Lesson 25 Warring Against the Flesh - Overcoming Bitterness
Questions 4 and 5
The root of bitterness takes hold of us, causes all kinds of trouble in our lives, and defiles everyone around us. Embittered, we become short-tempered, self-protective, and accusatory; we blame-shift, nit-pick, and require others to measure up when we do not.
What is worse is that this bitterness keeps us enslaved to sin. We get caught in a vicious cycle of gratifying our flesh, living in guilt and shame, experiencing anger and frustration, which turns to bitterness. As a result, we return to overeating (or over drinking, binge-watching, etc.) in a misfocused effort to get some relief.
But there is good news for us who have put our faith in Jesus! God has made a way of escape, so we can get off the vicious hamster wheel of bitterness and sin, a way to be entirely free from it all!
To see what this way is, let’s look to the Old Testament and see how God eradicated a bitter problem the Israelites faced as they traveled through the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land:
“Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the Desert of Shur. For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is called Marah.) 24 So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?” 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.” Exodus 15:22-25 (NIV)
Question 4. Why could the people in the desert not drink the water?