Eric begins by reminding us to be thankful for God's blessings instead of grumbling about our circumstances. He uses the example of the Israelites who, despite witnessing God's miracles, grumbled about their hardships in the desert. They complained about various things: the bitter water, lack of food, dangers, and even their leaders, Moses and Aaron. This constant grumbling displeased God, leading to serious consequences.
Eric emphasizes that grumbling is not a trivial matter. It reveals a lack of trust in God's provision and plan for our lives. He reminds us that God hears our complaints, even those we don't verbalize. Instead of grumbling, Eric encourages us to talk honestly with God about our struggles, expressing our needs without demanding or accusing. We are also reminded to ask God to increase our contentment, helping us learn to be satisfied in every situation. Ultimately, Eric reminds us that as believers, we are called to be lights in a dark world, reflecting God's love and grace even amidst challenges.
Perhaps we would open your Bibles again today at 1 Corinthians 10.
While you are looking for that passage, perhaps I should tell you that, in connection with the remarks I made yesterday about my experience—my daughter’s experience—in Princes Street, the last time I told it we were besieged afterwards with the question, “Did she find the bag?” And it is happening again.
So let me tell you that she did. It was not really relevant to my message yesterday; that is why I did not tell you. It was in the police station, and when we phoned the next day, we got it back. So you may relax now and forget about that.
Let us read this passage then, 1 Corinthians 10. By way of introduction again, in case there are perhaps some here today who were not here yesterday, we will read the first thirteen verses.
I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud,
and all passed through the sea;
and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
and did all eat the same spiritual food;
and did all drink the same spiritual drink:
for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.
Howbeit with most of them God was not well pleased:
for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.
Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written,
The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed,
and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
Neither let us make trial of the Lord, as some of them made trial,
and perished by the serpents.
Neither murmur ye, as some of them murmured,
and perished by the destroyer.
Now these things happened unto them by way of example;
and they were written for our admonition,
upon whom the ends of the ages are come.
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear:
but God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able;
but will with the temptation make also the way of escape,
that ye may be able to endure it.
Our Father, we submit ourselves now to Your Word—not to the speaker, but to Your Word and to Your Holy Spirit—that in the speaking and in the hearing we may be instructed by God Himself. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Again, just to recount very briefly, the apostle tells us here that the people of Israel travelling through the desert were all under the cloud. They were people who were close to God. They had been baptised into Moses. They all ate the same spiritual food, and they drank water from the rock, which was Christ Jesus.
Nevertheless, he says, God was not pleased with most of them, and the consequences of His displeasure were extremely serious. They are to be examples for us and warnings.
We are all, I believe—I am sure most of us will be—believers in Jesus Christ, born again by His Holy Spirit, sealed by Him, baptised, most of us I think, into Christ, and regularly taking the bread and the wine, feeding on Christ. Perhaps, possibly, I think most of us are sincere and earnest Christians who have come here because of our desire to know the Lord better.
Paul does not want us to be ignorant of these particular things that he mentions here. Of course, there are many other things to which he wants to draw our attention, but there are four things here that particularly displeased the Lord:
I imagine you may have been wondering which one I was going to take next. The answer is: do not grumble.
“Do not grumble,” the apostle says, “as some of them did, and were killed by the destroying angel.” You will notice that these four problems were dealt with by equal severity. One cannot really distinguish between them, and if we were to attempt to do so, we would have to recognise that to be dealt with by the destroying angel was perhaps the worst of all.
Some were dealt with by plagues; some were bitten by snakes. But those who grumbled were killed by the destroying angel. So this would appear to be quite a serious matter.
It may have occurred to you that such a simple thing as grumbling is relatively trivial. Let me assure you this afternoon that it is not so. This is a very serious matter in the sight of God, and it is also, I think it is true to say, very widespread among God’s people—including myself.
The Greek word is gongysmos. Our own words, grumbling and murmuring, have an unpleasant sound as well, do they not? Complaining, whispering, and arguing—they are all the same kind of thing. It seems, as I say, to be quite a serious issue, and something to which we ought to pay very close attention.
In Jude 1:14-16—perhaps you would like to look at Jude with me, the second-last book in the New Testament—Enoch prophesied about certain men:
Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of His holy ones,
to execute judgment upon all,
and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness
which they have ungodly wrought,
and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.
These are murmurers, complainers.
“These are grumblers and fault-finders.” We really need to look at this issue of grumbling.
I want you to turn with me today to Numbers 14, and to keep this chapter before you as we think about this question. We will read some verses from Numbers 14, beginning with verse 1.
That night all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried;
and the people wept that night.
And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron:
and the whole congregation said unto them,
Would that we had died in the land of Egypt!
or would that we had died in this wilderness!
And wherefore doth the Lord bring us unto this land,
to fall by the sword,
that our wives and our little ones should be a prey?
Were it not better for us to return into Egypt?
And they said one to another,
Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.
Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces
before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel.
And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh,
who were of them that spied out the land, rent their clothes.
And they spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying,
The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceeding good land.
If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it unto us;
a land which floweth with milk and honey.
Only rebel not against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land;
for they are bread for us: their defence is removed from over them,
and the Lord is with us: fear them not.
But the whole assembly talked about stoning them. Then the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites.
And the Lord said unto Moses,
How long will this people despise Me?
and how long will they not believe in Me,
for all the signs which I have wrought among them?
I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them,
and will make of thee a nation greater and mightier than they.
It is a great chapter, but let us read a few verses further on, at verse 17. We remind ourselves—though I am sorry that we have to, as I said yesterday, speak about God being angry—that we read:
Now, I pray Thee, let the power of the Lord be great,
according as Thou hast spoken, saying,
The Lord is slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness,
forgiving iniquity and transgression.
Let us remind ourselves that God is not readily or easily angered.
Then verse 26:
And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,
How long shall I bear with this evil congregation,
that murmur against Me?
I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel,
which they murmur against Me.
Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord,
surely as ye have spoken in Mine ears, so will I do to you:
your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness;
and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number,
from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against Me.
Surely ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware
that I would make you dwell therein,
save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.
And verse 36:
And the men, whom Moses sent to spy out the land,
who returned, and made all the congregation to murmur against him,
by bringing up an evil report against the land,
even those men that did bring up an evil report of the land,
died by the plague before the Lord.
But Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh,
remained alive of those men that went to spy out the land.
What sort of things did they grumble about? Well, they grumbled about the bitterness of the water. I think it probably was rather bitter.
They grumbled about the lack of food. Perhaps there was not, in fact, a great deal of it at the time. In other words, neither of these was a trivial complaint.
They grumbled about the kind of food that had been supplied to them. In Numbers 21:5, they spoke against God and against Moses and said:
Why have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
for there is no bread, and there is no water;
and our soul loatheth this light bread.
“We detest this miserable food.” So they complained about the kind of food and the quantity of food.
They complained about the dangers to which they thought they were likely to be subjected. Of course, there was justification for that. They were going to have to fight. They were going to have to defend themselves.
“Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?”
They complained about their elders. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole assembly said, “If only we had died in Egypt.” Then they said to each other, “We should choose a leader—choose another leader, a better one—and see if they can do better for us, perhaps by going back to Egypt.”
So they grumbled about all kinds of things. Many of them were perhaps not particularly comfortable experiences, and perhaps you might say, “Well, they had reason to complain.”
What sort of things do you grumble about? Do you grumble about the weather? Of course, that is a conversational thing, in a way. We do, do we not?
Sometimes we grumble about our food too, do we not? I was fourteen when the war broke out, and we had very severe rationing in our country. You got a little bit of butter, about that size, for a week. We would carve it up into little sections, allotted sections for each day, and a little bit of sugar in a bowl. We would spoon it out carefully to make it last for the week.
My father would never allow us to complain about the food.
You sometimes complain about the neighbours, do you not? The noise they make; the intrusion upon our privacy.
Do you ever complain about the government? We sometimes feel sorry for your president, and I hope you feel sorry for our prime minister too. The ratings!
I heard of something—I do not know whether it is in your country or ours—called a grumbleometer. Did you know there was such a thing? Perhaps we should all have one in our homes.
A very popular thing to complain about in our country is doctors and hospitals. They are really targets for people who want to grumble and complain. I do not know whether it is a popular sport here or not, but we certainly suffer from it in our country.
Sometimes we grumble about our status in the world. Remember, the disciples did that. In Luke 9:46, an argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest.
I do not suppose there are many here who want to be the greatest, but we do not want to be left out either. We do not want to be the lowest. We want, somehow or other, to keep even with other people. If things do not go that way, then we think about it inside, and we grumble a little.
We complain if our rights are interfered with. We read in Acts 6:1 that when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.
Westerners, particularly, feel very strongly about personal rights—things that we feel we are entitled to: entitled to at home, entitled to at work, and even entitled to in the church.
Have you ever complained about your elders in your assembly? We want leaders who will do what we want, do we not? Leaders who see things the way we see them, and, if necessary, get us out of trouble.
We complain, I am afraid, sometimes—and not infrequently—about what God has done or allowed in our Christian experience and our human experience. “Why did God allow that to happen?” we say.
But, of course, the truth is that all grumbling is ultimately against God. All grumbling finds its way back to the Lord. That is something that we should lodge clearly in our minds this afternoon: all our grumbling finds its way back to Him.
Who is responsible for our living conditions? Who gives us our food? We say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We all join hands around the table and thank the Lord for the food, and when it comes from the table, we say, “Yuck!” Sometimes we do something like that.
Finally, we thank Him for it. I noticed, in visiting Denmark some years ago, that the Scandinavians—and if there are any here, they will correct me—frequently give thanks after the meal. Maybe that is a safer idea.
Who makes the weather? I would not like to leave Scotland. Well, it is very nice there some of the time. It rains a lot. It snowed in June.
Maybe you would prefer to live in the Sudan. I stayed there for two and a half years in the army. They had things called sandstorms there. I do not know whether any of you have experienced sandstorms, but because of the heat—and it often went up to 118 or 120 degrees in the shade—it was so warm at night that I used to sleep on a hospital veranda.
Every now and again, while I was starting to sleep, a sandstorm would creep up. Before I knew where I was, my ears, my nose, and my eyes were full of it. The bed was covered with it. It was down inside my pyjamas, and I was extremely uncomfortable. I had to rush inside and get out of it. It just came rolling across.
Oh, I do not think you have many sandstorms in Richmond anyway.
Who put us next to these neighbours? Do you think that God gave you the house in which you are living? Most of us do believe that God put us there and gave us that house. Did He not know about the neighbours?
And did He not know the next neighbours who were moving in a year later?
Who placed you in this country? Would you rather have been born in Rwanda, Albania, North Korea, Japan—where earthquakes come and destroy large parts of a city—or Hong Kong?
Sometimes hospitals have three to a bed. I know nowadays, I am sure, they are much more sophisticated and everybody gets a bed to themselves. But there are many places where medicine and medical treatment are not available.
The truth is that in every country there are good things and bad things, but God put you where you are. If you have a grumble about that, then your grumble will be reaching His ears.
Who do you work for? Think about that one for a minute.
In Matthew 20:11, Jesus told a parable which includes this statement: “When they received their pay, they began to grumble against the landowner.”
The apostle Paul tells us:
Whatsoever ye do, work heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men;
knowing that from the Lord ye shall receive the recompense of the inheritance:
ye serve the Lord Christ.
If you work, and if I work, for Him, and complain about our salary, then I am complaining, I am murmuring, I am grumbling against Him.
Do you see why this is so serious? You think of grumbling as a trivial thing, unimportant. We all do it. We all do it. It is not for the people of God, for the children of God, and especially for those here who have come because they want to love Him, serve Him, and please Him. Grumbling is a very serious issue.
What about our elders? Who put them there? Did God give us these elders? The Word of God says:
But we beseech you, brethren, to know them that labour among you,
and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you;
and to esteem them exceeding highly in love for their work’s sake.
I could go on and on like this, I am sure—and we do go on and on, do we not? All kinds of things that we grumble about.
Most of it is inside. It is an internal thing. We do not always express our grumble. The grumble grumbles inside.
But is murmuring and grumbling really a secret? We read here in this chapter, in verse 2, that all the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron. It was against the leaders that they grumbled, saying, “If only we had died in Egypt or in the desert. What does the Lord think He is doing, bringing us here?”
They grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and then the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites—not just to Moses. The glory of the Lord, the cloud and fire, appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites.
The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat Me with contempt?” What a thing to say. “How long will these people treat Me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in Me?”
“Well, I am only complaining a little bit about the food.” No, it is a much more serious matter than that. They are treating the living God with contempt, and He felt it.
They were criticising the young people—maybe we do a certain amount of that too, do we not? Joshua and Caleb, God’s young people. And God answered them.
“I have heard the complaints of these grumbling Israelites,” He said.
Remember that when we grumble and complain, God hears. If we are believers and walking with Him day by day, if the presence of God means something real to you, will He not hear when you grumble?
If you really believe that, as you go about day by day, His presence is with you—and you want that, I want it, and you experience it—what does He feel when we grumble about something that He has provided for us?
The Pharisees grumbled about the disciples. The Pharisees and teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to His disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them, “They that are in health have no need of a physician; but they that are sick.”
They complained to the disciples, but Jesus answered them. God hears and knows what is going on in our hearts and lives. Is that really a surprising thing? We believe in the presence of God with us, day by day and night by night.
I mentioned yesterday the occasion when Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife. They said, “Hath the Lord indeed spoken only with Moses? Hath He not spoken also with us?” And the Lord heard it.
There is a marvellous verse in Ezekiel 11:5. This is what it says in the New International Version: “This is what the Lord says: That is what you are saying, O house of Israel, but I know what is going through your mind.”
That is what you are saying, but I know what is going through your mind.
The Word of God is living and active. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to Whom we must give account.
I do not want you to think of this as an oppressive kind of condemnation message. But I am trying to share with you what I believe could be a matter of the most serious importance for us as believers, because of the effect it has upon the Lord Whom we love. That is why it is so important.
Jesus knew what people were thinking. We read in Luke 5:22, “Jesus perceiving their reasonings, answered and said unto them, Why reason ye in your hearts?” The Pharisees were critical of statements and actions of Jesus, simply thinking about it, and He heard.
Other people also get to hear our grumbles, especially if we express them. Innocent people get caught up in our murmuring and complaining. Sometimes we can become responsible for a whole group of complainers. That is an unpleasant thing to happen.
You read in verse 36 of this chapter that the men whom Moses had sent to explore the land returned and made the whole community grumble. They made them grumble. They were the initiators of the grumbling which spread through the people.
Remember always that God hears and knows what we think. When He hears grumbling, how does He feel about it?
Well, I have read to you the verse that says, “How long will these people treat Me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in Me?” Not to trust Him is offensive to Him and deeply touching.
“In all their affliction He was afflicted.” Our God, brothers and sisters, is sensitive beyond our understanding. We have clues to it in Scripture.
We have not a High Priest Who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. We have a High Priest Who is touched with our infirmities. He is deeply sensitive. “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.”
A number of years ago, when our son—the doctor—was going to Kenya to do missionary work, he was just around thirty at the time. I took him to the bus station.
In fact, he was only going out for six weeks at that point to do some language study. A few months later, he was then leaving to live in Kenya and work in a hospital in a place called Chogoria.
I took him to the bus station to get the bus down to London and then the flight to Nairobi. As we went into Edinburgh, I drove him and we talked. We had such a good time of fellowship and friendship. He is such a friend to his parents, and we had a lovely time of fellowship and chatting as we went into the bus station.
Then we waited, got the tickets, and waited for the bus. Again, we talked together and drank a cup of tea together. He got on the bus, and as I waved to him as he went away, I got into my car.
But I could not see to drive because of tears coming down. Now, it was only for a few weeks, but I felt it so deeply. We love him so much. You all have that experience.
Once I had composed myself, I sat there by the pavement in the car and said to the Lord, “Why is it that You have made us so vulnerable in a world which is so uncertain, so threatening? Anything could happen to our son as he goes off to Central Africa. Why have You made us so vulnerable, so sensitive in this way, so that we suffer like this?”
“Why did You not make us,” I remember saying this, “like the fish in the Arctic Sea, who are made to resist the cold? They do not feel it. Could You not have made us that way, so that we would not be so sensitive?”
I really was not expecting an answer. But an answer came, just like that. I could not say whether a voice spoke to me, but something came—just the words. I will never forget them for the rest of my life. The words came into my mind: “I made you like Myself.”
Think about it. That is the reason. We are made in the image of God, and that is what He is like, only much more so.
We do not want to hurt Him, but we do, sadly, do so by grumbling about the situations and the conditions that He has permitted us to experience.
Then I am afraid it is also true that He becomes angry. I said this yesterday also: “Do not grumble, as some of them did and were killed by the destroying angel.”
In Numbers 11:1, if you would like to look back just a page:
And the people were as murmurers, speaking evil in the ears of the Lord:
and when the Lord heard it, His anger was kindled;
and the fire of the Lord burnt among them,
and devoured in the uttermost part of the camp.
The people complained about their hardships. They were hardships. I am not suggesting that our complaints, in human terms, are not justified. They were hardships. They were suffering some hardships. Yet they complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord, and when He heard them, His anger was aroused.
When Miriam muttered about Moses, and the Lord heard, we read that He was very angry—very angry.
I remind you that God is not easily angered. He is patient, longsuffering, kind, and gentle with us. But there can be times when Scripture makes it clear that God can be angry.
What should we do instead of murmuring? I think the prescription is going to be very similar to yesterday’s, if you were here.
The first thing is to be thankful. Never forget to be thankful for all the good things that God has given you—and even just the things that God has given you. It reduces grumbling considerably.
Never forget, any day, to give thanks to God for all the good things that He has given you—for all of them.
I will tell you a story. I do not know whether it is absolutely authentic. It was recounted to me, and perhaps there is an American version of it; I am not sure. But this is a Scottish one.
It was about a Scottish boy who fell into the River Ness in Inverness—a beautiful, fast-flowing river. We have walked along its banks, and I am sure some of you may have done that too.
He fell into the water, and a man who was passing immediately leapt into the water at the risk of his life. He caught the boy and dragged him ashore. By this time, a crowd had gathered. They all attended to the boy and called an ambulance. In the meantime, the rescuer quietly slipped away and went home to change his clothes.
The next day, the father of the boy, who had not been there at the time, discovered where the rescuer lived. He made his way to the house and knocked on the door.
When the Samaritan opened the door, the father said to him, “Are you the gentleman who rescued my son from the river yesterday?”
He said, “Yes, I am, actually.”
The next thing the father said was a question: “Where is his cap?”
Well, can you believe it? I do not know whether it is true, but it teaches us a lesson. We come to God often not just to say, “Thank You,” but to ask for something that He left out.
It is a kind of grumble, is it not? A kind of complaint.
I have heard that there are those who recommend that we should request things from God specifically: that we should ask Him for a car—not just a car, but a red one. God gives you a car and it is not red. Would you go back to Him about that?
It is so important for us to thank God for the things that He has given us, without limits to our thankfulness: for family and friends, for how much these mean to us, for the ordinary daily things, quite apart from the great gifts of salvation, grace, the Word, and all the wonderful things that we experience when we are here and at all times.
Thank Him for a rainproof house, for central heating. Do you ever thank Him for that? Is there a breakfast? Look around you and say, “Lord, thank You that the rain is not coming in. Thank You for the warm bed I slept in last night, and the blankets.”
Do you thank Him regularly for these things? Thank Him for peace and tranquillity. Thank Him for stable government. These things are great blessings from God, and we should not grumble about them. We should be thanking Him constantly.
That is a way by which we can reduce grumbling. If we are constantly giving thanks to God for all His goodness to us, then perhaps we will not grumble so often.
The second thing is that we should talk honestly with Him about our frustration. Do not mutter.
You used to say that in school, did you not? People would say, “Don’t mutter. Speak up. Tell me what it is you want.” Do not mutter under your breath, as you say. Talk to Him.
He loves to have us come and talk to Him about things. That is different from grumbling, and it is different from making constant demands and unreasonable demands upon Him. He loves us to come and talk to Him.
Go and tell Him that the job you have is really very difficult to manage. Maybe He will give you another one.
Tell Him that the house you have is really not suitable for your family, and honestly, you really need another one, if you do. Maybe He will get your salary right. Maybe He will give you a better job. Maybe He will help you to win a competition.
But He wants us to come to Him and talk to Him if we are unhappy about things—not to murmur, not to complain, not to mutter and grumble.
“I will yet be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them.” He is waiting. He wants to do something for us, but He is waiting for the people who are going to come and ask Him. He loves to do things for us. He loves to provide for us.
Ask Him. Talk to Him about it. But not with fault-finding or the attitude of complaining.
If there is no change, no better offer from Him, then the third thing is that we should ask Him to make us more contented.
Some soldiers spoke to Jesus in Luke 3:14 and asked Him, “What should we do?” He replied:
Extort from no man by violence, neither accuse any one wrongfully;
and be content with your wages.
“Be content with your pay.” That is what Jesus said. Be content with your wage.
The apostle Paul, of course, tells us something about learning to be content in Philippians 4:11-13:
Not that I speak in respect of want:
for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content.
I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound:
in everything and in all things have I learned the secret
both to be filled and to be hungry,
both to abound and to be in want.
I can do all things through Christ Who strengtheneth me.
“I have learned to be content.” There is something that we do need to learn. We do not come upon it by accident. We have to learn how to be content.
Paul says, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.” He had experience of both things, both extremes. “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.”
The secret of contentment we have to learn is Christ, Who strengthens us and enables us to cope with the things that we are finding difficult to cope with and grumbling about. Come to Him and ask Him to teach us more about Christ and His sufficiency.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” If you are not coping very well, ask God to teach you how to be content.
Finally, in closing, I want you to turn with me to Philippians 2. We will just read this verse.
We have already begun to hear about the great purpose, the eternal purpose, of God. Here in this verse we have a picture of God’s purpose just here in the world in which we are living—something which Paul seems to see as the very justification for all his years of hard service and hard labour in the things of God.
Philippians 2:14-16 says:
Do all things without murmurings and questionings:
that ye may become blameless and harmless,
children of God without blemish
in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation,
among whom ye are seen as lights in the world,
holding forth the word of life;
that I may have whereof to glory in the day of Christ,
that I did not run in vain neither labour in vain.
“Do everything without complaining or arguing.” Do everything without complaining, or murmuring, or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the Word of life.
I think this is a marvellous picture of what the apostle Paul was seeking for in the world here: to do everything without complaining, so that we might become blameless and pure, the children of God, the community of God, living in a crooked and depraved generation.
They are all complaining about everything, twisting and turning and manipulating to get a better deal. God wants us, His community, the children of God, in a crooked and depraved generation, to shine like stars in the universe as we hold out the Word of life.
It is a marvellous picture—what God’s people should be like here in this world, living in such a generation and among such deteriorating moral conditions. To complain about the changes and the deterioration in our world is not how God wants His people to live.
Let us be unceasingly thankful. I say again, we are all here because we love the Lord. We are all here because we want to know Him better. We want to understand how to walk with Him better, to be closer to Him, more pleasing to Him.
Let us just remember: one of the things that disrespects Him is our complaining about the conditions that He has allowed us to live in.
Our Father, as we have read together Your Word, we hear and speak not the words of a preacher, but the Word of God, which so clearly presses upon us Your love and tenderness, Your care for us.
We pray, as we think about this matter this afternoon, as we think about it next week and the week after, as we go on in our Christian lives, help us, we pray, to be content.
Help us to call upon Your grace, to call upon the riches of Jesus Christ our Lord, provided for us so fully and completely, that we may live quietly, honouring You, glorifying Your name in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation.
Grant us Your grace, we pray. We give You thanks now and rest in You together. In Jesus’ name. Amen.