Be Careful What You Ask For

Psalm 106. We looked at the first 13 verses last

week. Psalm 106. Psalm 105 was about God's faithfulness

to His people. And Psalm 106 is about God's people's

unfaithfulness to God. It started out with some

words of praise, but then we are quickly... introduced

to the problem of Israel and really our problem

too, and that is we see God work sometimes in

powerful ways and then we are quick to forget.

And we want to do things our way and we don't

want to wait on the counsel of the Lord. And

that's exactly what God's people Israel did and

maybe we can learn from their mistakes and from

our mistakes. And so tonight we're going to read

again verse 13. That's where we ended off last

week. We'll read 13, 14, and 15. I told you last

week that we were going to probably take our

time getting through Psalm 106 because there's

some good stories that are referenced here. And

so we want to take our time to go back and look

at some of these in the context and see what's

going on in the earlier. earlier scriptures where

these stories were recorded. So let's pray, and

then we'll read this scripture and get started.

God, we come to you. We thank you for a good

day. I thank you for all the folks that have

come tonight. I pray that you would help us to

learn something from what we're about to read,

and maybe we can use these scriptures as a mirror

in our life to examine our attitudes and our

hearts and our actions to see if maybe we ever

fail in this way, dear Lord, and it's not It's

not good if we do, and you're not pleased with

that. And so, dear Lord, I pray that you would

help us just to know that even if we have fallen,

even if we have failed, that, God, you desire

for us just to repent and to come back to you,

and your grace is sufficient. And, dear Lord,

we need that. We are not worthy, God, but we

thank you for being good to us even when we are

unfaithful just as... Your word says the Israelites

were. So I pray that your Holy Spirit would be

with us and let your word do the talking tonight.

In Jesus' name I pray it. Amen. Psalm 106, verse

Psalms 106:13

13. They soon forgot his works and would not

wait for his counsel. They were seized with cravings

in the wilderness and tested God in the desert.

He gave them what they asked for. but sent a

wasting disease among them. Now, those couple

of verses there, 14 and 15, sum up a whole story

that's a pretty interesting story that's found

in Numbers 11. And so, really, we're just going

to use these two verses as kind of a springboard

to go back and look at the actual text we're

going to look at tonight. And that is in Numbers,

that's toward the beginning of your Bible, Now,

we don't have time to go through all of it, so

we're just going to pick and choose a few verses.

We're going to read the first few verses just

to get a little context about what's going on,

and then we're going to skip down a few verses.

Numbers chapter 11. Numbers chapter 11. We're

Numbers 11 · chapter mention Numbers 11 · chapter mention

going to start in verse 1. We'll read through

this pretty quickly, hopefully, and see what's

going on. Now, to give you a little context,

God had delivered his people out of Egypt, and

they are wandering around, and they are complaining

a lot. We talked about one example last week

from Exodus 15, which is right after they crossed

the Red Sea. Almost instantly they started complaining

about water. We see right after that in Exodus

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

chapter 16 that God provides quail for them to

eat. Well, we're going to see that same thing

here in Numbers 11, but I'm pretty sure it's

two separate occurrences. Some might say that

it's the same event, but I don't think so. When

you read through Numbers 11, it looks like this

is sometimes later. that this event occurred.

And so we see two different occasions where God

provided quail for His people. The first one

in Exodus 16, and then we have this one in Numbers

11. And we see the same heart among the people.

They are still complaining about their situation.

Numbers 11, verse 1 says, Now the people began

Numbers 11:1

complaining openly before the Lord about hardship.

When the Lord heard, His anger burned, and fire

from the Lord blazed among them and consumed

the outskirts of the camp. Then the people cried

out to Moses, and he prayed to the Lord, and

the fire died down. So that place was named Tibera,

because the Lord's fire had blazed among them.

Okay, so the scene is set for us, pretty simple.

God was so gracious to his people, he delivered

them out of Egypt. All they had to do was be

obedient. They were disobedient, so they're wandering

around, and they're complaining about how bad

things are. And this just makes God angry, so

angry that he sends fire down all around the

outskirts of their camp. Everything's burning

up, and the people cry out to Moses, Oh, Moses,

what are we going to do? You've got to save us.

And Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire died

down. Okay, so we kind of see what's going on.

Let's continue a little further. Verse 4. Contemptible

people among them had a strong craving for other

food. The Israelites cried again and said, Who

will feed us meat? We remember the free fish

we ate in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons,

leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our appetite

is gone. There's nothing to look at but this

manna. Now, this is interesting for us to consider.

Now, let's not forget where Israel had come from.

They were slaves in a foreign land. But isn't

it funny how things that are pretty horrible

in our life, after a while, we forget how bad

they were. We remember things sometimes better

than they actually were. We remember things that

really were bad, and maybe there was some level

of good to them. We kind of forget about the

bad, and we just remember the good, and then

we want to go back to those things. And they

should have thought, wait a minute, we were enslaved

in a foreign land. But instead they say, well,

look at us now. We have come out in the middle

of this wilderness, in the middle of this desert.

God has led us out here, and Moses has led us

out here, and man, it was so good back where

we were. Listen to all the good stuff that they

had when they were in Egypt. They had fish, free

fish it says, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions,

and garlics. Man, they were living a good life,

weren't they? Well, that's how they remembered

it, but they had forgotten. The worst part of

it. Now, would you rather be enslaved and have

some fish to eat, or would you rather be free

on the way to your own land flowing with milk

and honey? Well, to them, they couldn't look

ahead. Even if God told them what was ahead was

beautiful and great, and they were going to be

blessed there, they'd rather stick with what

they knew, even though what they knew wasn't

that good. And are we ever guilty of the same

thing? Maybe there's good things in store for

us. Maybe there's good things that God wants

to do for us and we're scared to take that step

because it's unknown in some sense. It's unseen.

We don't like to get out of our comfort zone.

Even if our comfort zone's pretty bad, we don't

like to get out of that comfort zone. Even we

are drawn back to things that we know are not

good for us. Like there was a time in my life

a few years ago and I said to myself, I said,

I'm going to cut out sugar. And I did. And I

did very well. I went for months and I ate very

little sugar and stopped drinking Cokes entirely.

And I felt a lot better during that time period.

And so I concluded what I already knew. And that

is that sugar is not good for you. And even though

I knew sugar was not good for me, guess what?

One day I looked back and I was thinking, man,

a Coca -Cola would sure be good today. A Kit

Kat bar would sure be good today. And I thought,

man, it was good when I had that Kit Kat in the

afternoon, that Coke. And so guess what I started

doing? I started doing what I knew wasn't good

for me. Because there was a part of it that seemed

good, and it is good in the moment. It is good.

And here recently, guess what? I would get my

Kit Kat just about every afternoon, get my Coke

about every afternoon. And guess what? I feel

bad when I start eating all that sugar, plus

some other sugar too. It wasn't just that. That

might be okay. And then guess what? Then I start

feeling bad. And so now I say, well, I'm going

to cut out sugar again. So that works good for

about two days. And then in the afternoon I say,

about Kit Kat time. And so it's a struggle, right?

We live in a part of our life that we know is

not good, but there's something about it that

draws us back there. And even though the Israelites

had come out of slavery, They were looking back

on that time favorably when it was not a good

time. And so here they are in the presence of

God, and they're in the mess they're in, eating

all this manna for so long because of their own

disobedience. But they kind of overlooked that.

It ain't their fault. It's Moses' fault. It's

God's fault. They don't have any of this good

stuff to eat anymore. They're sick and tired

of eating this manna. We want meat, they said.

We want meat. And I can understand that. I want

meat too. If I had to eat salad every day or...

or any kind of bread every day and didn't have

any meat, I'd be mad too. And they were mad.

And they were complaining about it. Well, Moses,

if you continue reading the story, I encourage

you to do so. He says, God, what am I going to

do with these people? What did I do to deserve

this? Now, I'm paraphrasing, but he says, God,

just take my life. God, if I've done right by

you, then just take my life and get me out of

this mess. I don't deserve all these people.

They were giving him a hard time. Maybe sometimes

we feel that way. Maybe people we are trying

to lead sometimes, we say, God, why in the world

did you give me this bunch of people? I don't

say that about y 'all, by the way. That was not

a passive -aggressive statement about a pastor

in his church, I promise. But sometimes maybe

we are in a situation like Moses where we're

like, what am I going to do? I want to be out

of this situation. Lord, just kill me. I can't

handle these people. But God was good and he

was gracious and he said, no, I'm going to take

care of this situation. So if we scroll down

a little bit, if we scroll down a little bit,

we're going to go down to, let's see where we

want to go to. Let's skip all the way down. I'll

let you all read the rest of it by yourself.

Let's skip all the way down to verse 31. Numbers

Numbers 11:31

chapter 11, verse 31. Y 'all go back and read

the whole chapter so you can see all the stuff

that we're skipping over so you get the context

of what's going on. So, these people won't meet.

God, we won't meet. Where's our meat? We won't

meet. When we was in Egypt, things were so good,

God, you brought us out here. We want something

good to eat. God said, if you want something

good to eat, I'm going to give you something

good to eat. Verse 31. A wind sent by the Lord

came up and blew quail in from the sea. It dropped

them at the camp all around, three feet off the

ground, about a day's journey in every direction.

Now, when it says three feet off the ground,

I'm not really sure exactly what that means.

I'm not sure if it was quail piled up three feet

off the ground in every direction. That would

be a ton of quail, but maybe it is. As we're

going to see as we continue on, it could mean

that the quail were flying low for whatever reason.

They came in off the sea and the quail were coming

in three, four foot off the ground. They were

flying real low. That could also be what it means.

It's not clear. Regardless of whether it was

piles of quail or low flying quail, it was a

lot of quail. God said, you want meat? I am sending

you some meat. And continuing on, verse 32. The

people were up all that day and night and all

the next day gathering the quail. The one who

took the least gathered 50 bushels. And they

spread them out all around the camp. Now that's

a lot of quail. Now this was a lot of people.

A lot of people gathering quail. And they gathered

quail all one day and the next day. And it says

the one who gathered the least amount of quail

gathered 50 bushels of quail. That's a lot of

meat. Man, God supplied in abundance, didn't

he? They said, we want meat. He gave them meat.

He gave them just what they wanted. So they got

their feast. So they began to feast down. In

verse 33, while the meat was still between their

teeth, before it was chewed, the Lord's anger

burned against the people. And the Lord struck

them with a very severe plague. So they named

that place. Kibroth, Hadavah, because they buried

the people who had craved the meat. From Kirbroth,

Hadavah, the people moved on to Hazeroth and

remained there. Man, that's pretty intense. God

said, you want meat? I'm going to give you so

much meat that you're going to be sick of the

meat. And they were. They ate so much meat, they

got sick. He brought a plague on them. He said,

if you're going to complain, if you're going

to demand these things, I'm going to give you

what you want, and you're going to realize that

what you want is not good for you. And the place

was named, where it says Kibroth Hatava there,

that means the grave of the cravers. That's what

that means. The grave of the cravers. These people

died in what they craved. They crave what they

thought was good and it ended up being their

destruction. And that's what's being talked about

in this passage we see in Psalm 106. This is

the story that's being referenced. And this is

a good story for us to consider. Do we ever have

this attitude or mindset in our life? Is there

anything in our lives that maybe God has delivered

us from that... After we get a little bit away,

at a distance, it looks a lot better than it

did up close. Everything looks better at a distance,

especially when your eyesight is as bad as mine.

You can't really see all the details. You say,

man, that looks better than I remember. In Israel,

at a distance, away from Egypt, they said, man,

Egypt looked pretty good. Man, we want to go

back there and eat all those melons and those

fish, and everything was so good. But they didn't

know what they were asking for. Now God knew

he didn't want his people to go back there. He

knew he wanted to deliver his people. He also

knew he didn't want his people to have this heart.

He wanted his people to be obedient to him and

to listen to him and to follow him and to trust

him. Not just to complain and moan and groan

about every single thing. But that's exactly

what they did. Just the whole time they just

keep on groaning and complaining. We want, we

want, we want. This is what we want because this

is good for us. And God gave them what they wanted.

It wasn't good for them. It's the same thing

that ever happened in our life. Maybe you've

got an example of that that you can think of.

Maybe there's something in your life that you

wanted so bad and you wanted so bad and you got

it and it was a burden. It was a burden maybe

financially or it was a burden because it added

extra stress or whatever it is. Sometimes the

things that we want, that we think are good,

are not good for us. Sometimes you see that.

You see a child that tells their mom and dad,

they say, oh, I want to get a puppy. I want to

get a puppy. Let me get a puppy. And the parents

say, no, you can't just get a puppy because you've

got to take care of a puppy. And they say, I

want a puppy. I've got to have a puppy. Give

me a puppy. I want a puppy. Let me have a puppy.

And the parents finally cave and say, if you

want a puppy, you're going to get a puppy. But

you've got to clean up after it, and you've got

to feed it, and you've got to take it out in

the middle of the night. And guess what? That

puppy is so good at first. They all look the

little puppy, and oh, it's all good. And then

all of a sudden, you've got to feed it, and you've

got to start taking it outside, and you've got

to start cleaning up after it. And then all of

a sudden, some of y 'all probably had this experience.

All of a sudden, your kid, they don't want the

puppy anymore. I want an inside puppy. Well,

then all of a sudden, Well, could we let it be

an outside puppy? Because they realize, I don't

want to clean up all this stuff. And something

that they wanted so bad that they finally got,

they realized that maybe it wasn't as good as

what they thought it was going to be. And maybe

we have some stories, not just as kids, but maybe

as adults, we have some stories of some things

that we had to have. And we got them and we realized,

I probably would have been better off not having

this. I probably would have been better off not

doing this. I probably would have been better

off not acting this way. And God's people were

so, they were so obstinate and they were so consistent

that God, this is what we want. Eventually God

gave it to them. And sometimes God does that

for us. Sometimes those are hard lessons to learn.

Maybe some of you have learned them. Maybe some

of us are in some of those lessons today. And

it ain't good that we got there. It's not good

that in our disobedience and our desire to not

wait on the Lord's counsel and our desire to

have what we want when we want it got us in this

shape. It's not good that we're there, but God

is still good. And we don't have to just keep

demanding the quail. That we can stop and say,

okay, God, I've been asking for things and seeking

things and I've got things and I want things.

And God, I don't know if it's good for me and

so I just, I want to repent of that. And God,

I'm sorry for that. Maybe there's some things

we've already got. We're learning those lessons

and we just need to ask God to forgive us and

to help us. By His grace and mercy, God, I've

gotten myself into this mess, but God, would

you get me out? That's the story of Israel. Man,

they got... They got themselves into so many

messes. And some of them, some of them sadly

didn't learn their lesson. But some of them did.

Some of them did cry out to the Lord. Some of

them did call out to the Lord. Some of them did

recognize their sinfulness and repented. And

the ones who continued in their wickedness, man,

you see God deal with them. You see God destroy

them sometimes. We'll look at an example of that

in a week or two. But we don't want to be those

who... who continue on. You don't have to continue

on in your own selfish desires, in your own ways,

in your own sin. We can say, okay, God, I've

gone too far. I've wanted it my way, and I've

done my way, God, and I've got myself in a mess,

and I thought I wanted something that was going

to be good for me, and I realized that what I

thought was good for me is tearing me up. So,

God, would you just help me? And praise the Lord,

through Jesus Christ, we can have that grace

today. whatever mess we might have gotten ourselves

into, whatever sin of our past that we were freed

from, just like the Israelites, there were things,

there were sins that so easily ensnared us, and

maybe years have gone by, and there are things

that we hadn't done in years, and maybe sometimes

there's that temptation the devil still puts

in our mind, and there's something in our distant

past that we know is bad. We've left behind that,

boy, that devil sure does make it look good.

Boy, what you did in the past, that was a pretty

good thing. Remember how much fun you had doing

that? Man, the devil is so good at making that

stuff at a distance look beautiful, but it ain't

beautiful. The sins and the things of our past

that enslaved us, they are not beautiful. And

Jesus died on the cross to give us freedom. So

we don't have to go back. As tempting as it may

be, we don't have to go back. We don't want to

be those who try to find our satisfaction and

joy in the evil of the past. We want to find

it in Jesus Christ in the present. Say, God,

however good the things of the past may be, they

do not look as good as Jesus Christ. So I'm going

to just hang tight on Him and what I have right

now. Let's pray. God, we thank You for this good

word and this good story. And I pray that you

help us, dear Lord, that if maybe we're guilty

in some way of these things, God, and we get

to where we seek our way and want it our way

and complain about maybe what we don't have or

what we want. But God, I pray that you would

help us to be careful and cautious and just to

trust you and not try too hard to do things our

way to get what we want. And God, if we've done

that and we... We are suffering the consequences.

I pray that we would just repent of that and

seek you, that you'd give us some mercy. Help

us to do better moving forward. Help us just

turn to you, dear Lord. Help us not to be drawn

back to our past slavery, as tempting as it may

look. I pray that you would help us to keep our

eyes looking upward and onward, not to the past,

but to the present, to Jesus Christ and to the

future, to our future hope and glory. And I ask

these things in Jesus' name. Amen.