Exodus 15:22-27 · The Waters of Marah and Elim
The Gospel of Marah
Exodus 15:22-27
Sermon
by Maxie Dunnam
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I delight in hearing a great sermon. I relish reading the creative writing, of other preachers. I have a sort of insatiable appetite for preachers. I heard recently of a man who was telling of his surgery. A lot of people like to tell about their operations, though not many people like to hear about them. This fellow said that when the doctor sewed him up after surgery, he left the sponge inside. His sympathetic listener asked him if he had any pain. “No,” said the fellow, “but I sure do get thirsty.”

I have an insatiable thirst for good preaching. Sometimes I’m tempted to preach what I think is a masterpiece of a sermon from someone else. I resist that because I think the integrity of preaching comes through the very person and personality of the preacher. Approaching the sermon today, however, I was sorely tempted. When I began this series on Exodus, Dr. Jim Eoff, who has an insatiable thirst for Bible study and who listens to teaching tapes as much as anyone else I know - Jim loaded me down with resources on Exodus. One of the tapes was by a fellow I’d never heard of, and I don’t remember his name now, but it was powerful teaching on Exodus. It was a sort of sweeping treatment, descriptively titled, “Detours, Dead Ends, and Dry Holes.”

I was sorely tempted to try to preach his sermon. I’ve resisted, however, giving in only to the point of sharing that graphic picture as an introduction today. It is graphic, isn’t it? “Detours, Dead Ends and Dry Holes” - a vivid description of Israel’s wandering. When God delivered them from Pharaoh’s captivity, he didn’t lead them directly to Canaan, which would have been a rather short journey. He took them detour, a forty-year detour through the wilderness, and then there was that ominous dead end, the Red Sea, with mountains on either side and Pharaoh’s army pressing upon them. And then there was that dry hole at Rephidim. “Give us water to drink,” the people cried, refusing to trust the Lord. They murmured against Moses, saying, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? (17:3)

Detours, Dead Ends, and Dry holes.

That really captures the wilderness saga of the Israelites: God’s continuous deliverance, but Israel’s lack of faith, their shallow trust. Their basic needs of thirst and hunger brought them often to despair and to long for the flesh-pots of Egypt, rather than depend upon the Lord. That overall picture brings us to our particular focus.

What a dramatic seesaw of prevailing moods. The first 21 verses of this chapter contains two songs - the Song of Moses and the Song of Miriam. The Hebrews had triumphed over Pharaoh; God had delivered them across the Red Sea, and their enemies were drowned in the sea; so on the seashore, they celebrated.

It’s a marvelous picture of the joy and praise, the halleluiah of God and exuberant celebration of his mighty presence in their life. But, that mood of celebration and joy will change. Three days away from one of the mightiest acts of God, at the Red Sea, they come in their Exodus to Marah, and I want us to stay with them here for awhile, let’s read verses 22-27 – and so we come to our scripture lesson today.

There is gospel here, I call it: “The Gospel of Marah”. It’s focused in one phrase of verse 26: “I am the Lord, your healer.”

I believe there is gospel here. I call it the gospel of Marah, it’s found in chapter 26. Sometimes in our Bible study and in our preaching and teaching, we need to look for truth that is not so obvious, opaque meaning, lessons to which we may be blinded by the dramatic.

Not so, I think, in this passage. The lessons are neither subtle nor subdued. They are right there, on the surface, hard to miss even by those who try. So, don’t let the forthright simplicity of these truths as I state them dull your mind to their profound meaning.

I

First, in life we come often to Marah. Marah is not only the designation of a geographical location three days journey from the Red Sea in the wilderness of Shur; it is a place on the life map of all of us. It’s not geographical, but circumstantial.

The Hebrew adjective, Mar, from which Marah comes, means bitter. In the Old Testament this adjective is seen clearly in two references from Proverbs. First, Proverbs 27:7: “He, who is sated, loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.

Clearer yet the picture in verses 3 and 4 of Proverbs 5: “For the lips of a loose woman (did you know the Bible talked about loose women?) drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two edged sword.”

“Bitter as wormwood.” Do you have any notion about that metaphor? Remember the line from that great hymn:

Sinners, whose love can ne’er forget
The wormwood and the gall,
Go spread your trophies at his feet,
And crown him,
Crown him Lord of all.

Wormwood is the bitterest of all wood… bitter as gall. Do you remember C.S. Lewis’ delightful book The Serentape Latter? Serentape was the major devil communicating to temp in wormwood.

You get the picture? Mar is an adjective meaning bitter – and Marah is not only a geographical designation, it is a place of circumstances, events and experiences to which we often come in our life journey.

Let Marah be a metaphor to designate any place any circumstance, any experience, any estrangement or painful relationship you may be passing. Let it refer to that illness that has been designated ominously, “terminal”. Let it describe that situation to which you’ve come with your children. Someone has said that a parent is as happy as his unhappiest child. The fact that we parents love our children make us vulnerable to our children’s hurt. The fact that we want for them the best causes us to be deeply sorrowful when things are not working out for them. Certainly, there are those times when our children are a bane rather than a blessing, more pain than pleasure.

So, let the word designate whatever place it is in your experience to which you’ve come, and you don’t want to be there. In Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan referred to the slough of despondency.” That may be what Marah is all about. We become despondent because of the circumstances of the circumstances of our life.

And Marah may be a condition of emptiness or loneliness or lack of meaning.

No one has described the feeling better than the Psalmist, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” (Psalm. 42:5)

It’s true, isn’t it? If you haven’t had sorrow or bitterness just hang around for awhile, your time will come. In life we come often to Marah, and we get to the point where we want to cry with Martin Luther, “I’m sick of life, if that is what you call it.”

II

Now note a second truth: God comes to us at Marah. In fact, it may be true that God brings us to Marah. God was leading the Hebrews when they came to Marah. Now this is a hard truth to reckon with, and there are no easy answers. Look at what happened to the Hebrews. They moved from triumph to trouble. They came through the Red Sea, dry-shod, led by God; and there on the shore, safe from Pharaoh’s army, they sang joyfully: “The Lord is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.” (Verse 2)

Three days later, their triumph had turned to trouble. There they were in Marah, a place not of blessedness, but of bitterness. And the Lord had led them there. Now that’s hard to take; hard to reckon with. Somewhere between the extreme notion that a severe providence plots every step of our life and everything that happens to us is planned and decreed by God; and the other extreme position that all is capricious, happenstance, whim – between extremes, we must find our place to stand William Cowper (Koper) put it in a hymn:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.  (The Methodist Hymnal, page 215)

When you feel that the Lord has led you to Marah, or even if you don’t feel that - but rather, the searing question, “Why?” smolders in your mind. “Why?” “Why?” “Why am I in Marah?” – Reach back for that word of Paul to the Romans, Romans 8:28: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love Him.”

Cowper had another verse in his hymn I quoted a moment ago; my favorite verse:

Ye fearful saints fresh take;
The clouds you so much dread,
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

That’s really the big point I’m making. Whether God brings us to Marah or not, He will come to us in Marah. Look again I said a moment ago that they moved from triumph to trouble. Now they move from trouble to testing. Let’s read verses 25-26 again:

“And he cried to the Lord; and the Lord showed him a tree, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. Now here is a type of cross and I wished I had time to talk about it. The tree of Christ – the Cross the bitterest experience in history turns all their bitterness into blessedness. There the Lord made for them a statute and an ordinance and there he proved them, saying, “If you will diligently harken to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon you which I put upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord your healer.”

The word I call to your attention is in verse 25: “He proved them.” The big question is not whether we can sing in our triumph at the Red Sea, but whether we can sing in our troubles at Marah. The proof of faith, the testing, always comes in the barren desert at Marah, not in the oasis at Elim, where there were 12 springs of water and 70 palm trees. The testing comes when nothing makes sense, except to God. It’s the kind of testing that came to Job, and his faith lights our way: “Though He slays me, yet will I trust Him.”

Stay with the Hebrews for a moment. They went from triumph to trouble from trouble to testing, and from testing to teaching. Look at verse 26 again, “If you will harken to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon you which I put upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord your healer.”

There it is - the big point: “I am the Lord, your Healer.” Don’t lose the big point. God will come to us in Marah. “There is a gospel of Marah, and the gospel is in the word of God: “I am the Lord, your healer.”

What a gospel! We could talk about it in sermon after sermon. The Lord is our ultimate healer. We go to a lot of different places for healing, and give ourselves to all sorts of would-be “healers”. - Yet it is the Lord who is our ultimate Healer.

Note His healing is perpetual. I AM the Lord your Healer. His healing never ceases.

And note finally that it is universal, you see it could have preached a sermon on this alone – the Lord is our healer his healing is ultimate perpetual universal, it is available to all, and it is encompassing.

We see it, and we know it; but it’s easy to forget – the Healing Lord continuing to transform circumstances and persons always amazes us. We know that it happens, but when we see the miracle of it so dramatically and transparently present in the situation, it always staggers and challenges our too-weak faith. Let me share a personal story, and I’ll close.

Yesterday – appointment I’ve tried to get this guy to talk, for two years, wouldn’t have counseled with his wife – she has at times been desperate – wanted to leave – divorce. And I confess I have at times thought divorce was inevitable.- But friends finally persuaded him to go to Emmaus.

He met the Lord – our healer. I wish he was here to tell his story – he cried. His voice croched, but the joy was so evident. He said words like saved, forgiveness, and cleaned. He talked about his deadness – his pseudo-Christianity. For the first time, he said, “I know Christ personally.” Then he talked about his meaning. Hoe in his deadness – cold unemotional approach to life – he had killed her love. His only concern, can her love be restored? Yes – I say – The Lord says “I am the healing one.”

I remember being in a city in another state about five years ago. I was visiting in a home with a group of people at lunch time following a Sunday preaching service. I’d known the hostess in conferences I had led, but not the host. I’d never met him before. He was a hard-driving business man, the stereotype of success driving him, work above everything; the dream of the good life was the magnet that pulled him on.

It was also the situation I see so often. The wife, the religious one, the husband, in church but only body-present for the sake of the family. The wife genuinely seeking a vital spirituality; the husband too busy with other things too preoccupied with the so-called “real world”; and caught in the phony idea that spiritual things are not masculine. For some mysterious reason, John and I hit it off that Sunday after noon. We found ourselves alone out on the balcony of his beautiful home. He talked honestly as I dared to probe a bit, and listen. By a miracle of Spirit, soul touched soul. Only a short time before, the huge manufacturing business that he headed was swallowed up in a conglomerate, and he’d lost his prestigious and powerful position. His world had crumbled and the “good life” that he had finally grasped, was now fading; it was like sand running out of his fingers; and this towering man was now feeling impotent, no longer in control

He wrestled with this “lost dream” for over a year before he began to get a grip on things and move toward a degree of wholeness. Then something big happened in his life. He attended an Emmaus Weekend and had a life-changing experience - life-changing in the sense that it gave him a whole new direction, but more - a whole new approach to life, and resources to deal with it. This was proven dramatically not long ago. His young son came “out of the closet” and shared the fact that he was a homosexual. I can only imagine how this fellow would have dealt with this shattering experience, this Marah, back there when he and I first met. Now, having something new and dynamic going on within him - a Power not his own, he invited his son and wife to sit together and share about this new situation. The conversation began. “Son, I want you to know there are four persons here - you, your mother, and me, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is here because I’ve invited him; I want you to know I love you and I believe the Holy Spirit is going to give us the wisdom and the power to deal with this situation.”

What could have been the most destructive estrangement a son and a father could experience had been short-circuited by the power of the Lord who comes to us in Marah as the healing one. Grace, explained only by Christ’s Presence, is working in that situation that otherwise would have destroyed an entire family. I sat down with them recently at dinner and they shared some of the miracles that have happened complete healing has not come – but it is coming.

I look back on the difference between John when I first met him, and John as I know him now, and I can only exclaim: There is a gospel in Marah; the Lord comes to us there; and the Lord who comes is our Healer.

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Collected Sermons, by Maxie Dunnam