From the story of Marah we learn these lessons:
I. The water was deleterious, not distasteful only. Had the people drunk it, it would have wrought disease, but it was healed by the obedience of Moses to God's directions. So if we are attentive and obedient to His voice He will find us remedies from all things that might hurt us.
II. It was not possible, perhaps, that the children of Israel should, by persevering in the unwholesome draught which is there typical of sin, have vitiated their taste till they delighted in it. But it is too possible in the antitype.
III. Though we are compelled by God's providence to pass through difficulty and temptation, we are not doomed to dwell there. If we are faithful, it is but in passing that we shall be endangered. If we use the remedy of obedience to God's word to-day, to-morrow we shall be beside the twelve ever-springing fountains, and under the shade of the palm-trees of Elim.
Archbishop Benson, Boy Life: Sundays in Wellington College,p. 197.
We have in our text a parable of the deep things of Christ.
I. Israel was in those days fresh from their glorious deliverance out of Egypt; they had sung their first national song of victory; they had breathed the air of liberty. This was their first disappointment, and it was a very sharp one; from the height of exultation they fell almost at once to the depths of despair. Such disappointments we have all experienced, especially in the outset of our actual march, after the first conscious sense of spiritual triumph and freedom.
II. Of us also it is true that God hath showed us a certain tree, and that tree is the once accursed tree on which Christ died. This is the tree of life to us, although of death to Him.
III. It was God who showed this tree unto Moses. And it was God who showed it to us in the Gospel. Applied by our faith to the bitter waters of disappointment and distress, it will surely heal them and make them sweet. Two things there are about the tree of scorn which will never lose their healing power the lesson of the Cross and the consolation of the Cross; the example and the companionship of Christ crucified.
IV. The life which found its fitting close upon the Cross was not a life of suffering only, but emphatically a life of disappointment. Here there is comfort for us. Our dying Lord must certainly have reflected that He, the Son of God, was leaving the world rather worse than He found it in all human appearance.
V. Whatever our trials and disappointments, let us use this remedy; it will not fail us even at the worst.
R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions,p. 46.
References: Exodus 15:23-25. S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches,p. 20; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 540; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 987. Exodus 15:23-27. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 453; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiii., p. 275. 15:23-16:36. W. M. Taylor, Moses the Lawgiver,p. 128. 15-18. J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era,p. 61.Exodus 15:24; Exodus 15:25. J. Burns, Sketches of Sermons on the Parables,p. 257. Exodus 15:25. J. Hamilton, Works,vol. v., p. 177; J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year,vol. ii., p. 185.Exodus 15:26. A. D. Davidson, Lectures and Sermons,p. 161; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxviii., No. 1664; J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation,vol. ii., p. 394; Parker, vol. ii., p. 319. Exodus 15:27. T. Kelly, Pulpit Trees,p. 314.Exodus 16:1-8. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 459.