Advanced Level, Block 4—Wilderness
Week 31
The Experience of Marah
Point to Emphasize: Will the bitterness remain in us or will we let it go?
Reference Reading: Exodus 3:7-8; 15:22-26, footnotes 231, 261
Memory Verse: Let all bitterness and anger and wrath and clamor and evil speaking be removed from you… (Ephesians 4:31a)
Story Sample
We have been talking to you about outcomes or events from the book of Genesis for a while, and now we would like to tell you some events from the book of Exodus. In this book, God spoke to Moses and said that He would deliver His people from the Egyptians. God promised to bring them into a new land, a good land, the land of Canaan. So, God sent Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, and they began a journey in the wilderness after crossing the Red Sea.
As they traveled into the wilderness, God led the children of Israel to go South instead of North where the good land was located. They spent three days in the wilderness with no water. When they reached Marah, the waters there were bitter, and they could not drink them. So, they began to complain against Moses and went to him to ask, “What shall we drink?”
Moses made a wise decision. Instead of complaining like everyone else, he cried out to God, asking what he should do. He was instructed to take a tree that God showed him and cast it into the waters. The waters were changed. They no longer tasted bitter but now they were sweet for the people to drink. The people who had complained now had nothing to complain about!
We all have times like this in our life. Not with bitter water, but maybe a bad situation that makes us bitter or resentful. Maybe we have been in an accident, or been very sick, or had a teacher or friend that treated us unfairly. Maybe we have even lost a loved one. So sad! What do we do when this happens? We can respond in two ways. We can either be resentful and complaining, maybe even blaming God for what has happened, or we can talk to God and our situation can become sweet or easier to accept. God wants to change our bitter situations into sweet conversations with Him.
When my daughters were in elementary school, there was a girl who lived down the street who had a disease called cerebral palsy and she couldn’t walk. She was always having operations and not able to play some of the running games that her friends could play. Being in such a situation, she could have been very bitter with God about this and be a very unhappy child. But she wasn’t! She was always laughing and thinking of tricks she could do in her wheelchair. She chose to make her hardship into a sweet thing. I found out from her mom that they were a family that loved God and she had learned to talk to Him every time she was going to have another operation or when it was difficult for her to do something. In her hard situation, that girl made a choice not to be resentful. [Use your own story or tell this one in the third person.]
Maybe you have been mistreated by a friend and begin to feel resentful of what this person did or said? Eventually, your resentment can grow until you won’t even want to play with them anymore. Perhaps, you’ve been corrected by your parents or a teacher and right away you resented it. This is bitterness in your heart. I hope none of you choose to let the bitterness remain in your heart, but instead would talk to your parents or God about how you feel so that you won’t hang on to those feelings. Like Moses, rather than complaining to let our bitterness grow, we can talk to God and who will cause our situation to become sweet again.