Good morning, dear friends. It is indeed good to be back with you today. I would invite you to turn with me to Exodus chapter 15. And as you're turning there, let me seek our Father's help. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks today for you are good and your steadfast love endures forever. And we acknowledge as we approach your word this morning that we are entirely dependent upon you not only to understand it rightly, but also to receive it by faith and to lay it up in our hearts and to practice it in our lives. And so, Lord, we pray for the presence and the activity and the work of your Holy Spirit, that we might behold together wondrous things from your law. For the sake of Christ, our Lord, we pray, amen. Well, the last time I was with you was several months ago, so I don't expect that any of you would necessarily remember, but we looked at the scene of Israel at the Red Sea. And so I figured it'd be appropriate for this morning to just follow the people of Israel from there. and catch up with them on the other side of the sea, as they have just seen their enemies, the army of Egypt, crushed in the Red Sea. And they sing to the Lord in Exodus chapter 15. The focus of the exposition this morning will not be on the song that begins our reading, but will actually be on what transpires after the song. But the song of Israel in verses 1 through 21 really sets the stage for us to see, to understand rightly what's going on in the aftermath. And so with that in mind, beloved, let us hear from God's word. Exodus chapter 15, starting at verse one, and I will read to chapter 16, verse eight. Hear now the word of our God. Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord saying, I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him, my Father's God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them. They went down into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power. Your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrow your adversaries. You send out your fury. It consumes them like stubble. At the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up. The flood stood up in a heap. The deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil. My desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword. My hand shall destroy them. You blew with your wind, and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you? majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders. You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them. You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed. You have guided them by your strength to your holy abode. The peoples have heard, they tremble. Pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia, Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed, trembling seizes the leaders of Moab. All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them. Because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone. Till your people, O Lord, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased. You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain. The place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established, the Lord will reign forever and ever. For when the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his horsemen went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them. But the people of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea. Then Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing, and Miriam sang to them, sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Mara, they could not drink the water of Mara, because it was bitter. Therefore it was named Mara. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer. Then they came to Elim, where there were 12 springs of water and 70 palm trees, and they encamped there by the water. 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 15th 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, would 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'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. 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 evening, you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out 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 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. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So yes, a sermon on grumbling. Happy Sunday. My, how quickly things change from singing at the sea to grumbling in the desert. I want to talk to you this morning about what I, what I call the battle for your voice. The battle for your voice. And what I mean by that is this. We live in a world of grumbling and grumblers, do we not? drowning in a sea of complaining voices, right? And each and every day as we find ourselves in this world of grumbling, right, there is a battle going on both within us as individuals and among us, right, as the people of God, the result of which battle will determine whether we are people who are set apart for the Lord to his praise and honor and glory or whether we are just going to go along with the crowd and join our voices in with all the grumbling, right? And it is this very battle that I would suggest to you we see played out very starkly in this passage that we just looked at in Exodus 15 and 16, because it's no coincidence, right, that right after Israel is saved from bondage in Egypt, what do we find? We find this very battle going on. There is another battle and there is another enemy that Israel needs to fight against. And what is that enemy? It is the enemy that starts within, within the heart and comes out in words that oppose the Lord. First, they sing at the sea, then they grumble in the desert. As their hearts are really, and our hearts tend to be right, just like that very sea, that the people of Israel just crossed, tossed about with every wind the direction of life takes us, right? And so we go so quickly from celebration to adversity and therefore from singing to grumbling. Now before I move any further, let me define our terms here, right? What am I talking about when I use this word grumbling? Here's a quick definition of grumbling. It is the verbal overflow of a discontent heart. Grumbling is the verbal overflow of a discontent heart. And what I mean by that is this, right? I have within me, and I would suggest to you that each and every one of us has within us, like a tepid pool of discontent, right? A tepid pool of discontent. And when the heat of life's circumstances, right, starts to beat down on that tepid pool of discontent, what happens? There's sort of a spiritual chemical reaction that causes that tepid pool to start to bubble up and boil over and what comes out of us are words that accuse God with wrongdoing, and so therefore the verbal overflow of a discontent heart. And generally this whole process will come in two basic stages. First you have the simmer stage, right, where it's just sort of a, just a low simmer, you know, you're just kind of muttering stuff to yourself under your breath. It doesn't seem to cause any harm to anybody else. But then, if left unchecked, what happens? That low simmer starts to rise, doesn't it? And it starts to bubble up, and that's stage two, the boiling stage, where it spills over. It's no coincidence, as you look at the aftermath of Israel at the Red Sea, as they go into the wilderness, we see these two stages. The first stage, the simmer stage, comes at the end of chapter 15, right as we meet up with the people of Israel, starting at verse 22 of chapter 15, the dust is settled, They've sung their song at the sea and the singing has died down and they pick up and they move on from the sea and it says in verse 22, they went three days into the wilderness. So think about it, right? Three days, just three days removed from that glorious victory of the Lord that they had just sung about. And now Three days later, the grumbling starts. Don't miss this. It is when they stopped singing, beloved, that space was opened up within their hearts for the grumbling to begin. Brothers and sisters, be on your guard always for the first sounds of this simmering bitterness, right? Because the distance between singing and grumbling is actually a whole lot shorter than you would think. I mean, consider, you know, is it just me or have any of you had the experience where, you know, one day, say it's a day like today, you're singing the Lord's praise, and your heart is in it, and you're enjoying the fellowship of the people of God only the very next day to have the polar opposite experience, right? Like Sunday, I'm just, you know, I'm worshiping, I'm praising the Lord, the things of God seem so real and vibrant and just palpable to me. Then Monday morning, wake up, It's cold outside. I'm not feeling too great. Right, the Phillies lost the last night again. I make the horrible mistake of going to that place where all grumblers gather. Facebook, right? I open up my Facebook browser, people are, somebody said something that really gets under my skin, and then the simmer begins. And if left unchecked, what's gonna happen to me throughout that day? It's going to be a day of grumbling, right? This is the tendency of our souls. Why? Because our feelings are fickle, our circumstances change, and our hearts deceive us. Now, all that said, right, here's something really important to realize about Exodus 15 and 16. The things that the people of Israel are grumbling about, this is not like the Phillies lost last night. These are the basic essentials of life, right? In chapter 15, they're grumbling about water. In chapter 16, they're grumbling about no food. In chapter 17, you find, if you read on, they grumble about water again, right? This is not like, oh man, we've been inconvenienced today and somebody said something I didn't like. This is, in reality, if things don't change here, we are literally going to die. That's the sort of thing. And so you know, what do they say? Well, the first thing they say is simply verse 24 of chapter 15, what shall we drink? That's not an unreasonable question. What shall we drink? Something's got to change. We've got to get some water from somewhere, right? If that doesn't happen, we're going to die. But you see, there's something sitting behind the question. That is not right. That causes this question to be referred to as grumbling. And so as you go on, and I'll say more about that in just a minute. So they grumble. So they grumble. And yet, the Lord is very gracious to them, is he not? Verse 25 says, after they grumble, Moses cried to the Lord, and the Lord does what? He shows him a log. And Moses throws the log into the bitter water, and the water becomes Sweet. The Lord is a good father, right? Even though they grumble, they had a legitimate need. The problem was not that they expressed the need, it was the way they expressed it. You know, if my children, they have a legitimate need, you know, say we're walking around on a really hot day and they're thirsty, but they express that need in a really horrible way you know they start screaming at me and accusing me of doing something wrong to them well you know I'm still gonna give them something to drink right I'm not gonna withhold what they need but I'll teach them the right way to express that need in the process and that's sort of like what we see the Lord doing with his people Israel here in Exodus 15 and 16 he still provides for them But he is teaching them. The problem is they really don't learn the lesson, do they? Which brings us then into chapter 16 where grumbling stage 2 begins, right? So they have drunk the water of Mara. the end of chapter 15, very important verse 27, it says that they come to this place called Elim, where it says there were 12 springs of water, a spring note for every tribe, and 70 palm trees. In other words, a place not just a provision But of abundance, right, was actually waiting for them at the very next stop. The Lord was going to bring them to this place all along. All they needed was a little bit of patience and a measure of faith. And still the Lord, even with the grumbling, brings them to Elim. And so now sufficiently hydrated, you have to assume their supplies replenished. from all the abundance that they found at this place called Elim. They move on from Elim and go into another place called the Wilderness of Sin. And, of course, nothing good can come at a place called the Wilderness of Sin, can it? It is now the 15th day of the second month since they left Egypt, so it's been a month since the day that they left the land of Egypt. They still haven't found a place to settle, so what happens? When the belly starts to rumble, the tongue begins to grumble, right? And so they get hangry. You know what hangry is, right? It's when you get angry because you're hungry. So chapter 16, verses 2 and 3, the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the people of Israel said to them, would 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." See what's going on here? We're starting to get a clearer picture now of what is underneath the surface, aren't we? That pool of discontent is starting to boil. Before, it was just the people saying, what are we going to drink? Now it is the whole congregation saying, would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt. At least we would have died with full bellies, right? Oh, it was so much better back then. The grass is always greener somewhere else, is it not? This is the tendency of our hearts. Someplace else has got to be better than where we are right now. Now again, just like with the previous scene, lack of food is a big problem. They needed food. The issue was not acknowledging the need and asking how it was going to be met. It was the underlying posture of their hearts, which was opposition to God. That's the problem. And here's where I think it's really important to point out that there are two different types of complaining in scripture. Right, one is bad, that's what we see going on here, grumbling. But there is also, we need to understand a very good way of making a complaint. Good complaining, right? What we might refer to as lament, right? And lamenting is something that we are called upon as God's people to do, right? You can desire that things be different than they are and fervently express that desire and yet still honor God in the process. Real injustices happen in our world every single day, and to us. Things are a mess in our country right now, yes. And also in the churches in our country, yes. We don't just turn a blind eye to these things. It would be wrong for us to just say, ho-hum, this is just how things are, praise the Lord. No. Right? God does not want you to act like everything is okay when you know that it isn't. Things will happen to you that are just awful. People will do really messed up things to you, say horrible, hurtful things to you for no discernible reason. Evil thrives in God's good world. sickness, grief, sorrow, and the difference between the people of God and the world around us we need to see when it comes to these things is not that the world acknowledges the things as they are, and we don't. The difference is how we acknowledge these things. How we acknowledge them, right? We know the world we live in is crooked and twisted. Yes, we know this. And what is more, we know why it is such. We have the true story that we look into each and every day. We know it. And it is not at all wrong to say, in fact, it is very right to say, Lord, how long? Lord, when are you going to do something about it? Lord, I don't want to go through this anymore. Please act. Right. But you see, to lament is very, very different from grumbling. And so we need to be taught by the word what it sounds like. to lament, right? And thankfully, the scriptures are full of examples, are they not? In fact, we have an entire book of scripture called what? Lamentations. Read it sometime. It's worth looking at. So many of the Psalms, which are really like the heartbeat of the life of prayer, right? So many of the Psalms are taken up with this theme of lament. Just a few examples. Psalm 13. begins with these words, how long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? And it goes on three more times in the opening couple of verses to repeat those words. How long, oh Lord, how long, how long? Is that grumbling? No, that is the cry of a faithful sufferer. Right? Psalm 142, David says explicitly, I pour out my complaint before the Lord. I got something to complain about. Right? I pour out my complaint before the Lord. And then he proceeds to tell the Lord all about it. All about the darkness of his situation. Is that grumbling? No, that is the cry of a faithful sufferer. And of course, you'll recall how on the cross, our Lord Jesus cried out. the opening words of Psalm 22. My God, my God, why? Why have you forsaken me? Was that grumbling from the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ? No, that was the cry of the faithful, perfectly righteous Son of God suffering the anguish of the cross. So what is the difference? What is the demarcating line between those faithful cries of lament that we have in scripture and grumbling? It is the underlying posture of the heart. Grumbling, you see, begins from a standpoint of unbelief. It is inherently cynical and is therefore directed not toward God in prayer, but against God in accusation, right? Whether you're just muttering stuff to yourself or talking to other people or just typing stuff into the abyss of Facebook, right? Lament, on the other hand, begins from a standpoint of faith in God and is therefore directed toward God with trust in his goodness. which is actually what we find in each of those examples that I just gave you, right? Psalm 13, how does that psalm end? That same psalm that began, how long, O Lord, will you forget me forever, ends with these words, but I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. Psalm 142, I cry to you, O Lord. I say, you are my portion. in the land of the living. Trust Jesus on the cross. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Trust in his father's goodness, even through it all. Exodus 16, on the other hand, with our forefathers in the desert, that's just grumbling out of unbelief. And yet once again, don't miss, how does the Lord respond? He doesn't even rebuke them at first. No, again, he is still patient, is he not? Verse four, he says to Moses, behold, I'm about to rain down bread from heaven." It's just astounding! Right? I'm gonna rain down bread from heaven, even though they just said we wish we died in Egypt. Such is the patient, steadfast love of the ever-compassionate God, even in the face of our grumbling, He still continues to provide each and every day. And so, verses 6 through 8, Moses tells the people what the Lord is going to do, and then it concludes in this way, verse 8. 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 that you grumble against us? Your grumbling is not against us, but against the Lord. You know, when we grumble about our circumstances in life, we need to keep in mind whether we're talking to another person or just to ourselves. Our grumbling is ultimately against the Lord. Yes, the people here were talking to Moses, but their grumbling was against the Lord. Why? Because the Lord was the one who was responsible for them, right? The Lord was the one who brought them and led them to all of these places. The Lord was the one who provided for them and promised to be with them and bring them to the promised land. And so beloved it is with you and me. The Lord is your deliverer and your provider, which is why we need to be on our guard against grumbling in whatever form it comes. Okay, so how do we do that? That's a lot easier said than done, is it not? How do we guard against grumbling? Three points of application. Three points of application. First, Keep yourself each and every day focused on the big picture, the big picture of who your God is and the big picture of what he has done for you and what he has promised yet to do for you. Know this, beloved, when you are tempted to grumble in your life, it is a tactic of the enemy always to deceive you into thinking that whatever it is that's going on in the moment invalidates everything else that God has done for you and everything that God has promised to do for you. And so it was for our fathers in the desert, was it not? I mean, think about it. What was the big problem here with Israel? The big problem was that they forgot the truths that they just sung about a few days earlier. The big picture is what they forgot. The big picture that God had delivered them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm from slavery in Egypt. The big picture that he had promised to preserve their lives and he had promised to bring them into the land that he had promised their fathers to give them. Which is why the Lord tells them right in between these two scenes, these two stages of grumbling, he reminds them who he is, chapter 15, verse 26. I am Jehovah Rapha. I am the Lord, your healer. And it's easy for us, you and me now, to point the finger and say, oh, how could they forget those things? But how often do we do the very same thing, right? I know everything that God has done for me. I know the truths of what Christ has accomplished on the cross. I know how he's worked in my life. I know all of the glorious things he has told me about that are coming in my future. And yet, things happen day to day and I still grumble. A couple passages of scripture that might help you focus on the big picture when these things start to happen. First Philippians chapter 2 verses 14 and 15. Philippians 2, 14 and 15. Do all things without grumbling or disputing so that, so that you may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights in the world." In other words, remember who you are. You are the light of the world. He has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Don't forget the big picture, right? And therefore, do all things without grumbling or disputing. Another one, 1 Peter 2, verse 9, reminds us of our purpose, right? Peter, the apostle, says that God has created the church in the very language used by Moses in Exodus chapter 19 to be this. a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. That's the big picture. That's what your God has done. Why? So that you may proclaim, use your lips to speak about, the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. The very reason you are here is to be a people set apart for God, to proclaim His excellency in the crowd of grumblers. Second way to guard against grumbling. You gotta begin beneath the surface, right? Begin beneath the surface. Remember that tepid pool of discontent, dear friends. It is only out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks or the finger types. Ask what might be going on underneath the surface, right? Which may at any moment in my life bubble over in words that dishonor the Lord. You know, every one of us is every day carrying on an internal dialogue with ourselves. Are we not? Every day you're carrying on an internal dialogue with yourself about what's going on, about what you're thinking, about how you're perceiving things, about what you're going to do. Right? Bring the Lord into the conversation. After all, he's there anyway. Might as well talk to him. Psalm 139 verses 1 and 2. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. Do you speak just to yourself, or do you speak to your God as things go on in your life, right? If you, like me, are prone to grumble, ask yourself, where is the Lord in my daily thought life? Not just in my set times of prayer, and I suspect that this is at least part of, perhaps, what the Apostle Paul is getting at. when he tells us to pray without ceasing, not just at set times, but throughout the day, live in conversation, not just with yourself, but with your God. How different might my thoughts sound if I find myself start to grumble internally, right? If I always kept in mind that the Lord hears each and every one of those thoughts. And if rather than grumbling, I turned those inner grumblings upward in prayer, right, and lived each and every day in the proactive pursuit of praise, the proactive pursuit of praise, because you see, the one thing that will be sure to drive grumbling out is gratitude. There is no room for grumbling in a heart that is filled with gratitude to God, amen? Again, much easier said than done. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Only one, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Which brings me then to the third and final point to guard against grumbling in your life. Beloved, remember the wood that makes the bitter water sweet. Remember the wood. that makes the bitter water sweet. Friends, when the Lord turned those bitter waters of Mara into sweet waters, how did he do it? It is no coincidence that he did it with a piece of wood. That is not a coincidental thing. When that wood, that log, was thrown into that tepid pool of bitterness, those waters of Mara, what happened? The bitter waters became sweet. Beloved, that wood should direct each of our minds to the wood on which our Savior tasted the deepest depths of the bitterness of my sin and my suffering. and swallowed it up so that I might taste his sweetness and by the sweetness of his inexhaustible righteousness and life, he might take all of that bitterness away. As the one who gives us the living water and the one who is himself the bread of heaven came to be thrust into our pool of bitterness, that we might have the eternal sweetness of that river whose streams make glad the city of our God. Thanks be to God. And dear friends, when it comes down to it, this and this alone is the one and only thing that can turn this bitter, tepid pool of my grumbling heart into the sweet sound of that river that gives life. It is only the heart that is filled with the grace of the gospel of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ that will not bubble over when the heat of life's circumstances comes, but will even in such times be at peace. And that, dear friends, is the truth that when you see it, And when you truly taste the sweetness of it is the only thing that will quench the thirst of your soul and drive the bitterness away. Amen. Let me pray for us. Oh Lord, have mercy upon us. Have mercy. For we are in ourselves people of unclean lips, and we live in a land of unclean lips. We give you thanks, O Lord, that that very one whom Isaiah saw in chapter six in the temple came and walked among us, tasted the bitterness of the cross, despised its shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. May we today have a greater vision of his glory, that by that sight and the sweetness of our Savior, you would drive the bitterness out of our souls, cleanse us of our unrighteousness, and fill us once again with your life, that our lips and our very lives would be lived to your praise and honor and glory through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.