Title: Grumbling Before a Gracious God
Text: Exodus 17:1-7
Thesis: Our impatience stands in stark contrast to the patience of God who gently woos us to live in anticipation of his grace.
Lenten Series: Reflecting, Repenting and Returning to God
The Lenten Season is a time for reflection, repenting of our sin and returning to God. During Lent we confront the presence of evil in the world, the reality of temptation and human sinfulness. However, it is in acknowledging human sinfulness and the need for repentance that we find our way to return to God who is merciful and gracious.
Introduction
The Fiddler on the Roof follows the life of a poor Jewish dairy farmer named Tevye. Tevye had a wife and five daughters and his story is set in the Ukraine during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. It’s an old story but we can relate.
In one scene Tevye is pulling both his old horse and the milk wagon in an attempt to get home before the start of the Sabbath. He looked up to heaven and said, “Ah God, was that necessary? Did you have to make my horse lame just before that Sabbath. That wasn’t nice. It’s enough that you pick on me. You bless me with a wife, five daughters and a life of poverty. That’s all right, but what do you have against my horse?” (Fiddler on the Roof, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 1971
I don’t think Tevye is all that different than any of us. There were times in his life that he felt like he deserved better…
People tend to complain when they feel entitled.
I. When people have a sense of entitlement they become impatient.
The people set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Exodus 17:-2
Most people have expectations. For some the bar is higher than it is for others, but we all have expectations. The Israelites had been road for a few days and they were traveling in mass. From the perspective of a global satellite they probably looked like an army of ants moving across the desert.
When Bonnie and I travel together we always try to stay in comfortable accommodations and we have found that Hampton Inns and Holiday Inn Expresses are good. They are generally newer. They have spacious rooms and great beds. The bathrooms are sparkling clean. The towels are big and fluffy. They have Wi-Fi connections and good breakfasts with good coffee included in the rate. When I travel alone I am likely to stay a roach inn… I don’t pay much and I don’t expect much. But I still like for it to be clean and have a door with a lock and inside plumbing.
But imagine the Israelites… traveling without even the benefit of a seedy, flea-bag, roach inn. They obviously had fairly low expectations but they did expect that wherever they stopped for the night, there should at least be water.
They were entitled to water.
A. People grumble when they feel entitled.
Courtney Love was married to Curt Cobaine, leader of the band known as Nirvana. However Courtney Love is a rock star in her own right. Courtney Love was on the front cover of Rolling Stone Magazine in 1998. She enjoys the privileges that go with wealth and fame.
On one occasion she was charged with disorderly conduct for hitting one of her fans with a microphone stand and had to make a court appearance.
On the day of her appearance a black stretch limo dropped her off in front of the Manhattan Criminal Court Building. Assuming privilege she attempted to bypass the security line but was stopped by security and told to take her turn in line and to pass through the detector like everyone else.
Courtney was not happy and in her comments to a reporter at the scene said, “The guy wants me to stand in line with everybody else. I’m not everybody else.” (“Courtney Love Enters Plea, and Nobody Else Gets Hurt,” New York Times, 10/21/04)
When we have a sense of entitlement everybody else is everybody else… not us. We are special and as such, entitled to what we want when we want it and everyone else can stand in line.
What is amazing about our bible story today is that the Israelites had been slaves for hundreds of years. They were not entitled, as a people, in the land of Egypt… they served those who were entitled. But now they were the entitled.
When entitled people get impatient, they grumble.
B. People grumble when they are impatient.
Impatience is really about a sense of entitlement in regard to time. When we grumble we are demonstrating our impatience. Impatience is a time issue. The clock is ticking.
Commentators say that there are two ways of thinking about time. One way is referred to as “chronos.” Chronos time is what we think of as clock time. Think chronology or the way things unfold over time as the clock ticks. The other way of thinking of time is “kairos.” Kairos time is about timing, as in, “when the time was right” or “in the fullness of time.”
In our story today the people had a chronos sense of time. The people complained and grumbled when they did not think God was acting fast enough.
In sharp contrast to the entitlement and impatience we sometimes express is the example we are seeing of how the Japanese people are responding to the catastrophe that is their lives right now.
Stacey Lovett wrote in her blog, Abundant Living, “The recent disasters in Japan have put the many strengths of the Japanese people on full display. Was there ever an incident like this where no looting or violence broke out? It is inspiring to watch the patience of the Japanese people… standing in perfectly formed lines for hours to get water and food. Drivers wait for hours to get fuel without honking, yelling and flicking each other off. News programs have highlighted the countless Japanese who have lost spouses, children, grandchildren and friends. And yet there is a distinct calm and consciousness that remains, as though selfishness and hatred were not even an alternative.” (staceylovett.blogspot.com, March 24, 2011)
Certainly what is said of the resilience and resolve of the Japanese culture ought to be said of the followers of Christ who should reflect the values and behaviors of a Christian culture.
Meanwhile, the Israelites were not happy. There was no water and they expected there should be water and they wanted water right now!
II. When people are impatient they are hurtful toward others.
And Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the
test?” Exodus 17:2
If we think our attitudes and our words do not affect others we are badly mistaken. The way we look and the way we talk or express ourselves affects other people.
When we exhibit impatience in a grumbling and complaining kind of way we make life hard on other people.
A. Impatient people make life hard for other people.
…but the people were thirsty and they grumbled against Moses. And they said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to make us and our children and live stock die of thirst?” Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.” Exodus 17:3-4
We know that Moses was hardly a perfect person. His life was as flawed as any life can be flawed. He was just a guy trying to do his job. But what they say is true: They say, “you can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.”
In this case… none of the people were pleased. All of the people were unhappy with Moses. And not only did they gripe and complain to his face and behind his back. Some of them wanted to demonstrate their displeasure with him by stoning him.
In that culture stoning was a recognized form of mob action. It is so engrained in some cultures that the practice continues in our time, i.e., rocks seem to be the preferred projectile for rioting in the Middle East and Africa.
Our grumbling and complaining not only creates a climate of complaint – it may also have the equivalent effect of stoning another person.
Our impatience with others and complaining about them, not only hurts others, it does not please God.
B. Impatient people do not please God.
Nevertheless, God was not pleased with them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. I Corinthians 10:5
In my heart I am somewhat sympathetic with the Israelites but in my head I know something is not right about their quarreling and grumbling and complaining. This is what I think was wrong…
III. When people forget the goodness and faithfulness of God they become impatient.
The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded [them]. Exodus 17:1
Impatient and complaining people are essentially ungrateful people. The people of Israel seemed to have forgotten who had liberated them from Egypt and who was leading them on their Exodus journey.
In forgetting what God had done in the past, they had no memory of God’s goodness.
A. The people forgot that God rescued them from a life of oppression and slavery in the past.
Do you remember what God said to Moses when he called him to lead the people our of Egypt?
“I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the land of the Egyptians into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” Exodus 3:7-8
When God called Moses to return to Egypt and lead his people from captivity to freedom and the Promised Land, God was responding to the prayers of a people who longed to be free of their oppressors.
God had miraculously orchestrated a series of plagues that ultimately compelled their oppressors to set them free. But in just a few days out on their journey to the land flowing with milk and honey, they were longing to be back under the thumb of their oppressors. They forgot what God had done.
And in forgetting what God had done in the past they could not envision the goodness of God in the present or the future.
B. The people forgot that God was leading them and providing for them in the present.
In the first verse of our text today we are told that the people of Israel traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. Exodus 17:1
In Exodus 14, with the Red Sea in front of them and the Egyptian army in hot pursuit behind them, they started thinking the life of slavery looked pretty good so God parted the Red Sea for them. When the water was didn’t taste right in Exodus 15: 22-24, they complained so God sweetened their water. In Exodus 16, God gave them manna to eat but they longed for the stew pots of meat they had enjoyed in Egypt. The bible says, “God heard their grumbling” and gave them some good game birds to eat every evening. It was one of those situations where they seemed to think that since Moses and God had gotten them into this, Moses and God needed to pony up and take care of them.
So where there is no gratitude there is grumbling and complaining.
IV. When people are impatient they leave a legacy of complaint.
Moses struck the rock and water poured out for the people to drink. And he called this place Massah and Meribah because the people quarreled and tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Exodus 17:6-7
The first legacy they left is the naming of the place.
A. The legacy of an historical landmark.
…he called this place Massah and Meribah because the people quarreled. Exodus 17:7
Moses named that place in memory of the Israelites.
One of the things I have noticed wherever I travel is that along every highway there will be little pull-outs where a roadside sign indicates there is an historical marker.
In Decatur County, Kansas there is a roadside historical marker along Highway 36 in a turnout northeast of Oberlin. After the Little Big Horn battle in 1876, the U.S. government forced most Northern Cheyenne from the Northern Plains to a reservation in Indian Territory in Oklahoma. In 1878 a group of those Cheyenne Indians, (89 men, 112 women and 134 children) led by Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolfe attempted to return to their homeland. Angry and embittered by their plight they killed settlers and herders as they fled through Kansas. (http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-markers/14999)
Nineteen settlers living along the Sappa Creek were killed in Decatur County and the event is referred to as the Last Indian Raid (in Kansas).
Historical markers may be found along every highway and if you take time to take the turnout and read the signs you always pick up a bit of history that happened along that way.
When Moses named the place of their complaint he called it:
1. Massah which means in their hardness of heart the people tested God.
2. Meribah which means in their faithlessness the people quarreled (essentially, with God).
If there was a roadside historical marker there at Rephidim it would read: “This is the place where the Israelites did not trust God because of their hardness of heart and because of their lack of faith in God, got all feisty and quarrelsome with Moses and God.”
And the second legacy left by the Israelites is simply a lesson.
B. The legacy of a lesson.
“Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. And do not grumble, as some of them did and were killed by the destroying angel.” I Corinthians 10:6-10
Sometimes the best example is a good example but other times the best example is a bad example. This story has been told and retold for centuries as a good example of the bad example of grumbling and complaining. It has been told and retold for centuries as a deterrent to us… a reminder to us that God is not impressed in a positive way when we gripe and complain.
In I Corinthians 10 the Apostle Paul writes a warning to us based on the example or legacy of the Israelites. He wrote of how the forefathers were all under the leading of God and had passed through the Red Sea and had had eaten manna and quail and had drunk fresh water from the rock… but despite their many blessings, God was not pleased with them.
Then in I Corinthians 10:6 he begins a list of things they did that displeased God like idolatry, pagan revelry, sexual immorality and then he ends the list with this sentence: “And do not grumble, as some of them did and were killed by the destroying angel.” I Corinthians 10:10
It may be unfortunate and unfair but despite all that may be good about our lives we are often remembered for what is not so good. The Israelites left a legacy of grumbling and complaint. If anyone were to ask any of us what we remember about someone we knew that is now deceased… what immediately comes to mind? Of some, our memories are of graciousness and of others our memories are of grumpiness and complaining.
This is the legacy lesson: When people grumble, God is neither honored nor pleased and future generations may have an unfortunate memory of who we were.
Conclusion:
So what Lenten lessons can we learn from the good example of a bad example today?
In repenting of our grumbling we turn to God with renewed spirits of gratitude and graciousness.
1. Does my life reflect humility and patience?
2. Does my life encourage others and honor God?
3. Does my life reflect gratitude to God and trust in God?
4. Does my life legacy read “Grumbler” or “Gracious?”
