Amen. Please remain standing and open the pages of the scripture in your hand to the book of Exodus chapter 16. Tonight we are looking at the entire chapter, but I will be reading the first eight verses. but will cover the entire teaching in this precious chapter, chapter 16. Exodus 16, verse 1 to 8 for our reading tonight. They set out from Elam, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elam and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month, after they had departed from the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the people of Israel said to them, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt. when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full. For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.' Then the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day. I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily. So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, at the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we that you grumble against us? And Moses said, When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him. What are we? Your grumbling is not against us, but against the Lord. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father, your Word is truth. And now we ask you to sanctify us by the truth of your Word. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Are you a grumbling person for self-examination tonight? Would you say complaining to God is one of the things that you struggle with as a Christian? Well, maybe, you know, when we hear a question like that, We might respond by saying, well, maybe that's the case with me, but what's the big deal? It is just complaining. It's just grumbling. It's not like killing someone or lying or stealing or committing adultery. It is just grumbling even to God. Well, in Numbers chapter 14, in Numbers chapter 14, verse 26 to 30. This is what we read in the Scripture concerning the problem of grumbling and murmuring in Numbers 14, beginning from verse 26. And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. Say to them, as I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing, I will do to you. Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number listed in the census from the 20 years old, and upward who have grumbled against me." You see, my friends, grumbling is a sin. It is a very serious sin against the Lord, against God. In the eyes of God, grumbling, murmuring is a sin. Our ladies in the church, I remember them studying the book by Jerry Bridges, The Respectable Sins, Confronting Sins We Tolerate. A very good book. In that book, the author mentions grumbling, having a grumbling heart, a grumbling attitude toward God as a sin that we often easily overlook or tolerate. You know, deep in our heart, we say it is okay. It is okay. It's not equal to shedding the blood of someone. It is not equal to committing adultery. No bloodshed, no harm. It's okay. It is one of the respectable sins in that book. Now, we are not talking only about unbelievers who does not know God, have no relationship with God. Of course, they will complain. Of course, they will grumble. But tonight we're talking about our believers, about believers. We're talking about you and I. Believers also grumble. Believers also complain all the time. We all complain. We all grumble. Parents, we often grumble about our kids. Kids, you grumble about your parents. Husbands, sometimes we grumble about our wives, and wives do the same. But we all together as believers, we sometimes grumble against God. This sin, the sin of grumbling, was a besetting sin for Israel. A sin that the Israelites struggled with continually. And tonight we'll learn three things about grumbling, or from Israel's grumbling. First, I want us to consider grumbling as a sin that distorts the past. You see that in verse 1 to 8, grumbling distorts the past. And then secondly, grumbling dishonors God in verse 8. And then I want us to see what the solution is, and the fact that God, the God of grace, the God of mercy, shows His grace to grumblers. He shows his grace to those who murmur against him. The root of grumbling, my friends, is blindness to God's grace. It's blindness to God's grace. So first, we consider the sin of grumbling as a sin that distorts the past. Listen to verse 1, 2, 3. They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month, after they had departed from the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel Grambling against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. Now remember Moses told them, your grumbling is not against Aaron and against myself, it's against the Lord. But what is sad here is about two million people, one congregation, were in one accord. They agreed to get together to do one thing, to complain, to grumble against God. The whole congregation came together, not to sing like what we were doing earlier, not to worship, not to encourage one another to do the will of God, but to complain, to murmur against God. You see the seriousness of this sin. You just go back and remember what God has done for them. How merciful God has been to these people. Dividing the Red Sea into two and making it stand on both sides and have these people pass and walk on a dry land. preserving the life of these people from all those plagues in Egypt, providing water, providing food to them. And what they do is complaining, grumbling. And it wasn't like, you know, few people in Israel, you know, oh, you know, five, six ungrateful people. That was bad for Israel. Few bad people, no, the whole congregation. was in a business of not worshiping God, not praising him, not crying to him for help, but grumbling. The Lord just solved the drinking water problem, and now they are grumbling. You see, grumbling causes the heart to go back and to try to distort the past. Listen to what they said to Moses. And the people of Israel say to them, with that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. You see what they are saying? Moses, Aaron, Our hearts are remembering Egypt, the good old times in Egypt. Was it a good time? They were slaves. They were not even eating meat. It's a lie. They were slaves. And now they are saying, that was a good time. Now, let me tell you this. If you are grumbling now, right now, I'm sure you were grumbling in your old days. Yes, there were God's blessings pouring upon us. He has been good to us. But there were times we complained and grumbled against God. And you see how they are distorting The past, we see this in Exodus chapter 2. Listen to what Moses tells us in Exodus chapter 2, verse 23. During those days, the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their life was a life of what? Groaning. Groaning. And now they are saying, that was a good time. In Exodus chapter 17, verse 1 to 3, all the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord and come at But there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink. And Moses said to them, why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? But the people thirsted there for water and the people grumbled against Moses and said, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us? Us and our children and our livestock with their thirst. Why did you bring us out of Egypt? Moses came to deliver them, not to kill them, not to destroy them. There are times in our Christian life, even in regards to our salvation, Jesus came to save us. Jesus came to deliver us from the power of sin, hell, and death. But we complain, we grumble, as if we haven't received anything. Paul, in his epistle, said, do all things without grumbling, without murmuring. Secondly, grumbling not only distorts the past, but it also dishonors God. In verse eight, Moses told them this, in verse eight. And Moses said, when the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling, that you grumble against him. What are we? Your grumbling is not against us, but against the Lord. You see what Moses is telling them? Your grumbling is sin against God. You're sinning against your God, against the good God, the kind God, the God who delivered you from Egypt, the God who provided all your needs. Grambling first and foremost is against God, who is the provider, Jehovah Jireh, the Lord, our provider. How can the heart of any people, anyone who believes in God, grumbles against God, knowing that he is Jehovah Jireh, the Lord who provides? A complaining spirit indicates that something is not right in your relationship with God. It is saying to God, you're not taking care of me. You're not listening to me. I don't think you are working all things for my good. I don't think Romans 8, 28 is true, Lord. That's what grumbling does. I don't believe in your promise anymore. I don't think it's true. I look at what's happening to me. I look how I'm struggling. I doubt your love. That's what grumbling does. And it starts with God. It starts being against God, and then it goes to our fellow man. We grumble among one another. We murmur. because we are blind to the grace of God. You know, Grambles blinds our heart, blinds our mind, so that we will not remember the goodness of our God, will not remember the mercy of our God, or the provision of our God. The problem with complaining is that the heart that complains does not trust that God is big enough to help and good enough to care. It's a very serious sin, my friends. Very serious sin. Two things. First, the complaining heart. doesn't trust that God is big enough to help, strong enough to help. The disciples, one time they were on the boat, Jesus was sleeping, and then the storm came. Remember what they said to Jesus? They woke him up and they said, don't you care that we are perishing? Aren't you good enough to save us? That's, you know, they were complaining, they were grumbling, why do you leave us in this situation? Where are you? Where is your power? Where is your strength? Don't you care? It was not only lack of faith, but they were grumbling, they were murmuring. One time Peter asked Jesus, he saw him walking on the water, and Peter asked him, Lord, I want to walk on the water like you. And Jesus told him, go ahead, walk on the water. And then he started looking at the wind, the storm, all the chaos around him. He started sinking into the water, into the sea, cried for help. And Jesus told him, you of little faith, why do you doubt? Sometimes we think our God is not big enough to help us. big enough to meet our needs. Now let's think about the solution. What is the solution? You know, God told Moses, okay, I hear they're grumbling. I know these people, Moses. But I'm going to give them the manna. I'm going to give them bread from heaven. And this is what really amazed me this week as I was studying chapter 16. What came down from heaven was bread. It was not fire. It was bread. It was not a plague to destroy them. You know, God would have said, enough is enough. I'm going to send fire on these people. But what rained upon God's people was manna. Remember what Jesus said about manna. It was I coming down from heaven as the bread of life. It was pointing to me, the bread of life, John chapter 6. We grumbled against Him. We say to God, You are not enough to save us. And He gave us Jesus to die on the cross for us. Instead, He punishes us. You know, our God is the God who saves grumblers, who saves murmurers like us. The grace of God was appeared to save those who grumble. But you and I, we need to be very, very careful. We need to be in prayer all the time, that as believers who have been tested that God is indeed good. We need to overcome the sin of grumbling, the sin of murmuring toward God, toward one another, about the church. Instead, we come together, help one another, pray for one another. We grumble. We murmur. And that is a sin. What is the solution? The solution is to trust God. In verse 4, then the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I'm about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day that I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not. I'm going to test them. The solution is to trust God. In verse 15, we see God giving them the manna. The manna was rained and it came down from above. You know, John Calvin, I love this, you know, the way he describes the manna in four ways. First, it was not interrupted for 40 years. It was a miraculous bread. It was enough to feed millions of people every day. A remarkable bread. And then the other nations didn't have it. Only the people of Israel, only God's people. It was a miraculous bread. In Psalm 107, Psalm 107. The psalmist talks about the sufficiency of our God to his people, 107 verse 9, for he satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul, he fills with good things. Isaiah 55, 2, that great invitation in Isaiah 55, 2, why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Come to me. Come to God. He will satisfy not only your belly, but your soul. That should bring us now to John chapter 6, where the Israelites, where the religious leaders in Israel asked Jesus, what miracle would you perform? Moses performed that miracle in the wilderness. He gave our fathers the manna, What about you? Jesus told them, no, it was not Moses who gave them the manna. It was my father. And he did that for this purpose. That that bread which came down from heaven would point you to me, the bread of life. Jesus said, I am the bread of life. Whoever believes in me will not thirsty and will not be hungry. Amazing, the gift of God to the gamblers. We grumble, but God meets us, not with His wrath and punishment, but He meets us by His grace. the grace of God to the grumblers, to the murmurers. That's how God saved us, through Jesus Christ, who is the bread of life. He satisfied our soul through the work and the merit of His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. Let me ask you this, to whom was the manna given? grumblers, murmurs, grace to the murmurs. Psalm 136, one, give thanks to the Lord for his loving kindness endures forever. His loving kindness, his chesed, loving kindness, unconditional love, mercy, and grace endures forever. We even have a hymn in the Trinity hymn now that we often sing. The grace of God exceeds our sin, exceeds our murmuring, exceeds our grumbling. Grace to the grumblers. Amen. Let's pray. Gracious and heavenly Father, bless your word, the message of your word into our hearts. Use it to turn us from being grumblers to thankful people, people who are content with what we have and what you have done for us through your son Jesus Christ. Enable us by your grace to overcome the sin of grumbling, the sin of murmuring. Lord, grow us in this area. Make us a thankful people than grumbling people. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.