As I was looking at the passage that I was studying this week, I came across or I remembered a book that I really liked. This is a children's book. I'm sure you've heard about it. This children's book is called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I'm going to read just a few pages of this book to you. “I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
At breakfast, Anthony found a Corvette Stingray car kit in his breakfast cereal box and Nick found a junior undercover agent code ring in his box of cereal, but in my breakfast cereal box all I found was breakfast cereal. I think I'll move to Australia. In the carpool Mrs. Gibson let Becky have a seat by the window. Audrey and Elliott got seats by the window too. I said I was going to be scrunched. I said I was being smushed. I said if I don't get a seat by the window I am going to be carsick. No one even answered. I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” Well, you know, I think we all are like Alexander and have days like that that are terrible, difficult and challenging.
That's why we need our verse for today coming from Philippians 2:14. One verse that says this: Do all things without grumbling or disputing. One verse. Now this verse is a part of a paragraph. And the paragraph is really powerful. We're going to look at the paragraph next week. But as I was doing my own research in my study here, as I’m looking at the Greek words and just trying to understand this particular passage of scripture, I was just so impressed with the things that we learn about complaining. So today we're going to do a theology of complaining. I'm going to take you through the Bible and show you what the Bible has to say about complaining. Because it's really interesting.
Let's start by looking at this verse. And look at the first Greek word there. The first word grumbling there is the word gongusmon. Even the Greek word gongusmon sounds like complaining. But it's gongusmon and it means to murmur or complain. That's what the word means. Now when someone complains, what it means is that they're focusing on the problem instead of focusing on the solution.
When I asked myself the question, why do people complain anyway? Just think about it. Why do people complain so much? I think some people complain because they think that's how you solve problems. You complain. I think some people learn that when they're children. Because children come into the kitchen, “I'm hungry.” And what happens? Mom says, “Oh you're hungry? Oh here. I'll help you stop complaining. Here's some food for you.” Now what I teach parents to do is if your child comes into the kitchen and is complaining by saying, “I'm hungry,” it would be better not to say, “Here, let me solve your problem.” It would be better to say to a child, “Oops. That's complaining. Go back out, come back in, and try again.” Now if you were coming back into the kitchen, and you were going to try again, instead of saying, “I'm hungry,” which focuses on the problem, what might you say to focus on the solution? What do you think? There we go. “Hi, Mom. Can I have something to eat?” Good job. So yes. Let's focus on this solution. “Could I please have a snack?” Wow, amazing. But I think that sometimes parents make the mistake of trying to squelch their children's whining by giving them what they want. I think we grow up with a generation of people who like to whine and complain because that's how they think they solve problems.
But I think another reason that people whine and complain is just because they're self-focused. They just think about themselves. It's as if they say or believe that if I'm uncomfortable I have the right to make everyone else miserable. So this whining and complaining just starts coming out of people. Complaining focuses on the problem, not on the solution.
Now Paul is saying that Christians don't complain. That's what he's saying. You can live a life that doesn't involve complaining because believers think differently than nonbelievers think. That's the difference. We think differently than people who are nonbelievers. In fact, I want to show you now let's expand out of this verse. Let's just go into the book we're in, the context of Philippians so far. What have we learned about God that would remind us not to be complaining?
Well the first thing we learned back is in verse chapter 1 verse 6 is that God is working positively in my life. He says in Philippians 1:6 – Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Now isn't that remarkable that God is at work in our lives? You see, the person who is a believer recognizes that the problems that happen, the negative things that take place are part of some bigger plan that God is instituting in my life.
If I find myself having to wait a lot (whether it's wait for a check to come in the mail, wait for a report from the doctor, wait because I'm in traffic), maybe God's teaching me a little bit more about patience. That's how I think as a Christian. Because I know God's at work. So He's using the things right around my life to help me. So I don't have to complain about waiting. I can say, “Okay, God, I see you're trying to teach me something. I want to grow more in my patience.” If you happen to work with or live with annoying people, maybe God is teaching you how to practice forgiveness. Like He taught Peter when Peter says, “Should I just forgive somebody seven times?” and Jesus says to Peter, “No, seventy times seven.” I mean, that's more than you can count. What Jesus is saying to Peter is develop a lifestyle of forgiveness. You know how you do that? You work in an annoying office. You work in customer service with annoying people. Because then you have to learn how to forgive them over and over and over again. And God starts to develop that forgiving heart inside.
If you live in a world where things are negative and then you realize, you know, God wants to do something in my heart. He wants me to rely not on the things that are going on in the world. He wants me to rely on something inside of myself in my relationship with Him. And then I don't have to be negative. Just like this verse says – I'm confident that God is working and bringing something to completion.
We as Christians think differently than people who are not Christians, because we believe three things about God. One, God is in control. That means nothing passes down to me without going through the hand of God. God is in control. Number two, we believe that God is good. And that God is working things out for good. Thirdly, we believe that God is loving. The fact that He is loving means that, wow, this is powerful. God wants to do something amazing in my life.
Now if we understand those three very important things, God is able to work and do some things in our lives. And so as a Christian, I think differently about the struggles, the challenges about life. I don't complain and I don't whine because I'm a Christian. Because I understand who God is. And there's some theology that we grasp and when we grab that, we understand we're different. That's what Paul is saying in these words – Do all things without grumbling or disputing.
Well that's the first thing. Let's go to the second thing. The seeming setbacks are opportunities for God to work. Just look at the passage in verse 12. It says – I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me (that is, I'm in jail and I can't share the gospel like I was before, building churches and so on), I want you to know that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. See, the Philippians are feeling like oh no, the gospel is stopped. And what Paul is saying it hasn't stopped. That even the bad things in our lives are often opportunities for God to do something great.
I was talking to a man on Friday night and he said to me, “My girlfriend broke up with me. I was really upset about it and bothered. But now I see that God had His hand in that and He's freeing me in some really powerful ways.” He's a Christian, you say. He recognizes that God is at work in his life. So he doesn't have to whine and complain about it all. He can allow God to work.
So even seemingly setbacks in our lives can be used by God in a powerful way. So we as Christians, we don't have to complain. Now what we can do is focus on the Lord and what He's doing.
Those are some examples just right out of Philippians. But if we're going to do a theology of complaining, we need to go outside of Philippians to some other passages of scripture. I think if we're going to look at scripture and understand more about this, I think one of the greatest examples we have of complainers are the Israelites. Remember the Israelites in the Bible. They complained all the time. God rescued them out of Egypt. You would think they'd be grateful for that. Because they're going to the promised land, but they have the space in between called the wilderness experience. Now, I would suggest that many of us might be in wilderness experiences in our lives. And that's maybe why we have a tendency to complain. But if we recognize how God has rescued us and where He's taking us, maybe we wouldn't complain so much.
But the Israelites complained a lot. And they complained about three things. The same three things that children complain about, the same three things that adults complain about. The Israelites complained about the food, they complained about the living conditions, and they complained about the leadership. Those are the three things that people complain about regularly.
Now I want to take you into this passage in Numbers 21 because it's a good example of a time when the Israelites complained. Now it's interesting to me that sometimes when the Israelites complained, God just gave them what they wanted. He didn't rebuke them; He just gave it to them. I think sometimes we do that with our kids. But when it becomes a pattern, that “oh I'm complaining all the time when I don't get what we want,” maybe we need to take a different approach. So God is going to take a completely different approach in Numbers 21 let me read this story to you.
It says – From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient. Just stop right there. Because notice that there's something going on in their hearts that needs to be addressed. The impatience in their hearts needs to be addressed. And so it says – And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” They’re complaining about the living conditions, complaining about their leadership, complaining about the food. Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
They were complaining and complaining, and so God sent these snakes around and they were biting people. It reminds me of a story. It reminds me of the story of the wise old sage in Africa in the village. A young man came to it because you go to the wise sage to get wisdom for your life. So the young man comes to him and says, “Oh wise sage, I have so many problems. Everybody in my house is complaining. I've got two kids and my wife and my father-in-law. We all live in this small house and people are complaining, I don't know what to do.” And the wise sage says, “Okay, I can help you.” And the young man's eyes brighten. The old sage says, “Here's what you do. Take the cow from the pasture and bring him into the house.” The young man says, “What?” That's what you need to do. So the young man went, and he took the cow from the pasture. And he brought the cow into the house. A few days later, he comes back to the wise sage and he says, “I've got a problem. This is not working. It didn't solve my problem. People are complaining more in my house. What do I do?” The wise sage says, “Take the cow out of the house and put him into the pasture.” And so the young man went and took the cow out of the house and put them into the pasture. A few days later, the wise sage ran into the young man and says, “How's it going?” The young man says, “Everything's great. Nobody's complaining anymore. They're grateful the cow is out of the house!”
You see, I think that's the same kind of thing that God is doing here. You think it's bad? Well, let me show you some snakes. So these snakes come in and start biting people. So they've got this problem now.
In my evaluation, I'm asking myself some questions about complaining. I'm saying, what's the opposite of complaining? I think some people say the opposite of complaining is gratefulness. Right? I mean, that's what I would have said before my study. I think probably on a behavior level that complaining and gratefulness are opposite. But if we get down into the heart of a person, I think there's another opposite to complaining. The opposite of complaining is trust. If I'm complaining, it means that I'm not really trusting that God is at work in my life. If I'm complaining, I’m trusting that maybe God doesn't have a bigger plan here. If I'm complaining, maybe it means that I don't even consider God in my life. If my trust factor is growing, then I'm not going to be complaining as much, which makes complaining a spiritual indicator. It seems to me from the scriptures that when the complaining level rises, it's an indicator that, wow, maybe I've got a problem in my heart. I need to do a check. A spiritual reality check that maybe my trust level isn't as high as it needs to be.
The other interesting thing about this complaining problem they have in the passage is that you can't delegate your misery management. Okay. We all have misery management that we must do, but you can't delegate it to someone else. Oh I wish I could delegate some things. Boy, I wish I could delegate healthy eating to someone else so I can be stronger. I wish I could delegate my exercise program to someone else so I can be more fit. I can't. And I can't delegate my misery management to someone else. It's something I must do myself. And so everyone… Notice in the last statement – If anyone was bitten by a serpent, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. You couldn't say, “Hey, wife, go out of the tent there. Look at the serpent for me.” No. Every person themselves managed their misery themselves. I think that's what we're talking about. Even with Paul. Paul is saying, look, we as Christians live differently. It is not befitting for a Christian to be whining and arguing, or complaining and arguing, as it says in the passage, because they don't fit us. We all must have a plan for misery management. As we do, we're going to come to that place of understanding that God is in control, that God is good, and that God is loving. When we've got that, then it changes the way we respond in life.
So now we've looked at the Israelites and we've expanded our biblical theology of complaining, not only to Philippians, but also to the story of the Old Testament. But then I come to these other verses that kind of surprised me. I didn't know what to do with them. These are the Psalms. You know, there are a lot of complaining going on in the Psalms. In the Psalms I'm thinking, wow, there's something going on there. There must be a good kind of complaining. So in this passage here I underlined there, you can see the verses. The problem is here that the people spoke against God and Moses. There's something different about complaining when you bring your problems to God. You're not complaining against God. Which means there's a different kind of complaining that's actually good. That we come we take our problems to the Lord, we say, “God, here's my problems. Lord, I need to complain to someone. I'm coming to complain to you.” I think that's acceptable. In fact, I would suggest that's what God wants us to do. I think He wants us to say, “Hey, Lord, here's all of my struggles I'm going through. Would you take these.” And God does this great exchange where He takes the negative weights that we have and He gives us peace instead. That we can come to the Lord and complain, and that's okay. There's a good kind of complaining that God offers us.
It’s Jesus who says – Come to me, all you who are weak and heavy burden, and I will give you rest. See, He takes those burdens from us. So it's okay for us to complain to Him. That's acceptable. Let me just show you one of the psalms. There are many of them. But the one in Psalm 142 says this: With my voice I cry out to the Lord; with my voice I plead for mercy to the Lord. Did you see in the last verse, it was against God. Here, it's I bring these things to the Lord. I pour out my complaint before him; I tell my trouble before him.
This is an excellent thing for us to do. If you're struggling and you're feeling negative, you're feeling upset, you feel like complaining everywhere you go, that means you need to visit. A visit to the doctor, a visit to the spiritual doctor, God Himself, who wants to say, “Okay, I want to listen to everything you have to say about that. Let me take those things from you.” Because when we do go to the Lord and we experience that grace that He wants to give us, then we can go away from that having left those things there and taking away from that the sovereignty of God, the goodness of God, and the love of God that so many other people need. It just fortifies your heart. I think this is a key to mental and spiritual and emotional wellbeing. Is to understand that we can come to the Lord and give it to Him. Because see, as Christians, we don't just bottle it all up. We have someplace to go to share these complaints. So we don't have to go to Facebook to do it. We can go straight to the Lord and allow Him to work in our lives. This is the power of what Paul is saying in this passage. He's saying it's not befitting for Christians to be complaining and arguing. That's what he's saying in this passage.
Well let's go back to that verse. Because there's a second word there in the passage. Do all things without grumbling or disputing. Now the Greek word disputing is this word dialogismos, which you can imagine is where we get our word ‘dialogue’ from. That is that talking back and forth. But this isn’t just the arguing that you do with your mom when she says, “No, you can't have a snack right now,” or “no, you can't play on your video games right now.” This isn't that kind of argument. This is the internal arguments that happen before then. You know, those internal arguments that I'm talking about. The ones that say, “I'm so worthless. Nobody loves me. I've messed up so much in my life. Ah, this is so terrible. I'm never going to get anywhere.” That inner dialogue that happens that we do is bad. And we don't do that. Or there’s the other side that says, “I'm so great. Everybody should admire me. And I can't believe why people mistreat me like this. This is so unfair. Nobody listens to me. And nobody understands me because I'm so great.” I mean, that's the other dialogue, the opposite kind of dialogue that's bad. Right?
Or there's a dialogue that has to do with anxiety. “Oh this is going to be bad. Oh wow. Look at that statistic. This is going to really be bad. And if that happens, then this is going to be terrible. And if that terrible things happen, this is going to be a disaster and this is the end of the world. Oh poor me.” So there's that dialogue that goes on inside of us that's more anxiety producing. It's that inner dialogue that Paul is speaking about.
Now, you say, how do you know that inner dialogue? Well, I know it's inner dialogue, because I go to that word dialogismos and I look where else is that word used in the Bible, so I can understand what it means. I come to this story in Luke 5:22. Let me tell you the story.
Here’s the story of these four men who have a friend that they really like who's paralyzed. So they put him on a mat and they take him to Jesus to be healed. But the problem is the house where Jesus is is so full of people they can't get in to bring him. So they have an idea. Their idea is they're going to go up on the roof and dig a hole in the flat roof and lower him down so that he'd be in front of Jesus. Whenever I think of that story, I think about homeowner’s insurance and who's going to pay to fix this thing. But anyway, they open it up and lower this guy down right in front of Jesus. Jesus’ first words when he's on the ground, His first words are – Your sins are forgiven. Well the religious leaders who are standing around, they're saying to themselves, “Who does this guy think he is that he can forgive sins?” And that's where the verse on the screen there fits in. He says to them – When Jesus perceived their dialogismos (their inner thoughts), he answered them, why do you dialogismos in your hearts? Why are you doing that? And so Jesus goes on to heal the man because He wants to show them that, yes, I will show you that I can forgive sins internally, by doing an extra work of healing the man and he's going to walk out of here. So that's the story as how it progresses.
But what we want to take out of the story is the meaning of the word dialogismos. It's the internal dialogue that we have that gets us into trouble. It's an internal dialogue that happens inside of us that starts moving in a negative direction. I would say it's the internal complaining we do to ourselves that gets us going in the wrong direction in our own hearts.
So Paul is saying this isn't right. Christians don't do this. They don't have to do this. We don't have to complain because we have Christ in our lives. Paul's trying to communicate this message to the Philippians.
Now remember, the whole context of Philippians is all about joy and having joy. So one of these keys to having joy in your life is to decrease the complaining and the inner dialogue that removes you from experiencing the joy that God wants you to have. You choose joy, you don't choose complaining is essentially what Paul is going to say.
We're going to look more about this in the next paragraph next week, because there's so much in this piece. But I just wanted to look at this one verse because there's just so much here. I mean, don't you need this? I mean, I need this as I'm going away from this. In fact, here's the lessons I think we take away from this passage today about complaining.
Number one: Complaining is a spiritual indicator of a heart problem. It's like the gas gauge that says uh oh, I'm getting on empty here. I need a fill up of the Holy Spirit in my life. When I have the Holy Spirit, I'm being filled with the Holy Spirit, then I don't need to complain in my life. That's what Paul is saying to them I sense here in this passage.
Secondly, complaining to God but not at God is good. There are some people who when bad things happen.. See, here's what happens. If you're in a home and you solve children's problems for them (every time they complain, you solve their problems), then they start to get a picture about God. If I go to God He’s going to solve my problems. He's going to take away the bad things that Christians…and we even kind of say this sometimes to our kids, don't we? “Oh, being a Christian is so great. He takes away your problems.” So here's what happens. The child grows up and now as an adult experiences some trauma or some devastating event in their lives and they say, “What? This doesn't fit my theology. I'm leaving the faith. God isn't real to me.” Because they don't understand that God is working in all kinds of bad things as well. That God doesn't say to Christians, “You're not going to experience bad things.” He says, “I'm going to be with you, wherever, wherever you go.” You know, He’s with us so that He works in the midst of us. So we can come to the Lord and we can pour out our hearts, because we are broken people. We're going to experience bad things and we can come to the Lord ourselves.
Thirdly, the opposite of complaining is trust. Oh, I think gratitude must fit in there somewhere. Paul is going to tell us that more in chapter 4. But here what he's saying, it seems to me, is this idea that there's a trust factor that we need more. Again, going along with the spiritual indicator. We need to trust the Lord and when we do, our complaining level would decrease strategically.
Number four: Complaining and negative thinking are not befitting to the Christian. I think this is helpful and important. You know, if you're not a Christian today, that you come here and you say, “Wow, this is really interesting,” you have to understand that the theology that we have applies to us personally. That in order for you to have this kind of working relationship with God that allows you to come to the Lord and pour out your pain and your heartbreak is because you have access. You have access by accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You have access because now you are adopted into His family and you can run right into His presence. He's never too busy for you because of that personal relationship. If you don't have that personal relationship… Maybe you're religious. Maybe you’ve gone to church a long time or you have a history of spirituality. But that doesn't mean you have a personal relationship with Christ. It's engaging Christ personally, by accepting Him as your Lord and Savior, that allows you the freedom to experience what God wants for you in your life. And when you do, then complaining and negative thinking are not befitting for us as Christians.
I think all of us are like Alexander with the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad days. What are you going to do when your life is like that? I think we're going to come to the Lord, we're going to say, “Lord, thank you for allowing me to become a Christian. I need to trust you in this.” This is difficult because sometimes we have no idea what God is doing. It is just so odd here of what's happening. And we just say, “I have to trust. I need to trust the Lord.” And so we do. We trust Him with all of our hearts. And that's our goal.
Let's pray together. Would you stand with me?
