Exodus 15:25
Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink. (NIV)
Today’s Reading: Exodus 15:22-27
The Israelites are free from Egypt. They just watched the Egyptian army drown in the Red Sea. There was much rejoicing and celebration. It was time to head to the promised land. But wait! God has some work to do on their hearts first.
The Israelites are still following Moses and the pillar of cloud and fire. They don’t know where they are going. They just go where the pillar leads. And God takes them into the desert. And for three days, they wander in the desert without water.
Naturally, the people grumbled. I think I would’ve grumbled. If God can do everything we just saw him do to the Egyptians, drinking water doesn’t seem all that hard to provide. I think God had a point He wanted to make and something He wanted to show the Israelites.
So He led them around the desert until they grumbled. Ironically or maybe exactly as planned, it took three days. This event will point to the cross and I think the three days is just a reminder that God is using the Israelites to point to Jesus.
God leads them to bitter waters. The bitter waters seem to represent a few different things. Immediately, it represented the attitude of the Israelites. It’s a very parental move on God’s part to say something like, “How about some bitter water for your bitter mouths?”
The bitter waters also point to Jesus in two ways. It points to the bitterness of sin and also the bitters that Jesus drank on the cross. Our sins are what made the death of Jesus necessary. Recall in the Passover meal, the lamb was to be eaten with bitter herbs representing our suffering in our slavery to sin. The symbology comes full circle on the cross when Jesus is given bitters to drink.
Moses cries out to God and God shows him a tree. Some versions say “a log” or “a piece of wood.” The historian Josephus writes that Moses “took the top of a stick that lay down at his feet, and divided it in the middle, and made the section length ways” forming the shape of a cross. When the wood touched the water, the water didn’t just become regular water. It became sweet.
This miracle certainly points to Jesus. Who else could turn bitter water into sweet wine? Jesus certainly performed a similar miracle at a wedding. But Jesus’ greatest miracle was turning the bitterness of sin into sweet victory through the wood of the cross. The cross is still bitter sweet.
Christ in the Old Testament 
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