“So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he threw it into the water, the water became drinkable. The Lord made a statute and ordinance for them at Marah, and he tested them there. He said, ‘If you will carefully obey the Lord your God, do what is right in his sight, pay attention to his commands, and keep all his statutes, I will not inflict any illnesses on you that I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.’ Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy date palms, and they camped there by the water.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever had a teachable moment? It doesn’t really matter right now if you were the student or the teacher in it. Teachable moments come along every now and then and bring with them the opportunity to impart possibly life-changing information or wisdom. Israel’s experience at the waters at Marah provided just such an opportunity for the Lord. Let’s take a moment to think through what God had to teach them, why it mattered, and why it points to something important about the nature of our relationship with Him.

Can you imagine the stress Moses was under in this moment? He never wanted this job. This was probably one of the many moments when he found himself wishing that stupid sheep had never wandered off and that he was still back working for his father-in-law. He probably didn’t much care whether or not he retained his leadership position over the people. They hadn’t voted him into it. He hadn’t forcibly taken it for himself. It just kind of happened. Now they were coming to him with mutiny at least on their minds if not taking root in their hearts. God was supposed to be leading this people, not him. He was just the mouthpiece and the hands and feet of the enterprise. When the people came to him looking for a solution to their thirst – especially in the face of bad water when they were nearing the point of dehydration – he did the only thing he could. He cried out to the Lord.

And God answered. God answers our prayers in different ways. Sometimes it feels like He doesn’t answer, but that’s usually just when He’s not giving us the answer we want and so we don’t hear what He has to say. In this instance, God directed Moses to a tree that when dropped in this bitter pool of water made it sweet and drinkable for the people. How this happened we simply don’t know. It could be that God accomplished this by some sort of natural means. We don’t know of any tree or plant today that has water purification properties. It could be that there was one back then that has since gone extinct. It could also be that this was just a miracle. As we talked about in Monday’s sermon, we don’t have to be ashamed of that or otherwise look for a way to explain this in strictly natural terms. Surely the God who just parted an entire sea a few days before also has the power to make brackish water sweet by dropping a piece of wood into it. Either way, God made the water drinkable for the people.

When He did, He took the opportunity it presented to give the people some important instructions. Moses writes at the end of v. 25 that God tested the people. We are not, however, told of what was the exact nature of the test. It is likely that the entire episode here was one great test of their faith. This episode is never brought up again like a subsequent and similar episode will be, so we don’t actually have any information on what kind of a grade the people received on this test. My inclination is to say they did poorly, but they didn’t threaten to reject God over it. They went to Moses for a solution who went to God, so the order of operations was correct. So, perhaps they didn’t do quite as poorly as I first thought.

What God wanted the people to know coming out of this whole thing, though, is that if they would trust in Him, He would take care of them. He gives them four things to do which are all different ways of saying the same thing. They were to carefully obey Him, do what is right in His sight, pay attention to His commands, and keep all His statutes. Giving careful obedience and full attention to Him and His commands speak fairly well for themselves. They were to do what He said. The second part deserves just a bit more attention.

They were to do what is right in His sight. That’s important. They weren’t called simply to do what is right. They were to do what is right as He defines it. It is very easy for us to stop at the first part of that phrase and then use our own sense of right and wrong as our guide. The trouble with doing this is that our own sense of right and wrong is not an objective, unchanging guide. We want what we want, and we will convince ourselves that what we want is right and okay every single time. Our powers of self-justification are limitless. As we have recently been reminded, we can even convince ourselves that murdering babies (and not just ones that are still in the womb) is a morally acceptable and right and god-honoring (of the wrong god, of course) thing to do. If we limit ourselves to simply doing what is right, we are setting ourselves up for failure in God’s eyes. We need to strive to do what is right in His eyes. And how do we know that? By investing ourselves in the study of His word. Israel didn’t have that option just yet, but God was going to fix that soon.

If the people would do this, God told them, then He would not inflict on them any of the illnesses that He inflicted on Egypt. This is probably a reference to the plagues. It is also a reminder that the covenant God made with Israel was a conditional covenant. It was conditioned on their fulfilling their obligations to Him which were fairly simple: Do what I command. If the people did that, He would uphold His side of the agreement which was laid out in short here. He wouldn’t come after them for their sin the same way He went after the pagan peoples around them for their sin. The opposite of this, it is worth noting, is also true. If the people didn’t uphold their side of the agreement, then He would go after them for their sins like He did all those other people. He would later make this explicit to them. For now, the form was simple: If they would, He would not. If they wouldn’t, He would.

At the end of this, He identifies Himself to them as “the Lord who heals you.” And as much as this seems disconnected with what He actually does here, He wouldn’t have revealed this part of His character randomly. This is interesting because as far as we know, the people weren’t sick. And God doesn’t say He is the Lord who heals their environment (by way of the water). He is the God who heals them. I think what this is doing is pointing to the deeper, spiritual problem being fleshed out here. The people weren’t physically sick; they were spiritually sick. Their faith was small and weak. The slightest challenge caused it to fail. By meeting their needs in such obvious and miraculous ways, God was healing their hearts and growing their ability to trust in Him. This, in turn, would make them more able to trust in Him, triggering the response of faithfulness He had just told them He would have to their faithfulness. In other words – and don’t miss this part – God told them what they needed to do in order to secure His blessings, and then revealed Himself as the God who enabled them to do it so that He could too.

Then, in the end, they travel on to the next place where there is plenty of water and food. And from the sound of the story, they didn’t have to travel very far. In other words, when their hope and faith finally failed (after a measly three days, no less) and they complained to Moses about their thirst, they were maybe one more day from having all their needs satisfied. In other words, God had a plan all along to provide for them. It wasn’t their plan. It wasn’t going to come on their timetable. But it was going to be grand. They just needed to keep on trusting Him so they could see when and how He would deliver on His promise to care for them. Indeed, He had told them He was going to lead them to the Promised Land, and He is a God who keeps His word (something they were still learning). There was no way He was going to let them die along the way and thus fail to keep His word. So really, there was never any doubt about His provision for them. They just needed to trust Him.

Friends, the same thing is true for us. The promises God made and the statutes and ordinances He set before Israel aren’t for us, nor should we try to claim them as such, but His character hasn’t changed. He is still the Lord who heals us. That doesn’t mean He is going to swoop in and cure all our diseases in any given moment. You perhaps know all too well from experience that isn’t the case. Rather, He is the God who makes us spiritually well and who enables us to do the very thing He demands so that we can be in a relationship with Him.

We see this aspect of His character revealed most profoundly in Jesus. God demands perfect righteousness from us in order to be in a relationship with Him. We can’t come anywhere close to that on our own. Don’t believe me? Just survey human history for a few minutes. Yet He is the Lord who heals us. He came in Christ and fulfilled the demands of His own righteousness, but then instead of simply telling us to follow His example, He died in our place, paying the price our sins required for the sake of justice, and then went on to extend the righteousness He achieved to us. Now, when we place our faith in Him, we come under the umbrella of His perfect righteousness. We are made clean from our sins, and we can stand with confidence and boldness in the presence of God. He makes us able to do the very thing He has commanded us to do so that we can be in a relationship with Him.

This means that you are never going to be right with God on your own. That’s not okay, but neither is it an insurmountable difficulty. All you need do – all anyone need do – is to put your faith in Christ. Put your faith in Christ and He will make you right. Then, keep on trusting Him. He has promised in Christ to perfect you in His image and give you an eternal life in His eternal kingdom. He never breaks His word. That means no matter what seems to rise up to bar your way in this life will ultimately fail because it has already been overcome by Christ. Just keep trusting Him and you will see how He will keep His word. The fulfillment may not come in this life, but He’s not limited to that. It will come. Trust in Him.