MARAH - TESTING IN THE SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE
If you’ve ever motored around the west of Wales you can’t have helped noticing the many chapels - sadly, many of them now closed. They have some lovely Old Testament names, recalling great events in the lives of the patriarchs and prophets - Bethel, Shiloh, Bethlehem, Ebenezer, Elim and many others. And they’re in Guernsey, Channel Islands where I live, as well! But I haven’t come across one called Marah! No, because Marah was a place of barrenness and disappointment.
The newly liberated nation of Israel was on its way from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan but it was proving to be a difficult journey. The trouble was that the people, although chosen by Jehovah to be his people, were far from perfection. Redeemed, yes, but righteous, no! If we’re honest with ourselves, we might very well come to the conclusion that we share many of their characteristics. It could be profitable to look carefully at this little incident at Marah (Exodus 15:22-27) to see if it can help us on our spiritual pilgrimage to our Promised Land.
The young nation of Israel began their journey in great spirits. Their archenemy, Pharaoh, was dead, drowned in the Red Sea. They sang a song of triumph to the Lord praising him for his great act of deliverance: "Your right hand, O lord, was majestic in power. Your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy" (6). The song continued: "In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy nation" (13). What they sang was true - God did love them; he would guide them, but the spiritual condition of the people wasn’t right for a quick transition from slavery to sonship. I believe this little episode is recorded in Scripture to tell us, first of all:
THE REASON WHY WE FACE PROBLEMS
The Exodus storyteller moves dramatically from the sweet celebration of triumph to the bitterness of disappointment. "Then" we read "Moses led Israel from the Red Sea ... they travelled in the desert without finding water." No one could survive long without water in that hot climate, especially in a desert. What was God doing to them, they thought? Had he suddenly abandoned them, so soon after releasing them from slavery? Why, O why? This was part of Jehovah’s permissive plan to put his chosen people to the test. It’s one of God’s rules for the spiritual life that testing comes before resting! God has never promised that his people will pass into victory via a rose-strewn path. C S Lewis says that is God puts us through the wringer - it’s his business, but doubtless for a good reason. God’s mysteries, he says, are like envelopes addressed to someone else - and you shouldn’t open envelopes that are not addressed to you!
Only three days journey from the point where they had crossed the Red Sea, the people encountered their first difficulty. We can imagine their relief when in the distance they spotted an oasis or a well - their hopes rose high as they hurried to this potential life-giving water. They plunged their faces in the water to quench their thirst, but to their great disappointment, it wasn’t to their liking. They experienced the minor inconvenience of finding that the water supply had a bitter, but not poisonous, taste. This wasn’t at all uncommon in the desert.
"What shall we drink", they cried. Their agonizing cry tells us of their disappointment and disillusionment. Such an experience is not unknown in the Christian life. Life is made up of "highs" and "lows" - rather like a weather chart showing areas of pressure constantly moving, with cold and warm fronts bringing different types of weather. Difficulties and setbacks come with amazing regularity after blessing. We’re caught off our guard and a moment of gladness changes to gloom. We feel disappointed and discouraged when life’s broad highway suddenly peters out into a stony pathway. These experiences bring us back to the basics of life - what are our real foundations? When the time of testing comes, what do we cling to for support? The external factors of life’s circumstances are changeable and there’s no guarantee that they’ll continue to our liking. But they are not the essentials to real happiness and fulfillment.
Well, we ask ourselves, what’s the reason for this about- turn of circumstances? In a word, it’s "discipline" - God’s discipline; it’s part of our soul’s education and equipment. It’s part of God’s training programme for our continued spiritual development. It’s a sign that God loves us. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews contrasts the discipline of human parents which, although given with the best of motives, may be imperfect, with God’s discipline which is "for our good, that we may share in his holiness" (12:10). This has been the story of God’s people down the ages - we cannot be exempted. We’ve seen the Reason that leads on to:
THE REACTION TO LIFE’S PROBLEMS
The Israelites came to Marah, the place of the bitter water, and what happened? The storyteller is quite blunt: "So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, What are we to drink?" (24). What, the people of God grumbling? Perish the thought! We’re told that the people "grumbled against God’s servant" but in reality they were complaining against God - and Moses was the convenient whipping boy.
Submission to discipline isn’t easy. The natural reaction is to become resentful or even rebellious when life takes a hard turn. The spiritual way is to have an attitude of submission to God’s will and patient perseverance. We must look beyond the circumstances that we have to endure and beyond the "second causes" whose helpless and even unfair victims we may appear to be, to the sovereign God whose mind and heart control our affairs. It’s not even a matter of resentfully resigning ourselves to our unwelcome lot, but rather to be in willing subjection to our heavenly Father, refusing to let depression get us down. Of course, it’s easier said than done.
The nation of Israel had experienced a wonderful deliverance from their Egyptian masters and it seems they began to take God for granted, assuming that they would be swept into the Promised Land, promptly and painlessly. The fact that God was fully able to meet their needs by remarkable and miraculous deeds wasn’t intended to imply that he wouldn’t sometimes severely test their faith in order to bring them to maturity. The sad thing was that they found it difficult to cope with even the most minor inconvenience. An insignificant irritation - the water supply being rather unpalatable - was in danger of completely wrecking their discipleship. How often is this true of us?
Learning can be a long process. We want quick solutions to our problems. If we become ill because we’ve been overdoing it and go to the doctor expecting an instant cure by being prescribed a medicine, we’ll be disappointed. "No," the doctor will say, "what you need is regular exercise, proper meals and adequate sleep." Perseverance - that’s the reaction we should have to the difficulties of life. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light bulb said he had to experiment 10,000 times before he succeeded. "These were not failures," he insisted. "I just discovered 9,999 different ways that the bulb didn’t work!"
We’ve looked at the Reason why we experience life’s problems and the Reaction to them - both the negative, which should be avoided, and the positive to be cultivated. Now we must consider:
THE REMEDY THAT GOD OFFERS
"What are we to drink?" was the rather desperate pleading of the people. They just stood there and grumbled. They were rather like the man whose car was held up by a car in front of him that had broken down. He just sat there and sounded the horn while the woman driver in front was desperately trying to start her car. He sounded the horn even more impatiently and the lady walked round to his car and said sweetly, "Why don’t we change places? I’ll sound the horn and you can start the car!" It’s easy to grumble - finding solutions is more difficult!
Moses was up against it; he had no resources of his own. But he was a man of faith; he knew what God had done for him and the nation in the recent past and that he was an unchanging God. He did the only sensible thing: he "cried out to the Lord." It wasn’t a long complicated prayer; no, it was an S O S cry for help. Isn’t it a wonderful consolation that God is always at hand to hear our prayer? He is there in the situation; he is with us, an ever-present help in trouble. Of course, God doesn’t want to be prayed to only when we’re in trouble, but when an emergency comes, be sure he’s only a breath of prayer away.
Our God knows the end from the beginning, so he wasn’t caught unawares by Moses’ S O S prayer. He had the solution already worked out. The storyteller tells us that "the Lord showed Moses a piece of wood"; other translations refer to a tree or a log. Whatever it was, it’s clear that a miracle took place. Moses promptly took hold of the log and "threw it into the water" and what happened? We’re simply told that "the water became sweet".
There’s a saying that "Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity." It certainly was true in this situation. It seems beyond belief, but not where God is concerned. He meets man’s need through a typically implausible means, directing Moses to throw a tree branch into the water, which purifies it. The occasion of failure and disappointment thus becomes, in God’s grace, a symbol of his remedy for mankind’s ills. It’s symbolic because, wasn’t it a tree which formed the cross of Jesus? And isn’t it the Cross in which we can find healing and restoration from the bitterness of sin? The apostle Peter confirms when writing to the Christians of his day - and to us too. Jesus himself, he writes, "bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins, and live for righteousness; for by his wounds you have been healed" (1 Peter 2:24).
The Cross for Jesus meant yielding up his life in atonement for our sins. That is something we can’t do, but the same principle applies - of yielding up the will. It’s as we see God’s will in the various events of life, and surrender ourselves either to bear or do it, that we shall find earth’s bitter things becoming sweet, and its hard things easier to bear. The secret is that:
WE MUST YIELD OUR WILL TO GOD
The means of obtaining a contented life is in saying "Yes" to the will of God. Broken dreams and unfilled aspirations can become a blow too hard to bear. A mark is left. A sore spot begins to fester. God is in the dock - why has he let it happen? Suffering makes us either bitter or better. Where bitterness develops, if treatment isn’t urgently applied, surgery is sometimes necessary. Left to itself it quickly becomes a spiritually life-threatening growth. Scripture urges us, "see to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many" (12:15). We must yield our will to God, but not only that:
WE MUST ACCEPT WHAT GOD PERMITS
It may be that our pains originate from the actions or negligence of others, but if God has permitted them, they must be part of his permissive will. The person of faith will admit God’s omniscience - which he knows what we don’t. Nothing is hidden from him. Broken dreams lie shattered. Doors have slammed in your face. But our providential God knows what he’s doing. A verse of a poem points the way forward: "Disappointment - his appointment, / Change one letter, then I see / That the thwarting of my purpose / Is God’s better choice for me." Healing begins when we accept his providence. But in addition:
WE MUST DO ALL HE BIDS
The thread of obedience must always be running through our hands. Our choice of life’s crossroads must be subject to God’s commands as we find them set out in his Word. It’s rather significant that it was at Marah where the bitter water was made sweet that we read:"There the Lord made a decree and a law for them, and there he tested them." He made it a condition of his continued blessing: "If you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands..." (26).
All healing of spirit, soul and body depends upon obedience. In the natural realm, it’s common sense that if we’re sick but fail to take the prescribed medicine, we’re unlikely to get better. And so much more in the moral and spiritual spheres: "If you will keep my laws." Healing isn’t a changing of God’s laws; it’s the outcome of obedience. Obedience makes way for God to act, to restore and to provide.
In thinking about the incident at Marah, we’ve seen the Reason why we face problems, the Reaction to them and the Remedy that God offers. Our final thought centres upon:
THE RESULT OF OBEDIENCE TO GOD’S LAWS
The story ends on a high note. "Then they came to Elim" (27). It wasn’t the Promised Land, but it was a place of rest and refreshment. There were springs of water for the people to quench their thirst; there were palm trees to provide nourishment and shade. When the Israelites had their minor crisis at Marah they little but knew that the oasis at Elim was only some 7 miles away. If only they’d known it was but a couple of hours walking distance, they perhaps wouldn’t have made so much fuss. This is usually the case with God’s dealings with us. Yes, there are difficulties, but times of comfort and peace are seldom far away.
God has a purpose for our lives. He has chosen us to fellowship with him in his kingdom, which will be for eternity. What a prospect! But for the time being we are still treading this earthly pilgrimage in preparation for the hereafter. Life’s journey may at times be a difficult one; there may be experiences of disillusionment and disappointment. But there is One who has trodden the path before us - and his name is Jesus.
It was Jesus who faced the ultimate "Marah" of life, for it was at the Cross that all the bitterness of sin was heaped upon him. We can take the story we’ve been considering as but a faint picture, a mere illustration of what Jesus did in coming to Earth. God the Father, the heavenly Moses, allowed his Son to go to the tree of the Cross and there was hurled into the bitter water. The pureness of his life, his shed blood as a sacrifice, was and is the means by which cleansing was made possible for you and for me. Hallelujah, what a Saviour!
The "Marahs" we face pale into insignificance compared with that faced by Jesus, but they’re real enough. But we can face them with confidence. Joni Eareckson, the Christian lady crippled by a diving accident in her youth, tells how she found strength to cope with her grievous disability by relating to Jesus who was paralyzed on the Cross and realizing that he knew exactly how she felt. That as Hebrews tell us: "He can sympathize with our weakness ... one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are" (4:15).
All of us, in one way or another, will, or may already have, come to our own particular "Marah". We may grumble like the Israelites against our circumstances, but really we’re offended at God as we say, "What are we to drink?" I can only answer in the words of my text that if, like Moses you cry out to the Lord, he will show you the Cross that can make the bitter waters sweet. Jesus spoke of a "water that I shall give" and he who drinks "shall never thirst" and "shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:14).
