In Numbers chapter 11, we have one of the many examples.
I'm going to just show you a couple of examples this morning.
One of the many examples of where the children of Israel are out in the wilderness
and they're complaining to God.
What I want to preach about this morning is complaining.
And this is one of the major examples in the Bible
of where the children of Israel, they've just come out of Egypt
and they really haven't been out of Egypt that long.
Several months have gone by, but if you think about it,
if you go into the Promised Land in Numbers 14 and begin to spy it out,
they'd only been gone from Egypt for about six months.
So this is less than six months they've been out in the wilderness.
And they're starting to complain.
It says in verse number 1 in Numbers 11,
When the people complained, it displeased the Lord,
and the Lord heard it, and His anger was kindled,
and the fire of the Lord burnt among them and consumed them
So first of all, when we complain, it displeases God.
It makes God upset.
And the Bible says that when you complain, God hears you.
And a lot of times you're not complaining to God.
Maybe you're just complaining to the people around you
or even just talking out loud and complaining.
But the Bible says the Lord heard it and His anger was kindled.
Now it's easy to see why God was angry in Numbers 11
because He brought these people out of Egypt,
He showed them all His miracles,
He did everything for them,
He gave them food to eat, He gave them manna from heaven,
He gave them water out of the rock,
He took care of them in every possible way,
and yet they're complaining.
And you can say,
Well, I can see why it was wrong for them to complain,
but wait a minute, it's okay for me to complain.
But hold on a second,
hasn't God given you everything in your life?
I mean, you have food, you have clothing, you have shelter,
and the Bible tells us that every good gift
and every perfect gift is from above
and cometh down from the Father of light
with whom is no variable this night, a shadow of turning.
Your food, your clothing, your housing comes from God
just as much as theirs came from God,
and you are probably living in much greater comfort
than they were living in,
and if it displeased God when these people complained,
it'll displease God when you complain.
Now, if these people have been delivered
from the bondage of Egypt, we've been saved from hell.
We're on our way to heaven.
We have no reason to go through life complaining
and whining and murmuring
about the things that we don't have.
Now, what were the people complaining about?
First of all, we saw in verse 1 that God got so angry.
Halfway through verse 1, it says,
the fire of the Lord burned among them
and consumed them that were in the outermost parts of Egypt.
So many of them died because God set a fire
that burned among them
because they were complaining so much.
But look what it says in verse 4.
We can see why they were complaining.
It says, the mixed multitude that was among them
fell a-lusting.
Lust is basically when you desire something
that does not belong to you,
that is not rightfully yours.
It's similar to the word covet.
And, of course, that's one of the Ten Commandments,
thou shall not covet.
It says, they fell a-lusting,
and the children of Israel also wept again and said,
who shall give us flesh to eat?
We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely,
the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks
and the onions and the garlic.
But now our soul has dried away.
And look to the next thing you say,
and there's nothing at all,
oh, besides this manna.
So they're acting like, we don't have any food.
Oh, well, of course, we have manna.
Of course, that's going to feed us
and give us everything we need.
And God tells us that it was the taste of a wafer
that was baked with wood, went with honey.
So it was like a sweet wafer.
I don't know exactly what it tasted like.
I don't know what it was like,
but it was some kind of a sweet wafer.
They didn't have to work for it.
All they had to do was just go out
and pick it up off the ground.
And so God was providing their food for them,
and they began to complain about it
and say, you know, this is all we have.
And then they began to talk about
how great it was back in Egypt.
Now, if you remember back in Egypt,
they're suffering cruel bondage, the Bible says.
Their taskmasters were beating them and whipping them,
making them work brutal hours,
making them work day and night literally
and gather straw in the middle of the night.
But they're acting like it was so wonderful back then
and how they had all this fish and garlic
and cucumbers and leeks and all these different things,
and we wish we were back then.
And that's how people are that complain
because there are two kinds of people in this world.
There are people who complain and people who don't.
It has nothing to do with their circumstances.
It has nothing to do with where they are.
Whether they're in Egypt, they're going to complain.
If they're in the wilderness, they're going to complain.
They've got manna, they're going to complain.
When they had the fish and cucumber,
they were complaining about that
because it's a type of person that constantly complains.
It has nothing to do with their circumstances.
And a lot of people who complain,
they will idealize the past and they'll think,
oh, man, it was so great back then
when we had this, this, and this.
Of course, they were complaining back then.
Or they'll look at other people's situation and say,
oh, man, it must be nice to be in their situation.
And they begin to covet what other people have.
But in reality, if they were in that other person's position,
they'd be complaining too.
They'd be complaining about that.
See, it's always easy to look at some distant memory
and make it out to be something that it wasn't.
Or to look at someone else's life
and make it out to be something that it wasn't.
And many people are dissatisfied with their spouse,
with their husband or their wife.
And they think, oh, why can't you be more like so-and-so's wife
or so-and-so's husband?
But in reality, if you lived with that person,
you'd be complaining about them
because you only see them at church or at work.
You see them with their best foot forward.
And guess what?
Everybody has faults.
Everybody's husband doesn't fix stuff around the house.
Or everybody's wife spends too much money
or whatever the complaint is.
Every husband works too much and he's not homing up.
Whatever you complain about,
everybody else is going through the same problems,
the same issues.
It's just that they have a smile on their face.
They have the joy of the Lord as their strength.
They're choosing not to complain about what God has given them.
And it's like Paul said,
not that I speak in respect of want,
for I have learned in whatsoever state I am
their wit to be content.
I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound.
Everywhere and in all things,
I'm instructed both to be full and to be hungry,
both to abound and to suffer in need.
I can do all things through Christ with strength and in being.
We can go through anything and be content
and happy as Paul said he had learned to do.
Or we can go through life complaining about everything,
whether we're in Egypt, whether we're in the wilderness.
And notice how they exaggerate.
You know, we have nothing at all to eat.
These people weren't going hungry.
These people could eat as much food as they wanted
until their stomach was completely full.
And I guarantee you God was giving them a nutritious food.
He wasn't giving them junk to eat.
They ate it for 40 years and did just fine.
And he gave them a quality food.
The Bible says man to eat angel's food.
And it was good food, but they complained about it
because it was just not enough variety in their life.
You know, they just got sick of eating the same thing every day.
Look what they said about it in verse number 8.
It says, and the people went about and gathered it
and ground it in mills and beat it in a mortar
and baked it in pans and made cakes of it
and the taste of it was as of the taste of fresh hook.
So some people just picked it up and ate it.
Other people ground it up and made flour out of it.
They're basically just trying to figure out
a million different ways to serve the same thing,
you know, just to give it a little variety.
Maybe if we grind it up, we can do this.
Hey, let's make it into a pancake.
Hey, let's make it into a loaf of bread.
Hey, let's make cereal, you know, whatever.
And they're basically just trying to eat it
as many different ways as they can.
Now, you can probably see their point a little bit.
You know, eating the same thing over and over.
Now, I wouldn't necessarily want to go on a meatless diet
and that's what their complaint was, right?
No meat. We're eating bread all day long.
We're not getting our meat or fish or, you know,
we want something a little spicier like an onion or a leek
or something with a little bit of a different flavor.
But God is not sympathetic toward them here.
Now, we are because we're sinful people too
because we're a bunch of complainers too.
So we look at it and say, yeah, I see their point.
I wouldn't want to eat, you know, a bowl of cereal
three times a day or whatever, the same food all the time.
But that's just because we're human beings
that also grow up in a society
where we do a lot of complaining
and where everything's handed to us
so we whine and complain and murmur
whereas God here is not saying that he sees their point.
God's just angry. God's just mad, saying,
look, you're getting free food.
Quit complaining about it.
Now, the children of Israel ate manna for 40 years.
But wait a minute.
That was not God's plan for them to eat manna for 40 years.
God's plan was that it would take six months
for them to get there.
All they had to do was just go through this period
of six months, mainly just eating manna every day.
And then they were going to spend the rest of their lives
in a land flowing with milk and honey,
with the grapes of Esco and all these wonderful things
and they could have all the meat and vegetables
and fruit that their heart would desire
more than they ever got in Egypt
and they'd be in peace and freedom
and not be getting beat.
So they had a great future out of it.
They just had to go through this six months.
And really, they wouldn't have even had to go the six months.
But God looked down upon them
and he knew that they didn't have the faith
to go through the land of the Philistines.
He said it would have only taken them 11 days
to go from Egypt to the Promised Land
through the land of the Philistines.
But God looked down on them, and the Bible says
he won't tempt us above what we're able.
And he looked down at them and said, you know,
if they go through the land of the Philistines,
they're going to repent when they see war.
They're going to turn back.
And he said, let's take them around through the wilderness.
And that's why he took them on the six-month route
instead of the 11-day route.
But even so, six months!
Nobody's asking them to starve or go hungry.
They just have to eat the same thing for six months.
Manner.
It's free, it's given to them, it's healthy,
it's good for you.
Just shut up and eat it.
But they wouldn't do it.
And so they fell a lusting, they lied, they complained.
God became very angry and burned the fire among them.
Now, when you give someone something as a gift,
and they complain about it, you know,
that's going to make you angry.
I mean, think about it.
You buy someone a gift, and I used to say,
you got me.
Wait a minute.
I don't have to give you a gift.
You know, I'm giving it to you out of the goodness of the art.
You didn't pay for it.
You didn't earn it.
It's given to you freely.
Have you ever heard the saying,
don't look a gift horse in the mouth?
You know, and that's what they were doing here.
They're getting something for free,
and they're whining and complaining about it.
Now, when Moses hears this big speech
about how they wish they had all these garlic onions.
Now, I would have probably lusted after different things,
but, you know, they want onions and leeks
and garlic and cucumbers.
When Moses hears this speech about them complaining,
he gets really angry about it.
Not just God's angry.
Moses is angry.
And he says in verse number 10,
Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families,
every man in the door of his tent.
And the anger of the Lord was kindled greatly.
Moses also was displeased.
And Moses said to the Lord,
Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant?
And wherefore have I not found favor in thy sight,
that thou layest the burden of all these people upon me?
And the big long story short,
he basically just says,
like, what have I done to deserve this?
Why did you put me in charge of these people
who just whine and complain and fuss at me all day long?
Look what he says in verse 15.
He's so upset,
and he's so sick of listening to their whining and complaining,
because by the way,
this isn't the first time they've been complaining.
They've been complaining the whole way out of Egypt.
He says in verse 15,
And if thou dealest with me,
this is what he's saying unto God,
If thou dealest with me, kill me, I pray thee,
out of hand, if I have found favor in thy sight,
and let me not see my wretchedness.
He says, God, if you love me,
if you're pleased with me,
just do me a favor and kill me,
so that I don't have to deal with these people.
Now that should show you
that not only does your complaining irritate God,
it irritates other people.
It could drive people to the point of wanting to be dead.
I mean, people wish that they were dead
when they listened to you complain.
That's what Moses,
and Moses was a pretty mentally stable guy.
He wasn't just some suicidal,
he wasn't on a suicide watch with Aaron and her, you know,
making sure to keep sharp things away from him or something.
I mean, he was a very stable, godly, righteous man.
He had a lot of faith.
But even for him, it just got to the point
where it was to the point where he's just like,
God, please kill me,
so I don't have to listen to this complaining anymore.
And that's the way people can feel that are around you,
whether it's your parents that get sick of you complaining
or whether it's your co-workers or your boss at work
or your husband or your wife or your children even, maybe.
Hopefully parents aren't complaining to their children,
and making them go insane and want to die.
But the bottom line is,
your complaining makes everyone around you miserable,
even innocent people like Moses who are doing the right thing.
And eventually, this is going to cost Moses
going into the promised land,
because Moses is so mad, he wants to be dead.
Later on, Moses is going to get so mad
when the people ask for water to drink,
and they just keep complaining, keep complaining,
give me water, give me water.
And then basically, and if you have kids,
you've heard that a million times, give me water.
He gets so upset that he ends up,
instead of speaking to the rock,
remember he's supposed to speak to the rock
and water's going to come out?
He takes a stick and he beats it twice,
and then the water comes out.
But God said, you know what,
because you've sinned and disobeyed me,
you don't get to go into the promised land.
But later in the book of Deuteronomy,
when Moses is recapping that,
and obviously all scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and holy men of God speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,
Moses said, it was you that provoked me
with your complaining and your lusting,
and that's why I did it,
and that's why I don't get to go into the promised land.
Thanks a lot.
And he got to go up in the mountain
and see the promised land.
Of course, he's in heaven right now anyway,
so that's a better promised land anyway.
But still, he missed out on some earthly blessings
because he got so mad because it drove him nuts
that people were just complaining to him
all day long and it just drove him nuts.
And it made him so mad that in verse 15
he's asking God to please kill him.
Now you should stop and think about that
before you just complain all day.
And before you turn your workplace into a nightmare
or your home into a nightmare or a church into a nightmare,
which is constantly complaining about everything.
Now, of course, let's skip forward here to Numbers 14.
Turn to Numbers 14.
I'm going to show you another story in the Bible
that I think really illustrates this point well.
Now in chapter 11, of course,
let me just tell you what happens in chapter 11
while you're turning to chapter 14.
Basically, God, he heard their complaining.
God's mad. Moses is mad.
But he says, you know what?
I hear their complaining and I'm going to give them what they want.
But he said I'm going to punish them also.
But I'm going to give them what they want.
I'm just going to show them that I'm able to give them what they want.
But they're not going to get to enjoy it
because they're committing sin here.
They're wicked and so they're going to die for what they've done.
But he said I'm still going to show my power
and show them that I could do it.
Because here's the thing, and here's what we can learn from that.
When you complain about stuff that you don't have,
whether it's you don't have the food that you want,
you don't have the car that you want,
you don't have the clothes you want,
you don't have the life that you want,
you don't have the good health that you want,
it's not that God can't give you what you want
because God can give you what you want.
I mean, isn't God able to give you the car you want,
the house you want, the clothes you want, whatever?
But guess what? He's choosing not to give it to you.
Because that's His will, that's His choice.
Now we should pray to God and ask Him for the things that we need.
And ask Him for good things, not lustful, frivolous things,
but just ask Him for the things that we need.
But if we don't have the things that we want,
it's because He's choosing not to give it to us.
It's not because He can't give it to us.
He has the power to give us anything.
I mean, if God wanted to,
He could give you all kinds of money and things that you need.
He doesn't want you to have it, apparently, if you don't have it.
And the way I see it is whatever I don't have, I must not eat.
And God must not think I need it or else I would have it.
So God tells Moses, He says,
okay, you get up and tell the children of Israel
that I'm going to give them meat to eat,
all you can eat, buffet of meat.
It's going to be so much meat
that they will eat as much as they can.
In fact, it'll be coming out their nostrils, they eat so much.
And He says, I'm not going to do it for one day.
I'm not going to do it for two. I'm not doing it for ten days.
I'm not doing it for 30.
For 30 days, they will eat as much meat as they can
until it's coming out their nostrils.
And now Moses, he's a little bit nervous about telling this to the people.
You know, because he doesn't want to get up and say that,
and it doesn't happen.
They look like fools.
So Moses kind of questions God a little bit and says,
so how are you going to do that, God?
Are you going to take all the fishes in the whole world and bring them?
All the fishes in the sea?
Are we going to kill every piece of cattle?
Are we going to just kill every animal?
And Moses is doubting,
because it's just such an extreme thing that God said He's going to do.
They're out in the middle of the desert with nothing.
And God's claiming that He's going to give them so much meat
that they can eat as much as they want and more than they want for 30 days.
So God says, you know, my hand is not shortened.
I'll show you that I can do it.
So Moses gets up and announces to the people that it's going to happen.
Of course, God sends in this wind that just brings in flocks of quail flying,
basically up to a man's waist, just quail coming through.
And they have so many quail that they can just grab them
and they don't even have to hunt for them.
I mean, they're just right there.
But then the Bible says that as they began to eat the meat,
God sent a pestilence among them, a disease among them,
and it says He slew the fattest of them,
you know, the ones who were lusting after it the most,
the ones who just wanted to gorge themselves the most.
He slew the fattest of them to teach them not to covet,
not to lust, not to complain, not to whine.
But it's not that God couldn't do it.
So we should take a lesson from that, that if we don't have something,
it's because God has chosen that we don't have it.
It's not because God can't give it to us.
It's because He's chosen to keep us a little bit leaner
than we want to be sometimes.
Because sometimes if we get too much money
or too much of what we want or we live too comfortable of a life,
we start to take things for granted.
We get spoiled.
And we also start to just get too comfortable
and not really think too much about God because we don't need God.
So we're not praying and we're not relying on Him.
We're just kind of cruising through life and it's just a little too easy.
So God likes to keep us sometimes a little bit leaner than we want to be
so that we have to trust in Him and rely on Him
and think about Him and realize that He's the one who's providing our needs.
Now, Numbers 14.
We move a little bit forward in the story.
Now the children of Israel are at the Promised Land.
And before they go in to take the land that God has promised...
Remember, they left Egypt about six months ago.
And here we... or it was supposed to be six months.
It's gone a little longer.
Anyway, they get there and they're ready to go into the Promised Land.
Here it is.
And before they go in, they're going to send in the 12 spies.
Now the 12 spies that they send, one from each tribe.
Their purpose was not to decide whether we're going to do this or not.
Their purpose was just to check things out so that they could make a battle plan,
just to see what the land is like, to see what the inhabitants are like,
to see what the enemy is going to be like before they go to war.
And so they're just going to reconnoiter the territory and see what's going on.
Not to decide are we going to do this or not.
I mean, they've already left Egypt. There's no going back.
They're in a desolate wilderness.
It's forward only.
So they send in the 12 spies.
Look at chapter... I'm sorry, chapter 13.
We're going to get to 14 in a minute. Go to chapter 13.
It says in chapter 13, verse 1,
The Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan,
which I give unto the children of Israel,
of every tribe of their father, shall ye send a man,
every one a ruler among them.
So he's just sending them to search to check things out.
It says in verse 17,
And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said unto them,
Get you up this way southward, and go up into the mountain,
and see the land, what it is, and the people that dwell therein,
whether they be strong or weak, few or many,
and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad,
and what cities they be that they dwell in,
whether in tents or in strongholds,
and what the land is, whether it be bad or lean,
whether there be wood therein or not,
and be of good courage, and bring up the fruit of the land.
Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes.
So they have no idea what kind of land this is.
They don't know whether it's forests.
They don't know whether the people live in walled cities or tents.
They have no clue.
God just told them, you're going to the promised land.
So he says, okay, well, let's send in 12 guys.
We're going to check things out, see what we're dealing with,
and make a plan.
It says in verse 21,
So they went up and searched the land from the wilderness of Zin unto Rehob,
as men come to Haman.
And they ascended by the south and came unto Hebron,
where Ahima, Shishai, and Talmai, thus the children of Adak, were.
Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoham and Egypt.
And they came unto the brook of Eschol,
and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes,
and they bare it between two upon a staff,
and they brought of the pomegranates and of the figs.
So they come into the land, and this is a land that's just producing
great amounts of fruit and food.
I mean, this is a very lush, fertile, beautiful land.
I mean, it's everything that they could have wished for and hoped for and beyond.
Way better than Egypt, way better than the wilderness,
way nicer than anything they've ever seen in their life.
And in fact, this one giant cluster of grapes that's just growing wild,
they're having to carry between two guys on a stick.
One guy can't even carry it.
Now, when I was a little kid, you know, when you're a little kid,
you don't really understand things in the Bible.
When I was a little kid and I saw this in the Bible,
I thought that each grape was huge.
I pictured just a normal bunch of grapes just blown up in size,
you know, a grape this big like a basketball.
But obviously, the grapes were normal size.
It was just a huge cluster of grapes, okay.
So that was my misunderstanding when I was a little kid when I read this.
But anyway, they come back and I mean, the fruit of the land is great.
Pomegranates, figs, grapes, they bring a sample
so that the people can taste of what it's going to be like when they get there.
And it says in verse 24,
The place was called the Brook Eschol because of the cluster of grapes
which the children of Israel cut down from that.
So they even named that place after that one big cluster of grapes
because it was so amazing that there would be a cluster of grapes so big
it took two people to carry it.
Who likes grapes?
Everybody loves grapes.
It's like the best fruit.
Everybody loves it.
They're kind of expensive though, right?
How much are grapes per pound, organic grapes per pound?
Three bucks a pound or something for organic grapes?
You know, unless you want the ones with poison in them.
But anyway, the ones with that white film that you have to rub off of each grape,
the bitter white film.
Who knows what I'm talking about?
Yeah, that's not good for you.
But anyway, that's another story.
But anyway, it says in verse 25,
And they returned from searching the land after forty days.
So they spent forty days searching the land.
And they're gathering the grapes, they're gathering the fruit,
they're checking everything out.
And they went and came to Moses and to Aaron, verse 26,
unto all the congregation of the children of Israel,
unto the wilderness of Perah and of Kadesh,
and brought back word unto them,
and unto all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land.
And they told them and said,
We came unto the land whither thou sentest us,
and surely it floweth with milk and honey.
And this is the fruit of it.
But in verse 28, they begin to look at the negative side.
Nevertheless, the people be strong that dwell in the land,
and the cities are walled and very great.
And moreover, we saw the children of Anak there.
Now, who are the children of Anak?
Those three guys that he listed earlier on,
Sheshi, Talmai, and Ahima.
These are giants.
These are basically guys that were related to Goliath.
Goliath was also one of the sons of Anak.
Of course, that's much later on, hundreds and hundreds of years later.
But it's the same family, big family.
Goliath was about ten feet tall.
These guys were probably a similar height.
These are huge warriors, and they're very tall, these giants.
And it says, we saw the children of Anak there.
The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south,
and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains.
And the Canaanites dwell by the sea and by the coast of Jordan.
So there begins to be a fuss among the people,
because it says in verse 30,
Caleb stilled the people.
So he's basically hushing them.
All right, everybody, quiet down.
It says he stilled the people foremost and said,
let us go up at once and possess it,
for we are well able to overcome it.
He says, let's go do it right now.
We can do this now.
Easy, well able to do it.
Let's go.
But the men that went up with him,
because out of the twelve spies, there were ten that were bad.
The only two that were righteous were Caleb and Joshua.
And it says the men that were with him, these are the other ten,
said, we'd be not able to go up against the people,
for they are stronger than we.
So these people have already seen the Red Sea parted,
they've been eating manna, given them miraculously.
The Egyptians were mightier than they,
but yet they were brought out with a high hand and with a stretched out arm.
And yet they say, well we can't do it, because they're stronger.
Well obviously you can't do it, but God can do it.
And God, all things are possible.
Verse 32, and they brought up an evil report of the land,
which they had searched under the children of Israel,
saying the land through which we have gone to search it
is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof.
So they're saying, you know, it's a rough terrain.
And all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.
So basically all of these people,
there are those sons of Anak that are like ten feet tall,
but they said really all the people are pretty tall.
This is a tall race of people here.
And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak,
which come up the giants,
and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers,
and so we were in their sight.
So they're exaggerating a little bit,
that they felt like a grasshopper around these people.
They're so small.
Go to chapter 14, verse 1.
It says, and all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried,
and the people wept that night,
and all the children of Israel what? Murmured.
That's another word for complaining.
They complained, they murmured,
against Moses and against Aaron,
and the whole congregation said to them,
would God that we have died in the land of Egypt,
or would God we have died in this world?
Nothing has even gone wrong yet.
Just because somebody told them,
oh, you can't do it, it's too hard.
Ooh, why are you coming?
Nothing's even going wrong yet.
Everything's fine, but they're just crying and whining
about something that might happen in the future.
Now here's another point I want to make about complaining.
Have you noticed a lot of times people complain
about stuff that never even happens?
Like they complain and whine,
oh, man, it's going to be so horrible.
And then, oh, it turned out that it never even happened.
You know, why are you complaining about stuff in the future?
You don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow.
Thou knowest not what a day shall bring forth.
Why would you complain about next week?
Oh, man, next year's going to be horrible.
You know, man, tomorrow's going to be a horrible day at work.
And you complain about, and then you get there
and everything goes great.
Oh, well, it turned out it was great,
but I'm still worried about next week.
Because people complain.
They complain about stuff that doesn't even happen.
They complain about future events that might happen.
What are we going to do when this money runs out?
I don't know what I'm going to do at the end of 2011.
I don't know what we're going to do.
And they just complain about hypotheticals
that might not even happen.
I mean, if you're going to complain,
at least complain about something that's happening right now.
But you shouldn't even complain about that.
Because count your blessings, all the wonderful things they get.
But it's even more ridiculous
to complain about something in the future.
Is what they're complaining about even reality?
No.
Because if they would have gone in,
everything would have been great.
They would have won all the battles.
God would have blessed them.
God was going to send the hornet
and God was going to send storms.
God was going to make the walls of Jericho fall down.
God had all these miracles
that were going to cause them to win these battles,
but yet they're complaining about what might go wrong,
what could happen in the future.
And so they're whining, complaining.
And it says in verse number three,
Wherefore, if the Lord brought us unto this land
to fall by the sword,
that our wives and our children should be a prey.
Of course, it hasn't happened yet.
They're just thinking it might happen.
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 to Egypt.
Yeah, that's going to go over real well
when they get back to Egypt.
All right, we're back.
After they've killed after all the firstborn have died.
Remember the Passover?
Remember all the planes?
Remember hail and fire and brimstone?
Remember drowning the whole army of Egypt in the Red Sea?
All right, we're back.
Where's my jail cell?
I'm back.
You know, lock me up.
These people are idiots.
But you know, if you listen to what most people say
when they complain,
it's stupid things that they say.
It's stupid stuff.
Oh, man, I wish I was nowhere here.
No, you don't.
What are you talking about?
They don't even remember how bad it was
when they were in Egypt.
And so they're saying,
Let's make a captain and let's return to Egypt.
Verse 5,
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,
which were of them that searched the land,
rent their clothes.
They're tearing their clothes.
They're so upset.
Because they were all excited.
They're pumped.
They're like,
Yeah, let's do it.
We love it.
The fruit is great.
The land is great.
We can beat these people.
And then all of a sudden
they hear everybody whining about it.
They don't want to do it.
They were excited.
Now the wind has totally gone out of their sails.
They're renting their clothes.
They're tearing their garments.
They're so upset.
And they spayed, the two of them,
on all the company of the children of Israel,
saying,
The land which we pass through to search it
is an exceeding good land.
If the Lord delighted us,
then he will bring us into this land
and give it us,
a land which floweth with milk and honey.
Only rebel not ye against the Lord.
Neither fear ye the people of the land,
for they are bred for us.
Their defense is departed from them,
and the Lord is with us.
Fear them not.
So this is some great preaching
that they're doing, right?
Joshua and Caleb are preaching the truth
and they're doing this great preaching.
And what's the response to this great preaching?
Telling them to quit complaining
and just do what God told them to do?
All the congregation bade stone them with stones.
They watched Joshua and Caleb dead
when they hear this.
And he said,
let me find my place here.
It says,
They badged stone them with stones,
and the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle
of the congregation before all the children of Israel.
And the Lord said unto Moses,
how long will this people provoke me?
And how long will be are they believe me
for all the signs which I have showed among them?
I will smite them with the pestilence
and disinherit them
and will make thee a greater nation
in my year than they.
So if God's just raised you,
just kill them all.
He's like, let's just kill all of them
and I'm just going to take you, Moses.
You're going to be the new Abraham.
We're going to start over with you
and we're going to create a whole new nation
and just kill them all
because he said,
no matter what I show them,
they won't believe in me.
And by the way,
people believe what they want to believe.
There are some people,
you can go out of soul with it.
You can show them anything in the Bible.
They don't believe it.
You can show them that their Mormon,
Latter-day Satan religion is wicked as hell.
They don't believe it.
They don't care.
And no matter how much you show them,
they won't believe it.
It's the same thing here.
God's showing them all these miracles,
they still don't believe in them
because their heart was hardened.
They didn't want to believe
because they didn't want to obey
because if you believe in him,
then you have to acknowledge the fact
that he has rules.
And obviously,
you're not saved by works.
You don't have to follow the rules to be saved.
But people don't even like to admit
that they're even doing anything wrong
because God doesn't expect us
to stop sinning before we get saved.
The Bible just says,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and now shall be saved.
But the Bible says that people
whose deeds are evil,
they hate the light.
They don't want to come to the light
lest their deeds should be reproved.
And see, the atheists today
down at ASU,
you know, who doesn't believe that
it is a God that exists.
It's not that he doesn't want to believe
because he thinks he has to work his way to heaven.
It's that he doesn't even want to admit
that what he's doing is wrong.
He wants to commit wicked sin
and think that he's righteous
and think that he's better.
And he wants to look down on other people
while he's a fornicator,
while he's a drunk,
while he's an adulterer.
He wants to look down on everybody else
and think that he's so rich.
I mean, even these filthy sodomites.
Yes, I said it.
Filthy sodomites.
They have pride.
Pride.
They're proud of the fact
that they're a vile queer.
They're proud of it.
They display it down the street.
They make a banner out of it
saying, gay pride.
You know what?
They're proud of it.
They're proud of their sin.
They don't want to admit,
hey, what I'm doing is sick.
It's perverted.
It's disgusting.
It's an abomination in the eyes of God.
And so that's how mankind is.
That's an extreme example.
That's the dirtiest sin that there is,
and that's an extreme example.
But even lesser sins, though,
people don't want to admit that it's wrong.
People who commit adultery want to make excuses
why they commit adultery.
People who commit fornication,
they want to justify it and say,
well, we're going to get married anyway eventually.
You know, or whatever.
You know, they try to justify it.
Or, you know, I'm not really drunk.
I'm just a little tipsy, you know,
after 12 beers or whatever.
You know what I mean?
I'm just a little bit buzzed right now
after drinking all this hard liquor.
You know, people try to make excuses
and justify themselves.
They don't like this book
because this book just shuts it down
and says, no, you're wrong.
This book condemns everything that the world promotes.
It condemns drunkenness.
It condemns fornication.
It condemns adultery.
It condemns lust.
It condemns pornography.
It condemns Hollywood.
It condemns the rock and roll industry.
It condemns the hip-hop culture.
It condemns and condemns and condemns,
and people don't want to be condemned.
They want to think that they're righteous
in their own eyes.
And you see, they don't like someone
telling them that there's right and wrong,
absolute concrete, black and white,
on-off, good, bad, right, wrong,
wicked, righteous.
They don't want to believe that.
So instead, they just believe a lie,
willfully choose to believe,
oh, there was this big explosion
and we all came from monkeys.
You know?
Where did the stinking monkey come from?
I mean, give me a break.
You know, they show a little chart
of a monkey turning into,
or I'm sorry, everybody's always like,
oh, pastor, I understand.
You know, we didn't come from monkeys.
We came from apes.
Oh, I'm so, so sorry
because that makes so much more sense.
I mean, if you said that we came from monkeys,
that would truly be ridiculous.
But now that I hear you say that we come from apes,
okay, now let's sit down and talk about it.
That makes a lot of sense.
You know, but where did the ape come from?
Oh, it came from, you know, whatever,
and it goes backward to, you know,
some single-celled organism,
which is more complicated than your computer,
which is more complicated than your iPod.
And if I told you that your iPod came from nothing,
you wouldn't believe that.
But yet you believe that a life form
that's more complicated than your iPod
came from nothing.
And, you know, it's the laws of science.
You know, this week they're coming out with all this stuff.
I saw this thing in the news.
They're saying how we found these particles
that can travel faster than the speed of light,
and, you know, you use them to go back in time,
you know, and time travel.
And they talk about all this science,
and they're like, we're having to rethink
all of our laws of physics.
If this experiment, they did some experiment in Italy
or something, they said if this experiment was real,
and they're going to try to recreate it,
they said if this experiment was real,
we're going to have to just rewrite
everything we know about physics.
We're going to have to go back and revisit
everything about Einstein's special law of relativity.
We're going to have to go back and rethink all of this.
It turns out we didn't even know what we were talking about.
All the science that the Big Bang is based on
is all just concrete science, my friend.
Of course, next week it's going to completely change.
And throughout history, science, so-called,
is constantly changing, isn't it?
I mean, it's constantly changing.
It's being updated and revised
as man understands more and more
about the world we live in, okay?
And as we learn more about the creation,
things change because we learn more.
We have to adjust and correct ideas.
You know, I don't know if this experiment is true or not.
I don't really care.
But the bottom line is it may cause them
to have to readjust their whole thinking
and their whole thought process
about certain aspects of physics.
That's what we're always going to be learning
and going forward.
But they want you to think that we just know everything.
We understand everything.
And in fact, I can tell you everything about the Big Bang.
You know, they tell you that the Big Bang,
first of all, the physicists,
and I don't want to go too deep on this,
but the physicists out of one side of their mouth
will tell you,
nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
Nothing.
You know, that's the fastest that anything can travel.
I need my glasses.
Where are my Dr. Spergl glasses here?
I can't really talk about this effectively
without my glasses.
You know, because I don't want to seem like
I'm on the same level with those that do my speaking.
You know, I need to put on these glasses
so I can transcend into, you know,
the scientific community, you know.
Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light,
is what they'll say.
But they're not in the same breath.
They're not in the same breath.
You know what they'll say next?
They'll say, and look,
honestly, I think that most people
just don't even understand the Big Bang.
Because if they understood the Big Bang,
they wouldn't believe it.
But 99% of people,
they don't even understand the Big Bang
because they think the Big Bang was a Big Bang,
you know, which, I mean, from the name,
yeah, you'd think so.
And it was a Big Bang.
But here's the thing.
This is what they say.
They say that it all came back.
And this is what people who believe in the Big Bang,
which is a new theory from the last 100 years,
those who believe in the Big Bang
believe that, you know,
all of the matter in the entire universe,
are you listening?
They believe that it was all crammed into a dot
that was so small you couldn't even see.
It was even smaller than a single proton.
Okay?
Everything in the universe.
The world, the sun, the stars, the moon,
I mean, if you understand the Big Bang,
you'll understand that it was all crammed into a little dot
that was smaller than a single proton.
Now that's jammed, that's pretty dense.
I mean, the whole everything.
And also all of space and time and matter, everything.
Because that's all that existed was a dot.
Then the dot exploded, okay?
Because it was just too much energy
in too small of a space.
I mean, I can see why it exploded.
I mean, if you're going to cram the whole universe into one dot
so small you can't even see it,
of course it's going to explode, you know?
And so it exploded, and then when it exploded,
they say that it expanded to the size of our current universe
in one trillion trillionth, not a trillionth, my friend,
but a trillion trillionth of a second to the current size.
Well, here's my question.
If nothing can travel faster than the speed of light,
how did it get from that dot all the way out to the edges,
the debris, how did it get to the edges
in a trillion trillionth of a second?
And then this is what they say,
well, you know, that's one of the mysteries of physics.
That's actually something that we've been grappling with
for the last hundred years.
We're just trying to understand how that little dot
exploded in the trillionth of a second,
and the whole universe and everything came from it.
Well, maybe it just didn't happen because it's stupid,
because it doesn't make any sense because it's a lie.
And you know why they come up with that lie?
The Bible says that they, because of their own lusts,
read 2 Peter 3, because of their own sinful lusts in 2 Peter 3,
it says that because of their own lust,
they are willfully ignorant that God created the earth
and that God sent a flood upon the earth
and destroyed the world in the days of Noah.
They don't want to believe it.
They want to get their big fat paycheck
to teach a lie down at ASU
and to commit adultery with their students
and look at porno and get drunk and say,
yep, trillion, trillionth of a second.
And all these little morons at ASU are just like,
oh, wow, this is really interesting.
This is really fascinating.
I love science.
I'm going to get a degree in science.
And they believe this garbage because they're fools.
Because the Bible says the fool that sent this heart,
there is no God.
And it's nonsense.
They used to say that the Big Bang
was the size of a period on the page, the whole universe.
But then they're like, hey, if we're going to say
it's the size of a period, let's go all the way.
It was the size of a proton.
You can't even see it.
It was so small.
Because look, people in moral life
didn't believe a big lie than a little lie.
Let's just tell a big whopper, hey,
why say it happened in one year?
It happened in a trillion trillionth of a second.
And these same people say, you actually
believe God created the whole universe in six literal days?
Six days is a lot longer than a trillion trillionth
of a second.
I mean, that's a long time.
Six days, 24 hours in a day.
They think that nothing created it
in a trillion trillionth of a second.
We at least believe that God did it.
And I've even seen a chart.
You're not going to believe this.
I've seen a chart mapping out the first trillion trillionth
of a second, breaking it down even further.
Like, OK, when we were an eighth of the way
into the trillion trillionth of a second,
here's what the universe looked like.
I'm not kidding.
Looking up on the internet, these charts exist.
When we were halfway through the trillion trillionth
of a second, here's what the universe looked like.
I mean, you can't make this stuff up.
These people, I mean, you have to be,
what kind of drugs were these people taking?
Well, they even made this stuff up.
You know, it shouldn't be called the institutions
of higher learning.
It should be institutions of high learning.
But anyway, I'm off on a rabbit trail.
I need to get back to the Bible here.
I need to get out of this weird twilight zone
that I've gone into in the last five minutes of the sermon.
But the bottom line is, people believe
what they want to believe.
You show them the truth in the Bible,
they choose to believe it or reject it
based on what they want to believe.
And if they want to believe in the Big Bang,
if they want to believe in evolution,
if they want to believe in space aliens and everything
that a lot of these people believe in,
they're going to believe in it
because they want to believe in it.
Well, I want to believe in the Bible,
so that's what I believe in.
Except here's that you say, well, what's the difference?
The difference is that the Bible's true
and that everything else is a lie.
That's what the difference is.
That's not logical.
Well, okay, then your Big Bang is very logical,
so I'm going to let you stick with that then.
You're such a logical creature,
you stick with the Big Bang,
I'll stick with my illogical Bible here,
and we'll see who ends up burning in hell
at the end of it all.
But anyway, the bottom line is these people,
God is angry with them
because no matter what he showed them,
he said, for all the signs which I've showed among them,
he said they don't believe me.
And it's the same thing what Abraham said.
If you remember Luke 16,
remember the rich man is burning in hell
in Luke chapter 16.
And he calls out far off to Abraham.
He lifts up his eyes and he says,
Father Abraham, he said, send Lazarus
that he may dip the tip of his finger in water
and cool my tongue for I'm tormented in this flame.
And Abraham tells him, look,
there's a great gulf between me and thee.
Nobody can go back and forth here
between heaven and hell here.
It's not going to happen.
And he says, okay, well then send Lazarus to my house.
He said, I have five brethren
and I want Lazarus to warn them
so that they don't come to this place of torment.
He's basically saying,
I don't want my five brothers to go to hell.
So send Lazarus to warn them.
And you know what Abraham told the rich man?
He said, they have Moses in the prophets.
Let them hear them.
And the rich man said, no.
He said, if they see one risen from the dead,
then they'll believe.
And Abraham said,
if they don't believe Moses in the prophets,
they will not believe,
even though one were risen from the dead,
they won't believe.
And you know what?
Somebody did rise from the dead
shortly thereafter, Jesus Christ.
Did they believe? No.
I mean, the Pharisees watched Lazarus,
the other Lazarus, different Lazarus,
in John chapter 11,
they saw him rise from the dead
and then they went out and said,
let's figure out how we can kill Jesus.
And in fact, let's kill Lazarus
because he's part of the evidence that Jesus is real.
Let's kill Lazarus.
They tried to kill Lazarus.
Why? Because they didn't care.
They want to believe what they want to believe.
And that's what we see here with the children of Israel,
the ones who were not saved.
They believed not because they didn't want to believe.
And that was a little bit of a rabbit trail
from complaining, okay?
But, you know, it is what it is.
So quit complaining about my sermon, okay?
I can go off on a rabbit trail.
Don't murmur a rabbit.
No, I don't need my glasses.
I'm switching back into Bible preaching mode, all right?
So let me jump back into my sermon here.
I got off on a rabbit trail.
They didn't believe.
And verse 12, God said he's going to kill them all
and make up Moses, a great nation.
Look at verse 26.
And the Lord spake unto Moses unto Aaron, saying,
How long shall I bear with this evil congregation
which murmur against me?
I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel
which they murmur against me.
Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the Lord,
as ye have spoken in my ears, so will I do to you.
Your carcasses 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.
Doubtless ye shall not come into the land
concerning which I swear to make you dwell therein.
Say, Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun,
but your little ones which ye said should be afraid.
Then will I bring in, and they shall know the land
which ye have despised.
Now, let me finish up the sermon by saying this.
There were twelve men who went in to spy out Canaan, right?
Ten of them came back, and then look,
did they all go to the same places?
They checked out the same land, they saw the same graves,
they saw the same figs, the same pomegranates,
they saw the same giants, they saw the same Canaanites,
they saw the same enemies, they saw the same fruits of the land.
They all had the identical experience, okay?
One of them walked away and said,
This is great! I'm excited about this!
This is going to be a piece of cake!
Ten of them walked away saying,
We can't do it. It's horrible. It's a nightmare.
This land, it's too fertile. Stuff grows too easily.
So there's all these plants everywhere,
thorns, and they're in the way.
Another guy looks at it and says,
This is great, man. We don't even have to till the land.
There's just fruit growing everywhere. We just eat it.
This is great.
And what I want to show you about complaining is that
two people can look at the exact same circumstances in life,
and one can have a good attitude about it,
and one can have a bad attitude about it.
You see what I mean? That's the same thing in our life.
We can look at our lives,
and we can either choose to focus on the good or on the bad.
Because when they went into the land, let's face it,
there were some negatives.
I mean, huge walled cities, giants in the land,
the sons of Anak, a formidable foe to face.
And they looked at that as a negative. It was a negative.
But the positive was all the bounty and all the plenty
and the promises of God that said they could do it.
And in your life, you can choose
whether to focus on the positive or the negative.
You know, you can choose whether to focus on what you do have,
what God has blessed you with,
what God has given you, all the good things,
or you can choose to just fixate on the bad.
And if you look at the story of Haman in the book of Esther,
he had ten children. That was a blessing from God.
The Bible says children are in heritage of the Lord,
and the fruit of the wood was his reward.
Haman had ten children. Great blessing.
Haman was the second most powerful man in the kingdom.
A great blessing.
Haman had wealth and riches and prosperity and security,
but the one thing he didn't have
was that Mordecai would not bow down to him.
And here's what Haman said.
Well, none of this other stuff does me any good
as long as I see Haman. It just ruins everything.
I mean, what a fool.
To overlook everything he'd been given,
to overlook all the blessings,
and to just fixate on the one thing that he doesn't have.
And that's the same thing that we often do.
You might have perfect health today.
Perfect health!
But your finances are on intensive care or whatever.
Your finances are flatlining right now.
And your health is great.
But other people would give every penny
to have perfect health.
The Bible says,
Yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.
When Job was afflicted with boils and sores and scabs
and itching, he would have given all the money in the world.
He didn't need money. He just wanted to be healed.
He would have paid any price.
And there are people who would give any amount of money
to have your health.
But you complain about the finances
even though your health is perfect.
See what I mean?
And then there's other people who have shot finances maybe.
Or, I mean, they have great finances.
Somebody who has all kinds of money and they're unhealthy.
You know, other people wish that they had those kind of finances.
But you're just complaining about your health.
When in reality, you know,
there are other people who have worse health than you.
There are other people who wish they were in your shoes.
You know, we complain because we don't have the right food, maybe.
Because we just have to keep eating, you know, rice and beans or something.
Because we don't have the variety.
And I just can't eat the same thing every day.
But yet other people are just struggling
just to have enough food to eat in the world.
They just want to have a full stomach.
They don't care what it's coming from.
They wouldn't care if it was just white rice and whatever
and the same thing every day.
They're just looking to survive.
And so it's all dependent on what you focus on.
Nobody's life is perfect.
My life is not perfect.
Your life is not perfect.
You might have, maybe it's health problems.
Other people, their health is great, their finances are great,
but their marriage is a nightmare.
Okay?
They would give up their health, you know,
if they would get along with their spouse, you know?
They're like saying,
Kill me because of my spouse, you know, like Moses did.
Okay?
So the bottom line is,
some people have a nightmare in their marriage,
great finances, great health.
Other people have a great marriage, great health,
and then they're just upset about their finances.
You can't have it all, folks.
Nobody's life is perfect.
And you can always fixate and complain about the,
or maybe you have great finances, great health,
great marriage, but, you know, you have to work 100 hours a week,
or you have to, you know,
or your kids are turning out wrong or whatever.
And look, you can always look at somebody else and say,
Well, man, I wish I had their finances.
But you don't know what other problems they're going through.
You know, you just need to quit complaining
and realize that the lot that you've been dealt in life,
whether it be your married life, your children, your health,
your finances, or any other area you want to name,
okay, be thankful for the good things that you have
and focus on that.
Count your blessings.
And don't worry about what you don't have
instead of just focusing always on what you don't have.
You know, some people have great health,
great marriage, great finances,
but they live in a place
where they can't find a good church to go to.
They can't find a church.
I mean, they have no church to go to
that's preaching the Word of God,
that's a soul winning church,
and they're searching for a good church,
and they're miserable because they don't have a good church.
Hey, be thankful that you have a church to go to.
Even if you say,
well Pastor Anderson, my marriage is shot,
my health is shot, my finances are shot,
but hey, you go to a great church.
Look on the bright side.
You know, there's always something you can be thankful for.
Even if everything in your life is shot,
and if everything in your life is shot
and you hate our church,
well, I don't know what to tell you.
Maybe you just need to go eat some worms and die
or something, I don't know.
But anyway, the bottom line is,
if you count your blessings,
I guarantee you everybody can find
a lot of things to be thankful for.
A lot of things that are working out for you.
And if you look hard enough,
you'll find people that are way worse off than you
that wish they were in your shoes.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your Word, dear God,
and I just pray that you'll be here
and that every person will put this into practice
and not to be a complainer.
Boy, it'll help their job.
It'll help their career.
They'll succeed more if they don't complain.
In a rough economy, they'll keep that good job
if they don't complain.
Help us not to be complainers.
Help us not to ruin our home life
or our church or our workplace
by being a whiner.
Help us to just count our blessings
and to let your prayers out.
Help us to be a complainer.
And to let your praise be in our mouths at all times
and not to be down in the mouth and depressed.
In Jesus' name we pray.