Thank you. Greetings, friends. Exodus chapter fifteen, reading at verse twenty-five this time, we have already considered briefly verse twenty-six, where the Lord said, through Moses to the people of Israel, if thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and will do that which is right in his sight, and will 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, I am the Lord that healeth thee. Now, he is a great healer. He is a great physician, God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a great physician here. He healed everybody that was ill or diseased or maimed or haught or blind, and even raised the dead. when he was here upon earth. He is a great physician, none like him, because he knows every fiber in your body and mind, every particle knows it all because he's made it, and he's able to heal it, and does, and keeps us well most of the time, the most of us. And we suffer very little... There are great many of us. We've been so fortunate. God has been so especially good to us that we have suffered very little from disease and sicknesses and injuries. And yet there's a great many of us, friends, and we must surely admit it, that we've done a lot to injure our bodies that God has given us. And even... Over the Air has been published within a few days. The fact that the mother who uses tobacco, the smoke, is likely to injure her unborn child. This has come over the air from physicians, experts in their field. And so we need the healing. not only of the body, but of the soul. We need not only the healing of diseases, but we need the healing from our sins. And the Lord Jesus came first of all to forgive our sins, and then to help us and to encourage us and enable us, give us the strength and ability to discard these matters that we have accumulated as habits, And these things that we engage in that are injurious to our health. I am not a physician, but I know the book of God a little bit. I wish I knew it better. But I do know that the Lord is able to help us. When he saves us by his grace, he saves us not only from the penalty of our sins, but he saves us from many of the evils and the wrongs. and the injurious things that's in this world. And He gives us the grace and ability to not engage in them. And if we have been engaging in them, He gives us the desire. We do not want to do them longer. And He gives us the desire not to do them. And He gives us the ability not to do them. And I am persuaded from what a little bit that I know that many of the habits and the things that we engage in have grown upon us to such an extent that we're unable in our own strength to give them up. Oh, we profess if I wanted to stop, I could stop right now. But the fact is, it don't stop. And then sometimes when the do stop for a little while... And then they get with company who engage in the same thing again. Well, they start all over again. And their stopping was only an interim stopping. It wasn't permanent. These are things, friends, that the individual should think about and weigh the cost themselves. And yet the Word of God makes it clear that Many times, most of the times, we're unable to extricate ourselves from these things that we call habits, that are injurious to our body and also to our soul. Many that we don't care to mention, that injure us in our soul. They're sin, they're evil, they're wrong. They destroy our health. They take away our little bit of wealth, and they make us the deeper in sin. The injurious things to our health. We need not mention them. We need not go over the whole catalog. But we know that poison in the form of dope. We know that smoke, taken into the lungs. We know that alcohol... taken into the stomach, are injurious to our bodies, injurious to our health. They oftentimes affect our loved ones. They oftentimes affect our families. And yet men and women become slaves to these things. And only God can help you, friend, to stop. And you need to trust the Lord Jesus as Savior. And he'll prove to you that he can give you the grace and the strength and the wisdom to stop them and not feel it at all. Be able to give you the strength to conquer. You can't do it yourself. No doubt you can. But the Lord can give you the strength and the grace to overcome them. Now we've read in this twenty-fifth verse a very strange yet of most illuminating incident in the life of the children of Israel while they're in the wilderness. They're journeying in the wilderness, and they found no water, and then they came to a place called Mara, and there was water. But what? Well, it was they could not drink of the water of Mara in verse twenty-three of Exodus chapter fifteen. They could not drink of the water of Mara, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Mara, or bitterness. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? Oh, yes. They had a man they blamed everything on, all their ills and troubles and difficulties and deprivations and so on. They blamed it on poor Moses. We always find someone on whom we can lay our guilt and blame and criticism. But is it right? No, not right. Anyway, they murmured against Moses. He's a man that led us out. My, they could have been still back serving with the taskmaster's lash on them for not making enough brick because they'd taken the straw away from them and they had to go and find their stubble instead of straw in order to make the same tail of brick. And if they didn't, then it was the lash. that came down upon them. They could have been back there. They've forgotten all about that now. They've forgotten about their deliverance. Oh, my Christian friend, have we forgotten our deliverance? God has saved us. If we're saved at all, then he has saved us from a life of sin, an evil, wrong, terribleness. The things that are in the world today, he's saved us from them. But here was this bitter water, and they... And Moses, when they murmured against him, and said, What shall we drink? In verse twenty-five, And he, Moses, cried unto the Lord. Yes, we can go to him when we're in trouble, friends, if we've trusted him, the Lord Jesus, as Savior. Then we can turn to the Lord. For help. The one who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. Just think of that. Above all that we can ask or think, and you and I can think of a lot of great things, but he can still be greater than our thoughts, and he can give us more than we ask or think, and he does. If we just stopped to count our blessings every day, we'd find out he's doing that for us right along. But anyway, sticking to our text, he cried unto the Lord, and the Lord did what? The Lord healed the wise. Well, yes, he certainly did. But how did he do it? Now this is what's important. And the Lord showed him what? A tree. Oh, how wonderful. Oh, how magnificent, Flynn. He showed him a tree. A tree. Yes, he pointed one out. It wasn't he could just go and pick up a tree wherever he wanted to, but the Lord showed him a particular tree. A tree. He didn't say, go and take one of the trees. He showed him a tree which, when he had cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. The waters were made sweet. Oh, my friend, here is a picture of this tree is a picture of the cross. Ah, yes. Trees are mentioned so frequently in the Scriptures, twenty times in the first three chapters of Genesis. The first three chapters in the Bible, trees mentioned twenty times. In the book of Revelation, the last chapter, twenty-two, tree is mentioned three times. All the way through the Bible, the tree is mentioned. In the book of the Psalms, there are seven different kinds of trees mentioned, and men are likened unto those trees. Here a tree was cut down and was cast into the waters, and the waters became sweet. Oh, my friend, if you want to know the loveliness of living in this world for God, then come to the cross. the tree in the middle of the, where they were crucified, on which the Lord Jesus bear your sins and mine on that middle cross. He'll heal all our diseases of these afflictions. He'll give us power to overcome them. He'll make the water sweet if you want to know joy and peace and gladness and happiness beyond anything you've ever known. Then, friends, accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. He died for you. He loves you. He wants to save you. And then you'll find a happy new year, the like of which you have not ever known before. Blessed God, we thank thee for the Savior who died on the cross, the middle tree in the garden at the cross. May many come as sinners to him, to that fountain, and be cleansed of all their guilt and sin and misery, and enabled, Lord, to live a wholesome, pure, and sweet life, and joy, and happiness and peace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, bless our president, our country, our government, all who are in authority, and the men and women, boys and girls of all the human family, may turn to the Savior and be saved forever, we pray, in his precious name. Amen.