"SPEAK YE UNTO THE ROCK."
By L. D. Santee
AT Rephidim Moses was to smite the rock, now, he was but to speak to it. Num. 20:1-13. But Moses, for the first and only time in his life, added to, and changed the command of his God. Moses was the meekest man upon the face of the earth (Num. 12:3), but this once the people "provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips." Ps. 106:33. True, he "took the rod from before the Lord, as He commanded him," but in the heat of his spirit, stirred to indignation that a second time the people should accuse both God and him so falsely, he said, "Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice." Was this sin? God counted it so; and for this sin Moses was not permitted to lead God's people into the promised land. God forbid that we should lower His standard of sin. Turning to 1 Cor. 10:11, we read: "Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples [margin, "types"]; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." As we study God's dealings with them, we remember that they were types, and we ask, What lesson does it contain for us? As "God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34), and, as surely as Moses lost the earthly Canaan on account of disobedience, so surely disobedience on our part will cause us to lose the heavenly Canaan. The command was given to Moses, "Speak ye unto the rock," and his disobedience cost him his life. God has given us a command equally plain and explicit. Here it is: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work." It is unchangeable. "My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips." Ps. 89:34. Is this command condemning you? or does it witness your obedience? It will be kept in the new earth. Will you be there to keep it, or will your disobedience lose you the heavenly Canaan? Remember Moses on Mount Pizgah, looking sorrowfully on a land that he was never to enter. Will his experience be yours? or will the judgment find you among the company that are keeping "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Rev. 14:12. "So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty." James 2:12.