John 6:41-43 (How The Gospel Breaks Our Grumbling)

The Shepherd's Church

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Pastors need a lot of grace, it's true. I've spoken before and given a sermon illustration on the universe and the galaxy, and one of our scientific -minded brothers reminded me that I have no idea how the universe and the galaxy works.

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The same will be true today as I introduce this message with a thing called algorithms. I had to look this up this week to even understand what it means, but it's not actually all that complicated.

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I know we're tempted to think, if we're not computer -minded, I actually am fairly good at computers, but we're tempted to think that algorithm is this sort of complicated thing that only experts can understand in the field, and maybe

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I'm missing it, but it seems like to me that it's just a list of steps and processes that will help you get to a desired conclusion or outcome.

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That's all that it is. It's if this happens, then that will happen. That's called an if -then algorithm.

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It's not actually all that complicated. We do this all the time in our life. We use algorithms to help us process the material world around us.

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For instance, if it's cold outside, then we'll wear a coat, maybe.

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Actually, I'm not one to talk. I barely wear a coat. It's a chip on my shoulder from being from the South, I guess.

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You're not going to get me, New England. If it's raining outside, then we'll grab an umbrella.

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These are things that we think through, these sort of if -then relationships that we have. They're conditional algorithms, and they help us come to conclusions about what we're supposed to do in our life.

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Now, this is one of the most common types of algorithms, is the if -then algorithm, and we use them all the time for both simple and complicated things.

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For instance, if I haven't eaten in 12 hours, then I will be hungry. That's a simple algorithm. A more complicated algorithm will be if I put a slab of butter in the pan, and if I turn on the heat, and if I grab the bread, and if I grab the cheese, and if I smoosh it together and put it on the pan and flip it at the right time, and if I do all those things, then

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I'll have a grilled cheese. That's a little bit more complicated algorithm, and we use algorithms to even put robots and rockets into space.

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They're just simple rules that help us get to a desired outcome. Now, the reason that I bring that up is because I want to give us an algorithm today for the sin of grumbling.

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I think in the Bible, there's this algorithm, there's this list of rules that actually work, that if we evaluate them, we'll understand why we grumble against God, and this is what it is.

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If I have a low view of God, and if I have a high view of myself, then

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I will grumble. If I have a low view of God and a high view of myself, then

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I will complain, and I will grumble against God, and that, of course, gives us dire consequences.

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It harms our relationship with God, and as Christians, that means that we need to repent, and the Bible's full of that message.

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But what I want us to do today is I want us to look at this thing called grumbling, and we're going to do something a little different than we normally do.

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Normally, I start with the passage after I finish the introductory remarks. I start with the passage we're going to be talking about, and I often look back to the

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Old Testament, and I look to Jesus, and I bounce around a little bit. We're going to start in the Old Testament today, and we're going to build our way towards the gospel of John because grumbling is defined for us, it's described for us, and it's demonstrated for us all in the

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Old Testament Scriptures. So when we understand what it is, how it's defined, demonstrated, and described, then we'll turn to John, and then we'll see how

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Christ is the only hope. That's what we're going to do today, so let's pray. I ask the Lord to be gracious to us and help us to understand his word.

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Lord God, I pray right now that even in my great weaknesses, and even though,

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Lord, I am a grumbler at heart, and even though, Lord, I fail in this area so many times, that,

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Lord, you would give me grace to be able to preach your word right now. You would give all of us who sin in this area so much.

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It's almost become an acceptable sin. Lord, I pray that you would give us grace to hear the truth of your word about what grumbling is and how dangerous it is.

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And, Lord, I pray that in that grace that you would allow our eyes and our face to turn to Jesus Christ, the only hope for our salvation and the only hope for our sanctification.

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And that, Lord, that you would teach us even how to deal with the problems that we have in our world and deal with the pains that we have in our life and the betrayals that we have faced and everything else,

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Lord, that causes our hearts to grumble. I pray, Lord, that even something as simple as an if -then relationship that we're talking about with grumbling,

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Lord, that it would help change us. It would help convert our hearts. It would help even us to trust the

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Holy Spirit's work in our life so that we would grumble less and glorify you more. In Christ's name, amen.

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So let's start with describing grumbling. Grumbling, when the Bible speaks about, is an attitude of contempt against God.

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It is complaining, yes, but it's more than complaining. It's embittered vexation against God.

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Embittered vexation against God. A grumbler will look at their circumstances with confusion and disgust, and instead of asking

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God, please help me, they'll look at God and they'll shake their fists and say, why are you doing this to me, God? That's what happens when we grumble.

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And there's three phases, really, in the life cycle of someone who grumbles. There's the first phase where you're frustrated at the situation.

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And you say, God, why is this happening to me? Or, God, are you really with me?

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You're frustrated at what's going on in your life. The second life cycle is you become frustrated with God, and your questions turn from, are you with me,

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God, to, God, why are you doing this to me? And then the third phase of grumbling is where you turn against God, where you're no longer angry at the situation, and when you're no longer frustrated at the fact that God is not showing up, you're now angry at him, and you're turning against him, and you're saying,

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God, you're unjust. God, you're not good. God, you're wicked.

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See, grumbling, ultimately, if we don't repent of it, leads us into this sort of self -righteous victimhood where God has acted out against us.

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We've minimized God. We've maximized ourself, and the inevitable consequence is that we will grumble.

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We take on the role of a prosecutor and a judge against God. We ask God questions like, why did you let this happen to me?

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Why didn't you intervene in my life and my story and my circumstances? Don't you know how I feel about this,

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God? And when we ask those sorts of questions, they're not really questions, are they?

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They're like statements dressed up like questions, hurled at God like hand grenades. That's what they are. Think about it this way.

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If you go up to your boss and you say, why are you so bad at your job?

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That's technically a question. It starts with an interrogative pronoun, and it ends with a question mark.

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It's technically a question, but your boss isn't going to hear it that way. I remember during the Trump years, which was just a few months ago, the media used to do this all the time.

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Why are you killing people? Because you don't wear a mask. Or when a wife says to her husband, when are you going to grow up?

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She's not actually asking to find out the answer. She's not saying, you know, I was really thinking about this. When are you really, when are you going to grow up?

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I'm just curious. It's a statement weaponized as a question, and we do the same thing to God.

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When we look at God and we say, why did you let this happen? What we're actually saying to God is you don't love me.

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You don't care about me. You either weren't powerful enough to save me, or you were, and I wasn't that interesting enough for you to intervene.

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That's grumbling. When we do that, we not only become the prosecutor of God, we become the judge of God, and we raise our gavel and we indict

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God, and we say, you were wrong. You're not fair. You're unjust.

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And it's this sort of secret anger that boils underneath the surface. That's what grumbling is.

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And at the heart of it, it really functions as we know better than God on what we need in our life.

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I know what I need in my life more than God. I know what I need in this relationship more than God. I know what I need in my finances more than God.

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I know what I need in every aspect of my life more than God. And that's actual foolishness. We're living in a sort of false reality when we do that because we know so little.

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We occupy about, depending on your size, three square feet of real estate for about, at most, 80, 90, 100 years.

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That's it. We have such a small, miniscule point of view on reality, and yet God is infinite in every way.

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He's existed eternally. He's existed everywhere all at one time. He knows everything that ever was.

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He knows everything that ever could be. He knows everything that ever is. God doesn't only know just what's actual.

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He knows what's possible. There's not a single piece of data that God doesn't already know, which means we are laughably limited in comparison to God.

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And yet we accuse Him. And yet we complain about God. We say things like,

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God, why did You give me this spouse? Look at her or look at him. What's so funny about that is your spouse is saying the same thing.

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God, why did You have me be single? Obviously, You don't know what I need. You don't know what my hearts are and my groanings are.

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God, why would You do that to me? We complain about our bodies because we don't look the perfect shape and the perfect figure and the perfect everything else.

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We complain about our kids because they swing on the chandeliers instead of doing their schoolwork. We complain about the lack of kids.

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God, why can I not get pregnant? Or why can I not have a child? Or why is so -and -so or this or that? We complain about everything.

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We're addicted to it. We minimize

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God, His power, His love, His grace, His authority, His plan, His mercy.

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We maximize ourself, our priorities, our opinions, our situations.

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And when we do that, we always grumble against God. So with that context,

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I want to define grumbling very simply as that anger -fueled complaining at God that always occurs when we put ourself and our plan above Him and His plan.

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We believe God is too small to help us. We're living in a fantasy land, like we've already said. When we believe that we are too big to fail, we're living in a delusional world that we see happen all throughout the

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Old Testament scriptures of people who believed that they were too big to fail and that they were so important that God had to intervene in their life and their situation or else

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God is unfair and unjust. We live in this sort of binary, false binary equation that either

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God is going to show up in my life or God is not good. That's ridiculous. Because yes,

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God is infinite. Yes, we have problems. But the way that God shows up in our life is always good.

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It's not based off our definition of good. It's based off His definition of good. In the

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Old Testament, God says, for I know the plans I have for you, plans to bless you, plans to build you up and establish you.

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He gave that right before He destroyed Israel. His good plan for their life was their city was burned to the ground.

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His good plan for some of our lives is that we would get cancer. His good plan for our lives for some of us is that we would lose something that we care about more than anything so that we could see that He is more powerful and better than everything.

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God is always working good in our life, but it's not always the way that we define it. And if we define it wrongly, we will grumble.

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Now this happens all throughout the Old Testament Scriptures. It's everywhere. It's right there in the very beginning.

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If you've been at Shepherd's Church long enough, even three weeks, you'll probably notice that one of the things that we always mention is

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Genesis 1 -3. Everything begins in the foundation story. Everything begins right there in the garden.

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All the things we struggle with are right there. And we see this happening in Adam. What does

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Adam do? Adam is put into a garden, and then almost days after it begins, he's complaining about God.

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Look at what happens. He sins. He eats the fruit. God comes to him and says, Adam, what have you done? And then what does

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Adam say? It's the woman you gave me. He's saying there's two people,

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God, that can be blamed right now, and I'm not one of them. He's saying it's the woman's fault.

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She wasn't paying attention when I was giving her the theology lesson on which fruit we were not supposed to eat. He's saying she wandered off and went to the grocery store looking for new fruit, and I don't know where she went.

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You know me, I don't like to shop. He's saying,

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God, it's not me, it's her, which means it's also God because God's the one who made her. So if he's saying that it's her fault, then he's also saying that it's

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God's fault. He's saying, Lord, I was just in the garden minding my own sweet, innocent business, doing my job, naming animals, and you knocked me out, first of all.

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You put me under the knife, and I had surgery. When I woke up, I had a rib missing, but I'm not gonna lie because I was actually super happy about it because this woman was beautiful and wonderful until she started bringing all this trouble in my life, and now,

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God, you're to blame. Now, I'm dramatizing. None of that is actually in the Bible. It's almost like Adam is trying to evoke a return policy because there's a manufacturing error, and he wants a new model.

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None of that's in the Bible, but I think that was in Adam's heart. See, he wasn't accepting responsibility for anything that he's done.

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He's passing the blame off on Eve and onto God. He's minimized

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God, maximized his grievances, and therefore, he grumbles. It's always true.

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Eve does the same thing. You can't just pick on Adam. God turned to her, and he looks for an explanation, and she said,

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The serpent is the one who deceived me. You can imagine Adam saying, It's not my fault.

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You can imagine Eve saying, It's not my fault. Where was Adam? He was grumbling on and on about theology.

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I didn't understand what he was talking about, and all I was trying to do was to feed my family with some interesting new fruit that I found, and where was he?

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He didn't protect me. He didn't come after me. He didn't guard me. He didn't tell me, Don't do that. He just sat back and watched like a spineless man that he is.

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That's maybe what Eve is saying, and she's saying, He didn't protect me, and God, because you gave me such a weak man, you didn't protect me, and how often has this argument played out over history between male and female?

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We pass the blame. We don't accept responsibility for our own sin, and ultimately, we point the finger at God.

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Now, what I find so fascinating about this account is that the serpent was the only one who was wise enough not to blame

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God. The serpent, which means that sin is so powerful in our lives that it reduces our character down below what even

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Satan finds appropriate. Satan, as nefarious and deplorable as he is, never in the

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Bible grumbles against God. Never in the Bible blames God. That means that when we sin, when we blame

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God, when we grumble, we're doing what hell won't even do. It's like a drug dealer who refuses to do the drugs because they're bad for you, but has no problem giving them to the people and leading them into all kinds of pain and misery.

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It's like a pharmaceutical company that will make the drug but won't take the drug because they know what's in it and they know the list of side effects that they ramble off at the end of the commercial.

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It's like the fast food company CEO who won't eat the Big Mac. He's eating kale while they're peddling all kinds of calories to the rest of us.

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It's a sort of hypocrisy, but it's also a sort of wisdom. If you know it's bad for you, why would you do it?

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Satan himself will not grumble against God, but he's happy if you will. He's happy to lead you into sin.

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James says, this is Jesus' brother in the New Testament, even the demons believe God and they shudder.

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Which means that the demonic faith believes God, fears

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God, and knows who they are. They don't minimize God. They don't maximize themselves. They know how low they are.

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They know how condemned they are and they know how awesome God is, so they won't even complain, but they're happy for us to.

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Human beings in our sin, we don't tremble when we come into the presence of God. We don't fear God. We don't shudder at His holiness.

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We don't guard our lips with the same passion that demons do. Most of our life is spent laughing at the commands of God or yawning at the praises of God.

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We do the unthinkable when we speak out against Him. Now, let's be objective for a moment.

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It's easy to look at Adam and Eve because they're very far removed from our situation. It's easy to look at, well, the pagans do this, the atheists do this, the naturalists do this, everyone else is doing this, but the

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Word shows up in the Bible the very first time with God's chosen people. It's God's chosen people who are the ones who grumbled first as far as the

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Word is concerned. That's the first time it shows up is in Exodus. These same people who saw

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God bring them out of Egypt with a mighty hand, who saw Him fight for them, who saw them overthrow their oppressors and save their children from the waters of the

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Nile, the same God that they saw keep them safe from the plague so that they wouldn't get sick and so that none of it would touch them, the same

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God who they saw save their firstborn sons and kill the firstborn son of Pharaoh, this same God that they saw do all of that whenever they get to the waters of the

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Red Sea, whenever they get right there on the edge of it and they see this pitiful little army chasing after them.

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They're afraid and they're in terror and they grumble because they've now minimized God and they've maximized their circumstances.

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They do it even though they've seen the evidence of who God is. Look at what happens in Exodus 14, 10 through 11.

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As Pharaoh drew near, the sons of Israel looked and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them. And they became frightened, so the sons of Israel cried out to the

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Lord. Now, this is not where it goes wrong. When we're frightened, we should cry out to God. When we're scared, we should pray.

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This is not where it goes wrong. Verse 11 is where it goes wrong. Then they said to Moses, it is because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness.

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Why have you dealt with us this way in bringing us out of Egypt? Do you see what they're saying?

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They're asking questions weaponized as statements. They're saying, God, your character is such that you have tricked us.

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You've done good things to us to woo us out of our slavery and now you're going to kill us and bury us in the desert.

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They're saying, God, you're evil. You're capricious. And we don't trust you.

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That's what they're saying through those questions. They're minimizing God, but they're also maximizing their circumstances.

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They're looking at Pharaoh's army as if Pharaoh's army is going to absolutely destroy them. And let's be honest, it was the biggest army at the time in the ancient world.

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It was a powerful fighting force. But yet in that moment, they forgot who God is and they forgot who they were.

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And what does God do? In their sin, God could have struck them down.

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In their sin, He could have let the Egyptians conquer them, but He didn't. He was gracious.

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Everyone looks at the Old Testament and says, God was so angry and so mean. No, you're reading it wrong.

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God was so gracious. God saved sinners in the Old Testament time and time again.

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And in this particular scenario, He saved them and rescued them in the most dramatic and awesome way. He split the waters of one of the largest bodies of water in that entire region completely into water to dry ground.

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They walk over to the other side. They're looking at the Egyptians who are chasing after them and they watch the mercy and the salvation of God when those waters come crashing down and eviscerate the

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Egyptians. They saw the hand of God. And in Exodus 15, it tells us that for 21 verses, they broke out into one of the greatest worship services that exists in the entire

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Old Testament. They were praising God because in that moment, they got to see who He was and who they are.

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And let me tell you, this is a little side note, but I think this is important. You go through pain and you go through trials and you go through persecutions and you go through all kinds of things so that you can see how small you are, so that you can see how big

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God is, so that you will stop trusting in you and you'll start trusting in Him. That is why God gives us problems and trials and circumstances to make us mature and complete and lacking in nothing.

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The Israelites were not equipped to go into the promised land without the Egyptians chasing them and threatening them because they needed a bigger vision of who

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God is. And we're not ready to stand before King Jesus in heaven yet because God has not called us home.

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And until He does, He's going to test us. He's going to bring us through trials. He's going to bring us through things that are so hard that they're going to break us, that they're going to cause us to weep.

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But He's doing that for your good so that you will not trust in you, but you'll trust in Him.

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And human beings have to learn through pain because that is how stubborn we are. God showed

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His grace to these people who were prone to grumbling. But in their sin, that is all that they could ever do.

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They were addicted to it. And you know, sin is so powerful that human beings can't break it on their own. So we see the same group who's worshipping on the shore grumbling just a few verses later.

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This is what happens in Exodus 15, 22 through 24. Then Moses led

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Israel from the Red Sea. So they're just worshipping. Worship service in full effect. They're packing up their drums.

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They're getting ready to walk. Like, this is where they're at. And they went out into the wilderness of Shur, and they went three days in the wilderness, and they found no water.

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And then they came to Marah, and they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore, it was named

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Marah. So the people grumbled at Moses and said, what shall we drink? What I find so fascinating is, is that they were just worshipping at a large body of water, and now they walk up to a kiddie pool, and they're like,

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God, what are you going to do? God just split the waters of the ocean in half, and now they come to a poisoned little pond of water, and they think, what's

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God going to do for us now? That doesn't make any sense. That's how efficacious sin is in our minds, that we forget who

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God is. The same God who split the waters can make the waters potable to drink.

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And yet they forgot who God was. They minimized Him, they maximized them, and it made them grumble again and again and again.

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72 hours after the greatest miracle, arguably, that happens in the entire Old Testament, and they're already grumbling again.

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And if not for the grace of God, so would we. So would we.

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They do the same thing in Exodus 16, 2 through 3 when it comes to food. Then they set out from Elam, and all the congregation of the sons of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin.

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That's a pretty appropriate title, even though I don't think that's what it was there for, which is between Elam and Sinai on the 15th day of the second month after their departure from the land of Egypt.

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And the whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the sons of Israel said to them, it would have been better if we died by the

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Lord's hand in the land of Egypt when we sat by pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full, for you have brought us into this wilderness to kill the whole assembly with hunger.

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What I find fascinating is that God tests them with water and food because those are the two most basic elements of human life.

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Because He wants them to see that they can't even trust themselves for food, they can't even trust themselves for water, they have to trust

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God to provide for them in every single circumstance. And instead of relying on God to provide, they're accusing

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Him of being wicked. This is the same people who saw all of the miracles of God, and yet, the moment that they don't have food, they're complaining and grumbling.

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And look at how they maximize themselves. They say, we used to sit around pots of meat, and we used to have bread that never ended.

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I think they're misremembering their history a little bit because they were in slavery, they were being whipped, they had swords on their back, they were crying out to God, God, save us or let us die.

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Isn't that funny how often when we go through pain we misremember our history too? We think, I wish that I could go back in that moment or that time when things were better, but in that moment and that time, if you remember clearly, you were complaining then too.

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That's how powerful sin is in our life. When we grumble, we minimize the power of God, the love of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God, and we maximize our pain, and we maximize our trial, and we maximize our opinions, and when we do that, we grumble.

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We make ourselves and our thoughts bigger than God, and that poisons our heart, and it causes us to protest and complain and grumble.

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Now, the Bible has a lot to say about how God feels about that sort of thing. Now, we've described grumbling, we've defined grumbling, and we've demonstrated it in the

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Old Testament. Now, let's look at how God feels about it. This is the same

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God when they grumbled, he sent plagues on his own people, the same people who saw him deliver them from plagues before.

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He sent fire upon them for grumbling. He unleashed vipers upon them for grumbling. He gave them sicknesses in their camp because of grumbling, and in one story, he even opened up the earth and swallowed an entire group of people who were grumbling against him.

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So God cares deeply about our complaints. Imagine if you were on the road, and you were driving, and someone was sitting in a yellow light refusing to go through the intersection, which is maddening, and you hurl a complaint, and God up in heaven finally is finished with you, and he says, enough.

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And then the earth opened up, and you go tumbling down some cavernous dark hole to the core of the earth.

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That would be exactly what we deserve in that moment. We don't actually think that way, though. We think that grumbling is so normal, and complaining is so normal, that God really doesn't care.

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It's one of those sins that he overlooks, like when we go to the all -you -can -eat buffet, and we eat too much. Well, that's just an acceptable sin. It is.

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It's something that the Lord has convicted even me about, because while my metabolism is slower than it used to be, the way that we treat our bodies is an indication of how we love our

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Lord. The way that we complain is an indication of what we think about God. All throughout the

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Exodus narrative, God was provoked to fury against his people.

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In Numbers 14, God even says that he would wipe them off the face of the earth.

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Moses interceded for them, and he said, God, don't do that, because the nations would think and would believe that you're unjust.

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God already knew that he was going to rescue them, but he used Moses in order to do it. But he doesn't let them off.

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He actually punishes them, and their punishment is severe, and their punishment is a paradigm for you and I even today.

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Numbers 14, 26 through 29 says, The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, How long shall

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I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against me? I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they are making against me.

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Say to them, As I live, says the Lord, just as you have spoken in my hearing, so I will surely do to you.

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Your corpses will fall in this wilderness. Even all your numbered men, according to your complete number, from 20 years old upward, who have grumbled against me.

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So what we see happening is when we minimize God, maximize ourself, we grumble in God's heart for the grumblers that they would be banished from the presence of God, incapable of entering into the promised land with God, cursed to wonder in their sins.

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That's the paradigm. It happens with Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden, cursed to wonder, banished from the presence of God.

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That's the paradigm for what sin does to us and its consequence. That's what happened to Israel, and that's what will happen to you and I if we live in our sin and continue in our sin and die in our sin.

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We will be cursed to wonder for an eternity in hell, refused entry into the paradise of heaven, banished from the presence of God.

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That is the paradigm for what sin does to us. Now let's move to John 6, and let's see how this is exactly what they were doing in that passage as well.

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So this is what John 6 says. Now the introduction's over. Therefore the

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Jews were grumbling about him, this is Jesus, because he said, I am the bread that has come down from heaven.

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Now let's stop just a second because I find this fascinating. When Israel in the Old Testament grumbled against God, they grumbled against a

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God that they could not see, that they could not touch, and they grumbled against a God who had not yet fed them.

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This crowd grumbles against a God that they can see because Jesus Christ is right in their midst, they can touch, they actually tried to grab him and make him king, and they're grumbling against a

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God who's already fed them. Now let's ask the question, we know sin is offensive to God, but this sin's worse.

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They're grumbling against a God that they can see who's just done a miracle right in front of their eyes and their bellies are full even asking for it.

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They're grumbling in a way that even their ancestors wouldn't grumble. Can you imagine how disrespectful this must have been to the father who opened up the earth to crush his adversaries, and yet his own son, they're spitting in his face right in front of him and grumbling against him, and God only by his mercy is holding back his hand of judgment.

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The text continues. They were saying, is not this

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Jesus the son of Joseph whose father and mother we know? How does he now say,

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I have come down out of heaven? And Jesus answered and said to them, do not grumble among yourselves.

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No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

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Now we're gonna go into detail about that last verse next week. What I want us to focus on this week is the fact that they don't even see who

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Jesus is. Remember I said that grumbling is maximizing ourself and minimizing our

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God. They are doing both of those. They don't even see Jesus as divine. Their objection is not about his divinity.

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They have no category for a triune God who comes down in flesh and dwells among his people. They don't even reference him in that way.

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They say, we know your father and we know your mother and you can't have come down from heaven. They're looking past his divinity and they're just saying, you're just like us.

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No, he's not. They're denying his divinity right now, which means that they're minimizing him and they're actually performing a great idolatry in the presence of Christ.

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They're also maximizing their own circumstances. They're looking for a Moses -like prophet who's gonna feed them day in and day out, like we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

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They're looking for a new King David who's gonna lead them in freedom to Rome because their opinion of what the

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Messiah was gonna do was more important than what Jesus actually came to do. Jesus didn't come to free them from a political power.

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He came to free them from a spiritual power that was gonna keep them bound forever in hell. That's a greater enemy than Rome and that's a greater enemy than Israel and yet they looked right past Jesus and they looked and they said, you're not what we thought you would be, therefore we're gonna grumble against you.

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You're not feeding us like Moses fed us when yet Jesus, when they finally, if they were to finally understand what kind of feeding

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Jesus is talking about, he's not talking about physical bread. He's talking about a food that will never fail, that will satisfy our souls for all of eternity.

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We feast on Christ as Christians and we are never hungry. This is what's going on in John and the consequence to this crowd is the same that it would be to Adam, to Eve and to Israel.

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In the end of their life, they'd be banished from the presence of God, cast out of the promised land of heaven, cursed to wander in their sins.

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That's the bad news and that's what each and every single one of us deserve in our sins. There is no one here who has not grumbled against our

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God. There's no one here who hasn't for a single moment believed that God didn't love you.

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When you believe God didn't love you, you're saying, God, you're not loving. There's not a single person here who's questioned

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God's power. There's not a single person who's questioned God being present in your life, wise enough, interested in you, concerned enough about you, strong enough, gracious enough.

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We've minimized God throughout our entire life. We've provoked the fury of God through our low view of God our whole life.

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And we provoke the fury of God with our high view of ourself. How many of us have maximized a diagnosis and our hearts were so gripped in fear, we thought,

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God can't heal me of this. God can't do anything with this. Or we've looked at a sickness and we've asked

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God, why aren't you healing us? We've looked at an addiction. I know so many men who cry out to the Lord and they say,

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God, why aren't you taking this lust away from me? What they're saying is, God, I don't trust you.

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I don't think that you're powerful enough. I don't think that you're good enough. I think that you're leaving me in my sin on purpose.

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That's what we're saying. And none of us would ever say it that way, but our questions are saying it that way. We're disappointed.

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We're broken. And we complain. All of us. And one complaint is enough to send us to hell.

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Do you know why? Because one sin against an infinite God deserves an infinite consequence.

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When you and I sin against each other, it requires a finite consequence. That's why we have the court system and that's why we have finite consequences.

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We have to pay a fine or we have to serve a term in prison or whatever it is when we commit a sin against another human.

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When we commit a sin against God, it's infinite. Because God is infinite. And that infinite consequence is an eternity in hell.

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That is what each and every single one of us deserve. But now I want to end on the good news of the gospel.

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Because Jesus didn't come so that we would continue to be abandoned. Jesus didn't come so that we would continue to be grumblers.

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Jesus didn't come so that we would continue to be stuck in our sins and lost forever. The reason he came was to rescue sinners just like us.

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I find it so fascinating that Jesus does the exact opposite of what we do.

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We minimize God. We maximize ourself. Jesus did the exact opposite in his life because he was breaking the vicious cycle of sin.

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Jesus, though being in very essence and fully God, denied himself. When they were talking about Jesus, when is this going to happen?

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When is Jerusalem going to be destroyed? He says, the Son of Man doesn't know the day or the hour. In Jesus' divinity, he knew the day and the hour.

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But in his humanity, he was emphasizing and showing you and I how we're supposed to live.

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We minimize ourself and we maximize God. When they asked him who's good, he said, don't call me good. Only God is good.

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Jesus is good. But in that moment, he was demonstrating to us how we are supposed to live.

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We don't live looking at ourselves. We live looking at God. We live minimizing ourself and maximizing him.

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Every moment of Jesus' life was about the glory of God. He lived in such a way that magnified the love of God and the wisdom of God and the mercy of God.

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And in his life, you're talking about minimizing yourself. In his life, he was born in a manger in a little town called

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Bethlehem. In his life, he didn't have a place to lay his head often.

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In his life, he went through bouts of poverty. In his life, he went 40 days and 40 nights with no food in the middle of a wilderness, being tempted directly by Satan himself.

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None of us have been in that spot. In his life, he was mocked and slandered and discredited and rejected.

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He was lied about. In his life, he was crucified in the most awful and hideous way.

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They took him and stripped him naked and they beat him and they pushed a crown of thorns down into his skull until he was disoriented and could barely walk up the hill of Calvary.

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He went down to the bottom of what humanity can go to show us how big God is.

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We have to minimize ourself and maximize our God. Jesus did that perfectly and he did that perfectly on the cross.

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On the cross, Jesus accomplished both. He made the most, he made much of God on the cross.

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He glorified God greater than he had ever glorified God in anything that he had ever done on the cross and even at the same moment where he was reduced down to almost nothing.

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He was made low so that God would be made much of it and what we see happening there is that is how salvation was accomplished for you and I because we can't do that.

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The goal of salvation is not go imitate Jesus and do what Jesus did and then

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God will look at you and he will save you. You can't do what Jesus did. That's why we needed Jesus to come.

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What salvation is is that Jesus did what you and I could not do so that he could put a new power inside of us that we could not do on our own so that we could start living the life that Jesus called us to live.

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The Christian life is not go live like Jesus and then God will save you. The Christian life is die to yourself and look to Jesus, minimize yourself and look to the

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God who's maximized and then by believing in him, he'll put a new power inside of you. He will come inside of you and live and dwell and he will help you do that very same thing.

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What I love about this is that it actually helps you and I who struggle with grumbling because it's not our power who's changing us.

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Every year we make new New Year's resolutions.

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This year's New Year's resolution was that I would go to the gym. I think I've been three times. In our power and our strength, we can't change ourselves but that's the glory of the gospel is that his power at work in us can help us change.

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You and I who are prone to grumble, we need to look to Jesus who it says in Hebrews 12 to fix or the author and perfecter of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and he sat down at the right hand of God.

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What Jesus was doing was he's looking beyond himself and that's what Jesus is calling you and I to do in our life is to look beyond ourself, look beyond our hurt, look beyond our pain, look beyond our brokenness and look to Jesus.

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We have to look beyond ourself to his death. We have to look beyond ourself to his resurrection and his ascension and now him reigning in power.

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When someone wrongs you and I, we have to look beyond ourself to know that we've been righted in Jesus Christ.

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You see how that works? When someone hates you, we have to look beyond ourself and know that God has already declared that he loved us.

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You see how that works? When you look at yourself, you start worrying about the offense and you start worrying about the pain and then you start grumbling against God but when you look beyond yourself, every accusation that could ever be hurled at you is untrue because of Christ.

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Let them say that they hate you, you're loved. Let them say that you're rejected. No, you're not, you're accepted. That's what the gospel does.

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If your body's broken in pain, look beyond yourself to the day that you will be healed and you will dance in heaven because every single one of your joints will work perfectly as they were intended.

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If you have relational needs that are not getting met, look beyond yourself to the fact that you have the perfect husband in Christ.

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You have the perfect one who loves you and you will never be abandoned, you will never be forsaken. If you're persecuted, shout for joy.

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If you're stuck in traffic, sing a song of praise. If the government is broken, and yes it is and yes it always will be, remember, look beyond yourself and realize that you're a citizen of heaven.

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The remedy to grumbling is to maximize our looking to Christ, to minimize our looking to ourselves and that will change us from someone who grumbles to someone who worships.

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Let's pray. Great job. Lord, thank you so much for the simple truths.

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Lord, it is so easy to look at our life and our circumstances and the things that we think we don't have and to look at the things we do have and be upset about those things and Lord, it's so difficult to live with contentment.

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It's so difficult to say that this pain that I have right now is not cause for me to complain, it's cause for me to rejoice.

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It's so difficult to look at a broken relationship, a broken marriage, a broken body, a broken everything, to look at that and to say

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I'm not going to complain against my God because I know that he loves me. I'm going to worship. I'm going to lay myself down and I'm going to praise you because you are worthy.

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Lord, this is something that we cannot do as humans. We are addicted to our grumbling. Holy Spirit, I pray that you would help us.

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Holy Spirit, I pray that you would help me. This week I grumbled because one of my kids ate the last hockey in the bag.

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Lord, I pray that you would cure my grumbling heart. You would cure our grumbling hearts and you would cause us to look to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross.

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Lord, none of us have ever went through a cross and yet Jesus had joy there. I think he expects us to have joy here.