The Song of Moses was not only delightful to the ear of God; it gave real pleasure to Israel to sing of the great deliverance that Jehovah had brought to them in delivering them from the hand and power of Pharaoh. But after three days in the wilderness without water, the people soon forgot what God had been to them as their unfailing resource, and when they came to Marah and found its waters were bitter, they murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? God was proving His people. Could they rely on Him, no matter what the circumstances and conditions of life through which they passed? Alas! instead of simply resting on the grace and faithfulness of God, they murmur. But they were not yet under law; they were under God's grace; so He does not chide them with their murmuring, but warns them, lest they should not listen to His voice or do what is right before Him.
In Egypt, God had poured out His judgment upon Pharaoh and his people, providing the Passover lamb to shelter Israel's firstborn; at the Red Sea, the waters which had been piled up to prepare a way for His people, were used to destroy Pharaoh and his host. Here, at Marah, God's provision was at hand to make the bitter waters sweet: Jehovah showed Moses "a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet."
As Christians, God has not only sheltered us by the blood of "a Lamb without blemish and without spot"; He has also given us deliverance from Satan and the power of death through the death and resurrection of Christ for us. But, like Israel, we have to meet the bitter waters as we pass through the wilderness. Do we find only bitterness in the trials of the way, or have we proved the sweetness that the cross of Christ brings into the darkest hours of sorrow?
The tree, or the wood, that Moses cast into the waters, brings Christ before us; and especially in relation to His death. When we realise that the love of God, and the love of Christ, have come to light in the death of Christ, the light of that love illumines the darkest circumstances through which we may be called upon to pass. The circumstances will be naturally bitter, but the realisation of the divine love, made known in the cross, will alter their character practically for us.
If we suffer the loss of a loved one in Christ through the home-call of the Lord, there is naturally the bitterness of parting with the one that is loved; but the sweetness of Christ's love in opening the way into His presence for the loved one, by His death, completely alters the character of the sorrow, for we "sorrow not, even as others which have no hope." And there is also the sense of the Lord's love for us in passing through the sorrow, as for the one He has taken to be with Himself.
Sooner or later we have to learn that the dark shadow of death is cast over the fairest and brightest of earth's prospects; and that the sweetest of natural relationships and affections may bring to us the most bitter sorrow. It is then that the knowledge of Christ, and of His love made known in death, brings sweetness into the bitter circumstances of life.
For the Apostle Paul, death was a daily experience, for he said, "I die daily." Again, he wrote to the Corinthians, "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body" (2 Cor. 4:10). We are not called upon to pass through the intense persecutions that were Paul's, but, like him, we can bring the death of Christ to bear upon all the circumstances of life so that we too may manifest the life of Jesus, and prove the sweetness of the joys of that holy life while waiting for Him.
Another aspect of this is found in Galatians 2:20, where the Apostle views the world in relation to Christ's death. Before we knew Christ, the world was most attractive to us, providing all that the flesh desired for its gratification; but when we see the world exposed in its true character in Christ's death, it may be a bitter experience for us to realise that in fidelity to Christ we must say Farewell to the world and its things; but the same cross that exposes the world brings to us the sweetness of Christ's love, for, like Paul, we learn there "of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."
So that the waters of Marah bring before us all that belongs to man after the flesh; all connected with the natural relationships of life, all that is earthly, and all that belongs to the world. What promises the sweetest of refreshment brings bitterness to the soul until we learn the truth of the cross, that Christ's death has severed "ties that bound us here," and that He is "our treasure in a brighter sphere."
Then it is blessed to see that immediately on leaving Marah, with its bitterness, and having learned the truth of God's provision for every circumstance, there is Elim, "where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees." There are waters which are not bitter; the wells of God's own providing which bring refreshment and joy to the soul, and where we can rest under the shade of the palm trees as we take our way to the rest of God.