I guess I'll not go too much further with that since we spent some time on it this morning, but there's a lot there. That's the kind of sermon this morning that I really enjoy sharing because there's people that know the Lord should feel so much confidence in His ability. It ought to give us great encouragement. But I still enjoy teaching, too, like, you know, this study. I enjoy this. Numbers, I know the first nine or ten chapters was sort of rough, but, you know, we began to get into some more interesting things last week. And I flipped ahead a little bit. There's going to be another tough chapter here or there that we really have to go through. They're talking about the sacrifices and sin offerings and things. And, you know, we don't deal with that these days because we don't have an altar and we don't have, you know, an incense altar and a tabernacle and all those things. So we don't understand that. And in a sense, we don't have to. But in another sense, there's some benefit in realizing that that stuff pointed forth to Christ coming. So we'll deal with those things when they come. But here, well, in our previous passage, we dealt with the rebellion of the rabble, the lower scum of their society, so to speak. Really, they were probably, like you and me, they were probably Gentiles. But in Jewish society, they were scum. They weren't descendants of Abraham, certainly, and they had issues, apparently, from what we read last week, and they're leading Israel to rebel. We also saw 70 elders appointed last week, which possibly became known as the Sanhedrin. I talked to Jeff Short this week, who's smarter than I'll ever be, and he said he really believes that that group did become the Sanhedrin. And he traced through several scriptures as to where they seem to show up in other places. Some things I had never thought about, but I guess I had not thought on it as deeply, perhaps, as he had. He had no doubts, and I think that's very interesting. Today's chapter is brief, but beneficial. Now, you say, brief, and you gave us three pages of notes. Well, I didn't say my sermon was brief. I said the chapter is brief. That's something altogether different. Let's read the first nine verses here, Numbers chapter 12. Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite 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 the people who were on the face of the earth. 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 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 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. 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." Man, that's... there's a lot in what happens here. Now, here Miriam and Aaron obviously oppose Moses here. In the previous chapter, we saw a rebellion of the lower class of people. Not in this chapter. In this chapter, we see a rebellion among the leadership of the people. So, apparently everybody in Israel had a problem with Moses at one time or another. Clearly, they oppose him for one reason. Verse 1 says, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married. The Hebrew specifically says Cushite. not Ethiopian, Cushite. And I think that's key to something that I'm going to say here in just a second. He had married a Cushite woman. That is the reason that they opposed him, because of the Cushite woman. Do not misunderstand. They were opposed to her and they were opposed to his marriage to her. Now that raises a lot of questions. Number one, who is she? I mean, he's married to Zipporah, right? Is that who this is? Well, a lot of people actually suppose this to be Zipporah. I do not believe for a moment that it is Zipporah, and I'm going to tell you why I don't believe that. Zipporah was a Midianite. You say, well, that could have just been a different name for a different class of people. Well, that's fine enough, but Genesis 25 says that the Midianites were descended from Abraham. Abraham was a descendant of Shem, not Ham. The Cushites were descended from Ham, not Shem. So I see no possibility that this is Zipporah. And I really don't know the point in arguing about it, you know, but it's amazing the extent to which some commentators will go to try to prove their point of all the spiritualizing away of everything. Well, it doesn't really mean cushyite, it really just means sinful, and it doesn't really mean... You know, I think it's just a lot simpler. to just take it like it reads? Instead of taking my own opinions about the passage and trying to work the Bible to fit them, let's just read and take what it says. The Scripture says she was a Cushite woman, and I believe that she was. She was a descendant of Cush who was a descendant of Ham, probably not Zipporah. Not to mention, Moses had been married to Zipporah for quite some time. This is not a new thing. And they had never opposed her prior. He met Zipporah when he fled from Pharaoh way before the Exodus, you know, when he murdered the man. And he fled from Pharaoh and he settled in the land where she already was. And he met her there and had two sons by her. When he came back, they didn't oppose her. There's no mention of opposition to her all through Exodus. So it seems unlikely that they would have opposed her now. Where was Zipporah then? I don't know. Bible don't say. I mean, we have a few possibilities, but there's no way for us to know for sure. It's sort of like, where was Joseph when Jesus' ministry began? I don't know for sure, but I assume he was dead. The reason that I assume that Joseph was dead is because Joseph, Jesus' earthly father, quote-unquote, the husband of Mary, I should say. Joseph doesn't appear. He was a very godly man. I believe he was a believer. And he's just not there. I assume he died. I mean, there's really no other way to take it. With Zipporah, there's not quite so much information. She could be dead. It's possible. They could be divorced. You say, well, I don't know. Did they have problems? Yes, they did have problems. Do you remember when they were coming back to Egypt and the Lord got angry with Moses over the circumcision of those two boys? She circumcised the boys, threw it at Moses' feet and said, you are a bloody bridegroom to me. She wasn't happy with him that day, I don't think. I mean, that doesn't come across as a very encouraging thing that she was saying to him. I think she was very unhappy. By the way, in Exodus 18, we do learn that Moses actually sent her back home with her daddy. They seem to have had some issues. We don't know that they were divorced. I mean, there's no way to know that, but it's possible. You say, well, it doesn't seem like that would be likely. Moses was a really godly man. None of that would have ever entered into Moses' life. Look, godly people get divorced. It happens. David had a lot more problems than a simple divorce. So let's not think that Moses was that. If there was a problem, I really believe it probably was Zipporah. And you say, well, now that's been awful. anti-feminist. I'm not being that way, but she was the one who seemed to have a problem with Moses, and Moses is complimented by God. So I'm going to say Moses probably was a decent guy. This woman was more of a dark-skinned ethnicity. She was a descendant of Ham. And it seems more likely that they opposed her due to some racial prejudice. But that's not uncommon with the Jews, is it? They hated everybody but themselves. If she'd have been too white, they probably wouldn't have liked her then either. It just so happened that this one was probably darker than they were. Miriam is mentioned first, which is very uncommon in the Scripture. Generally, when it mentions a man and a woman, the man's name is going to be mentioned first and the woman's name is going to be mentioned second. That is almost a perfect rule. But when you get here, verse 1 says, Miriam and Aaron. I think that's significant. I really do. I think probably that she was the leader in the rebellion while Aaron followed her. You say, well, is that, do we see that in Aaron before? Yeah, we do. What happened with the golden calf incident? Everybody gathered around Aaron. They said, look, your brother's gone. We don't know what's going on. Build us a calf. Aaron built one. Of course, I'm always amazed that when Moses comes down from the mountain, he breaks them, Aaron said, look, man, They were on me, they handed me the goal, I tossed the goal in, this calf popped out. That's what he said. He didn't form it, it just popped out. How silly. But Aaron was easily influenced, it seems, by other people. So perhaps Miriam did influence him. It is very strange that her name is mentioned first. That's obviously speculation, but we'll go with it anyway. The Lord is displeased in their opposition to Moses. I want you to notice something specific. It says in verse 2, "'Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us also?' Listen to these words, "'And the Lord heard it.'" He hears everything. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the good and the evil. He is everywhere, all the time. He knows everything that every one of us does, all the time, 24-7, 365. You say, yeah, but, you know, so-and-so don't know what I did. Yeah, but they don't really matter. What did Paul tell the Corinthian saints? It is a small thing for me to be judged by you. I don't even judge myself. Of course, Paul, I think, was speaking of his ability to judge himself. We judge ourself awful good. And he says, the Lord is going to judge me. So the Lord heard it. And he was angry with them. It says in the ninth verse, the anger of the Lord was kindled against them. Their true opposition is his wife, and it says so in verse 1, but that is not the complaint that they lodge verbally. How many times do we do that? We have an issue with somebody, but we point something else out. That's not the real issue. The real issue is something else. That's what's going on here. The real issue was the Cushite wife. How did anybody know that? Because that's not what they said. Well, God reads the heart and He wrote the book. So He's telling you up front what the real problem was. But here's what they said. Verse 2, they said, "'Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us also?' Why is Moses getting all the attention? Why is He the one that gets to lead everybody around? We deserve the same." That didn't go over very well. By the way, in Exodus 16, we will find another rebellion by a guy, or at least a leader named Korah, who will raise a similar complaint. Very similar. It seems there was a lot of people jealous of Moses. If you'll recall, Moses didn't want this job when he got it. At the burning bush, what did he say? No, Lord, you got the wrong guy. Pick somebody else. I can't talk plain. I can't do this. It's not within me. The Lord says, hey, I'm the one that makes the mouth. You go do what I say. He said, no, I don't want to go. I'm not able to go. He said, fine, take Aaron. You recall that? It's not like Moses usurped this job. God chose him and said, you are going to do this. And he did. By the grace of God and the power of God, he did it. But Moses still was the one that is credited with this. By the way, look in the previous chapter, what happened when they were supposed to choose these 70 men, two of them remained in the camp. Do you recall that? They didn't come out with the other 68. And it says in verse 26, now two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other named Medad. Why not just Jim and John, you know? and the Spirit rested on them. They were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, so they prophesied in the camp." By the way, God saw where they stayed, and He sent the Spirit on them there. Not a problem for God. Problem for everybody else. Not a problem for God. A young man ran and told Moses, "'Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp, and Joshua the son of Nun.'" Now, he came to Moses' rescue, and he means well. Joshua the son of Nun, the assistant of Moses from his youth, said, My Lord Moses, stop them. They shouldn't be prophesying in the camp. But Moses said to him, Are you jealous for my sake? Because Moses wasn't jealous. He was happy. He says, Would that all the Lord's people were prophets and the Lord would put His Spirit on them. So the complaint they're lodging against Moses here, it's unfounded. Moses isn't usurping authority. That's not the kind of person that Moses was. In fact, if you have any doubts of that, verse 3 here says, now the man Moses was very meek more than all the people who were on the face of the earth. I don't think it was Moses' fault. It was their fault. Their suggestion that Moses is usurping authority or power is invalidated. By the way, Matthew 5, when the Lord points out the fruits of children of God in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount and what we call the Beatitudes, what does He say? The meek shall inherit the earth. can just be defined as gentle. I mean, that's a good, simple meaning of meek. We often equate gentleness or meekness with weakness, but that is not the case. Gentleness is a quality that God seeks in His children. Jesus is said to have been gentle or meek and lowly in heart. Moses is an example here for us to follow. He is the most meek man on the face of the planet and we are to be meek. So what happens? The Lord calls Moses, Miriam, and Aaron forward to the tabernacle, and He declares to them that He is the one that chooses prophets. Look what He says in verse 6. He said, "'Hear My words. If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make Myself known to him in a vision.'" Who chose prophets? The Lord chose prophets. They didn't choose themselves. The Word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah. The Word of the Lord came unto Ezekiel. The Word of the Lord came unto Habakkuk. The Word of the Lord came unto Haggai. See, God revealed Himself to them. They had nothing to flaunt there. It was God that revealed Himself. Now, I hesitate to use these words because being a prophet was not a normal thing. If there were 70 in the camp at this time and there were 2.5 million people, that's uncommon to have been a prophet. But to the common prophets, how did God reveal Himself? In a vision. They'd have some kind of trance. They'd have some kind of vision. God declares Moses to have been faithful in all that he had, and he declares that Moses is greater than the other prophets. He says, look, all these other prophets, I reveal myself to in a vision, not with Moses. What does he say about them? God spoke to Moses, verse 8, tells us, mouth to mouth, clearly and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord. Moses' relationship with God was completely different than everybody else in the country at that time. They had no right or reason. Not only should they not have opposed the authority God had given him, but he was a gentle, meek person. More than everybody in the nation, but more than everybody in the world. It's pretty amazing. You ever paid any attention to what Deuteronomy 18.18 says about Moses? I got it in your notes. Deuteronomy 18, 18, God was saying this to Moses. He said, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him. Guess who that is a prophecy of? That is a prophecy of the coming Messiah. So in a sense, Jesus came in a similar fashion to what God raised Moses up as. Now obviously Christ's witness was far greater than Moses. He was perfect. He was not a... a sinful man at all, not that Moses was practically sinful all the time. I don't mean that, but Moses was a sinner saved by grace. Jesus was not a sinner whatsoever. There is a difference there. But God speaks of Moses as a type of Christ, at least in Deuteronomy 18.18. They really had no reason to oppose Moses at all, and God's anger was kindled against Miriam and Aaron. Verse 10, "...when the cloud removed from 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." And Moses cried to the Lord, "'O God, please heal her, please!' But the Lord said to Moses, if her father had spit in her face, Should she not be shamed seven days, let her be shut outside the 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 March till Miriam was brought in again. After that, the people set out from Hazeroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran. When the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous like snow. Leprosy, we have a very specific meaning of leprosy these days and exactly what it is. There's a specific disease that we call leprosy. That was not the case back in their day. Any skin problem was called leprosy. It could be major, major, major, all the way up to a pimple almost. Now, a pimple would go away, so when they went before the priest and they came back seven days, the pimple's gone, so it's no big deal. But if it didn't go away, then they had to go through a ceremonial cleansing process. Ultimately, if it never went away, they were put outside the camp. Miriam doesn't have a minor form of leprosy. She's got something major going on here. For Aaron to cry out the way that he did, let her not be as one dead whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out of his mother's womb, that don't sound like a pimple. That sounds like something a little more major than that. I know that it was. God takes seriously opposition to leaders that He has appointed. We see similar opposition to other people in the Word of God. Aaron responds to this in repentance. That is admirable. We see the same thing in Peter. We see the same thing in David. We see the same thing in the life of children of God, in the Word of God. When they mess up, they cry out to the Lord in repentance. They desire forgiveness and they have a desire to change. Judas, we do not see such an attitude in Judas. Judas just goes and hangs himself. He's not repentant to the Lord for what he had done. He maybe felt bad that he got caught. That's a completely different thing than what we see here. Verse 13, perhaps, is the one verse in this chapter that really ought to stick out to us as much as anything practically on how we ought to respond to people. Verse 13. Now, just before we read it, let me remind you why we're here, because they opposed Moses completely. They didn't like his wife, they didn't like his position, they didn't like anything about him, right? So she gets what she deserves, doesn't she? Yes, God gave it to her. Let's not doubt that. I mean, God's not going to give her what she didn't deserve. He'd be unrighteous. So He gave her what she deserved. Moses cried to the Lord, O God, please heal her, please. Well, we learned something from Moses right here. We learn a spirit of forgiveness from Moses. Brian, you messed up not using this a couple weeks ago when you spoke on forgiveness. You need to do it again. We see a forgiving spirit from Moses that we don't often see in this world. Somebody that opposed him as a leader, as a brother, as every... I mean blood brother. Everything that you can think of and what happens when she gets what she deserves, Moses says, Lord, please heal her. Please. What a spirit. Maybe that's why the Lord said he was more meek than anybody that lived on the face of the earth. How about that? God ordered Miriam to stay out of the camp seven days. He said, look, if her father spit in her face, she'd have to stay out of the camp seven days. I corrected her. She's going to stay out of the camp seven days. They sent her out. The people did not move until she was allowed back in. Then they did move. three weeks from today, good Lord willing, we'll catch up with them again. Y'all gonna miss numbers for a couple weeks because we got a guest speaker next week in the afternoon, a missionary, and then we have... I'm gone the next week, so somebody gonna speak. Why wasn't Aaron struck? I mean, it seems logical Aaron would have been struck with leprosy too. Why? I mean, well, there's a few ideas as to why he wasn't struck. Some believe Aaron wasn't struck with leprosy because it would have left Israel without a high priest. I guess that'll preach, but it doesn't seem right to me. I mean, who was going to become a high priest when Aaron died? Aaron did die not too long after this, and guess what they did? They appointed another one as high priest, one of his sons. So had Aaron not been able to be high priest, they had another priest they could have just promoted to high priest. So I mean, I'm sure that will preach, that he didn't get leprosy because they needed a high priest, but what we'll preach isn't always true. And I don't much think that's right. Could be, but I don't think so. I think probably it's just more simple to believe that Miriam, again, was the leader in all this and that's why she was struck with leprosy. I believe it was primarily her complaint. That's why she's named first. Good Lord willing, three weeks from today we'll jump into the spies being sent into the land, and they're going to say, man, those people there, we were like grasshoppers in their sight. They were huge. We can't overcome them. Two guys are going to step up and say, oh yes we can, the Lord promised it to us, we're going to overcome. Well, those two guys are the only ones that end up going into the promised land with Joshua. Lots of good stuff in Numbers. If you sort of ignore it, you miss it. As I've said before, Numbers is stuck in between Leviticus and Deuteronomy, so we just see it as pure law. But there's a lot more in Numbers than just the law. There's a lot of good historical stories here. We got food? Please stay and eat. There's plenty. There's more than plenty. I'm going to ask you to stand, if you will. Drake, good to have you here today, young fellow. Will you please dismiss us and go ahead and bless the food?