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Due to the large amount of sermons and topics that appear on this site I feel it is necessary to post this disclaimer on all sermons posted. These sermons are original to the author and the leading of the Holy Spirit. While ideas and illustrations are often gleaned from many sources including those at Sermoncentral.com, any similarities and wording including sermon title, that may appear to be the same as any other sermon are purely coincidental. In instances where other minister’s wording is used, due recognition will be given. These sermons are not copyrighted and may be used or preached freely. May God richly bless you as you read these words. It is my sincere desire that all who read them may be enriched. All scriptures quoted in these sermons are copies and quoted from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Pastor James May
Facing the Waters of Marah
Exodus 15:22-27, "So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, what shall we drink? And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them, And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee. And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees: and they encamped there by the waters."
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 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 defeated, and his army was drowned in the Red Sea. The Israelites 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" "In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy nation".
What they sang was true - God did love them; he would guide them, but their spiritual condition wasn’t right for a quick transition from slavery to Freedom.
I believe this little episode is recorded in Scripture to tell us, first of all:
THE REASON WHY WE FACE PROBLEMS
We see Israel move quickly from the celebration of triumph to the bitterness of dis-appointment. "Then" we read "Moses led Israel from the Red Sea ... they traveled 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 God’s plan to put his chosen people to the test. One of God’s rules for the spiritual life is 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 if God puts us through the wringer - it’s his business, but he always does so for a good reason.
Only three days journey from the point where they had crossed the Red Sea, the people encountered their first difficulty of a water shortage. We can imagine their relief when in the distance they spotted an oasis or a well and 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 found 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". But Pastor, I thought that salvation and redemption would bring perfection and that life would be without pain and that I would feel the presence of Jesus at all times. Well, welcome to reality. Difficulties and setbacks come with amazing regularity after blessing. We’re caught off guard and a moment of gladness changes to gloom. We feel disappointed and discouraged when life’s broad highway suddenly becomes a stony pathway.
Every one of us is on the roller coaster ride of life. God brings us to the top where we can look around and see great distances. Our vision is grand, our hopes are high and we are anticipating the great things to come. Then suddenly, like dropping the bottom out from under us, we are in the depths of the valley in a trial or test that almost seems to overwhelm us. That vision is limited now because we can only see the problem and not the solution and now we must trust God to bring us out.
We can come to the Lord and be born again, filled the Holy Ghost and on fire for God, then take 3 steps outside the church door and suddenly the troubles, trials and tests can begin. But God can take the bitterness of the death of a loved one, the bitterness of family relationship problems, the bitterness of severe illness, the bitterness of losing your income and the bitterness of yielding to temptation and make those bitter experiences to become sweet.
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 circumstances are not the determining factor for 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 program for our continued spiritual development. It’s a sign that God loves us and won’t allow us to continue in our immature and unsanctified lifestyle.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews contrasts the discipline of human parents given with the best of motives, that 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 through the ages and we cannot be exempted.
THE REACTION TO LIFE’S PROBLEMS. Handling Adversity.
When the Israelites came to Marah, the place of the bitter water, what happened? "So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, what are we to drink?" They complained to Moses buy they were really complaining against God and blaming Him for their thirst.
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. All too often people will leave the church, abandon God and look to other means of comfort as though it is God’s fault that they fail or the church’s fault for not helping them more.
We must look beyond the circumstances that we have to endure to the sovereign God whose mind and heart control our affairs. It’s not even a matter of resentfully resigning ourselves to our lot, but rather to be in willing subjection to our Heavenly Father, refusing to let depression get us down.
There is an illustration that I want to share with you. I saw this on a movie entitled “Patch Adams”. Hold up four fingers in front of your face and look at them. Now, tell me how many fingers you see. Nearly everyone will say four because they are looking at the problem, ie, the fingers. Now hold those same 4 fingers up but instead of looking at the fingers focus on an object beyond the fingers and then count how many fingers you see. Most people will see 8 instead of 4. If we would learn to focus on God’s ability to deliver and on His Word and promises instead of focusing on the problems, how much greater would our vision be?!
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 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 tasting bitter, was placing the Israelites 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. 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 what does God have in store for us when difficulties come?
THE REMEDY THAT GOD OFFERS
"What are we to drink?" 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 a solution 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. There is our answer too. We must learn to CRY OUT TO GOD in times of trouble.
"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? "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 means that we cannot understand, by 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, it was a tree that formed the cross of Jesus? In the Cross-, 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.
1 Peter 2:24, "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed."
The Cross of 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, in every circumstance, in every instance of bitterness we must learn to cast the Cross of Christ into those experiences and allow the sacrifice of the precious blood of Jesus to cleanse, deliver and strengthen us. We must learn to trust in Jesus and in nothing else.
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. 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 in Hebrews 12:15, "Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled". We must yield our will to God, but not only that:
We must accept what God permits
Broken dreams lie shattered. Doors have slammed in your face. But our providential God knows what he’s doing. "Disappointment becomes his appointment, / Change one letter, then we will see, that the challenges of my life are put there to better me. Healing begins when we accept his providence.
But in addition: We must do all he bids
The thought of obedience must always be running through our hands. It was at Marah where the bitter water was made sweet that we read: “there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them”. He made it a condition of his continued blessing: “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes..”
Healing of the 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 centers upon:
THE RESULT OF OBEDIENCE TO GOD’S LAWS
The story ends on a high note.
"Then they came to Elim". 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. But we can’t see the forest for the trees- the answer is hidden from your view and can only be seen by faith when the dark valley of despair and adverse circumstances surround us.
God has a purpose for our lives. He has chosen us to fellowship with him in his kingdom, which will be for eternity. But for the time being we are still treading this earthly journey in preparation for eternity and Heaven. 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.
The story we’ve been considering is a faint picture, a small illustration of what Jesus did in coming to Earth. God the Father 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.
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.
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 the Bible that, like Moses you cry out to the Lord, he will show you the that His Cross can make the bitter waters sweet.
Jesus spoke of "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)
When troubles come, life is unfair and you face the bitter waters of your life, learn to turn to Jesus, in faith, believing that He already has the answer to your situation and is already working on your behalf to bring you into victory.
Remember: The Cross makes the difference.
The Cross of Christ will make your life’s lemons into lemonade.
The Cross of Christ will turn your bitterness into sweetness.
The Cross of Christ will turn your disillusionment into a new vision.
The blood of Jesus will lift you out of the miry clay and set your feet on the Rock to stay.
Bring your bitterness to Jesus and let Him make it sweet today.
