I preached this sermon on Sunday, July 11, 2010 at the Olivet New Church in Toronto.<\/p>\n
BITTER WATERS MADE SWEET<\/p>\n
A Sermon by Rev. Coleman S. Glenn<\/p>\n
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\u201cAnd they came to Marah, and they could not drink the waters for bitterness, because they were bitter; therefore he called the name of it Marah.\u201d (Exodus 15:23)<\/p>\n
This morning we read a story about the Children of Israel\u2019s journeys in the wilderness.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to read the story without really grasping what the experience was like for them \u2013 but if we put ourselves in their place, we might start to understand how this story comes into play in our own lives.\u00a0 Picture what the experience would have been like for just one of the children of Israel.\u00a0 Picture him in a desert.\u00a0 He has just finished crossing a great sea that was parted before his people so that they could walk through on dry land.\u00a0 And the Egyptians, who since he was born have beaten him, chained him up, and forced him into labour, were completely swallowed up by the sea.\u00a0 Moses and his sister Miriam have just finished shouting out a song to Jehovah, his God, who has the power to do miracles unheard of by Egypt\u2019s magicians.\u00a0 He is going to a new land, a land where he will be free, a land flowing with milk and honey.<\/p>\n
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He looks around him \u2013 at the thousands of his fellow Israelites, at his tribe, at his friends, at his family.\u00a0 And they begin, setting out over the desert for the promised land.\u00a0 The sand is hot, and there is not any water, but he hardly notices it \u2013 he is free!\u00a0 He walks along through the desert, he and all of the other sons of Israel.\u00a0 At night, they rest, then they start again the next morning.\u00a0 Again, he walks and walks through the desert.\u00a0 The sun is beating down.\u00a0 There\u2019s not much vegetation.\u00a0 He hasn\u2019t had anything to drink since yesterday.\u00a0 And still he walks along following an enormous pillar of cloud.\u00a0 Night begins to fall, and the pillar of cloud turns into a pillar of fire, lighting the way.\u00a0 Eventually, he stops with the others to set up camp.\u00a0 His mouth is parched.\u00a0 His stomach hurts from thirst.\u00a0 His skin is dry and dusty.\u00a0 It seems like another lifetime that he crossed that sea.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t sleep very well.\u00a0 And the next morning, he wakes up, and they start walking again.\u00a0 The pillar continues on ahead.\u00a0 He trudges and trudge and trudges through the desert.\u00a0 It has been three days since he has had anything to drink.\u00a0 He is close to fainting.\u00a0 His muscles are cramping from lack of water.\u00a0 He knows that he can\u2019t go on like this for much longer; his body is going to collapse.<\/p>\n
And then he sees it up ahead: water!\u00a0 There is a surge of bodies as he and all his thousands of companions rush toward the water.\u00a0 He reaches the water.\u00a0 He leans down to take a drink.\u00a0 He brings the water to his mouth \u2013 and immediately he spits it out.\u00a0 It\u2019s bitter.\u00a0 It\u2019s undrinkable.<\/p>\n
The people around him start to discover the same thing.\u00a0 All around him are people spitting out water.\u00a0 The crowd starts to grumble.\u00a0 He hears people shouting out to Moses, \u201cWhat are we going to drink?\u201d\u00a0 He is almost ready to give up hope \u2013 it feels like he will never drink again.\u00a0 And then he sees the people parting.\u00a0 Moses is coming through carrying a large piece of wood, which he carries to the water, and throws it in.\u00a0 A few people take a drink \u2013 and then drink, and drink some more!\u00a0 He cautiously approaches the water.\u00a0 He leans down, and he tastes it.\u00a0 And it is sweet!\u00a0 After three days with no water, he drinks and drinks until his thirst is gone.<\/p>\n
The experience I just described is foreign to almost all of us.\u00a0 Most of us will never go longer than a day or so without anything to drink, let alone three days without water in a wilderness.\u00a0 But we can imagine the thirst, the longing for water, and the disappointment when we find out that the water is bitter.\u00a0 And maybe you can already start to see what this story might mean in its internal sense.\u00a0 The children of Israel had just crossed the Sea of Reeds (mistranslated as the Red Sea in many Bibles).\u00a0 They were elated \u2013 they had escaped from Egypt, and the Egyptians would oppress them no more.\u00a0 Think of the times in your life when you\u2019ve felt that joy of a new beginning.\u00a0 Times when you looked at your life, noticed that you were sinning against the Lord, and made a commitment to stop.\u00a0 The first day of that commitment brings a feeling of joy and elation.\u00a0 Finally, you\u2019re going to be free \u2013 free from the desire to control other people, maybe, or free from lust, or free from the need to tell lies.\u00a0 You have made a commitment to the Lord to change, and you have prayed for His help.\u00a0 You know that you are on the way to the Promised Land.<\/p>\n
And then daily life sets in.\u00a0 Maybe for a week, two weeks, a month you see the progress you\u2019re making.\u00a0 You catch yourself a few times when you\u2019re about to break one of the\u00a0 commandments.\u00a0 But as work starts to pile up, you dedicate less time to your spiritual commitment.\u00a0 You start to fall into old patterns.\u00a0 Maybe you stop reading the Word as often; you stop taking the time to work on your spiritual life.\u00a0 You haven\u2019t given up, but you don\u2019t give much thought to these things anymore.\u00a0 And you can feel it.\u00a0 You know that something is missing, that the very thing that gave you such excitement only a little while earlier is gone.\u00a0 You thirst.\u00a0 And it might not even be on a conscious level \u2013 just a nagging, empty feeling that you\u2019re missing something important.\u00a0 You\u2019re trudging through the wilderness, and you are becoming thirstier and thirstier.<\/p>\n
And then you realize it: you\u2019ve stopped focusing on the Lord.\u00a0 You\u2019ve stopped focusing on your commitment.\u00a0 You\u2019ve stopped taking the time to think about how to love the Lord, how to love the people around you.\u00a0 Maybe you\u2019ve stopped reading the Word.\u00a0 Maybe you haven\u2019t been going to church.\u00a0 You realize what\u2019s been missing. And so with hope you open up the Word to your favourite passage, you attend a doctrinal class, you go to church.\u00a0 You recommit yourself to your goals.\u00a0 You\u2019re ready to get back on the right path. You see the cool waters right in front of you, and you take a deep drink.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s nothing there.\u00a0 The same words that in the past have inspired you fall flat.\u00a0 You read the Word, but it\u2019s not joyful; it\u2019s a chore.\u00a0 Your doctrinal class feels meaningless.\u00a0 Church is boring.\u00a0 The waters that looked so refreshing, so cooling, so life-giving, are bitter!\u00a0 And this is a very real feeling, as real as the feeling that the children of Israel had when they discovered that the waters of Marah were bitter.\u00a0 When you want nothing more than to feel the Lord\u2019s presence, to taste the living waters of His truth, and you cannot do it \u2013 you feel hopeless.\u00a0 You need these truths.\u00a0 They are what tell you how to live!\u00a0 Without them, you don\u2019t even know how<\/em> to love your neighbour!\u00a0 In some cases, you may actually be brought to tears.\u00a0 I\u2019m a bad person.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never get this.\u00a0 I might as well give up now \u2013 there\u2019s no life in these words, and I\u2019ll never find life in them.\u00a0 We groan against Moses, who represents the Lord\u2019s Word.\u00a0 If we cannot have water from you, how will we survive?<\/p>\n We call out to the Lord in our anguish.\u00a0 We say, \u201cLord, give me your truth!\u00a0 I am dying!\u201d\u00a0 And the Lord hears us.\u00a0 The Lord Jesus Christ hears us.\u00a0 He knows that we need truth, and He knows that we feel like we\u2019re dying.\u00a0 And He wants nothing more than to give it to us.\u00a0 When He was in the world, He Himself said, \u201cWhoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst to eternity, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life.\u201d<\/p>\n So Jehovah shows Moses a piece of wood, or a tree, and Moses knows that he needs to throw this wood into the water.\u00a0 But why does Moses need to do this?\u00a0 Jehovah is all powerful, and He could easily make the water sweet without using a piece of wood.\u00a0 But by showing Moses the wood to throw into the water, the Lord shows us what is really<\/em> missing from our lives.\u00a0 \u201cWood\u201d in the Word represents good.\u00a0 And it is good that will make truth delightful again.\u00a0 It is not truth that we are lacking \u2013 the water is right there.\u00a0 But the goodness has gone out of it.<\/p>\n The truth that we found delightful before gave us delight because, whether we knew it or not, it held love within it.\u00a0 Every single truth<\/em> in our minds<\/em> is connected to goodness<\/em> in our heart<\/em> \u2013 to love, to kindness, to compassion.\u00a0 And when these connections to the good in our heart are cut off, the truths become stale and meaningless.\u00a0 The truth that the Lord Jesus Christ is God becomes real and powerful only when we feel<\/em> the joy<\/em> of Him acting through us.\u00a0 The truth that marriages last to eternity is only delightful if we can connect to<\/em> the joy and blessedness of true conjugial love.\u00a0 The truth of the Ten Commandments, for example \u201cYou shall not steal,\u201d is delightful only when you can feel<\/em> the heavenly joy of giving <\/em>to others replacing the hellish pleasure of taking<\/em> from them.\u00a0 For truth to have life, it needs to exist not just in our heads, but in our hearts as well.<\/p>\n But how can we reconnect to these truths?\u00a0 How do we re-join the truth in our mind to the good we used to feel in them? When the water is bitter, we can\u2019t force<\/em> ourselves to feel the love behind the truth.\u00a0 That is the problem<\/em> \u2013 even if we know in our minds that the good is there, it still means nothing to us, because we cannot feel<\/em> it.\u00a0 And so we ask the question: what does it mean to have Moses throw the wood into the bitter waters?<\/p>\n The wood that is thrown into the waters is the goodness that we feel in our hearts \u2013 a love for our neighbour, a love for the Lord.\u00a0 It inspires us to learn truth and to use that truth.<\/p>\n But the wood is not just good in our hearts.\u00a0 It is also goodness in our lives, in our actions.\u00a0 Throwing the wood into the water means focusing our attention on how we can serve others, rather than on our own desire to be satisfied.\u00a0 And so return in your mind to that place of desperation.\u00a0 Remember how the children of Israel might have felt as they watched Moses throw the wood into the water.\u00a0 It seems like such a simple thing \u2013 why should this make any difference in the waters?\u00a0 Why would a piece of wood help out?\u00a0 How can he be doing only this when we are dying of thirst?\u00a0 How can the simple act of doing good make a difference in the way truth affects us?<\/p>\n But Moses does throw the wood in the water, and the people do drink.\u00a0 How do we throw the wood in the water?\u00a0 We make the effort to apply what we know to our lives even though it feels like a chore.\u00a0 We again make that conscious effort to resist the evil tendencies we\u2019ve seen in ourselves.\u00a0 We act according to the Lord\u2019s commandments, knowing that to break them is to sin against Him.<\/p>\n And maybe for a while, truth will still seem stale and tasteless and bitter to us.\u00a0 But as we keep at it, the wood will start to work.\u00a0 As we add good actions <\/em>to our lives, we start to feel the good love<\/em> in our hearts.\u00a0 And gradually, perhaps with little hope of success, we\u2019ll try again to taste the truth.\u00a0 And a miracle does <\/em>eventually occur \u2013 those truths that seemed empty come to life again.\u00a0 The water that tasted bitter does<\/em> become sweet.\u00a0 The Lord lifts us up out of temptation, and He leads us to a new sight of truth, to new feelings of love.<\/p>\n Picture yourself now in the place of that Israelite, in the deserts of the Middle East, having just drunk from the now-sweet waters of Marah.\u00a0 The pillar of cloud is on the move again, and with joy and confidence you follow after.\u00a0 And within hours you come to an enormous oasis: not one spring of water, but twelve!\u00a0 Not four or five palm trees, but seventy!\u00a0 Your journey is not complete; you still have miles and years to go before you reach the holy land; but after we come through hardship, the Lord blesses us with truth and goodness in abundance.\u00a0 Even though the truth may at times become bitter, we continue to follow it, and the love we feel returns.\u00a0 Then we can see the truth of the Lord\u2019s words to the Samaritan woman:<\/p>\n Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst to eternity, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n Lessons: Exodus 15:22-27; John 4:1-14; AC 8349<\/p>\n AC 8349. \u2018And they could not drink the waters for bitterness; for they were bitter\u2019 means that truths seemed \u2026 to be unpleasant, as being devoid of an affection for good. \u2026 All the delight of truth comes forth from good.\u00a0 The reason why an affection for truth has its origin in good is that good loves truth, and truth loves good; the two go together as though joined in marriage. It is well known that everyone wishes to learn more about the things he loves and has as his end in view. One who loves good, that is, wishes in his heart to worship God and benefit his neighbour, loves to learn more about ways to do so, and therefore to learn truths. From all this it becomes clear that every affection for truth arises out of good<\/p>\n \u2026. A genuine affection for truth consists in wishing to know what the truth is for the sake of life in the world, and for the sake of eternal life. People with this desire enter temptation when the truths they possess begin to be lacking, and especially when the truths they know seem to be unpleasant. The origin of this temptation lies in the fact that the links with good have been broken. These links are broken the moment that a person moves in the direction of his proprium, for in so doing he slips into the evil of self-love or of love of the world. The moment he does so he begins to find truths unpleasant; but as soon as he emerges from that state the truths become pleasant. This is what is meant in the narrative that follows, describing how the bitter waters were cured by the wood that had been thrown into them; for good is meant by \u2018wood\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I preached this sermon on Sunday, July 11, 2010 at the Olivet New Church in Toronto. BITTER WATERS MADE SWEET A Sermon by Rev. Coleman S. Glenn \u201cAnd they came to Marah, and they could not drink the waters for bitterness, because they were bitter; therefore he called the name of it Marah.\u201d (Exodus 15:23) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[30,84,131,213],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","tag-bitter-water","tag-good","tag-marah","tag-truth"],"yoast_head":"\n