Transcript

Years ago, there was a Vietnam veterans’ parade in Chicago. Part of the commemoration was a mobile version of the Vietnam Wall. Like the original, it bore the names of all the soldiers who had died in Vietnam.

A newscaster asked a vet why he had come all the way to Chicago to visit this memorial and to participate in the parade. The soldier looked into the face of the reporter and with tears flowing down his face said, “Because of this man right here.”

As the soldier talked, he was pointing to the name of a friend that was etched in the wall. He traced the letters of his friend’s name in the wall.

The soldier continued to answer the reporter by saying, “This man right here gave his life for me. He gave his life for me.” As the news clip ended, the sobbing soldier let the tears flow as he stood there tracing the name of his friend with his finger.

It was hard for that man to get his heart and mind around the sacrifice of his friend, so he kept retracing and remembering the story. We have that problem, too. There is, of course, someone who gave His life for us.

And we can never retrace the story enough out of our gratitude for what Christ did for us at the Cross. And in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit gives us many different prophecies and types of the Cross for us to discover and study.

And this can make us grow in our appreciation for our Savior’s sacrifice for us, and it shows how the Cross was God’s perfect plan for our redemption from the beginning of creation and eternity past.

Exodus 15:22-23: “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.”

In Exodus 14 is the dramatic account of Israel’s miraculous and glorious deliverance from the Egyptians through God parting the Red Sea. Verses 1-21 of this chapter is a song of praise to the Lord for that deliverance.

Following the crossing of the Red Sea, Israel then began a journey from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai. Three days into that journey, however, they ran into a problem and the people faced another trial involving water.

From the Red Sea, Moses led Israel into the wilderness of Shur, which was a desert. They were crossing an arid, barren, and bleak wasteland, a desert that’s as dry as anything you would find in Arizona or California.

After three days, all their water supply was exhausted. Any jugs, barrels, or canteen-like containers filled with water which they’d brought out with them from Egypt were gone now. And the Israelites were parched and had an intense craving for something to drink.

This was a serious problem for this large number of people, in the neighborhood of 2 million, as well as for all their animals, living in the desert.

Like at the Red Sea, they were facing a water problem again and there was no solution in sight. But this was a test of faith for the Israelites as well. And the Lord said as much in verse 25, where it states that here at Marah, “He proved them.”

Later, Moses also told Israel in Deuteronomy 8:2: “And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and TO PROVE THEE, to know what was in thine heart…”

Just days earlier, the Lord had specifically directed Moses to take Israel to a place where a large body of water was in front of them, the Red Sea, and to camp there.

Pharoah, on receiving this information, pursued them to trap them up against the sea.

God did this so that Israel would see their need to depend and trust in Him, and so they would understand the power and provision of God when He parted the sea and delivered them from Pharoah’s army. And the Lord expected Israel to learn from this event.

Days after that miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea, Israel was led three days into the wilderness and found no water. The test was, “Would they trust God to provide?”

God’s purpose for Israel was to build a people who trusted in Him for His glory. And this test at Marah, provided an opportunity for Israel to do just that.

In Israel’s journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, across the wilderness, we find many principles for the believers’ walk with God. And perhaps the single, most important thing we can learn by their wilderness journey is of the need to trust the Lord.

But put yourself in their sandals. It’s a hot, arid day in the wilderness. You’re tired after walking many miles for three days. You’re thirsty, your lips are parched. You need water.

Someone at the front of the caravan yells, “I see shimmers of sunlight on water! There’s water up ahead!” Word passes quickly through the people.

Everyone picks up speed and begins hurrying to get there. But arriving at the water, the disappointment is great and palpable. You find out that it is even worse than no water. Someone cries out, “It is marah!” It is bitter, undrinkable water.

The word “Marah” is a Hebrew word that means bitter. We see this term used by Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law after her heartbreaking experiences of losing her husband and 2 sons.

Ruth 1:20 reads, “And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.”

Moses led the children of Israel three days into the barren wilderness of Shur, where at first they found no water, and then when they did find some water, it was bitter.

By “bitter” the text does not simply mean the water tasted sour or unpleasant, but rather that it was poisonous, undrinkable, and would make you sick if you drank it.

It was a terrifying moment in their journey, because the Israelites faced certain death if drinkable water could not be found quickly.

Water, of course, is always a matter of life and death, but nowhere more so than in the dehydrating heat of the desert.

Exodus 15:24-25: “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.”

A college student went to his professor and said, “Professor, I don’t believe I deserve this F that you gave me.” The professor said, “Son, I don’t believe you deserve it either, but it’s the lowest grade we have.” That’s how bad the Israelites failed this test from God.

In just three days, they had forgotten the Lord’s mighty miracle at the Red Sea when they had seen Him part a great sea and destroy the greatest army in the world.

Earlier in this chapter, you find Israel singing and praising, “The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation…in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee…Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?”

Exodus 14:31 also states, “And Israel saw that great work which the LORD did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD….”

And three days later, not three months or three weeks later, three days later, these same people are standing by a pool of bitter water complaining, murmuring, and criticizing, when they had already seen what God, the Almighty Creator, could do with water.

Israel’s grumbling here was the outward expression of their inward unbelief in God. Now they were not putting their trust in the One whose greatness they praised so fervently, and whom they had feared and believed.

This chapter shows how prone we are and how fast we can go from the heights of praise and faith in God to the depths of murmuring and unbelief.

And we too can suffer from their same type of short-term memory loss, when we have a circumstance when we should trust the Lord, but we take our focus off Him and focus instead on our trial.

In Israel’s past, they had cried to God, and God responded to their cry for help. Exodus 2:23 reads, “and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.” Israel had turned to the Lord in their great need in the past and God delivered them from their bondage.

But now they had forgotten, and they doubted and murmured. Tony Evans said it well that “We doubt what God can do only because we forget what God has done.”

This is the first time Israel murmured in their journey, and it is also the first time this term “murmured” is used in the entire Old Testament.

But from this first time, murmuring because a continual drumbeat in Israel’s wilderness wanderings, reflecting their unbelief and rebellion against God and Moses.

And the Israelites’ murmuring here was directed “against Moses.” We see by this, how quickly, too, the people turned on the man that God used to courageously deliver them from their bondage in Egypt.

After seeing the miracle of the Red Sea, the whole verse in Exodus 14:31 states, “And Israel saw that great work which the LORD did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD, AND HIS SERVANT MOSES.”

It was only a few days earlier that they feared, respected, and believed in Moses too. But now they were murmuring against him without respect or belief in his leadership. Their murmuring criticized and discredited Moses.

But Moses’s reaction was not to lash out at the people, but to turn to the Lord. Our text tells us that “he cried unto the Lord.” Bitter circumstances drove Israel to grumbling to Moses, but it drove Moses to pray to God. That teaches each of us something.

At Marah, Moses needed water as much as all the other Israelites, but he didn’t join the murmurers. Instead, as the people murmured, he prayed.

God was not his last resort. It was his first reaction to go directly to the God of all wisdom and power. Moses did what the people should have done: he took the issue to God in faith.

He did so because Moses remembered what the Lord had done and that He was able to provide for them.

Though Israel had failed the test and murmured in their unbelief, God dealt with them by His mercy and grace here. And God’s response to Moses was to give him an unorthodox water purification method.

“The Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet” (v. 25).

Moses went to that tree that God showed him, cut it down, and threw it into the waters of Marah, and immediately and miraculously, they were transformed and “made sweet.”

Israel was taught the lesson that the same hand of God that turned water into blood in Egypt could turn bitter water into sweet water in the wilderness.

The unwholesome waters were now changed. The waters that were of no use and could do no good were now immediately useful. The water became sweet, drinkable, and beneficial to the people and it saved their lives.

The fact that God chose a tree as the instrument which produced this transformation should leap out at us. Why would a tree sweeten bitter waters?

The reason God used a tree to symbolize His healing of this water is because His Son would be crucified on a tree, a wooden cross. The tree here in Exodus 15 was a prophecy, a type or symbol of the Cross of Calvary.

In Acts 5:30, Peter and the apostles stated, “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a TREE.”

In Galatians 3:13, Paul wrote, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a TREE.”

And 1 Peter 2:24 says, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the TREE…”

Like that tree that was tossed into the bitter waters of Marah, the Cross turned doom into deliverance, and transformed death into life.

Christ hung and died upon a tree. On that tree, He was made a curse for us; He took our sins upon Himself, and by His sacrifice we find life.

Notice how Moses cried unto the Lord, and God’s response was to show him a tree. The need of the Israelites was great; they needed water to drink or they were going to die, so God showed Moses a tree.

And the need of sinners dying in their sins is great, and in answer to the cry of that dire human need is a tree. And God sent His Son into the world to die on a tree to save us from our sins and to give us life.

And when any sinner cries out to God today in their spiritual need, “What must I do to be saved,” or “What must I do to have eternal life?” God shows him a tree. He points us to the Cross. It is there we must look for salvation and life.

Moses took the tree and “cast it into the waters” (v. 25). The divinely appointed remedy must be brought into contact with the bitter waters, which portray sin and death.

Sin has the bitter consequence of death, even eternal death in the lake of fire.

Like that tree was thrown into the bitter waters, Christ became sin for us, and Calvary’s tree was a bitter experience. Christ on that Cross was cast into the bitter waters of sin and death and He faced bitter suffering and drank the bitter cup of God’s judgment and wrath that was poured out against our sins.

Sin brings separation from God, and He faced that bitter separation from the Father for us. He faced all the bitter consequences of sin on that tree. And He takes the eternal consequences of death and condemnation away when we trust Him as our personal Savior.

Like those bitter waters left the Israelites thirsty, another consequence of the bitter waters of sin is thirst, spiritual thirst. But at the Cross, our Savior thirsted for us when He was in the bitter waters and was made sin.

He experienced physical and spiritual thirst as He paid for our sins that He might provide us with the waters of everlasting life. By a tree, the Israelites had their thirst quenched, and by the tree, the cross, we have our spiritual thirst quenched by Christ.

As our Lord said in John 4:14: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

When that tree came into contact with the bitter waters of sin, it changed it because it pictured Christ fully paying the penalty for all our sins and taking the bitter consequences of sin away. Thus, the tree, the Cross, made salvation and deliverance from eternal death available for all.

And the bottom line is that by a tree, those Israelites were saved from death and they lived. And it is by the tree, the Cross of Christ, that we are saved from eternal death, and we live. We find the sweetness of life eternal and salvation by a tree.

The tree did not just help Israel cope with the bitter waters, but it completely changed those waters. This was prophetic of the power of the Cross.

That old bitter water became new by that tree. The Cross has the power to make us new. As 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

Like that bitter water was transformed and became sweet, the Cross has the power to transform us, to take one who is dead in their sins and give them life.

It takes an unrighteous sinner, and changes them and makes them righteous in Christ. It transforms one who is in darkness and makes them light in the Lord.

The tree changed those no good, unwholesome waters and made them useful. And the Cross takes no good, unwholesome, ungodly sinners, and washes their sins away, gives them new life and can transform their lives by God’s grace and make one useful in the service of the Lord.

And the tree, the Cross, has the power to free us from the specific sin of bitterness in our lives. Ephesians 4:31-32 reads, “Let all BITTERNESS, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you…”

And the Cross can change us into the sweetness of being like Christ, “and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

In addition, the tree, the Cross, can also sweeten the bitter waters of life and affliction for believers. It enables us to rejoice in tribulation.

The Apostle Paul teaches us that through the Cross we have been “justified by faith,” and “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And our justification by the Cross of Christ, enables the believer, in the bitter and difficult circumstances of life to “glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope” (Rom. 5:1-4).

We also see here that for three days, Israel traveled across a bleak and barren wasteland, walking through the valley of the shadow of death. But at the end of those three days, the bitter waters were made sweet, and they found life.

And so our Savior died on the tree, but after three days, He turned the bitter waters of death sweet when He rose again and has provided eternal life for those who believe.

And thus, Paul wrote the questions of taunt toward our enemy of death, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?…But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55,57).

Death came into this world as a bitter consequence of sin and the curse. But now, through the tree and Christ’s resurrection, He made the bitter waters of death sweet (1 Sam. 15:32). We have the sure hope of life and resurrection through Christ.

And death for the believer now is just a doorway directly into the presence of the Lord. Christ fully paid for all our sins, and by the tree, we are right with God, and we know we have access to God in Christ and we are welcome in His presence.

Exodus 15:27: “And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees: and they encamped there by the waters.”

After the experience at Marah, the children of Israel journeyed further and next came to Elim. And Elim was a tremendous and glorious oasis in the desert, a place of blessing.

This all sounds like Psalm 23: After Israel had walked through the valley of the shadow of death in the desert wilderness of Shur, they were made to lie down in green pastures, and the Lord led them beside the still waters, to restore their souls at Elim.

It had 12 wells of water, which just so happened to be the perfect number for 12 tribes of Israel. Elim means palm trees, and it had a good number of them, having 70 palm trees.

Thus, Israel had plenty to drink as well as the coolness from all these sheltering palms.

Understandably, Israel camped here by the waters. And it was God Who brought the Israelites to this time and place of refreshing. And in His mercy, He had them remain there for an extended period of time.

This was a “waterlogged” journey for Israel. They initially crossed the waters of the Red Sea, then they found no water in the wilderness, before coming to the bitter waters of Marah, to now twelve wells or springs of water in Elim!

But Elim, with its twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees, pictures the rest and refreshment and blessing which are ours after we have been to the cross.

For one to get to Elim, you must first go through Marah. In other words, you have to come to the cross first to have the hope of eternal blessing.

The sun had just risen on a hot August day in 1944 in the small village of Plelo, in German-occupied France. A 15-year-old boy did not know why he and the other citizens of Plelo had been lined up before a firing squad in the middle of the town square.

Perhaps they were being punished for harboring a unit of French underground freedom fighters. Perhaps they were merely to satisfy the blood lust of the German commanding officer who, the evening before, had routed a small group of French scouts.

All the boy knew was that he was about to die. As he stood before the firing squad, he remembered the carefree days of his early childhood, before the war, spent roaming the green of the French countryside. He thought about all he would miss by never growing up.

Most of all he was terrified of dying. And he hoped no one could hear the whimperings coming from deep in his throat every time he exhaled.

Suddenly, the boy heard the sound of exploding mortar shells beyond the limits of his little village. Quickly rolling tanks could also be heard.

The Germans were forced to abandon the firing squad and face a small unit of U.S. tanks with twenty GI’s led by Bob Hamsley, a corporal in Patton’s Third Army.

A French freedom fighter captain had asked Hamsley for help. After three hours, fifty Nazis were dead, and the other fifty were taken prisoner.

In 1990, the town of Plelo honored Bob Hamsley on the very spot where dozens of the town’s citizens would have died if not for him.

The man who initiated the search for Hamsley and the ceremony honoring him was the former mayor of Plelo, that same 15-year-old boy. He had determined to find the man who saved his life and honor him. He did so, because it’s hard to forget your savior.

And that’s how we feel about our Savior, who has rescued us from eternal death by His all-sufficient sacrifice at the Cross. We can never forget Him.

We can never forget His love and grace or His great sacrifice in at the Cross in saving us from our sins so that we might live eternally.