Free Jesus Unmasked: The Truth Will Shock You by Todd Friel Page A

face of Moses the judge, with his rod uplifted, stands the God of Israel. The Lord stands in the prisoners dock. Moses cannot strike into the heart of God’s shekinah glory. God commands He strike the rock.
    God, the Rock, identifies Himself with the rock by standing on it. God stands in the place of the accused, and the penalty of the judgment is inflicted.
    Is God, then, guilty? No, it is the people who are guilty. In rebellion they have refused to trust the faithfulness of God. Yet God, the Judge, bears the judgment; He receives the blow that their rebellion deserves. The law must be satisfied: if God’s people are to be spared, He must bear their punishment. 1
    And Who Is That Rock?
    Fifteen hundred years after this wilderness courtroom drama, the Apostle Paul tells us who the Rock was.
    For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the [Red] sea; and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:1–4).
    Jesus Christ is the rock!
    Jesus Christ, the righteous one, stands in the place of guilty people and receives the punishment they deserve. Jesus, the innocent, stands in the place of His guilty accusers that they might be found innocent. Jesus, the Just, was treated as if He were unjust so the unjust ones could be made just.
    Jesus was placed on trial by guilty people, sentenced by guilty people, executed by guilty people, to redeem guilty people. The trial at Meribah was a picture of the trial of Jesus Christ.
    >God was falsely accused. Jesus was falsely accused.
    >God stood on trial before men. Jesus stood on trial before men.
    >God stood in the place of men. Jesus stood in the place of men.
    >God was stricken. Jesus stricken, smitten, and afflicted.
    >God, the innocent, paid the fine for the guilty. Jesus, who knew no sin, was made to be sin that we might be made the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).
    Before the Jews were allowed to enter the Promised Land, God gave them another picture of the gospel. God showed them that guilty people need Him to pay the fine for their lawbreaking.
    Most of the Jews failed to grasp this, and they continually attempted to satisfy the justice of God through their self-righteous efforts. They missed the gospel. They missed grace.
    Have you?
    1 . Much gratitude to the late Dr. Edmund Clowney for his judicial understanding of the scene at Meribah. Edmund Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Pub., 2013).
    Chapter Eight — Jesus Is the Living Water

    Not only was Jesus the rock who stood in our place to take the punishment we deserve, He is also the life-giving water that flowed from the rock.
    There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
    Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water .”
    She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water ? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?”
    Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” (John