In this sermon, the speaker discusses the tactics of Satan throughout history to infiltrate and weaken the church. He explains that Satan's previous strategy of persecution and killing believers only resulted in the church growing stronger. So, Satan changed his approach and began to water down and pollute the church from within. The speaker then focuses on the significance of the rock in Exodus 17, which was smitten by Moses and represented Christ's death. The rock also symbolized the provision of physical and spiritual life, as well as the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 12, excuse me, Exodus chapter 17, you'd think we were going backwards, Exodus chapter 17, and we'll be looking at verses 1 through 7. I've titled this message, and our 25th message on our Desert Survival series, Honey Out of the Rock, Honey Out of the Rock. Listen to this and see if you recognize it. Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure. The double cure is we're saved from the penalty of sin and from the power of sin in our lives. Could my tears forever flow? Could my zeal no longer know? These for sin could not atone, thou must save and thou alone. In my hand no price I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. While I draw this fleeting breath, when my eyes shall close in death, when I rise to worlds unknown, and behold thee on thy throne. Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Let's bow for prayer. Father, would you reveal to us Jesus this morning? We would see Jesus. Spirit of God, open up our eyes to see. I just pray that I would be an instrument of your grace. I yield myself to you, Father. You do that which you want to do. You teach us that which you want us to hear. For it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You know, Samson asked a question that I never did see it. I was over here late last night going over this stuff and I never did see this. But he asked a question that there's an answer to. He said, what is sweeter than honey? Remember that? He got to fooling around with the Philistines and he ended up, he proposed a riddle to them because he had found this, he killed this lion going along one day. By the way, he was a very shy person. He was going along, this giant lion jumped out at him. He grabbed that lion and jerked him inside out and chunked him over in the bushes. Well, he came back a little bit later, a few months later or so, and there was a carcass there, and the beads had moved into the carcass, and so he grabbed this honey. And he was eating this honey and he went along and gave it to his mom and dad, and he didn't tell him where he got the honey. He killed that lion single-handedly like David, just a very meek person. But he used that as a riddle later on in Judges 14. And so it came out, what is sweeter than honey? That was part of his riddle. Just want to talk to you about Jesus this morning. Life is so hard if Christ isn't there, living in our lives. And life just doesn't work to pretend like he's there either. It gets awful hard. And if he satisfies your physical needs, he can satisfy your spiritual needs too. And this is the thing of this passage. My proposition, I guess, would be this. If he satisfies your physical needs, he can satisfy all your needs. Everything. All we need is Jesus. All we need is Jesus. That song was so good. Let's read this passage that we have before us. Exodus 17, the first seven verses. So you get an idea of what we're going to be covering this morning. And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of sin, after their journeys according to the commandment of the Lord, and pitched in Rephidim. And there was no water for the people to drink. Wherefore the people did chide with Moses and said, give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, why chide ye with me? Wherefore do you tempt the Lord? And the people thirsted there for water. And the people murmured against Moses and said, wherefore is this that thou has brought us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, what shall I do unto this people? They be almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said unto Moses, go on before the people and take with thee of the elders of Israel and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, and take in thine hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel." Before I answer this question of what is sweeter than honey, because there is something sweeter than honey, and the Lord just revealed this to me last night. I never saw this in this light. I want to just take you through this a little bit for background information necessary to build us up to understand the answer to that question. What is sweeter than honey? Now the clue is, of course, the rock. In chapter 6, I want you to notice, chapter 17, excuse me, in verse 6, that Christ said, I will stand on the rock. You take the rod, and actually when he smote the rock, it was the smiting of Christ. That was a picture of several things. First of all, when the rock was smitting, let me just share these three things with you. One, the rock was smitten. He hit the rock, and it spoke of some things. It spoke of Christ's death. Very clearly it spoke of his death. Let me share this with you. Isaiah, chapter 50, in verse 6, says, I gave my back to the smiters. Jesus said, I gave my back to those that beat me. They beat him with stripes. And my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. They would grab him by the beard, and they would jerk the beard right out of his face, and leave it raw and bleeding. And those of you that grow beards, we're pretty sensitive when we have a beard. I remember when last year, I had a beard last winter, and Joy, she'd come along, she'd grab this thing, and she'd jerk. I'd come inside out. It don't take much jerking either. We're just real sensitive on the face. Your face is real sensitive. And if you can imagine, they did that to Jesus. They beat his back, and then they would jerk the beard right out of his face. And he says, I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting. And then also, Isaiah 53, in verse 4, oh, maybe I should start off. Yeah, verse 4, it says, Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. You can carry it if you want, but he's already carried it all. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. When they saw him, they thought he was just a man. You see, he had left his glory in heaven. That's one of the things, when he came down and he took on a body, he left his glory. Have I shared with you about Joseph? Did I share that with you about Joseph and his cross, being in the pit? Have I shared that yet? I haven't shared it with you? Okay, I've shared it in about five other states, but I haven't even shared it here yet. I'm going to share that with you sometime about Joseph, some beautiful things about Joseph. But it says, He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for my iniquities, our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. With his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumped, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. Who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was he stricken. He was stricken for us. Once we understand that and it hits our heart, then we're at the point of salvation. If you can get over Jesus, you've never met him. Some people have some kind of an emotional experience, an intellectual experience or whatever, and then they go on and they live their life without letting Christ guide them, and it's a bitter life. We can't get over Jesus. He is life. All that thrills my soul is Jesus, as they sang in the song. Anything else just waters it down and hinders it. They spoke of his death. Why did he die? Why did he die? The Bible says Christ also had once suffered for sins. The just for the unjust. He was the just and I was the unjust. I should have been the one on the cross paying for my sins. I was the guilty one, but he says, I will die in your place. The just dying for the unjust. The guiltless dying for the guilty. When we see that and it breaks our heart, then we get saved. We come to Jesus. We receive him. It says he did that that he might bring us to God. That's the only way we get to God. Now when we're talking about the rock, we're talking about Jesus. That he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit. Not only did it speak of his death, but it also spoke when the rock was smitten, it spoke of our death. If we are in Christ, it spoke of my dying to self. Romans chapter six. Romans chapter six tells us that that when I received Christ, my old self died. Positionally, I am to consider that the old life is dead. When the early Christians first received Christ and they went down into the water and were baptized, the first step of obedience for a believer in Jesus Christ, they went into the water. They were saying, I am dead. And they were dumped under the water and they said, I am over, I'm dead. And when they come back up, they said, I am alive in Christ. It's Christ living now in my life. This is what Paul said when he said, I am crucified, I'm dead. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And so when they would come up, they would really believe they were dead. So when they were, they'd take them and they'd throw them into the lion, they wouldn't try to run away from them and everything. They would just stand there and take it and say, Lord, this is your will. And this is why Satan had to quit his tactic because it didn't work. They'd throw one Christian into the lion and a hundred would pop up in the stands and say, we want to be Christians too. The Roman soldiers, they'd throw them into the lion. They'd watch how they'd die and they would fall on their face and receive Christ and go out to the lions too. They were just producing more Christians. The more they killed, the more they produced. So finally by about 300 AD, Satan had to quit his tactics. And he started with a new program to infiltrate the church. And that's what he's been using ever since to get in and water it down and pollute it. But it spoke of my death. It said in Romans six, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin. If you're living as a slave to sin, you're doing it willfully. If I serve sin, I do it willfully. I disobey God. He's given me all I need not to. And this is what we're going to learn about this honey, this honey out of the rock, because it has an awful lot to do. Well, it has everything to do with whether or not we live in this power that we're talking about here. The Bible says in 1 Peter 2, 24, he died so I could live. 1 Peter 2, 24 says that he died so I could live free from sin's penalty and sin's power in my life. He did that. He made it available. If I'm not using it, it's not his fault. Those early Christians had the same power that we have. They were extremely happy. Nothing bound them. Nothing could bend them. Nothing could break them. You couldn't get them to compromise. Nothing satisfied but Jesus. They would sell their houses, their land. They met all the time praying together, loving one another, saying the word together. They just loved Jesus. And that was the norm for the Christian life. And it's never ceased to be the normal Christian life. But what we have, we have a flip over today. We're the one that gets excited about Jesus. He's a weird guy. He's fanatic. He goes to church regularly and he doesn't miss. Relatives come, he doesn't miss. He's sick. He'll go unless he's really sick. He just loves the fellowship. He loves Christians. He loves God. He talks about Jesus. Well, we got a flip over today. The normal Christian is the guy that goes to church but he doesn't talk about Jesus. And the devil doesn't care if I go to church. But he does want me to quit talking about Jesus. And he'll get me to do it. The Bible says that Satan goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may destroy. He'll destroy you anyway he can if you let him. He'll destroy me too. And then something else. Not only was the rock smitten but when Moses took his rod and he come down on Christ and he hit that rock which is a type of Christ being crucified, water came out of the rock. Now does that make any sense to you? Water to come out of a rock? Now it's a good thing that Moses was already a crucified man. Otherwise, see he spent 40 years in the desert dying. And now when he's out here and God says, Moses, I want you to hold up your hand and the water is going to split open in the sea. Moses walked out there. Okay, Lord. Moses, I want you to hit a rock and water is going to come out. Okay, Lord. He was obedient most of the time. We'll get into his disobedience. But he was obedient. You know, you think about it. Suppose God tell you, I want you to go out here in the middle of Main Street in Gordon and I want you to take a stick and I want you to take that stick and I want you to hit right down in the middle where Main and 2nd crosses and when you do that, water is going to come gushing out. And I want you to gather a crowd and tell them what's going to happen. How many of you are going to do that? Gun is not good English, is it? How many of you are going to do that? I don't know. I really have to die a little bit more probably before I do that. But this is what it is to crucify life. Jesus tells us to do something and we just do it. Water came out. Now, the water coming out represented life to them. They rushed up and they drank. They hadn't had any water. It represented physical life. Jesus represents physical life. As long as they lived, they needed that water. It was water for life, but also it represented something else. Now we're getting down to where we're going. It represented the Holy Spirit. The water that came out of that rock represented the Holy Spirit. The smiting of the rock represented Christ being crucified. And when he was crucified, he said, you'll receive my spirit. And that's what happened on the day of Pentecost. And so the water represented the Holy Spirit. Now listen to what the Bible says in John 7, 37. John 7, 37. Jesus got up one day. In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried saying, if any man thirst, let him come unto me. Come to the rock and drink. And he's talking about getting saved. And then he said, he that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly, his innermost being, shall flow rivers of living water. By this spake he of the spirit, which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. He's talking about the spirit-filled life will just flow out of your life as you come to the rock. And so it represents physical life, and it represents the Holy Spirit. In John 6, 63, Jesus said, it is the spirit that quickeneth. In other words, it's the spirit that gives life and produces life. He says, the flesh profits nothing. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. This is why the believer, a real Christian, cannot live without the word of God. He craves it as much and more than water and food. And if you can go week after week without craving the scriptures, I doubt you're saved, because that doesn't match up with what the Bible says. The Bible says we will desire the sincere milk of the word. That desire is just as deep a desire as we do for physical food and water. And so many are saying, yes, I'm saved, I'm saved, but they don't have any desire but that which sustains them. This is why the Christians in Russia will risk their lives and a whole lifetime in jail to smuggle scriptures in and to get them. It is life, they crave it. They will walk 500 miles through snow and ice to just go get one page of scripture, and then walk back 500 miles. It is life. They go through their radio stations all night long trying to get something on the radio. There are so many shortwave stations around the world to get the right time at the right spot where they can get a Christian broadcast in their language that they can understand. They'll stay up sometimes for months, all night long searching, and when they find a station like J. Vernon McGee, and there's a few other stations that broadcast over there, oh, it's like finding an oasis in the desert. It is life. Satan is trying to keep the word from them. It's so weird. We've got so many Bibles, so much access, but we don't have any desire for it. Why? I just wonder, how much of Christianity is really Christian in our country? Is it any wonder that we're letting our country go down to the homosexuals and the pornography? The Bible says, Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. If you don't have this Holy Spirit that lives within you and makes you crave this spiritual food, where Jesus said, he said, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. If you don't crave it, are you really saved? Romans 8 is so powerful in this area. It just, it'll rattle you if you read Romans 8, because it says, They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit do the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded, to think humanly all the time, to be carnally minded is death. It's just the life of death. But to be spiritually minded is life and peace. To think spiritually, to think eternal, and we get our thinking from the Word of God. It's life and peace, and it just goes on down. It says, Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But you're not in the flesh. You're not in the flesh, if so be that the Spirit, this living water, what? Dwells in you. Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he's none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. And he gets into some deeper things there. There's another thing. The rock was smitten, and then the water came out, and then what? The Bible said, and we read it, Behold, I will stand before thee. Thereupon the rock in horde, and thou shalt smite the rock. This is my name, Christ. There shall come out water out of it. Then the third thing, that the people may drink. You may drink if you want it. You can have it, and they won't take you to prison in this country yet. You can have it if you want it. Now, the thing about it, it says that they went and they gulped up that water, and they drank it, and they lived off of it. But the Bible says that they did not see Christ. They trampled the manna, they sloshed in the water, but they didn't get their eyes off the water to say, hey, there's water coming out of a rock. What is going on? God let them go through the thirst. He let them go through the hunger, so that they would see him. But so many times our eyes are just off on secondary things, and we don't see God. And our lives are messed up, and our lives are miserable, and our lives are just so much darkness, and so little light. It says in the scriptures, listen to this, they lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation. In other words, they didn't think very much about the rock. All they wanted was the blessing. And what we have today is a whole nation full of people that want blessing for themselves. They want to get this experience, and that experience. And they want to get this for themselves. And I want to be pushed to this position, and I want to have this thing and that thing. But who wants God just to have God? Who wants him? We are trampling upon Jesus in our churches today. Is it any wonder we need revival? Revival is going to come to those that want it. That the people may drink. You see, you can have them if you want it. They didn't recognize that if he satisfies their physical, he would satisfy everything. And that's what we need. Now what is sweeter than honey? Do you know what is sweeter than honey? Huh? Here's what is sweeter than honey. There's been, all the way from the beginning, in this Bible you can go through, there were men that God knew, and that knew God, and they understood what was sweeter than honey. Do you know what is sweeter than honey? David knew it. He even talked about it. You wouldn't believe it. This is where I began to put things together. I saw this verse last night. He said, he should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat and with honey out of the rock, should I have satisfied thee. He's saying that to Israel. You know what he's saying? That honey, the thing that is sweeter than honey, is honey out of the rock. The Spirit of God is what he's talking about. This is why Jesus said, this is why Jesus said, in John 7 39, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. And he that believeth on me, as the scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. The rivers of living water, if you'll study in your Bible, it mentions that almost a dozen times, I think, especially in Revelation, many times, the rivers of living water is what? The Holy Spirit. But this fake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. Do you have the Spirit of God direct in your life? Do you have the Spirit of God, which is the presence of God in your life, giving you comfort, giving you guidance, giving you strength, giving you joy? If there's no joy, then the Spirit of God is not mastering your life and controlling you. The honey out of the rock was the Holy Spirit. Nothing thrills my soul like Jesus. John 4 14, he told this to the woman at the well. John 4 14, he said to this woman, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. He's not talking about physical water. He says, listen, when you receive me and the Spirit of God comes into your life, it's going to satisfy you and it'll take you through all kinds of droughts. Why is it so many people that are professing Christianity and professing Christ are cracking and crumbling? They have no water. They have no spiritual life. And we can't, I tell you, life's too hard. You just can't wing it. You just can't fake it. You got it or you got, or you don't. It's just here. And so he says, I will give him, shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. Whoever drinks of this water that I shall give him shall never thirst. Once we drink, it satisfies forever. That's eternal. But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. Jesus says he is the abundant life. This is the abundant life, the Spirit-filled life. John 10, 10. I've come that you might have life and that you might have it abundantly. That you might have eternal life, but also that you might have the Spirit-loved life. And Satan is busy counterfeiting. He is really busy counterfeiting and he'll get you off in the counterfeit. I love the charismatics, but I'm convinced from the top of my head to the sole of my feet that it's a counterfeit. And I talk to preachers all over the country and they go through all these experiences. And then I talk to those that have been in it and come out and they said it was a dry desert. It's just a dry desert. This is what they're looking for. This is what they're looking for, the Spirit-filled life, where we just let God lead us and guide us. Life is bitter without Him. You know, if you do not have the Spirit of God living in your life, if He is not number one and you're saying, Lord, what do you want today? I love you. I praise you. Go through Psalms 119 and pray those things in there. Man, is it good. You know what? If you're not doing it, you're going to fill your life with other things. You'll fill your life with other things, other habits, other pleasures. And I'm learning that whatever squeezes God away from the center of my life, I've got to get rid of it. He doesn't mind if we have things and do things and enjoy things and pleasures. But when those things are, we're trying to fill our life with those things, money, whatever that is, you know, those things don't satisfy me. Even position, Nicodemus, leader of the Jews, came to Jesus. It didn't satisfy because he didn't have it. And Jesus knew he didn't have it. And He said, you've got to be born again. And maybe you need to be born again. You know, I don't know where you're at, but you know, maybe you just really need to be saved. I went almost 10 years thinking I was saved from the time I was 10 to 19 in church and everything. Well, boy, it was a bitter, miserable time. It just doesn't work. The Spirit-filled Christ life doesn't have room for extra things. You may drink if you want. You know, Jesus said in closing, and let him that is thirsty come. Revelation 22, 17. He says, are you thirsty? Why don't you just come to me? Just come to me. Are you weary, heavy laden? Just come to me. Just come and fall at my feet and give yourself to me. And let him that is thirsty come, and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. It's free. You can have it. You can have it. You know, when we were down in Midland, Texas, I went and I got some water and put some ice cubes in it. And I took a drink, and I can hardly drink that stuff. It tasted so bad. You know, it didn't taste like oil. There's a lot of oil down there. It just tasted so strong with minerals. You can, it's like drinking a rusty pipe. And I tried drinking a little bit of that. And I tried that a couple of times, and then finally the lady there in the house, Ms. Blalock, saw what I was doing and said, hey, don't drink that stuff. There's some good water over there in the cooler. They had to go buy their water, the pure spring water, the distilled water, whatever it was. So many believers are drinking at the wrong well, and they're not satisfied. We've got to drink at the well of the word of God. You know, God says that he holds his word above his name. Do you know that? He holds his word above his name. And so many times we think that we're doing God a favor, we praise God, we praise his name, but yet we don't exalt his word and crave his word and memorize his word and live with his word. All we're saying is, you're not that important, Lord. Let's bow for prayer. Before we close, I just wonder, would you like to pray and receive Christ? Just draw a circle around yourself and say, God, this is my altar, and I'm just going to crawl on it right now. And here I am, me, miserable, full of sin, full of selfishness, full of problems, and I've produced problems in my life with others. Here I am, just as I am, without one plea, but dear God, would you just save my soul. Jesus, I accept your forgiveness for me. I just accept your forgiveness. I confess that I'm an awful sinner, and I accept your forgiveness and your cleansing. Cleanse me. Give me that new start, that born-again, beginning-again experience. Just come into my heart now and save my soul, and you direct my life. You make my life that which you want it to be. I've made a wreck out of it. And Lord, also, I give you all my problems. I can't undo them. I have to commit these to you also. And I thank you now for saving my soul. I thank you now for taking control, and I thank you now that you will make me whole, for Jesus' sake. Lord, thank you for your word that you've given us. What is sweeter than honey? What is sweeter than honey? Samson asked. And David knew what was sweeter than honey. He said, what is sweeter than honey? Why, it's water out of the rock. Honey out of the rock. The Spirit of God. For man, and man can drink it. And Jesus, you said, it will fill and it will satisfy how sweet you are to those that drink. And they may drink. We may drink if we want to. Lord, if someone goes away from here today and they're not satisfied, it's not because you're not able to satisfy, it's because we won't let you. Thank you now, in Jesus' name. Amen.