It is not an insignificant afterthought that the children of Israel spent forty years wandering the wilderness grumbling and complaining against the God who rescued them. It’s not due to the unpleasantness of the desert. It’s not due bad leadership skills of Moses. Nor did it flow out of the psychic trauma of 400 years of slavery. It came from the sinful hearts of the grumblers, the same kinds of hearts we likewise have. Israel leaving slavery and heading to the Promised Land is a picture of believers being rescued from slavery to sin and led to the Celestial City. Which means that we grumble and complain quite a bit ourselves. Their weaknesses are just like ours because we are just like them.
There is, of course, a great difference between grumbling and lamenting. The former looks to God in accusation, the latter looks to God for deliverance. I’m not grumbling about lamenters but lamenting about grumblers. And, confessing that I have plenty of both inside me. Grumbling is not, as we tend to see it, a mere sin of a lack of manners. The problem with grumbling isn’t that it is rude, but that it is idolatrous, in at least two ways.
Grumbling is idolatry first because it presents God as He is not. Whether our grumbling is built on the premise that God has let us down because He’s not loving enough to do better or strong enough to do better, it is built on a lie about Him. He loves us. By name. Personally. Emotionally. Truly. And He is almighty over all things. There is nothing that can thwart His sovereign will. When we are going through hardship, the deepest, soul piercing hardship, it is precisely because He loves us and has ordained our hardship for our good and His glory. When Job affirmed “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away” he acknowledged that both his blessings and his suffering ultimately come from God’s omnipotent hand. When he added, “Blessed be the name of the Lord” Job acknowledged that God does all things for the good of His children and for His glory.
Grumbling is idolatry second because it appeals to a god that does not exist, a god above God. Grumbling says to the living God, “You are not measuring up to the standard of a god I have invented in my own head. That god insists that my life be different, more comfortable. You, Lord, are letting him down. If You’re not careful, You may find Yourself under his judgment.” You can’t “tell on” God not just because the Judge of all the earth always judges rightly, but because there is no court of appeal over Him. Who you gonna call?
When, on the other hand, we lament, we go to our loving and all powerful Father, asking Him to deliver us. We do not distort His character nor do we posit a god above Him. He is our hope, our redeemer, ruler of heaven and earth, our Father which art in heaven. Hallowed be His name, on our lips and in our hearts, whether we abound or are abased.