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Let's begin our study by reading in the book of Exodus, chapter fifteen. Book of Exodus, chapter fifteen. For Saturday next, if God so will, we shall be studying chapter seventeen of the book of Exodus, and that therefore is the chapter that you may care to read if you have time to do your homework. But tonight we begin in chapter fifteen and verse twenty two. And Moses led Israel onward from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur.
They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. And when they came to Mara, they could not drink of the waters of Mara, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Mara. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, what shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, and he cast it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet. There he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them. And he said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his eyes, and wilt give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes.
I will put none of the diseases upon thee which I have put upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth thee. And they came to Elim, where were twelve springs of water and threescore and ten palm trees, and they encamped there by the waters. And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.
The whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron in the wilderness. The children of Israel said unto them, Would that we have died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, when we did eat bread to the full. For you have brought us forth into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may prove them whether they will walk in my law or no.
And it shall come to pass on the sixth day that they shall prepare that which they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily. And Moses and Aaron said unto the children of Israel, at even, then shall ye know that the Lord hath brought you out from the land of Egypt, and in the morning then you shall see the glory of the Lord, for he heareth your murmurings against the Lord. And what are we that you murmur against us? Verse nineteen: Notwithstanding, they hearkened not unto Moses.
Verse twenty seven: And it came to pass on the seventh day that there went out some of the people for to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse you to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days. Abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh. So the people rested on the seventh day, and the house of Israel called the name thereof manna, and it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.
Moses said, this is the thing which the Lord has commanded, let an omurful of it be kept for your generations, that they may see the bread wherewith I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt. And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a pot and put an omerful of manna therein, and lay it up before the Lord to be kept for your generation. As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the testimony to be kept. And the children of Israel did eat the manna forty years until they came to a land inhabited. They did eat the manna until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan.
Now, an omer is the tenth part of an ether. God use his words to discipline our hearts as we think about them this evening. It was altogether natural, was it not, and understandable, that when Israel saw their enemies dead upon the shore of the Red Sea, they gave vent to their feelings in a burst of ecstatic praise. The relief from the nervous tension of the past few days, of course, would by itself account for a great deal of their feelings.
And yet there was more to it simply than relief from their nervous tension and fears. There was in their praise surely an element of genuine gratitude to God, as the implications dawned upon them of what had happened. God had delivered them from the Egyptians. Israel were free and forevermore free. There might be enemies facing them in the wilderness to come, but of this they could be sure that however far they advanced along the wilderness, Egypt would never now be able to come creeping up behind and impose the chains of their slavery once more upon them.
They were free, and God it was that had done it. There was in their praise an element of genuine gratitude to God. And there was an element of genuine faith, was there not? For the Bible itself, itself tells us at the end of chapter fourteen that when the people saw what God had done, they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses. It had been a vivid experience of God's salvation, and it provoked their genuine faith. You may, I suppose, be inclined, if you're that kind of person, as you listen to their praise, to feel that here and there it's a trifle exaggerated, and maybe they were a little bit overexcited.
Perhaps Miriam shook the old timbrel that little bit too much. Never mind, that's understandable, isn't it, and natural. There still was in it a great deal of genuine faith. Listen how their minds are working. They have perceived that it is God that has saved them. They didn't have to do any fighting. The Lord fought for them. And if the Lord has saved them from this Egyptian enemy, what does it mean? Why, it means this, that they can begin to sing with all confidence, he's not only brought us out, but he will bring us in. If it's God upon whom our salvation depends, then we can not only be sure of the past, we can be sure of the future.
And their faith is beginning to stretch out and to build itself up upon the work of God. They begin to have certainty about their future entry to the land. You nod your wise head, I say, and say, well, that perhaps was a little bit of excitement, that, because a lot of them didn't ever get in, did they? Yes, that's a sorry story. I would have to admit that there was some dross mixed in with the gold of their faith, but for the moment, let's concentrate on the gold. And there was faith too, wasn't there, as they began to contemplate the enemies that might lie ahead.
They were realist enough to know that there would be some. The Egyptians were overcome. They didn't fall to thinking that there would never be any more enemies along them in the road that lay ahead. They mentioned them and, uh, and counted them on their fingers. There was Philistia, and Philistines could be terrible, and there were Merabites, and there were the inhabitants of Canaan, and the dukes of Edom, if you please, no less. And all of them might be expected to come out and fight them and try and prevent their progress along the, the desert pathway. But with this brilliant experience of the power of God behind them, they surveyed all the Edomites and the dukes of Edom and the Merabites.
Poof, they said, Edom and his dukes and Philistine and the Merabites. What care we for Edomites? And Miriam gave another bang on the old timbrel that dismissed the Philistines. And the Moabites, what would they would all fall away. In fact, they said their hearts were already melting. We are as good as conquerors, more than conquerors in him that loved us, and all our enemies shall melt away. Excitement, you say? I, I couldn't deny there was some excitement in it. But there was a good deal of faith, wasn't there? Faith, uh, so valuable to God that he thought it well worth the trouble to refine it.
And so we join with them for the moment, hearing old Moses with his lovely bass voice, or was he the tenor, I know not, and the cymbals and the joy and the gladness. Oh, the desert wasn't always difficult and hard. The desert itself rang with the songs of joy as the people of God knew their victories. And then it happened. A terrible shock. A bitter, unexpected disappointment. And the murmurings against Moses and against God.
So soon, you say. So soon after the singing had died away. How did it happen so soon? And we should find it almost incredible, shouldn't we, if we hadn't known our own hearts and experienced how all too easily the high points of our praise and excitement can be dashed almost at once by some difficult and unexpected bitterness on the desert path. As you try to understand it, pray have some sympathy and try and make excuses for them, because when it happens to you, you'll want people to make excuses for you.
Don't you think it was the shock of it that upset them somewhat? They came to Mara. I see them running down now with the kiddies and the children to this lovely oasis of water, and they were to drink it. And the sudden shock of it when they tasted it, the water was bitter, and they couldn't drink. But then you say, yes, so what, but didn't they realize that that's the kind of thing that can happen in a wilderness? By goodness me, it wouldn't be a wilderness if it were all fresh, sweet ter- tasting water piped to them by the Belfast Water Company.
This wasn't Belfast, this was a wilderness. And weren't they prepared for things like that to happen in a wilderness? Well, I don't know, I suppose they were, or perhaps they weren't. Perhaps, I don't know, had they forgotten, maybe? It had been such an exhilarating experience, that experience at the Red Sea, and they were so full of joy and gladness. I wonder for the moment, had they forgotten that this wasn't heaven yet, and it was a wilderness. And they must expect this kind of thing. For oh, you see, if they had been expecting it, it wouldn't have been such a shock, would it?
And is it not true, some of us, perhaps not you, but I, becoming elated with some spiritual victory or other, fall to thinking, I would never express it to anybody, I wouldn't be so stupid, but somehow in one's unconscious thinking, one supposes the Lord will provide for us, and all is going to be wonderful. Well, we're going to march every step of the road victors right to the end. And then it doesn't happen that way. There come experiences of which another spoke, saying, if need be, you are in manifold heaviness. But the contrast between their praise and their murmuring is all the more clear, isn't it, and sad?
In that now not only were they murmuring at the old water and saying, stupid water and horrible water. That might have been, uh, reasonable, mightn't it? I don't suppose even God himself expected them to say, this water is lovely. Oh, I do love this water. Of course not. It was bitter, and God himself didn't ask them to pretend it wasn't. They didn't only murmur about the water, they started to murmur at God, as though it were God's fault that the water was bitter. As though somehow God had let them down.
And it's a trait to be found in many a human heart, isn't it? One day we will sing God's praise, and the next day, when something difficult happens, then that, that little unrest in the heart, that ugly thought that will rear its head. Somehow this is God's fault. Why has God allowed this? We feel he could have done better for us than he's done. Oh, you know, that made the water doubly bitter, didn't Isn't it? Sometimes we feel almost justified in our murmurings, but we would be wise to observe that when we murmur against the Lord like that, it makes the difficult experience ten times more difficult.
For it's bad enough having to drink bitter water, but if on top of that bitterness you add this other bitterness that God somehow has ceased loving you, and it's God's fault, and God could have done it better. Ah, that will add a bitterness that will rankle in your mouth and heart for a long while. Why, it would begin to take some of the joy of heaven away before we got there, wouldn't it? For if God, uh, through his carelessness allows life to have its bitter maras, perhaps, you know, he might through his carelessness allow heaven to be a little bitter on time.
So then they murmured against God. And we now begin to discover what we shall see on other occasions as well, that though these Israelites at the Red Sea, as they praised the Lord, had realistically anticipated there might be enemies over the horizon there, Philistines and Moabites and dukes of Eden, and had, uh, so to speak, tented themselves ready to face whatever enemies there might be out there. They hadn't realized, or realized sufficiently, sufficiently, that the biggest enemy they would ever meet was an enemy not out there, but in their own very hearts.
An enemy that had been there lurking even when they had been praising the Lord for that deliverance, an enemy lurking underneath, waiting to be provoked, and here he comes the moment they meet a bitter experience, and the enemy rears his head, and you call his name. Distrust in the Lord. Because that enemy lurked within their breasts, God himself, one imagines, deliberately allowed them to come across this experience. And is it not true, at least we gather so from Peter's remark, that God sometimes has to allow us to have our bitter experiences too, is obliged to allow it.
There is a needs be in it and a necessity, and if needs be, we are in manifold heaviness through diverse temptations. Why so? Why? Because there's no other way of getting rid of this enemy. There is no other way known to God of getting rid of this enemy, other than first of all provoking him and letting him come to the surface and making us aware that he's there. So that then we might turn round and look him in the face and, by God's good grace, throttle him dead. It is important, you see, that we get rid of this enemy, isn't it?
The enemy who, when anything appears to go wrong, would start, uh, blaming God and indulging in distrust of God and thinking it's God's fault. Why is it important to get rid of him? Why, Israel were now beginning on a journey that should lead them through many and many a wonder that they had never seen before, and many and many a temptation that they had never met before. It wouldn't be simply the difficult things of their experience that would prove to be temptations either. There would come the times when they entered into Canaan and they saw things the like of which they never had.
Consider what they had been living in, in, in Egypt, in their little hovels and their huts, and the miseries of their plight. And one of these days they were going to land into a country flowing with milk and honey, with beautiful, solid built houses made of stone, says the preacher in Deuteronomy, and vineyards and olive yards and cows, if you please, and three acres. And there would be such wealth and such wonder for their eyes, comparatively speaking, that the very wealth of it might perhaps one of these days take them away from the Lord. Unless they reach that land of Canaan with a faith unshakable in God, then Canaan itself wouldn't be safe for them.
And as you right know well, those who eventually did get there, alas, Canaan proved not to be safe for them. And what about us? Why, we are on our way to an inheritance as well, are we not? That's why, says Saint Peter, it needs be on times that you pass through difficulties and bitter experiences. Why so? Because you have an inheritance ahead, that's why. And therefore God allows the difficult experience in order to refine our faith here, that that faith might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearance of our Lord Jesus.
We shall need our faith when we get home to heaven, can't we? Now, I said this before in an assembly in Belfast, and they didn't throw me out, so that if you think at this stage I ought to be, well, perhaps, uh, grasp your patience for a moment. Uh, one assembly at least thought I oughtn't to be turned out for saying it. We shall need our faith in heaven, can't we? It is a common thing, I know, to be heard many times repeated. In fact, it has the backing of Holy Scripture, that now we walk by faith. Ah, yes, and they say, or the hymns say it, but then faith will give way to sight.
Well, of course it will. We can't see heaven now, can we? One day we shall. Its glories and its joys and its wonders, many of them we have not yet seen, some of them we can't even visualize. One day we shall see them. And oh, wonder of wonders, we trust the blessed Lord himself, not having seen him, and still not seeing him, we love him. For one day we shall see him. Oh yes, in that sense, faith will give place to sight. But tell me, my good friend, will that mean that when we get home to heaven, we no longer have to trust the Lord?
You'll be at liberty, you think, then. You won't need faith anymore. Um, you will have permission not to trust the Lord up there, yes? When he says to you, my dear good friend, my redeemed, my redeemed child, I've appointed to you galaxy number two thousand three hundred and four in the nebula of Orion. I want you to go out there taking all the troops that I give you. I want you to go and develop it for me. I want you to do it this way. And when you get out there, you say, this is a tremendous job. I don't know if I could do this, and and anyway, is this the right way of going about it? Um, come. Will you not have to trust the Lord still?
Or are you going to be as infinite and an omniscient as God when you get home? So that if he tells you something that this is the way to do it, you'll say, yes, yes, yes, yes, well, I know as good as he does. I don't have to trust him. I could have told him. Or will not God always be bigger than you are, and his thoughts immensely and infinitely greater than your thoughts, so that there will always be occasion for you to trust him? Because you won't understand everything about God, will you? Are you going to be omniscient when you get home? No, indeed not.
We shall still have to trust the Lord. Why, if our, there came a moment in that glorious time when our faith in God wavered but a centimeter, then the lights of heaven would begin to dim, wouldn't they? All pray consider. You say to me there will not be any nasty things up there. So I shan't, uh, I won't tax my faith too much, won't it? Well, there won't be any nasty things, I know. But I suspect you, as I, have seen a child, uh, frightened by a toy, haven't you?
I seem to remember occasions when, uh, some good, uh, maiden aunt has come along, and maiden aunts are the salt of the earth, you know. Delightful souls and generous souls, uh, yeah. And here's a maiden aunt, she's brought a beautiful, uh, I don't know what it's called, it's one of those rubber things, and it's got a kind of a trumpet sticking out of its mouth, and if you pet it at the back, you go, look, you see. It's one of those, and it's gaily painted, and she's got it for this nipper of nine months, and he's sitting in his chair, and she unfolds the wrapper, and the nipper is all excited at this wonderful thing that's beginning to appear, and he's looking very pleased, and the maiden aunt goes, honk! Oh, the little chap, oh, who is this maid?
And his lip curls, and he begins to cry at this thing. Yes, it was a present. Oh, we'll get used to it. He'll be honking presently, but the first sight of this present... was too much for him. Pray, have you no imagination? Oh, one of these days, my dear brother and sister, you have to hear the very trumpets of heaven. You have to hear Michael and Gabriel sing their praise of God. You have to hear angels whose very voices are like the sound of many waters. God has presence, and God has tasks ahead for you, the like of which, if you knew them now, would cause your little heart to quail.
There is not merely glory, says the apostle, that awaits us. There is an exceeding weight of glory. How shall I bear it and be unafraid? Why, my dear sister, there's some of you that would go tomorrow to Buckingham Palace, and you'll talk with the Queen, the Duchess, and any manner of men, and a number of queens, and be unperturbed. And there are others of your dear sisters, if they were asked to the banquet with Her Majesty the Queen tonight and all the foreign Service and the ambassadors of the world, you'd rather not go, wouldn't you? For the sheer weight of the glory would overpower you.
And they are but trinkets. Compared with what you yet shall face. Because of the sheer weight of the glory that awaits us, our spirits must needs be strengthened and our faith be purified and refined till it is utterly unmovable in God. Our very joy in heaven depends on it. Ah, what shall it be to see the Savior at last in all his incalculable majesty, to sense his omnipotence, and to realize that I am utterly dependent on him.
My whole heaven depends on his unswerving love and faithfulness to me. Why, if ever a doubt about it arose in my heart then... Then heaven itself would turn into a kind of a torture chamber. Oh, it needs be, says Peter. It needs be that there will come times in life now... when we must go through a period of the testing of our faith and the refining of our faith, the removal of mere excitement, of cupboard love.
But our faith is left nothing but the pure gold of genuine faith that can stand anything and remain uncorrupt. So then God allowed Mara, and a bitter experience it was. I beg you, just look down to your text, if you will. And, uh, well, that's all I'm going to ask you to do, just to notice that Mara is on the map. You know, as you will have been studying these passages, and we shall yet be studying them, they are, so to speak, a map, are they not?
A map of Israel's way from Egypt to Canaan, a map, if we will have it, of our way from salvation to glory. Oh, how kind of God to provide us with a map. You know how it is when you go on holiday, don't you? And you've got the AA map with you in some French town, or some Irish town for that matter. Difficult job sometimes, because when you get it there, it says take the road and you'll see a signpost to such and such a place, and when you come there, there ain't no signpost. They seem to proceed on the principle that they put signposts three times out of four, and the fourth time they leave you to guess because it makes life more interesting rather than being told everything.
Ah, but how nice it is when at last you see, yes, there's the signpost. What does it say? Broken down old tower here. Well, yeah, it looks broken down enough. Yeah, well, that must be the place then. We're right. That doesn't look very pretty, but we're right that the map said it would be here, and I'd like it in God's holy word. There's a map here that says, shout for joy at this juncture. God and they're praising him. There's another mark on the map, and it says, weep for the sheer bitterness of the road here. I'm glad it's there. Because when I strike the bitter path, sometimes I feel I must be lost.
Why hadn't I got the joy I once had? And then I look at the map. And the map says, yes, well, round about here you will know bitterness. And I say, well, that's pretty tough, but I'm on the road anyway. I'm not lost after all. And shall I tell you a thing? It was marvelous standing by the Red Sea and singing the praise of God. You felt you were nearly in heaven, nearly in Canaan. But when they got to Mara and were sad and bitter, they were nearer Canaan than they were when they were singing, weren't they? Oh, you mustn't think, my brother or sister, that just because now you've struck a difficult patch, that you've necessarily lost your way.
You're probably nearer glory now than when you were a bit down the road before. And not merely nearer in time chronologically, but perhaps nearer in spirit. Because when you stood singing, it was delightful and wonderful, but there was just that little bit of excitement in it, wasn't there? And you were saying words that were a little bit too big for you. Never mind. You meant them. And now you're facing some of the realities, and God is putting you through his discipline. And you're more ready in spirit for heaven now than you were before, even though it doesn't seem like it.
Then let's look at this first bitter experience. And there were, in fact, not one but two. And the interesting thing is that these murmurings and these grumblings and these defeats that they suffered were not because they met some gigantic giant of a spiritual wickedness in high place or something. Their defeats came over the ordinary humdrum matters of their food and their drink. How true to life that is, isn't it? Oh, in the moment of our faith, we promised the Lord that should he call us to go to Africa and meet the elephants head on and the lions and look down their throats, why we would have gone.
And then somebody in the home was a little bit unkind. Woof. How often, uh, we get it into our heads that it's going to be in the big things that we shall be tested, when it's in the ordinary humdrum things of bread and butter and daily living. There was a hymn that I used to sing in my youth in school chapel. I thought it was such nonsense as, uh, some saintly people sometimes wrote. I couldn't make head and a tail of the thing. You know, as I got older, that's taken a long while, I began to see a sense in the hymn, and it runs like this.
The daily round, the common task, should furnish all I need to ask, room to deny myself, a road that daily leads me nearer God. Oh, praise God, if God calls you to some exhilarating, marvelous pioneer task in the middle of some jungle. Praise God if he calls you through some concentration camp with all its horrors and there tests your faith. But you don't necessarily need some great and lurid experience like that.
It's enough to live in a three by two house, you know, and have an ordinary job. In God's hand, the ordinary daily round and the common task is enough to prepare you for glory. Enough opportunity to develop those decisions and behavior patterns by which God trains us for the greater things to come. So then about their food and their drink, and their drink first. And they came to Mara, and the waters were bitter, and they murmured.
And you will at once notice the first thing that God did. He didn't first rebuke them. That came second. And even when he rebuked them, there was a note of tenderness and compassion in his voice, and reasoned explanations as a father will give his child. But first came not the explanations, but God's act to comfort their hearts. And he showed Moses a tree. When Moses cut down a branch off that tree and put it into the waters, the bitter waters were made sweet.
You say, do you believe that story? Yes, I believe it's in the Bible. You say, that was a miracle, I suppose. Yes, that was a miracle. I suppose it was. I wouldn't know enough about chemistry and botany to know whether it was or wasn't. Who say, ah yes, but that was a long time ago. Is there anything like that today that you could put into your bitter experiences? And turn the bitterness into sweetness? Ah, there is, isn't there? All the story is not here to mock us with some kind of fairy story that doesn't bear re- reality.
There is another tree, which when put into the waters of bitterness, even for us will turn them sweet, is there not? The Holy Spirit himself teaches us how to use it, how to cast it into our bitter waters, teaching us to reason like this and to think like this. He that spared not his own son. Oh, for the story of Calvary again. I needed the story of Calvary when I was subject to the wrath of God.
The message of Calvary to be my protection against the destroying angel of his wrath. Ah, but I need Calvary still, in the middle of my disappointments, public or personal, to be able to reason. Yes, it's tough. Bitterly tough. And I hadn't thought that God would allow it to be so tough. What can I think of God? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all.
How shall I not with he shall, how shall he not with him freely give us all things? When it seeps into my heart, it begins to turn the tide of the bitterness, doesn't it? He spareth not his son. 'Tis this that silences each rising fear. 'Tis this that bids the hard thought disappear. He spared not his son.
You'll be mistaken to think that God isn't tough. There isn't one drop of sentimentality about God. All the toughness of God, have you never witnessed it in the lives of your fellow Christians. You might think that if a man volunteered to be a pioneer missionary, God in response would always protect him, and nothing evil would befall him. But you've learned different, haven't you? You've seen how God has allowed such devoted men to lose loved ones, to lose children, to lose wives, to lose their own lives.
I tell you again, God is tough. Ah, but God is love. There was no other tougher place on earth. When Christ died on Calvary. He that spared not his son, but delivered him up for us all. How shall he not with him freely give us all things? And the wood of Calvary in the water of my Mara begins to turn the very bitterness to sweet.
And that being done, God begins to explain things. Says he, now look, I'm going to make an ordinance with you and a statute and a covenant. If thou wilt diligently then hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God and wilt do that which is right in his eyes and wilt give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon thee which I have put upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth thee. And you will each one have to make up your mind, you've probably done it long since, as to what those verses mean.
Does it mean, you think, that God was here promising them that if they obeyed him, they would never be ill, never have a headache, never have tonsillitis, never have any boils. Well, who knows, it might mean that. If it meant that for Israel, I'm afraid I can't promise you the same promise nowadays as they had. There are some dear Christians, are there not, who think you can claim it. They say that not only forgiveness of sins was bought for us by the redemption that Christ procured at Calvary, but constant healing is procured for us as well.
And that we may claim healing whenever we go sick on the basis of the sacrifice of Calvary, and we can claim it now. And some go so far as to say that if you're sick and you don't get healed, then it must be your lack of faith, because if only you had faith enough, you will be able to claim healing. That isn't true. The New Testament itself explicitly tells us, and the chapter is Romans eight and chap- and somewhere about verses nine, ten, and eleven, And it says to the believer like this, if the Spirit of Christ be in you, and if Christ is in you, then the body, this physical body, is...
Well, what is it? You'll say it's disease-free then, if Christ be in me. No, it isn't. It says if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin. And when a man trusts Christ, it does not mean that he is forthwith relieved from the sentence that was passed on our forefather Adam. Death was pronounced upon Adam, and even though you trust Christ, that sentence is not removed. And if the Lord doesn't come, my brother, my sister, you will die.
Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin. One day you shall be raised. Oh yes, thank God, and a new body conformed to the body of his glory. Yes, indeed, you will have it, but not now. Mark what Holy Scripture says, but if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall also quicken, make alive your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you. There are those who will say, ah yes, well there you are, Mr.
Preacher, the body is dead because of sin, but now we have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes alive our bodies right here and now. Oh, but did you notice what the verse said? It said, quicken your mortal bodies. Yes. And mortal means that they're subject to death. And mortal they still are, and still will be. Until the Lord comes, and then shall mortality put on immortality, and corruption shall put on incorruption.
Then shall come to pass the saying that is written, not now. For the moment, the believer's body in this age remains mortal, with all that that implies. But we could gather for some- something from these verses for ourselves, couldn't we? Says God to these people in ex- by way of explanation, I shall not put upon you the diseases which I have put upon the Egyptians. What's the difference then? Ah, well, you should know those, uh, uh, Egyptian diseases.
The diseases, uh, started to come when the Egyptians refused to believe God, and Pharaoh hardened his heart and, uh, disobeyed God. And the diseases mounted in their soreness, moraines and boils, and eventually death itself. I tell you the boils were painful, but they weren't so painful as this. But as those diseases came upon the Egyptians, the significance of the disease was that this was a punishment from God, a penalty for their disobedience.
My dear Christian brother, it will never happen to you. There may come some very bitter and painful things in your life, but if you are a believer, learn this difference. There is now no Condemnation. No penalty for sin. The penalty has been born. Yes, there will come chastisement. And when we are wrong and straying, God may have to use sometimes severe chastisements to bring us back, but chastisement is one thing and penalty is another.
There will never come any penalty. There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Here it's said in the words of scripture, if you will. Says the Apostle Paul, if we would discern ourselves, we should not be judged, but when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord. There comes your chastisement, and it can be bitter, but listen, chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned. Because forever and forever there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
And you say, what, what, what difference does it make? Oh, but my friend, it makes everything of difference. When the bitterness comes, if it were the bitterness of rejection by God, then it would be hell begun. But if when the bitterness comes, I dare to believe, because it is the fact that it is the discipline of a father's heart who loves me. Then in that very love I can get the courage to face the pain.
Here is a child, and the child is young and must need to go through an operation, and the parent knows right well it's going to be an exceedingly long operation and a very painful post-operative period. And the child isn't young enough to understand and keeps protesting to the parent, but, but, but why do I have to go? And fancy you're handing me over to that surgeon, that cruel man with the knives. And of course, it breaks the parent's heart to have to do so. Ah, it will help that child, won't it, in those long hours of suffering, if the child can be made to feel that this isn't a punishment from the father. And this isn't the parent, uh, forsaking the child and being unfaithful to the child or being heartless.
But the parent is standing with the child. Can't save the child from bearing the pain, but it can communicate the strength of a parent's love and security till the child come to believe, please God, that the parent is doing it, painful as it is, because it loves the child. And oh, what a softening and a soothing of my, my troubled spirit. When I come to see that God's ways with me are not punishments and rejections.
I'm not an Egyptian anymore. Never will one drop of wrath fall on my head. There is no condemnation. Pains there will be. They are but the pains of love's chastenings. And when I begin to see it, there comes another healing into my life, doesn't there? How natural for us to become embittered. It doesn't cure us, does it?
Oh, I know it's easy for me to speak. How often and how easy in some great tragedy and trial to become embittered. Difficult to resist being bitter and feeling bitter. Yes, feeling bitter against God himself sometimes. Why did he allow it? And why has he singled me out for this and not allowed it for somebody else? When the bitterness only makes the trouble worse. I used to get fearful headaches as a child. I still remember a kind parent who used to stand over me as a youngster and say, well, don't cry.
How could I stop crying? But the crying will make it worse, she said. So it did. Ah, but when I see that these things are but love's chastisement, and I hear his voice who says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. There begins to seep in a healing of the spirit. I say it's all right. It shall be well. And so said the writer, whoever he was, to the Hebrews, who had been asked to stand by as their furniture was smashed and their homes ruined and their loved ones carted off to jail by the thugs of their persecutors.
Their knees were beginning to sag and their hands hang down, and they felt like giving up. They believed in God's son, and here was God allowing them to suffer these enormous atrocities. The writer explained that whatever the enemy intended, God meant it as a father's education, and afterward it would yield its harvest of pleasant fruit. Wherefore, he said, strengthen the feeble knees and lift up the hands that drag, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way.
But rather, let it be Heal. healed. Some of our wounds will leave scars as long as life shall last. A scar is a sign of a wound that's healed. I am the Lord that healeth thee. Then there came the lesson over their daily bread. This is the other necessity of life, isn't it? And they ran, uh, short of food, and this time by God's deliberate intention. For God had a lesson to teach them about daily bread.
He had two lessons to teach them. Lesson number one was he wanted them to grasp that their daily bread came from God. As you say, they knew that, surely. Well, if they did, they'd forgotten it on this, on this occasion. Because when they ran out of bread, they came around Moses once more, so chapter sixteen says, and they said to Moses, Moses, would God that we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt. So we at least had our food, when we sat by the fresh pots, when we did eat bread to the full. Well, we wouldn't have mind what God did to us then, because we at least, we were in Egypt, and there was a shop around the corner, and we could have got the daily bread from it, you know, so that if the Lord sent some trials, well, we could say, well, that's too bad, but we've got our bread.
Now we're out in this wilderness, and there aren't any shops. Well, that's tough. Hold a minute. Who were, who were they thinking gave them their bread in Egypt, I wonder? Reminds me of the story of the little girl who went out for the first time to a hotel to dine with her mother, and when the waiter served the soup, uh, mother bowed her head and gave thanks, and the girl said in astonishment, but mummy, whatever did you give thanks for? We paid for this today. Huh. That childish delight that thought ordinary days nobody paid for it.
Well, it always appeared on the breakfast table, didn't it? Ah, had she known. Who supplied their bread in Egypt? Well, you say they work for it down in Egypt. Oh, well, so they did. They worked hard for it. But did that mean it wasn't God who gave it to them? My fellow Christian, who gives you your daily bread and butter? You say I work for that up in Mackie's, jolly hard too. Well, I dare say it is hard. But is that your sole source of supply? Why, if it is, it'll be too bad when you get unemployed, if ever you get unemployed. Be too bad for you if Mackie's go broke, if Mackie's is the ultimate supply of your daily bread.
Do you know God on this occasion allowed them to hunger, to teach them this very helpful lesson, that even when they worked for it in Egypt, it wasn't, uh, simply their work that got them the bread, and it certainly wasn't the Egyptians. It was God who gave it. And here out in the wilderness, because it's the same God, it will be God who gives them their daily bread, whether they work for it or whether it comes down from the sky. Why should they have to be told it's God that gives them their daily bread? Oh, because God had very good reasons for giving them daily bread. You say, yes, I know what they were to, to keep them alive.
You say, well, goodness me, that was a marvelous spiritual, that was a marvelous march of theirs across the desert, and they were full of singing good hymns and spiritual songs and exercising themselves with faith in God and going to meetings around the tabernacle and things like that. But you say they never would have got to their inheritance unless they'd had their daily bread. I mean, man, be sensible, you've got to eat. Yes, that's true. You'll never get to heaven. Well, I suppose you would if you didn't have anything to eat. You'd get there rather quick, wouldn't you? But then you might get there too quickly and unprepared, without having learned a lesson.
So that if we've got to spend some while on the desert of this world, learning our lessons, why we shall need our cornflakes, aren't we? Yes, you say, and that's what we do. We work for the cornflakes. God supplies the spiritual power. No, sir. In the last analysis, it's God supplies the cornflakes, you know. Why is it important I get hold of that? Because when he supplies my cornflakes, he's doing something more than, uh, keeping me going physically, isn't he? He tells them straight here why he had held the food up and what the lesson was going to be when now he did a virtual miracle and rained manna down from heaven.
It was going to be this, he was going to prove them. Whether they would keep his commandments or not. That was what the daily bread was going to be about. It was going to be a daily exercise in whether they would keep the commandments of the Lord. And as the story proceeds, you will perceive how they needed the lesson. Command number one? Well, they were to go out, and they weren't to keep anything till the next day. And as sure as your life, some of them did.
Plain, straightforward commandment. You couldn't have misunderstood it if you'd tried. Don't keep any till tomorrow. Ah, but sure as eggs are eggs. Some of them kept, yes. It bred worms and stank. Command number two: on Fridays g- gather a double amount because there won't be any o- o- on the Sabbath. And sure as eggs are eggs. Some of them only gathered one lot on Friday and went out on Saturday expecting the manna to be there, and it wasn't there. How long will you be, says God, before you learn to obey my commandments. I may detect a little element of divine impatience in the protest.
Because important as was their daily bread, it was vastly more important that they learn to commit- keep the commandments of the Lord. And is it not so with us? What is this business upon which we spend eight hours a day, and some of us more, some of us less, uh, some of us more? Is it one of these awkward necessities that you wish you could cut out of life? Oh, you say, if I were a millionaire, I wouldn't go back to that factory again. But what would you do? What is this business? Why, let the blessed Lord Jesus tell us.
He says, now, when you go to work, don't you go like the Gentiles go, you know? Oh, ho. And what do they go for? Well, when the Gentiles go to work, let me tell you what they're doing it for, says Christ. They're going for food and clothes. But you say, goodness me, what else would a man go to work for if he got all the food in the world and all the clothes in the world? A man would never go to work, wouldn't he? Well, I hope that's not true of you. If you, if that's true of you, you're a jolly old gentile, that's what you are. No, the first motive for going to work is not the food and the drink. They are the secondary dividends.
And your father knows that you have need of things like that. He's a realist, you know. He knows your stomach needs them. But the prime thing in going to work is this. Seek first the kingdom of God, that is the rule of God in your life. That's the first motive for going to work. For it is work, whether it be making the beds or the donuts, adding up the bills or shaking the computer. It's work that gives us the exercise to see whether we will or not keep the commandments of the Lord and get into the habit of obeying him, and thus develop what the Bible calls his righteousness, that is God's right way of living in my life.
It gives me the opportunity to be honest, to be truthful, to be unselfish, to be kind, to be forbearing. Doesn't it? Of course, there was never a better school than work for that. I mean, in the meeting, when they were surrounded by delightful saints, why, it's easy to be holy sometimes. But get you out into work. Ah, that's a good exercise ground, isn't it? Some of us would find it so tough we wouldn't go unless God made us.
So God makes us with stomachs that get empty and doesn't give us rich grandfathers in America, so we've jolly well got to go to work. And at work, God uses it to see whether we will obey his commandments and develop his righteousness and a truly Christian. We need it. I begin to think that the journey isn't going to be long enough for me. What about you? Oh, how much I've got to learn and practice, not just learning it with my head, but actually succeed in doing it.
For heaven comes on a pace. Oh, pray God, I've learned to behave properly before I go home. It would be a sad thing, wouldn't it, if in order to get a crust of bread, I disobeyed his commandment. If because I was afraid of losing an order in my shop, I told a lie to a customer and said it would be ready next Monday when I, well, I jolly well knew it couldn't possibly be ready next Monday. But I did what the unconverted man would do, tell the customer, yes, sir, yeah, oh, of course it will be here next Monday.
I jolly well know it couldn't be here for another three weeks. But I'm afraid he'll go down the road and go to another man if I say I can't get it by Monday, so I tell him a lie and keep him happy and make some excuse when he comes in on Monday and the thing isn't there. What? Disobey the commandment of the Lord for the sake of a crust of bread? What a topsy-turvy way of living that would be, wouldn't it? And hence, after they got redeemed out of Egypt, God took them through a wilderness and started his practical lessons with the sheer basics of life, food and drink, that he might prepare them for the inheritance that lay ahead.
God help us thus to understand what life is about, and to take its disciplines from the Father gratefully, and seek his courage to face them. When the food and the cornflakes and the carrots are gone forever, we may have learned through those humble lessons to develop a character that will last us eternally. Shall we pray? O God, we thank thee for the moments of our ecstasy and exhilaration when we discover yet further depths in thy great salvation.
Now humbly, Lord, though our hearts lag, thou knowst, with our minds and spirits we call upon all that is within us to bless thy holy name, and we try to thank thee for the times that have been bitter and tough. We trust thee, Lord, and we ask thy grace to trust thee yet more firmly. And not to turn against thee, but to trust thee and dare to believe that through all thou dost mean our good and our eternal good at that.
We thank thee for our lessons tonight. Lord, tomorrow, if the Savior have not come. Help us as we go out to work, to go getting first things first. I know us we need food and clothes and homes. But Lord, help us to keep in our sights as the prime objective thy kingdom, thy rule. Help us not to despise any duty, however humble, but to see them all as opportunities in thy hand given to us of developing our Christian character in preparation for eternity.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
