You know, I think all of us here have heard of Murphy's Law. You know the basic premise says if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.
What you may not know is that Murphy's Law has eight corollaries, and here they are. Corollary number one, and whatever it is, it will go wrong at the worst possible time. Corollary number two, if there is the possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will do the most damage is the one that will go wrong. Corollary number three, the more desperately you need something you're looking for, the more likely it is that you've thrown it away.
And conversely, if you hold on to something in case you ever need it, you will most likely go to your grave having never used it. Corollary number four, nothing is as easy as it looks. Corollary number five, if you fiddle with something long enough, you'll break it. Corollary number six, the line that you're in always moves the slowest. Corollary number seven, no good deed goes unpunished.
And finally, corollary number eight, if everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. Now, I don't know who this guy Murphy was, but if you were to tell me that he was one of the Israelites that followed Moses out of Egypt, I would totally believe you. Because those guys displayed this very same kind of negative, critical, fault-finding, complaining attitude as our friend Murphy displayed. Nothing was ever right for these guys. Something was always wrong for these guys. They spent their whole lives griping, complaining, and murmuring about everything. Well, that's what we want to talk about this morning. We want to talk about murmuring, griping, complaining, because you know, the Israelites are not the only people to have ever done this.
As a pastor for 26 years, I have discovered that we as followers of Christ have a tendency to do this too. So what I want us to do is go back 3500 years this morning and look and see what happened with the Israelites, and then we're going to bring all of that forward and we're going to talk about you and me. So if you brought a Bible, I want you to open it with me to Exodus chapter 16. If you did not bring a Bible, reach under your armrest right next to you and you'll find a copy of the Bible. We're going to be on page 51. Page 51 in our copy, Exodus 16 in your copy.
And remember where we are here. The Israelites have crossed through the Red Sea and they've gone south in the Sinai to a place named Marah. Here, of course, God turned bitter water into sweet. From there, they went further south to a place named Elam, where they camped out for just about a month. Here's a map and you can see where it is. And then verse one of this chapter says, then the Israelites set out from Elam and came into the wilderness of Zen, which is between Elam and Mount Sinai. Again, our map, as you see the Israelites heading towards Mount Sinai. And folks, this is where trouble erupted.
Watch verse two. And once again, the Israelites began to grumble against Moses and Aaron. And they said, If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt, there we sat in Egypt around pots of of meat and and we ate all the food we wanted. But you have brought us out in this desert to starve us to death. Now, remember that the Israelites had been eating food that they brought out of Egypt with them.
But now these provisions were pretty well gone. And so here they are grumbling and complaining and murmuring. Now let's stop for a moment before we go on, shall we?
And let's ask the question. Well, what exactly is murmuring anyway? Well, friends, murmuring is a symptom.
It's a symptom of a deeper issue. And let me illustrate the issue to you. You remember in Matthew Chapter 20, the parable about Jesus, that Jesus told about the landowner who hired people workers and sent them out in his vineyard.
In case you don't, let me review it for you. Jesus told the story of a landowner who hired a bunch of men to go work in his field at six a.m. and he agreed to pay them one denarius, one silver coin. Well, then he hired some more people at nine a.m., some more people at noon, some more people at three p.m., some more people at five p.m., and sent them all out into the field without committing himself what he was going to pay them. At the end of the day, he started by paying the five p.m. workers first and he paid them, excuse me, one denarius. Well, the guys whom he had hired at six a.m., they said, wow, this is great. They said, this is wonderful. If he paid them one denarius, he's certainly going to pay us more.
We've been out there all day. And when he got to the six a.m., folks, guess what? He paid them one denarius. And here's what the Bible says. Verse eleven, Matthew 20. And when they got their pay, the six a.m. group, they began to murmur. Aha, there's our word. They began to murmur against the landowner.
Now, stop. Why did these men murmur against the landowner? Well, they murmured, friends, because things didn't go the way they wanted them to go. They thought they got a raw deal. They thought they'd been treated unfairly.
Things didn't go the way they thought they should have gone. Now, my point here is not to explain this parable in all of its fullness. My point is just to illustrate why people murmur. We murmur when we feel we've been treated unfairly. We gripe when we feel like we've been given a raw deal. We complain when things don't go the way we want them to go or the way we feel they should go.
Murmuring is just a symptom. You know, a few years ago, I got up one morning, I was getting ready to come into the office, and I went downstairs and I smelled gas. So I traced it over to my hot water heater, and I could get down on my knees and smell gas around the hot water heater. And I said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, not good.
You know, it was kind of old anyway. And I thought, oh, geez, I'm probably going to have to replace this thing. The guy from the gas company is going to come out. He's going to cut off the gas in the house. I'm going to have no water. I'm going to have to call a plumber.
It's going to cost me 500 bucks, 1,000 bucks, who knows. So we called the gas company. I went on in the office. He came over. He checked the hot water heater out, found it was just a couple of loose connections.
He tightened them up, gave the hot water heater a complete bill of good health. And Brenda called me up, charged her nothing. And Brenda called me up at the office and told me about all of this. And you know what I said?
Here's what I said. I said, oh, man, just my luck. I mean, nothing ever goes right for me. Why can't God cut me a break?
I mean, here I am serving God with my life, and he does something like this to me. Did I say that? No. No, I didn't say that.
Why? I said, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.
That's wonderful. Friends, we don't gripe and murmur and complain when things go the way we want them to go. The Israelites didn't gripe and complain when things went the way they wanted them to go.
They griped and complained because things didn't go the way they wanted them to go. And you know what? When you and I murmur, it's for the very same reason. Now, what did God do here in Exodus 16? Well, look at verse 11. And the Lord said to Moses, I've heard the murmurings of the Israelites.
Tell them at twilight you will eat meat. And in the morning you will be filled with bread. And then you shall know that I am the Lord. Verse 13. So that night quail came and covered the camp. And in the morning there was a thin layer of dew around the camp.
And when the dew evaporated, the surface of the ground was covered with thin flakes like frost. Verse 31. And the Israelites called it manna. And the Israelites ate manna for 40 years. They ate manna until they reached the border of the promised land. So in His graciousness, God stepped in and He provided for the Israelites in spite of their murmuring.
But this does not mean that their murmuring was good. This does not mean that God appreciated it or that God liked it. Friends, and Moses expresses this to the Israelites. Verse 6. So Moses and Aaron said to the Israelites, they said in the evening when the quail come, you will know it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt. And in the morning when the manna comes, you will see the glory of the Lord.
Watch now, because He has heard your murmurings against Him. Friends, Moses said it wasn't our idea to bring you out here in the desert. The Lord was the one who brought you out of here.
You're where you are today because this is God's will for your life. Verse 7. Moses said, Who are we? Moses and Aaron, that you should murmur against us. Verse 8. Your murmurings are not against us. They're against the Lord.
Folks, God sees murmuring and God sees grumbling as a direct complaint against Him, and He sees it as an act of rebellion against how He has chosen to run our lives. We see this again in Numbers chapter 11, verse 4. Then the Israelites began to crave other food and began to complain again. And they said, If only we had meat to eat, we remember the fish we ate in Egypt, as well as the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic.
Breath issues. Verse 6. But now we've lost our appetite because we never see anything but this manna. Manna, manna, manna, manna, manna, manna, manna. We're sick of manna. Now, I'm sure the Israelites had come up with every creative way imaginable to fix this manna stuff. I'm sure they had baked manna and broiled manna and fried manna and stewed manna and fricasseeed manna. I'm sure they had sunny-side-up manna, scrambled manna, over-easy manna, manna omelettes. They made manna cakes and manna pies and manna rolls and manna burgers and manna cottie.
That's funny. But you know what? Any single thing we eat all the time, every day, I mean it gets old. By December the 1st, you are sick of turkey.
And by January the 1st, you are sick of ham. I mean that's just the way it is. So you say, well then Lon, what you're saying is it was completely human and understandable that they were complaining about manna. Friends, what I'm saying is it was completely human but it was ungodly and it was wrong. And the reason it was wrong is because manna was God's will for them. Manna is what God had chosen for them. God could have caused cucumbers and leeks and onions and garlic to fall from heaven every night but He didn't. He caused manna to fall every night and by murmuring about manna, what these Israelites were really doing is questioning God's wisdom, questioning God's plan for their life and rebelling against God's will for their life. That's why a little later in the book of Deuteronomy, referring back to the events of Numbers 11, Moses said about the Israelites, they murmured in their tents, watch, and they rebelled against the Lord.
You see the connection? So let's summarize. Friends, as followers of Jesus Christ, murmuring is more than just an outward expression of the fact that we don't like how things are going. Murmuring really amounts to saying that God is not running our life correctly.
It really amounts to saying that we know better than God does what's best for us and it really amounts to saying that God's perfect plan for our life is not perfect in our opinion, it is flawed. Now, this is as far as we want to go in the passage because we want to stop and ask our most important question at this point. You know what it is, so are you ready? All right, here we go, nice and loud. One, two, three. Yeah, you say, Lon, say what?
Say broiled manna, fricassee, manna, manicotti, whatever. What difference does any of that make to my life today? Well, I think what we're talking about makes a lot of difference and in the time that I have left, I want to answer two questions and then we're done. Question number one, as followers of Jesus Christ, why is murmuring bad for us to do? And number two, as followers of Christ, how can you and I defeat murmuring in our lives?
So let's answer these two questions and we're done. First of all, why is murmuring bad for us to do? Well, folks, there are lots of reasons why it's bad. Reason number one, it makes us unpleasant people to be around. Reason number two, it makes us the tool of Satan in the church and around the work of God.
Reason number three, because it makes us depressed and compromises our immune system and there's all kinds of other reasons, but friends, none of them are the most important reason. The most important reason why murmuring is bad to do is because murmuring makes God mad. Murmuring provokes God.
Listen to these verses of scripture. Numbers 14, 11, and when the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, God said to Moses, how long will these people continue to provoke me? In Numbers chapter 16, when the Israelites murmured against God in a mighty mutiny led by two men named Korah and Abiram, here's what the Bible says. God says these men provoked the Lord.
And in Psalm 78, referring to the Israelites, your habit of murmuring and complaining in the desert, the Bible says again and again, they provoked God in the desert. You might say, well, Lon, I don't understand why God would get so upset about a little bit of complaining. Well, friends, the reason is because in God's mind, a little bit of complaining is not a little thing.
Murmuring is not a little thing. He sees it as a direct challenge to his sovereignty in our lives. He sees murmuring as a direct insult to his wisdom about how to run our life. And he sees it as a blatant act of spiritual disrespect and impertinence.
Now, let's agree. God showed unbelievable patience with the Israelites and with their murmurings. But you know, folks, at some point, God's patience ran out. We see that in Numbers chapter 16. Remember I said there, there were two men, Korah and Abiram, who led this massive mutiny of murmuring against Moses and Aaron.
Korah and Abiram, if you read the story, came to Moses and Aaron number 16. And they said, hey, you guys, we don't like the way things are going around here. You two guys lead us out here into the desert to play king and prince in front of everybody.
And it's great for you. But we're all starving to death and dying of thirst. And we don't like it. We don't see why you need to lead us.
We think we ought to lead us, blah, blah, blah. And Moses said, I don't like y'all's attitude. And God said, I don't like their attitude either. And so God sent a plague on all these grumbling mutineers and killed 14,700 of them right there on the spot. And then God called fire, caused fire from heaven to fall and incinerate 250 of the movement's top leaders. And then in an act of special judgment reserved just for the two ringleaders, Korah and Abiram, Moses said number 16, 26. Then Moses warned all the Israelites to move away from the tents of Korah and Abiram verse 31. And as soon as Moses finished speaking, the ground under these two men split open and swallowed them up, them, their families, their tents, their possessions, and everyone standing near them. They all went down alive into the pit.
And then the earth closed back over them and they were gone. And all the Israelites said, it is not good to murmur. And friends, I'm here to say to you as a follower of Jesus Christ by the word of God, I'm here to tell you today, it is not good to murmur. Why do I have to be here? Why can't I be over there? I hate my parents. I hate my job.
I hate my boss. Why am I single? How come I don't have more children than I have? Why come I got an old car? How come I get another?
I can't get a financial break. I don't like this and I don't like that and I don't like the other thing. Watch out. Watch out. This makes God mad.
And he doesn't appreciate it. Murmuring is not a good thing to do. This is why the Apostle Paul said in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 10, 10.
He warns us as Christians, do not murmur, he says, as some of the Israelites did and were killed by the destroying angel. Now all of this leads us to question number two, and that is how then can you and I as followers of Christ defeat murmuring in our life? It's such a human tendency. We're also prone to do it.
How do we beat it? Well, folks, if we're going to eliminate murmuring from our lives, we need to first figure out what the root cause of it is. Why do we do it? Friends, the root cause of murmuring is our belief, listen, that we know how to run our lives better than the Lord does. That is what lies at the heart of this. Did we know how to run things for us better than the Lord does? Certainly that's what lay at the heart of the Israelites' murmuring problem. They said being back in Egypt is better for us than being out here in the desert where God's led us.
They said eating cucumbers and leeks and garlic is better for us than eating this manna stuff that the Lord gave us. They said having somebody else lead us is better for us than having Moses lead us like God decided. And they said being slaves in Egypt is better for us than going to some promised land that the God has picked out for us. In essence, what they were saying at every turn is, hey, our plan is better for us than the Lord's plan. And when you and I murmur, my friends, this is exactly why we do it. For the same reason, we analyze the circumstances of our life, we figure out exactly what we believe is best for us, and we go to God and we inform him of what that is.
And then when God doesn't do what we want, when we want, the way we want, how we want, we murmur, we gripe, we complain, just like the Israelites did. Now, folks, if this is the root cause of murmuring, then the solution for murmuring becomes crystal clear. The solution for murmuring is, number one, to reject the idea that we really know what's best for us. Number two, to accept the idea that only God really knows what's best for us. And finally, number three, to trust God's choices for our lives, moment by moment, day by day, event by event, without reservation.
Let me repeat that. The solution to murmuring is, number one, to reject the idea that we know what's best for us. Number two, to accept the idea God knows what's best for us, and then to trust his choices.
That's how you solve it. This is exactly what the Old Testament St. Job did. Remember, God allowed Satan to destroy Job's home, his livestock, all of his children. Then God allowed Satan to inflict Job with boils all over his body. And what did Job say? Job went around and said, oh, man, I can't believe this. How could God let this happen to me? I mean, I'd have said that. No.
Look what he said. Job 1 21, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
Watch either way. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And the Bible goes on to say in all of this, Job did not sin by charging the Lord with wrongdoing.
What enabled Job to rise up and not murmur and complain in the midst of some really tough circumstances? Friends, his focus was on the wisdom of God in running his life. And he said, all right, if this is what God's chosen, then you know what?
I embrace it as best for me, whether I understand it or not. And that's how he was able to say the Lord gives and the Lord takes away either way. God's run in my life. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And what we see here with Job is that the antidote for murmuring is for us to have this same kind of deep, abiding, unshakable totalitarian trust in God's plan for our lives.
The same kind of trust that Job had. You know, as many of you know, 14 and a half years ago, or for the last 14 and a half years, Brenda and I have cared for a severely disabled little girl named Jill. In fact, I'll show you a picture of Jill. And, you know, Jill's doing much better now, thank the Lord, than she was in the early days, thanks to some new medicines and some new therapies. But for the first 10 years of Jill's life, her situation was dire. She had over 5,000 grand mal seizures in those years. We were constantly spending the night in chairs in the hospital. We knew the people on the rescue squad by first name, and they knew us by first name.
They were at our house so often. Finally, in December of 2000, Jill lost the ability to walk. She lost the ability to stand up by herself. She even lost the ability to sit in a chair.
We used to have to take a little strap and help strap her in a chair so we could even feed her or else she'd roll right out of the chair. And we went to see the doctor at that point, and I will never forget, he said to us, you know, he said, Lon and Brenda, I just think that all these seizures have caught up with Jill, and I think we're going to lose her. And he said to me as I walked out the door, he said, if you have any final arrangements that you need to make, he said, if I were you, I would suggest working on them.
I'll never forget that. Now, friends, I can't even describe in words to you the anguish that we went through in those first 10 years, the heartache, the pain that we went through. And I would often cry out to God in confusion. I would cry out to God in desperation. And in all the pain that we were going through in agony, I would cry out to God. But I want to tell you something that even in our lowest moments, Brenda and I held ourselves accountable for something. We held ourselves accountable for reaffirming biblical truth every day. We held ourselves accountable every day for praying together and saying, you know what? This is God's will for us. We held ourselves accountable for reaffirming every day that we were right where God wanted us to be, that Jill was right where God wanted Jill to be, that our other children were right where God wanted them to be, and that all of this was God's plan and that God's plan is perfect, whether we understood it, whether we liked it or not. We held ourselves accountable for that. And you know, I can tell you that as a result, honestly, as bad as it was, and it was bad, I can tell you that to the best of my knowledge, to the best of my knowledge in those years, we never murmured against the Lord. And Brenda and I learned a very important lesson in those 10 years. My friends, we learned that the only effective firewall in our life against murmuring, against complaining against God, is for us to see our circumstances, is for us to see the events of our lives through the lens of biblical truth.
That's the only effective firewall. For us to see truth number one, that God has a perfect plan for our life, and the key word there is the word perfect, Jeremiah 29 and 11. For us to see truth number two, that God is in total command of every detail of our life, just the way Job saw it. And for us to see number three, that God never makes a mistake in anything He sends our way, He's already decided how He's going to turn it into good, Romans 8 28.
And friends, based on those pieces of biblical truth, we found that that gave us the ability to rise up with Job as hard as it was many days, and to say, you know, the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Now Jill's doing much better today. She's walking again. She's standing again.
She walks around the block every evening with us. Praise God for that. But it could have gone the other way, folks.
It could have. But either way, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord, whatever He does, because He's running the show and He doesn't make any mistakes.
And I say, well, Lon, this is all great. I understand what you're saying, but this is all in the Old Testament. You know, how do we even know God still agrees with any of that?
What are you kidding? But just in case you need some New Testament reassurance, how about Philippians chapter two, verse 14, Paul says to us, Do all things without murmuring or complaining that you may show yourselves to be children of God, who are above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you will thus appear as lights in the world. Friends, when we're going through tough times, Paul says, and we don't murmur and we don't complain and people come to us and they say, how can you be facing this with such a great attitude? And we're able to say, because we have a living God who's running our life and He doesn't make mistakes. And I trust Him, even though I don't understand, we become lights to a crooked and a perverse generation.
You understand what he's saying? And so I have a suggestion as we close. My suggestion is that you take a little sign and you put it on your refrigerator. You put it on the dashboard of your car. You put it on your desk at work. You put it on your locker at school. You hang it over the dining room table. Here's my sign.
You ready? Let's show it to them, Cheryl. There's my sign.
What do you think? And that we trust the living Christ to give us such biblical perspective on life that, friends, we're able to deal with anything He sends our way and say with Job, you know what? Lord, you give and sometimes you take away, but either way, I'm going to bless your name. No murmur in here, God. No murmur in here.
Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thank you for reminding us today that as people, it's really tough to go through life and not complain and grumble and murmur. First of all, everybody around us is doing it. And second of all, it's just part of our human nature when things don't go the way we like. And often in your plan, they don't go the way we like, at least at first. Lord, it's just human nature for us to gripe and murmur, but I thank you for speaking to us today biblical truth and reminding us that you understand murmuring as a direct complaint against you and that you take it personally and that you don't like it. And that as followers of Jesus Christ, this is something that we need to deal with in our lives. And Lord, we can fix it by just simply demanding from ourselves, holding ourselves accountable to seeing our lives through the lens of biblical truth. So God, change our lives because we were here today. Change the very way we see the world because we were here today and we sat under the Word of God and we learned from your Spirit. And I pray you'd give us a very different week this week, Lord, because we were here and we pray these things in Jesus name. In God's people said, Amen. Amen.
