“Even a skim-read through the book of Exodus will expose the ancient Israelites as habitual grumblers and complainers. God rescued them from slavery to be his people, but they had short and selective memories, especially when they were hungry.”

Like most people, I’ve been through hard times in my life. Sometimes they’ve stretched on and on for years. At other times they’ve been relatively short-lived.

But like all people everywhere, I’ve also frequently experienced the kind of difficulties that are best described as minor, momentary or just maddening. They make me grumpy and irritable, and they probably make you grumpy and irritable too.

Imagine. You arrive early for an appointment, but it takes fifteen minutes to find somewhere to park your car, so you end up sprinting to get there on time. You buy a new microwave, but after a month it stops working, so you have to find the receipt and take it back to the store. You look forward to having a decent holiday, but when the day finally arrives you come down with the flu and have to cancel.

We all have experiences like this; they’re a part of normal life, though naturally we wish they weren’t. And because we have no control over them, our instinctive reaction is to find a sympathetic audience and have a good whinge. It’s such a relief to moan and gripe to others about the inconvenience or disappointment we’ve experienced. It’s easy to be cranky and so hard to be content.

But why is it so difficult to resist the urge to grumble? And why does it matter?

Even a skim-read through the book of Exodus will expose the ancient Israelites as habitual grumblers and complainers. God rescued them from slavery to be his people, but they had short and selective memories, especially when they were hungry. Lacking food to eat in the desert, they looked back at the grinding poverty and brutal oppression in Egypt and decided they’d rather have that again (Exod 16:3).

But God graciously responded to their accusations, promising Moses that he would provide food for them. In fact, he provided food for them for 40 years. Nonetheless, when the Israelites later camped at Rephidim and couldn’t find water, they got Moses in their sights and again accused him of treachery: “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” (Exod 17:3).

Fearing for his life, Moses cried out to God for help, and he provided the water they needed. It’s worth noting here that the embattled Moses renamed that place Massah and Meribah, which meant ‘testing’ and ‘quarrelling’, because:

… of the quarrelling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exod 17:7)

Deep down, when things were going badly, the Israelites were not content, because they didn’t trust their God. Even though he had responded to their need by rescuing them from the cruel Egyptian yoke in a miraculous way, they chose to focus on what they feared and on what they lacked. In the end, their discontent caused them to wander for 40 years. Testing God and quarrelling with Moses seemed to be what the Israelites did best, and so—with the notable exception of Joshua and Caleb—God prevented that entire generation from ever entering the promised land. They died in the desert.

We would be wise to remember the incident at Massah and Meribah. It gets a dishonourable mention several times in Scripture because it demonstrates that grumbling and complaining are signs of a sinful, unbelieving heart. It’s a cautionary tale and a genuine warning: don’t be like the Israelites who hardened their hearts (Heb 3:6-13).

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