BITTER & SWEET MARAH
"Bitter and Sweet" - The Waters of Marah
"And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter..." (Ex. 15:23).
After crossing the Red Sea, the Cloud of God began to turn in a southerly direction, along the western edge of the Peninsula of Sinai. For three days they travelled into the wilderness, and found no water. On and on they travelled, and suddenly they came upon a pool of water, but their hopes were dashed as they stooped to drink and found that the waters were "bitter." Rather than quenching their thirst, the bitter waters merely aggravated their souls.
One of the most tragic things about Israel's journey through the wilderness was the fact that they could never seem to come to that place where they recognized the faithfulness of their God. Over and over again they witnessed His mighty working and delivering power; but never did they learn His ways, and have the assurance of His ever-abiding faithfulness.
I think we have all been inclined to sympathize with the children of Israel in all of their trials, because we want to sympathize with ourselves like in Psalm 119.
I’m feeling terrible—I couldn’t feel worse!
After all, if God was leading the Israelites this way, as a picture and an example to us, why does He lead them to Marah?
God does not give His chosen ones bitter waters to drink nor want them to drink of these waters, but He must reveal the condition of their heart and He is going to deal with it.
We are no different in our reasoning. Oftentimes we put expectations on our leaders to do something about circumstances and situations instead of God. We can witness a breathtaking miracle, like Moses leading the people through the Red Sea, and only three days later when a problem arises, we’re convinced that it is God’s leader who has led us wrongly. He or she must be the reason for the unpleasant circumstance!
One of the first things we have to discover in our journey is that by nature we are filled with bitterness and grumbling just like the children of Israel. We are born complainers about our bitter situations and this grows as we grow. We can sing and dance under the anointing one day and be grumbling the next. We gather on Sundays to worship and praise the One who delivered us from our sins, and then we fail to trust Him in the smaller details of our lives throughout the week.
The same God that can handle the Red Sea can handle the bitter waters of Marah. God wants to deal with us, so let’s quarantine the virus of bitter complaints and trust God to make our bitter waters sweet.
God wants us to discover His way of rooting out the bitterness that is speaking within our soul. The word "Marah" means "bitterness"; and so God leads us to a place in the wilderness named Marah. This place becomes our personal discover of our inherent bitterness or fallen nature, and God shows us how to deal with it.
James writes that our tongues are fire when we are born into this fallen world and it’s quite oblivious to the fact that the bitterness, the envy, the strife, the quarreling, the jealousies, are things that are "earthly, sensual, devilish" (James 3:15).
When we turn to God these things begin to be uprooted from our lives. Like the people James writes about, we think it’s helpful and normal to let the tongue remain in its wild, untamed state. This is a lie of course that we must uncover, overcome and be delivered! I learned, “don’t say it, pray it” as the Lord was uprooting the bitter fountains of my old nature. What I didn’t know at the time, God was training my tongue to stop these bitter roots [words] from intermingling with the new water of life that He had begun flowing! It was a glorious step in my journey to partake in God’s peace and rest!
"But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" (James 3:8, 10-11).
We see the sweet and the bitter everywhere, we learn to think it’s normal to speak about everything! We are slow to believe that God wants the "bitter" to be so completely dealt with that includes jealousy , envy, striving, ill-feelings, resentments, and hardness of heart. All must be submitted to the work of the Cross and then the fountains of our life might be wholly in God, and our Springs are only of Zion.
Now you might understand why the Lord named my Podcast “Springs of Zion”? Our world needs more Springs full of God’s [zion] good water, don’t ya think?
Often, when we are tested in life, we fail to see the problem as a spiritual test. We are quick to blame our Moses instead of looking to God, who is our guide.
The Israelite’s cried out to Moses for water but not to God. All of this took place while the pillar of cloud was over their heads. If they were led wrongly, wouldn’t it have been God who made the blunder? Wouldn’t it have been the leading of His cloud of glory that made the mistake and not Moses? So let us not be disturbed and frustrated but instead excited because God is moving and when we come into agreement with Him we begin to move too! Our Marah is our place of Discovery, the place of Uncovering, where God begins to reveal the bitterness of our hearts.
Our bitterness did not begin when we came to Marah. It began at birth... at our natural birth. We enter this world with a cry of pain and resentment. But now that God has brought forth a new spring of life within us, He wants to deal with the old... that the fountains issuing forth from our lives might henceforth be rivers of refreshing, uncontaminated waters of the old life.
What is the solution?
It is in another Discovery... the discovery of a certain Tree.
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