Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1664
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, June 11, 1882
“I am the Lord who heals you.” Exodus 15:26.
WE shall consider this passage in its context, for I have no doubt that the miracle at Marah was intended to be a very instructive illustration of the glorious title which is here claimed by the Covenant God of Israel— “I am Jehovah-Rophi, the Lord that heals you.” The illustration introduces the sermon of which this verse is the text. The healing of the bitter waters is the parable of which the line before us is the lesson. How different is the Lord to His foes and to His friends! His Presence is light to Israel and darkness to Egypt. Egypt only knew Jehovah as the Lord that plagues and destroys those who refuse to obey Him. Is not this the Lord’s memorial in Egypt, that He cut Rahab and wounded the dragon? He overthrew their armies at the Red Sea and drowned their hosts beneath the waves! But to His own people, in themselves but very little superior to the Egyptians, God is not the terrible Avenger consuming His adversaries, but, “Jehovah that heals you.”
Their mental and moral diseases were almost as great as those of the Egyptians whom the Lord cut off from before Him, but He spared His chosen for His Covenant’s sake. He bared the sword of Justice against rebellious Pharaoh and then He turned His tender, healing hand out to His own people, to exercise towards them the heavenly surgery of His Grace. Israel knew Him as the Lord that heals and Egypt knew Him as the Lord that smites! Let us adore the Grace which makes so wide a difference—the Sovereign Grace which brings salvation unto Israel—and let us confess our own personal obligations to the mercy which has not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities!
Again, how differently does God deal with His own people from what we should have expected. He is a God of surprises! He does things which we looked not for. God deals with us not according to our conception of His ways, but according to His own wisdom and prudence, for as the heavens are high above the earth, so high are His thoughts above our thoughts. You would not have supposed that a people for whom God had given Egypt as a ransom would have been led into the wilderness of Shur—neither would you have guessed that a people so near to Him that He cleft the sea and made them walk between two glassy walls dry shod—would have been left for three days without water!
You naturally expect to see the chosen tribes brought right speedily into a condition of comfort, or, if there must be a journey before they reach the land that flows with milk and honey, you look at once for the smitten rock and the flowing stream, the manna and the quails and all the other things which they can desire. How singular it seems that after having done such a great marvel for them, the Lord should cause them to thirst beneath a burning sky and, that, too, when they were quite unprepared for it, being quite new to desert privations, having lived so long by the river of Egypt where they drank of sweet water without stint.
We read at other times, “You, Lord, did send a plenteous rain, whereby You did refresh Your inheritance when it was weary.” But here we meet with no showers! No brooks gushed forth below and no rain dropped from above. Three days without water is a severe trial when the burning sand is below and the blazing sky is above! Yet the Lord’s people, in some way or other, are sure to be tried—theirs is no holiday parade—but a stern march by a way which flesh and blood would never have chosen. The Egyptians found enough water and even too much of it, for they were drowned in the sea, but the well-beloved Israelites had no water at all! So is it with the wicked man—he often has enough of wealth and too much of it—till he is drowned in sensual delights and perishes in floods of prosperity. He has his portion in this life and in that portion he is lost, like Pharaoh, in the proud waters.
Full often the Lord’s people are made to know the pinch of poverty. Their lives are made wretched by sore bondage and they faint for a morsel of bread—they drink from a bitter fountain which fills their inward parts with gall and wormwood. They are afflicted many times, almost to the breaking of their hearts. One of them said, “All the day long
have I been plagued and chastened every morning.” They lie at the rich man’s gate full of sores, while the ungodly man is clothed in scarlet and fares sumptuously every day. This is God’s strange way of dealing with His own people. He Himself has said, “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.” “He scourges every son whom He receives.” Thus He made His people know that the wilderness was not their rest, nor their home—for they could not even find such a common necessity as water with which to quench their thirst!
He made them understand that the promised brooks that flowed with milk and honey were not in the wilderness, but must be found on the other side of Jordan, in the land which God had given to their fathers—and they must journey there with weary feet. “This is not your rest,” was the lesson of their parched lips in the three-day march. You know what teaching there is in all this, for your experience answers to it. Do not marvel, Beloved, if with all your joy over your vanquished sin, which shall be seen by you no more, you yet have to lament your present grievous needs. The children of Israel cried, “What shall we drink?” This was a wretched sequel to, “Sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously.” Have you never made the same descent? If you are in poverty you are, no doubt, tempted to put that trinity of questions, “What shall we eat? What shall we drink? And with what shall we be clothed?”