I'll just remind you, as I'm sure you noted from the opening prayer, that we do need to be mindful of our young people, or at least some of our young people, many of them that are in our youth camp this week and our various ministers that will be preaching the Lord's Word to them. So let's remember them and some of our folks as well that are laboring to cook for them and clean after them and all of those sundry things. So let's remember these folks in particular prayer. I ask you this morning, if you would, just to read with me a very brief portion that we find at the conclusion of chapter 15. The bulk of this chapter is the song of Moses and the immediate aftermath that we considered last Lord's Day morning, but we begin reading in verse 22 of the same chapter the events that came so soon afterwards. So Exodus 15 and verse 22. So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur, and they went three days into the wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord, And the Lord showed him a tree, which, when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them, and said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee. which I have brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth thee. We'll end our reading and again trust the Lord's blessing to be upon the public reading of his word. Let's bow our heads together. Our Heavenly Father, we come again together into your presence today and we ask that we might know even some of the leading of the Spirit this day as we come to look at the Scriptures of truth. I pray you give us discernment. Lord, give us honest hearts as we come face to face with your Word. Lord, give us honest hearts as we come face to face with ourselves. And I pray that this might be a revelation that we strive toward each day to know more of ourselves and more than plead more for the grace of God and cleansing and the power of the Spirit of God. And so we pray, even as you have promised to bless the reading and preaching of your Word and called us never to forsake it, I pray that this day under its preaching we might know the help and power of the Spirit as we together hear thy Word. So, Lord, we ask and pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. The psalmist once said, It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes. This is not a statement that a believer can make lightly, nor is it a statement that a believer can usually make very early in his Christian experience. Very often the children of God, in the joy and the release that they sense and feel in coming to Christ, rather, from their sins, and knowing the penalty of their sins to be gone, and that fresh understanding of the gospel and their sights all filled with heaven and glory, sometimes they don't have a close-up enough view of that thing that intervenes between justification and glorification. And that is our pilgrim journey. That is, the battles that we face, and the growth in grace that we require, and that the Lord would engage us in in these days of our flesh still, while we're redeemed. While we've come out of Egypt, but we're not yet in the promised land. It's a wilderness. And it is a journey to which the Lord calls His people. And it is a journey certainly to which and into which Israel is brought now that the waters of the Red Sea have closed back in behind them and have carried away their enemies, have carried away that bondage and that slavery that they knew for so long. But yet I say the wilderness is before them. And this story of the waters of Marah is the first thing that we find. in Israel's pilgrim journey. The first thing we find after the song of Moses, it is the first thing we find after the people and their fear and their trembling and all those periods of fear and trembling, and now they can look back and see on the shores of that ocean all of their enemies washed away. They do not fear the bondage of Egypt coming upon them anymore at all forever. So it was a glorious place for them to be. They were dead center in the Lord's will. They were a people on the way to a land that was promised. A land that flowed with milk and honey. They were a people that after just three days have found no water. They come to a place where finally The Lord in His directing them, for remember as we saw at the closing verses of chapter 14, as the Lord first descended in the cloud, He took it not away from them. And they come at the leading of the Lord tomorrow. And they come to a point in which for all the thirst and all the provision that they've had is now gone. That in the struggles and in the days intervening where we don't read of any complaint, we don't read of any murmuring, we don't read of any problems saved, that they have had no water, but they find water. We can just begin to think of the release that they came to know. The pleasure. The satisfaction. that first met with them when they arrived, and there's water there. But then the dismay comes when they drink of the water, and they find them to be bitter. They find them to be so bitter that the waters will not meet their need. They cannot drink. This is the place that Israel first comes after singing the Song of Deliverance. They come tomorrow. And so it is tomorrow that we come today in our consideration of the life of Moses and the ministry to which the Lord has called him and given him. And I want to look this morning at three very simple thoughts as we come to the text. We're going to consider, firstly, the perils of the wilderness. Secondly, in the Lord's will, the problems of the heart. And then finally, the power of the gospel. And so if you would think with me this morning on these three thoughts. The perils of the wilderness. Israel is in a problem. This, as we know from reading the story before, was but the first of many trials and many struggles that Israel is going to face in the wilderness. And it may have been that Israel thought, well, there is a lot of territory, there's a lot of geography between us and the promised land. And we know that even once we get there, there are going to be enemies in the way, and we're going to have to engage in battle to secure the land and to dwell in it and make it our own. And so Israel in a sense is mindful that there's going to be some difficulty. There's going to be some problem here and there that faces them. But nonetheless, perhaps now with the Red Sea experience and all that the Lord has done for them, the plagues of Egypt, the manifestation of their weak faith, and yet the Lord still blessed them anyway, that maybe finally they've come to a point where, okay, we can do this thing. We have had a little bit of sight now mingled with our faith. We've seen the chariots of Pharaoh's armies destroyed. And so now we press on and we'll look for that day yet ahead where there'll be another struggle and we'll buckle our bootstraps a little tighter and we'll pass through that as well. But they're not ready for Marv. Because you see, the trial came early. And so it is. Is it not, friend, that very often trials come early in our Christian experience? We've come through those struggles of the soul, the power of conviction, the fights with the devil and the world to hold on to us, and we know release. And we come and pass into his kingdom, and we think now that everything will be smooth sailing. And then suddenly something goes wrong. There's a trial. There's a problem. There's some need that comes upon us we weren't expecting. Perhaps there is a physical trial of infirmity or disease or loss. Here comes the trial of our faith. Lord, I thought things would be better now. I thought all the problems of life that I had known in the past were all because of sin. Sin does normally bring in its wake great problems. Sometimes those are mercies, because there are times that sin seemingly doesn't bring problems. Recall the psalmist in Psalm 73, as he saw the ungodly, and that they prospered in their way, and that there were no problems that seemed to them. The psalmist had to be brought to the house of God until he came to an understanding heart. For the Christian, sometimes when the trial comes early in his Christian life, he struggles along and he faces a difficulty. He faces a hardship. He faces a type of problem that he didn't know in the past. His heart might race back and think in the words of another. And all this was all the severer trial, because some of us had found a degree of pleasure in all the ways of sin, and now it has stumbled us to find sorrow in the ways of God. Friends, that is where we lead as we come more willing to see later the power of the gospel to understand that the reproaches of Christ The reproaches of Christ are greater treasure than all the riches of Egypt. And I say such perils in the wilderness can come, and they can come very early. And they can also come in forms that are great and severe. It would be one thing if Israel had been tried here that, you know, they didn't have any salad dressing for their salads. Or they didn't have any, you know, flavored beverage to go along with their meal. Or they didn't have any dessert or any ice cream. You get the point. You know, there are a lot of things they could have done without. There are a lot of things that you can do without in your life. Those of you fellows that have been on some of these backpacking trips, maybe even more so after the first one, figure there's a lot of things we can do without. We carried last time and we don't want to carry this time, they're too heavy. But water, there's something you can't do without. I mean, you can get by without a tent, you can get by without a sleeping bag in many conditions and circumstances, you can get by without your little bit of dried beef, you can get by with all these things, but water you must have. And here is Israel in the wilderness and in the desert in the heat of the sun. And again, there are many things that they do have with them that they could get by without. And the Lord hasn't tried them, as it were, to remove from them, bringing their favorite little item to put on their mantle when they get back into their land and into their houses. He hasn't deprived them of life or limb, at least at this point. But water here, something that is necessary for life, here's where the trial comes. And sometimes, it is not that the Lord tries us in a small thing. We can think often of Christians and their trial of perhaps some financial need, or some little thing that comes along, or the car is broken down, and you need extra money to get this fixed, or you don't have the money to get it fixed. So, lo and behold, we have to exist for a while with one car instead of two cars, or some great problem like that. But when the Lord touches us upon something that's really important, The Lord brings us a trial like this that's a matter of life and death. The loss of a loved one. Perhaps disease in our own body that would threaten our very life. It would bring us to know that our days are few. We've labored in our denomination which is still small enough to have, in some ways, a family atmosphere far beyond our local borders. We have labored and do labor even now with those that have been brought news of infirmity and disease that may very well take them to the glory soon. Beth Lancaster and our Greenville congregation, if she has not passed on, the last word we received is the doctors are amazed that she's even alive right now. Sometimes the trials the Lord brings his people are great matters. It's not just the missionary that has 95% of his support and needs to raise 5 more percent. Though that can be a trial. The trial can come, I say, in any form. And sometimes they come in such a way that we feel that we can't bear them. Whether it be a great trial or a medium-sized trial or even a small trial. Sometimes you think, Lord, I can't bear this. Why did you bring me this problem? Why did you bring me this trial? You see, the thing is, we need to take a step back and recognize that it's God that's brought us the trial. And we need to be careful. I don't know where this adage or modern proverb comes from, but I've heard it said often, be careful what you ask for, you might get it. Well, I think there can be a grain of truth in that when we look at the things of God. We look at a trial. I think, Lord, well, why'd you bring me this trial? You know, if so and so doesn't have this trial, why don't you let me, you know, have their trials and I'll take theirs, or let them have mine and I'll take theirs. But no, the Lord in His sovereignty brings each of us our own trials. He brings each of us to our own morrow. And He has a purpose in it. And we need to be a people that in looking at it recognize, no, the Lord has a great purpose for me. We need to be a people that can step back. We'll see later on today, I hope in some greater detail, that we can step back and say, well, wait a minute. Yes, I'm in the wilderness, and even at this particular place in the wilderness, there's no water here. There's a real problem. But I used to be in slavery in Egypt, and I'm going to be in the Promised Land. And you see, it's getting in that big picture, that big gospel thinking, that gospel frame of mind to say, Then Lord, You that have taken me out of slavery, You that did that which I couldn't do for myself, and You which are doing for me that which I still can't do for myself, You have led me here. And you know, the Lord doesn't deceive us. That's one of the things. If you've known me for any while, you should say, well, Kimbrough, add this. That's one of the many things that I have a problem with in the modern televangelists and the charismatic movement and all of these various things is that their view and their presentation of Christianity is name it and claim it. That trials come always because of sin, and if you can just have enough faith, then you'll be a millionaire, and you can give part of that to me, of course, as the preacher, and you just go on and on and on, and there won't be any problems. But Christ doesn't present the pilgrim journey to his followers in such ways. Christ speaks to us very much of counting the cost of not being his disciple and not worthy to be his disciple if we don't recognize and count the cost. He speaks to us in his word that we shall through much tribulation enter the kingdom. And you see, we need to understand what the wilderness is. We need to understand that we should not expect the wilderness to be a pleasant place for the people of God. We see the trials that come upon us, they may come in this physical way, or this tangible way as it were, where there's a hardship, or the loss of a job, or an illness, or all these various things, poverty, whatever, that other people might have. that the lost might experience. Now, they experience it in a different way than we do because they experience it alone rather than at the loving hands of the God of heaven. But the believer beyond even those normal trials has a mara to deal with of things that come to him simply because he's a child of God. The wilderness is a wilderness to him because he now breathes different air. He is a citizen of a different kingdom. He is swimming against the tide. The world doesn't go in the path that the believer is going. And so there are many things for the children of God that are harder in this life than they are for the ungodly. There are many things in this life that pose a difficulty for the Christian that is not posed for the ungodly. You think about just listening to and watching the news. Believer has a responsibility and a need for discernment and grace in listening to the daily news that the ungodly do not have. The believer has a difficulty, certainly in our generation, we commented on I think last week, going to the store and buying articles of clothing the ungodly don't have. A believer has trials multiplied simply because he is a believer and his life is of a different nature than the life of those in this world. We could go on really for a long season and just expand our thoughts on the perils of the wilderness. Perils are many. And just because we're children of God doesn't mean we're exempt from trouble. In many ways it means we're going to have more trouble than others. It would be one thing if the perils of the wilderness were all that we faced. But the real danger comes in our second thought this morning. And that is the problems of the heart. You know, it's easy for us to look at the children of Israel and point out their flaws. Boy, look at those people, they're reading our Bible. You know, we read chapters at a time and we know the beginning and the middle and the end of the story, or at least if we don't, we should. We should be a people that keep reading the book. So I say it's easy for us to look at Israel and point out their flaws. It's not so easy for us to look at them and see in them a mirror of ourselves. But that's what they are. How quickly they turn from singing to murmuring. You go back and you read the opening section of this chapter. A song so full of praise, and of glory, and of release, and of redemption, and of marveling in the power of God, and the cry even we came to last Lord's Day at the table. Who is like unto thee among the gods? We can look at all the idols of the ungodly, we can look at all the false gods and idols that we pursued and that we enjoyed in the days of our flesh and we can say, our God is like none of these. Our God has designed everything for the good of his people. And idolatry just brings down its followers and ultimately destroys them. It's easy on the shore of the Red Sea. on the shore when you pass through and you're looking back at all your enemies destroyed, they say, Who's like our God? What a wonderful God He is! Can you sing that at morrow? Who's like my God? What a wonderful God He is. You see how quickly they turn from singing to murmuring? That's quite a transition. Sometimes the ground in between singing and murmuring is pretty broad. It's a long season. You can see that even in the history of the church. Today is a revival blessing and years of peace and prosperity and stability and health for the church. But yet, then sometimes days of murmuring yet come again, whether it's the murmurings of the ungodly false teacher in denying the gospel, or the murmurings of the Lord's people, not in doctrinal heresy, but just in strivings because they don't like this or that circumstance the Lord has brought. You see how quickly they turn from singing to murmuring. It doesn't always take a long time for us in our experience to turn from singing. from being the first one with a hymn request because it was a song in our hearts and a desire to sing and to join with others in the praises of our God and our own experience walking with Him daily. To be the one that's hard even to utter out the words. Our minds and our thoughts are either somewhere else or picking apart the things of the house of God and of His people and of His servants. Notice here The people were not so bold as to cry out against the Lord. The people did not come and say, well, God was great three days ago, but boy, God is really horrible today. No, they don't say that. They're not so brazen. They're not so apostate as to make a statement like that. No, but their word is very plainly, verse 24, murmuring, against Moses. You see, they were not so honest as to send their murmuring directly to God. They hurled it elsewhere. Friend, I believe that is one of the great problems of the heart, is that we are ready to murmur. We look at our various circumstances, our particular morrow, our particular bitterness. And again, remember that the situation was aggravated in that they long for water. And then they find water. But the very water that they think is going to be their relief turns to be more of an agitation to them. There's a bitterness to it. And I say they're not so honest as to send their murmuring directly to God. And so in their murmuring they find some other place upon which they will have their murmuring to land. Whether it is the preacher, the elders, the denomination, the church, some other Christian who very often would be seeking our good and our help and yet We'll find something in them to blame. Some other place that we can hurl our murmurings so that we don't have to face the fact that our hearts really are discontent with our God. I say this is a problem of the heart. You read the life of Moses. We look at Moses as a giant. Indeed he was. We look at what history owes to Moses. We see what we owe to Moses and what the church of all the ages owes to him. It was a life that was certainly filled from an eternal and even an earthly perspective with great experience, with great blessing, with great achievement. But that's with the wrong view. You take the short view and you just think through the life of Moses. It was hard. It was full of problems. It was full of personal difficulty, strivings in his own soul, having to come to terms with God Himself. I mean, here's a man that's 40 years in the wilderness and there's nothing. There's a man that thinks the next however many years the Lord's going to give him, he's just going to die out in obscurity and nothing will be done. But you see, in the grace of the gospel, in the life of Moses, it was not a wilderness experience that led him to final murmuring and uselessness. No, it was an experience that brought him to a position of greater usefulness and greater service. It wasn't that Moses didn't have the problems of the heart that the Israelites had, he did. So do we. But he dealt with them rightly. He dealt with them with understanding. Moses hadn't led the people to Marah. Moses followed the cloud to Marah. And the people followed Moses. God led them there. Can you think of it? What problem it might be? Loss of a child. Loss of some other strength. Like, well, if I'd only not done this. If only I hadn't gone to this particular place, then there wouldn't have been that car accident on the way. All these various things where we look at the circumstance rather than the sovereign God. Oh Lord, what are you seeking to do with me? You see, when we have that honesty about the thing, then we have a handle with which we can deal with our own hearts and the problems of our hearts. And so I say, let us not be as Israel at Marah, and look at Moses. Let's be as Moses was at Marah. I mean, it's amazing here. You read verse 24. The people murmured against Moses, saying, what shall we drink? Now, what would you have done then? I mean, you just think through. You know the previous 40 some odd years, or 80 years of Moses' life. All these things. You see all the trials and the things he's come through, and the blessings and the power of God manifest in his ministry? It's not even just like, you know, a Jonathan Edwards that saw revival come in a congregation and other congregations in New England, and then ultimately was cast off by his congregation. It always amazes me to understand that. I mean, all the small potatoes. Look at Moses! We look at a man that the Lord said to him, you put your rod forth and the sea will divide. You cast your rod down and it will miraculously change. You touch the waters and they'll turn to blood. You go forth. And yet the people murmur against Moses. And I say, what would you have done? I put myself in the spot and say, well, here they are. three days from singing the praises of God. We don't find it at this point, but there are other occasions where the people were ready to stone him. But verse 24 doesn't lead to a verse 25 that says, and Moses rebuked the people and got in their face and showed them who and what they were. It says, he cried unto the Lord. He cried unto the Lord. Here is a man that I think was a leader of his people in far more ways than are apparent. He was leading them even here into the path that they should be walking. They should have been crying to the Lord. They're the ones that were thirsty. How much better for them to pray and say, Lord, here we are. We know you're able. We've seen but a sampling of your power. For you to part an ocean. For us to walk through. For you to use the same ocean to destroy our enemies. You can bring us water. They murmur at Moses. Then Moses prays to the Lord. Again, we It had much more to the thoughts, but to the perils of the wilderness, I say, came to expose the problems of the heart. But the last thing I want us to think on this morning is the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel. Here's where we need to apply gospel thinking to all our circumstances. The people were brought tomorrow. Moral was a place of difficulty, a place of trial. A place where a normal trial was exacerbated and made worse. A place that for many would be a place of breaking. Certainly a place that exposed the problems of the heart as we said. But moral became a place of great blessing. So it is believer that our trials, Our trials can become, and is it not the case that very often in our experience, the deepest of our trials becomes the greatest of our blessings. The problem that we thought was impossible to get through, and we're overwhelmed by the circumstances, and even that that causes us so to stumble, that we sin against our God. And yet in the power of the gospel, in bringing Christ into the situation, in bringing a gospel understanding heart into the difficulty, that the waters are made sweet. You see, one of the great gospel applications here is that it was the very same water that they wound up ultimately drinking. And so it is when we come to terms with our God, when gospel thinking prevails over the murmuring of the flesh, that the thing that we had first found a source of murmuring, or a cause of our murmuring, becomes something through which and in which we can praise our God. You see, all that happened here was that there was something added to the problem. This is a passage that preachers obviously, and I believe rightly, have dealt with on many occasions in gospel terms. As it's said here, the Lord showed him a tree. It was upon a tree that our Christ was hanged. And you see, friend, what earthly bar, what earthly problem can overwhelm the people of God. But the understanding of the cross can't bear us through. Now, in many ways I preach from a position of difficulty. I'm old enough now and life has had a few problems here and there, but yet In many ways, as far as great disease or loss, overwhelming circumstances, we've been very blessed. And yet I have to say, there are oftentimes mars that we don't see, that we don't know one another have. And again, they're not always those things we can know about. Sometimes the greater water to deal with is the spiritual realm. Wrestling with the Lord over things regarding His kingdom. But yet sometimes the dearest place, the place where we know and feel the Lord's presence most keenly, is the morrow. It's the place of bitterness, of hardship, rather than blessing. I say there is power in the gospel, the power to understand about Amara that can turn it into a blessing. One of the greatest blessings of Amara experience is to come to a place where a greater appreciation, if we've already been to the place, but a place of self-distrust. To come to a place where spiritually we've fallen on our face. We've come to a place as Israel where we've cried out against Moses and we've been a murmuring people. The devil would have us at that point say, well, this is the way the devil always operates. Boy, you've blown it now. You might as well give up. It's kind of like the dieter, you know? You stick to the diet for 30 straight days and then one day you're driving along and boy that McDonald's sign is just too much for you and the double cheeseburger and down the hatch it goes and you think well that's it, I've blown it. You know I've missed 14,000 calories, no more than that. You know I've skipped 2 million calories in the last month but boy I've just had 500 too many and so I might as well. You get the illustration and that's the way the devil works with us spiritually very often too. You know, I've walked with the Lord, I've known much of His grace, I've known much help, and growth and grace, and Christian experience, and yet I fall flat on my face in sin. And so, let's turn my back from this pilgrimage. I've got to seek release somewhere. That's not gospel thinking. It's not gospel thinking with reference to the Lord. It's not gospel thinking with reference to His people or to His church. I think that's one reason that even the theology is so important for us, no understanding. How many people, in their experience in coming into the free church, have come out of a background where they had an imperfect understanding of justification? And the believer's frustration where he's failed the Lord, and he goes down that aisle of rededication, and then he fails again sometime, and he begins to wonder, will I ever, am I really even saved? Have I ever come to know the Lord? It's because they've got that view to self rather than to Christ. They're looking at the battles of sanctification and the lack yet of glorification, but they don't see the perfection of justification. I was reading. Spurgeon actually had several sermons on this particular passage. I think I read them all. perhaps more honestly would say skimmed at least one by others read. But one thought that he had so clear and so simple, such an illustration of what we like to call here gospel thinking. There are sufferings sometimes that come to us, and they come to us directly from the hand of God. and the flesh would struggle and fight against it. But the spirit has to stop and think. It is not from the hand of a condemning judge that I have received this trial. There is nothing, if we can have enough ears to understand some of the old language, there is nothing penal in my suffering I am not suffering here in some way to merit righteousness or because God has rejected me. It is not for the condemning judge that this hardship has been sent. It is for a loving Father that it has been sent. And so, there is good for me in this. And there is going to be help and grace for me in this. I can say with a psalmist, it is good that I have been afflicted. I can say with the psalmist that this is something that is going to help me in the things of God. I'm going to learn your statutes. And so the power of the gospel comes at more when we come to know a self-distrust. We come to see more of ourselves. It is a mercy for the Lord to show us more of our weakness that we might have a greater dependence upon Him. Perhaps one reason that we see Moses and Israel reacting so differently at this point is because Moses had been through his morrows. Moses had been through his wilderness. Here, you see, I think, a grace in this, that Israel learned self-distrust. They learned a dependence upon their God. They learned, as we see, and we'll not elaborate on here, but they learned the power of prayer. The tree was there, but it's after Moses appeals to God that he opens his eyes to see the tree. And you know, friends, sometimes in our reading of the scripture, in our understanding of the gospel, we have an intellectual appreciation of the facts, but we don't have the heart to understand them. There have been times, I'm a preacher, I have to think all the time, what am I going to preach? You know, if you're in retail, you've got to think, what am I going to sell? Who's going to be my supplier? Who's it going to be? So the preacher's always thinking, what am I going to preach? So you always have some place in your notebook or whatever, just a little false page. Well, guys of my era that chastised me, they have these things all filed electronically now. They're little palm pilots and everything's great. Well, I just have to do it all with paper still. I got a sheet of paper, or pages actually, in my little day time. And I just write down thoughts for sermons. And there are times in my reading of the Scripture or my reading some other writing or hearing another sermon where my heart is stirred and I'm overwhelmed with a particular text. And I jot down the thought there and I write down the text. And it may be six months or a year later where I've been preaching other things and there's just been no occasion to come to that. Then I go through my notes and I say, oh, let me see this. And I turn open my Bible and I read. And it's as if the page were completely blank. What did I mean? What is this note all about? There's nothing different on the page. But there's something different in my experience. There's something different in my understanding. There's something different in my appreciation of my dependence upon God. or of His blessings, people. I say we can look to our borrowers with gratitude in the power of the Gospel, that there are times when the Lord will use a difficulty to make His Word come alive to us. There are times when the Lord will use a problem to cause us to pray and ask Him to feed our souls, to show us that He is near, that warm our hearts. Doubtless the disciples on the road to Emmaus knew the Old Testament Scriptures. But when Christ opened them to them, their hearts burned within them. I say more I can be at blessed time in the power of the Gospel when we come to a self-distrust, when we come to dependence upon our God, when we come to understand the power of prayer. We come to understand our separateness from Egypt. We've touched on this a little bit already. But behind Israel was a sea that the Lord had caused to collapse in again upon their enemies. There was no going back to Egypt. Who would part the sea? Here is a little gospel and even theological debate an application. One of the things I like to deal with in talking with Arminians is, at what point do we read in the Scripture of God unregenerating His people? If we study the Scriptures and the nature of the doctrine of regeneration, that it is a sovereign act of God. It is not something to which we contribute. It is not something we do for ourselves. But God breathes life into dead sinners. He makes them who were dead to become spiritually alive. We don't read of God undoing that. They say you can, in many ways, get the same application. Who's going to part the sea for Israel to go back into Egypt? God's not going to do it. The only waters God will part for them are the waters of Jordan to bring them into Canaan. I say we're gospel thinking. There's no going back. Thank God, even though this particular problem may belong to me, the problems of Egypt don't belong to me. The bondage of Pharaoh's taskmasters will never belong to me again. These scars that are upon my back and the whips of these men, they'll never be reopened. I say here, there is a great education for Israel tomorrow. I know our time has hastened on. We did not read verse 27 in our Bible reading. I'd like for you to look with me, if you would, now at that verse, the last verse of chapter 15. "...by the waters." Elam was a place of blessing, shade, refreshment, Not one bitter spring, but twelve wells of water. But that's all we read about Eden. What do we read in the closing verses about Marah? It says, there he made for them, verse 25, after the waters were made sweet, there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them. and said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all of his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I have brought upon the Egyptians. For I am Jehovah the healer thee. Jehovah Rapha. And even we read of the blessings they knew. At morrow we read of a statute, of an ordinance, of a promise, and a new name of their God. God in intervals of Scripture reveals Himself by new or additional names that we might know more of Him and experience more of His blessings. It's at morrow that we read of those blessings, not at evening. Elam gets one verse in the wilderness journey. Mara gets four, and they're more lengthy. Sometimes, Christian, it is, as the psalmist said, good for us to be afflicted, that we might learn his statutes, that we might see more of our God, learn more of this one who calls himself by these new names, that we might hear his promise to us, that we might know his blessing. I preach today to the Lord's people. I have spoken of matters that concern the pilgrim on his journey, difficulties that come to Christians, sometimes that even might come because we're Christians. But I want to say in closing a word to any that might be lost in our midst today. Israel is in the wilderness. Israel had an Egypt encamped with that nation that was built around one of the world's most magnificent rivers. One of the most fruitful areas and full of supply and wonderful waters. It would be easy to look and say, well, how much better would it be to be in Egypt by the waters of the Nile that were never bitter, and to be in the wilderness with these people. But you read the stories. Israel's bitter waters were made sweet by the cross of Christ. Egypt's waters were turned to blood. You read in the closing pages of Scripture Theologians and Bible commentators wrestle back and forth, and I believe they'll wrestle until the events of Revelation are finished about what the events of Revelation are really about. You read of times of tremendous plagues, of a third of the waters of the earth turned to blood. Is that literal? Some say no. And I say, why not? God's somehow able to do miracles on a small scale that he can't do on a great scale. And could it not even be a mercy in the last days? You think of it. What if a people, in their region, everything that belongs to them is met with such devastation that they have no water. All they have is blood. And they know, therefore, that all they have at best is days in their debt. Those are days in which they can cry out to the God of heaven for an eternal wife. Days of mercy, in which they might, rather than crying for the rocks and hills to fall upon them and hide them from the wrath of the Lamb, that they might take shelter in the Lamb from the wrath of God. If you're here today without Christ, it is far better to know the brief bitter waters of Christian pilgrim wilderness experience on the way to the land of promise, than it is to remain in Egypt and know waters that to the fleshly eye appear to be great, but at the hand of God be turned to blood and death forever. I ask you today, do you ever know brief affliction with the people of God for a season? The Apostle said, for our light affliction, which is for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. I say to you, dear friend, today, if you're outside of Christ, even with His moras, there's a land of promise. come to Him. Let's bow our heads together. Lord, today we ask Thee, give us wisdom and grace to understand Your Word aright. And I pray that You will give us help to discern Christ and the pages of Holy Writ. For He has testified to us with His own lips, they are they which testify of Me. Lord, if there are any here today that are outside of Christ, I pray that you'll give them, by the power of your Spirit, to flee from the wrath to come. Lord, for any believer here that has known, or even now may be knowing, some experience of bitterness and mar, that you might open their eyes to see the healing tree, that it might be cast in. And even that which at first seemed to be such a curse, might show itself in the gospel to be of great blessing, because it draws us nearer to our Christ. And so, Lord, we pray, minister to each one at our points of need, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.