Do everything without grumbling
Scripture
Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me. (Philippians 2:14-18)
Sermon Audio
Do everything without grumbling
I wish I had the time to preach a series on this whole chapter. There is SO much here. Today I am going to focus on what I see as a major enemy to serving God joyfully. It is an enemy that is crouching in our midst. So, it is for your joy that I'm going to dwell on the first part of verse 14, “Do all things without grumbling...”
I want to make a distinction early between sinful, self-centered, prideful grumbling and a child crying out to his father in lament. I plan to make grumbling detestable to you and show you how crying out to God in lament and recalling the steadfast love of the Lord are actually the antidote to grumbling.
Why not? Your growth and joy!
Why doesn't Paul want the Philippians to grumble? Why doesn't God want us to grumble? Let's ask Paul.
“...it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:9-11)
He summarizes this in verse 25, he wants them and us to “progress and [have] joy in the faith”. (Philippians 1:25)
How will grumbling keep us from growing and having joy in the faith?
Paul addresses this in the early part of Chapter 2.
“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves...” (Philippians 2:3-5)
Here we see what Paul means when he uses the word grumble. To Paul grumbling is the result of fostering selfishness and pride. Grumbling keeps us from serving others and keeps us in the sinful cycle of pride.
Imagine a family of conceited, opinionated, entitled, complainers. How much serving, joy, and peace is there in a family like that?
So Paul says to the Philippians, “[Don't fall into this temptation. Do as you have always done with me, obey in my absence as much as you have obeyed while I was with you,] work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13)
Yes, God is at work in you. So fight against the temptation to grumble because it will hurt your growth. It will hurt your brothers and sisters. It will squelch your joy and the joy of others. You will give God a bad name among unbelievers. Most importantly you will be sinning against God and we know that God disciplines those he loves.
Why do we grumble?
You are going to be tempted to let yourself off the hook and say, “everybody does this.” Or, maybe you'll say what my son said to me the other day. I told him to stop complaining. To which he replied, “I'm not complaining. I'm wining and that's not bad.” Yes, son. It is bad.
I will let James answer our question. Remember, he was writing to Christians!
"What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you [you are not that Judge]?" (James 4:1-12)
To summarize, we grumble because of our sinful desire to run the world. We want to be judge, jury and executioner. We want to be God. But if we will humble ourselves before the Lord and resist the temptation to sin by grumbling he will forgive our sin and restore our hope in him.
Doesn't God provide both the sun and the rain; prosperous and lean times? Isn't it God who has put you in your station in life? Isn't it God who has assigned you your family, job, body? Then why are you so hesitant to direct your petitions to God in prayer when you struggle? Why do you fall so quickly to grumbling?
Do you truly believe that God has adopted you as a son or daughter? Do you truly believe that God has done it joyfully and stands ready to bless you with his surpassing peace and joy in the midst of whatever is happening to you? Do you trust God to do what is right both to you and for you?
Well, if you are grumbling, then the answer is, “No you don't.” You fall into the temptation to wallow in pity, lash out in anger, or strive under your own power and plans because you do not believe God is good. You do not believe that God is the ultimate loving Father, that Jesus is your caring Brother, and that the Holy Spirit is present in you and ready to strengthen you and give you peace and joy. You do not believe that God is working all things together for your good (Romans 8:28). You are believing that God is out to get you, that he wants to punish you, as if it's fun for him; that he has adopted you grudgingly and doesn't really want to be bothered with your lowly issues.
When we begin to believe that God is working all things together for the worst, grumbling is not far away.
When you turned your heart toward God and said, "I've made a mess of my life and contrary to the lies I tell other people, I am a horrible person who is doomed. Jesus, forgive my sin. Take the reigns of my life before I drown and go to Hell. Jesus, save me!"
When your heart came to that place and you gave yourself to Jesus, from that point on you were adopted as God's child. Jesus became your brother. The Holy Spirit is in you and working to make you holy. You may not have riches in this life but Jesus is preparing your inheritance, you will be rich in joy beyond measure. Your homecoming will be sweet as you come into the presence of your adopted Father, your Brother, and your family (the Church).
Do you believe that this awaits you in Heaven? Do you believe God can give you peace and joy on Earth as well? Do you believe that God is able to take care of you? That he WILL take care of you?
Then why do you so quickly fall to grumbling and why do you get wrapped up in your addictions and run so quickly to your idols when things don't go your way; sitting content to grumble about your pet issues instead of casting your cares upon Jesus and trusting that all things will work together for your good and God's glory.
Many times we find it hard to believe that God wants us to have joy in this life. Sometimes it feels wrong to want to be joyful or to seek our pleasure in God. Like somehow a Christian is supposed to deny himself happiness in his Savior.
C.S. Lewis said, "If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
Why does God hate grumbling?
When you grumble you are saying that you could order your life, other peoples' lives, and even the world better than God. You are saying that you could do a better job than God; that you want to impeach Him and then take His place.
God will not share his place as supreme ruler of the universe with you. Isaiah 48:11 makes this clear.
“For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” (Isaiah 48:11)
Consider God's response to Job:
“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!” (Job 38:1-5)
If this is God's response to a righteous man who did not sin in his lament. Imagine what God's response is to the sinful grumbler. Compare yourself to Job. This is his response to the lose of everything, including his health.
...Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:20-21)
Is this the way you respond to injustice or oppression? I doubt it. At least not initially. Instead you probably respond to oppression more like Elijah did when he was fleeing from Jezebel (1 Kings 19). Keep in mind that this is the same Elijah who just faced down the 450 prophets of Baal.
he went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” (1 Kings 19:4)
I'm guessing that your response to injustice is more like Jonah's when the Ninevites repented.
...it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, [because you didn't deal with the Ninevites the way I wanted to deal with them] please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:1-4)
Notice how God responds to Jonah, "Do you have any right to be angry?" It gives us great insight into God's heart when faced with a grumbling child.
I submit that when you grumble, in whatever form it takes, you are doing the same things these men did. Whether you are being attacked or oppressed or whether God is not doing what you think ought to be done, when you grumble you are throwing a tantrum and saying you know better than God.
If you ask my boys what a tantrum is they will tell you our family definition, "attempting to take control of the family from Daddy, Mommy, and God". That's what you do too when you grumble.
Do you have any right to grumble?
Grumbling is a virus that leads us away from God
Grumbling led the Israelites away from God and into the arms of idols. Over and over again God would do miraculous things in their midst and almost as soon as it happened they would turn away from God, and it always seemed to start with a small number of grumblers... that grew.
Grumbling is an early symptom of turning away from God in an area of your life. And it's like a virus. Whenever you do this God takes it personally. He takes it personally in the same way He took it when Israel asked Samuel for a king. He hates grumbling and he goes to extremes to purge it from his people. For an example go read about Korah's rebellion in Numbers 16 and ask yourself, “What does this tell me about God's attitude toward grumbling?”
I'll give you a brief summary:
“Now Korah, Dathan and Abiram took men. And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men. They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far!” (Numbers 16:1-3)
In verse 11 Moses reminded Korah and his crew exactly who they were grumbling against.
“it is against the Lord that you and all your company have gathered together. What is Aaron that you grumble against him?” (Numbers 16:11)
If you read the rest of the chapter you'll see that God responded to this grumbling by splitting the ground open and swallowing up the entire households of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Now I'm not suggesting that the ground will open up and swallow you when you grumble but this account gives us more insight into God's attitude toward grumbling. He hates it.
Grumbling is unbelief
So, why was it that so many Israelites were kept out of the promised land and were left to die in the desert? It would seem that the answer is grumbling? Actually it was because of the underlying unbelief that they were kept out of the promised land (Hebrews 3:19). Their unbelief presented itself in the form of grumbling.
Are you a grumbler?
King Solomon said, "A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed... All the days of the afflicted are evil, but the cheerful of heart has a continual feast." (Proverbs 15:13,15)
Would you say that most of your days could be characterized as being a feast? I'm guessing you're like me and would characterize many of your days as afflicted. Why is that?
I am going to assume that you struggle against, and sometimes fail to resist, the temptation to grumble like I do. The Israelites suffered from it. And I suspect your family struggles with it too. Falling into the temptation to grumble in your heart, with your body language, your actions or with your words is a GIGANTIC problem and none of us are immune. After all, Paul wrote this to the Philippians who are considered the “good” church. That's an indication that this is a universal temptation for everyone.
Grumbling is one of Satan's best and most effective weapons against Christians because we are all universally prone to grumble. Since it is so pervasive we hesitate to challenge our brothers and sisters on when they start grumbling. In fact, the temptation is so attractive that we tend to agree and take part in their grumbling ourselves!
Humble yourself and He will lift you up
This must not be so! We must fight this! We must fight the fight of faith. That is, we must fight to believe that God is who he says he is. Our first order of business is to humble ourselves and repent. Remember I said you'd be tempted to let yourself off the hook? Well don't. It will keep you in the pattern of grumbling, when what you really need to do is repent and worship at the feet of Jesus—the one who will be faithful and just to forgive your sin. If you humble yourself he WILL lift you up. (James 4:10)
How can we keep from grumbling while suffering?
First of all, if we are caught up in a pattern of grumbling we need to humble ourselves and repent, trusting that Jesus will forgive us and restore us.
We must stop listening to ourselves and start preaching to ourselves. Resolve to begin the day by recalling the mercies of the Lord. Resolve to train yourself to run to the Lord at the first sign of grumbling. He sees everything anyway, why wait for your suffering to become sinful grumbling? Run to God early and often!
The author of Lamentations provides a fantastic model for us in Chapter 3. He begins by explaining how he feels about God's treatment of him (Lamentations 3:1-20).
"He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has made my chains heavy;
though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones;
he has made my paths crooked." (Lamentations 3:7-9)
But watch how he has conditioned himself to recognize this train of thought, starting in verse 17.
"my soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness is;
so I say, “My endurance has perished;
so has my hope from the Lord.”
Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me." (Lamentations 3:17-20)
He's caught in a cycle of despair but the Holy Spirit helps him to notice when he looses peace and hope. And as soon as he recognizes that he has lost peace and hope in the Lord, he starts preaching to himself! He knows that he can regain his hope in the Lord by recalling truth about God.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord...
For the Lord will not cast off forever,
but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love (Lamentations 3: 22-25, 31-32)
I encourage you to read Lamentations 3 and meditate on it this week. What does it tell you about God? What does it tell you about yourself?
Train yourself to recall the steadfast love of the Lord and to dwell on his attributes daily, especially in times of struggle and weakness. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you a hair trigger for recalling the steadfast love of the Lord at the first sign of weakness.
King David did this. He knew the antidote to grumbling and depression was to recall the attributes and faithfulness of God. He also knew that in times like these he needed to stop listening to himself and start preaching.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you... (Psalm 42:5-6)
Doesn't that sound familiar? Reading on in Psalm 42 you'll see this pattern again.
“As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? [Why are you grumbling? Why are you depressed? Why are you angry at the situation?] Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. (Psalm 42:10-11)
Learn from these patterns. Learn to recognize when you have lost hope and peace, and as soon as you realize it run to the Lord in prayer. Ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen you so that you will not give into the temptation to grumble. Cry out as the father of the child did in Mark 9:24, “I believe, help my unbelief!”
Begin preaching to yourself, read scriptures like these, listen to sermons, listen to music that recalls the attributes of God. Hope in God is the antidote to unbelief and all of its symptoms, including grumbling, idolatry, covetousness, etc.
If you discover that you are being infected by other people's grumbling don't spend time with them, get away from them if you can. Instead seek out people who will encourage you and will help you recall the steadfast love of the Lord.
If you know someone who is struggling with a pattern of grumbling come along side them and help them to recall the steadfast love of the Lord. Be patient with them but do not let them off the hook.
Make it your goal to be content in every situation
Make it your goal to be able to say what Paul said in Philippians 4:12-13.
“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:12-13)
Notice that Paul has discovered the secret is not within himself, but it is in the Spirit that dwells in him. This is very different from what the world tells us. The world wants to tell us that we have everything we need inside of us, all we need to do is tap into it through the power of positive thinking. NO! The power of positive thinking will not help us escape the sin of grumbling! We need to have souls that are happy in the Lord and that will not happen through positive thinking. It will happen through the Word of God because the joy of the Lord is our strength and that most certainly does not come from within the heart of man. It comes from God alone.
It is the joy of the Lord that is our strength to be content in every situation. Remind yourself that God has adopted you and made you his child. He loves you and all things, all things, are being worked out for your good and his glory. Remember that Jesus is your loving brother. He has been where you are and he knows exactly what you are feeling and experiencing. He can relate to you and he is constantly interceding for you. Remember that the Holy Spirit is at work in you, making you more and more holy. Remember that there is no guarantee of comfort in this life but there IS a promise that if we humble ourselves before the Lord, he WILL lift us up.
Trials and struggles should make us run to Jesus. Even if he does not change the situation he can change us and restore our peace and hope in the midst of it. His grace is sufficient for us. His power is made perfect in our weakness. So boast all the more gladly of your struggles and weakness, so the power of Christ may rest upon you. (2 Corinthians 12:9)
Do everything with joy, knowing that your Father in Heaven is working all things together for your good and his glory.
My prayer for you, for me, and for my family is that we will all be able to agree with Paul. That through the power of the Holy Spirit we will each be able to say that we can be content in every situation so that we will be the beacon of hope that we are called to be to this crooked and twisted generation.
