"I Am Bitter Waters Healed" asserts that God's provision in the wilderness, specifically the manna and quail, was intended to reveal His identity as Jehovah, the personal "I Am" who is the God of Israel. The passage uses the Israelites' murmuring and dissatisfaction in Exodus 16 as a backdrop to explain that God heard their complaints and responded with miraculous sustenance to prove His power and presence. The core lesson is that God desires a personal relationship, evidenced by His possessive claim, "your God," which requires individual appropriation through faith, as exemplified by Thomas's confession, "My Lord and my God." The message concludes by urging listeners to personally receive Jesus Christ as their Savior and God, thereby knowing they have eternal life.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.51 → restored 3.91
Thank you. Greetings, friends. Exodus chapter sixteen, verse eleven. The Lord speaks again to Moses, as often he did in that day, when the children of Israel were being led by God, directed by him, as to where they could go, when they should go, all about them, and the keeping of them in the wilderness as they journeyed. So verse eleven tells us that the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, I have heard the murmurings. Notice the murmurings. Even though they were directed by God, even though they were specially kept, fed, clothed, preserved, protected.
By God, we read this solemn word, I have heard the murmuring of the children of Israel, and the murmurings. They weren't satisfied. They weren't content. They murmured. And so God says, I have heard the murmurings. Yes. It didn't go by the Lord's notice. The Lord noticed their murmuring. He heard their murmuring. And he said, Speak unto them, saying, Moses, you tell them this.
At Eden, at even, that is the even tide, you shall eat flesh. And in the morning you shall be filled with bread. They had murmured, because they were in the wilderness, and they didn't have the same feet that they did even when they were slaves back in Egypt. And so they began to complain, and they began to murmur. And here is what God said. I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel. Possibly, friends, we haven't been satisfied at times. Perhaps we've complained at what we thought were circumstances and conditions not conducive to our plans, not what we desired.
They weren't as good as what we thought they ought to be. And what did we do? Well, we complained about it, and we murmured about it. We weren't satisfied. And so we made it known. God heard us. As he heard the children of Israel... He heard their murmuring, and he said, If even ye shall eat flesh, where were they going to get it? There was no place in the wilderness for them to get it. So how were they going to be fed? This is one of the things that bothered the people of Israel. They said, How can we have a table in the wilderness? Will the Lord prepare us a table in the wilderness?
They doubted if he would do it, or he could do it, maybe. But this would have been normal, because they'd not ever seen anything like this before. We must keep this in mind. We'd be too critical of the children of Israel. They'd not ever seen anybody fed but what had to earn it hard labor by hard labor, and then only a meager existence at that. At evening you shall eat flesh. In the evening you're going to eat meat. And in the morning you shall be filled with bread. This turned out to be angels' food, as we read later on in the Scripture, fed with the very best, fed by heaven.
But there is going to be a reason for it. I'll feed you a flesh in the evening and fill you with bread in the morning, and ye shall know or else. No doubt here, no wandering here, no hoping here, is going to... No, they're going to know. And ye, the children of Israel, shall know. You'll be fully convinced. You'll be without any murmurings or any complainings or any doubts or any fears. And ye shall know that I am, I am, the great I am, Jehovah God.
The I am of eternity past, of the present, and eternity to come. The one who is the ever great, present, I am, ever present. Always the present. I am the Lord, your God. The emphasis here is on the personal pronoun, the possessive case, your God. Oh, my friends, how precious this. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, your God, not the God of someplace else. No, not for the time being now. It's for the personal appropriation of each of the children of Israel that ye may know.
I'm going to do these miraculous things that ye may know that I am the Lord, the God Jehovah. Overall, the omnipotent, omnipresent, ever-present one, the omniscient one, and knows everything. I am the Lord. your God. Oh, my friends, this is something. He didn't leave them in the wilderness and let them to their murmurings. Perhaps that is what they deserve. Who can say? But instead of that, he said, I'm going to prove to you that I am the Lord your God. Oh, my friends, this is a personal God.
God is a personal God. and he's for the persons who will receive him as their personal God, so that they would be able to say with Israel, I know the Lord is my God. When Thomas saw the Lord after he'd been risen from the dead, and he was going to put his finger in the nail print in the Lord's hand, and his hand into the spear wound in his side, when he was confronted with the Lord Jesus, He didn't do that, but he exclaimed what no man other elsewhere ever exclaimed. He said, My Lord and my God.
Oh, how wonderful. At that moment Thomas could see in the person of the Lord Jesus, his God, his Lord, and he wasn't worried nor concerned, nor did he think about anybody else. But each and every individual can do what Thomas did. And by faith we must do, or else he's not, in the true sense of the word, your God, your personal God, nor mine. It's a personal appropriation. The Lord Jesus, it was said of him by John the Beloved, in the Gospel by John, as many as received him, the Savior.
To them gave he power of the right to become the children of God, even to them that believe on his name. They made him there by a personal faith in him, a personal receiving of him. I receive him as the one who died for my sins on the cross. I know that he loved me. The Bible tells me so. I know that I'm a sinner. The Bible tells me so, as well as my own life tells me so. But I received him as my Savior. I realized, and I believed, that he died on the cross for my sins. And ye shall know that I am the Lord your God. Oh, wonderful. This is way back in the beginning of time, Fred.
Way back in the beginning of the human family. In the second book of the Bible, the book of Exodus. And here God's revealing to the people of Israel. What I'm going to do now physically for you, you'll be able to see, and then you'll know that I am the Lord your God. Can you look back in your life, friend, to a time when the Lord did something for you? And unmistakably you were able to say, then and now, the Lord my God. The Lord my God. My Savior. You see, it's those who are able to say, on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, friend, the Lord is my shepherd.
The Lord is my Savior. Has there been a time in your life when you can look back and you first realize for the first time that the Lord Jesus is the Lord, you're gone. And you were able to say, thank God, he's my Savior. He's my shepherd. He's my friend. I've made him mine. I've received him as mine. I believe in him as mine, that he died just for me on Calvary's cruel tree. For that he surely did. I am the Lord, your God. My what a precious statement this, that you may not, not something fanciful, not something that may be or may not be.
not something that exists now and may be taken from us later on, but that you may know now that the Lord, I am the Lord, you're gone. Paul says, these are the Apostle Peter, John says, I write these things unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life. There they would testify of me. Oh, my friend, do you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior? Can you say, I know, that the Lord is my Savior. You made him yours because you accepted him. You trusted him. You believed in him for you, for your own self. Oh, how wonderful.
This friend is God's marvelous salvation, that ye may know that I am the Lord, your God. How wonderful, how great God is. Our Father, thank thee for thy message of the Word of God. We thank thee for the Savior who came, for seeking to save that which was lost, that whosoever believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Oh, we pray that many will, and will be able to say truthfully, based on the Holy Scriptures, Lord, is my Savior. I have trusted him. We pray for our President and all the great men of state, and of each state of our Union.
We pray for our country. We pray, Lord, that... We'll be able to turn back to God, and we'll be able to turn to him for salvation, and be saved, and then to know his mind and will, and to do what we should do in this world, in this life in which we live, and to honor the Lord Jesus, who loved us, and became our Savior by dying for us on the cross. We pray these things in the name that's precious, Lord Jesus Christ.