what Moses wrote about in Numbers chapter 11 and what we just read is mentioned in the 106th Psalm. Let me read you a couple of verses that refers to this incident in Numbers 11, Psalm 106, beginning at verse 14. In the desert, They gave in to their craving. In the wasteland, they put God to the test. So he gave them what they asked for, but sent a wasting disease upon them. The King James puts it this way, that he sent leanness of soul to them.

I want to speak this morning on the subject of The Grave of Craving. Now, that title comes from the name of the place where this event happened. They named it. And that name, you can see it back in Numbers 11, verse 34, Kibroth Hata'ava, which means the grave of craving.

Now, why did they call it that? Well, one has to look at the history of the nation of Israel up to this point from its deliverance in Egypt. God, with a mighty hand and outstretched arm, delivered them from their bondage in Egypt.

Now, when they left, others who were not Jews went with them. You know, they had seen the 10 plagues that the Lord sent, miraculous things that nobody could explain. And seeing that, and then seeing how the Jews were set free and 600,000 men plus their wives and children were about to leave.

And as they left, the Egyptians who lived around them, gave them articles of silver, enriched them as they left. Now this is all the Lord's doing. Who else could make that happen? A people whom you had enslaved, the Lord sets them free, and not only are you letting them go, you're saying, here, we don't need this silver platter anymore, you take it, you know? Well, I got some, I got some, gold in my pocket, here you go, enriched them as they went out, and these other non-Jews, and they very well may have been slaves from other nations, they'd been enslaved by the Egyptians, I guess they just kind of insinuated themselves among the Jews.

so that everybody would think, well, this is just another one of the Jews leaving. And they were able to make their escape from Egypt. And so they went across the Red Sea right along with the Jews. They went into the wilderness right along with the Jews. They saw God speak and heard God speak at Mount Sinai just like everybody else.

But you know how the Jews were. And I almost hate saying that because the Jews have suffered a great deal of hatred over the centuries. And people hate them because they are Jews. Well, when I say something unflattering about the Jews in the Old Testament, particularly in their journey from Egypt into the Promised Land, it's not because they're Jews. The Jews, God chose the Jews, and one of the things he did with them is, as our brother read in 1 Corinthians 10, he uses them as examples to us to warn us. The Jews are no different than we are, and we're no different than they are. I mean, if the Bible had recorded everything they did in one of the Gentile nations, well, it might have been, you know, look a lot worse than the record about the Jews.

So when I say that the Jews in the wilderness rebelled against God and complained against God, the New Testament talks about how God put up with their bad manners. It's not just that Jews do that. Everybody does that. It's just because the Bible is about Christ and the Jewish nation is the nation of the lineage of Christ, they get written about.

Remember that, the Jews, they're just people. That's all they are. No better, no worse than anyone else. No more likely to believe God or disbelieve God than anybody else. But since God sets them forth as an example, or many of the things that happened to them, many things done by them are set forward to us as an example.

Here is an example of something we should never do. And the essential thing that was wrong with what they did, and we find it back here in verse one. This is the first instance of it. Now, the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord. They said, well, wait a minute, doesn't God hear everything? Yes, he does. But what I'm assuming is, is they made their complaint right there at the tent of meeting, the tabernacle.

Because for, you know, God's purposes with the nation of Israel, He had made His presence known to them in a way that it wasn't known in the rest of the world. And we know that God cannot be contained in a tent, not in a temple. Solomon said not even the heaven of the heavens can contain Him. But He caused His glory, at least some representation of His glory, to be there in that tent of meeting. That was where people went to inquire of the Lord and all that. And evidently, they went right there.

This is, again, I'm speculating, but it's the only way I can make sense out of it. Because, you know, in truth, if they complained 100 miles away from that tent, the Lord would have heard them. But for them to mention that they did this, their complaint was with, in the hearing of the Lord, they must have complained when they were right there at the tabernacle. Maybe even they complained to one of the priests who were representatives of the Lord.

But this complaint, what was it? Well, you look in verse four, the rabble with them began to crave other food. And again, the Israelites started wailing and said, if only we had meat to eat. Remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost. Also the cucumbers, the melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite. We never see anything but this manna.

Now you remember the story of the manna, don't you? They go out in the wilderness and there's nothing out there to eat. It's not like the area between Egypt and the promised lands like the Garden of Eden or anything like that. It's a desolate place. Certainly not designed to provide for 600,000 men and their wives and children. And so they cried out, we need something to eat. And so the Lord said, okay. I will send you bread from heaven.

And the bread did come. It came in the form of like dust, like dew. You know, the Bible describes it in several ways, but just they woke up in the morning and here's this stuff just laying all over the place. And they went out and gathered it and evidently they could grind it up and use it like flour, make bread out of it. And that's what they did. And I'm sure the first day they ate that, they thought that was the most wonderful food there ever was.

You know, when you're hungry, almost anything tastes good, right? I've often said that I would never eat liver under any circumstances, you know. But really, if I got hungry enough, I'll bet you even liver would taste good to me. So they ate that manna that first day, probably gorged themselves on it. The next day they wake up and there it is again. Go out and they gather it. This happens every day.

And on the sixth day they were supposed to gather a double portion because none was gonna fall on the Sabbath day. And so they gather what they needed for Friday and Saturday. They gathered that on Friday. Now, this is a wonderful illustration that God provides for His people. But all that He provided was manna. And these people came from a land that had quite a variety of tasty foods.

I mean, they list, you know, they said, all that we could go there, cucumbers, melons, They even had those, you know, kind of vegetables you could use to flavor up anything, kind of nice, leek, onions, and garlic. And now, what are we having for dinner, manna?

And as a kind of a curiosity, the word manna means, what is this? Because they got up in the morning and here's this manna everywhere, and they go, well, what's this? And so they named it, what's this? I remember a song by one of the contemporary Christian music makers of the late 70s and early 80s, a man named Keith Green. And he had a song called, So You Want to Go Back to Egypt. And he was talking about how the Jews complained. And he wrote it in kind of a comical way. And he said, one of the lines was, in the morning it's manna hotcakes. We snack on manna all day. And we sure had a winner last night for dinner. My wife made manna souffle.

Now, that first day it was wonderful, but can you imagine three or four weeks out and the only thing you've had to eat is manna? Imagine a year out, manna, manna, manna, manna. That fellow went on and at the end he was, the music was fading out, you know, he started Again, listing, you know, manna things, and the one that caught me, I thought was kind of funny, he said, the manna bread, you know, so they had, now it's kind of funny to think of it that way, but imagine that, if all you had to eat was manna every day, every meal.

And they got to complaining. And this complaining angered the Lord. They were finding fault with His providence. And when you find fault with God's providence, you are finding fault with God. Now think on that a minute. This doesn't mean that you enjoy God's providence. I'm not talking about that. This doesn't mean that God's providence doesn't make you weep, doesn't make you cry out to the Lord that He'd change it. All of that is well and good. but to complain about God's providence, as though He has neither wisdom nor love to direct His providence in your behalf, and that He either doesn't have your best interest at heart or doesn't care. That is what the Bible calls putting the Lord to the test. to complain.

Now, when things are tough, you know, we go and we're more likely to pray at those times, at least that's the way it is with me. When things are good, it's kind of easy to forget about prayer. But when things get tough, man, we're on our knees before the Lord, whether physically or just in our hearts, but yet we cry out to Him and we tell them that things are tough and we list out the things maybe and what we'd like Him to change. All well and good. But this got to the point that some of them even said, why did we ever leave Egypt?

Now, how does this apply to us? What's this mean to us? After all, in the passage Brother James read, it refers to this event When they complained that the manna didn't satisfy them anymore, they wanted some meat to eat. And it says in 1 Corinthians 10, this is an example for us so that we won't do the same thing. So how would it apply to us? I mean, you and I aren't eating manna, are we? I mean, I don't go out in the morning and scrape up whatever's laying on the ground and eat it. So how can this apply to us?

Our Lord said, I believe this was in John 6, and they said, you know, Moses gave us bread from heaven. What do you got? Which is kind of an interesting thing for them to ask, seeing that the day before, he had fed 5,000 of them, plus their wives and children, with five loaves and two fishes. He'd fed the whole bunch. They go, what are you gonna give us? Moses gave our fathers bread from heaven. The Lord corrected him and said, Moses didn't give you that, God gave you that. And then he goes, I am the true bread from heaven. The manna was a picture of Christ. The people of God were starving, and God gave them what they needed.

And that manna, you know, people have tried to figure out what it was as though there were some natural occurrence that happened to cause drop. I think it was a miracle from the Lord and a miracle that happened every day except the Sabbath day. From then until the day they crossed over into the promised land. Manna fell day after day after day. And evidently it only fell there where the Jews were. He wasn't supplying anybody else. So I don't know what it was. But I know it came from God, it was miraculous, and it had everything in it that a human being needed to stay healthy. Now, that's quite some food. If your doctor will tell you anything, if you say, I need to have a healthy diet, they'll tell you, well, eat a variety of foods. Because you get some of what you need from this, and some of what you need from that, and you want to call it a well-balanced diet. And you wouldn't have to talk about balance if there was only one thing you needed. So whatever that manna was, a person could live on it. Could live on it for his entire life. Didn't have to have anything else.

Now does that remind you of anything? Something that came from God, something that was miraculous, and something that contained within it everything you need. Peter says, we have through the knowledge of Christ, everything we need for life and godliness. The Lord said, I am that bread from heaven. He came from God. He is God. We just sang about that. But he came from God. Even in his humanity, he came from God. And in him is absolutely everything a human being needs for spiritual life and health. Doesn't need anything else.

However, through the years since our Lord came and the apostles went out and preached in various churches, people have complained, all we ever hear is Christ. There's Christ on Sunday. We come here Wednesday, it's Christ. Come next Sunday, it's Christ. You know, we left another church to come here. Boy, back in that church, you know, the pastor spent three months preaching on creationism. And then we did a series on revelation and, you know, he set forth that, you know, a plan for the ages. Boy, that really got our interest. We came over here and all we ever hear is Christ. It's getting kind of boring. I've already heard about redemption by the blood. I've already heard about forgiveness through the blood. I've already heard about Jesus Christ as God and man put together. I don't need to hear that again. You don't need to teach that again. I'm weary of that. Give me some of that interesting stuff. Give me the new thing.

Now notice who started this trouble. Verse four, the rabble with them. This discontent and complaining did not start among the Jews. Remember how I said when they left Egypt, others insinuated themselves among them and left with them. Now when the gospel is preached, and preached truthfully, simply, honestly, with a desire to glorify God. I'm just using all these modifiers. I'm not attributing this to a faulty presentation of the gospel. When the gospel is preached, God's sheep hear it, and it calls them to the Savior.

But you know who else hears it? The rabble. Those who hear the gospel preached, but they only hear parts of it, really. They hear about the forgiveness of sins. Well, that's a major part of it, isn't it? Who wouldn't want their sins forgiven if they think they have any sins? They hear that in the gospel that a person has salvation, has a home in heaven, without them doing anything to earn it or qualify for it. They come to Christ, it's all handed to them for free. That sounds good, doesn't it? And people will come like that.

And there's one thing they never really fell in love with. Christ himself. They fell in love with heaven or their perception of it. They fell in love with getting away with sinning. Now, I'm not going to even attribute to them that they saw in the gospel a way they could even increase their sinfulness and yet be pardoned in the end, and they could live lives of fleshly indulgence and still get into heaven. Many of them genuinely want to live decent lives, but they're sure glad there's somebody to take the blame for their mistakes.

This is the rabble. This is those who insinuate themselves among true believers. And the interesting thing is, when they do that, you can't tell that they're not believers. You see, that can only be determined, that can only be discovered if you can see their hearts, because that's where real faith goes on. Anybody can profess. Anybody can be baptized. Anybody can take the Lord's table. Anybody can come to church every Sunday. Anybody can experience emotional, uplifting things in the hymn sung, or the contemporary music sung. That can happen with anybody.

But here's what only the child of God can do. Truly love Christ. Bow to Him as Lord. Not under constraint. They bow to him as Lord because they're happy that he is Lord. They don't want anybody else to be Lord. And they are satisfied with him.

The rabble, they get excited when they hear the gospel. They may appear to be the most zealous among the people of God for a while, but eventually, they weary of that bread from heaven. And someone says, I don't know about this preaching we're listening to. Oh, it's the truth. Everything he says is true. But there's a lot more in the Bible. I remember when I was at 13th Street. A few of the guys were going there and these were men that were accounted preachers and would go out and preach in, you know, if a preacher was on vacation or if a church didn't have a preacher, they'd go from time to time and preach for them.

But these men decided that, you know, Brother Mahan is preaching Christ all the time, and they said, you're not preaching the law enough. Now, I'm thankful. Probably among the people that come here regularly, there's not even one. that would want that. We don't want to return to the law, do we? But don't think that there could never come among us those who heard some glorious aspects of the gospel, but they weren't really Jews. They weren't really God's Israel. They came in as part of the rabble. And eventually, they wearied of Christ. Christ all the time. And what generally happens in these churches when this kind of thing happens, of course, the rabble's not going to come up and, generally speaking, not gonna confront the preacher himself. They begin going door to door. And that's what happened back in Ashland. These men, they began trying to disaffect other members. Tell them, you know, we need some preaching on the Sabbath day. We need some preaching on this. Finally, it got real serious.

These who were of the rabble, so to speak, it says that when the rabble began to crave something besides the manna, That attitude infected some of the Israelites, too. You say, I'd never do that. Don't say you'd never do something. You talk about putting the Lord to the test. You say, Peter, I'll never deny you, Lord. Well, if none of the other apostles denied him that night, Peter had to, because he couldn't be allowed to fulfill that boast, because he'd have been boasting about that for the rest of his life.

You make a boast, and don't think that the children of God can't do this. Peter did it. Others have done it. I'll stand firm. Whatever God sends my way, I'll never whine and complain. Don't make a boast. You exalt yourself, the Lord's gonna have to put you down. He's gonna have to humble you. And it's not because he's mean, it's because he knows pride is a killer. And if you exalt yourself in pride, the Lord's gonna take you down a notch or two or 10 or whatever it takes.

What did the apostles say? Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. Don't lift yourself up. These people complained, this rabble complained, and folks that don't really believe the gospel but have insinuated themselves among the people of God, and the people of God can't tell that they're not part of that they aren't true people of God, but they start to complain, and they start bringing up suspicions, and the people of God get involved in this.

Well, what did God do about it? They went so far as to go to Moses himself and complain there. Moses went to the Lord with it, and he said, well, you tell the people to consecrate themselves. That is, to set themselves apart, get ready. They craved meat, I'm going to send it to them. And here's what he said. Look in verse 18, tell the people. This is Numbers 11, verse 18. Tell the people, consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow, when you will eat meat. He said, you wanted it, you'll eat meat. The Lord heard you when you wailed. If only we had meat to eat, we were better off in Egypt. Now the Lord will give you meat and you will eat it. You will not eat it for just one day or two days or five or 10 or 20 days, but for a whole month until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it. because you have rejected the Lord.

Now, you notice this? He didn't say you rejected the manna. Now, that's what they were complaining about. They said, you rejected the Lord. You rejected me. I provided the manna. And when you rejected the manna, it wasn't just manna. You weren't just sending your meal back to the chef to do something different. You rejected me. You have rejected the Lord who is among you. And you have wailed before him saying, why did we ever leave Egypt? And this wasn't the rabble the Lord was talking to. He was talking to the Israelites.

Now, I thank God, and I truly do. I'm so thankful. for the spirit and attitude of this congregation. I do believe I come up here every week and preach Christ. And I cannot recall anyone ever telling me we needed something more. And I'm rather convinced, as much as you can be convinced about this, if I began bringing something more You might tolerate it once, saying, ah, just a bad day. Everybody has a bad day. You might tolerate it twice. But about the third time, I get up here and just preach curiosities, give good, uplifting, you know, pragmatic advice sermons. If I were to ever leave off Christ, you would say, well, I can't stick around for this. And I'm glad that's what your attitude would be. I hope in love that if I ever did that, after about the second time, you'd come say, Joe, I don't know what's going on, but I'm not hearing any Christ, and that's what I came here for. You know, why have you changed? I truly love what I perceive to be your attitude toward Christ and the preaching of Christ.

But as much as I love that and am grateful for it, I know this. If the Lord were to withdraw His hand just a little bit, we would be acting exactly like them. Before long, we would weary of it. So far, If any rabble was among the congregation, when they got dissatisfied with the very simple menu we have here, instead of stirring up trouble, they just left on their own and they went to somewhere where they could find the diet they wanted. And you know, that's pretty much what I would tell someone. If they ever said, you know, well, you preach about Christ and that's good. I love to hear about Christ and everything, but you know, That's not the only thing in the Bible. And, of course, I would say, well, yes, it is. The Lord himself said so. These are the scriptures that testify of me. But if they insisted there be something more, I would just tell them, look, the United States is full of churches. Find one that gives the kind of message you want to hear.

The Lord said, you're going to eat this, not just for a day, not just for 10 days, not just for 20. You are going to eat this quail for 30 or for a whole month until it's coming out your nose. Well, you know what? I bet you the first day they ate quail, they said, oh man, I haven't had meat in so long. This is so good. Second day, man, I'm glad we got some quail. Third day, yes, quail's all right. Fourth day, why couldn't the Lord have sent maybe some beef? And for pity's sake, there's no bread. I mean, quail's good, but a quail sandwich would be even better. There's not even any mayonnaise, just quail all the time, every day, three times a day. Quail, quail, quail, quail. And the Lord sent a wasting disease. Whether it was something he put in the quail that made them sick, I don't know. But here's what happened. Now again, some of this is me speculating. It says that he sent this wasting disease and evidently it killed some people. Now, I tend to think it didn't kill any Jews. They may have got sick, and sick of quail. I think the one that died was a rabble. The ones who, in their hearts, had no love for God, no real respect for Him, they had been attracted by the stuff they thought they would get. And when they didn't get what they wanted from the Lord, well, they weren't going to change. The Jews, being the people that God had chosen as a national people, He would work in them a repentance and a sorrow over their complaint.

But it says in verse 34, therefore the place was named Kibreth Hadavah, which means the grave of craving, because there they buried the people who had craved other food. And they left there. Now, Imagine this scenario. Some believers in this church. Goes fine, you know. Well, we've been here 37 years, and it's been my intention, you know, always Christ, always Christ. Talking about him. He's the bread from heaven. Nourishes our souls. In him got everything we need. Preach it, preach it, preach it.

Well, some rabble gets attracted. They get among there and they start stirring up a little trouble. Well, yeah, he preaches Christ as well as anybody does, but now there's more. There's more.

Now, if that happens, it's kind of like a fork in the road for the church. It may be that the Real believers will just stand up and say, no, we don't need anything more. We don't want anything more. You've come to my house and you have complained in my hearing about the preaching that nourishes my soul and has nourished my soul for 30 years. And you're telling me I need something more. Well, if you want something more, go somewhere else where they've got something more.

That could happen. And if the congregation as a whole did that, well, these people would just leave. But here's what sometimes happens. People don't want to stand up for something. You know, we've kind of been trained, you know, we don't judge. It's true, we don't judge the hearts of people. That's not our business. Doesn't mean we can't judge what they're doing and say that's wrong. But we don't want to have anybody leave the church. I mean, we're small enough as we are, right? We don't want to lose members.

And if that is allowed to stay, then it begins to infect the people and more and more of the rabble. because if it affects the people enough and God, well, and the minister does not have whatever it takes to stand and, you know, tall on his two feet and insist Christ is all he's gonna preach, well, the other stuff starts coming in. Stuff from Egypt. Stuff from spiritual Egypt begins to be stirred in among the pure, in the pure food of Christ.

And when that happens, What you have is a church that becomes more and more rabble and less and less people of God. Till the day comes when those who are satisfied with Christ just say, I can't take this anymore. I can't sit and listen to this nonsense. And they get up and they leave.

Really, when you look at the history of this church, that's why it exists. And then what you have left is a church full of people who are spiritually dead. You have a church which might as well have been named Kibroth Hatava Baptist Church, the grave of craving Baptist Church. And everybody in there's dead. Oh, they're happy. Spiritually dead, of course. They're happy. They're singing their songs. They're getting their emotional experiences. But because they were not satisfied with Christ alone, they've come to a point where they don't have Christ at all.

They buried the people, called the place Grave of Craving. And then they left. And when they left, there was no more quail. Just every morning, the Lord sent manna.

Now, as I say, I give the Lord thanks that for all these years, all you have wanted is Christ, so far as I know. I have never had anybody come to me and complain that the preaching is wandering away from the preaching of Christ and bringing in a bunch of dross and useless stuff. But that doesn't mean that it could never happen. And we need to be on our guard. We need to be ready that if someone complains that this manna, this bread from heaven, is not enough, to say, well, that's enough for me. It's sustained me. And if I have anything to do with it, nothing more than Christ is coming in this congregation.

Generally speaking, that'll make the rabble leave. When they find out they're not gonna get what they want, it's not just because the pastor isn't gonna give them anything else, the rest of the congregation doesn't want anything else. Then they'll just go elsewhere. But God preserve us.

Isn't it blessed, now think on it, isn't it blessed to have the heavenly bread all the time? I love to serve it all the time. And you seem to love to hear it. May God preserve us from ever changing on that. Lest the time comes when they have to change the name of Grace Community Church to Kibreth Hata'ava, the grave of craving. They craved meat.