Bitter Waters of Marah

Why did Moses throw a tree into the bitter waters of Marah, beyond it being a demonstration that obedience to God solves problems, even when what He tells us to do doesn’t make any sense? The widow of Zarephath gave Elijah her last bit of food and God miraculously caused her flour and oil to be renewed in their vessels until the famine ended.

But it suddenly came to me what the tree signified when I contemplated my own human weaknesses and how I need the character of Jesus Christ to enable me to bear His blessings, so that I don't forget Him and get arrogant and deny Him His glory, or become crushed by the envy of others and grow bitter towards God due to persecution.

The well of bitter water is our human weaknesses. We cause so much hurt, sometimes with spite, even when don't consider ourselves to be a spiteful person. For some, the spite is deliberate, but it is usually born out of hurt, a sense of rejection, rather than out of pure evil. Sometimes we cause hurt because we don't know the best thing to do or say, and we're just feeling our way along through life, hoping that things will turn out all right, in spite of our mistakes.

The tree represents Jesus, Him crucified, His suffering and death on our behalf, and His resurrection applied to our soul, instead of leaving Him standing aside in our life as a solution that can offer life, but is overlooked, ignored, or dismissed as too crazy an idea.

The Bible says in Isaiah 53:2, "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he has no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him."

Who would have thought that a scraggly tree in the desert could satisfy the thirst of millions of people and their animals? But God pointed it out to Moses and told him to cut it down and toss it into the bitter waters, and they became sweet.

The world looks at Jesus and sees a defeated man, falsely accused, tortured, shamed with nakedness, nailed to a tree, and even if He had been rescued and survived, as far as they are concerned, Jesus would have been crippled for life.

The world does not see that Jesus is God, and that He loved us so much that He came down to Earth to suffer the penalty for our sins, so that we could be saved. When God does something, it has a powerful impact. Life comes out of death. Sweetness comes out of bitterness. Strength comes out of weakness. Honour comes out of shame. Abundance comes out of lack. God overturns defeat.

When Jesus' body hung dead on the cross, it looked like defeat. When the tree was cut down at Marah, it looked like that tree was defeated. It was cut off from its roots, like Jesus was caught off from God when He took our sin upon Him. Whatever little moisture it had been getting from the soil, the tree was no longer linked to drink. The tree was dead, but the tree's death made the water sweet when Moses threw it into the well, and delivered millions from thirst and death. Jesus came to restore our link to God, so that we can drink from His Spirit and take hold of His strength.

Without Jesus in our soul, there is no hope of overcoming the world the flesh, and the devil. It is His character interwoven in our soul that helps us bear adversity and to bear success, without losing our faith in God's goodness, or taking His goodness for granted. It is the character of Christ, obtained through repentance of our sins and submission to His lordship, that turns our ugliness into beauty, our bitterness into sweetness, our weakness into strength. And in so doing, God can use us to refresh others, instead of repulsing them with our bitterness.

 

Your word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
[Psalm 119:11]