The taste of our words
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Scripture reading
And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.
Main idea: The taste of your words is the taste of your heart, and a foretaste of your future.
Introduction
If you took all of your words in the past week, put it in a blender, and made a smoothie, what would it taste like? Sweet? Sour? Spicy? Would you be willing to take a sip, down the whole thing, or perhaps pour it down the sink? What ingredients would you add? We’re going to reflect on the taste of our words this morning. Not because I enjoy it, but because of what Jesus said.
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.
What’s He saying? He’s saying that your words come from your heart, and if your words-of-the-week smoothie tastes like a trip to the hospital, then your heart is probably occupied with something other than Jesus. In other words, the taste of your words is the taste of your heart.
And if your heart isn’t filled with the love of God in Jesus Christ, then it’s likely that neither is your future. In the end time on judgement day, the question is not whether you have lived righteously or not, but whether you are in Christ or not. And if your heart isn’t occupied with Jesus while on this earth, then neither will He occupy your future in eternity.
The taste of your words is the taste of your heart, and a foretaste of your future.
And this morning as we consider the state of our hearts, we’re going to reflect upon the Israelites in the wilderness as a spiritual mirror for us today. We’re going to consider three things: the consequence of their grumbling, the cause, and the solution. And what we’re going to see is that the taste of their words was a taste of their hearts, and a foretaste of their future.
The consequence of grumbling
The consequence of grumbling
There were 603,550 Israelite men, aged twenty and above, at the foot of Mt. Sinai. They had crossed the Red Sea, and entered into the wilderness. And now they’re camped at Rithmah, which is near the southern border of Canaan. They’ve sent twelve men ahead of them to spy out the land. They come back and report there are giants, their cities are well fortified, and they have giant fruits. Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, remain optimistic. The other ten are not. And so they wander through the wilderness.
When they enter into the promised land 38 years later, all but two of the initial group are dead. It was the same two spies who gave a good report, Joshua and Caleb. What was the difference? The rest didn’t die from lack of food, water, or shelter. They died for their words.
And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness!
So on the one hand, we have the bitter grumblings of the Israelites, and that led to a bitter future. On the other hand, we see Caleb speaking words of faith over the people.
But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”
And Caleb enters into the promised land along with Joshua. Their words were different. Their hearts were different. Their futures were different.
And the same goes for us today. We are the Israelites in the wilderness, set free from our spiritual bondage, crossed the Red Sea of baptism, and we’re now making our way into the promised land. And unless our words are different, unless our hearts are different, we cannot enter in.
The Israelites had made so much progress in the wilderness. They journeyed from Egypt all the way south to Mt. Sinai, and then from Mt. Sinai all the way north to Rithmah. They could even send spies into Canaan. It’s like catching a glimpse of heaven. But all that collapsed the moment they grumbled.
Grumbling causes us to spill all the grace that we’ve received
Grumbling causes us to spill all the grace that we’ve received
See, grumbling has the power to spill all the grace that we’ve received. It’s as if our hearts start to have holes poked in them, and all the grace spills out. The Israelites witnessed God’s judgement upon Pharaoh and the Egyptian army that chased them through the Red Sea. And three days later they grumbled because of the taste of the water at Marah.
When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”
They had totally forgotten the amazing grace of being saved from a life of slavery in Egypt. Days later, they worry about food, and they grumble again. So then God feeds them with manna from heaven. And then they grumble again because of water and all the grace was spilled.
But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”
There was no gratitude or thanksgiving leftover in their hearts for all the works God had done for them.
In C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, a senior demon gives advice to a lesser demon on how to make Christians stumble. And this is what he says.
“Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoiseur of churches. The search for a “suitable” church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil.”
We all know that it’s an attitude problem. There’s so much pride and entitlement involved in a criticizing attitude. And yet we also know that we’re very capable of becoming like this.
‘The worship’s too loud.’ ‘The sermon’s too long.’ ‘Why is no one cleaning with me.’ Why is no one cleaning with me.’ ‘Why is no one cleaning with me.’
It doesn’t matter how much grace we receive each week if all of it is spilled the moment we grumble.
Grumbling drains the momentum of the church
Grumbling drains the momentum of the church
And the thing about grumbling is that we don’t keep it to ourselves. We always find someone else who’s willing to listen, our grumbler-in-crime. And then we become like the ten spies who gave a bad report, causing others to be darkened and to lose grace. Even Moses, a great man of God and the leader of the Israelites, stumbled and fell because of the grumbling of his congregation, and in the end even he couldn’t enter into the promised land.
They angered him at the waters of Meribah,
and it went ill with Moses on their account,
for they made his spirit bitter,
and he spoke rashly with his lips.
This is what the devil wants for every church. He wants to drain the ministry of its momentum. He wants to crush the morale of your senior pastor. He wants to run Zion Church into the ground. And he’s going to use this tried and tested strategy of making us grumble. Why? Because grumbling turns us against God, turns God against us, and turns us against each other.
Grumbling turns our hearts against each other
Grumbling turns our hearts against each other
Do you know that feeling when someone’s grumbling about you, and then you overhear what they’re saying? That happened to me a couple of times in school. Wow, what a feeling. When the person we’re grumbling against hears what we’ve said. And as we saw in today’s passage, God hears our grumblings.
“How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me.
The English translations makes it sound less frightening, but in the Hebrew it literally says, ‘What you have said in my ears I will do to you.’ So when we grumble, it’s as if we’re speaking directly into God’s ears. And how does that make God feel? Look at what the Bible says.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
He loathed it. He hated it. Why? Because when we grumble we’re saying, ‘Things shouldn’t be this way.’ ‘He shouldn’t be like this.’ ‘She shouldn’t be like that.’ And then we go and tell more people about it and darken them too.
To God, this is not knowing His ways. Why? Because we’re judging the situation according to our ways, not God’s ways. We’re not seeing things the way God sees them. That’s why it feels so good when we grumble and others hear us and agree. We’re being self-righteous.
But God calls that wickedness, and it provokes Him to wrath. Look at what God says. He says they are a people who go astray in their heart. Why’s that? It’s because they have not known my ways. And so in His wrath He says ‘They shall not enter my rest.’
This is consequence of grumbling. So if your words taste of bitter grumblings, then so does your heart and so will your future.
Now, let’s look at the cause of grumbling.
The cause of grumbling
The cause of grumbling
What do we call it when someone knows God’s ways? We call it faith or trust. You trust that when you come to Zion Church at 10:45am on a Sunday morning, the doors are opened and the praise team starts singing. Why? Because you know the ways of Zion Church. A person who doesn’t know the ways of Zion Church might start grumbling as to why the doors aren’t open at 6pm on Sunday. Well, it’s because everyone’s gone home.
The cause of grumbling is not knowing God’s ways. God calls this faithlessness.
And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.
Grumbling is what we might call an iceberg sin. Murder and adultery are as obvious as sin gets, and beside them, our grumbling words seem small and insignificant. Like an iceberg, the only part that everyone sees is the smallest tip. But beneath the little words of grumbling is the deep sin of faithlessness. As we read earlier in Matt. 15:18
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.
Why is this the case? It’s because what we say comes from how we feel, and how we feel comes from what we believe. So if we believe that God is bigger than our problems, God is bigger than our situation, then nothing can break our peace. This is the kind of peace that the Apostle Paul talks about in Phil. 4:7.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
If someone loses their peace, that’s what you call a spiritual dilemma. And if you put most spiritual dilemmas into a pot and turn up the heat, they usually boil down to two questions: Is God in control or not? Does God love me or not?
The Israelites grumbled because they couldn’t say yes to both. God couldn’t deliver them out of this situation, and God didn’t love them, since He brought them out to die in the wilderness. So the problem wasn’t that they didn’t believe in God, but that they believed in wrong words about God. God isn’t in control. God doesn’t love me.
Doesn’t that sound familiar? Doesn’t that sound like what the serpent said to Eve? ‘God’s lying to you. He doesn’t want the best for you. He doesn’t love you. He’s afraid you’re going to eat the fruit and gain powers equal to Him.’ That’s what the enemy wants us to think. And if the word of the serpent gets into our hearts like that, we’re going to end up grumbling against God, and God is going to call us a faithless people. So it isn’t a stretch to say that when we grumble, our spiritual fire alarms are blaring. And what’s the fire? It’s the lies of the devil that have made their way into our heart. And when we grumble, we’re vocalizing the lies of the devil within our heart. Consider that the 144k who stand on Mt. Zion in the end time have no lies in their mouth.
and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.
So the cause of our grumbling is faithlessness in God and believing the devil’s lies. In other words, false ideas about God are the recipe for a bitter heart and bitter words.
The solution to grumbling
The solution to grumbling
So what’s the solution? How can we put the fire out? We can fight the lies of the devil with the truth of God. Joshua and Caleb did that when they spoke truth over the people. Look at what they say.
If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.”
Now that’s a big ‘if.’ And you think there’s any doubt in Caleb’s mind whether God delights in them, whether God loves them? In this case, it is better to translate the word ‘if’ as ‘since.’ ‘Since the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us.’ I believe and pray that since the Lord delights in Zion church, He will bring us into the promised land. Amen?
How was Caleb able to speak such words of truth? God gives us a hint in v24.
But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it.
What does it mean for Caleb to have a different spirit? The word for spirit is ruah, and I have no doubt that this different spirit Caleb possessed was the same Spirit of God in Gen. 1. How can we know this? What we see in the Bible is that the Spirit of God gives power to God’s Word. Let me rephrase that. The Spirit of God is the power of God’s Word. The Holy Spirit incarnates and manifests the Word. He’s the breath of God’s Word. He is the power. And in the power of the Holy Spirit we are born again.
Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
What does that mean? That means that even though the Israelites had left Egypt, Egypt had not left them. They had heard the Word of God, but couldn’t believe it in the face of reality. They were the generation born in Egypt. Only the generation born in the wilderness, the church, entered into the promised land.
Now if the grumbling of the Israelites tasted bitter, what did Caleb’s words taste like? Caleb had received the Word of God at Mt. Sinai like everyone else. The difference was that the Holy Spirit activated the Word of God in his heart. The Holy Spirit incarnated the truth of God into Caleb’s heart and lips. And He is the same Spirit that incarnated the Word of God Jesus Christ into the world, and inspired the human authors of the Bible. Caleb regurgitated the Word of God to the people in distress. So the real question is, what does the Word of God taste like?
How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
See, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that God fed the Israelites with manna that tasted like honey. And neither is it a coincidence that the promised land is described most commonly as a land flowing with milk and honey.
Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.
But I have said to you, ‘You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples.
Caleb spoke honey words. By the Spirit of God, he ate honey tasting manna, and he spoke honey words, and the taste of his words was a foretaste of his future in the land flowing with milk and honey.
If we are the Israelites in the wilderness, then what is the manna that sustains us on our spiritual journey? Jesus taught us to pray ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ and He also said that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So the manna in the wilderness foreshadows the Word of God that comes down from heaven to us. So how can we also speak words that taste like honey, instead of bitter words of grumbling? We must eat the Word of God.
And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter. And I was told, “You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.”
Why does the scroll turn bitter in the stomach? It doesn’t mean that we eat the Word of God and then become bitter people. John is then told to prophesy. It means that we must regurgitate it. We must share the honey. When times get tough, speak the Word of God. When people need comforting, speak the Word of God. And I believe and pray that when we share the honey Word of God that we’ve received, we will enter into the land flowing with milk and honey. The solution is to share the Word of God in times of dissatisfaction and grumbling.
I’d now like to conclude.
Conclusion: Let us speak words of honey
Conclusion: Let us speak words of honey
Fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit came down upon his followers, and they began to speak in tongues. And as they did, they proclaimed and declared the mighty works of God in the history of redemption in languages they had never spoken before.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”
The Holy Spirit who was at work in Caleb’s heart, who came in power upon the first disciples, that Holy Spirit is at work in our hearts today.
How do we know? It’s because we confess with our lips that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.
So what’s our part? If the Spirit’s at work in us, does that mean we get to sit back and relax? We need to constantly surrender our words to God. We need to constantly surrender our hearts to God. What does that look like?
That looks like stopping yourself before you grumble, and taking your words to Jesus in prayer.
That looks like finding peace from the Word of God, not in the words and affirmation of fellow grumblers.
That looks like actively searching for things to be grateful for, instead of looking for things to grumble about. As the saying goes, gratitude changes an atitude.
We can only do these things by the power of the Holy Spirit. And when we do, our words begin to change flavor. Gone is the bitterness against a God who isn’t in control. Gone is the bitterness against a God who doesn’t love me. Gone is the bitterness against our circumstances. Only those who are born of the Spirit can change like this. The taste of our words is the taste of our hearts and a foretaste of our future.
Do all things without grumbling or disputing, 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.
I pray that Zion Church will be a church full of honey in our hearts. May we hold fast to the Word of life. May we speak honey words, and may we enter together into the promised land flowing with milk and honey.