Rock of Ages

ROCK OF AGES

There were three main ceremonial feast days that Israel celebrated every year. The first was the feast of Passover, commemorating Israel’s miraculous escape from Egypt. Each family had to sacrifice a firstborn lamb of their flocks and sprinkle the blood of the Lamb on the door posts of their houses, and the angel of death passed over the houses of the Israelites, while the firstborn of the males of the families of the Egyptians was slain. The second feast was that of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover, and this Feast celebrated the barley harvest.
The feast of Tabernacles was the third and final feast of the year, and it was the feast that celebrated the presence of God with his people, and it took the form of a festival of joy and unity and thanksgiving. There was a closing ceremony on the seventh day of the feast and the main feature was when the priest invited people to draw of the water from a golden bowl. 
That ceremony commemorated the miracle of the living water that God provided for them when Moses struck the Rock at Mount Horeb in the wilderness.

Exodus 17:1… There was no water for the people to drink... and they complained against Moses. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take in your hand your rod with which you struck the river. I will stand before you there on the rock between you and Mount Sinai; and you will strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may have water.” So he called the name of the place Massah (testing) and Meribah (discontent), because they tempted the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord’s presence among us or not?”  

That was the real test and the real complaint! They had thought that the presence of God was not amongst them because they were without water. Our human heart is tempted to believe that suffering loss or being deprived means that God has abandoned us. God was teaching Israel to learn to trust that his presence was always with them, so he provided for them by miraculously providing water from the rock. Paul writes about this in Corinthians.
1Corinthians 10:3 They all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. 
11. all these things happened to them as examples for us, written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. 
‘That Rock was Christ’. (The Rock of Ages - then and now and the ages to come)

God gave them supernatural living water from the rock for their physical thirst. 
Jesus as our rock gives us the living water of his presence for our spiritual thirst. 

Jesus made a spectacular appearance at the Feast of Tabernacles in that final year of his ministry. The Feast of Passover was the next feast after Tabernacles, about four months away, and his ministry had recently been more out in the open and the opposition and antagonism towards him was growing.
Jesus was staying in Galilee with his family at the time when they were all preparing to go to the feast of Tabernacles. His brothers were becoming confused and impatient with him because of his apparent lack of initiative in ramping up on miracles and healings in the surrounding area. They goaded him by demanding that he do something spectacular at the feast, telling him that it would be his chance to show the people who he really was, but Jesus told his brothers to go on ahead without him seeming to imply that he wasn’t  even going to the feast. However, Jesus had planned to go to the feast for a very special reason, but he wanted to go there in secret and to avoid the crowds till he was ready, so he took the back roads to the temple at Jerusalem.  

On his way to the temple, he would have passed many hundreds of tents camped upon the hillsides because thousands of people gathered on these hills for the week of the feast. He arrived in Jerusalem on the fourth day of the feast and went to the temple and began teaching and discussing Scripture and answering questions from the people, who were amazed and astonished at his teaching. Whenever Jesus stood to speak the crowds would gather to listen. They asked one another how he could have unfolded the Scriptures to them the way he did when he had not been formally taught.

At this Festival People danced and sang as the water drawing ceremonies and rituals were acted out each morning. Women would get water from the surrounding springs and wells in their pitchers and take them up to the temple singing with the men and the children from Isaiah 12:13 ‘Therefore with joy you shall draw water out of the well of salvation’.

On the seventh day of the feast, the Great Day of the feast, as the huge golden water bowl was carried by the people up the temple steps, the enormous crowd stood around watching and cheering, amidst the trumpet blasts sounding out. This was the consecration ceremony of the sacred water, the high point of the feast.

At the top of the temple steps was a special altar with a priest selected by the Sadducees, waiting for the big moment to arrive. When the bowl was presented to him he would raise his hand to indicate that the call was about to be made for people to ‘Come, drink of the water’. 

This would have been the moment, when the priest raised his hand, that Jesus would have stood at the temple steps in front of the crowd, who had eager ears for what he would say. 
John 7:37 On that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink, he who believes in Me. As the Scripture has said, Out of His heart will flow rivers of living water. He was speaking of the Holy Spirit’ Jesus saying this at that particular time in front of all the Jewish pilgrims from all over the Middle East and Asia Minor and Greece would have hit their ears like a thunderclap. 

Division and argument broke out amongst the crowd. Many in the crowd said, ‘This is The Prophet’ while others said, ‘This is The Christ’, while others said ‘Would The Christ ever come out of Galilee?’ 
The Pharisees and Sadducees were furious – calling on the temple police to stop him and arrest him but they couldn’t take hold of him. The officers came back and said ‘we couldn’t arrest him and besides, no man has ever spoken like this before.’
Nicodemus, who had earlier on in Jesus’ ministry come to him in secret to question him about the Kingdom of God, now publicly defended Jesus saying that the Law couldn’t judge unless people have heard what the man has to say. Jesus alone knew that it was planned for him by the Father to proclaim himself as the Rock that gave forth the living water of his presence at this feast. 
Jesus had turned their historic feast into a proclamation of their (and our) salvation, our present faith, and our future hope, an astounding fulfillment of prophecy. Here is Jesus at the end of his ministry saying he was the source of that Living Water, just as he was the bread, the true manna from Heaven that fed them in the wilderness, just as he was The Rock from where the water flowed. Jesus alone knew also that the time was almost upon him to become the sacrificial Lamb of God for humanity at the approaching feast of Passover. And he was the presence that was always with them.

The problem for Israel in the wilderness was the constant complaint of ‘Is the Lord’s presence among us or not?’ 
but God kept showing up for them time after time. It can be the same with us. That is why Jesus was so emphatic that he is always with us, like the Rock that was always with them, following them in the wilderness.
Our soul can feel dried up at times when we sense a lack of motivation or even meaning in the things that happen to us. It is at these times that we set aside time in his presence, keeping our mind upon drawing the energy and inspiration from him as our strength, our rock of Ages to give meaning to everything that we do.
Isaiah 26:3 You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock. 
(olam sûr – which means ‘The Rock of Ages’).