On Honor

Here's a decently well known story. Moses is in the middle of leading Israel to the Promise land, and everyone, as usual, is complaining:
"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 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 and drink.'
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.'"
Numbers 20:2-12

Whoosh. That's hard luck right there.
God just told Moses that he won't be the one that brings the nation of Israel into the promised land. After almost 40 years of wandering around, putting up with all the complaining of his people, having to beg God to show them compassion, fighting through the disunity and overcoming his fears of leadership, he blew it. No milk and honey for Moses.

So what exactly did Moses do?
The scripture doesn't tell us. All it does is not tell us what he doesn't do.
"Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff"- Moses hits a rock and water comes out. He was completely obedient to God.
But here's the deal.
We know that Moses has a problem with public speaking- that's why Aaron signed on in the first place. Moses hits the rock and God follows through with his promise of water, but Moses fails to recognize God's power in front of the Israelites. In fact, he almost uses the event to glorify himself.
He didn't say, "the Lord will pour water out of this rock for you". On the contrary, he said, "must we bring you water out of this rock?" The 'we' is very much referring to himself and Aaron, not God.

The Israelites weren't particularly grounded people. When they were hungry, they complained about food, and when they were thirsty, they complained about water. When Moses was on mount Sinai, they complained about him taking too long. These are a people that were never good at having their eyes on God- that was Moses' job. So when Moses makes the problem worse by lifting himself up with his water-from-the-rock magic trick, the people look to him as a great leader, rather than a great follower of God.

Moral?
Everything we do is for God's glory, and if we don't recognize His power and His works, we're being like Moses. Moses died before he could get into the place he toiled for decades to get to.

Now here's something else.
When you read, "Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.", what mental image do you have?
Whatever it is, its probably wrong.
In Numbers 26, we learn that the number of fighting men (over age of 20) in Israel about this time was 601,730. Double that for their wives, and double it at least again for their young children. I'd say that a decent approximation of how many people were at the rock: 2.4 million.
That's a lot of people. You can't imagine that many people. Luckily for us, a very recent event also had roughly 2.4 million people at it: President Obama's inauguration.
Here's some perspective.
Look at this picture:
http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/44_01_21/4403_17681689.jpg

That's about 2.4 million people. they look like ants.
Here's a different view:
http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/44_01_21/4402_17676747.jpg

And my favorite is the Gigapan image, taken from the press box next to the capitol building:
http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=17217

Zoom in all the way in the top-right. The end of the crowd is at the Washington Monument.


That is a ridiculous amount of people.
With those images fresh in your mind, try to re-imagine enough water gushing out of a rock for all those people and their livestock to drink. This is not a garden hose. This is a river.

Also, now that you know what 2.4 million people looks like, go back and read Exodus. Everything in that book means a lot more when you realize the insane logistical challenges facing Moses and Aaron to keep track of, communicate to, and feed that many people.