Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why We Complain | Torah | Exodus 16

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

We live in a culture of discontentment. Do you find yourself grumbling about life? Do you feel dissatisfied with what you have? In today's episode, Keith shares how complaining impacts both today's culture and Israel's culture in Exodus 16. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Exodus 16 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. My name is Keith Simon, and right now we're going through the Book of Exodus. Okay, we're getting ready to dive in to Exodus 16. But in order to help us understand what God wants to say to us, I want to share a couple little interesting thoughts. First, we're comfortable with the word selfie. It's a word we use all the time, and it's a word that feels like it's been around forever, but it hasn't. The first time selfie appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary was in 2013, and yet there's not a word that captures the spirit of our age better than selfie. Here's the second thing.

Houses are getting bigger, families are getting smaller, and yet storage centers are full. They're having to build more and more because people who live in bigger houses with smaller families have so much stuff. They don't have anywhere to put it, so they rent a storage center. What in the world do people put in the storage center that they can't put in their house? But that captures our moment too, doesn't it? It's a culture of accumulation. All right, here's the third thing. I saw an ad for a counselor that said that if you're not completely satisfied, you can have all

your money back. Now, who's completely satisfied with anything? I'm not completely satisfied with myself or my church or my dinner or anything. Much less a counselor, how does this counselor plan to stay in business if they say that people get their money back if they're not completely satisfied? All right, so now in Exodus 16, here's where we find Israel. They're sitting around by a beautiful spring called Elam. They've got water.

It's a really beautiful area. They're getting refreshed and encouraged. Sometimes there are seasons in the Christian life in which you're kind of getting fed and you feel really strong in your faith. Well, that's where they were, but you can't stay there forever. So they head out into the desert. And as soon as they get into the desert, we read in verse two, the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.

Grumbling and complaining are sins that keep appearing in Israel. They grumbled at the sea where they accused Moses of bringing them into the desert to die. Then they grumbled because they didn't think they had enough water. Grumbling is contagious. If you start grumbling on your team or your school or at your job or in a family, all of a sudden everybody's grumbling. Here's what the Israelites say in verse three. If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt.

There, we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted. But you've brought us into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death. Really? I mean, that's an amazing verse because it says something about our ability to deceive ourselves. How could they get to the point where they said, back in Egypt, we had the good life, and now it's hard? I mean, it's turning out that you can get these people out of Egypt, but you can't get Egypt out of them. One of the things that we learn about our grumbling and complaining is that underneath it all is this idealized view of what we don't have. They idealized what Egypt was like. It was time of

sitting around pots of food and we had it so good. We have a tendency to idealize what our life could be like if it were somewhere else or if we'd have made a different choice. I could live in a big city or I could live at the beach or I could live in the mountains or I could have taken that job. I could have married this person. I could have done so many things. And if I had done those things, my life would have been perfect because we idealize what our life would have been like how do we made another set of choices. But you know what? Reality can't live up to that because our idealized view of life, well, it's not real. The second thing we see is that underneath all are complaining is this belief that our circumstances are the key to our happiness. The Israelites,

are complaining about their meal plan, but their complaining and grumbling are bigger than any one issue because their complaining isn't really rooted in their circumstances but in their heart. Our complaints are really not caused by our outward circumstances. Our complaining reveals the inward condition of our heart. It turns out we've mastered the ability to be unhappy anywhere because no matter where we are, we'll figure out a way to complain about it. If circumstances determine people's happiness, then everybody who lived on the ocean in California would be happier than people who lived in North and South Dakota. I mean, the weather on the ocean in California has to be a lot better than in the Dakotas. But what they find is that when somebody moves from

the Dakotas to the beach, that they say that they're happier for a short period of time, but pretty soon their happiness levels out to where it was when they live in the Dakota's. So it turns out that your circumstances don't really make you happy, but we tend to believe they do, so we complain when our circumstances don't go the way we want. Here's another thing we learned from Exodus 16. Underneath all our complaining is a discontented heart. I mean, the Israelites really didn't have anything to complain about. It turns out they weren't running out of food like they claimed that they were, because in the next chapter, we find that they still had flocks and herds, things they could have milked or even eaten if they needed to, so they weren't starving.

In Psalm 78, it reflects back on this time in Israel's history, and it says they willfully put God to the test by demanding the food they craved. I mean, that really puts the spotlight on their heart, doesn't it? The food wasn't necessary for survival. The food was something that they craved. They wanted something they thought would make them happy. In Exodus 16, God graciously meets their needs. Even though they're complaining, he's gracious and patient with them, and he reigns bread from heaven on a daily basis to take care of their daily needs. Moses and Aaron ask,

Who are we that you would grumble against us? I mean, you're not really grumbling against us, but against the Lord. The people had grumbled against Moses. They'd grumbled against their circumstances. But God says, really, all your complaining is directed toward me. Now that's an important insight about the sin of complaining. All our dissatisfaction, all our discontentment, all our unhappiness, all are complaining, all our grumbling is ultimately directed against God.

We think we're taking out our frustrations on someone else, but God always takes our complaining personally because he knows that when we're complaining about our circumstances, our leaders, our government, our church, whatever it is, that really what we're doing is finding fault with him because he's the one who has provided for us. we're saying, God, you have not done a good enough job giving me the things that I deserve. And that takes us to the fourth thing we learned from Exodus 16. Underneath all our complaining is a false view of ourselves. Complaining always starts with thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to. Complaining starts with a posture of pride. It starts with an attitude that says, I deserve better.

Here's a great quote. I'm not exactly sure who said it, but catch it. It's really good. The person with a discontented heart has the attitude that everything he does for God is too much and everything God does for him is too little. Let me just say it again. The person with a discontented heart has the attitude that everything he does for God is too much and everything God does for him is too little. See, if I think too highly of myself, then I will believe that I'm owed something. I'm not going to be thankful because I think I'm entitled to what I got plus better. The bigger the sense of entitlement, the smaller the sense of gratitude for what I do have and the more complaining about what I don't have. Because the reality is that my sinful mind can always convince me that

anything I want, I'm entitled to. And if I'm not getting something I want, well, then somebody in the universe must be messing up and they owe me and they ought to pay for it. So an entitled, deserving mentality is underneath all that complaining. Maybe you've heard of Stephen Hawking. Maybe you've heard of Stephen Hawking. He's this brilliant scientist who died a few years ago. He had a motor neuron disease that he was diagnosed with at age 21. So he was trapped in this rapidly decaying body, but his mind was as sharp as ever. Anyway, you can read about him if you want, but here's what I want you to walk away from his life with. One time he was asked how he keeps his spirits up. How was it that he was able to be happy to be joyful, to keep his spirits up, to keep working hard in the field of

science. And here's what he said. My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus. What if we had our expectations reduced to zero? Because we know that what we deserve is God's judgment and he's been gracious to us. He's forgiven us. He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. He hears our prayers. He watches. He watches. us. He loves us. He has a plan to do good to us. And one sign of his goodness is that he's given us Jesus. Remember that God provided manna or bread from heaven to provide the dietary needs of the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. In John 6th, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. So Jesus is saying, I am that bread that comes down out of heaven. I am the bread that will really

satisfy your life because he goes on to say whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty see when the Israelites had that bread that god provided they got hungry the next day and then they ate what god provided and they got hungry the next day and it just went on and on and on but jesus is saying that i am the true bread of life and if you come to me if you believe in me if you find your satisfaction in me then you'll never be hungry you'll never be thirsty because what Jesus is saying is that he is the bread that we really want. He is all will ever really need. Therefore, let us do everything without grumbling and complaining. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk

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