“Quick to Complain” – FBC Morning Light (2/23/2024)

Gratitude in Times of Difficulty

Well, a good Friday morning to you. Here we are looking forward to another weekend, and trust that God is going to bless you this weekend with a good time with God's people, worshiping the Lord and just praising Him for all of His goodness to us and His mercy and His kindness.

I want to remind us of that, that God is good and gracious and merciful and kind to us, and He blesses His people, and He provides and meets the needs of His people. Sometimes it's especially important to keep that in mind when we are going through times of difficulty, times of change, when things are different from what we're used to and so on.

What I'm getting at is what we find in our Bible reading in Numbers chapters 11 to 14 today, and chapter 11 begins with the people complaining. Let's make no mistake about it, we don't want to sugarcoat it, we don't want to pretend that it's anything other than what it is, but this was an arduous time period for God's people.

There's a couple million of them, we think, that had left Egypt and they're in this wilderness, and this would have to have been a difficult thing. There's no question about it. However, God was leading them to a place of bounty and a place of blessing and a place of abundance, and this difficult time that they were going through to get from point A to point B was in itself an act of God's blessing.

If they're going to get to the Promised Land, they've got to go through this process. If they're going to enjoy all the bounty and the blessings of Canaan, well, they've got to deal with the desert of Sinai.

And so it is a period of difficulty, there's no question about it, but the challenge is, in those times of dryness and darkness and difficulty and pain and so forth, the challenge is that we don't end up being a complaining and griping people.

Chapter 11 begins with saying, when the people complained, it displeased the Lord. In times like that, when we're so given to complaint, it's easy for us to look at the past through a filter, the filter that filters out all the bad and only looks at what we remember as good.

This is what the mixed multitude did. It says in verse 4, the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving, so the children of Israel also wept again, saying, who will give us meat to eat?

All we have is this manna stuff, this manna stuff, this bounty from the Lord that came every day, enough to provide nutritionally and physically satisfying for everybody. Every day, it was provided. They got tired of it.

And then looking back, they looked back through the filter that left out all the bad, and what did they see? They saw when they were in Egypt, they ate cucumbers and melons and leeks and onions and garlic, and they had fish to eat, and they had all this kind of stuff.

They seem to have forgotten about the bondage and the misery and the taskmasters and the beatings and the incessant labor where they had no time to hardly rest. They forget all about that. This is what we do when we have succumbed to a complaining spirit.

We forget the hardship of the past. We remember only the glory, the good things, the gold of the past, and we are actually looking at the past inaccurately. Why? Because we're miserable now. At times like this, we can complain about our circumstances, and we can then complain about the leadership that God has put over us.

Complaining Against God-Appointed Leadership

This is what happens in chapter 12 with Miriam and Aaron. They spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married, and they said, has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?

We can not only complain about our circumstances, but then we can become nitpicky and complain about those whom God has placed over us. When you read these chapters, and the complaining isn't going to stop anytime soon, then let it challenge you to avoid that kind of spirit, a complaining spirit that is just never satisfied with what God has given, and a nitpicking spirit that just looks at the little things and picks on the little things at those whom God has placed over you.

Instead, let's cultivate a heart of gratitude. Be thankful for the manna, and be thankful for the leadership that God grants to us. These are his gifts, these are his blessings. So our Father and our God, I pray that you would deliver us from a complaining spirit, the kind of heart that is never satisfied and can't be grateful for the good gifts that you give.

Deliver us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, have a great weekend, and may the Lord bless you in it, and gather with God's people on the Lord's day, won't you? Have a good day. God bless.