And in the morning, you shall see the glory of the LORD; for He hears your complaints against the LORD. But what are we, that you complain against us?” Also, Moses said, “This shall be seen when the LORD gives you meat to eat in the evening, and in the morning bread to the full; for the LORD hears your complaints which you make against Him. And what are we? Your complaints are not against us but against the LORD” (Exodus 16:7-8).
Our text reveals something that’s common to believers and unbelievers alike—the sin of complaining. However, believers ought to know better. We are instructed in Philippians 2:14 to “Do all things without complaining and disputing.” And we read in 1 Corinthians 10:9-10, “nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer.” However, because of remaining indwelling sin, no matter what a man possesses, he always seems to complain that he doesn’t have enough, or what he has is not good enough. He complains about his home, his job, his income, his neighbor, his possessions, his spouse, the government, the weather, the church, the preacher, etc. You name it, man complains about it. And this is a grievous sin against God, especially for believers, since God gives us all things richly to enjoy (1 Tim. 6:17) according to His own good pleasure. To complain about what God gives or what He does is simply saying that we know better than God. This attitude is blasphemous, and it demonstrates distrust in God’s Word and God’s providence, and this is exactly what we see happening to the children of Israel in Exodus 16.
The children of Israel witnessed the powerful hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt: water turned to blood, the frogs, the lice, the flies, the Egyptians’ livestock diseased, ashes became boils, large hailstones, the locusts, darkness in Egypt for three days and light in Goshen, and the death of all the firstborn in Egypt (Passover). They witnessed the Israelites plundering of the Egyptians’ goods and the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night on a continual basis. They saw the Lord bind the wheels of the Egyptian chariots, the Red Sea parting, the dry-ground pathway through the Red Sea, and the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea. Exodus 8:23: “I will make a difference between My people and your people.” But approximately six weeks after they witnessed all these miraculous works of the Lord, the Israelites complained against the Lord and His prophet Moses and His priest Aaron. Exodus 16:3, “Oh, that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” After all the Lord did for them, how could they complain against the Lord and not trust His Word? Well, how can we complain against the Lord and not trust His Word after all He has done and continues to do for us? Isn’t the God of Scripture completely trustworthy to keep His promises? Yet each time disaster threatens, we despair and forget all the past mercies of God. We distrust God’s providence, and we murmur and complain just as the Israelites, even though God promises to provide for all the needs of His people. “God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19). David said in Psalm 37:25, “I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread.” As Christians, we seriously need to daily confess and repent of our ungodly sin of complaining against the providence of God, who does all things well.
God saved our wretched souls by His grace and imputed all our sins to Christ in exchange for Christ’s righteousness being imputed to us. He provides us with great abundance every day and has not given us what our sins deserve, yet we murmur and complain when things don’t go our way. Crops are not good enough, we don’t have enough rain, we have too much rain, it’s too cold, it’s too hot, it’s too windy, it’s not windy enough, worship is too long, sermon is too long, prayers are too long, I don’t have this, that, or the other thing, etc. We do the same things we criticize the Israelites for doing. Did you ever think that maybe the Lord withholds rain and abundance because of all the complaining of His people? Complaining is a vile sin for which so many Christians fail to repent. It’s a sin that has become socially acceptable in Christian circles because “everybody does it.” However, the Lord will often give men over to their desires. Psalm 81:11-12, “But My people would not heed My voice, and Israel would have none of Me. So, I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, to walk in their own counsels.” Be careful about the sin of complaining. Open your mouth in prayer and praise to beat back the sinful habit of complaining.
The Lord silenced the murmurings of the Israelites by sending quail in the evening and manna in the morning. Six mornings God gave them bread, and they gathered it all up in a pile and each took according to his need. A double portion was taken on the sixth day for the Sabbath Day rest. What a miraculous provision by the hand of the Lord. Six days He gave them manna and a double portion on the sixth day for 40 years for over 2,000,000 people. Yet some still did not trust His Word and kept some manna overnight on the first five days, and even went out to gather manna on the seventh day. The manna was nutritious enough to meet all their physical health needs. It was a delicious, sweet food called “bread from heaven” (Ex. 16:4). But it wasn’t long before they complained about the manna. Numbers 21:5, “And the people spoke against God and against Moses: ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.’” To “loathe” is to detest, disgust, or hate, and “worthless” means that something is of no value or insignificant. John chapter 6 teaches us that the manna was an earthly picture of Jesus, whom God the Father would send from heaven to give spiritual life to His people. Just as physical bread fills our earthly needs, so Jesus is the spiritual Bread from Heaven, the Savior who has come down to fill our spiritual needs. Jesus is the Bread of Life, the manna that became man, who alone can satisfy the hunger of our soul. When Jesus says He is the Bread of Life, He is saying that He is essential for salvation. Bread in the Bible represents daily necessity. Apart from bread (food), we die. So, we are taught to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” In the same way, Jesus is essential for our soul every day. We cannot live without Him. John 1:4, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). We cannot be saved apart from Jesus, our Bread of Life, since “there is no other name given under heaven among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). He is “the only Mediator between God and man” (1 Tim. 2:5). We must have Jesus, or we die. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). “Therefore, I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24).
Dear Christian, we eat physically every day, and multiple times a day, but do we faithfully feed spiritually on God’s Word, prayer, fellowship, and the sacraments? “So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). “For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. “Then they said to Him, ‘Lord, give us this bread always’” (John 6:33-34). Let us cry out daily the same words of the disciples, “Lord, give us this bread always!”
Rev. Scott Henry
Hope Reformed Church
Sutton, NE