Complaining Leads to Frustration -- a study of Numbers 11 (plus an introduction to the Book of Numbers)
- mww
- Sep 10
- 16 min read
Updated: Sep 16
When we grumble, we miss God's grace.
Bible Study Ideas and Commentary for Numbers 11:4-17
Our first lesson from Numbers comes after God has established the ground rules for the journey to the Promised Land. And the people start complaining immediately. So much so that Moses is driven to despair. But God's judgment is still filled with grace -- the provision of the Spirit for help for Moses, and a reminder of the need to trust God.
I can’t carry all these people by myself. They are too much for me. (11:14)
[Editor's Addition: Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk's assassination took place after I had posted these notes. Our Bible study leaders probably had little trouble seeing how that tragedy illustrates one of the terrible conflicts we read about in this week's passage. I will pull this back in as an illustration in next week's post.]
Getting Started: Things to Think About
Taking Things for Granted
It's going to be tempting to point all of our illustrations toward children this week, because the Israelites in this week's passage behave like children. But that would be missing the point -- because it is the Hebrew adults who are behaving like children.
In other words, if you start this idea with a question like "What do your kids tend to take for granted?" make sure you quickly shift it to "What do you tend to take for granted?" And why?
Years ago, when we lived in Kansas City, my wife bought me a set of Peanuts figurines. I distinctly remember being underwhelmed, and I don't remember how well I hid that. And I also don't remember why I was underwhelmed. They are one of my very favorite possessions, and I have them in eyesight all the time.
I think it came down to at the time, I wanted something else. I don't even remember what. But my wife knew that this particular gift would be something I would treasure, and she was right.
I think that will be a common theme for why we take things for granted: we have our eyes on something else.
[Note: taking home and family for granted is a driving motivation in many an adventure story, like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. The main character wanted to see the world/galaxy and have an adventure, only to realize too late what they could never get back. Incidentally, that's the appeal of Peanuts -- adults realizing that they had taken their childhood for granted, and there was no way to get it back.]
When Adults Behave like Children
Let me preface this by saying that everybody in this week's passage was behaving like a child, including Moses. So let's lot our group try to suggest that "I've never behaved like a child; I've always been mature and levelheaded".
What are ways that adults behave like children? Sadly, there are too many ways to count right now. After all, 25 is the new 13. The one that took social media yesterday was "Philly Karen" (if you don't know the story, don't worry about; you'll find another example) --
And then the follow up would be "What's a recent way that you behaved like a child?" For me, I try to catch myself before I pout or whine or get all passive-aggressive or selfish. And I find that I'm more likely to allow myself those childish behaviors when I'm at home around my family (where God specifically instructed me to behave like the head of the household).
Behaving like a child . . . isn't a good look for an adult. It's not flattering. If you want to pursue this topic, go into the bigger picture -- what happens to a society/family/church when the adults behave like children? That answer will help us understand what was going wrong among the Israelites.
The Importance of Help
This week's passage is the remarkable event of God scolding Moses by telling him to delegate responsibility. It's one of the foundational reasons why churches have staffs and committees and Sunday School teachers and whatnot. One person may bear ultimate responsibility, but the task is to be shared.
This topic might be a good way to engage your businesspeople in discussion. What's the importance/value of delegation? What does healthy delegation look like? What about unhealthy? What happens in a business/organization when delegation hasn't happened?
You can always do the "many hands make light work" exercise with a heavy object. Keep adding people to the team until the object becomes easy to lift.
In this week's passage, Moses was imploding because he was trying to do too much on his own, so God "forced" him to delegate. [Note: this is pretty much what Jethro had strongly encouraged Moses to do back in Exodus 18.]
How Do You Do with Warnings?
In the verses right before this week's passage, God sends a warning to some malcontents among the Israelites -- fire from heaven that burns up some outskirts of the camp. It's a gracious warning -- nobody was hurt -- and I feel like it should have gotten the people's attention.
But it didn't.
What are warnings we get today, and how do we tend to respond to them? You could take to anything from a flashing yellow light to a weather alert to a reprimand at work. Sometimes we heed them, and sometimes, we just don't. Why?
The answer to that question helps us understand what's going on in the Book of Numbers, and hopefully it gives us a cautionary tale to not act as if we know for sure that we wouldn't join that foolish rebellion in Numbers 11!
[Aside: Help from ChatGPT
In my training on Saturday, I highlighted the importance of what Darryl Wilson called "the First Encounter" -- the time you spend with God before you try to create and lead a Sunday School lesson. And there is no way to game that or expedite that or offload that. You need to spend the time in prayer and Bible study, and then you can start thinking about what a Sunday School lesson based on that passage might look like.
And that's where I said that an AI tool like ChatGPT might come into play. In my experience preparing for that training, ChatGPT was a great "brainstorming partner". AI had better not be your Bible teacher, but it can be your creative assistant. In other words, you can prompt "give me discussion questions for senior adults for a Bible study based on Numbers 11:4-17" or "give me ideas for active learning exercises for young parents for a Bible study based on Numbers 11:4-17". It will give you lots of ideas, and you can take them or leave them. I believe that is a way to maximize your preparation time.
About this: I encourage you to continue to click on links. Many of the sites being scraped by the AI depend on clicks for ad revenue. We want to keep those sites in business. And that's also why I will not be using AI to prepare these notes pages. We don't need AI scraping material created by AI. The internet is declining enough as it is.]
This Week's Big Idea: Introducing the Book of Numbers!
For those of you not at First Baptist Church, we did not have a traditional Sunday School lesson last week, so this Sunday is our first in the Book of Numbers. The Book of Numbers gets a bad rap, probably because it's called the Book of Numbers. Not very appealing. (Except for us Excel nerds. More numbers!) And that's because the book is dominated by two censuses. (Censi?)
The NIV Study Bible suggests an alternate title: "A Tale of Two Generations of Israelites, One Faithless and One Faithful." Does that sound more interesting?
Here are the two wonderful Bible Project videos:
They highlight the two ongoing themes of Israel's rebellion and God's faithfulness.
And here's a brief outline:
The Faithless Generation (chap 1-25)
Preparing to enter the Promised Land (chap 1-10)
Rebellion against God and Moses and Aaron (chap 11-19)
Pitiful wandering in the wilderness (chap 20-25)
The Faithful Generation (chap 26-36)
A new census, leader, and commitment (chap 26-31)
Preparing again to enter the Promised Land (chap 32-36)
It's not a complex book if you look at it that way.
The Bible Project has a slightly different outline than I do:
Parallel with Creation
The Bible is filled with beautiful, repeated themes. That's why a song like "Christ the True and Better" hits so hard. In the Book of Numbers, the Israelites repeat the story of Adam in Eve:
In Genesis, God created people (starting with Adam and Eve), gave them a land (Eden), commanded them to bless the earth, only for them to rebel, to which God responded with judgment and mercy.
Guess what? In Numbers, God created a new people (the Israelites), gave them a land (Canaan), commanded them to bless the earth, only for them to rebel, to which God responded with judgment and mercy.
The Travel in Numbers
There is no firm agreement on the exact route of the exodus. This map shows a common idea:
Don't lose sleep over the fact that some people argue about the specific location of some of these events. Those arguments don't affect the meaning of the book.
Here's a chart from the NIV Study Bible. [Note: get a study Bible! A good study Bible has done the work to answer all of your basic questions clearly and concisely.]
From Egypt to Sinai (Ex 15-18) | 2 months, 14 days (Ex 19:1) |
At Sinai in the book of Exodus | 10 months (Ex 40:2, Num 1:1) |
At Sinai in the book of Numbers | 19 days (Num 1:1, Num 10:11) |
Travel to Kadesh (Num 10-12) | Several months (Num 13:20) |
Wandering to Moab (Num 15-22) | 38 years (Dt 2:14) |
Total | 40 years (Num 32:13) |
In other words, what we skip in Numbers (see next section) took 19 days.
What We Skipped
Our first lesson starts in chapter 11. The first 10 chapters focus on preparing the people for what is to come:
organization of the camp while traveling
roles and responsibilities for the journey
laws to keep the people civil
final actions related to the tabernacle
God's cloud leads the people forward!
When you take a long family vacation, or when your work sends a team out for a long project, or when your church is sending a large group on a long-distance mission trip, don't you spend a lot of time planning and preparing and setting rules? And if everybody follows those rules and knows their place, doesn't the trip go more smoothly? That's all we're talking about in chapters 1-10. Except with 2 million people. Across a desert. To a place none of them had been before.
One favorite section: the Aaronic Blessing in chapter 6
24 “May the Lord bless you and protect you; 25 may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; 26 may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.”’
Even with all of the grumbling that has already taken place, and knowing what was yet to come, God still told Aaron to offer His blessing to the people. Every chance you get, help your group see the juxtaposition of God's faithfulness and the people's rebellion.
Part 1: Dissatisfied Followers (Numbers 11:4-9)
4 The riffraff among them had a strong craving for other food. The Israelites wept again and said, “Who will feed us meat? 5 We remember the free fish we ate in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. 6 But now our appetite is gone; there’s nothing to look at but this manna!”
7 The manna resembled coriander seed, and its appearance was like that of bdellium. 8 The people walked around and gathered it. They ground it on a pair of grinding stones or crushed it in a mortar, then boiled it in a cooking pot and shaped it into cakes. It tasted like a pastry cooked with the finest oil. 9 When the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna would fall with it.
I mentioned the preceding verses in a discussion idea. The people strted complaining, and God "sent a warning shot". Fire from heaven burned on the outskirts. But did that stop the complainers?
We talked at length about manna when we covered Exodus:
Please refer to that lesson if you want more detail (like "what's bdellium?").
For our purposes, we should note that the people have been eating manna for a little more than a year (see the above chart). They are absolutely taking it for granted. They want some meats. Some fishes. Some crunchable birdses. (Soory -- some LOTR deep cuts in there.)
What's the longest you have gone eaing exclusively one thing? In America, it's just not something we do. And manna was rather bland to begin with (if it looked like resin and tasted like olive oil, that's pretty boring). Have you ever complained about "what's for dinner"?
Well, you can sympathize (a little) with the rabblerousers (or riffraff; the Hebrew word just refers to the multitude, which could mean that most of the people were complaining). "Can't we just have something different to eat?"
But it's definitely not that simple or innocent. With this complaint, the riffraff are
challenging God's goodness and
reinventing their own past.
"Maybe we didn't need to be rescued from Egypt." "Maybe we didn't have it so bad in Egypt." "Maybe God doesn't really have our best interests in mind."
Those are serious accusations, and they demand a serious response.
When we studied Psalm 42 a few weeks ago, I mentioned the power of nostalgia. Interestingly, the Times just released a deep-dive on a social media trend that is picking up steam:
Here's the tagline:
"Dubious videos about the glory of bygone eras are creating nostalgia for those too young to fact check them."
Essentially, creators are using AI to create "commercials" for the 80s and 90s -- the time before smartphones and social media took over everyone's lives. It's fascinating. And it's appealing.
And it also idealizes those decades. Having grown up in the 80s and 90s (I was born in 1975), I can say with zero hesitation that I would not trade my childhood for one closer to today. But the era of my childhood wasn't perfect. The Times article says, "The whole point of nostalgia is to remember only the good stuff." And that's what these riffraff are doing.
A: "Remember when we lived in Egypt? We had access to fish and vegetables!" B: "Wait, weren't we slaves?" A: "I don't remember the details."
So, you could take your discussion down the "taking things for granted" road or the "eroding power of nostalgia" road. The point is to establish that the people were complaining -- complaining specifically about God's miraculous and gracious provision for them! This is not looking good for humanity writ large.
Part 2: Frustrated Leader (Numbers 11:10-15)
10 Moses heard the people, family after family, weeping at the entrance of their tents. The Lord was very angry; Moses was also provoked. 11 So Moses asked the Lord, “Why have you brought such trouble on your servant? Why are you angry with me, and why do you burden me with all these people? 12 Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth so you should tell me, ‘Carry them at your breast, as a nursing mother carries a baby,’ to the land that you swore to give their ancestors? 13 Where can I get meat to give all these people? For they are weeping to me, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ 14 I can’t carry all these people by myself. They are too much for me. 15 If you are going to treat me like this, please kill me right now if I have found favor with you, and don’t let me see my misery anymore.”
Moses doesn't really acquit himself any better than the people. He is understandably frustrated. When is the most frustrated you have been with a group of people?
I've gotten frustrated with people. Somebody doesn't do what they said they would do. Somebody doesn't listen. Somebody complains. Somebody doesn't cooperate with somebody else and feelings get hurt. And that was just this morning! (Just kidding.) (Or am I?) Cue frustrated Charlie Brown:
There's a healthy way to handle frustration. Moses didn't do it. In fact, we can see that the people's complaining has rubbed off on Moses! It was contagious!
Rather than take his frustration to God in prayer, trusting that God would help him handle this difficult situation, Moses jumped straight to "just kill me now and put me out of my misery". How selfish, and how disobedient. To be fair, Moses did voice his complaint to the Lord directly, whereas the people voiced their complaint loudly to one another (thus contaminating the multitude). But I don't want to give Moses a lot of credit here.
Let's real-world example this: modern churches trying a big, new ministry or event. Do you realize that if you voice your pessimism or complaining loudly enough for long enough, you can spread discouragement through the rest of your church? And it might even affect your pastors or ministry leaders?
And don't try to say, "Well, pastors should be able to handle that." Look at Moses! He had a face-to-face relationship with God and watched miracles every day, and he got sucked in by the people's discouragement. Ministry leaders are human; they aren't immune from complaining or discouragement. That's why "encouragement" is a spiritual gift! God put all of these gifts together in a church so that we can work together to squash the seeds of discontent and complaining. This is why Paul wrote (after praising Jesus):
Phil 2:14 Do everything without grumbling and arguing, 15 so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world, 16 by holding firm to the word of life.
There's enough complaining and bitterness in the world. Let's not bring it in among God's people. How can we shine the light of Jesus if we are overcome with the same attitude as the world?
Anyway, all of that to say is that pastors pick up on your complaining, and it can cause great discouragement. So, stop complaining! Instead, join in finding a solution for whatever thing that has made you malcontented, putting the needs of the entire congregation ahead of your own. (Read all of Philippians 2.) (Btw, if that paragraph doesn't apply to "you", thank you for your Jesus- and church-first attitude. 😇)
Back to Moses.
I believe part of the problem is that Moses thought God was upset with him for the people's complaining. Moses felt he was to blame for the big problem. Of course, I feel that way because it's a trait that I have. When something goes awry in an event or area I have responsibility over, whether or not there was anything I could do about it, I expect to absorb the blame.
Moses was doing that, and it wasn't healthy. His questions were rhetorical, but his accusation wasn't -- God created the people, and put the entire burden of caring for them on Moses' shoulders.
What's wrong with that accusation?
Moses hadn't learned the lesson that it's not all about him (we will read more about this in a future lesson). The Lifeway material tries to paint this in a positive light -- that Moses took his frustrations to God. And that's true! That's what we should do! But remember that Moses had already been here in Exodus 18 -- that his father-in-law Jethro had told him he needed to delegate responsibility and not take everything on himself. In other words, Moses brought a lot of this on himself, and he let himself get past the breaking point.
I take two different lessons from this:
Let's learn the lesson from Moses to take the steps we need to prevent ourselves from sliding into despair, discouragement, or being overwhelmed.
BUT! When we do cross our breaking point, when we do have our meltdown, God's grace is still there for us, and not with an "I told you so".
Part 3: Gracious Provision (Numbers 11:16-17)
16 The Lord answered Moses, “Bring me seventy men from Israel known to you as elders and officers of the people. Take them to the tent of meeting and have them stand there with you. 17 Then I will come down and speak with you there. I will take some of the Spirit who is on you and put the Spirit on them. They will help you bear the burden of the people, so that you do not have to bear it by yourself.
First, note that God didn't say, "Fine, you can quit." He also didn't say, "Get over it and deal with it." Instead, God gave him a solution that would be for everybody's good -- Moses' and the people's.
This is admittedly a strange passage. On this side of Pentecost, Christians simply "receive the Holy Spirit". We don't receive it partially. We can't pass some along to somebody else. So, this just sounds weird.
Realize that God was using language that Moses would understand. Before Pentecost, God sent the Spirit on certain people at certain times -- like Moses, and like the craftsmen of the tabernacle, and like the prophets. We know today that God wasn't "dividing the Spirit among them" because we know that the Spirit is part of the Triune Godhead. But God was making a powerful point to Moses: "I had given you this gift of the Spirit, but now you have to share it with others." It's negative in the sense that Moses was forfeiting something because of his lack of faith. But it's positive in the sense that all of these leaders were sharing together in this same gift of God.
Let me again use Paul to make this point:
Eph 4:1 Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope at your calling— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
Today, we see this "sharing of the Spirit" as a beautiful symbol of the unity of the church in Christ. But in Moses' day, it was primarily a lesson about faith, trust, and partnership.
This is another place to talk about the importance of sharing responsibility in Christian leadership.
So, let's talk about Sunday School.
In many Sunday School classes, the teacher pretty much gets tasked with everything. They prepare, they teach, they are responsible for organizing events, they are responsible for class projects and mission work, they maintain the prayer list, and whatever else. And when the group isn't talkative, the teacher pretty much has to drive the entire Sunday School hour.
Is that healthy?
Instead, divide those things out among your group members. Let one person be primarily responsible for maintaining the prayer list. Someone else for organizing fellowship activities. Someone else for planning a mission project. Or whatever it is that's most important to your unique group. The point is to spread the load in the way that makes the most sense for your group.
And the best part? You don't have to wait for God to "take some of the Spirit that is in you to give to those others" -- if they are a Christian, they already have the Spirit!
And of course this doesn't just apply to your Sunday School class. What ministry in your church is feeling overwhelmed? Underappreciated? What can you do to lift them up or help them out? How about your pastor(s)? Do they need encouragement or assistance?
This week's passage is incredibly practical, even if it is all stuff that we should know.
Closing Thoughts: The Rest of Chapter 11
I LOVE this chapter. You should read it several times. Not only does it help us understand the people (and their problems), but also God's divinely gracious way of dealing with them. What a great line, "You'll eat quail until it comes out of your nostrils." See? I have biblical precedent for my sarcasm and hyperbole!
But in the midst of this story of God providing an "overabundance" of quail, we also have the story of God providing an abundance of the Spirit. God's grace to His people is in everything -- even His judgment.
[Editor's Addition: Why Pastors Quit
This article came out the Tuesday after this Bible study --
This article will apply in an upcoming study, I'm sure.
For observation, note that only 1% of pastors quit in a given year. That's not nearly as bad as some news outlets would have us believe.
But here are two quotes germane to this week's passage:
But pastors who agree they have experienced significant conflict within the past year are less likely [to still be serving] (1.6 times).
The more a pastor attributes their church’s progress to themselves, the less likely they are to still be in the ministry (1.8 times).
Moses vibes.
But Moses came through these conflicts. How?