Bitter Water Made Sweet

Story:  Bitter Water Made Sweet

Passage: Exodus 15:22-27

Characters:  Moses, God, Israel

Summary:  The Israelites went into the wilderness.  After three days they couldn’t find water so the people complained to Moses.  They found a source of bitter water.  The Lord showed Moses a piece of wood that he threw into the water and it became sweet.  The Lord promised to keep the Israelites healthy if they follow the Lord.  They camped by the water at Elim. 

  

Notes:   It takes very little to pull our focus from God.  It generally just takes a little bit of discomfort.  When discomfort gets to us and pulls us away from God, it shows that our focus was on ourselves the whole time!  To be fair on Israel though, three days with little to no water is tough to deal with.  And with the thousands and thousands of people they had, it probably looked grim.  Can you imagine the emotional rollercoaster they went through when they came to Marah and saw water?  They were probably overjoyed!  Then they realized the water was “bitter”.  It wasn’t drinkable!  The people would obviously have been upset.  But instead of praying to God for deliverance from this next obstacle, they complained about Moses!  Moses then asked God for deliverance.  Apparently, the fact that not even a sea had stopped them so far did not cross their minds!  God showed Moses a branch, or a tree depending on how you translate the word.  Moses threw it into the water and it became healthy to drink!  The passage says that the Lord tested them and gave them a statute that day.  He promised to heal them if they followed His commandments and diligently listened to His voice.  God calls Himself the Lord, your healer.  God is a healing God. He can heal physical, emotional, and mental brokenness.  Diligence is careful and persistent work or effort.  After this incident the Lord led them to Elim.  Elim had 12 springs of water and seventy palm trees.  God never intended them to die of dehydration; He just wanted them to trust Him to provide water.  Now that they had sort of passed the test, He led them to a huge source of water! It should also be noted that while God could have fixed the water Himself, He appears to have wanted Moses to do a tangible act of obedience to Him.  We will see that consistently throughout scripture.

Questions:  Was God still leading them with a cloud and fire?  Did the people carry water with them on the journey?  How did Moses know to throw the wood into the water?  What made the water bitter?

Lessons: The promise God made to Israel is worth noting today.  We need to diligently listen to His voice!  We need to try to do what is right in His eyes and not our own.  We need to believe that God is a God of healing and trust Him to deliver us from any brokenness that comes as a result of our fallen nature.  Just like God turned the water from being useless and bitter to sweet and useful for consumption, He can transform us from being polluted and worthless to clean and useful for doing His will.