Gratitude Series Pt. 5 - Pastor to 60+ Dave Skorupa - November 30, 2025

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

Okay, that young man who was performing the baptism, that's Trey Overton.

Trey's an intern with us this year, and he's helping out at Chaffee.

Pastor Matt delivered the message out at Chaffee.

I got a chance to listen to it.

He set the bar pretty high.

You didn't hear it, so you're not going to know any different.

You know, for the past four weeks, we've been talking about gratitude here at First Baptist.

And Pastor Greg has done a pretty exhaustive job of covering gratitude.

And I thought, well, he really didn't leave a whole lot left for me on November 30th.

And then I remembered something.

I remembered that sometimes when everybody likes to zig, there's a lot of room left if you decide to zag instead.

And so today we're going to talk about gratitude, but we're going to talk about it by talking about an antonym or an opposite of gratitude.

We're going to talk not about ingratitude, but about complaining.

And a whole bunch of people just felt their toes get stepped on.

Yes, we're going to talk about complaining.

You know, when we hit Thanksgiving, we spend a lot of time preparing all of that food and all those meals.

How many of you had, well, how many of you went out of town for Thanksgiving and came back?

Okay.

I'm one of your number.

I left on Wednesday, got in the car with my wife and daughter.

We went to Memphis.

We drove on I-40, and that was a contest in my heart and spirit not to complain, driving on I-40 to Memphis.

We spent Thursday with family, had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and then headed back on Friday.

Once again, a wonderful experience in trying not to complain as you are driving on I-40 back to town.

You know, when we look at complaining, the greatest example, perhaps in Scripture, of people complaining and the consequences that happen as a result of that occur during the time that Moses is with the Israelites there in the wilderness.

And so we'll be in the book of Exodus in a few moments to talk about a story from Scripture that sort of talks about complaining and shows us in many ways some of the reasons why we shouldn't complain.

But I'm not going to stop there.

I'm also going to help you.

If complaining is an area that you struggle with in life, we are going to talk about the answer to complaining.

All right?

Before we begin our time in God's Word, let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this baptism that we've just learned about.

We pray that you will bless that young man in the days, the weeks, and the years to come, that you will complete your work of bringing him into greater likeness to yourself.

And now, Lord, as we go to your word, we are reminded that your word is inspired by the power of your Holy Spirit, that you have protected your word down through the centuries, even to the time of our reading it this morning.

And Lord, since we remind ourselves that this word is inspired by your Holy Spirit, we also remind ourselves that if we are saved by Jesus Christ, then that same Holy Spirit dwells within us.

And so as the Holy Spirit within us engages in work of reading and meditating upon your inspired words by that same Holy Spirit, we acknowledge that any good thing that happens is because of you.

Anything that we learn, anything that we're reminded of that we have forgotten, you receive the honor, the credit, and the glory.

Use your word to make us more like Jesus.

And God's people said, Amen.

Amen.

So this morning's lesson is gratitude's opposite, or complaining.

You know, when we look at complaining, you may or may not be familiar with this.

Two years ago, the pastor engaged in a great study talking about how we change spiritually as a result of salvation, but also how salvation and growing more like Jesus actually changes our physiology.

Things happen in our brain and the way that we think because of different chemicals that are released or stop being released as a result of the behaviors that we change as we engage in daily life.

Complaining is bad for your health.

When you complain, your glands right above your kidney, I'm guessing that's right around here, they release a chemical called cortisol.

Now, when I first ran into the word cortisol, I thought, is that the same as what I'm taking for my cholesterol?

No, it's not.

And if your hippocampus receives too much cortisol, it can begin to shrink in size.

Complaining shrinks your brain.

Isn't that an interesting thing?

Not only does it shrink your brain, but your shrinking brain leads to difficulties.

You're going to find that it's harder for you to solve problems over time if you're a person who complains all the time.

Your memory is going to go south if you complain all the time.

Now, first off, let's just go ahead and clear some decks.

If you're having problems with your memory, or if you have problems solving problems, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're complaining all the time.

Don't put the cart in front of the horse.

If you do complain all the time, however, and these are things that are happening to you, this is a wake-up call, okay?

Some other things that happen.

Your blood pressure, you're going to have blood pressure issues if you have too much cortisol in your system from complaining.

You're going to be more likely to suffer from heart disease.

You are going to have trouble losing weight and keeping it off.

And you are also going to have a poorer immune system, which means that you're going to get sick more often.

And can you see how this could be a vicious cycle?

Things start happening to you because you've got cortisol in your system, because you're complaining, and then suddenly your health starts to suffer.

Guess what you're going to do?

You're going to complain some more.

You're going to complain some more, and more cortisol is going to be put into your system, and your health situation is just going to get worse and worse and worse.

Complaining is not good for you.

Now, having gone ahead and made everybody happy with that, let's go ahead and dive into God's word here in Exodus chapter 16.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 16.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 16 takes place one month after the Israelites had left Egypt.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

God had liberated them from slavery.

They marched through the wilderness.

They marched through the Red Sea when God parted the Red Sea.

We're basically about a month after all of that activity.

And we're in Exodus chapter 16, and we begin in reading in verse 1.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

They journeyed from Elam, and the congregation of the children of Israel came to the wilderness of sin, which is between Elam and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they departed from the land of Egypt.

Then the whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

We'll pause right here.

So they've been gone from Egypt.

They've been escaped from slavery for a month.

Just to refresh your memory, you remember all of the miracles that God worked in order for Pharaoh to say, Yes, you can go.

All of those plagues, frogs and flies and lice and locusts and darkness and river water turning to blood, and then finally the death of the firstborn, all of those miracles that God worked in order for them to escape Egypt.

Then when they were there, just after they had left Egypt, they thought they were going to be crushed by the army of Pharaoh, and God parted the Red Sea.

The Israelites walked over on dry land, and then when the Egyptian army tried to follow them, God caused the waters to come back, crushing, destroying the Egyptian army that had tried to pursue them.

All of those miracles, one month later, they're in the wilderness.

And verse 2 says, the whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

That word complain, I think this is from the New King James Version.

Some of your Bibles might have that they murmured against Moses and Aaron.

I like that word murmured because the word sounds exactly like what it is.

You know, it's interesting that not only in the English language do we have a word that sounds like the activity that's being undertaken in this, but the Greeks also had a word that sort of sounds like murmuring or sort sounds like this, and their word was goggyusmus.

Gogusmus, goggyusmus, gogiusmus, gogiusmus.

All these words sound like what they're doing.

Even the ancient Hebrews, they had words like ragon or lun or a and all these words, if you repeat them, it sounds like people that are murmuring or complaining.

I think God has a sense of humor when it comes to words a lot of times, and he uses that word that captures the essence of what's going on when a lot of people are talking or complaining.

And so let's go to the next verse.

Let's go to verse 3.

The children of Israel said to Moses and Aaron, Oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, and when we ate bread to the full.

And now, because they're hungry, they decide it would have been better for us to stay under those conditions, because after all, we had oh so much to eat.

Now I don't know what the, Miss Joe, I don't know what the menu was like over there in Egypt.

I'm sure Pharaoh and the royal court probably had all they needed to eat, and I'm sure that they had it to the full, but I get the impression that if you were a slave assigned to the hardest of labor, that no one was going out of their way to make sure that you had a great four-course meal every day.

But you see that this is the memory that the people have.

The people's memory is, oh, we had plenty of meat, we had all the bread we could stand, we were just fed like kings over there.

And Moses, you and Aaron have brought us out into this wilderness because you want to kill us with hunger.

Let's move on to verse 4.

The Lord said to Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you.

And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not.

And it shall be on the sixth day that they shall prepare what they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily.

Let's move on, verse six.

Then Moses and Aaron said to all the children of Israel, At evening you shall know that the Lord has brought you out of the land of Egypt.

In the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, for he hears your complaints against the Lord.

But what are we that you complain against us?

Pause here for a moment.

So the Lord speaks to Moses.

Moses shares the words of the Lord with the people, and he tells the people, The Lord's heard you, and I like how Moses even says, The Lord's heard your complaints.

The Lord's heard your complaints, and so the Lord is going to fix this situation.

You are going to have bread in the morning.

But then Moses adds, Who are Aaron and I that you're complaining against us?

Why are you complaining against us?

Moses didn't have a bread store in the back that he could serve all of Israel with.

Aaron certainly didn't either.

And yet the people decided to complain to Moses and Aaron, but their real complaint, let's face it, their real complaint was against God.

Their real complaint was against the one who had liberated them from that slavery.

Let's move on.

Okay, we're going to skip a few verses and go to verse 11.

Same chapter, Exodus 16, verse 11.

Exodus 16:11

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, I have heard the complaints of the children of Israel.

Speak to them, saying, At twilight you'll have meat, and in the morning you'll be filled with bread.

You will know that I am the Lord your God.

So it was that Quail came up at evening and covered the camp, and in the morning the dew lay all around the camp.

Let's keep moving, verse 14.

And when the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a small round substance as fine as frost on the ground.

So when the children of Israel saw it, they said to one another, What is it?

For they did not know what it was.

And Moses said to them, This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat.

Pause here for a moment.

So Moses makes a statement.

God is going to feed you with bread.

And the next morning they get up and they have the morning, they're used to seeing the morning dew there, perhaps on the wilderness floor.

They go out and there's this substance.

There's this substance they've never seen before, and they say to one another, What is it?

Now many of you know what the name of this substance is.

We find this out in other passages, other verses.

The name is manna, and the word manna literally means, What is it?

What is it?

And so they, that's what you heard all morning long when the people, you know, earlier I was talking about the murmuring and the noise that that makes.

Well, when they came out the next morning and that manna was on the ground, they were all going, manna, manna, manna, manna?

What is it?

What is that?

What is it?

They didn't know what it was.

Moses says, This is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.

Let's move to verse 16.

This is the thing which the Lord has commanded.

Let every man gather it according to each one's need.

One omer for each person, according to the number of persons, let every man take for those who are in his tent.

Then the children of Israel did so and gathered, some more, some less.

We'll pause here.

So God gives a command.

And God's command is gather as much as you need for your household.

And in the previous verses, we find out that you're supposed to gather as much as you need for your household for the day.

Now, when's the last time that you went to the grocery store, Harps, Walmart, wherever it is that you shop, and you just bought enough for what you need for the day?

Some of us have been there because that's all we can afford to eat and gather, is what we need for the day.

No, when we go to the grocery store in America, we are stocking up.

We're getting what we need for the day, for the week, the weekend, maybe what we need for several more days.

But manna was different.

When you came to get the manna off of the wilderness floor, you were only supposed to gather what you needed for your household for the day.

And since households varied in size, some people gathered more, some people gathered less.

Let's move to verse 18.

So when they measured it by omers, omer is a unit of measurement.

He who gathered much had nothing left over.

He who gathered little had no lack.

Every man had gathered according to each one's need.

Moses said, Let no one leave any of it till morning.

Pause here.

God's rule was, you get what you need for the day, and you don't store any waiting for the next day.

You're going to go out the next morning and you're going to get what you need for that morning.

And then the morning after that, you'll go out in the morning and you'll get what you need for that day.

Let's look at verse 20.

Notwithstanding, they did not heed Moses.

Some of them left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and stank.

And Moses was angry with them.

Pause here.

Human nature.

You tell someone, just get what you need, somebody is going to grab a little bit more.

It's like the bowl of candy that's left outside the house at Halloween time that says, just take one.

And you know that kid is going to come up with that basket and grab that whole bowl and dump it into the bag.

Well, that's how we often are as human beings.

And even when they had seen the miracle of God about this miraculous food, and even when they'd received the word from God, take just what you need, don't take any more, there were people there trying to get more than their fair share.

And God's answer to that was, go ahead and get it, but you're not going to want to eat it the next day.

Manna made for terrible leftovers.

If they got more than what they needed, the next day they would come to it and it would have worms in it and it would stink.

We're not told exactly how noxious the stench was.

In my imagination, I like to think that perhaps it was so bad that two or three tenths over they could smell the stench.

And they would say, What in the world is that?

What is it?

Mana again.

What is it?

What is it?

And it would be the stench from the manna that people had gathered against God's command.

Now, when we see this story, and we see that all of this is started, if you will, from a complaint that the people lodged against Moses, which was really, as God said, a complaint against God, we learn some more things about complaining.

Let's go to the next slide.

Complaining is often rooted in not trusting God.

Complaining is often rooted in not trusting God.

I told you that I was on I 40 a couple of days ago.

And I was driving on I-40, and I encountered that same thing that we all encounter when we're on I-40, when two trucks are next to each other, and they are driving, and they haven't made up their mind yet who's going to win that little drive.

And so they drive and they drive for a mile, sometimes they drive for two miles, and all of the traffic begins to back up behind them.

That's usually when my complaining starts when I'm driving.

Usually I will think, well, you know, they when are we going to teach truck drivers how to drive so that they aren't doing this all the time?

Or I might complain about the person in front of me who's tapping their brakes every three seconds or what have you.

And so I found myself in preparing for this message, driving on I-40.

I wanted to not complain at all.

That's what I wanted to do.

But my wife is here, and I can't remember whether or not I actually pulled that off or not.

I will say this: I complained less than I normally complain.

How's that?

That's fair.

Okay.

And I reminded myself that the car's working fine.

I reminded myself that I had a good amount of gas in the tank.

I reminded myself that we didn't have to stop and eat again.

I reminded myself that even though I wanted to get home in time for one of the football games, that I was making pretty good time.

And I reminded myself of all the blessings that were so evident and so clear in front of me in order to keep from complaining about being stuck behind the trucks.

And once I started doing that, I remembered, I said, you know, if even if I'm late to watch the ball game, even if I'm stuck behind these two people, even if I'm stuck behind them for another 10 miles, I know that God is watching us.

I know that God is, God will get me home when He wants me to get home.

I know that God, God may have something going on with those two driving those trucks that I don't know anything about.

And so I should not be having my hand over the horn.

Instead, I should be handing this over to God and letting God just do whatever it is that He's doing with this situation.

And you know, I found that the more I was trusting God, the less irritated I was getting with the situation around me.

And we can apply that to any other thing in our lives that is causing us to complain.

We can hand over ownership, if you will, of any situation that we're in.

Just hand that situation over to God.

Trust that he's doing something with it.

Maybe what he's doing with it is he's rubbing off some of our rough edges so that we can be a little more like Jesus.

Or maybe he's doing something with it.

It doesn't have much to do with us at all, but it's got the world to do with somebody else that's in our area of circle of influence.

Complaining, we complain when we decide that we don't trust God enough to resolve whatever situation it is that we're in.

We complain when we think that it's all up to us.

We complain when we think it's all up to somebody else other than God.

When we start to realize that God is in charge and He can be trusted, our need to complain, our desire to complain, our self-justification to complain suddenly begins to disappear quite a bit.

When we trust God, we can start the work of stopping our complaining.

Let's go to the next slide.

So when we complain, complaining is often accompanied by some things.

And you'll notice that in each one of these, the word twisted is present.

And that's by design.

Because when we stop trusting God and we start thinking that we have a right to complain, what we're really doing is we're twisting our perceptions of reality.

First, we see twisted memories of the past.

In that passage in Exodus that we just read, remember what the Israelites said?

The Israelites said, Oh, if only we were back in Egypt, where we had all the meat we wanted and we had bread to the full.

You know, a lot of times when we're complaining about something and we say, oh, it's not as good as it used to be back in the old days, or oh, it wasn't that this was different last week than it is today.

What we're doing is we're sort of elevating the past and making it better than it actually was.

We're twisting our memory of the past.

Not so, uh, I don't think that God does anything by happenstance.

I think it's interesting that God has, as one of the physical side effects of complaining, is that you end up developing a bad memory if too much cortisol is in your system.

No, when we are complaining, sometimes we're complaining because we've got a twisted understanding, a twisted memory of the past.

Look at the second point here, a twisted understanding of the present.

What did the Israelites say to Aaron and to Moses?

They said, Oh, you've brought us out into this desert to kill us with hunger.

That's the complaint that they shared with Moses and Aaron.

That's a rather twisted understanding of the present situation that they were in.

No, God had taken them out of Egypt, taken them into freedom.

He was going to, over the course of the next years, the next generation, he was going to make them from a people who had lived in slavery into a people that would be ready to conquer the promised land there in the book of Joshua.

But because they only saw what their stomachs would allow them to see, there's some of you right now that are thinking, I want to go to lunch.

Pastor Dave, I want to go to lunch.

You're forcing us to be here.

You're going to starve us with hunger here in the sanctuary.

No, no, I know better than that.

If anything, you're just saying, I wish he'd wrap this up because I don't want to lose out to the Methodists and the Presbyterians.

But sometimes when we complain, we've got a twisted understanding of the situation that we're in.

We're so focused, we're so hyper-focused on that thing that's bothering us that we don't see the larger picture.

Third point, twisted thinking can create the idea that somehow God wants to spoil your future.

This one may take a little bit of explaining.

You know, for a few moments ago, Pastor Jacob was up here worshiping and he reminded us, he reminded us of the life that we lived before being saved by Jesus Christ.

Humbling, very humbling.

And I remember that as a lost person, one of my hesitations about accepting the message of the gospel didn't have anything to do with doubting the person of Jesus Christ.

Didn't have anything to do with doubting that the Bible was the Word of God.

But selfishly, I thought if I go and join up with those folks, I'm going to stop having a lot of fun.

If I go and join up with those folks, I'm not going to be able to do some of the things that I kind of like to do.

If I go and join up with those folks, my life is going to change and it's not going to be as good as it is now.

Boy, how stupid was I.

That was ridiculous thinking.

And yet, there may be some people in here today.

Maybe you're visiting, maybe you're here with family, and you know, you're sort of humoring your family by coming to church with them on Sunday.

Thanks for doing that, first off.

Thank you for doing that.

And you may be thinking, you know, if I were to follow Jesus and become a Christian, my life would change, and I'm not all that sure that I want some of those changes.

If I go and follow God, God might spoil my future.

God might create changes in my life that I don't, frankly, want to see made.

If that's your thought, please allow me to suggest this to you.

You have a twisted understanding of what God wants to do with you in your future.

Because when you become a Christian and you decide that God is in charge, and you're not in charge anymore, and you're going to follow God's rules, you're not going to make your own rules, that you're going to do the things that God has called you to do, and you're not going to do those things that God has told you not to do.

Your life doesn't become less enjoyable.

It becomes safer and much more enjoyable.

And you're able to wake up every morning realizing that today is just another day, not until you eventually die, but today is another day until you spend the rest of eternity with the Lord who has saved you, with the Lord who loves you.

How much does Jesus love you?

Jesus loves you so much that he died for you.

Jesus loves you so much that he laid down his life so that you could not be trapped in a life of sin, but instead could be joined to his family and enjoy an eternity in joy and peace and fellowship with Almighty God.

God doesn't want to spoil your future, he wants to fix your future.

You know, those guys who didn't trust God, and so they went and they gathered up more manna than they were supposed to gather up, thinking that they would have some a little bit left over.

What did they see the next morning?

Did they go out and say, oh, since I defied God, I've got extra manna for this morning?

No, they had a big wormy mess that had just a stench to it, horrible stench.

That's kind of what happens when you decide, well, I'm not going to let God be in charge of telling me what to do.

I'm going to do what I want to do.

You end up creating a life for yourself that, quite frankly, is kind of filled with worms and a stench.

Why?

Because God wants more for you than just a grave at the end of your life.

God wants you to enjoy fellowship with Him for now and for all eternity.

Finally, last point here, complaining is often accompanied by twisting the honor that God deserves.

Twisting the honor that God deserves.

Oh, there's not very many brave people in here.

That are a whole bunch of liars are sitting out here.

One of the two.

Okay, got my arm raised.

You know, when something happens in our lives and we don't want to blame God, even though that may be where our mind takes us, all too often we will blame somebody else for something that we realize they had no control over.

As a minister, we get this a lot.

Ministers get complaints a lot.

I don't know if you knew that or not.

Sometimes I think that's out right outside the office we ought to just have a box and it could be labeled complaints.

All right.

And you could stick your complaint in there and we leave the bottom open and put a trash can underneath it and go right in there.

Okay?

No, we actually do listen to it.

We do listen to every complaint that we get.

That's a joke.

Not a very good one.

A lot of times the complaints that we get as ministers have nothing to do with the job of ministry that we are undertaking.

The complaints that we get as ministers are complaints that people actually have with God, but they decide to share it with the minister instead.

Because they don't get to see the funny look on God's face, but they do get to see the funny look on our face when they give us the complaint.

All too often, when we have complaints, we won't take them to the Lord because we know after years of Bible study and Bible reading and prayer, we know that God doesn't want to hear our complaints.

But we will take them to the next person that may represent some aspect of God's work.

We saw that here in Exodus chapter 16.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

They complained because they're hungry.

They wouldn't complain directly to the Lord, but they did complain to Moses and Aaron.

So much so that when Moses was answering the people, he said, Who are me, who are Aaron and I that you are bringing this complaint to us?

We're not the Lord.

When a person does that, when they complain to someone else rather than talking to the Lord, they're really twisting the honor, and they're giving the honor of authority over the situation to a lesser being.

And when you give God's honor to someone less than God, you are twisting God's honor.

You are twisting the honor that God deserves.

And so as we look at these different types of situations of complaining, and we realize that complaining results in physical harm and biological pain to us and our brains shrinking and chemicals going all over the place.

What is the cure for complaining?

Well, let's go to the next slide.

The answer to complaining is trusting God.

When you trust God, you realize that what God is doing with your life has less to do with your temporary desire today, and it has everything to do with your future needs, your greatest need.

What is the greatest need of every man, woman, and child within the sound of my voice and beyond?

The greatest need is to be saved and become more like Jesus.

That is our greatest need.

And so God ultimately is using the circumstances of life to make you more like Jesus, you more like Jesus, you more like Jesus, you more like Jesus, and me more like Jesus.

The lives we live are filled with challenges and opportunities that as we meet them, trusting God in prayer, we will become less like ourselves and more like Jesus.

God is changing us every day to be more like Jesus.

You know, my one of my favorite writers, some of you in the 60 plus lunch know this, I'm a big fan of the writer C.S.

Lewis.

And C.

S.

Lewis has an explanation for part of this.

He says that when a person gets saved, you could compare it to an old house that needs some repairs.

Our first house, when my wife and I we moved into our first house, it had lots of really nice things about it, had a lot of things that needed fixing up.

The carpet tacks that had those little nails sticking out of them were still around all of the baseboards.

And on Saturday morning I'd get up for a cup of coffee, and inevitably I would stick my foot right on one of those things.

Ah, boy, that'll wake you up better than a cup of coffee.

But nonetheless, we just thought, well, you know, we've got a handful of little things to do, and then the house will be perfect.

And most of the time when people come to Jesus Christ, they think they're like that house that just needs a few things done to it in order to be perfect.

They think, well, you know, I'll stop doing this, I'll start doing this, I'll clean up my vocabulary, I'll clean up what I watch and I'll and what I listen to, I'll just do a few things and then I'll be more like Jesus.

But Jesus comes in and says, no, no, your house needs more than just a new coat of paint.

Your house needs more than just a little bit of carpeting.

As a matter of fact, let's take this wall in your house and bust that down.

Let's pour a new concrete slab over here, and we're going to begin a large second-story addition.

And on top of that, the carpets that you have in the house, we're just pulling all of those up.

And we've discovered that the wiring is bad and the plumbing needs to be repaired.

Oh, and by the way, you need a new roof, too.

And over time, as a Christian, you see that what you need to become more like Jesus isn't just a little series of touch-ups, but rather it's a full-scale renovation, requiring a whole new set of blueprints as to who is in charge of your life and what you're going to do with your life and who your life belongs to.

You see, when we trust God, we understand that the things that cause us to complain are just more often than not things that God is using to change us so that we'll seek Him, so that we'll give Him the authority to do what He wants with our lives.

Lord, you can feel you can treat it like this.

Lord, I know that I complain about and fill in the blank.

And the other blank and the other blank and all those blanks about the things that you complain about.

You can say, Lord, I realize that I've been complaining about those things.

I realize that I should instead practice gratitude, that you are interested enough in me, and that you are working enough in me, that you are challenging me in these ways in the hopes that I will use this to become more like Jesus and less like myself.

I can't help but think that if back when I was a college student, before I was saved, if I had died and if I had gotten a chance to glimpse heaven, that I probably would have said, Well, I see it, but I really don't understand much of what's going on around here.

But in the coming up on 40 years now since I've been saved, I like to think that if I were to pass away today and found myself up in heaven and I looked out at heaven, I would say, Oh, I understand what's going on here.

This is praise and glory and honor to Jesus Christ and to the Lord now and forever.

I want to be a part of that.

Plug me in, ask me to do whatever it is you want me to do, Lord.

I'm your man.

I'm on it.

You see, God is changing you, and God has changed me and continues to change me so that I can be a person that's going to appreciate and enjoy the blessings of heaven more.

God is making me hopefully more like Jesus every day.

God is making me hopefully more willing to trust him, not just with the different events of life, but with every aspect of my life.

Not just for today, but for the purpose of eternity.

Eternity.

There's a passage in the New Testament.

I didn't want to leave you with just some Old Testament reading today.

We're going to go to the next slide.

And there is a passage where Jesus explains that he is the fulfillment of the bread from heaven, the story about manna that we read about in Exodus chapter 16.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

I'm in John chapter 6, verse 30.

John 6:30

If you've got your Bible, join me there.

Otherwise, I recommend you write this down and look at it when you get home.

John chapter 6, beginning in verse 30.

John 6 · chapter mention

Therefore they said to Jesus, What sign will you perform that we may see it and believe in you?

What work will you do?

Our fathers ate manna in the desert, as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

Jesus said to them, Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my father gives you true bread from heaven.

For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

They said to Jesus, Lord, give us this bread always.

Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

He who comes to me shall never hunger.

He who believes in me shall never thirst.

Some fourteen hundred years before Jesus, the Israelites came to Moses and Aaron and they said, We're hungry.

If you don't give us bread to eat, we're going to die out here in the wilderness.

God heard that.

God sent them manna, bread from heaven.

Some fourteen hundred years later, Jesus was teaching and preaching to the multitudes, and Jesus said, I'm the bread from heaven.

Whoever comes to me will never die.

What does that mean exactly?

Well, the people who ate manna in the wilderness, they had that bread, but they died later on.

They died.

When you come and you have Jesus Christ and you symbolically take Him and make Him a part of who you are, you make Him the sustenance of who you are.

When you receive the salvation that He offers, when you put yourself on the shelf and say, I'm going to trust Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

I repent of my sins.

I'm trusting what Jesus has done on the cross.

I'm trusting him as my Savior and as my Lord, Jesus, come save me.

When you do that, then spiritually, you have the person of Jesus.

You have the Holy Spirit with inside you, and you will never spiritually die.

Yes, you may pass away from this life, but instead of just having your body join the ground, you, the spirit that is within you, you will be with Jesus in heaven for all eternity.

And he is preparing for you to enjoy that day even now as he makes you more like him.

That's a blessing.

That's something to be grateful for, isn't it?

Wow.

Wow.

Let's all stand.

The reason I just said wow right now is because I sense I sense that we have people who are understanding that, but they may not be really embracing it.

Let's have our worship team come up.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're here today and you don't have Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then you've probably got a right to complain about the life that you're living.

You've probably got a right to complain about every little thing that happens.

At least in your own mind, you have that right.

But ladies and gentlemen, if you have Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, He is making you more like Himself.

He wants you to practice that spirit of gratitude.

He wants you to be grateful for that salvation that you've received.

And if you're here today and you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, we have this time in our service as a traditional time that we call the invitation.

We are inviting you to come forward and talk to one of our deacons or ministers here at the aisles.

And just tell them, just straightforward, I don't know what this being saved is all about.

Or tell them, I want to know more about becoming more like Jesus, like Pastor Dave was telling us today.

They will be happy to talk with you.

And you can yourself begin that process of living separate from this world, feeling the gratitude of having Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

What about for all of the people here that are saved this morning?

What are they supposed to do during this time of the invitation?

Your job, ladies and gentlemen, is to pray.

You need to be praying.

You know, this isn't the time to be thinking about beating the Presbyterians and the Methodists to lunch.

This is the time to be thinking, Lord, if there's someone here who needs to be saved, send the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord, and bring them to a full, saving knowledge of yourself.

That's why this church exists.

We exist not so that we get to come together every Sunday.

That's fun, don't get me wrong.

We exist to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with a lost and dying world that needs to be saved.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.