Grace Bible Church
Pastor-Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Wednesday,December 28, 2016
The Jews and how they failed their first test which is theology known as the "Water Test" at the Red Sea.
They lived in fear of the Egyptians at this first Water Test, Exo 14:10.Fear of the Lord; Exo 14:31.Fear of Moses; Exo 14:31. Emotional revolt in Exo 15:1-21.
At the Red Sea in Exo 14, they had too much water.
Marah beginning with Exo 15:22, they not only had a little water but this time it was the wrong kind of water.
There is an opposite reaction now, a reaction called bitterness.
They had adult bodies, but spiritually they had never grown up.
They flunked the "Too Much Water Test", at the Red Sea, now they are going to flunk the "Wrong kind of Water test," where they had plenty of water but the wrong kind.
If your life is governed by emotions, you will fail when the Lord brings in the different tests for the purpose of your spiritual advance.
One of the reasons that you will fail....is found in "The Waters of Marah Test" or the subject of bitterness.
The wilderness will reveal the weakness of God's people and their failure under pressure.
The purpose is to magnify the power and the mercy of the One who brought us to the place of testing.
Prin- The wilderness not only gives us a revelation of ourselves, but it also makes manifest the ways of God.
Grumbled is the Hebrew verb "lun" which means to murmur, to complain, to be mal-content, to express dissatisfaction.
They speak as if Moses is the one responsible for their situation.
Many believers look for someone to blame when the Lord leads them to a place like Marah (bitterness).
A man of doctrine will not allow people to let him down.
A man of doctrine will not allow people to manipulate him.
A man of doctrine will not listen to the judgmental criticism that comes from apostate believers.
Prin - The more you recognize doctrine the more that you recognize your own helplessness.
The problem with Job at this point is the fact that he is double-minded and as JAM 1:8 says being a double‑minded man, he is unstable in all his ways.
Bitterness can come from the intensity of suffering in the mind and body or from something that is difficult to bear, something that causes animosity and reaction.
Suffering causes bitterness to people who do not understand problem-solving devices, principles, and give number one priority to relationship with God.
Ridicule can also produce bitterness in the life of others as Jeremiah says in Lam 3:14.
Under the doctrine of typology, wormwood is used to represent bitterness.
JER 9:15 Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, "behold, I will feed them, this people, with wormwood and give them poisoned water to drink.
Jam 3:14 "But if you have bitter jealousy and strife in your right lobe, do not be arrogant and do not lie against the truth."
Job 7:11 "Therefore, I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the stress of my mind, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul."
The word anguish in Job 7:11 is the Hebrew noun tsar which means stress.
Job has converted adversity into stress in the soul through the use of bitterness.
Bitterness motivates complaining and is self-destructive.
Job 10:1 "I loathe my own life; I will give full vent to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul."
You usually build up a self-righteous house of cards, and then you hate what you have done; including hating yourself.
Psa 64:3 "They have sharpened their tongue like a sword. They aimed their bitter speech like an arrow."
Heb 12:15 "See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God and that no root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by it many are polluted."
Grace-orientation and bitterness cannot co-exist.
The contamination occurs when you either believe the garbage coming from the bitter soul or react to the bitterness of another person.
You are defiled or polluted when you react to the bitterness in your own soul or the bitterness expressed by someone else.
You can actually react your way into a psychotic or neurotic believer.
Impersonal love is the problem solving device to deal with bitterness and anger in others.
Bitterness is self-induced misery, as well as chain sinning.
You simply cannot build your happiness on someone else's unhappiness.
The bitter soul contradicts the PPOG and must be removed from the life of the believer.
You do not get angry unless you have bitterness in your soul.
EPH 4:26-27 Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.
EPH 4:31 says Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
Wrath is a strong hatred and resentment.
Clamor is loud, noisy, vociferous or boisterous confusion and quarreling.
Bitter people amplify the flaws of others out of proportion; they have multiplied them beyond reality.
Bitterness produces a hardness or harshness totally incompatible with grace orientation and contradictory to the PPOG.
Bitterness assumes that you are right is someone else is wrong.
Bitterness refuses to take the responsibility for one's own sins or failures and attaches the blame to others.
The result of bitterness plus vindictiveness is an arrogant, malicious resentment, an unforgiving mental attitude of resentment, and irreconcilable enmity which makes a person hard, unbending, and locked in self-righteousness.
"Kind" is gracious action toward one another--the interaction of impersonal love among members of the body of Christ as the royal family of God.
"Compassionate" is the capacity for impersonal love for all mankind based on maximum metabolized doctrine circulating in the soul.
Isa 38:17 "Behold, bitterness became deliverance to me. In Your love You have delivered my soul out of the pit of destruction; for You have cast all my sins behind my back.