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Exodus 15:22–26 gives the account of Israel’s murmuring at the bitter waters of Marah. At this very beginning part of their journey from the Red Sea toward Canaan, their water supplies were exhausted. They had hardly ceased their songs of thanksgiving and triumph before they raised a new cry–– murmuring and complaining against God’s great prophet who had just led them out of slavery. This was but the first of several times they would so behave. Their repeated, faithless complaints became so displeasing to God that He would later send a plague to destroy 14,700 of the ungrateful wretches (Num. 16:41–49). Still later God sent the fiery serpents to kill many others because for their murmuring and whining (21:4–6).
After a journey of three days from the Red Sea, they came to the waters of Marah, but they were “bitter” and undrinkable. The people murmured and complained. Moses brought the complaint of the people before God, Who pointed Moses to a certain tree, which, when cast into the water, made it sweet and drinkable. Could Moses have sweetened the water by substituting some other tree than the one God selected? Surely not. Had Moses’ presumed to choose a different tree, reasoning, “One tree is as good as another,” two results would have obtained:
- Moses disobedience and disrespect toward God would have been on display;
- The water would have remained bitter.
Note some practical lessons:
- When God specifies his choice or his desire for men in any circumstance, they dare not presume to make changes or substitutions. Cain was the first to learn this principle—as it relates to worship—by his substituted offering (Gen. 4:3–7). He was certainly not the last to learn it. Most people who profess belief in the Bible deny this Biblical principle. One church is as good as another, one plan of salvation is as good as another, one baptism is as good as another, one doctrine is as good as another, one kind of music in worship is as good as another, and like statements are proofs of this denial. Just as Moses was content to use the tree of God’s choice, so must we be content with God’s choices in all matters. God’s command to Noah to build the ark out of gopher wood allowed no addition or substitution of any sort (Gen. 6:14, 22). Here is the principle: When God specifies any element(s) in carrying out His Will, He simultaneously includes what He desires and excludes everything else in the same class of items—without having to name any of them (God did not have to name all of the available trees and tell Moses not to use them).
- We see God’s attitude toward murmuring. Paul used those very occasions of Israel’s murmurings in the Wilderness as warnings against such behavior in the Christian age (1 Cor. 10:10–11). Those murmurings sorely provoked God so that He shut that generation out of the land of promise (Heb. 3:8–11). The root of the complaining, gainsaying, murmuring spirit is unbelief, which leads to rebellion (vv. 16–19). We are to serve the Lord without murmurings (Phi. 2:14). This ugly trait—and the lack of faith that it signals—will keep us out of the promised land of Heaven.
“Neither murmur ye, as some of them murmured, and perished by the destroyer” (1 Cor. 10:10).
[Note: I wrote this article for and it was published in The Lighthouse, weekly bulletin of Northpoint Church of Christ, Denton, TX, September 21, 2014, of which I was editor.]
Attribution: From thescripturecache.com; Dub McClish, owner and administrator.
