Grumble, Grumble, Toil and Trouble

We are following the Israelites, and if you ever wonder why something is in the Bible, it's because human nature does not fundamentally change, and God wants history to teach us that fact. The second thing we need to realize is how the Bible is pointing to Jesus.  So, not only do we learn about how broken we human beings really are, but how much we need a Savior.

How often do people say, "Well, why didn't the Jewish people get Jesus?"

"Why doesn't that person just do ahead and accept Christ?"

"Can't she see how sinful her life is?"

It's a Pharisee moment. How so?  We are recasting the person's predicament, attitude or desires into our own frame of reference.  When the Pharisees interrogated Jesus, they had already decided that He was not who He claimed to be and they wanted Him to discredit Himself with His answers to their questions. Their attitude was, at its core, 

Well, We would never talk to such despicable sinners! Why does He even bother?  He should be in the synagogue, studying the Torah with us, not fraternizing with people God clearly disapproves of. We stand with God.  He should be, too.  

We do the same thing.  In other words,

"I would have accepted Jesus in His day."  (Are you sure?  He made claims about His equality with His Father that you may have found blasphemous or at a minimum, very unsettling.)

"I accepted Christ.  Why can't he?" (Are you him?  Do you know his inner story? His life?)

"I saw my sin."  (You saw your sin?  Wasn't it the Holy Spirit who pointed it out to you, and perhaps it was many, many times before you truly saw your condition for what it was? How long did He work with you, revealing the saving grace of Jesus and the depth of your sin before you responded?)

When we minimize the other person's life and superimpose our responses over theirs, we start down the road to grumbling.

Yes, grumbling.

Let's get a definition from an online dictionary of the word: "the action or fact of complaining in a bad-tempered way." 

"Bad-tempered" is not what God wants to see or hear in His people. 

Let's define it from a Hebrew perspective: "The word in the Hebrew that is used here is layan which basically means to remain or stay. It is a refusal to move forward out of lack of faith and receiving divine instruction. I would give this a rendering of worry or fretting. Worry is nothing more than a lack of faith and refusal to receive divine instruction." [1]

Let's meet up with our wandering Israelites: 

"The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, 'If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.'” (Ex. 16:1-3).

OK. The people are now thinking about how things used to be, and grumbling about it. Why? Wait for it: the lack of food.  These are the same people who saw God do awe-inspiring miracles.  Not once, not twice, but over and over again. 

OK, you Israelites:  Let's review. Life in Egypt was acceptable, because you had food?  Let me highlight the choice words.  How about:

• "Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 'Look,' he said to his people, 'the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.' So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly." (Ex. 1:8-14) 

Doesn't sound like Disneyland, does it?  Let's keep going.  How about this:

• "The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 'When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.'” (Ex. 1:15-16)

Great. But because of the fecundity of the Hebrews, harassing the midwives wasn't enough.  Pharoah brought his own people into it: 

• "Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: 'Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.'” (Ex. 1: 22)

Awesome. You now had a society focused on ferreting out little Hebrew babies and murdering them.

Moses grows up, having divinely evaded this decree and we meet him outraged by his people's brutal treatment: 

• "One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, 'Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?'  The man said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?' Then Moses was afraid and thought, 'What I did must have become known.'” (2:11-14)

Were the men afraid of retaliation from their overlords and so turned on Moses?  He didn't look like a slave, nor acted like one. Did they think, 

Why would some Egyptian-looking guy come to the aid of us slaves?  Is he a spy, keeping track of what we're doing, ready to report back to whoever sent him? We'll be punished, that's for sure!

God saw the violence, the hurt, the anger and the exhaustion of His people:

• "During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them." (Ex. 2:23-25) 

Not only did God see His people's suffering, He appointed a savior who He would use to liberate them. He chose Moses and spoke to him from a bush on fire, burning but not being consumed.  Just like the Israelites:  They were in the fire of slavery, but they were not going to be consumed: 

• "The Lord said, '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 hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.'” (Ex. 3:7-10) 

Rescue. Deep understanding of misery. A new place to go where life will be better. Seeing the oppression. Sending a savior.

This is God's agenda from the word go.  He heard, He acted and He delivered His people with a beautiful display of miracles through His chosen leader. 

Does this pattern, by the way, ring any bells?  

God hears our cry.  He understands deeply our misery.  He desires to take us to a place that is new and free from slavery to sin.  He sees how oppressed we are by our sin, and He sent a Savior.

But once in the desert, the people actually thought their former life was better. 

Really?

This is the power of sin in our lives, that we once we face conflict, deprivation, or anything else that pushes hard on our faith, we begin to think back... Maybe my life back then wasn't so bad.  Well, at least I had ______________.  

Now, if we are not careful, we will start to grumble.  Grumbling stops the process of us trusting God, because it makes us sit down in the road of self-pity and acrimony towards God.  In other words, we take a bit handful of narcissism and shove it into our mouth.

Then, with its bitter taste on our tongue and our soul feeling empty, we fail to remember all of God's mercy, love, miracles and presence in our lives.  

Anguish, pain, sorrow and a feeling of abandonment, as painful as these emotions are to express, we are still conversing with God.

Grumbling means we have stopped talking to Him, yet demand He still talk to us. 

In His love and mercy, He keeps moving in our lives but grumbling can become a way of life, if we are not careful.  

It happened to Israelites.

It can happen to us. 

 

[1] https://www.chaimbentorah.com/2024/04/hebrew-word-study-grumble-lavan/

Pre-Desert Story: The Israelites

Every desert has a pre-story.  

It's a "remember when" kind of thinking.  It may not have been that perfect when you were actually living it, but compared to the desert you are now in, this reminiscing gives the past a glow, a beauty that makes us want to go back.

But the desert doesn't allow that. You are here. That's it.

That's one of the reasons that sometimes people don't want to hear our current desert story.  They, like Job's friends, think:  

Wow.  My life is going quite well right now.  What did you do to lose it, and go into this desert place you keep talking about?  You must have done something.  Or the person you are with must have done something. Well, maybe not.  No one asks for cancer.  But if your life was going so well, and then this happened, will I be next?  Does the desert await everybody?

Good question--one filled with fear and wanting some kind of guarantee that the desert is for some people, but hopefully not me.  I had someone tell me years ago that they didn't want to become a Christian, because bad things happen to Christians.  I asked how did she come to this conclusion? She  said that every Christian seminar or event has someone telling about how something terrible happened to them and they wanted everyone to know about it.

Hmmm.  There is some truth to that. We sometimes become spectators to the Body of Christ and the struggles people go through.  We watch, we listen, we are glad God gave them victory, but we wonder what price glory?  Will my child die?  Will my husband cheat on me?  Will I get some kind of uncurable cancer?  Will I lose my limbs in a car accident?

The world is an unpredictable place and we wonder if we are next.  

So, why not enjoy a stroll down memory lane?  It's understandable, but if we keep focusing on the past, and resent we are no longer living that life, we can fall prey to what the Israelites did:  complaining (a lot), not being thankful for God's provision and missing  out on His presence. 

Isaiah, speaking of the Servant of the Lord, says, "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out." (42:3)

If we are servants of the Lord, then we are not going to be broken or completely consumed by what challenges us.  Even His Servant, after a horrific death, rose back to life.  Jesus's sufferings did not last forever while He walked on earth.  He had moments of joy, peace in between the moments of sadness, tears and suffering.

Let's walk out into the desert with Israelites.  They have recently seen the amazing power of the Lord: Pharoah and all that he represents had "paid" put to his account.  The judgements were harsh at times, but his system had to come under God's dominion to show the Israelites that what Pharaoh represented is not true and is not welcomed in Yahweh's world. 

What did Pharaoh represent?

He was a god and his actions guaranteed that life would proceed as it always had.  He controlled the Nile, the crops, the sun rising and setting, and all that good came from his hand.  Even life and death. 

He wasn't going to share the stage with God in any way.  But nor was God: 

“You shall have no other gods before me.

“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments." (Ex. 20:3-4)

In the Israelites' very recent past, they had watched God remove each aspect of their life in Egypt:  The gods were judged (each plague had a god behind it); their status as slaves was ended (they left Egypt as a free people, taking some of Egypt's wealth with them) and all that they had known was removed as they walked into the desert.

I am sure they were grateful.  At first.  Moses and the people sang a song of victory over Pharaoh and praised God for His mighty hand: 

"I will sing to the Lord, for an overflowing victory!
Horse and rider he threw into the sea!
The Lord is my strength and my power;
he has become my salvation.
This is my God, whom I will praise,
the God of my ancestors, whom I will acclaim.
The Lord is a warrior;
the Lord is his name." (Ex. 15:1-3)

Take that, Pharoah! Take that slavery! Take that Egypt!

Good times.  Blessed times. Times when it was obvious God was with them.

Then we learn, right after this:

"Then Moses had Israel leave the Reed Sea and go out into the Shur desert. They traveled for three days in the desert and found no water. When they came to Marah, they couldn’t drink Marah’s water because it was bitter. That’s why it was called Marah. The people complained against Moses, 'What will we drink?' Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord pointed out a tree to him. He threw it into the water, and the water became sweet." (Ex. 15:21-25)

Welcome to the desert.  Three days is about the maximum that a human being can go without water, so they were at the brink of dying of thirst.  

That's the desert for you:  It takes us to the very brink of our faith, ourselves, and our thinking about how the world should work. We feel we are tottering at the edge. One more hour, one more day, more event, and we are going over into the abyss.

We then question those around us, for we feel as if we are the only ones going through this. When, in all reality, we are questioning God.

Moses is God's spokesperson, so the people's questions to him are really aimed at God: 

You brought us out here and we are dying of thirst.  We finally find water, and are you kidding me?  It's BITTER?  Is this some kind of joke (not trying to be disrespectful here, but whoa!)  Moses, we can't DRINK THIS.

Now, let's consider what the people are really thinking:

So, God.  Gotta have a talk here.  We are at wit's end.  The desert here is unrelenting.  The sun, the rocks, the mountains...dryer than bones.  We have been following this man You chose (no disrespect here, but we didn't choose him) and now we gather around this water (which we desperately need) and IT'S BITTER, GOD!  Yes, we know You may know that, but then why did You lead us here in the first place?

I know, I know.  We might not ever say things like this out loud, but the desert leads us very quickly into despair, because it seems, well, hopeless. 

But here's the irony of the past. We want to go back to the days when the water wasn't bitter, the sun wasn't that hot, and we could choose who we listened to and take advice from.  We had enough food, water and a place to live (literally or metaphorically) and we could count on life being pretty much the same from day to day.  No real surprises.  No jarring moments.  Just a kind of coasting.  Oh, and most importantly:

We really felt You were with us. You demonstrated Your power in so many ways:  You showed the Prince of this World who was Boss and didn't let him further torment us; You made a spectacular way over the things that impeded us--by answering our prayers; by giving us miracles, God-moments and God-appointments.  We saw lives changed and progress in our walk with You. Every day was another demonstration of Your mightiness, Your provision and active engagement in our lives. 

Yes.  So, here's the question that the desert asks us: When did God stop being God? Remember: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." (Heb. 12:8)  

"God is not human, that he should lie,
not a human being,
that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act?
Does he promise and not fulfill?" (Number 23: 19)

Maybe our past seems so golden because we were way more aware of God working in our lives, or maybe the challenges were not so great that we could meet them ourselves.

Now, it seems God isn't as involved as He was, or the challenges are so great we can't meet them ourselves. 

Let's take a peek at how God answered the cries of His people: "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." (Ex. 15:25).

What wood had God thrown into your bitter water?

The cross. 

Next: 

"There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test. He said, 'If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.'” (Ex. 15:26)

God wants us to remember where rebellion can take us:

"See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called 'Today,' so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said:

'Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.'

    

"Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief." (Heb. 3:12-19)

Anguish is not rebellion.  Deep sadness is not rebellion.  But losing sight of God's faithfulness in the past and thinking He is not going to provide for us now, and then consequently growing cold in our love and trust in Him...that is the danger zone for us.  The danger zone of rebellion. 

God does not cease to work or make Himself known to us because we are in the desert.  He wants us to know even more deeply because of the desert just how much He is still with us.  Look how He refreshed His people after the bitter water experience: 

"Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water." (Ex. 15:27) 

They were still in the desert.

But so was God.

And so is God.