Sunday, March 15, 2026
Fourth Sunday in Lent
Text: Exodus 17:1-7
Sermon Audio
As we gather… Our Lord wants to restore all things. For a time He held His peace (Isa 42:14). However, the time came that He stepped in to take action. He wants to heal the eyes of the blind. He wants to heal sickness. He wants to forgive sin and empower people to lead holy lives. We see this in the person of Jesus Christ who in our Gospel text heals the eyes of the blind man. But as we look at Isaiah’s Old Testament text, we see that the God doesn’t just care about those who are literally blind, He mourns that the true blind man is His servant Israel. He has sent the nation of Israel to be a messenger to the nations, but Israel is failing its mission. That is also why God sent Jesus to be the true Israel who can minister to the nations. The Lord wants to restore all things, and He works through us to restore us spiritually that we can minister to others, even if imperfectly, as we as the Church share this light with the nations.
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Survivalists have developed something called the rule of threes for survival which is a basic strategy to help decide what needs to prioritize if you’re stranded at sea, in bitter cold, or lost in a desert. From most important to least important, we learn:
You can survive 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. As we consider the Israelites’ desert wanderings, we will look at each of these needs and tie them to Exodus 17 and its surrounding chapters.
We will also tie these four things to how Christ fulfills our needs in the Gospels. Also, we will apply them to how Christ provides us our needs today. Finally, we will tie this all in with a passage from Romans 5 just read to you earlier wherein Paul writes, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” In short, survival, Exodus, Gospels, and application. It’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s go.
“Is the LORD among us or not?” You cannot live but three minutes without breath. The people of Israel suffered under the hand of Pharoah. Nonetheless, the Lord sent Moses to rescue God’s people through a series of plagues.
It all seemed like it was over when Pharoah’s armies were about to trap God’s people against the Red Sea. Yet as Moses sang, ‘at the blast of the Lord’s nostrils the Red Sea piled up.’ A strong east wind, or breath, parted the waters. The people walked through as though on dry land and when the last person crossed, the waters piled back up, drowning Pharoah and his armies.
In the wilderness, how could the Israelites have forgotten such a miracle? How could they have gone three minutes without remembering the strong breath of the Lord parting the seas?
Jesus’ ministry was one empowered by the Spirit. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb. The Holy Spirit descended on Him like a dove at His baptism. Fifty days after His resurrection, the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples at Pentecost and they were able to preach in different languages, and 3,000 people were baptized and believed that day.
We confess with Luther, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.” Your faith is not your own, it is granted to you by the Holy Spirit. You cannot spiritually live three minutes without the Holy Spirit dwelling in your heart. He underpins all things in the lives of a Christian.
“But we rejoice in our sufferings” It is through this Holy Spirit, true God, dwelling in you that you are able to rejoice even in the midst of suffering. “Is the LORD among us or not?” Yes He is! He dwells in your heart through the Holy Spirit. 4. God’s Spirit lets us rejoice in suffering minute by minute.
Next, you can’t live but three hours without shelter. I’m not talking about going for a hike on a nice spring day. I’m talking about if you don’t have a canopy in a raft in the ocean, or if you don’t have shade in the desert, you won’t last much longer than three hours.
As the people of Israel left Egypt, Yahweh gave Moses and Aaron instructions on building a tabernacle. A moving temple wherein the Lord promised to shelter His people in a special way. Where the tabernacle was, there was Yahweh. There He sheltered them with His Word, His forgiveness, and His peace as people brought offerings and offered prayers.
John writes of Jesus, “And the Word became flesh and [tabernacled] among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” It wasn’t good enough for God to dwell in a temple built with hands. He sheltered them with His flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ ministry became a shelter to God’s people as His words brought life and light. We see this in our Gospel text as Jesus refreshes with words of comfort to the Samaritan Woman even as she hides her shame from the crowds by going out in the noonday sun.
You cannot live three hours without shelter. The most remarkable three hours in the history of the world took place as Jesus, the Word of God, hung on the cross. As the sun darkened, many thought this was the end of all things. However, in these three hours of Jesus dying, we have been sheltered from the wrath of the Father that we deserve. More than our need to be sheltered from sun, rain, or snow, we need to be saved from God’s righteous anger over our sins, and because of the three hours of Jesus’ punishment at Calvary, we have peace with God.
As God’s Word shelters us, “suffering produces endurance.” When we face hardships and setbacks, we know how to react. The Holy Spirit grants us endurance to face the worst days of our life. “Is the LORD among us or not?” Yes He is! He shelters us through His Word. 3. God’s Word shelters us so that we endure hour by hour.
You can live only three days without water. We shrivel up and die without this precious resource.
“Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?”” In our appointed Old Testament text, we see that the Israelites are ready to stone Moses. Nonetheless, the Lord instructs Moses to strike a rock at Horeb to give the people water to drink.
“And [Moses] called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the LORD by saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”” The Lord shows grace to the people of Israel as He provides them water even despite their grumbling and lack of faith.
Jesus provided a living water to the Samaritan woman in our Gospel text. He provided her the gift of faith through a Gospel conversation at a well. Elsewhere we read, “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” Jesus gives us water to drink.
Three days you can live without water. After Good Friday, the disciples must have wondered, “Is the LORD among us or not?” Their leader had just died. Nonetheless, on the third day, Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. He appeared to many of the disciples over the course of forty days. His parting gift to His disciples was this, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Jesus gave baptism as a living water through which we as Christians live.
“Endurance produces character.” The Holy Spirit is using your baptism to create Christian character. Through Baptism, you have put on Christ, and the Holy Spirit is forming you into that image of God in Christ Jesus. How? Through His Word and through suffering! As you apply your life to the Word of God, especially in hard times, you see that you cannot live three days without remembering that you are a baptized child of God and He is working to make you more like Him.
“Is the LORD among us or not?” Yes, yes He is! He quenches your spiritual thirst through the waters of baptism. 2. Holy Baptism quenches our thirst to build our character day by day.
If you skip lunch, you may feel like you’re going to die of hunger. Nonetheless, the best rule of thumb for survival is that you can live three weeks without food.
As the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, they got hungry. We read, “and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.””
The Lord then rained bread from heaven to feed the people. They called that bread manna. If that weren’t enough, the Lord provided quail from heaven to feed them some protein. In this way, the Lord cared for His people not just for three weeks, but forty years as they wandered through the wilderness.
Jesus Christ came to this Earth, and He called Himself the Bread of Life. Something greater than manna or quail was present before His people. He fed 5,000 men plus women and children with just two fish and five loaves.
What’s more, He gave His followers a better meal. In the last night of His earthly life, He instituted the Lord’s Supper: a meal of His body and blood in with and under bread and wine for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. What is won at Calvary is delivered in this special meal.
“And character produces hope,” In the Lord’s Supper, we have a foretaste of the wedding feast of Lamb in His Kingdom which has no end. It is a meal of forgiveness, but it is also a meal of hope, knowing that the best is yet to come, and it gets us through the wilderness wanderings of this life with the sure hope of the Promised Land of Heaven.
You can survive three weeks without food. Although I am hesitant to put a number on the exact number of weeks one can survive without the Lord’s Supper, I think we can rejoice in the great blessing we have in this meal and eagerly receive it as much as it is offered here in this place.
I want to take a moment to discuss a matter of faith, life, and doctrine. As I mentioned in the newsletter, the elders and I are working toward making a switch to offering Holy Communion every Sunday. The timeline hasn’t been set; the details haven’t all been worked out. But I want us to consider the blessings it can bring. We feel our sins and know we need forgiveness often. We hear God’s Word often both at church and in our homes. We will have a more frequent opportunity to receive Christ’s body and blood for forgiveness, life, and hope.
Unlike manna, this doesn’t fall down from heaven, one consideration would be logistics. Considering service in the altar guild or as an usher would help make this change a reality.
“Is the LORD among us or not?” Yes, yes He is! He is truly present in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. 1. Holy Communion satisfies our hungry hearts to give us hope week by week.
Three minutes: the Holy Spirit works through Word and Sacrament to give us spiritual life minute by minute to aid in the midst of suffering. Three hours: the Holy Spirit works through His Word to shelter us with the presence of Jesus, producing endurance. Three days: the Holy Spirit works through Baptism to produce character even as we suffer. Three weeks: the Holy Spirit works through the Lord’s Supper to give us hope for the life to come. THE LORD WORKS THROUGH HIS HOLY SPIRIT BY MEANS OF WORD AND SACRAMENT TO REJOICE IN SUFFERING. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard and keep you in the true faith unto life everlasting. Amen.