Genesis 49:24

But his bow remained steady, his strong arms stayed limber, because of the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, because of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel,

That was the first mention of the "Rock of Israel." Of course you'll find "rock" in other places, so I want to trace "rock" through the Bible with you. If you were doing your own, personal word study, using Strong's Concordance, you would find these Scripture references.

The next reference is in Exodus 17.

The Nation of Israel has left Egypt. Moses has them out in the wilderness. They are two million-strong so there are a lot of logistics involved: food, water, clothing, etc.

Exodus 17:1-7

The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water to drink." Moses replied, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the LORD to the test?" But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?" Then Moses cried out to the LORD, "What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me." The LORD answered Moses, "Walk on ahead of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink." So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the LORD saying, "Is the LORD among us or not?"

So here's the next "rock" you would have found in Strong's Concordance. Strike the rock and water will come out.

"rock" - strike - water

Remember that when you're studying the Bible (and in your own lives), God will have things done to you that are supernatural. Would you call this "supernatural?" Yes. If God had said, "Go over the next hill and you'll find a lake of water," what could the people have said? "It was luck. The lake was there. Nothing supernatural about it." God works miraculously in their lives and in your life today.

Thirty-eight years have gone by. The Israelites have been wandering in the wilderness. A new generation has come up.

Numbers 20:1-8

In the first month the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died and was buried. Now there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. They quarreled with Moses and said, "If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the LORD! Why did you bring the LORD's community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!" Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the LORD appeared to them. The LORD said to Moses, "Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink."

Does this sound familiar?

What did God tell him to do? Speak.

"rock" - speak - water

"Strike" the first time and "speak" the second time. What are we going to get out? Water. You ask, "What does this have to do with Jesus Christ?" Well, we'll see.

Numbers 20:9-13

So Moses took the staff from the LORD's presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, "Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?" Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them." These were the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites quarreled with the LORD and where he showed himself holy among them.

In other words, Moses disobeyed God. God told him to speak. Moses struck the rock twice. And God said, "Because of that, you will not take these people into the Promised Land." Up to this time, Moses was going to take them to the Promised Land but now he's not. Is that a tough, tough consequence of what looks very innocent? Would you agree?

Deuteronomy 32:4a

He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just.

Notice the capitalization of "Rock." Who is this referring to? God.

"Rock" - God

Deuteronomy 32:15

Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; filled with food, he became heavy and sleek. He abandoned the God who made him and rejected the Rock his Savior.

"Jeshurun" is another word for Israel.

"Rock" - Savior

Does that sound more like Jesus? We're getting there, aren't we? Remember last week I said that God reveals Himself steadily throughout the Bible, as we can understand it? That's also how He reveals Himself to you, individually. In your own life, God reveals Himself. When you accept that revelation, God says, "OK. I'm going to reveal more to you." When you don't accept that revelation, He stops and waits.

Go to Judges. Judges is a 350-year period that is a sorry time in Israel. We will study that.

Judges 6:20-24

The angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth." And Gideon did so. With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the LORD touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the LORD disappeared. When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the LORD, he exclaimed, "Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!" But the LORD said to him, "Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die." So Gideon built an altar to the LORD there and called it The LORD is Peace. To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

When we've seen "the angel of God," who have we said that was in the past? I think it's the pre-incarnate Christ. We've seen more and more of the "angel of the Lord" referred to as God or part of the trinity, God.

"Sovereign Lord" is Jehovah.

Here's a rock on which an offering was made and what came out of it? What did Gideon call the place? The LORD is Peace. Does that sound familiar? I'm just building a little case as we go along here.

rock - fire - Peace

Let me tell you. If you were doing this yourself, you would forget football games. You'd forget turkey. You'd forget everything. After a while, in my case, my wife will come over and ask me, "Could you get your head out of that book just for a moment and acknowledge me?"

Judges 13:17-25

Then Manoah inquired of the angel of the LORD, "What is your name, so that we may honor you when your word comes true?" He replied, "Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding." Then Manoah took a young goat, together with the grain offering, and sacrificed it on a rock to the LORD. And the LORD did an amazing thing while Manoah and his wife watched: As the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame. Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground. When the angel of the LORD did not show himself again to Manoah and his wife, Manoah realized that it was the angel of the LORD. "We are doomed to die!" he said to his wife. "We have seen God!" But his wife answered, "If the LORD had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and grain offering from our hands, nor shown us all these things or now told us this." The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the LORD blessed him, and the Spirit of the LORD began to stir him while he was in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

Notice "the angel of the LORD," again.

Here's an offering on a rock and out of the flames on the rock, they see the angel of the LORD ascending.

rock - offering - ascended to Heaven

<From the class: You make the case that the "angel of the LORD" is Jesus. This passage says, "my name is beyond understanding." The footnote in my Bible says that "beyond understanding" could mean "Wonderful.">

I tell you. When you start looking, you won't be able to get your head out of the Bible!

1 Samuel 2:2

"There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.

Rock - God

When you look up a word like "rock" in Strong's Concordance, it will give you a number, like 4396. It will give you all the "4396"s that are the exact same word. Then it will give you "3485" which is a different Hebrew word for "rock." You will want to go to the back and get the definition of the word-it will probably be a derivative of "rock." The translators are the ones who said, "We're going to capitalize it here."

Understand that I'm not covering all the "rocks." There are some that I'm skipping. (Ha ha).

2 Samuel 22:1-3a

David sang to the LORD the words of this song when the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He said: "The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation.

rock - fortress, deliverer, God

rock - refuge, shield, salvation

2 Samuel 22:47

"The LORD lives! Praise be to my Rock! Exalted be God, the Rock, my Savior!

Rock - Praise, Exalted, God, Savior

Psalms 61:1-3

Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe.

rock - higher, refuge, strong tower

Do you see all of the images for rock? Savior, stability, refuge, fortress.

Psalms 78:32-35

In spite of all this, they kept on sinning; in spite of his wonders, they did not believe. So he ended their days in futility and their years in terror. Whenever God slew them, they would seek him; they eagerly turned to him again. They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer.

rock - Redeemer

Do you think we'll end up with all the names of Christ by the time we get through?

Psalms 95:1

Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

Psalms 118:22

The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

This is starting to sound familiar, isn't it?

I didn't cover "stone," but "rock" and "stone" are the same thing: "rock" is there. Do you know whom he's talking about? Do you recognize this from the New Testament?

Over the next few months, we will cover all these books. We'll go over the history of them and what's involved. We're just hitting "rock" right now. I'm trying to show you how to study the word "rock" and how meaningful it is.

Isaiah 8:13-14

The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread, and he will be a sanctuary; but for both houses of Israel he will be a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.

Doesn't that sound like the Psalmist? But now it's in Isaiah. Isaiah is saying that this rock is going to cause men to stumble and fall. Do you know who that "rock" is now? Is it getting really clear?

Isaiah 28:16-17a

So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed. I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line;

This is talking about the righteousness of Christ.

Now here's the solid one. This gets a little deep, but it floors everyone. It's really good.

Daniel is a prophet. We're going to study Daniel later. There's an amazing prophecy of the coming of Jesus Christ, when He comes and what happens. He also talks about the second coming of Christ.

In Chapter 2, there's a dream that Daniel interprets. The interpretation is about the nations that are coming: Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, and Rome, as World Empires. We have already covered them.

Daniel 2:31-35

"You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue--an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

It's talking about the nation. As you read on in Daniel, you'll see this.

You have to read this carefully. If you read it too fast, you'll miss it. A rock is cut out, but not by human hands.

Now who do you think the "rock" is? This is a prophecy of Christ.

He explains all the nations in 39-43, but look at 44.

Daniel 2:44-45

"In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands--a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.

Kings - kingdoms - World Empires.

Whose kingdom are we talking about today, in the New Testament that will be established forever? The kingdom of Christ. Does that get any plainer? Do I have to do an interpretation to get to that? This is pretty direct, to me. The vision of this rock (not made by human hands) is a kingdom that will last forever (talking about Jesus Christ).

Start in Daniel 2 and go back and look at what the "rock" is. Every time God was talking about the "rock," whom was He talking about in the Old Testament? In my opinion, He had to be talking about Jesus Christ. Hold onto that. We're going to get more into it.

This is fun, isn't it? How many of you want to do a word study again? Never mind. Don't answer that. I don't want an evaluation. We're going to do it again because I want to.

This is where I get lost in studying the Bible. I'll start following a word through the Bible and before I know it, an hour has passed and I'm not even studying what I originally studied. I'm off chasing rocks.

1 Corinthians 10:1-6

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.

All of this happened in Exodus. We'll read about it. The "spiritual food" was manna. It came from heaven. It only lasted one day and then it rotted. They could only collect enough for one day.

Where was the "spiritual drink"? The rock.

"That rock was Christ." Does that make it clear? Could it be any clearer? We've been leading up to it and you may have been saying, "Well, yeah, I don't know. You're stretching it a bit." What does this say? The spiritual rock was Jesus Christ.

Exodus 4:10

Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue."

Maybe he was, but remember that he's had a truly exceptional upbringing. He had 40 years in Pharaoh's house and 40 years in the wilderness. He's had a lot of experiences, but he's saying, "I'm slow of speech and tongue."

So those of you who are not thinking of teaching next year (which I strongly encourage you to do because you'll know more than 99% of the people out there), you can't say, "I'm slow of speech and tongue," because God will help you with that. We're going to see how He helped Moses.

Exodus 4:11-12

The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."

God is saying, "Don't give me your wimpy excuses! Who do you think created your mouth and tongue and mind? I know what you're capable of. Just go. I'll take care of everything." Do you hear that? What do we do? "No. My finger hurts and I can't go." We come up with all the excuses. God says, "I know you."

Exodus 4:13

But Moses said, "O Lord, please send someone else to do it."

We laugh at this, but this is us! "God, I was never cut out to handle two-year-olds. Send somebody else."

Exodus 4:14a

Then the LORD's anger burned against Moses

What a relationship between Moses and God! That's what I want you to see with this. You should read Exodus for how Moses and God related. You'll see that Moses went to God with things that would make us wonder why God didn't just speak him out of existence.

Exodus 4:14b-16

and he said, "What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and his heart will be glad when he sees you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him.

So now what is Moses' excuse? We'll see that he doesn't have one, but he's going to use the people.

Exodus 4:21

The LORD said to Moses, "When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.

A lot of people struggle with that word, "harden." A lot of people say, "Well, this is God hardening Pharaoh's heart such that Pharaoh doesn't have a choice." That's how some people interpret it.

If you look the word up in Strong's Concordance, "harden" means "to squeeze and twist to get something out." It's like a piece of fruit-like an orange. When God says that He's hardening Pharaoh's heart, He is squeezing it to see what is already there. It's not to harden his heart so that he won't let the people go. God knows everyone's heart. He already knew what was in Pharaoh's heart. He says, "I'm just going to squeeze it and watch what comes out." Pharaoh's going to be hardheaded. You can go read this. You don't have to trust me on it.

Exodus 4:22-23

Then say to Pharaoh, `This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, "Let my son go, so he may worship me." But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.'"

This is early. The plagues haven't happened yet, but what is God saying? "I can already tell you what the tenth, and last, plague is: I'm going to kill your firstborn son."