In His Word, God has given us many promises. Tucked away in this morning’s gospel reading is perhaps the most awesome promise of all. The crowd is gathered and Jesus is speaking. Jesus says, “I AM the Bread of Life.” The Jews understood that by using the term, “Ego, Ami” (I AM, I AM), that Jesus was saying that He was God. Then Jesus goes on to give the awesome, awesome, promise, “He who believes (in Me) has eternal life.”
Imagine being there in that crowd and having God the Son tell you that if you will just believe that He is who He says He is, then you will live forevermore in the Kingdom of Heaven! How would you react? How did the people there at the time react? Did they jump for joy and exclaim, “Lord, I believe!” Did they even exclaim, “Lord, help me in my unbelief”? No, they did neither. What they did do was grumble.
Jesus, just a short time before, had fed over 5,000 people with only two fish and five loaves of bread. The crowd continued to follow Him, not to worship Him, but to demand to see more miracles in order to “prove” to them that He was who He said He was. But instead of performing more miracles, Jesus tells them that He is the Bread of Life and they should seek the food that leads to everlasting life instead of the worldly bread that doesn’t last. He proclaims that He is the manna that comes from Heaven. This scripture says that, “The Jews grumbled against Him because He said, ‘I AM the Bread of Life that came down from Heaven.’” Simply put, they just did not believe Him.
The people of Jesus’ time seemed to grumble a lot about Him, especially when He revealed that He is God the Son. Rather than respond with faith, many, many asked, “How can this be?” Even after Jesus performs miracles for them and shows through His words and actions of not only Who He is, but also how much He loves them, they still grumble.
Jesus, the King of Kings, came to Earth as an humble baby and His lowly birth and social status gave people the opportunity to complain and grumble about His claim of heavenly descent. They said, “We know you. Aren’t you the son of that carpenter, Joseph? And was not Mary your mother?” Imagine what would have happened to those people had they talked the same way about the Roman Emperor! Execution would have been their lot!
When grumbling gets out of hand, like any other sin, the problem just gets worse and worse. It is this unchecked sin that leads the people to eventually want to get rid of this Jesus, this troublemaker, and they begin to plot ways to kill Him. Their grumbling intensifies. They say, “Who does this guy think He is, God?”
Emboldened in their sin, they have Him brought before the Sanhedrin. On the morning that Pilate has Jesus brought before the crowd, the grumblers not only instigate grumbling against Jesus, they soon have the crowd yelling, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Even after they have seemingly won and Jesus is hanging on the bloodied cross, their blatant and intense grumbling continues in the form of mockery as they say things like “This man saved others, but He can’t save Himself” and “If He truly is the Son of God, let God come down and save Him, then we might believe.” Their sin of grumbling had progressed to the point of outright rejection of their God and the disowning of their long-awaited Messiah. Unfortunately, this grumbling against Jesus did not stop during that time.
There are many, many, many people today who still grumble against our Lord and His Church. There are people outside the Church, who have never been brought to faith, who stand, looking in, and grumble about it. They say we are “closed-minded.” They say we are “judgmental”. They say “Who do those Christians think they are anyway? They need to take their outdated ideas, their views and their religion out of our schools, out of our media, out of our courthouses, and out of my face!”
And they don’t just grumble about the followers of Jesus either. They grumble about Christ Himself. Some say that Jesus was a “good guy”, but that is all He was. Some say Jesus was a “good moral teacher”, like Gandhi, or Buddha. Some even say that Jesus was a “total fake”, made up by unhappy, renegade Jews who wanted to create a new religion. Some say that Jesus “never existed”. This unchecked grumbling of our day leads people to deny that there is a God at all.
But don’t for a minute think that Christians are somehow immune to this sin of grumbling, because we are not. Many times we grumble against Jesus the most. The very people that Jesus has shown His love to and showered His blessing upon are those who turn on Him and grumble the loudest against Him at the first signs of trouble. It happened with God’s children in the desert of Sinai, and it happens today.
Ask yourself, “Have I ever grumbled against Jesus?” Ask yourself, “Have I ever been dissatisfied with God?” Ask yourself, “Have I ever thought something like, ‘Why didn’t you answer my prayer the way I wanted, God?’” Or, “Where were you, God, during that troubled time in my life?” Even if you didn’t say it out loud, God heard the grumbling in your heart.
We don’t just grumble directly at God either. We Christians grumble at each other. When there are divisions in the Church, we gossip and complain. When someone wrongs us, instead of going to them in gentleness and love, we go to someone else and grumble about our brother or sister in Christ. Oh yes, we Christians grumble more than we like to admit. What does God think about all of this grumbling? Listen to what the Apostle Paul writes about it in his Epistle, 1 Corinthians 10:9-12: “We should not test the Lord, as some of them did – and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did – and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you do not fall.”
There is danger in grumbling. God does not take it lightly. Grumbling deserves punishment. An eternity spent apart from God is the punishment. What is it that keeps Christians from having to endure that punishment? It is our belief and faith in Jesus Christ! Jesus never grumbled! Yet, He took our sin and the punishment we deserved for our sin, unto Himself. He paid the price for our sin, even the sin of grumbling.
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”
“Forgive them.”
For all of the times that we grumble, Jesus did not. For all of the times that we complain about God, and that we criticize one another, Jesus kept silent. He who never sinned, became sin for us and says simply, “Father, forgive them.” This is what Jesus does. Jesus forgives.
This is the Jesus who is the object of our faith. God has called us into His family, through His Son, Jesus the Christ. Because of God’s grace, you and I have been set free from the penalty of this sin of grumbling. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to grumble less, give thanks more, and use our words to build up each other, rather than tear down each other.
Jesus goes on to give us His awesome promise that, “He who believes (in Me) has eternal life.” He is talking here about you and me. He has called us to faith in Him. He has given us all that is necessary for eternal life. We can be 100% sure about what the future holds for us, because we have placed 100% of our trust and faith in Jesus Christ, God the Son, and the promise that He gives us in these passages, everlasting life in God’s Kingdom of Heaven.
He promises it and He will see it through. He will see you through this life and into the next, to live and reign with Him forever. Should we grumble about this? Indeed not! We should give all of our praise and thanks to our most gracious God. A God who is gracious enough to save and forgive even ungrateful grumblers like you and me.
Thanks be to God! Believe it today! Believe it forever! Amen!