Three days, that’s all it took, three days. They watched in amazement as a sight unfolded right before their eyes that the most spectacular movie could not create, and then just three days later started complaining. The Red Sea parts, they spend all night walking on dry ground as the waves tower on either side of them, and then three days later they’re thirsty, and their thirst demands for God to obey them. “I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts.” (Isaiah 65:2)
Jesus went to the cross for us, took every sin we had, and we worry about food and water, about the state that the world is in, about tomorrow when “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matt. 6:34) Whatever state you are in is either because you have sin in your life that you have not repented of and will not see the chastisement of the Lord as the means to bring you back to Him, or you are there because that is where He wants you, I see no third alternative at this time. In either case, if you are complaining, its not God’s fault, its yours.
Do you want to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord? Then expect tribulation, and when it arrives, don’t complain.
I think most people who are saved don’t believe in these verses anymore, that “Jesus is only love” garbage that’s been going around for a few decades now has efficiently blinded them to the truths of the Word of God, you will have tribulation, so do everything without complaining. It is, in part, the reason that we find ourselves in the days that we are in. The Holy Spirit is being poured out on those who are thirsty for the Lord, and the chaff is being offered a last chance in this age of grace.
The Lord does not expect us to jump up and down in great anticipation when these trials and tribulations arrive at our doorstep, but He does expect us to rejoice in them, to see ourselves as blessed to suffer for His name. I think for most of us that is going to mean a lot more than just being thirsty, but that is up to the Lord.
There may have been upwards of a million people or more that day in the wilderness, so it is safe to assume that not all of them were saying the same thing that has been written here, “It was just three days ago, why are you complaining, why aren’t you trusting?” Only those who were under the age of twenty (Numb. 14:29) would see the promised land, fulfilling the trustfulness of Matthew 5:45, “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Saved and lost, we are all caught up in these days, the point of this poorly written letter is this, if you are indeed of the wheat, are you complaining? “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” (Romans 13:11) As stated, I don’t believe the Lord wants us to be happy in these days of great evil, but He does want us to not complain about them, we rejoice because we know that no matter what the day brings, it brings us one day closer to being eternally in His presence, but that rejoicing must be tempered with the continual hatred of the evil that is beginning to cover the planet.
There will be a moment when it will all be completed for you, either alone taking your last breath, or together when all those who profess Jesus Christ as Lord will meet Him in the clouds. (1 Thess. 4:17) Until that moment, any major, continual complaining is off limits. “Do all things without murmurings and disputings.” (Phil. 2:14)
