“And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, ‘Would that we had 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.’” (Exodus 16:2-3)
Complaining is part of human existence, but that doesn’t make it right. So many are not happy with what they have, or with what their government is doing, or what other people are doing so they complain, often with rioting and violence as we have seen in the past several years. And many complain about change as they long nostalgically for the good old days. Yet very often, the good old days were not so good. They were filled with their own set of problems and evils.
The children of Israel were constantly complaining throughout their history as we see here in Exodus 16. The Lord had just delivered them from the Egyptians by the mighty miracle of the parting of the Red Sea. As the tribes of Israel journeyed on into the wilderness, they began to murmur and complain. They were not starving but they did have a need for sustenance. Of course there is a proper and respectful way to ask the Lord for relief but the Israelites felt that complaining was the best method. They mocked the faithfulness of the Lord and spoke against the authority of Moses. They looked fondly back to their slavery days and the fine food they supposedly had then. They forgot the bitterness and pain of the old life under the rule of the Egyptians.
The Lord graciously responded to their requests even though they were in the form of complaints. He gave them meat to eat, quail, an unexpected blessing. He also gave them total sustenance, however, in the form of manna. They would eat this manna for the next 40 years and it would meet their every need. Yet even later they would complain about that manna. Same old stuff all the time. Filling, nourishing, but boring.
The Lord promises us to supply our every need for our life, physical, spiritual, and eternal. No thing or person in this life will provide such sustenance for God grants us it all by grace through faith in the person of Jesus. He alone is the Bread of Life. While the Lord tolerates and understands our complaints we need not grumble and whine to receive His grace and provision as the Israelites did. We need only ask with a humble and contrite heart and He will give us all that we need.