Pastor Kirk McCormick: Lessons from the Wilderness

“Lessons about Discontentment”

Numbers 11

“Not to get what you have set your heart on is almost as bad as

getting nothing at all.”

Aristotle (4th Century BC)

I. Understanding Discontentment

A. Discontentment begins with frustration...almost despair.

Numbers 11:10-12
10 Moses heard the people of every family wailing, each at the entrance to his tent. The LORD became exceedingly angry, and Moses was troubled. 11 He asked the LORD, “Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of all these people on me? 12 Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their forefathers?
Point: Discontentment blinds us from the truth.

B. Discontentment is exacerbated by stress.

Numbers 11:13-15 –
13 Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep wailing to me, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ 14 I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. 15 If this is how you are going to treat me, put me to death right now – if I have found favor in your eyes – and do not let me face my own ruin.
Point: Physical or emotional exhaustion amplifies discontentment.

C. Discontentment allows self-pity to creep in.

Point: Rarely do guests enjoy a pity party...unlike the host.
Numbers 11:19-20 –
19 You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, 20 but for a whole month – until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it – because you have rejected the LORD, who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?’

D. Discontentment limits our faith in God.

Numbers 11:22-23 -
21 But Moses said, “Here I am among six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!’ 22 Would they have enough if flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? Would they have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them?” 23 The LORD answered Moses, “Is the LORD’S arm too short? You will now see whether or not what I say will come true for you.”
Truth: God could have given them anything they wanted...but he gave them what they needed. Point: If God is unwilling to bless, there must be a good reason.

II. Learning the Lessons about Discontentment

Lesson #1 – Unique blessings often flow from stressful circumstances.

c.f.: Numbers 11:24-25
So Moses went out and told the people what the LORD had said. He brought together seventy of their elders and had them stand around the Tent. 25 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke with him, and he took of the Spirit that was on him and put the Spirit on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but they did not do so again.
Luke 12:50 – Jesus said, “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”
Oscar Wilde – “Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”
Point: The “good-old” times usually began as a “challenging-new time”.

Lesson #2 – We serve no small God.

Luke 18:27 – Jesus said, “What is impossible from a human perspective is possible with God.” (NLT)
Point: Our God is an awesome God for whom no task is impossible. Don’t shrink him!
Numbers 11:31-32
Now a wind went out from the LORD and drove quail in from the sea. It brought them down all around the camp to about three feet above the ground, as far as a day’s walk in any direction. 32 All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail.