Exodus 15:25

And he cried unto the Lord,.... Or prayed, as all the Targums, that God would appear for them, and relieve them in their distress, or, humanly speaking, they must all perish: happy it is to have a God to go to in time of trouble, whose hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy that he cannot hear!

A tree ... - The statement points to a natural agency, but the result was manifestly supernatural. He made ... - The Lord then set before them the fundamental principle of implicit trust, to be shown by obedience. The healing of the water was a symbol of deliverance from physical and spiritual evils.

And hence the "statute and ordinance" that followed, which would have been singularly inopportune if no miracle had been wrought. and there he proved them--God now brought the Israelites into circumstances which would put their faith and obedience to the test (compare Ge 22:1).

WHAT A SUDDEN CHANGE from the sound of the timbrel to the voice of murmuring! You saw the maidens dancing three days ago, and you little dreamed that they would make part of yonder clamorous throng who surround the servant of God, and cry, “What shall we drink?” Such are the changes of our outward conditions and of our inward feelings, so fickle and so mutable is man. What is there that can be rested upon in this mortal life? We say to-day, “My mountain standeth firm, I shall never be moved;” to-morrow, terra firma there is none, and we are tossed upon a stormy sea. Our life is like an April day, the sunshine alternates with the shower; or like each day of all the year, the morning and the evening are needful to complete it. Quick on the heels of light treads the darkness, followed with equal haste by light again. The sun’s rule, at this golden hour, is but temporary; he must abdicate in favor of the usurping stars, but they, in their turn, must give way before his lordly presence yet again. This world, which is our inn, owns to the sign of the “chequers”—the blacks and whites are everywhere. We can be sure of nothing between here and heaven of the things which are seen; but of this we may be certain, that underneath all the outward change there is the immutable love of God towards his people, and that, after all, the change lies only in the seeming things, not in the things which truly are; for the things which are not seen are eternal and changes come not there; it is but in the things which are seen that the change occurs. Let us set the less store by earth, because its fashion abides not. Let us prize heaven more, because it cannot fade. I. The text directs your attention, first of all, to THE EVILS OF THE WILDERNESS.

AFTER I had fallen down at Mentone, and was grievously ill, a Brother in Christ called to me and said, "My dear Friend, you have now come to Marah." I replied, "Yes, and the waters are bitter." He then said, "But Marah is better than Elim, for in Elim the Israelites only drank of the water and ate of the fruit of the palm trees, and that was soon over. But at Marah we read that God, 'made for them a statute and an ordinance,' and that was never over.

AFTER I had fallen down at Mentone, and was grievously ill, a Brother in Christ called to me and said, "My dear Friend, you have now come to Marah." I replied, "Yes, and the waters are bitter." He then said, "But Marah is better than Elim, for in Elim the Israelites only drank of the water and ate of the fruit of the palm trees, and that was soon over. But at Marah we read that God, 'made for them a statute and an ordinance,' and that was never over. That statute and ordinance stood fast and will stand fast for Israel as long as they are a nation. There is much more benefit to be reaped from Marah than from Elim." I thanked my friend for that good word. I had found it true before. I have found it true since then and you and I, if we are, indeed, the people of God, will find it true to the end, that Marah, though it is bitter, is also better. And albeit that we do not like it, yet in the end there shall be no bitterness in it, but an unutterable sweetness which shall be ours through time and eternity! We have a long record about Marah, have we not? I have read you four verses concerning Marah. How many verses have we about Elim? Only one. Does Marah deserve to be talked about four times as much as Elim? Perhaps it does. Perhaps there is four times as much fruit to be obtained from the bitter waters of Marah than from the 12 springs of water, and 70 palm trees at Elim. Who knows? This I know, however, that we are very apt to talk more about our bitters than about our sweets—and that is a serious fault. It were well if we had fewer murmuring words for our sorrows and more songs of thanksgiving for our blessings.

WHAT A SUDDEN CHANGE from the sound of the timbrel to the voice of murmuring! You saw the maidens dancing three days ago, and you little dreamed that they would make part of yonder clamorous throng who surround the servant of God, and cry, “What shall we drink?” Such are the changes of our outward conditions and of our inward feelings, so fickle and so mutable is man. What is there that can be rested upon in this mortal life?

He cried unto the Lord - Moses was not only their leader, but also their mediator. Of prayer and dependence on the Almighty, the great mass of the Israelites appear to have had little knowledge at this time. Moses, therefore, had much to bear from their weakness, and the merciful Lord was long-suffering. The Lord showed him a tree - What this tree was we know not: some think that the tree was extremely bitter itself, such as the quassia; and that God acted in this as he generally does, correcting contraries by contraries, which, among the ancient physicians, was a favourite maxim, Clavus clavo expellitur. The Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem say that, when Moses prayed, “the Word of the Lord showed him the tree ארדפני ardiphney, on which he wrote the great and precious name of (Jehovah), and then threw it into the waters, and the waters thereby became sweet” But what the tree ardiphney was we are not informed. Many suppose that this tree which healed the bitter waters was symbolical of the cross of our blessed Redeemer, that has been the means of healing infected nature, and through the virtue of which the evils and bitters of life are sweetened, and rendered subservient to the best interests of God’s followers. Whatever may be in the metaphor, this is true in fact; and hence the greatest of apostles gloried in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world was crucified to him and he unto the world. It appears that these waters were sweetened only for that occasion, as Dr. Shaw reports them to be still brackish, which appears to be occasioned by the abundance of natron which prevails in the surrounding soil. Thus we may infer that the natural cause of their bitterness or brackishness was permitted to resume its operations, when the occasion that rendered the change necessary had ceased to exist. […]