Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

Let the Rock Be Hard and Your Heart Well-Watered

If you look at historical photos of Niagara Falls, you can see how the thundering water has carved back the underlying rock cliff over just the last one hundred years. It doesn’t take hundreds of millions of years. Water has incredible power, not just to sustain life, but also to cut through the hardest stone. Water jet cutting is used to make precision cuts and designs in marble and granite.

The Lord God also uses water to make precision cuts through the hardest of materials... our hearts hardened by sin. Just consider our Lord’s interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well in our Gospel reading. The hardness of her heart is laid bare in her initial reaction to Jesus asking for a drink of water. “How is it that You, a Jew, ask a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (John 4:9). Her heart was hardened by the years of conflict between their two cultures. But that does not deflect the stream of Jesus’ outpouring of grace. He continued to aim the jet of His Word at her hard heart.

We know from our own interactions with family and friends how difficult it is to break through the crust of hearts that have been hardened by their sin. But Jesus aimed directly at the stoniest issue. She was not married to her man but was living as if she was. And the issue had been formed by layer upon layer of sin as she had been divorced four times over. Who could ever break through such a heart hardened by repeated sinful behaviour and defiant action against the will and law of God?

We would be expecting an impenetrable resistance, and even an avalanche of assault in response. Stony hearts hurl rocks of rebuff by self-justifying their behaviour, having long ago shored up their defenses and armed themselves with the reasons and excuses of why they should be left alone to do their own thing; how they have chosen to follow the standards of the world rather than the commandments of God. And we know all too well that they are eager to point out any sin in our lives, not in the hope of helping us to rid ourselves of it, but in order to crush us so that they will not have to hear our loving concerns.

Yet the Word of God is able to break through. And it is important that we remember it is the Word of God and not our word that can cut it. For there is some truth to the avalanche of assault that falls upon us as well. We have to acknowledge that our hearts have been hardened too, by cultural prejudices and years of sinful behaviours that have calcified in us without our letting the flow of God’s Word penetrate into those deep hidden crevices. And our strategy to keep those hidden is sometimes to draw attention to the more obvious sins of others.

But Jesus speaks from a heart of pure divine love and mercy. He has no sin that He is trying to keep hidden. He has no desire to condemn the woman, but to bring salvation to her. He is bursting with grace and finds the right angle to aim the jet of His Word so that it cuts through the stony crust of the woman’s heart and transforms it into a heart of flesh that is ready to soak up all of the forgiveness and love that Jesus unstops for her.

Today’s psalm repeats for us the warning: “Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness” (Psalm 95:8). It was a day of complaining desiccated by denying the grace and power of God to save. For He had brought His people miraculously through the Red Sea, holding back the water on both sides so that they could pass through safely on dry ground. He had also turned the Nile River to blood so that their captors in Egypt would know His mighty command over the waters and eventually let His people go.

But at Meribah they were in the desert and there was no obvious source of water. In other words, the people came to the realization that there was no way they could find water for themselves (that is, save themselves). Having forgotten the mighty power of their Saviour God, particularly through water, they complained that He had brought them out in order for them to die of thirst in the desert. Their hearts had hardened and they quarrelled with Moses and they tested the LORD. They grumbled against Moses and tried the grace of God.

In response to these hard and stony hearts, the LORD appointed a Rock, not any rock but a specific Rock. And the LORD told Moses to take the staff with which he had struck the Nile River when the LORD turned it to blood, and to strike the Rock at Horeb. But the LORD Himself would stand before Moses on the Rock when he struck it. So as Moses struck the Rock, the staff passed through the LORD also and saving waters for all the people came out of the Rock.

St. Paul revealed in his letter to the Corinthians that the Rock in the wilderness, from which the water flowed, was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4), who accompanied His people throughout their wilderness journey. Jesus told the woman of Samaria at the well, “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again” (John 4:14). Later, at one of the great feasts commemorating the wilderness journey, Jesus “stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts let him come to Me and drink’” (John 7:37).

It was for such obvious claims of being the God who brought His people out of Egypt and to the promised land that Jesus was condemned and crucified. And while the Rock which was Christ hung upon the cross, He was struck in the side with a spear and blood and water flowed out (John 19:34). Out of His heart flowed rivers of living water. Whoever drinks of the water that He will give will never be thirsty again.

This is the water that cuts through stone. This is the water that breaks through layers of hardened crusty sin. This is the water that turns hardened hearts to hearts of flesh that are eager to soak up the water of life flowing from the pierced side of Jesus. This watery Word of the Gospel creates in us clean hearts and renews a right spirit within sinners. This blast from the firehouse of God’s mercy washes away every spot and stain of sin and wells up within the hearer a spring of living water, faith in the gushing grace of God, that gives eternal life.

This is the water that flowed forth for the woman of Samaria at the well, and it quenched her thirst for forgiveness, righteousness, and peace. So she left her water jar by the well of Jacob and ran to tell her family and friends to come and meet this man, Jesus of Nazareth, who gives living water to anyone that asks it of Him. Her dry and despondent heart had been softened by the promises of Christ. She stopped her quarrelling about Jews and Samaritans. She listened to Jesus and urged others to do the same.

And so our psalm also urges us to do. “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah, when your fathers tested Me. They tried Me though they saw My work” (Psalm 95:8-9). They saw the work of God turning the Nile River to blood and dividing the waters of the Red Sea so that they could walk through on dry ground. Yet they hardened their hearts against the LORD even when He was prepared to give them water in abundance in the desert.

We have seen the work of God, in the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ for our salvation. John the Evangelist saw Jesus’ side pierced and the water and blood come out of Christ the Rock. Do not harden your hearts as your fathers did. Do not grumble when you get thirsty for salvation. Do not quarrel with those who bring the Word of the Lord to expose your sins and wash them away. Do not test the LORD’s gracious care for you in this journey to the promised land, even when you pass through dry and dusty places.

Keep your eyes on the Rock. Open your ears to His Word. Let streams flow forth in the waste places and rivers in the desert. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest His Word as you read it from your Bible, and hear it read from the lectern. As it is preached to you from the pulpit and whispered to you in confession and counsel. Even when it challenges your life of sin, Jesus does not mean to leave you high and dry apart from His love. He is calling you to repentance where the streams of His mercy flow.

Dry and hardened hearts are in need of water. Water comes from the Rock. Moses struck the Rock where the LORD stood and water flowed in abundance for dry and hardened hearts. The spear struck the Rock who is Jesus Christ. Water and the precious blood of Jesus flowed out from His holy sacrifice for your sins.

This is the gushing of God’s grace that softens hearts. The Word of the Gospel turns us away from our sins and to Jesus. It stops our quarrelling and testing when we hear of God’s great love. Through this watery Word the Holy Spirit renews hearts. He removes our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh, spongy soft flesh that eagerly soaks up the flow of God’s mercy.

The living waters streaming from Jesus enliven us. They well up within us, creating, sustaining, and bursting with faith that holds to the salvation He secured for us through the shedding of His blood on the cross and the water that flowed from His side. With eternal life filling our hearts we are strengthened not to grumble or quarrel when we are confronted by our own sins and fears. The challenges and testings that we would throw out to the God who would dare to point out our sins, are quenched so that we may rejoice in Jesus and “make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation” (Psalm 95:1).