FBC Morning Light – February 2, 2023

I hope your week has been going well, and let me start off asking you this question.

Has this ever happened to you? You go to church on Sunday morning and come in the auditorium, you're looking forward to worshiping together, the opening hymn is one of those good, majestic, soul -stirring hymns like, holy, holy, holy, or how great thou art, or something of that nature, and you just move through the service and it all just flows.

You get the flow. You actually get the flow. You have a good reading of the

Psalms, and you're singing the song from the psalter that goes with the psalm, and you see the connection there, and that psalm particularly speaks to you that particular day.

Then there's the hymn before, the message that you get how it ties in together with the message, and then you open the

Word, and the Lord speaks to you, and it encourages you from the Word, and you just end the service praising the

Lord for his goodness and his grace to you, and you're just warmed in your heart, and you're thrilled with just all that God has done for you in your life, in your salvation, all that he's done even in that service that morning, and even maybe doubly so if this was a communion

Sunday, and we commemorated the Lord's Supper together, and you remembered what

Christ did for you on the cross, and you just leave the service that day just elated, just praising the

Lord for how good he is to you, and you get the family in the car, and you drive home, and get some things together for lunch, and you sit down at the table, and you look at what's on the plate, and on the table, and you turn to your wife, and you say, what's this?

Is this all we got? Bologna on white bread again?

Can't we come up with something different? You say, that would never happen in our house.

Probably not, but if it did, it wouldn't be the first time something like that's happened.

In fact, today in our Bible reading plan, we're reading in Exodus 15 and 16, Matthew 24, and Psalm 24, and Exodus 15 begins like one of those glorious worship services that fills your heart with praise and with joy.

It's the Song of Moses, the beginning of Exodus 15, so that means it takes

Exodus 15, 1 to verse 21. It ends with the chorus of Miriam, as she sings to the

Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and its rider he's thrown into the sea. And this song was motivated and stimulated by the experience that the

Israelites just had. They'd come through the Red Sea, God graciously delivered them through the sea on dry land, and they turned around and looked as the

Egyptians were coming after them, chasing after them, and God miraculously caused the sea to fill back in again, and completely destroyed those enemies that were out to kill and destroy the

Hebrew people. So consequently, it says, then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the

Lord, and spoke, saying, I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea.

So this whole celebration of praise begins and ends in the same way.

Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. Great season of praise.

But then the next thing you read is that Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, that place of deliverance, the miraculous deliverance and so forth, the conquering, the

Lord conquering the enemy. And they went into the wilderness of Shur, and they went three days in the wilderness, and they found no water.

And what did they do? They came to Marah. They could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter.

Therefore, the name was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, what are we going to drink?

What are we going to drink? And the word complained, it's a little stronger than what the word complain means.

The Hebrew word communicates a grumbling, a severe growling even in the tone of their voice.

They're growling at Moses, what are we going to drink? They've gone from ecstatic praise to grumbling and growling at Moses, because they don't have anything to drink.

I can certainly understand the thirst and the longing for something to drink, but where is the

Lord? The Lord who gave them great victory, the Lord who is still leading them with this pillar of the cloud, why are they not bowing before him and appealing to him to meet this particular need?

Why are they grumbling? Because they're people like you and I are. We can go from a morning of great praise and rejoicing and thrilled with what the

Lord has done and celebrate in a morning worship service, and we can go home at lunch and we can grumble with what we don't have to eat or grumble because of what's put before us.

We can be just like these Israelites. Clearly there's a challenge here, isn't there?

And the challenge is to be people of praise and not to be a people who grumble when we don't get what we want or what we think we need.

And instead of grumbling, we simply bow humbly before the Lord and we let our requests be made known unto the

Lord. That's it. That's it. Let's not go from praising to griping.

Let's go from praising to praying if there's a need. And so our

Father and our God, we do thank you this morning for this challenge, because truly we're all prone to this very thing, how easily we can go from the mountaintop of praise and rejoicing to the valley of grumbling.

Deliver us from it, we pray. And this we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well listen, you have a good