Exodus 17:1-7 | Religion, Grumbling, Nostalgia & Fear
Levi Stuckey
The Enemies of Gratitude | Enriching Tradition • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 41:35
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· 46 viewsReligion leads to grumbling, glorying the past and fearfully mistrusting God in the present; where as relationship leads to gratitude, glorifying God and faithfully trusting Him in the present.
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Good morning Church. Are you feeling grateful this morning. Do you have the joy of the Lord this morning! This is the goal is it not? To live with God in a joy and peace-filled relationship! This is what Christ died and resurrected to give us: a joy-filled relationship with God where we know that by God’s grace, because of Jesus, God the Father will always be happy to see us and be with us!
Relationship is what the gospel promises! It doesn’t promise us rainbows and unicorns in this life. No, Jesus Himself said right before His death, that in this life we will have trouble, but He also promised and invited us to remain hopeful and faithful in the midst of whatever trouble may come because as He said, He has overcome the world!
My paraphrase of Jesus’ words in John 16 is this. Jesus said, listen, loved ones, life in this world is gonna be a struggle at times, you’re going to have trouble, but don’t you ever loose heart because I will be with you, I will be glad to be with you in the midst of the trouble and just as I overcame death, so too will I overcome your trouble! Stay close and stay faithful and you will overcome with me!
The reality is Jesus and God, they did not promise a carefree existence or a life without out strife or trouble, but what they did promise was that we will never walk through trouble alone and that in the midst of our troubles they will be with us supplying our hearts with joy and peace and the power to stand up under it with gratitude and thanksgiving. Essentially they offered to us a life-giving and sustaining relationship with themselves! We’ll never walk alone, even if the walk is an arduous one, we won’t ever walk alone.
And folks I need you to hear me on this, this promise of relationship is vastly different from what a lot of us think and a lot of us desire!
So many folks don’t desire relationship, but instead they desire religion. So many folks have an unbiblical view of what Christ died and raised to give us and they wrongly believe that Christ died and raised to give us religion!
Do you know why religion is so powerful and when I say religion, I’m talking about the rule following and traditions that surround faith and worship. Religion is so powerful because it boils God down to a formula of empty religious rules and empty religious traditions, where if you do x then you can expect y to happen. Religion is an attempt to make life and God predictable and controllable.
You see, no one likes to feel out of control. Unpredictable is scary. And so, we love religion because it gives us the road map for how to maintain some semblance of control and predictability. Do this, don’t do that and you can know exactly what to expect!
This morning we’re launching into a new mini-series called the enemies of gratitude where over the next several weeks we’re going to examine what types of thinking and behaviors steal our joy in Jesus.
Today, we’re going to be in Exodus and we’re going to look at Exodus 16:1-2 and Exodus 17:1-7. And as we do I want to show you how religion leads to grumbling, glorying the past and fearfully mistrusting God in the present; where as relationship leads to gratitude, glorifying God and faithfully trusting Him in the present.
Hopefully you’ll see that the enemies of gratitude this morning are religion, grumbling, nostalgia and fear. The antidotes are relationships, gratitude, glorifying God and faith.
With this in mind please turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 16. As you’re turning there, let me fill in a little context for you.
Israel, that’s the Jewish nation. The decendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They have just spent the last 400 years in Egypt as slaves and things were pretty terrible for them. Talk about trouble! Israel found them selves in Egypt by the provision of the Lord. Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery and through God’s mircaulous provision and providence, what man meant for evil, God used for an incredible good. Joseph was elevated in the government of the world’s super-power, the Unistied States of the ancient near east, Joseph was made 2nd in command so that when famine struck the world, Egypt had stored enough grain to ride it out and the nation of Israel was saved! They moved to Egypt and because their brother was 2nd in command God provided for Israel and they found sanctuatry in Egypt.
But, as Joseph died and Pharaod died and the nation of Israel continued to grow under the Lord’s blessing, the new Pharaoh in charge began to be fearful of Israel’s size. What if they decided to overthrow Egypt from within, they certainly had the numbers. So the new Pharaoh turned against Israel and ruled them with an iron scepter. He made them slaves. He treated them brutally, going so far as to institute an abortion band on all their male children. Any male born to an Israelite was to be terminated, late term aborted! He instructed the Egyptian midwives to kill all male babies born to Israelite women.
Church we are living in new days, but the demons and the ways they corrupt and carry on their wickedness are quite old.
This is a complete aside, but I have to mention it here because it’s related. An election is coming in November in Ohio and there is an issue to be voted on that is not red or blue but is between good and evil. Issue 1. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, I’ll remind you that you are a Christian before you are a democrat or republican or at least you should be, if you are a believer you will vote no on issue 1 and I say that not as a Republican or Democrat but as one who stands on the word of God. Issue 1, is an attempt to put into Ohio’s constitution, rights to abortion for adults and minors up to 9 months into pregnancy and to remove from parents their rights to protect their children from undergoing genital mutilation at the hands of a surgeon for a sex change operation.
Now I need you to know, I will never politicize this pulpit. We won’t and cannot legally give money to candidates or tell you which candidates to support. I will not and this Church will not throw our support behind parties or political ideologies, but on matters of morality and law, we as a Church and a 501c3 non profit are allowed to tell you about issues of good and evil. So when issues of good and evil arise in our world and we are given a voice to stand for good and to stand with the Bible and God’s good as He defines it, then you better believe this Church is going to take that stand and preach the truth. All that to say, I don't’ care what party you align with, this is not a partisan issue. It’s an issue about human beings created in the image of God having the right to life and it’s about a parent’s God given right and responsibility to exercise their authority to parent their children! The government, has no authority from God to rewrite good or evil, to murder the innocent or to remove a parent's authority or supersede a parents authority in regards to protecting their children from genital mutilation. This Church and God Himself stands against issue 1 because we stand for life of all people at every age and for every race and we stand for parental authority and protection of our children. This Church and God Himself stand against Issued 1 and so should you if you stand for good as God defines it and stand on God’s Word.
If want more info on it, I’ve got sheets printed out in the lobby about it.
All that said, the Israelites were afforded not such rights and no such voice in the eyes of the Pharaoh and he murdered their male children and racially forced all Israelites into slave labor.
And this injustice and plight against Israel happened for 400 years! That is until God send Moses to command this injustice power hungry Pharoah to let His people go!
From here you’re all probably loosely familiar with the story. God sends 10 plagues against Egypt, culminating in the passover plague where the angel of Death comes of Egypt and unless you followed God’s plan for protection, killing a lamb and spreading it’s blood over your door post, the angel killed the first born in every family, including animals and the Pharaoh’s son!
That was the last straw and Pharoah finally agrees to free God’s people, but on their escape from Egypt, Israel faces death by Egyptian soldiers or drowning in the Red Sea, but God would not hear of it and He miraculously parts the sea and we’re told that the Israelites walk through on dry ground and the army of Pharoah followers right behind but the walls of water are brought down upon them and God in one swift show of power destroys the super-power of the day as they chariots, horses and riders of Egypt are thrown into the sea!
God then leads them by a visible glory cloud by day and tornado pillar of fire by night!
Imagine the miracles the Israelites had just witnessed, the miracles of the cloud and pillar of fire there were currently witnessing! God had just set them free from 400 years of murder and slavery! They were free. Free to walk with God, to take back the land He promised to give to their forefather’s and their descendants after them. Free to worship the Lord as they desired! Free to live with God in relationship!
That was their state, that was what they had just experienced. Powerful deliverance! Now, look at how they respond in Exodus 16:1-3 and Exodus 17:1-7
Exodus 16:1–3 (NIV)
1 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “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 have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
They are now in the dessert and they are hungry and they begin to fear for their lives and rather than trusting their God in relationship, they grumble, they glorify the past and they respond with fearful mistrust of their God!
And yet, God lovingly provides for them. You can read it for yourselves later. God provides manna, which is a wafer like, honey flavored bread that just appears on the ground every morning after the dew and except for on the Sabbath. And then every evening God sends quail so they could have meat.
Which you would think that after this radical and miraculous provision and show of God’s love and care that Israel would begin to live with gratitude and give glory to God and respond to Him with faithful trust, but they do not. Once again, as they are living their lives, trouble strikes and we discover where their hearts are. Look at Exodus 17 with me.
Exodus 17:1–7 (NIV)
1 The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?” 3 But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” 4 Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5 The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
Look with me back at this text more closely and we’ll examine the enemies that steal the Israelites’ gratitude, faith and joy.
In verse 1 we see semblances of the first problem, and I’ll admit I’m stretching this a bit here from the text, but the surround context I believe supports my point.
In verse 1 we see where Israel’s hearts is, they want religion!
Exodus 17:1 (NIV)
1 The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.
God had called them out into the wilderness to be His people. Exodus 6:7 tells us God’s heart! He doesn’t want mindless robot ruler followers! No He set them free and lead them out into the wilderness to be their God.
Exodus 6:6–7 (NIV)
6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.
God was offering to them relationship, but they missed it. They settled for religion and their grumbling, their glorifying their past and their mistrust reveal this to us.
So that as the reader by the time we get to Exodus 17:1, we can’t help but hear and read this verse without a tone of snide resentment. The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded.”
Do you hear the resentment, yet. It’s coming.
It’s almost like the people are building their case. Here we are God, following all your commands. Following all your rules. You commanded us to pack up again and go make camp somewhere else in this forsaken dessert! Here we are jumping through your hoops, following your commands and rules, following all these traditions and look at what we’ve found! More trouble!
There’s no water! Grumble. Grumble. Grumble!
Church this is the result of religion. This is the result of thinking that God and Jesus have offered to you a list of rules to follow! This is what happens when you follow religious formulas that God never promised that aren’t biblical!
If you and I are not careful we can so easily slip into religious thinking where be start to think if we do x, than we can guarantee that y will happen. If we follow all of God’s rules then we’ll experience free and easy living. If we practice all the right religious traditions then we’ll leave pain free with health, wealth and prosperity. If we do all the right things then our lives will be safe, predictable and controllable!
And do you know what this kind of thinking will do to your heart, friend? Do you know what religion will do to your soul! It will steal your joy and fill you with grumbling! Why?
Because you’re going to feel like God is holding out on you! After all you’ve done! God I’m doing what you’ve commanded and look at this! I’m going to die of thirst in the dessert! Grumble. Grumble. Grumble. And this is bad enough Church but it gets worse. Not only will you being to be a crotchety, grumpy old man, you’re also going to start to relive your glory days with rose colored glasses. You’re going to start to look back on your captivity and slavery to sin with longing! You’re going to start to glorify your past and missremember or selectively remember your past in bondage to sin.
God, look at this trouble I’m in, after all I’ve done for you! Look at this! I wish I was back in Egypt!
Exodus 16:3 (NIV)
3 The Israelites said to them, “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 have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
Exodus 17:3 (NIV)
3 But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”
Oh that we were back in Egypt! In your grumbling you will start to get nostalgic for the slavery you were in. The grass was so much greener back then!
And then as you focus on an idealized and Norman Rockwell version of your past you’ll begin to mistrust God and allow fear to control you!
And once fear is in control, good luck experiencing joy, peace or gratitude in Jesus!
This is the road map of religion. You live to follow a bunch of empty rules thinking that if you do, you can control God and live a safe and predictable life, but then life happens and trouble hits and because you’ve done x and are expecting y but y does not happen you begin to grumble and rather than focus in on the glory and power and might and grace of the God who saved you, you choose instead to relive an edited past, you glorify a past with rose color glasses and cultivate a heart of mistrust and fear where the only response is to grumble further still.
And before we get to hard on Israel and think how stupid are these people, I need you to know Church that the Bible doesn’t just record what happens, it records what always happens. This is a picture of where our hearts lead us. We default to religion. Always, to empty religious rule following and empty religious traditions because we long for safe, predictable, comfortable, and controllable.
As bad as Egypt was, the wilderness, the unknown future scares us and many of us would rather go back to Egypt than wade out into the unknown with God where He invites us to walk by faith!
Lord knows the fight for faith is a tough one isn’t it friends! Yes and Amen! Where our Country appears to be headed. The trouble we’re facing in our world economically, socially, the riots in Philadelphia, the crazy political scene. The confusion about sexuality. We are in the wilderness and it’s scary! Inflation is scary! I don’t know about you, but the cost of living is going up and I think most of us would say our wages aren’t keeping pace. Are then ends going to meet!
Church, I know the wilderness is scary. Where are we going next. What trouble is around the bend? It’s scary and if you settle for religion, it ain’t going to get better! Grumble. Grumble. Grumble. Kids these days! If only we could go back to the 1950s! God where are you! Here we are doing our part, but where are you! What kind of world are our kids going to inherit! Grumble, Glorify the past, live in the present with fear and mistrust. That’s what religion has to offer you!
And Church praise be to Jesus Christ, that is not what He offers us! Jesus does not offer us religion! Even though that’s what our hearts crave! He gives us something so much better! Jesus gives us relationships with an all powerful sovereign God who has and will overcome the troubles we face in this life!
If you’re expecting a pain free by following a bunch of religious rules or tradition, in love, allow me to invite you to repent of your unbiblical worldview! God promises to set us free in Jesus but it’s not a freedom to follow a religious formula, if you have faith, you’ve been freed to follow Jesus in relationships!
In this world, you and I, even as Believers, we’re going to have trouble, but loved ones, take heart Jesus has overcome the world and promises to be glad to be with you in your trouble!
Don’t settle for religion! I know it’s predicable, but it’s a lie. Choose relationship!
And if you’re going to look back on your past, do so with gratitude toward God! Don’t glorify as fake past that’s not real! Look back on your past honestly, with an eye toward how you’ve seen God provide for you time and time again and as you do, the God who is with you will begin to become bigger than any present trouble you face!
What if the Israelites would’ve done this folks. As they were staring at an empty pantry in the dessert. What if they’ve chosen relationship with over religion!
Look at this trouble. Lord we’re looking at starving here. Our situation is dire. What if rather than grumble because they thought God was holding out on them what if they would’ve preached the gospel to their hearts.
God didn't promise us no trouble, but he did promise to be our God and to care for us. He said he chose us, He said we are his people!
Remember when we were in Egypt and our children were being murdered, God heard us the! Remember what He did! The plagues. Remember when we were fleeing for our lives and with an ocean in front of us and an army of soldiers set on our death behind us! Remember when God parted that ocean and we walked through with Him on dry ground! Remember when God guarded us and lead us with a pillar of cloud and fire! Remember how great and glorious our God has been to us through those times of trouble!
God we’ve got more trouble! Please help!
Do you see the difference Church. Religion leads to grumbling, glorifying the past, and fearful mistrust in the present. Relationship however leads to gratitude where we glorify God and move forward in the present with faithful trust!
One is a very grumpy way to live, the other although it isn’t without some uncertainty, it does hold within it a lot more gratitude, love, joy and peace.
And before we close allow me to leave you some some serious grace. The Israelites missed it… like a lot. Those chose religion. They chose grumbling. They allowed fear to get the upper hand a lot and they let the enemies of grace and gratitude win. And yet their heavenly Father was still gracious to them!
There is grace friend for you to when you fail, when you allow fear to take control, there is grace for your grumbling. If you’ve been chosen and set free by Jesus, God will provide and care for you, but let me suggest to you that there is more joy to be had if you set your heart to choose relationship, gratitude, focusing in on God’s glory and faith, rather than religion, grumbling, nostalgia and fear.
What’da say, how about we choose to fight these enemies in the power and relational love of Jesu!
Pray.