January 26, 2025 | Ryan Bennett
Passage: Exodus 17:1-7
The book of Exodus is the account of God delivering his people from slavery in Egypt. It begins with the pharaoh enslaving the Hebrew people out of fear and making them work long, hard days building his empire. They cry out to God, and God hears their prayers and raises up Moses to lead them to freedom. It is an amazing story of how God frees his people from slavery and empires. We remember it every Maundy Thursday just before Easter because it is integrally related to the night Jesus was betrayed. The story originates the Passover, as God passed over the houses anointed by blood; the grief and loss of Egyptian life caused the pharaoh to relent and free the Hebrews, then God parted the Red Sea and they began their journey to the land of promise.
Can you imagine the sense of awe and gratitude the Israelites must have felt as they walked to freedom on dry land while there was a wall of sea on each side of them: What a magnificent display of God’s power and care for them: answering their prayers, freeing them, moving them toward a land that God had prepared flowing with milk and honey. A land full of resources, everything they would need. Can you imagine the gratitude they must have felt after witnessing that? Can you imagine how if that were you, it would have forever changed your outlook on life?
WELL . . . that’s not exactly how it all happened. In fact, the water had barely come back together sealing their freedom when THEY STARTED GRUMBLING. In fact, let me read to you one of the first things the Israelites said as free people for the first time: THE WHOLE COMMUNITY GRUMBLED SAYING “IF ONLY WE HAD DIED BY THE LORD’S HAND IN EGYPT! AT LEAST THERE WE HAD FOOD TO EAT, BUT YOU HAVE BROUGHT US OUT HERE INTO THIS DESERT WHERE WE WILL STARVE TO DEATH.” God once again heard their concerns—it actually said God heard their grumbling—and began raining down bread from heaven. They grumbled some more because this didn’t look like the bread they were used to, and God provided quail so they had meat to eat. Can you imagine not having to hunt or gather food, not even having to go to the grocery store? Every morning it was there on their front door waiting for them to take it in. How grateful must they have been to God after being freed from slavery and then having their needs met daily with no effort on their part?
WELL . . . That’s not exactly the way the Israelites saw it. In fact, the very next thing we hear from them is our text today where they GRUMBLED to Moses again and said, why did God bring us out into the wilderness only to let us die of thirst? God told Moses to get his staff out and smack it against the rock. In my mind, If I were Moses here, I would be thinking, THAT’S A GREAT IDEA. I NEED A LITTLE STRESS RELEASE. I AM GOING TO BREAK MY STAFF AGAINST THIS ROCK AND IT WILL MAKE ME FEEL BETTER. So he does, and the rock, not the staff breaks, and out comes a spring of water so all the Israelites and all their livestock are able to drink and be satisfied. How grateful the Israelites must be now that God has delivered them from slavery, brought food to their door, and now made a spring of water flow up out of a rock in the middle of the desert!
WELL . . . This cycle continues on and on and on. When Moses went up on Mt Sinai to be with God and God gave Israel the Law to help give order to their life, they grumbled that God didn’t care about them and began making golden idols to be their god. Because of their lack of gratitude and faith in God, they had to spend 40 years in the wilderness. We know that this is a recurring theme throughout the Bible: ingratitude and grumbling prevents God's people from living into the future God has for them. I am so glad those of us who are followers of Jesus today have all of this to learn from so we don't fall in the same trap as the Israelites and the early church of GRUMBLING and NOT BEING GRATEFUL.
WELL . . . We know that isn’t true either, don’t we? You see my point.
There are gratitude killers in our life, in our world, and the biggest of those is grumbling. I say the biggest because it is the most common. It is the one I think ALL OF US struggle with EVERY SINGLE DAY. It seems harmless. But it robs us of our gratitude and we fail to see all of the good, all that is right. This is our human condition. It is easily seen in our kids when they may find themselves in a room full of toys and things to do, yet they complain that they're bored. Even grown, we are just the same, if maybe more subtle. We fall in the trap of grumbling for the thing we don’t have instead of being grateful for the many things we do have.
Another gratitude killer is ENTITLEMENT. If you give me a car out of the blue, then I will be grateful for such a gift; but if I buy the car at the dealership, then I am entitled to it. So when you hand the keys over, I am not grateful because I bought it and feel entitled to it. The problem is we think we are entitled to a lot more than we are, and entitlement is a gratitude killer. Entitlement could also be called arrogance.
Another gratitude killer is RESENTMENT. Gratitude enables us to let go of anger and resentment; giving in to the anger and resentment kills gratitude. They cannot co-exist. Do you see the anger in the Israelites' story? Some of it was aimed at Moses and Aaron. Some was simply resentment of their current situation, anger that they had to do this. But it failed to appreciate how far they had come. Resentment robs us of the joy in our lives. It causes us to hold on to things we cannot control ourselves, but WE DO HAVE THE POWER TO CONTROL US!
The final gratitude killer I want to bring up in my non-exhaustive list is self-centeredness. When we are only focused on ourselves, then it is impossible to be grateful for others. We can never quench our appetite for self. The solution is to take the focus off of self and put it on others. IRONICALLY, THIS IS THE SOLUTION FOR MUCH OF THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS - FOCUS LESS ON SELF AND MORE ON OTHERS. It should remind you of what Jesus said over and over. Things like THOSE WHO WANT TO SAVE THEIR LIVES WILL LOSE THEM BUT THOSE WHO LOSE THEIR LIVES FOR MY SAKE WILL GAIN TRUE LIFE, and THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST AND THE LAST FIRST, and EVEN I THE SON OF MAN CAME NOT TO BE SERVED BUT TO SERVE BUT TO SERVE AND TO GIVE MY LIFE AS A RANSOM FOR MANY. Jesus is telling us that in taking the focus off self and putting it on others, then our lives find purpose and clarity and meaning and hope.
GRUMBLING, ARROGANCE, RESENTMENT, ENTITLEMENT AND SELF CENTEREDNESS ARE GRATITUDE KILLERS . . . THERE IS NO DOUBT. BUT, gratitude is a killer of grumbling, arrogance, resentment, entitlement, and self centeredness. It is our weapon against a world filled with those very things.
Thanks be to God
AMEN
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