Praise Wore Off?

Three days ago. Just three days ago you were singing. Tambourines in the air. The women of the camp dancing and singing. As they should, praising the Lord for deliverance. Three days ago. I mean the whole camp was still s soaked from walking through a sea on dry, dry ground in the middle of it. Watching an army you were sure would kill you. You watched them sink instead. You watched them wash up on the shore. Three days later. Three days. You're standing at a well you can't drink from. Your throat is dry, your children are crying. The only thing coming out of your mouth now is a complaint. That's not a contradiction. That's most of us. That's most of us in a completely ordinary week. Further from our last miracle than we'd like to admit. Shalom. Welcome to True Word, Faith for Life with Dr. Sean. I am Dr. Sean. As you might have noticed, we are only streaming to YouTube today. And from here on out, we will only be, except for some special events where we announce it in advance, we will only be streaming to YouTube on the live stream. So I hope that you have made your way over to True Word Faith for Life with Dr. Sean, SHAWN. You click on subscribe, click on the little bell for all notifications. That way you'll know. It matters more than you can possibly imagine. Anyway, welcome. Welcome to those in the live chat. Awesome to see you. Joe and Susan and Linda and Sean spelled correctly. And so many others. It's so good to see you all. By the way, I guess I should say I'm I'm Dr. Sean. That's my name. My name is actually just Sean. Doctor's not on my birth certificate. We're here day 71. Today's a special day. We've got some special stuff going on. Exodus 15, 22 through 27. Three days after the Red Sea, the same people who sang with tambourines are now standing at a well they can't drink from. And they're already grumbling. Hey, my book, True Word Faith for Life. It's available now, ironically, from Trueword FaithforLife.com. I know. Very difficult to remember. It's available anywhere, you can buy books, but it helps the ministry the most if you buy them through our website. They don't get to you any faster. There's links in the show description. And at TruewordFaithforLife.com. It's a bunch of resources there. Free. The book's not free, but the resources are free. So get a copy, maybe get one for somebody whose praise seems to run out faster than they'd like to admit. So today's question. Why did the miracle wear out so fast? So I said there's a special event. Tonight there is. 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, only on True Word, Faith for Life with Dr. Sean YouTube channel. It's the one with about 4,000, just under 4,000 subscribers. They engraved, hey Fascist, on the bullet. Because to them, he wasn't a man anymore. He was a category. Tonight, 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, live. I'm not messing about. There'll be no wandering through backyards and chasing squirrels. I know exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it. I name the machine that builds an assassin. I name what's rotting in my own camp, and I name who's been tormenting Charlie Kirk's widow while she buries him every day. Seventeen sources, zero apologies. You're welcome to come with your assumptions. Moses. He leads Israel away from the Red Sea into the wilderness of Shur. And for three days they find no water at all. Not a drop. Then when they finally reach a place called Mara, there's water, but they can't drink it. It's bitter. That means what the name, that actually, you know, names mean stuff. And that's actually what the name means, is Marah, bitter. Bitterness. The people respond exactly the way you'd expect thirsty people to respond after a three-day wandering in the desert. They grumble against Moses. What shall we drink? The Hebrew verb behind grumble here is lun. Lun, a word that shows up again and again through these wilderness chapters. And it describes something sharper than an honest complaint. It's closer to open rebellion dressed up as a question. Notice what Moses does next. And what he doesn't do. He doesn't argue with the people. He doesn't remind them. You remember what you just watched God do at the sea three days earlier? You think he's going to bring you through it? You're going to bring you through that? He's not going to bring you through this? You think he doesn't have a plan? You think you can't trust him? Do you remember all those horses and chariots and and and warriors coming after you to kill you? All dead, wash them up on the shore. You walked on dry land and the wall of water closed on them and drowned them. But now you're going to question just three days later, a little bit of thirst. Doesn't do any of those things. Instead, he cries out to the Lord. And the Lord shows him a piece of wood, a log. And Moses throws it into the water. And the water turns sweet. No lecture? No delay? Just provision immediately at that exact point of complaint. And then something happens right there at Mara. Could easily get skipped over. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you could easily skip right on over it. Good morning, Tammy. Scripture says the Lord made for them a statue, a statute and a rule. The Lord made for them a statute and a rule. And there he tested them, saying, If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, giving ear to his commandments and keeping all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord your healer. That's the first time in Scripture God introduces himself by that name. And he does it at a bitter well, not a hospital, not a battlefield. A well. From there, Israel travels on to Elim, where they find twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they camp there, beside the water in complete abundance. Now, if you're taking off boxes reading through the Bible in a year, because you just want to tick off boxes and reading through the Bible in a year, you'd miss there are three things. Three things that this passage carries, and it carries more weight really than a quick read will provide. First, the timing. Three days. That's the entire distance between the loudest worship Israel had ever offered and their first recorded complaint as free people. Three days is nothing. It's proof that a miracle in your rearview mirror doesn't automatically protect you from panicking over the very next inconvenience, even a small one. Even just water. Second, God's response to the complaint wasn't correction. It was provision. He didn't wait for Israel to repent of their grumbling before he fixed the water. Good morning, Robbie. He didn't wait for Israel to say, you know what, we've been, you're right. Man, what are we doing? Our tambrines barely cooled off from praise, and we're already complaining. I mean, look what he did. Look what he delivered us from. He showed Moses a solution immediately. That says something about how God actually operates toward people who are struggling to trust him. That could be me and that could be you at different times in our lives. He tends to meet the complaint with grace before he ever gets around to addressing the heart behind it. The statute and the tests come after the sweetening, not before it. Which means the provision was never conditional on Israel getting their attitude right first. I said there were three, and there are third, the name. I am the Lord your healer. That it that's not it that's not introduced in a moment of triumph. It's introduced at a well nobody could drink from. Right after a complaint. God chose the site of Israel's failure as the exact place to reveal a piece of who He is that they never need to know before. They never needed to know that. All the way prior, they didn't need to know that. Put together this passage says something worth sitting in your easy chair over in the corner where you do your reading and your thinking. The gap. If you miss this, you've missed it all. The gap between your loudest worship and your next complaint is probably a whole lot shorter than you think. True story. God tends to answer that gap with provision rather than punishment. And he often reveals the deepest parts of who he is exactly at the place you were failing him. And I am failing him, not somewhere else. Here's where this gets personal. Because most of us, we've lived exactly this timeline, right? Just with different numbers of days. You prayed for something enormous, and God did something even bigger than you could imagine. And you sang about it for a minute. You told people for a minute. You meant every word, and maybe you didn't tell people. And maybe you didn't sing out loud. You said, they might think that's pretty weird. You didn't pray any hallelujah, you didn't sing any hallelujahs and you didn't tell a story of any hallelujahs. You just went on about your day. You didn't break the tambourine out of the closet, dust it off. You just kind of tilted your head and went on about your day. But then something, something small went wrong. Maybe it was a traffic situation, a delay of some sort. Fender bender. A bill you weren't expecting, or maybe you thought it was going to be smaller than it was. Maybe it was a headache. Something simple like a headache. Whatever it was, within what felt like minutes, you were right back. You were right back to that anxious, irritable person who says, You know how to sing hallelujah. You know how to give thanks. You know how to praise. You saw the miracle and you knew you knew how to call attention to it. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. But here you are, just minutes later, forgetting entirely what you'd just witnessed. The whiplash isn't proof that your faith wasn't real at the sea. It's proof you're human. The same as two million people who watched an entire army drown and were complaining about water seventy-two hours later. Isn't that something? Water just a little bit earlier was what saved them. And now they're complaining about water again. What's worth noticing here is what God didn't do. He didn't wait for Israel to feel sufficiently ashamed of their short memories before he acted. In the middle of their complaint, not after it. If your own pattern looks like Israel's, quick to praise, quicker to panic, this passage isn't here to shame you. I'm not trying to shame you. Listen, I look straight back at me, and my own self. This is here, this passage is here, and I'm preaching this to you this morning to show you what God actually does with people whose memory doesn't hold as long as their gratitude did in the moment. There's also something worth noticing in what God didn't remove. He didn't erase the three dry days or promised there'd never be another Mara. Another bitterness. He met this one, specifically, and he let that be enough proof for the next one. And notice where Elim shows up right after the test at Mara, not instead of it. Twelve springs, twelve springs, seventy palm trees, abundance waiting on the other side of the very complaint you were sure would go unanswered. You wonder what might be hidden a little bit in this text. The tree Moses throws into the bitter water and watches turn sweet has carried typological, has carried typological weight for readers of this text for centuries. And it's not hard to see why. The Apostle Paul or Shaol tells us in the New Testament that Yeshua became a curse for us because it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. A tree. Death was bitter, sin was bitter, and a tree changed both. Permanently. What Moses threw into the water at Marah was a shadow. What was thrown on the hill, on that hill outside Jerusalem, was the same. It was the substance, the same God who sweetened bitter water with a piece of wood, sweetened the most bitter thing in existence with his own son on another piece of wood. The healer's name was never just a title. It was a promise with a shape, and the shape was a tree. Now you say, I want to have a way of obeying this concretely. First, name the gap between your last moment of real worship and your most recent complaint, honestly, without minimizing either one. Second, I want you to notice where God provided in the middle of your grumbling rather than after you'd cleaned yourself up first. And then thank him specifically for that timing. Third, look for your own Elim, the abundance that might already be sitting just past the test you're currently in the middle of. Is still the one throwing the tree into whatever's bitter in your life right now. Pray with me. Father, in the name of Yeshua, thank you that you met Israel's complaint with provision, not punishment, and that you still do the same thing for us. Father, thank you for the tree that sweetens what we couldn't drink on our own and for the name you wear because of it, our healer. For anyone whose praise ran out faster than they wanted it to this week, I pray, Father, you meet them in the middle of the complaint, the way you always have. In Yeshua's name, Amen. Maybe the bitterest water, the Mirah, the bitterest water in your life isn't a circumstance at all. Maybe it's what's underneath your own heart. And you've never let the tree touch it. Pray this with me. Stop fighting it. Surrender all to God. Pray this with me, Yeshua. I need you. I believe you died and rose from the grave. I surrender my life to you today. Forgive me, fill me, lead me. I am yours. In your name. Amen. Praise God. If you just prayed that, welcome to the family. If you have questions, you want help, go to Trueword FaithforLife.com slash contact, or just go to TrueWordFaithforLife.com, click on contact at the top or the little voicemail thing on the side. You have two minutes. It's your two minutes. Use it wisely. I pay for it so you don't have to. If you need help, all you have to do is ask. And if this is your first time walking with us, we've been walking through scripture chronologically since Genesis, starting at day one. Here we are at 71. And walk, walk it with us from the beginning. You can still listen currently, but you can go back. We're on all of the things. Um Spotify, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, iTunes, all of them. We're on all of them. Subscribe or follow or add to your list or whatever. Click on a review or whatever if you want. But make sure you sign up for on YouTube. I know I get it. Some people just don't want to be part of YouTube. I get it too, but that's the game. That's the game in town. And if you want to hear what we're doing here, I encourage you, go subscribe. True Word, Faith for Life with Dr. Sean, S-H-A-W-N. Click on subscribe, click on the little bell for all notifications. Wouldn't kill you to hit that thumbs up while you're at it. That way you'll know. Helps more than you can ever even possibly fathom. Tonight's episode is a rare one. It's not as if I don't preach enough. I have a burden on my chest, I gotta get off my chest. Some folks say I'm tired of hearing about Charlie Kirk. Well, then this episode is not for you. Tonight at 8 o'clock, 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Three days from the sea to the well. Three days from song to complaint. And still, a tree thrown into the bitter. And it made it sweet. Whatever's bitter in your life right now, he's still the God who sweetens it, and still the healer whose name you needed before you even knew to ask for it. Sometimes people won't ask you for what they need. If somebody you know is standing at their own bitter well, praise already worn thin from just a few hard days, send them this episode. Tell them the tree is already on its way. As to tonight, they engraved hey fascists on that bullet and other horrible things. Charlie Kirk was no longer a man to them. They'd made him into a category. Tonight, 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Live. I named the machine that built the assassin. I name what's rotting in my own camp, and I name who's been tormenting Charlie's widow. While every day she buries her husband one more time. Seventeen footnoted sources, zero apologies, come with your assumptions. The link is in the description. And now I want you to receive this in his heavenly name. I'll pray it first in Hebrew, the language of God. And then I'll translate it. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Until tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Shalom Bishim Yeshua.