THE song of triumph, “which Moses and the children of Israel sang unto the Lord,” is speedily followed by murmurings from the same lips. Three days wandering in the wilderness, and finding no water, was sufficient to obliterate from the thoughts of Israel what God had wrought. When they did come to water, “they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?” The same people who had sung the song of triumph with Moses, now murmur against Moses. The Lord Himself, not Moses, was the theme of their song; and in the Lord’s estimate the murmuring was against the Lord, and not against Moses. “Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured.” It is well to attend to this “admonition.” We are ever ready to lay the fault on others, when it goes ill with us; but it is really against the Lord Himself that we complain. “His hand is not shortened,” His grace is not exhausted, His ear is not heavy. This Moses knew, and he turned the murmuring against himself into a cry unto the Lord. Moses might have met their complaining of him, by complaining against them; but he reckoned on God’s grace and power. He had before known the petulance of the people, when they stood on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea. He had stilled their fears, and cried unto the Lord. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward;” and the Lord “led them through the deep, as a horse in the wilderness...to make Himself a glorious name.” Again the Lord hears the cry of Moses in answer to the murmurings of Israel; and the Lord showed him a tree, which, when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet; and the Lord added to His name, so glorious already, that of Healer― “I am the Lord that healeth thee.” It was the bitter waters of Marah which brought out this gracious name of God. Had Israel at once entered on Canaan, “a land of hills and valleys which drinketh water of the rain of heaven,” they would not have been in circumstances to learn this new and gracious name of God. It is God, who knew the bitterness of the waters, who alone knew the tree to sweeten them. And may we not say, that God is able to make all the experience of the wilderness not only profitable, but also that out of which the truest comfort is to be extracted. The “ordinance” of the sweetening the bitter waters is written for our admonition.
It is no uncommon thing to find the fresh joy of recent conversion succeeded by murmuring. There is something so wonderful in having peace with God, and deliverance from bondage through fear of death, as necessarily to call forth grateful emotions. But then, it is often the sense of these things, rather than the groundwork of our deliverance, that gives us joy, and allowable joy, although there be the danger of resting in the blessing received, rather than in the Blesser. Israel went through the Red Sea as on dry land; but it was the arm of the Lord that divided the sea for them, and gave them a dry and safe path through the divided waters. They might well think of that memorable passage, but in so doing, they might forget, and did forget the arm of the Lord; and therefore the next difficulty in their way led them to murmuring. But Moses remembered the arm of the Lord, and found its intervention quite as manifest in healing the bitter waters as in dividing the Red Sea. Now the arm of the Lord revealed to us is the Cross of Christ. Christ crucified is to us who are saved, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. It is upon the ground of what God has wrought in the Cross of Christ, that we are redeemed to Himself, and delivered out of this present evil world; but although sung with truth unto the Lord, “Thou in Thy mercy hart led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed; Thou hast guided them in Thy strength unto Thy holy habitation;” yet, actually, though they were out of Egypt, they were not in Canaan; though all needed power was present to bring them there, and they only needed faith in that power to enter in; but actually they were in the wilderness. Even so we can give thanks unto the Father, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son. In that kingdom we are in spirit, and in rich blessing, and in Christ we are already made to sit down in heavenly places, and fully blessed; but actually we are in the world, though not of it; and the very standing which God has given to us in Christ, makes us to know experimentally what the world is, what the flesh is, what Satan is. The new convert, with a light heart and firm step, it may be, goes his three days’ journey in the wilderness, and finds no water, or else, finding water, he cannot drink of it, because it is bitter. When laboring under the burden of a guilty conscience, deliverance from such a burden is the one desire of the soul; but when that deliverance is effected through faith in the blood of the Lamb, and peace with God known instead of a guilty conscience, the trial which before arose from unbelief, is now exchanged for another order of trial, the trial which begins from realized redemption, the trial of faith. Can we trust the same Christ to meet us in every difficulty by the way, on whom we have trusted for our acceptance with God? Could Israel trust the same arm of the Lord to sweeten the bitter waters, which had divided for them the Red Sea? A very short journey along the narrow path which leadeth unto life brings us to Marah. The unsatisfying of the creature has to be learnt―this proves one range of painful experience. We cannot stand as it were in a negative position; if we have left, on the principle of obedience, the flesh-pots of Egypt, we shall yet hanker after them, unless our hearts delight themselves in the good things of Canaan. This lesson is also one of painful experience. Then also there are expectations formed, short of having our expectation from God only; these expectations must necessarily be disappointed for our real blessing and joy. Whatever may be our “Marah,” it generally brings out from us murmuring and complaining against persons or things; and this is always the case when we taste the bitter waters, and compare our present with our past condition, instead of looking up to God, who is higher than the things which are pressing us down.
We are brought to Marah, it may be, we murmur; and as murmurings only increase the bitterness of the waters, we cry unto the Lord, and He shows us the tree which immediately sweetens them. There is a tree, and One who hung on it, under the curse of God, when on that tree He bore our sins in His own body. This is God’s “ordinance” to us for sweetening the bitter waters. It is the doctrine of the Cross. We have learned its grandest lesson, as being the groundwork of our reconciliation with God, for “God hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” It is indeed “Marah” to us, when we begin to discover that sin dwelleth in us. In most cases, it is the sense of guilt, arising from positive transgressions of God’s commandments, which affects us at first, and leads us to the Cross as our only refuge; but how is the bitterness, arising from the discovery that, fearful as was the discovery of rebellion against God, and alienation of heart from God, it is nothing compared with the fearfulness of the discovery, that sin and death are our natural constitution, to be met? even by the Cross of Christ. Cast this tree into the waters and they are sweetened. It is not only that your sins have been borne by Christ, but that you yourself have in God’s judgment been crucified with Him. “I am,” says the Apostle, “crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live.” “Our old man is crucified with Him.” How are the bitter waters sweetened! How much deeper does the love of God appear, how much broader the work of Christ, how much more solid the ground on which we stand, when we can dare to see all that we are, as well as to consider all that we have done; and see all judged in the Cross!
An onward journey in the wilderness may bring us to “waters that fail.” (Jer. 15:1111The Lord said, Verily it shall be well with thy remnant; verily I will cause the enemy to entreat thee well in the time of evil and in the time of affliction. (Jeremiah 15:11).) This is another Marsh. Have we learned how to correct disappointment in our expectation from ourselves? we need to learn the same with respect to others. We expect from them that which we do not find in ourselves, and we murmur; but when the cry comes unto the Lord, again the tree sweetens the bitter waters, or makes those that “failed” us to be the occasion of leading us to the living fountain of waters. It is still Jesus Christ and Him crucified; but now known not only in what He has done, but in what He Himself is, as never disappointing our expectation from Him. “I am,” says He, “the Bread of life; he that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.”
Or our Marah has been found in another direction. We have thought to do the impossibility of serving God and mammon―Christ and the world. We set aside the experience of others, and almost the testimony of the Lord Himself, and will needs hazard the experiment. Sure of our value of Christ, and of our real desire to benefit others, we fondly hold to the thought, that the world of our day is hardly the world of past history; that there are so many recognized ameliorating influences at work in the world, that we would fain help them on. But it is not long ere we are brought to a point; either the conscience is to be maintained in its allegiance to God, or surrendered to the world. The world, in seeking its own, cannot afford room for exercise of conscience towards God. No association with the world can be based on such a principle. The world ignores God’s right to be heard and obeyed in its matters. Its friendship is enmity with God. Again we murmur. Why is it so? The cry, and again the same tree heals these bitter waters; the glory of the Cross is discovered, in not only separating us from a world under righteous doom, but as introducing us into “an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us;” and we learn to glory in the Cross of Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto us, and we unto the world.
The experience of the children of God in itself is for the most part substantially the same, because it is the result of that which God has made them to be in Christ; but the sweetening of these experiences in God’s appointed way, by the use of His “ordinance,” Jesus Christ and Him crucified, makes all the difference of the waters in their bitterness occasioning murmuring, or the casting in of the tree which God has pointed out, causing praise and thanksgiving; so that the next stage in the journey through the wilderness is the shade of the palm trees, and refreshment of the wells of Elim. (Ex. 15:2727And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees: and they encamped there by the waters. (Exodus 15:27).)
Israel sang triumphantly and then murmured, and by virtue of the tree cast into the waters were refreshed, and learned Jehovah as their Healer. Jeremiah triumphed, too, in the Lord. “But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible One, therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed, for they shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten. But, O Lord of hosts, that triest the righteous, and seest the reins and the heart, let me see Thy vengeance on them: for unto Thee have I opened my cause. Sing unto the Lord, praise ye the Lord: for He had delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of evildoers.” (Jer. 20:11-1311But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten. 12But, O Lord of hosts, that triest the righteous, and seest the reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them: for unto thee have I opened my cause. 13Sing unto the Lord, praise ye the Lord: for he hath delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of evildoers. (Jeremiah 20:11‑13).) But this song of praise is not sustained. The waters were bitter indeed unto the prophet, all his familiars watching for his halting. Speedily he turns from God’s deliverance to his actual circumstances, and curses the day wherein he was born. (vs. 14.) He cried not unto the Lord, and found no tree to sweeten the bitter waters. Such will be the case, when our deceived heart would feed upon the ashes of our own experience, instead of the flesh and blood of Christ.
The disciple of Christ has full taste of all the bitterness which belongs to man, and he tastes also of bitter waters that others know not (see Psa. 73); but he has been taught the secret of how to sweeten these bitter waters, by bringing in Christ and Him crucified in the various aspects in which God presents Him to our faith, and finds his strange character written by the apostle, “as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”