091 - Afflicted With Bitterness

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, what happens in you when your expectations aren't met? Oh, well, I get mad and then I look for someone to blame and I'm just bent out of shape. Yeah, and we get grumpy and we blame somebody else. Yeah, that's right.

Well, we're going to see that happen to the nation of Israel today. Really? On More Than Ink. Well, good morning and welcome to our dining room table. I'm Dorothy.

And I'm Jim, and I won't mention that we're at our dining room table. Okay, good. But we have actually coffee in front of us and I like my coffee a little bit sweet, which is interesting because today we're coming into this passage where the Israelites were facing bitter water. That was very clever. And it makes your head spin how fast they moved from this incredible celebration of crossing the Red Sea.

Yeah, because last week we were singing and celebrating God's right hand and all that great stuff. One step away from the beach, the first place they come to, three days in the wilderness with no water, and they call it Mara. Bitter, bitter, bitter.

That's the meaning of the name Mara. So now we're going to talk about grumbling, we're going to talk about bitterness, we're going to talk about the speed with which we move. It's just sad because last week we were on the seashore, on the opposite side of the seashore on the Red Sea. The Egyptian army is dead. We have this great celebration in the desert, we've got singing, we've got dancing, we've got tambourines, God is great, everything's wonderful.

What happened? Look how quickly they forgot what God had done. And that just brings the question to mind, how quickly do we forget what God has promised us and what he has done for us? And Moses tells us how short a time. This is three days later. Three days. As we pick up the story in chapter 15 verse 22, we are three days after that great celebration and you will be amazed. They're probably still humming the song when they come to this bitter spring.

Well okay, we painted a bleak picture here. Okay, let's go. Let's just get into it.

I'll read for us. We're in verse 22 of chapter 15, three days after the great celebration. Well then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea and they went into the wilderness of Shur and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Mara, they could not drink the water of Mara because it was bitter, therefore it was named Mara.

That's what it means in Hebrew. And the people grumbled against Moses saying, what shall we drink? And he cried to the Lord and the Lord showed him a log and he threw it into the water and the water became sweet. Yeah, so they have this first encounter in the three day walk into the desert and they have no water. And they've slurped up everything they were carrying. Exactly, all the canteens are empty, all their water bottles are empty and now they need water. And they do come to water, but when they taste it they go, can't drink this stuff. Can't drink this.

Isn't it interesting that three times in that single verse they came there and the water of Mara was bitter, they couldn't drink it and that's why it was named Mara. Bitter, bitter, bitter. Bitter, bitter, bitter. And you might actually notice the fact that their hearts become a little bitter here too. Well, yeah, you know, it's interesting that bitterness comes about when your expectations have not been met.

Aha, that's a great insight. That really is the root of bitterness. I expected something and it didn't happen and I'm going to bite down on that bitter little nugget and suck on it. And I'm just going to be bitter and you nurture it, don't you?

You do. Yeah, you nurture it and you feed it and you say, you know, this isn't fair and I'm right and I deserve this and, you know, it's not a matter of gross expectations. It's a matter of things are supposed to go my way and they're not going my way. It's very interesting to me when I start looking at this word, bitterness, that Moses in Deuteronomy, at the end of Deuteronomy when he's talking to the people, he includes this idea of bitterness being an effect of turning away from the Lord. When you turn away from the Lord, it is a bitter thing. It makes you bitter and your bitterness causes you to continue turning away from the Lord.

Isn't that how it really works? I mean, you sort of dig a hole deeper and deeper and deeper in your bitterness. Yeah, so that's in Deuteronomy 29 if you want to look that up. And Hebrews picks up actually that very same idea. Hebrews 12, 15 talks about this root of bitterness, right?

Some little hair-fine tendril that you've been nurturing that suddenly springs into blossom. Yeah, you can nurture it. And impacts many, right? Bitterness spews on everybody. You can cultivate bitterness is what he's saying from Hebrews. You can cultivate, you can water it, you can fertilize it, you can just dwell on it and say, woe is me, woe is me, this is horrible. So, and bitterness needs a scapegoat, right?

So what do the people do? They blame Moses. Yep, blame Moses.

There's 24, they grumble against Moses and so Moses as their leader, he cries out to God, he does what he should do. Yeah. Right, God, what is this? You've brought us out here.

We need water and we're at water that we can't drink. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's fascinating, too, that many times, you know, our grumbling happens because we expect something to happen and then when it looks like it's going to happen, like here, it looked like it was going to be okay. Yeah, bait and switch.

And then suddenly it's not what we expected. I mean, that's a perfect recipe for bitterness and for grumbling and all that kind of stuff. I think it's fascinating here, too, that they don't grumble against God. No.

They probably shouldn't do that. Maybe, the memory is fresh. But they do grumble against Moses, yeah. I think what they do when they're grumbling against Moses instead of God, they're basically saying, are you really connected to God? I mean, you're leading us and we know that God's used you up to this point, but maybe you've lost your mojo or something, maybe the connection with God's done, so we're going to grumble against you. I think you're not listening to God well enough. I think that's why they grumble against him and not God directly. Because remember, this experience of being led by Moses into the wilderness, this is brand new.

Oh, yeah. Right, this is all new. They've never been in this situation before. They're in the wilderness of sure, or like I like to say, the wilderness of unsure. Because they just don't know where they're going.

They don't know what's happening. I mean, they literally have to follow what God's saying because they don't know. And Moses is his mouthpiece, so they blame him. Okay, but Moses was not unfamiliar with this region.

Because we know that when he came out of Egypt the first time when Pharaoh chased him out because he had murdered that guy, he had strayed across this very region and winds up over in Midian. We covered that in the early part of Exodus. And he had pastured sheep down here in the Sinai Peninsula. So this is territory that was relatively familiar for Moses, but it was new for them. Yeah, the wilderness of sure. Wilderness, meaning resources are few and far between.

You're out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, and it made me think too. There's a Psalm that says, I think I looked it up, Psalm 78, how often they rebelled against him in the wilderness. Yeah, so this is the first time. How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness. Or another part in Hebrews, you can help me here, I think it's chapter 3 or 4 where it says they put God to the test in the wilderness. And this is the first of many of those.

So here we have this problem. You know it made me think too, this mara thing, this bitterness thing. Remember in the book of Ruth, Naomi at the beginning of the book of Ruth, she says don't call me Naomi anymore, call me Mara. Which means bitter. Life has been bitter for me and I am bitter. She had a really rough go there, losing her husband and her sons and stuff like that. She's got her daughter-in-law's left, but still she says don't call me Naomi, call me Mara.

Because things are bad. Well if you know the story of Ruth, and if you haven't read the story of Ruth. Oh, it's only four chapters you can do in a city.

Go there when you get a chance, it'll just take you like 15, 20 minutes, well maybe I don't know longer than that. But it's just such a great story that starts from this downer where Naomi is just bummed. Because her expectations again was that she'd have a family and sons and daughters-in-law and kids and the whole nine yards.

And children, grandchildren. Yeah, had these great expectations. And God had rescued her and her husband from famine and now they've relocated and she's expecting things are going to be fine. God has saved us, but then all this happens. Her expectations were just dashed. Right.

And she says call me bitter because that's who I am. And that's where the Israelites are, right here. Okay, their expectations have been dashed, but they come to this spring. So what do you make of the fact that the Lord shows Moses a log or a tree or a wood of some kind. Right, right. And he throws it into the water and the water becomes sweet is what the text says, but it means pleasant or drinkable, palatable. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't have sugar in it. What do you make of that?

It's just not full of chemicals. Yeah, I think that's fascinating because if I was writing the story, I'd have God say, okay, I'll take you to a place that's right next door that we do have water. But instead he transforms. He transforms the situation like he's transformed in the past. Instead of bait and switch necessarily, he basically brings him to a place which will provide good water, but we have to wait for God to transform the situation. Well, and the very thing that was bitter becomes a source of sweetness and pleasantness to them. That echoes a lot of repetition in the scriptures where he says, I'll turn your morning into dancing. I will exchange your sorrow for joy.

I will exchange your ashes for a garland. So that picture of God transforming the unpalatable, inedible thing that's not going to provide for us, he will transform that. Because we find ourself in bad circumstances. And the question, many times it comes to our mind, is why didn't God either deter me around this poor situation?

I mean, why did he allow me to get stuck in this situation? And in this particular case, the question arises, well, maybe it was deliberate. Not maybe, it was deliberate. It was deliberate.

It was deliberate. This is the first time that God will take a situation like this and say, I'm the God that transforms these things. I'm not taking you into dead ends.

I'm not a God of dead ends. So why did he just transform it? Why is there the log?

I don't know. Because it's interesting. It is interesting. Some commentators see here a very veiled reference to the wood of the cross through which God transforms. Now that's, yes, maybe, we can't say for certain, but there is a hint here.

Yeah. Because why throw wood in the water? Well, and to further that speculation.

It is speculation, but it's very interesting. But the wood that they found was probably wood that was killed by the poisoned water. So it's wood that might have died because of the water itself. So here you've got wood that has died and now has brought life to dead water.

Yeah, God says, throw this dead wood in the water and I'll transform it. You can go for days on this speculation. There's more here than meets the eye. Oh my goodness. Yeah. In fact, I remember a while ago reading a commentator say, he says, well, I can tell you what happened here. The water was chemically transformed and it probably had magnesium in it and it probably had, the wood would do this to it. And there was herbs in the wood. Well, yeah. And he actually came to the conclusion that based on his chemistry of the whole thing, this is all speculation by the way.

Right. And this chemistry analysis of what probably happened right here with the magnesium and all that kind of stuff is it made the water slightly laxative. And as a result, it got in the way. This is interesting. It's speculative, but it made it slightly laxative. So basically God was cleansing their system.

So he got them out of Egypt, but this is how he got Egypt out of the people. Oh, well that was going to take another generation. That's exactly right. But I mean this is just fraught with lots of speculation. It's just a fascinating thing. Right.

Bring them along again throughout the water. But there's no commentary here except that at the end of verse 25 it says, there in that day, there at that place, the Lord made for them a statute and a rule and there he tested them. He proved them.

That word contains the idea of the way you assay a metal. Exactly. Right. He tested them to prove what was in them, not to himself, to prove it to them.

See what you're made of. So verse 26, I love saying, if you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord, your God, and do that which is right in his eyes and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I have put on the Egyptians for. I am the Lord, your healer. Right. I will heal you of your bitterness, the same way I healed the water.

Right. And so he's giving them this very visual, very tasteful, tasty point of reference God can transform. But there's something else I want to point out here and then I'll shut up. Verse 26, two really important words occur here, Shema and Shemar. Shema, listen.

Listen up. Listen with a heart that is ready to obey. Listen up and then he says, keep my statutes, says Shemar. That's this word that means to guard, to regard is important, to treasure. And yes, it means to obey, but obey is kind of a secondary meaning. Watch over, keep them, guard them, regard them as central and important. So God says, here's the thing.

If you listen to me and respond properly to my word, then you will discover that I am your healer. Exactly, yeah. That is just an amazing statement right here, standing at the bitter spring. And I'll double underscore that, keep all my statutes. We always go to obey.

We do. Obey is a piece of this. And actually, most often it gets translated that way. And there's nothing wrong with that, but the heart of the word really means to treasure something so much. I mean, you embrace it so much, of course you're going to keep it, of course you watch over it because it's treasured to. So as further laws come down the pike when we get into furthering the Exodus process and God says, you need to do this, you not do that, the response really ought to be from a pure heart, ought to be, well, God's in this for our best. So what he has told us in the past has been for our health and our blessedness.

Well, let's just embrace this too. We can't see the end to this, but God's on our side. I mean, God's the Lord, he's our Jehovah Rapha, he's our healer. So let's just realize that this is for our good, not our bad. And we often look at God's commandments and God's laws and say, well, God's just a spoilsport. He's keeping me from good because of these laws. And in fact, what he's saying here is, no, these laws are for your health and for your good.

So just embrace them because that's where they're coming from. And that's the teaching moment right here. Because I am good.

I am good. And I like how he says this, what you need to do is do that which is right in his eyes, not your eyes. Not right in your own eyes. Right. And that's not just a side comment about the fact that our own eyesight is usually self-destructive. We don't really know what's good for us in many respects. Yeah, because our eyes are on us. Exactly.

So we will make wrong choices. So if you want to find health and blessing, just give some treasuring love to what God says. And that's what he's saying right here. Listen up.

Yeah, it's Shema. Listen. Listen to what's going on. So sure enough, he says that this is, he's testing them. He's changing them.

He's purifying them in this process. And I really like the fact that he says that I'm the Lord your healer. That's Jehovah Rapha. That's one of the many different compound words for who God is.

I'm your healer. And in fact, when you get further on and we start talking about laws that God will establish for the newly formed country of Israel. He gives them a lot of laws that which we now from our scientific background know are actually scientifically medically wise, which they wouldn't know about. Different food laws, different quarantine laws. If someone's sick, you need to quarantine them. About washing your hands with running water as opposed to putrid water. Even some people speculate the circumcision itself was also a health issue really.

So although it's a minor part of that. But what God is going to tell them to do as a nation, listen to what I'm saying. It's good for you.

And this is good for you. And we can look back and say, yeah, we affirm that it was good for them, but they had no clue at the time. The test is will you embrace what I say, treasure what I say, follow what I say, because it is really for your good, not for your evil. And prior to this, when they were in Egypt, they had no codified law. They knew the promises to Abraham, right? God had reiterated those promises to them back in Exodus 6, but they had no code of law. And so that's one of the primary things God gave them when he brought them out into the wilderness, separated them from Egypt. He gave them his law. He gave them manna, right, which becomes a huge picture.

We'll get into that in a couple weeks. And then he gave them the tabernacle. He gave them this visual place of reference for God is among us right in our midst. Through this sacrifice, we can be in his presence.

So here's kind of the beginning of that. If you listen to me and treasure what I tell you and act on it, I will heal you. Just like God healed the water. That's why I call this whole section being afflicted with bitterness, because it's not just the water at Mar that's afflicted with bitterness, but their hearts are as well in terms of doubting God's goodness to them. And they've forgotten what he promised them.

Three days ago. I will bring you out, I will deliver you, I will take you to the land where I promised you. This is in Exodus 6, right?

Yeah. I will, I will, I will, I will do this for you. And they're like, well, we're out of here, what are we going to drink? We're going to die.

We're going to die. Three days later after coming through the sea, what's with that? Boy, are we like that.

Yeah, it just takes three days. And it doesn't matter how big and important the event was that we came from. I mean, you still forget it.

Yeah. This, this made me think of just kind of an association, Psalm 103 that says, you know, we forget none of his benefits, you know, who forgives all your iniquity and who heals all your diseases. All your diseases. So this is what God's all about. God's in the, God's in the business of healing your diseases.

Okay. And the ultimate, the disease with which we are genuinely afflicted from birth is sin. Sin itself. We're not talking about God will heal your, every cold and every broken leg and every now.

He does. That's a good clarification. And Jesus did maintain this incredible ministry of healing, but it was in order to point to the ultimate healing that every one of us requires.

And that is the healing from our sin, the disease of sin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let's push on. So we get to verse 27 and they came to Elam, they came to Elam where there were 12 Springs of water and 70 Palm trees. And they encamped there by the water. What? Why didn't we just go there first?

Well, it's because apparently it wasn't very far away. Right. Right. But it does, it does reinforce the fact that what we just saw happen at Mara was a deliberate teaching moment.

Right. And God could have completely sidestepped the Mara event by taking them directly to Elam. So I wonder if you know, this, this bitter spring at Mara, that was the first place they encountered the minute that their thermoses were empty. Oh, it could be. They were thirsty and they were afraid and suddenly they were bitter. Then had they just believed God and continued to walk, they would have walked right into Elam. That's right. Yeah.

So I don't know that speculation on my part, but you're right. God brought them to the bitter spring in order to speak to them before he provides for them this beautiful oasis. It's not a stretch to say that God will many times deliberately take us in troubled places for the purposes of getting our ear and teaching us something.

How many times have we said that now? I know. But here it is again, here it is again, because right next door is Elam and they could have gone straight over there. So if God was in the business of just making us comfortable, he would have gone to Elam. But since God wants to change us in the process, he takes him to Mara. Wow. I hate to think of that because then I think how many other deliberate things has God take me into that I would rather not experience or experience ever again.

But the outcome of it in terms of changing who I am and hearing God's voice happens there. Because you notice here at Elam, there is no great teaching that comes out of it. No.

But we don't even know how long they were there. Right. There's a teaching that comes out of Mara. Yes. And it echoes all the way through the Bible. Yeah. So, okay, well, let's push on.

Oh, we got to. So then verse one of chapter 16, they set out from Elam and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elam and Sinai on the 15th day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. So they departed from Egypt on the 15th day of the first month. Yeah, so it's been a month.

So it's only been a month. Verse two, and the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness and the people of Israel said to them, would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Wow. What the heck? Man, grumble. Grumble, grumble.

Grumbling, self-pity and blame. Yeah, yeah. Right after we've just walked away from the palms and the oasis. That's right. That's right.

We're back right there again. And we're only a month out of Egypt. This will recur as they wander. So they grumble against Moses and Aaron. Now you brought up an interesting question the other day about why is it they didn't eat their animals because they got flocks. Right.

Remember they brought flocks with them out of Egypt. And I've thought about that and my only good explanation is the fact that they aren't actually going hungry yet, but they're anticipating being hungry. Yeah. That's probably true.

Yeah. So they're coming out of this wilderness area saying we don't see any opportunity for food out here. So we're all going to die out here. And I mean they look forward just like their canteens went empty in the previous section. Now they're realizing that their flocks could go empty pretty soon.

So what are we doing out here? So I think it could be anticipation. That's Jim's explanation, but I'm not sure. But they do have lots of flocks of animals. But they were accustomed to living where resources were easily come by in a hugely developed civilized place and now they're out in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah. And I think that there's a difference between the Nile Delta and the sands of the wilderness out here in the scene. But they don't grumble against the Lord. They grumble against Moses. They blame Moses and Aaron. And they wallow in their self-pity, oh, we'd rather have died in Egypt when we had access to stuff. And then they blame them. You brought us out here to kill us.

How fast have they forgotten that God has promised them you're not going to die out there? I'm taking you out there. I'm bringing you out.

I brought you out here for a purpose. God's got a plan. And isn't it interesting too that in that bitterness and that grumbling, we so exaggerate the situation. I mean, they don't really think that Moses and Aaron deliberately wanted to bring them out there to kill them. Do they? I mean, no. Well, the other thing is they're really not going to die.

They've got flocks. Right. Right.

If they were hungry enough, they can sacrifice or kill a goat and have dinner. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. But they see the wilderness and they see death, which is, you know, there's not many resources out there. And they think, again, they're anticipating we're going to die out here because there's no resources out here.

Because we're looking at our circumstances and our apparent resources. Exactly. Instead of, I am the God who heals you.

Yep. I am the God. Instead of reaffirming the fact that God is with them and God is providing for them. So they look at the wilderness, they look at the circumstance, and they say, it'll kill us.

But they don't understand that God's the one that gives life. So again, it comes down to the situation where you've got to remind yourself when the circumstances look dire, that they're not as dire as it looks. There's more than meets the eye when your circumstances are taking a turn for the worse.

When you're looking in the future and all you see is wilderness. And you say, there's nothing out here, which is true, except that God's with you. And that changes everything in the equation. Well, and there was lots of stuff out there that they could not see. Yeah.

From where they were. Right. Right. Yeah.

And it seems to me, too, that this grumbling has caused them to have a very selective memory. We've talked about this already. I mean, you brought us out here to kill us. Don't you realize that God's already saved you from the Egyptians? That's right. So I don't think that's...

If God wanted to kill you, he could have done it. Yeah. I don't think that's in the game plan. So it's interesting in our human nature, grumbling causes us to have selective memory and cause us to exaggerate the nature of the situation, how bad it is. And to look for somebody to blame. And look for somebody to blame. Yeah.

That is human nature 101 right here as we're looking at. So the question is, is what happens after this? And we're not going to tell you, you got to come back next week.

You got a week. How does God respond to people who are grumbling because they say, you brought us out here to kill us? Does God say, okay, you're out here. How does he respond? What does he do in response to this? And that's what we're going to go to next time we come together to find out, does God tolerate these people? Does he have patience with these people? Does he meet their needs? What does he do? What does God do?

And again, since God is a teaching moment kind of God, what's he going to do to change their hearts? So we'll see that when we come back. So we're glad you're with us and we hope you join us next week as we continue the story in the desert on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org.