Sadly, so many of the Study Bibles will never apply the meaning of the passage. You look at what they teach from the Books of Moses, and the exodus wanderings, and you ask, ‘What is the purpose of these passages? Will the Study Bible tell me?’ No, it will only tell me about the geography, or technical matters. It might sometimes have a word of doctrine, but it will never make moral applications, because the compilers of that Study Bible don't believe that is what we should do with the Old Testament. That is tragic. These are parallels and we are to learn from these passages. When you read them in your personal Bible study, you ask a number of questions: ‘What view of Christ do I have in this passage? What view of the Lord?’ When we go to John 6 for instance, we are told that the manna speaks of Christ. Then the striking of the rock at Horeb, and the flowing water that nourished them, is said in John 7 to be a picture of Christ, who is the fulfilment of them all. We look back and we reflect on these parallels. This is not allegorizing; it is treating the Old Testament as God teaches us to treat it. It is to grasp God’s teaching methodology in these historical passages. Only God could so superintend history that it becomes the vehicle for spiritual lesson to those who live afterwards.
Does the passage put its finger on my sin? There are some preachers and they are immensely popular, and they are very good in their way, and they do believe the truth, and some of them are the celebrity preachers of the Internet, and yet they will never lay a finger on your sin. There are evangelical men; they are faithful men; they are gospel men in their way, but they will never admonish and exhort. And some even say, ‘You mustn't name the sin.’ Wherever did that come from? That is what the Bible does constantly. Of course, it is a mighty source of encouragement, but it is also a source of exhortation and reproof. Those kind preachers, because there were so many nominal Christians around; those kind preachers are immensely popular. Somebody once said to me that he used to love to go a particular conference that was very famous. He was a very wealthy man, and he had several ranches, not for business but for pleasure; and Cadillacs and all this sort of thing, and he went to this conference to hear truth, truth, truth. Then one day he realised that at that conference, nobody ever laid a finger on his sin or his excesses. Amazing! That is what these passages are for, and the apostle Paul quotes Moses, the Pentateuch, and he runs through the exodus generation and he puts his finger on their sins, and we must apply it to ourselves.