Imagine eating the same exact meal, every meal of every day, for forty unrelenting years. What if this meal wasn’t your go-to plate from your favorite restaurant, but it was a pile of bread-like flakes that looked like coriander seeds and tasted like “cakes baked with oil” (Numbers 11:8)? If that was your portion for forty straight years, it would be a tough pill to swallow! But in the case of the Israelites, that indeed was their daily bread.
But which came first, the chicken or the egg? In the case of the Israelites, they were the ones that laid the rotten egg that caused their forty-year wandering in the first place. With the forty-year suspension came the monotonous diet. They could have enjoyed a gloriously short passage from captivity in Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. But they themselves created the forty-year ordeal. They set their own table.
How did they do it? How did they get stuck in the wilderness and stuck with the same bland meal for forty years? The problem that led to God’s discipline was that the people of Israel would bellyache about everything. Even the manna in the wilderness, which was originally received as a delightful provision, quickly turned into another thing for them to complain about. It turns out that forty years of manna was just what the Doctor ordered to cure them of this horrible disease in the camp. Israel did not suffer from a physical malady; they had a disease of the soul. It was their besetting sin—complaining.
Complaining is draining. It empties the love tanks of those who have to hear its constant dripping. Moses wanted to die after so many years hearing Israel’s constant complaining. “Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me and say, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’ I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness” (Numbers 11:12-15). God didn’t kill Moses; He sent him seventy faithful men to help him carry the weight of the complaining nation.
But do you know what’s worse than the draining effect that complaining has upon others? It is the scorn with which it addresses God; complaining dishonors the God who is always providing everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). See how offensive it is to God when His people complain:
“And the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes, and when the Lord heard it, his anger was kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed some outlying parts of the camp. Then the people cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire died down. So the name of that place was called Taberah, because the fire of the Lord burned among them” (Numbers 11:1-3). “Taberah” means burning. Complaining is a constant drip against the glory of God that makes God’s anger burn.
So, God raised the young ones to know nothing but manna, and when their hearts learned to be thankful, He gave them better food in the Promised Land. But those who never learned to stop complaining, this entire generation of ungrateful Israelites, God would silence their complaining by making them fall one by one in the desert, until the nation was purged of this disease of complaining.
Lest we think that God no longer deals harshly with the particularly odious sin of complaining, read Hebrews chapters 3 and 4. God makes the point that nothing has changed with Him. In fact, the generation who fell in the wilderness is put before us as an example of what not to do, lest we suffer a similar fate. The warning is that complaining is a wandering step toward apostasy. Complaining is the opposite of gratitude; as soon as a soul stops praising and thanking God, there is a real danger of falling away altogether. God warns us not to be like the Israelites who fell in the desert.
So, if you perceive a complaining spirit in yourself, nip it in the bud. Kill it before it kills you, before it makes the people around you want to die. Moses himself failed to enter the promised land because of a creeping sense of entitlement and victimhood that finally resulting in him striking the Rock. That Rock was Christ, prophetically speaking (1 Corinthians 10:4), the very Rock that that gave him his manna and water. The constant dripping he heard from the people had made Moses himself a little bit leaky. Did you notice that Moses himself was complaining a little when he said he wanted to die because of all the complaining he had been hearing?
Complaining is sin. Just because it’s common doesn’t make it acceptable. Miriam complained and got hit with leprosy (Numbers 12). Aaron complained and suffered shame, not to mention the fear of seeing his sister afflicted with what would have been a preventable disease, had Aaron not joined in the complaint against Moses but counseled her to stop complaining.
It’s easy to complain, but it should be easier to maintain a heart of gratitude. After all, think about all that we have to be thankful for. Every day we are “better than we deserve,” as Dave Ramsey likes to say. We deserve eternal “Taberah” for our previous complaining, but here we are, alive. And not only alive, we are blessed beyond measure. God gives the sun to light and warm the earth. God gives clouds to water the earth and mute the overwhelming force of the sun, lest we be burnt. It’s only by grace all the time that we are not burned.
And God gave us better Manna from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. “‘For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst’” (John 6:33-35). How can we who have the Lord Jesus Christ ever complain?
How can we who have the abundance of food that we have in this country ever complain? The Israelites complained because they didn’t have “the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic” (Numbers 11:5). We complain because we have to eat our vegetables! Brothers and sisters, this ought not be.
When Jesus broke bread, He gave thanks. So, let gratitude be the defining characteristic of your life. If you are not sure that it is, just ask a few people around you, “do I complain a lot?” Others can see us better than we see ourselves. Hopefully they will answer that question honestly. If it turns out that complaining is a problem in your life, then make a practice of listing the things you are thankful for. Let those lists of thanksgiving be the carrots that attract you toward gratitude. And you also need a stick. Read Hebrews 3-4 every day until you stop complaining. Let God’s Word tell you how God feels about your complaining. Don’t let forty years of spiritual wandering go by. Let the Word of God be the tough pill that when swallowed delivers you from your complaining.
Jeremiah battled depression. He sat alone and wrestled with his thoughts. But in Jeremiah 15 we learn where he found his victory. “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts” (Jeremiah 15:16). Eat the manna of God’s Word every day and find deliverance from complaining.
For The Joy of the Lord is Our Strength,
Pastor Jeff
