OPENING: There once was an oyster whose story I tell,
Who found that sand had got under his shell;
Just one little grain, but it gave him much pain,
For oysters have feelings although they’re so plain.
Now, did he berate the working of Fate
Which had led him to such a deplorable state?
Did he curse out the Government, call for an election?
No; as he lay on the shelf, he said to himself,
"If I cannot remove it, I’ll try to improve it."
So the years rolled by as the years always do,
And he came to his ultimate destiny -- stew.
And this small grain of sand which had bothered him so,
Was a beautiful pearl, all richly aglow.
Now this tale has a moral -- for isn’t it grand
What an oyster can do with a morsel of sand;
What couldn’t we do if we’d only begin
With all of the things that get under our skin.
APPLICATION: As we visit our text this morning, we find that the Israelites don’t have just a grain of sand in their sandals - they have acres of sand. They have been 3 days without a fresh water supply. And when they finally arrive at a source of water that might have filled their needs, it turns out to be so bitter they can’t even drink from it. The water is as bitter as they see their lives as being.
I. As you probably know, life can be bitter.
In John 16:33 Jesus tells us: "In this world you will have trouble..."
Hebrews 11:32ff expands on this by saying: "And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtath, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned, they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated - the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith..."
ILLUS: Life can be filled with many difficulties. I once read of some of the great people of our world and how hard their lives had been.
In a famous study by Victor and Mildred Goertzel, entitled Cradles of Eminence, the home backgrounds of 300 highly successful people were investigated. These 300 subjects had made it to the top. They were men and women whose names everyone would recognize as brilliant in their fields, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, Clara Barton, Gandhi, Einstein, and Freud. The intensive investigation into their early home lives yielded some surprising findings:
* Three fourths of the children were troubled either by poverty, by a broken home, or by rejecting, overpossessive, or dominating parents.
* Seventy-four of 85 writers of fiction or drama and 16 of the 20 poets came from homes where, as children, they saw tense psychological drama played out by their parents.
* Physical handicaps such as blindness, deafness, or crippled limbs characterized over one-fourth of the sample.
ILLUS: Dr. Norman Vincent Peale often said, "The only people who do not have problems are those in the cemeteries." (Then with a twinkle in his eye he’d say, "and some of them really have problems.")
II. While life is hard - much of its bitterness can come from our own actions and attitudes.
Exodus 15:26 Marah was object lesson for both the Israelites and for us: "listen to Me," it seems God is saying, "and you’ll avoid much that is bitter in life."
ILLUS: My dad used to sharecrop and kept about 20 cows to milk. One day a salesman stopped by to demonstrate a milking machine. Dad said he could, but that he shouldn’t put it on "old Bessie" at the end of the barn because she was temperamental. The salesman sized dad up as too young to know what he was talking about and set about trying Bessie on with the machine. Dad said he watched the salesman as he put his equipment down beside the cow and put each of the suction pieces on her teats. And he almost got it done… but then something went wrong and Bessie kicked him all the way across the aisle. Dad called for Mom to come fix the man up, and then he had to go into the stall to disconnect the machine! The salesman left without so much as an apology or word of thanks.
The salesman had only himself to blame for his embarrassment and pain, but he was too proud to own up to it.
God speaks to us when our lives become unpleasant and the sources of our life’s water become bitter: In Isaiah 55:1-3 God declares:
"Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
and you who have to money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend your money on what is not bread, and your labor on
what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will
delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful
love promised to David.
"Listen to me!" He says. Like a parent to a child who thinks they know better.
ILLUS: Erma Bombeck once wrote:
"You don’t love me!" How often have your kids laid that one on you? And how many times have you, as a parent resisted the urge to tell them how much?
Someday, when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a mother, I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them:
I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom, and what time you would get home.
I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your handpicked friend was a creep.
I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it to a drugstore and confess, "I stole this."
I loved you enough to stand over you for 2 hours while you cleaned your room, a job that would have taken me 15 minutes.
I loved you enough to not make excuses for your lack of respect or your bad manners.
I loved enough to ignore "what every other mother" did.
I loved you enough to figure you would lie about the party being chaperoned but forgive you for it... after discovering I was right.
I loved you enough to let you stumble, fall and fail so that you could learn to stand alone.
I loved you enough to accept you for what you were, not what I wanted you to be.
But most of all, I loved you enough to say "no" even when you hated me for it.
That was the hardest part of all.
III. A question: When the Israelites were faced by bitter waters… how did God heal the waters? By a piece of a tree.
"On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
the emblem of suffering and shame.
And I love that old cross, where the dearest and best
for a world of lost sinners was slain.
And I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
where my trophies at last I’ll lay down.
I will cling to the old rugged cross, and exchange it some day for a crown.
Our healing is not in the tree (cross), but in Him who was on the tree.
John 7:37-39 declares:
"On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ’If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’
By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified."
Our healing doesn’t stop with healing of the waters. After we’ve been refreshed, God gives us His SPIRIT to heal the part of us that makes our life bitter. When life is harsh, God’s spirit guides us back to HIM.
CLOSE: Someone once wrote: "We once rescued a wren from the claws of our cat. Though its wing was broken, the frightened bird struggled to escape my loving hands.
Contrast this to my daughter’s recent trip to the doctor. Her strep throat meant a shot was necessary. Frightened, she cried, "No, Daddy. No Daddy. No Daddy." But all the while she gripped me tightly around the neck.
That’s what the Spirit of God does for us, it helps us to cling to God rather than flee Him - and therein lies the greatest of healings.
OTHER SERMONS IN THIS SERIES
Whose Will Be Done? = Exodus 4:19-4:26
The Fingerprint of God = Exodus 8:16-8:19
Stand Firm = Exodus 14:5-14:31
Thirst Quencher = Exodus 15:22-15:27
Strike the Rock = Exodus 17:1-17:7
Get Real = Exodus 34:29-34:35
Of Pride and Prejudice = Numbers 12:1-12:16
