Grace, mercy and peace, from God the Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Exodus 16: verses 1 – 8 but especially verses 2 and 8
In the light of these words, it looks as if the Lord is suggesting an 11th commandment: ‘Thou shalt not grumble’.
Psalm 145, ends with these words in verse 21:
'My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord'; why?
because of what it says in verses 10 and 11:
'All you have made will praise you, O Lord; your saints will extol you'
and: 'They will tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might';
and with what result, according to verse 12:
'so that all men may know of your mighty acts
and the glorious splendour of your kingdom'.
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Most people are attracted to positive, optimistic people,
and shun negative, pessimistic people,
so when Christians grumble, they put people off the Lord and His church,
but when they praise Him, they make the Lord and His church attractive,
and invite people think about what God and His love and grace
could do for them too.
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A story is told about a certain man who attended his company’s Christmas party
with the intention of having a good time.
During the course of the evening he drank far too much alcohol.
He woke next morning feeling awful, with a pounding headache.
He was sick all day, and recalled in the sober light of day
what an absolute fool he made of himself the evening before.
He promised himself that if he recovered from this hangover
he would never drink again.
Fast forward a year.
This same man again attends the company’s Christmas party.
He again drinks too much, and his co-workers again have the opportunity
to see him making a fool and a nuisance of himself.
And the next morning, guess what,
he woke up feeling rotten and promising to amend his life.
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The term for the all too familiar phenomenon just described is ‘selective amnesia’.
‘Selective amnesia’ is the incomplete recall of past experiences
that remembers good things, but conveniently forgets the unpleasant.
According to our reading this morning,
if ever there was a people who suffered from a corporate ‘selective amnesia’
it was the nation of Israel.
The first few verses of Exodus 16 provide the necessary context
for the rest of what happens in the chapter,
and reveals the first of what will be many, many other examples of the people of Israel suffering from ‘selective amnesia’.
The Hebrews journeyed from Elim, and came to the Wilderness of Sin,
on the fifteenth day of the second month after they departed from the land of Egypt.
Then the whole congregation complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
And said to them, “Oh, that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full!
For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
Their grumbling and complaining would be laughable if it were not so tragic.
After 4 centuries of slavery in Egypt
God raised up a deliverer for the descendants of Abraham in the person of Moses.
The Lord brought plagues, and blight, and even death upon the Egyptians
until Pharaoh agreed to let the people go.
In Exodus 14 the Lord miraculously dries up the Red Sea
to allow His people to cross on dry ground,
and closes the Red Sea on Pharaoh and his army, drowning them all:
Thus Israel saw the great work which the LORD had done in Egypt;
so the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD and His servant Moses.
Then, in Exodus chapter 15 the Lord miraculously makes the bitter and poisoned waters
of Marah sweet and drinkable, so that His people would be refreshed.
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Everything God had done for His people was done to demonstrate that
He was able to take care of them, and that He would always take care of them,
and yet here we find them in chapter 16, the recent recipients of so much grace,
so much miraculous provision, and so much loving care, grumbling and complaining,
and this grumbling was not a one-off; a ‘bad hair day’;
it would come to characterize the attitude of the nation of Israel
throughout the remainder of the Old Testament.
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Complaining by non-believers is just a normal part of life,
but for Christians, who believe God provides, it is spiritually wrong.
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The renowned Biblical commentator Matthew Henry wrote:
‘Discontentment magnifies what is past, and vilifies what is present,
without regard to truth or reason’
in other words, we all go on about how good things were in the past,
and how everything today is bad, and going to get worse!
Matthew Henry recommended:
‘When we are discontent, and think life or God owes us more than we currently enjoy,
we begin to grumble and complain.
If we are to defeat this vice, we must catch it in its infancy, in discontentment,
and work to foster the precious jewel of contentment.
And contentment for the believer is the conviction that God loves us
and will provide for us, and that He is in absolute control of every situation,
even the difficult ones.’
We have all heard of people who have an ‘attitude problem’,
well grumbling is a gratitude problem.
When we begin seeing our blessings as rights, and forget how much we’ve been given, especially compared to how little we actually deserve,
and especially when we forget to thank the Lord for everything, we begin to grumble.
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We should do what the old hymn says: “Count your blessings, name them one by one,
and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”
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Matthew Henry said ‘It is impossible to be grateful and to grumble at the same time.’
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Grumbling exaggerates the positive memories of the past.
“Oh, that we were back in Egypt!” the Israelites said. Wasn’t Egypt wonderful!
Never mind the toiling from daylight till dark and the stripes across our backs.”
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It is good to remember past blessings
but any person or nation or church living in the past
will never be open to what God has for it in the future.
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Secondly, complaining exaggerates the problems of today.
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The people of Israel were hungry, but they weren’t going to starve.
The same God who parted the Red Sea and made bitter waters sweet
was going to feed them. He just hadn’t done it yet.
But their grumbling caused the Israelites to magnify the good things of the past
and magnify the problems of the present,
and get both completely out of proportion.
What had begun with the murmuring of a few moaners becomes,
by chapter 16 verse 2: “Then the whole congregation of the children of Israel
complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.”
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Behind any grumbling we will usually find someone else’s discontentment,
or our own discontentment looking for a sympathetic ear.
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As Matthew Henry put it, grumbling, for Christians, is essentially a spiritual problem,
a problem of lack of submission to, and trust in, Almighty God
for the present and for the future.
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The Lord, in Exodus 16 verses 4 and 5,
promised miraculous bread from heaven to feed His people.
Manna was so named because the Israelites asked “What is it?”
and ‘What is it?’ is ‘manna’ in Hebrew.
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When it first appeared, it was given by God to test the people
to see if they would trust Him.
The people were to collect only enough for each family to consume in one day.
They weren’t to store any extra,
and two days worth were given on Fridays
so that the people would not violate the proscription of working on the Sabbath.
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If God was testing the Israelite’s faith, chapter 16 shows that they failed the test miserably.
Many collected more than necessary and attempted to store it,
but it became rotten and full of worms.
Others went out on the Sabbath collect manna when none was given.
The fundamental problem was a lack of trust in the Lord,
and this mistrust exhibited itself in grumbling and greed.
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The most remarkable part of this story,
apart from the miraculous provision by God of bread from heaven,
was that in spite of all their grumbling, God graciously hears the cries of His people.
In the Letter to the Hebrews we are encouraged us to go boldly before the throne of grace.
That doesn’t mean we kick down the doors and demand God to give us what we want;
it does mean that we should come before our loving heavenly Father,
confident we’ll get a hearing,
and that He will always give us what we ask for
if it is beneficial for us and in accord with His will.
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The Lord always hears the prayers of the righteous.
But more than that, Jesus reminds us in the Sermon on the Mount
that God knows our needs before we even ask.
The point here is that we should not grumble.
If God thinks we need something we will get it.
If we don’t get it, it is because God thinks we don’t really need it,
or because it isn’t good for us, or because we don’t need it yet.
God’s answers to our prayers are either “yes,” “no,” or “yes, but not now.”
Our response should not be to grumble, as the Israelites did,
but trust and be patient, because God is patient with us, and forgiving.
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And God generously gives His people what they need. Exodus 16 verse 11:
And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
“I have heard the complaints of the children of Israel. Speak to them, saying,
‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread.
And you shall know that I am the Lord your God.”
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As we say in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Give us this day our daily bread’.
Just enough, not too much or too little.
The Lord gives us what we need and not always what we want.
But sometimes He gives us what we want, too,
and notice that the Lord not only gave the people of Israel bread,
but also meat in the form of quails in the camp in verse 13,
and He gave them not just a little bread,
but promised they would be filled with bread.
Our God is a generous God.
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So, how can we go from grumbling to praising?
Firstly, by trusting the LORD completely,
meaning more than just accepting a set of abstract propositions about God,
but exercising a whole-hearted reliance upon Him in our daily living.
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It means clinging to Christ no matter what may come.
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust him,” Job says in Job 13:15.
Can we say that, instead of grumbling?
If we can, we have passed the faith test.
The opposite of grumbling is to be thankful in everything,
in the good times, and in the bad times. At all times.
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Is God moody?
Does the Lord only love us on a good day,
or when we please Him in some way?
No, the Bible talks in many places, about His ‘steadfast love’, His ‘chesed’.
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There is a story about a young man writing at a post office counter
who was approached by an old man with a post card in his hand.
The old man said, “Young man, could you please address this post card for me?”
The young man gladly did so, then agreed to write a short message
and to sign the card for the man.
Finally the young man asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
The old man looked at the post card, thought about it for a moment, and said,
“Yes, at the end could you put, ‘P.S. Please excuse the bad handwriting.’”
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Ask a typical American how he or she is,
and they will usually say ‘’m good, thank you.’
Ask a typical British man or woman.
and you will get ‘Not bad.’
We British people seem to like grumbling.
We moan if it is too sunny and hot, and we moan if it is too cold.
We complain if we don’t get enough rain on our gardens,
then we complain if we get wet when we go out.
Grumbling takes no special skill, anybody can do it,
but with the help of the Holy Spirit,
and fed with the bread from heaven Jesus spoke about in John 6,
we can be a praising and thankful people, come what may.
I pray we can, and we will, appreciating all we have now
and what we can look forward to, through the merits of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
