NewCity Orlando Sermons

Numbers 12:1-16 | In the Wilderness

• NewCity Orlando

Share episode

Listen to this week’s sermon, In the Wilderness preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from Numbers 12:1-16.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Sarah Bruner:

Please pray this prayer of illumination, asking the Holy Spirit to illuminate our hearts with me. Heavenly Father, we wish to see Jesus by your Spirit's power, give us eyes to see his glory. Through Christ we pray. Amen. Today's scripture comes from Numbers 12. Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Kushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. And they said, Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also? And the Lord heard it. Now the man Moses was very meek more than all people who were on the face of the earth. And suddenly the Lord said to Moses and to Aaron and Miriam, Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting. And the three of them came out. And the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud, and stood at the entrance of the tent, and called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forward. And he said, Hear my words. If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream. Not so is my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and he departed. When the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, like snow. And Aaron turned toward Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said to Moses, O my Lord, do not punish us, because we have done foolishly and have sinned. Let her not be as one who is dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out of his mother's womb. And Moses cried out to the Lord, Oh God, please heal her, please. But the Lord said to Moses, If her father had spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? Let her be shut outside the camp camp seven days, and after that she may be brought in again. So Miriam was shut outside the camp seven days, and the people did not set out on the march till Miriam was brought in again. And after the after that the people set out from Hezarath and camped in the wilderness of Peran. This is God's word. You may be seated.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

We've been walking through the book of Numbers this fall, and in the book of Numbers, Israel is on the move from Mount Sinai to Canaan, the promised land. And the New Testament is the authoritative commentary on the Old Testament. And in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul tells us that what was written in the book of Numbers was written for our instruction. Interestingly. So how does this instruct us? Well, last week we saw in Numbers 11 that Moses, as he's leading the people of God in the wilderness, faced two challenges. This week in Numbers 12, we see that Moses faces one more challenge to his leadership, but this time it's personal. And so, how does this text instruct us? I've got one point and one point only, and that is that the Lord defends his friends. The Lord defends his friends. Let's look at Numbers 12 together. We're going to walk through this passage verse by verse. So if you have a Bible, a device to worship God, go ahead and get it out in front of you. And look with me at Numbers chapter 12, verse 1. Numbers 12, 1 says this Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses. Pause for a moment. In case you don't know, Miriam is Moses' sister. Like in the movie, she's the one that follows the basket down the Nile. That's who we're talking about here. And Aaron is Moses' brother. They've been ride together, died together since the burning bush. This is personal and it is painful when his own brother and sister are speaking against him. But what's their beef? What's the problem? Look at verse 1 again. It says this. What's going on here? Well, twice the text repeats that Moses married a Cushite woman. Cushites are descendants of Noah's grandson Cush, the son of Ham. They settled in East Africa. The King James Version reads this it says, Ethiopian woman instead of Cushite. So let me make this plain. Moses married an Ethiopian woman with black skin. That's what the text is saying here. Now, I don't believe Miriam and Aaron were being racist here. That would be to read modern racial categories back into the text. Those categories emerged in the 15th century. It's not here in Moses' story. But what is happening here? Well, I do believe what is actually occurring is a form of xenophobia, a fear of strangers, of outsiders. This is why. When God led his people out of Egypt in Exodus 12, 38, it says that a mixed multitude came up with Israel. What does that mean? Well, we see right there in the Exodus, the great act of redemption in the Hebrew Bible, that God's heart is for the nations. You see, because along with Israelites, some Egyptians, some Midianites, and apparently some Kushites, Ethiopians, came up out of Exodus with Israel. God had a multi-ethnic family back in the day. This is really important because in this moment we saw in Numbers 11, verse 4, that there was a quote, rabble. That's what the text says. It was a group of people who caused the Lord to judge Israel. And so here's what I think is happening. Many commentators connect that group of people causing the Lord to judge Israel by stirring up a strong craving, as it said, with this mixed multitude that came out of Egypt. So, to make that plain, in times of fear, human beings often live from their limbic systems. What do I mean? I mean that, I mean, we moderns don't do this, right? We wouldn't do that. But but they did it back then, so we're we're exempt. It's all right. Um, because we've progressed, right? In times of fear, ethnocentrism and xenophobia increase. It happened in ancient Israel, it happened in the fall of Rome, it happened in Germany in the 1930s, and it's happening today. It's happening today. People make snap judgments, us versus them. And one of the easiest ways to judge people is by their outward appearance. Paul in 2 Corinthians 5 says it's he calls it judging people according to the flesh. That's what is happening in this text. Do they look like us, talk like us, walk like us? If not, fear stirs up and we begin to make divisive categories. You see, that's what's happening here. Miriam regards Moses and his wife according to the flesh, and that's always divisive. Now, quick sidebar on interracial marriage because it's here in the text. You see, in his book, From Every People and Nation, a Biblical Theology of Race, a scholar named J. Daniel Hayes writes this quote, clearly God affirms Moses' marriage to this black woman. Interracial intermarriage is strongly affirmed by Scripture. Marrying unbelievers, on the other hand, is strongly prohibited. Let me summarize that. Biblically, we have more in common with Christians of a different ethnicity than with non-Christians of the same ethnicity. Moses, the man of God, the figure who towers over everyone until Jesus Christ was married to a black woman, and the Lord defends it in this text. It baffles me how racist readings of Scripture live on for so long in church history. But it also sobers me for what we're missing today and justifying it to ourselves. Lord, have mercy. But it's not only ethnocentrism that's happening here, it's not only ethnocentricity, but also envy in the hearts of Miriam and Aaron. Look at verse 2 with me. It says this. And they said, Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also? There's a pastor named Craig Groschel who says, Envy is when you resent God's goodness in other people's lives and ignore God's goodness in your own life. You see, Miriam and Aaron had their own amazing callings. Miriam was a prophetess, a poet, and a musician, a leader of the spirit-filled women in Exodus 15. Aaron was the first high priest and therefore the supreme religious leader and the most holy man in Israel. But it wasn't enough because for envy it's never enough. You see, when we judge others according to the flesh, we begin to rank ourselves against others. Now I'm not sure that this really had much to do with Big Mo's wife. I think actually what was going on was they were playing a comparison game. When you're bested by someone, and so you compare their weaknesses with your own strengths. Like I've been playing ball before and gotten crossed by somebody and thought, at least I'm more godly than they are. I mean, I used to do that. I used to do that. I'm sanctified now. Doesn't happen anymore. Some of y'all are laughing because either you're in that category or you're lying. Okay. What happens here is that life, when we judge others according to the flesh, life becomes a zero-sum game. We get into competitive comparison with others. But listen to me, the Lord doesn't want you to demean your own uniqueness by envying others. That's what's happening with Miriam and Aaron. That's why the best antidote to envy is a deep and settled conviction that the Lord is both great and near. He is great and near. That's why verse 2 ends with these words here. It says this, and the Lord heard it. They weren't talking to the Lord, the Lord was eavesdropping. Have you ever been talking about someone and then realized that they were in the room the whole time? Like you don't even have to be talking trash, but something happens, something changes in the room, right? The conviction that God is great means that he is in control over all things. And the conviction that God is near means that he is involved in the details. That's the antidote to envy. That belief is the root remedy to envy. And it's called meekness in Scripture. Look at verse 3 with me. Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all the people who were on the face of the earth until he wrote that sentence. Just kidding. I think actually what's happening here is Moses' disciple, Joshua, is writing some editorial comments into Moses' text, just like the death of Moses is recorded at the end of Deuteronomy. That's kind of hard to do posthumously. And so the question is why put that comment here in the passage? It actually interrupts the flow of the narrative to put verse 3 in there. Well, because I think meekness is the opposite of envy. We just preached through Psalm 37 this summer. Go back and look. It's very clear in the text meekness is the opposite of envy. And Moses is a model of meekness here. The rapper KB said it like this: if you think being meek is weak, try being meek for a week. In our cultural moment, we equate meekness with weakness, and it causes a problem because Jesus intends for meekness to be a characteristic that defines his people. And so, what does it mean to be meek? Meekness is love-constrained power. It's not weakness, it's power that's actually constrained, hemmed in by a greater use of that power, which is to love. And that's what we see. Moses is being attacked and he doesn't defend himself. Look closely at the text. He never defends himself. Why? How? Well, because meekness trusts that the Lord defends his friends. That's what meekness believes. And Moses told Israel in Exodus 14, 14, a famous text, he says this the Lord will fight for you, you have only to be silent. And now, when it's not public and political, it's actually deeply painful and personal. He practices what he preaches. You see, Moses doesn't say anything in our text until verse 13. He knows the Lord will fight for him. He has only to be silent. And so sometimes the Lord seems slow to defend his friends, but not here. The Lord is sudden. Look at verse 4. And suddenly the Lord said to Moses and to Aaron and to Miriam, Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting. And the three of them came out, and the Lord came down. You see, the Lord descends to defend his friends. Look at verse 5. And the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the tent of meeting and called Aaron and Miriam. And they both came forward and he said, Hear my words. There's a poetic irony here because Miriam and Aaron claim that the Lord speaks to them. And so the Lord is basically saying, Oh, you want me to speak to you, all right? Listen up, verse 6. And he said, Hear my words. If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him. This is the Christian doctrine of revelation. Revelation. How do we know that the Lord defends his friends? Because the Bible tells me so. Because it's in the story of Scripture. Revelation means that the Lord reserves the right to self-define and self-disclose. We don't get to tell God or anybody else what God is like. He reserves that right for himself. You see, because if the Lord doesn't make himself known, John Calvin says that the greatest geniuses are blinder than moles when it comes to the knowledge of God. If the Lord doesn't make himself known, we're like travelers walking through a field at night, and then there's a flash of lightning that illuminates real quick and we can see, but then it's dark before we know it. Too dark even to know how to take the next step. That's what we're like if the Lord does not make himself known. And so praise God that he has revealed himself. Look at verse 6. If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream, not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly and not in riddles. Notice for a moment, the Lord is not denying that he's spoken to other prophets besides Moses. Maybe even Miriam and Aaron. That's not the issue. The issue here is the uniqueness of God's revelation to Moses. For us today, people might claim to hear God or be led by God. Science might be a source of understanding the world better. We have a lot we can learn from the wisdom of history and other cultures, but disciples of Jesus uphold the unique way in which, quote, I the Lord make myself known to the authors of Scripture, beginning with Moses. It's a uniqueness for us. We believe that the Bible is the authoritative God, the only rule to direct us how we might glorify God and enjoy him forever. Why do we have such a high view of Scripture? Well, because in everything we want to be like our rabbi Jesus. You see, every 10 things that Jesus says, he quotes the Bible. Pause. Think about that for a moment. Every ten things that Jesus says, he quotes the Bible. Eleven times in the Gospels, he's recorded as saying, Have you not read? Thirty times he defended his own teaching by saying, It is written, and then goes on to quote Scripture. You see, when I have conversations with people, not yet disciples, around hot topics like politics or sexuality, things like that, I will hear this often. People will say, Yeah, well, I just don't think Jesus is like that. To which my genuine question is, how do you know? I mean it, I ask it with curiosity and gentleness, but it's a real question. How do you know? Like, what is your authoritative guide to what Jesus is like, except for the inspired portraits of Scripture? And so Jesus himself in John 5, 46, says this if you believed Moses, you'd believe me, for he wrote of me. Listen for a moment. Jesus is telling us if you want to know Jesus, you should read Moses. Read Genesis through Deuteronomy, read the book of Numbers if you want to get to know Jesus. That's from Jesus' own lips in the Gospel of John. And so Jesus, just as people contest the uniqueness of God's revelation in Scripture today, so Miriam and Aaron contested the uniqueness of God's revelation to Moses then. Charles Spurgeon says, You don't defend the Bible, you let it out of its cage and let it roar. That's what's happening in the text. Moses, there is no self-defense because the Lord defends his friends. Look at verse 7. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord. You see, in our secular culture, it's popular to say that every religion is basically the same. The only problem with that is every religion denies that, bold face. In his book Evangelism through the early church, Michael Green, he does this sweeping tour of all the various religions and ideologies on offer, from Buddhism to communism, from Islam to animism, and he comes to this conclusion about the distinctiveness of Christianity. Quote, the Christian message of intimacy with God is strikingly different from the central affirmation of all other faiths. Whatever they're about, they are not about this. This language of mouth to mouth starts in creation's design in Genesis 2.7 when it says, the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. We still talk about mouth to mouth like this, right? We talk about it in CPR. The rescuer blows air into the person's lungs and they provide oxygen so that they can breathe again, which, and I I've realized some of you know this too, that apparently the American Heart Association only recommends chest compressions now because bystanders are hesitant to put their lips on strangers. I get it, I really do. But I wonder who made that call? Who is the person that was just like, listen, if I have to put my lips on one more Rando, I'm done. I'm gonna let them die. I don't even care. But praise be to God that He isn't ashamed to get up and close it personal with us. The Lord speaks mouth to mouth because we need the resuscitation of revelation. He gets close, he gets near, he gets intimate with his people. Right about now, some men in the room are getting uncomfortable with all this talk about intimacy. I get it, it's all right. We come by it honestly from our father Adam. Genesis 3.10 says, I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. You see, insecurity is the enemy of intimacy. But God in his kindness wants to lead you out of that insecurity and into intimacy with himself. This is what he does in the story of Moses. In Exodus 3.6, the story of the unburning bush, Moses, it says this quote, Moses hid his face when he was afraid to look at God. Fast forward 30 chapters. Exodus 33, 11, it says this, the Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. Fast forward to our text today. Numbers 12, 8 says this, the Lord, I'm saying that the Lord defends his friend as the one who speaks, quote, mouth to mouth. From face to face, to mouth to mouth. This is getting more intimate. He's drawing him deeper into his own heart. That's what the Lord's doing. Because intimacy doesn't just happen, it deepens over time. Verse 7 says, Moses is faithful in all my house. And one commentator says that Moses was a familiar presence in the house of God. Are you a familiar presence before God? Because you can be. Like Jesus bled and died and rose again to make that possible for you. We get to have far more than what Moses had. Because if you look at verse 8, it says this, why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant, Moses? But in John 15, 15, Jesus says, No longer do I call you servants. For the servant doesn't know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends. For all that I have heard from my father, I've made known to you. The true and living God, who spoke cosmos, the cosmos into creation, wants to speak to you face to face, mouth to mouth, as a man speaks with his friend. That's what the Bible is saying to us here. Because the Lord not only descends to defend his friends, but the Lord descends to befriend his enemies too. You see, in in the Gospels in Matthew 11 19, some people spoke against Jesus like they speak against Moses. And they said, Look at this guy, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. And what they meant as a mock, Jesus took as a title. He embraced the title of I am Jesus the friend of sinners. He reveled in it, he boasted in that. But Jesus isn't just the friend of sinners because he doesn't leave his friends as sinners. You see, Jesus wants to set us free, and sin is slavery. And so he begins by setting us free from the just judgment of God for our sin. Look at verse 9. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and he departed. When the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous like snow. And Aaron turned toward Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said to Moses, O my Lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned. Let her not be as one dead whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out of his mother's womb. You see, God is a just judge. And so we've got to ask the question here, how does this punishment fit the crime? Well, Miriam judged according to the flesh, and now her flesh is judged. Miriam called out Moses for marrying a Gentile, and now she's cast out with the Gentiles. Miriam claimed inside her access, and now she's outside the camp. You see, we get to this point where Miriam is facing the justice of her own judgment, and we finally, for the first time, hear Moses speak. And what does he say? He prays for his accusers. Look at verse 13. And Moses cried to the Lord, Oh God, please heal her. Please. You see, Moses, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses as enemies, but Moses spoke for them as friends. Praying for our enemies is a mark of meekness throughout the story of Scripture. Job, if you know the story, Job prays for his frenemies because they accused him of all kinds of evil. The Apostle Paul told Timothy that everybody abandoned him, and then he says, May it not be charged against them. Where did Paul learn this? Well, in Acts 7, Stephen was martyred, and Paul was there high-fiving the murderers. And then he hears Stephen, as he's dying, cry out, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Paul watched Stephen die. And Augustine of Hippo says that we owe the conversion of Paul to the prayer of Stephen. Where did Stephen learn to forgive like this? Well, Jesus, when he was crucified, said, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. Don't you see? When it looks bleak for the meek, our technique is to turn the cheek. That's the story of Scripture. That's what it looks like. You see, Christians don't have a fire that burns with a righteous fury that our enemies cannot comprehend. That's not true of Christians because the meek are those who seek the Lord who defends his friends. Remember, meek is not weak. We are called to bless those who curse us. That's really hard. We are called to pray for those who abuse us in Luke 6. That takes strength. We forgive as God in Christ forgave us. That's love. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love. But how? Well, Peter, the apostle, writing to a persecuted people in 1 Peter chapter 2, 21, says this, for to this you have been called, new city. New city, for to this you have been called. Because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. What was his example, Peter? He goes on, he says, He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued in trusting himself to him who judges justly. Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been f have been healed. You see, the gospel makes us meek because Jesus died for the weak. We are the weak. When we recognize that, that Jesus died for his enemies, and that was us until he made us his friend. Romans 5 says it like this while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. You see, we forgive because we know the great cost of our own forgiveness. But the gospel makes us meek because we know that justice will be served either on the cross of Christ or in hell for eternity. You see, we know that God is just. After Moses' intercession for Miriam, I believe she was healed, but the Lord still put her outside the camp for seven days. There were still consequences to what she did. Listen, we live for justice, but Jesus died for reconciliation. The rabbi Jonathan Sachs says it like this forgiveness breaks the cycle of stimulus and response, harm and retaliation, wrong and revenge, which has led whole cultures to their destruction and still threatens the future of the world. It frees individuals from the burden of their past and humanity from the irreversibility of history. And he ends the quote by saying this: forgiveness tells us that enemies can become friends. Can enemies really become friends? Only the gospel can make it so. You see, Romans 8 31 says, if God is for us, who can be against us? For if he did not, who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, if he freely did that, will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, and more than that, was raised and indeed is interceding for us at the right hand of God. You see, if it's true that Jesus descends to befriend, that Jesus not only defends his friends, but that Jesus also ascends to send his friends, if that's true, then like Moses for Miriam, Jesus is right now contending for his friends in heaven right now. Why? So that disciples of Jesus can live as if the Lord defends his friends and we can go befriend our enemies. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you that you came down, not in judgment, but in mercy. We look to you now, Lord Jesus. We see you enthroned on the cross, crying out in forgiveness for your enemies, and we see you enthroned in the throne of heaven. And we praise you that the dust of earth is now enthroned in heaven. We praise you that you are the one who wears the crown, that all authority in heaven and earth belongs to you because you alone are worthy of it. And so we listen to you now, Lord Jesus. We trust your words. And we read Moses because in Moses we learn about you. We pray these things in your name. Amen.