All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the LORD, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 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?" But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" So Moses cried to the LORD, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me." And the LORD said to Moses, "Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink." And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he 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?"
Exodus 17:1-7
From the purely human standpoint, of course, Israel had their complaint, for they were up against it. But they had forgotten they had been singled out for a particular destiny. Apart from God's dealings with them they would have remained an unknown slave race, as has been said, 'with neither identity nor character, and indeed with no purpose or significance in the world'. And here is the crucial point: in times of testing, the temptation is very real to want to be left alone, and left to oneself, rather than face the cost of being made something of by God. One recalls the people of Gadara, who prayed Christ to depart from their coasts (Mark 5:17), and the magistrates of Philippi who begged Paul and Silas to depart out of their city (Acts 16:39), because their presence was too disturbing and fraught with too critical a possibility. But we should also learn to trace this attitude to its proper source in the powers of darkness. It was an unclean spirit crying out in a man (Mark 1:24) that said, 'Let us alone; what have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth ...?' Now it is the fact that God takes us up and seeks to make something of us that is the explanation of the difficulties and pressures that beset our way. He proves us, tests us, and moulds us. This is why life is far more turbulent after conversion than before. It is the sign of the new dignity conferred upon us, and we should be of good courage, not cast down and disaffected.