Let The Grumbling Begin

I want you to imagine going to a fancy ice cream shop and sitting out on the patio on a nice summer day.

You've got your favorite flavor, you're slowly enjoying it, nibbling on the edge of the waffle cone.

It's refreshing.

And then a family walks up, and it seems they're having some kind of a celebration.

The kids in the soccer uniform, they're carrying a trophy, and you overhear the parents say, guys, this is a real treat to be at this ice cream shop.

But it's$17 per scoop, so we're gonna share when we come into this one.

But we're so proud of your hard work and the way you've had good attitudes to your teammates this season.

And as soon as they say that, the kids start to grumble.

Why do we have to share?

I don't want to have to share with little Billy.

And they walk into the ice cream shop and you keep eating, and a few minutes later they come back out, and it hasn't been 20 seconds, and the griping picks up.

One kid says, Well, there's not enough toppings on mine.

Well, little Billy took two bites of mine.

He's stealing from me.

And goes on and on, and this griping just like accelerates, and you're like, this is ruining the entire experience.

Could you please knock it off?

So finally, the oldest kid in this family next to you, who hasn't really been involved in the fight, kind of takes a deep breath and looks at their parents and says, Mom and dad, you guys knew this would happen if you brought us to an ice cream shop.

Why would you even do this to us?

You guys are big jerks.

Like imagine, like, what's wrong with you kids?

Be grateful.

Right?

Right.

What maybe you get similarly worked up as I tell that make-believe story.

But what's the principle of it?

They grumbled because they missed the generous heart of their parents.

Now, let me tell on myself a little bit here.

No, that story's not about me.

Quit judging me.

I see where you're going there.

Um, no, I different story.

I want to recall one of my mom's greatest mic drop moments.

So I'm maybe 10 years old, and we get through Mother's Day and Father's Day and Grandparents' Day, and I'm like, everybody gets a special day.

Mom, when is Kids' Day?

And she looks at me and she goes, Justin, every day is kids' day.

And every now and again there's a special day for the moms and the dads and the grandparents.

But in my viewpoint, I'm like, wait, they all get the special treatment day.

Why don't I get one of those?

Now, it's not explicit grumbling like it was the kids of the ice cream shop, but it is a heart posture of grumbling that says, I deserve more.

I was grumbling in my heart because I'm overlooking their generosity, the day in, day out sacrifices of all the things they're doing to make my world keep going.

So here's the thing.

You can laugh at me for asking when kids' day is, or you can get angry at the kids at the ice cream shop for griping about toppings.

But the better thing to do is to recognize that this section of Exodus tells us that both of those is how we often approach God.

With a posture of grumbling, because we miss just how generous he's been towards us.

And we overlook it altogether.

Now, if you're newer with us this Sunday, we are now in the book of Exodus, and we have been for about nine weeks.

And the book of Exodus can be broken up into three major sections.

The first part, the Israelites are in Egypt.

And in the middle part, they're on their way to this mountain called Sinai.

And then in the third part, they're actually at Mount Sinai.

That's about the last 20 chapters of the book.

So we're in the middle of part two, where they're journeying out of Egypt towards this mountain called Sinai.

And in the first part, in Egypt, God has revealed himself as the mighty savior.

He delivers them from their enemies, from their bondage, and frees them to leave.

But in the second part, God's revealing a different part of himself.

He's revealing himself as the generous provider for all of their needs.

You might recall if you've been here for a couple of weeks, on their way out, they ask the Egyptians for gold and silver, and God provides materially for them.

And then as they go out, he leads them with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, with the first HVAC unit combined with the GPS system before there was Steve Jobs or Garmin.

He's like, I got you.

I'll provide for your needs.

And then he lets the Egyptian army get close to them and chase them down.

Like he could have zapped the Egyptian army before they left Egypt.

But why does he let them chase and get close?

So that in the front of the Israelites' eyes, this army would be utterly destroyed and cut down, so they would see with all five senses exactly what it is for the Lord to reveal himself as their generous provider of all their needs.

By letting the army come close, he actually shows more of who he is.

So these Israelite people have been saved from their enemies, and they're seeing God provide for all their needs as they go.

And yet, in the midst of it, just like kids in an ice cream shop, they miss the generous heart of their God.

And they grumble and they grumble and they grumble.

Now it's a little bit longer passage this morning.

It touches three different chapters.

So I want to give you a roadmap of how we want to kind of walk through the sermon this morning.

There is one key passage in the Old Testament that tells us how to read this one.

So I'll go there first.

And then I want to look at grumbling and what it says about our heart.

And then I want to look at grace and what it says about God's heart.

Kind of the three movements here.

All right.

Passage that tells us how to read this one.

In Deuteronomy 8, Moses is giving a speech that sort of is like a commentary that says, here's how to read what just happened in the wilderness.

And he says, this whole 40 years of wandering in the wilderness that the Israelites are part of, it has two major purposes.

Number one, to humble them, and number two, to test them.

He says to humble you to say, you don't rely on yourself.

Super easy for them at their day, us in our day, to be self-realiant.

It says, nope, wilderness wandering is meant to strip you of that opportunity.

But also to test you, to say, will you look to me, to the Lord your God, as the generous giver and provider of everything you need?

Or will you choose to go your own way, what looks good to you, and ask why I'm not giving more to you?

To humble and to test you.

And the aim of all of this is to produce actually what we saw happen in the life of the Apostle Paul.

So he writes in 2 Corinthians 1 9 what should be a model for how all of us should take this passage and apply it to our wives.

Listen to what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1.

He says, We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.

Okay, pause right there for a second.

Paul is not talking about low grade or even moderate grade difficulties in his life.

They thought they had died.

But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

That perspective that the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1 is what this passage is supposed to produce in our lives.

So a good question for you to consider and to pray over this afternoon would be: how long does it take me to come to the end of myself?

How much heartburn do I have to endure before I come to God and confess I've been relying on myself and not relying on you.

I've been turning to what looks good to me instead of what you have told me in your word.

And we recognize that God allows the fire.

He even brings the fire in sometimes to purify us and to shape us into his image.

And that's what's happening here in Exodus 15.

So Deuteronomy 8 gives us a framework to see, okay, what's going on here?

How are we supposed to read it?

How are we supposed to apply it?

That was the first thing we were gonna do.

Now, the second thing I want to look at grumbling and what it tells us about our own hearts.

I think one of the initial things we do when we grumble is we we say something, especially when it's like bad grumbling.

Like, I know we're not supposed to rank sins, but just kind of like okay grumbling and like bad grumbling, and we kind of have those framework in our mind.

Sometimes we'll say things like, Well, I didn't really mean it that way.

It's it came out worse than it kind of was in my heart or in my head.

You've ever been there with somebody or yourself?

Yes, okay, we've all been there.

The problem with that is Jesus says in Luke chapter 6 that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouse speaks.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

So what's down in the well comes up in the bucket, and we really don't have the opportunity to say, I didn't mean that.

That's not what's actually in there.

It's actually more like, oh no, what's down in there is worse than I realized.

So we've got these three stories together in the book of Exodus, and the word grumbling or the comment about grumbling shows up ten times in three quick stories.

What does grumbling show us about our own heart?

It shows us a heart that doubts the generosity of God.

Very similar to the kids in the ice cream shop.

The grumbling heart misses or doubts the generosity of God.

So let's look at this in your copy of Exodus 15.

Take a look, please.

Exodus 15, 24.

The people grumbled against Moses.

Let's repeat it again.

16 1.

The people grumbled against Moses and Aaron.

17 3.

The people grumbled against Moses.

But baked right in the middle is maybe the most significant verse for the grumbling piece.

It's chapter 16 and verse 8.

Look at 16 8 with me.

And what does it say near the end?

It says, Your grumbling isn't against us, but against the Lord.

So let's just take that and apply it to our own lives for a second.

When you grumble against your boss, you're actually grumbling against God.

Kids, when you grumble about your teachers or your parents, you're actually grumbling against God.

When you grumble about your government or your insurance agent or your pastor or your HOA or inflation or the evils of Chat GPT, you're not actually grumbling against any of those things.

You're grumbling against the Lord.

And grumbling is a huge deal to God.

In fact, in 1 Corinthians 10, he places grumbling right next to sexual immorality.

Most of us wouldn't place grumbling right next to sexual immorality in terms of severity of sin.

But God does.

I think in many ways it's not only an acceptable sin in our culture, it's almost a desirable sin in our culture.

Because you'll hear people say things like, well, you need to be authentic, you need to be true to yourself, you need to get your feelings out there.

It's okay to grumble.

In fact, if you don't grumble, you're not being true to yourself, you're not being authentic.

So it's not only acceptable, it's actually desirable, many would say.

For a lot of us, I think we live with a low-grade grumble as sort of the operating system of our life.

When we don't know how to make small talk, what do we do?

Grumble about something happening, how we kicked the dog, or somebody did this, or somebody did that, and it's what's wrong with things, and we're just grumbling about it.

It kind of begs the question, though, what is the definition of grumbling?

Maybe you've wondered that.

Simplest one I've heard this is a mutter of discontent.

That's what grumbling is.

A mutter of discontent.

It's a low, heavy growl.

Grumble sounds like rumble, it's a low rumble in your life about what's not right in the world or in your life.

And yet in Philippians 2, Paul says, do all things without grumbling.

When Paul says all things, what he actually means by that, yeah, you guessed it, is all things.

So our grumbling can be a verbal thing we say, but more often it's a posture of soul and posture of mind, a posture of a muttering of discontent.

Now we should clarify: grumbling is not a command against negative speech.

So Paul is willing to recount hardship, he's willing to rebuke sin and say these things are not how it's supposed to be.

So muttering is or grumbling is not only negative speech, or not a uh command against that, but rather grumbling says to God's sovereign rule, his providence in my life, what you have given me isn't good enough.

I deserve more, I deserve different, I deserve better.

You don't have my good intentions in mind.

And it's just a little bit later in the book of Philippians, after Paul commands people not to grumble, he says in Philippians 4.11, I've learned in whatever situation I'm in to be content.

And then right after that, he uses the most wrongly quoted Bible verse, maybe in the whole Bible, and says, Philippians 4.13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

So you think of all the ridiculous ways that Bible verse is used.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, I can dunk a basketball through Christ, I can go to Mars through Christ, I can make it to the NFL through Christ, I can.

And what does Paul apply it to as one of the most difficult things harder than going to the Mars or dunking a basketball?

Learning to live without grumbling, to be content in all circumstances.

So if I can say it this way, you can grumble or you can be godly, but you can't be both.

You can grumble or you can be godly, but you can't be both.

And the choice to not grumble doesn't mean there's nothing in your life that you could grumble about.

Like sometimes we say that, right?

Like, oh, you've got everything going your way.

Of course it's easy for you not to grumble if you knew what was going on in my life.

It doesn't take very long of reading Paul's resume of suffering to realize that dude had a lot to grumble about.

Some of you here this morning can relate.

You've been through the ringer more than two or three times.

But let's just be real practical here.

The choice not to grumble is going to impact your speech to your friends.

This is gonna be a boots on the ground difficulty.

And there's probably gonna be a challenge that if you have done some grumbling, and we all have in various ways, you may feel hyper-spiritual.

Like, oh, I'm being a goody two shoes here.

When you show up and say, you know what, this thing is really hard, but I don't want to grumble about it, but I do need your prayer because it's difficult for me to trust God in this.

Ooh, must have heard a sermon on grumbling recently.

Maybe you've heard a conversation like that play out.

Listen, maybe you're on the other end of this and somebody is grumbling, and let me just say, Parkside, for us to be growing through relationships, is not merely eating lunch together.

It's that but more.

It means we are courageous friends who speak into one another's lives and say, brother, sister, I hear you on the difficulty there, and I want to challenge you not to grumble about this, but take it to the Lord in prayer, and I am going to the Lord in prayer with you as well, that he would strengthen you, that we would see his generosity in this, even though it seems exceedingly difficult right now.

Look, when you get into like really difficult stuff, it starts to raise big questions.

Why, God?

Why are you doing this?

And the reality is, God never tells us that we will know exactly why he allows things, why he allows the fire.

But we do know that he's using it to accomplish his good purposes.

And it might be something external, and it might be something inside you.

So Paul wrote from prison to the church at Philippi, and he writes to them, he says, These things, my imprisonment, really has served to advance the gospel.

Like outside of me.

Good things really are happening.

And then he says, and many of the brothers, in fact, most of them, have become more bold in the gospel.

So not just things out there, but things happening in these other brothers.

And yet he's honest.

He's like, actually, not everyone has gotten more bold.

There's a few who have become more fearful, and we're still praying they would grow in their faith.

Or you could think of James chapter 1.

James 1 · chapter mention

It says there are trials in our life, testing of our faith that produces steadfastness.

And steadfastness, when it has its full effect, makes us perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Now that's where we want to end up, right?

I don't like the path.

It reminds me of when I was coaching high school sports, and you'd walk into the weight room, and you could tell some of these guys have been lifting a bunch, and other guys wish they had been lifting a bunch.

And everybody in the weight room wants to be strong.

But not everybody wants to pay the price and be sore day in, day out.

Do you get strong?

And the weightlifting coach who says, No, I'm gonna keep taking you to the weight room, you will keep being sore because it's going to make you strong.

And when you get to the fourth quarter of the playoff game, you'll be glad that you were sore over and over.

You set your alarm early, you got out of bed on time, you did the hard work, you'll be thankful for it then, but you're not thankful for it now.

Everybody wants to be strong.

Not everybody wants to be sore.

So, what do we do when we're tempted towards these mutterings of discontent?

Let me suggest a real quick, like four prayers you can pray to go and help you out here.

Number one, say, Lord, I confess my self-reliance.

It's easy for me to rely on me, and that's really bad.

You might go to John 15, says, Apart from you, I can do nothing.

Lord, I just confess that.

And then you're gonna pray number two, Lord, would you please change my heart?

Like I'm telling you the truth about where I'm at, but would you change my heart in this matter to not rely on me?

And then it's good to ask God, God, would you change my circumstances?

Like Paul asked over and over and over that his thorn in the flesh, his suffering would be taken away.

So it's good to ask for that.

And then fourth, so confess self-reliance, ask God to change your heart, ask God to change your circumstances.

And then number four, here's what you're gonna do.

You're gonna trust God's generous heart by remembering the gospel.

Lord, I remember that you gave your one and only Son for me, and I'm gonna remember that generosity so that when I'm tempted to grumble and mutter in discontent over whatever thing is happening in my life, I'm seeing it through the lens of your generosity of the highest level.

Because we know that we grumble when we miss the generous heart of God, so we're gonna remind ourselves of his generosity.

That's what grumbling tells us about our own heart.

But the third thing we said we were gonna do this morning was look at what grace tells us about God's heart.

And really, this whole section of Exodus, this journey to Mount Sinai, part two that we called it, is a story of God's gracious provision.

Like there are just gifts of God's grace everywhere.

They're showing that his heart is generous through and through.

Here I want to remind you of Deuteronomy 8 that said God's leading them through the wilderness was part of his generous provision for them.

He's leading them away from the deception of self-reliance, and he's giving them the gift of revealing their own heart that is not as virtuous as they thought it was.

Now, this past week, I got my very first, for this year, Christmas list little form to fill out.

Anybody get one of those yet?

A couple?

Not a lot, a few of you.

Okay.

You know what I didn't put on my Christmas list form?

I want my self-reliant heart to be revealed, and I want to be shown as less virtuous than I am.

I don't think anybody puts that on their Christmas list.

But if God would reveal those things to us, although it's probably not what I would choose, it is a generous gift from him, because once I know about it, then I can do something about it.

So this leading through the wilderness is a generous gift from him.

Let me show you a few ways in the passage, in material ways, God is providing.

So 15 25.

They're thirsty, they have no water.

Moses cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it in the water, and the water became sweet.

Here, they are three days out from their journey, and they're already getting grumpy.

And God doesn't leave them out to dry, but responds to their grumbling and their mutterings of discontent with pure grace.

It's almost like he planted that tree decades or centuries earlier, knowing as it grew and grew and grew that one day they'd come to that tree, needing sweet water.

And God watched that tree grow, thinking, I can't wait till I get to use that tree to bless these people.

And then we go down to 1527.

Then they came to Ewam, where there were 12 springs of water and 70 palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.

It seems like a weird little inclusion.

Like, why is that thing there?

When I read that, it sounds kind of like paradise.

Like they got water, and then they went to this place where there's all these hot springs and all these palm trees.

It's like God took them to the Ritz-Carleton in the middle of the Caribbean.

Like, not only am I gonna give you water, I'm gonna give you a legendary resort to stay at for a while, just so that you'll never have to doubt my generous heart to you.

Absolutely not necessary to include that for the overall story in getting them to Mount Sinai, but if the point is to show the generous heart of God, then you know why it's there.

Nevertheless, what happens next in 16.3?

They ramp up their accusation.

They said, Would that we have died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full?

For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

These people are the recipients of grace upon grace upon grace, and they respond with grumbling, and they construct a totally false narrative about Egypt.

Remember when we got to eat meat whenever we wanted?

To which the rational person says, No.

That didn't happen.

And they actually accuse God of planning to kill them with hunger.

They say, God, your purposes were not generous to us.

In fact, you intend harm to us.

And we could go back and document all of God's kindness, and we could berate Israel for all of their foolishness.

Or we could realize in our own lives it's pretty easy to forget what God has done.

How He's been really, really generous to us.

And how does God respond to this heightened accusation that you intended harm, you intend to kill?

Look at 1611.

Says the Lord said to Moses, I've heard the grumbling of the people of Israel.

Say to them, At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread, then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.

Okay, I read this, I'm like, these Israelites, they kind of need to be slapped around a little bit.

And what happens?

God shows up with Uber Eats, meets Fogo de Shao.

Like, I'm gonna bring all kinds of food straight to you.

You don't even have to order it on the app.

I got you.

I'm just gonna drop it off.

Like, God is this waterfall of grace, the water of grace just pouring over Niagara Falls.

It cannot be stopped.

So I love to be generous and shower these things upon you.

Have as much quail and steak as you can.

Totally undeserving.

It's like if you if you poke a human like in the arm, blood's gonna flow out.

If you poked God in the arm, grace would just flow.

He loves to give more grace and more good gifts to his kids.

He's more generous than you could ever imagine.

And baked into the story is this idea that God is providing day by day, day by day, what they need.

And in our heart of hearts, we're like, I mean, I know you got the daily provision, God, but could I get like a seven-day itinerary?

And could we get like a chest freezer so we just got some backups in case you fall through?

And he's like, no, I keep providing every single day.

I want you to trust me, 40 years, day in, day out, day in, day out.

New manna.

I know it talks about an omer in there.

Feels like an innate Bargazzi sketch.

Like, what is an omer?

Nobody knows.

An omer is like 10 cups of flour.

So every day, 10 cups of flour.

You can do a lot with 10 cups of flour.

You're gonna eat pretty good with that.

But what he says, hey, if you try and take two days worth, you try and take 20 cups of flour, what's gonna happen?

It'll get worms immediately and it'll be rotten.

But by the way, I wanna give you the generous gift of rest on the Sabbath.

So take two, two, two helpings the day before.

That way I can give you more generosity in rest.

And of course, what does Israel do?

On the wrong days, they take two, like, I don't know, let's just save up in case, you know, God gets busy or something, and immediately it rots.

And then on the Sabbath, what do they do?

They go out like, I don't think we have enough.

We gotta get some more.

Like, what's going on here, guys?

They continually doubt God's generous heart.

Now we're gonna say more about the Sabbath in about a month or two when we get to the Ten Commandments.

So I don't wanna steal all the thunder here.

Let me just say this: this principle of Sabbath rest is a lot more applicable to our lives today than we generally give it credit for.

So let's just kind of get that running in the background of your mind, and we'll come to that more specifically in a little bit of time.

But the Israelites over and over, they're doubting the generous heart of God, saying, I should take things into my own hands, I should gather on the Sabbath, I should double gather on the other days.

And finally, what does God do in 1628?

You kind of feel the tension building, right?

The Lord said to Moses, How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws?

That's a valid question.

He's like, over and over and over, I've told you, I love you, I've redeemed you, I've called you by name, you're mine, I love to give you good gifts, my heart is generous to you.

Will you trust me?

And they're like, I don't know.

Let's see what happens tomorrow.

Then I'll make a decision.

See, guys, here's a lesson for us.

God is asking us to walk by faith and not by sight.

He's asking us to trust him.

And here's the thing about trust: trust rarely grows without a need.

Now you go to any kind of a team building exercise, and they'll probably do some version of a trust fall, right?

You stand here, somebody stands behind you, you do a trust fall, you have a need to be caught, otherwise you're gonna get a concussion, or worse.

And it builds trust because there's a need.

God's saying, Will you trust me?

Will you trust that I'm gonna catch you?

And certainly, if you can go to church camp and trust some misguided seventh grader with a trust fall, you can trust the Lord of all the universe who's revealed himself time and time again for century upon century upon millennia, upon millennia, saying, My heart towards you is generous.

All of this builds to a final episode.

It's kind of a courtroom sort of scene that unfolds in chapter 17, where the people are complaining, and God is being generous, and they keep complaining, and he shows more grace, more complaints, more generosity.

Comes to chapter 17.

Let's read in verse 2.

The people quarreled with Moses, and they said, Give us water to drink.

And Moses said to them, Why do you quarrel with me?

Why do you test the Lord?

Do you hear the exasperation a little bit in his voice?

Like parents at the end of a long road trip.

Why do you keep grinding bananas into the seats?

But the people thirsted there for water.

And the people grumbled against Moses and said, Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?

So Moses cried out to the Lord, What shall I do with these people?

They're almost ready to stone me.

It's just, they're exasperated, like looking at each other like, are we really doing this again, guys?

Have we not done this again and again and again?

It's the same song, 30-second verse, a little bit louder, and this time a whole lot worse.

It feels like the final straw.

These people are enraged.

They're getting ready to kill God's messenger.

And God's saying, I warned you, and I warned you, and I warned you.

I said it's a courtroom scene.

You can almost see it like Judge Judy in your mind.

Moses walks in front of the people with the elders.

You've got God on one side and the people on the other side, and Moses in the middle with his staff, the staff that he struck the Red Sea with, he struck the Nile with.

It's like the gavel of justice.

And let's have a throwdown.

Let's see who's in the right.

Let's see what's going to happen.

And God says, hit the rock with the staff.

And he hits the rock, and water flows, and you're like, You gave him more grace?

Yeah, you gave him more grace.

But there's actually something way more amazing than just continued grace.

And I want to look back at 17.6 here, and I want you to see this, because this is like one of the clearest and most beautiful pictures of the gospel in the entire Old Testament.

Exodus 17, 6.

God says, Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.

Now let's just read our Bibles really, really carefully together.

I want you to look back at this.

I want to ask you a question.

Where is God in Exodus 17, 6?

It says, I will stand before you there on the rock.

God is standing on the rock.

And what does Moses do?

He takes the rod of justice and he strikes the rock.

He strikes God with it.

The justice that should have come to these people who overlook his generosity, reject his generosity, who deserve judgment, God takes it.

And as he is struck with the rod of justice, blessings of grace and water flow so they can drink freely.

Freely coming to the guilty, to the grumblers, to the undeserving, and they drink and they are satisfied, receiving pure grace.

They don't deserve it.

But there was a substitute who stood in their place and took the judgment they deserved, so they could have what they didn't.

It's a stunning picture of the gospel that a couple thousand years later, the righteous one, Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, would stand not on a rock, but a rocky hill called Galgotha, where he would be struck with the rod of God's justice.

So that any who trust that sacrifice by faith, though undeserving, would receive the waters of grace that they never could have earned and never would have deserved.

And it freely comes to you because he stood in your place.

Drink of Christ, and you'll never thirst again.

Friend, if you're here and not a Christian, this is the message of the gospel that the rod of God's justice will strike.

And it has struck Christ.

And if you will trust him by faith, then in eternity that rod will not strike you.

You will receive grace upon grace, waters of eternal life and eternal blessing at the foot of Christ.

And there's also a message here for how we resist grumbling.

To see with fresh eyes the astonishing levels of grace of what God has done, what we might say, delighting in the gospel, having affection stirred to say, you're not only giving good gifts, you're taking the blows of judgment and justice that I deserved.

And so when we're the kids in the ice cream shop complaining to God that we don't like the toppings, or somebody else took two of our scoops, or it's melting too fast, or the cone got waterlogged, remember his justice on top of that rocky hill, crushing his son, that stands as a monument and a statue forever, so that every time we're tempted to grumble, we see Christ on the rock, absorbing the rod of justice, so that grace will flow and we don't have to doubt his generous heart ever again.

Father, you're so gracious to us, you're so kind.

Grace upon grace flows that we don't deserve, could never earn.

We couldn't even expect it.

Like we just wonder when you're gonna wipe these knuckleheads out.

And we recognize we should be wiped out too, and we would be if it weren't for your son standing in our place.

And so we say thank you.

And would you transform our hearts with the wonder of your generous permission?

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.