were talking about honesty in prayer. One fellow said, “About a year ago, someone I know was very angry at God about the death of two of her family members. I asked her if she had told God how angry she was, and she said, ‘No, I couldn’t do that! It would be too disrespectful.’ I told her it would be a good idea to be honest with God.”

He told us that the woman eventually did decide to be honest with God, and it was a turning point for her in her Christian life. I can imagine that after she was honest, she was much more able to experience God’s comfort and companionship in her mourning.

After that story, another person in our group said, “I’ve had a similar experience myself.” He said he had been dating a woman for many months, in a kind of on-again, off-again relationship. Throughout those months, he had prayed for God’s guidance about the relationship, but he never felt any guidance or any sense of what to do.

Finally he got mad at God. He said to God, “God, I want to do what you want me to do, but how can I do that if you don’t tell me what it is?!!!! Surely you could help me know where to go in this relationship!! Why don’t you help me?” Within ten days after that prayer, he knew for certain that he was supposed to break up with the woman. This wasn’t a huge turning point for him, but it was a small turning point, where he realized he can be honest with God and express his frustration.

So where is the boundary between honest struggle before God and the kind of quarreling and testing that God hates? I think part of the answer lies in Psalm 95. Remember it says, Oh, that today, when you hear his voice, you wouldn’t harden your hearts like they did at Meribah and Massah. We want to have soft hearts, not hard hearts. What does that look like?

Before I talk about the difference between a soft and hard heart, I want you to think about the area or areas of your life where you have struggled or where you currently struggle. Maybe it’s singleness or infertility or a difficult relationship. Maybe it’s something in your career. Maybe you’re like me and you are unhappy with the body God gave you. Maybe it’s something else. Whatever it is, bring it into your mind.

Here are some of the differences between a soft heart and a hard heart. A hard heart says, “You haven’t answered my prayer. You must not love me.” A soft heart says, “You haven’t answered my prayer, and it feels like you don’t love me. But I am open to hearing otherwise, to receiving your love.”

The hard heart says, “You say you answer prayer. You set me up to hurt me, because you haven’t answered this important prayer of mine.” The soft heart says, “Why don’t you answer my prayer? I want to believe, but it’s hard.”

The hard heart involves open rebellion and active disrespect. When our hearts are hard, we think we know best. We say, “If you loved me, you wouldn’t let this happen,” because we think we know more than God. A soft heart involves honest struggle before God. A soft heart is always open to the possibilities, open to God’s presence, open to God doing something new. A soft heart says, “Maybe you do know best. It feels to me like the best thing would be this, but maybe I’m wrong.”

A hard heart says, “You let me down, and I can’t trust you.” And then the hard heart turns away. A soft heart says, “You let me down. How can I trust you?” And then the soft heart is open to hearing God’s answer.

There’s a lovely little story right in the middle of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus is just coming down the mountain from the transfiguration, that time when he was shown to be the powerful, magnificent God. As he come down, his disciples and followers are in an uproar because they have been trying to heal a little boy and have been unable to do it. Jesus says that it’s necessary to believe in order to heal him. The father of the little boy turns to Jesus and says, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

The soft heart says, “I believe, help my unbelief.” The soft heart might only have a small kernel of belief mixed in with a ton of questions and anger and frustration, but the soft heart brings the whole mess to Jesus and says, “Here is a little bit of belief mixed in with everything else. I bring it all to you.”

There are two additional ideas from our passages today that help us discern how to keep our hearts soft. In both Psalm 95 and Hebrews 3, the writer talks about not hardening our hearts today. We are called to respond to God every day, not just once for all. You can’t pray on January 1, 2002: “God, I’m here with you for the year. I’ve got all I need for the whole year. See you again on January 1, 2003.” Our relationship with God is daily, and if we are looking for God and listening for God every day, we are more likely to have soft hearts.

I also want you to remember the miracle we started with, the miracle of the water flowing in streams from the rock. God works miracles, large and small, in our lives all the time and we find it so hard to notice. Our pastor, Dan Baumgartner, read us a Jewish Sabbath prayer last week that goes like this: “Days pass, years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles.” We do walk sightless among the daily small miracles that mark our lives.

The more we can notice what God is doing in our lives on a daily basis, the more our hearts will be soft. We will be able to come to God in anger and frustration, and say, “I’m really going crazy about this one particular thing, but I do remember that you answered my prayer yesterday. Thanks for that answer, and I am doing my best to remember you are a God who answers prayer.”

The streams of living water continue to flow in the places of our lives that we experience to be deserts. And God welcomes us into his presence with all our concerns, worries, and questions. And he helps us keep our hearts soft, so we can see him work and hear his voice.