Welcome to this Daily PBJ devotional. Read Numbers 12 and 13, Isaiah 2, and Psalm 119, verses 145 through 176 to keep up with the Old Testament reading schedule for this year. This devotional is about Numbers 12. Then Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married, for he had taken a Cushite wife. Does the Lord speak only through Moses? they said. Does he not also speak through us? And the Lord heard this. Now Moses was a very humble man, more so than any man on the face of the earth. And suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, you three, come out to the tent of meeting. So the three went out, and the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud, stood at the entrance to the tent, and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When both of them had stepped forward, he said, hear now my words. If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, will reveal myself to him in a vision. I will speak to him in a dream. But this is not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. I speak with him face to face, clearly, and not in riddles. He sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you unafraid to speak against my servant Moses? So the anger of the Lord burned against them, and he departed. As the cloud lifted from above the tent, suddenly Miriam became leprous, white as snow. Aaron turned toward her, saw that she was leprous, and said to Moses, My lord, please do not hold against us this sin we have so foolishly committed. Please do not let her be like a stillborn infant whose flesh is half consumed when he comes out of his mother's womb. So Moses cried out to the Lord, O God, please heal her. But the Lord answered Moses, if her father had but spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days? Let her be confined outside the camp for seven days. After that, she may be brought back in. So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on until she was brought in again. After that, the people set out from Hazaroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran. This is God's word. It is more than a little ironic, isn't it, that Moses is the author of numbers and that he wrote verse 3. Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. The humblest man on earth wrote in Holy Scripture about how humble he was. The first literary instance of the humble brag. Not really, of course, because the Holy Spirit inspired those words. So we're reading God's assessment of Moses, not his self-assessment. There's plenty of evidence of his humility too, such as how he resisted the Lord's call to lead Israel, and how he insisted that God blot him out of the Book of Life, if the Lord blotted Israel out of it. Despite how powerfully God used Moses to lead then, he truly was a humble man, someone who did not have an inflated view of himself. His brother and sister did not have the character trait of humility themselves. We can see that in verse 2, where they said to each other, Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? they asked. Hasn't he also spoken through us? That's the NIV's words. The implication of their words is that they were co-equal leaders with Moses. If they didn't like his wife, which is how this all started as we saw in verse 1, then he should be held accountable to them, they thought. The problem is that God had chosen Moses directly and had commanded him to lead Israel. Aaron and Miriam were called to supporting roles under Moses' leadership. Although it was true that God had spoken through Aaron and Miriam, He had not spoken to them in the same way that He had spoken to Moses. We see that in verse 8. They were way out of line then when they tried to exercise equal authority to Moses. Moses, being the humble man that he was, waited for God to take up his cause instead of defending himself. Moses was not disappointed because God did, in fact, speak up to defend him, as we saw in verse 4, which says in the NIV, at once the Lord said. Two issues of application come to mind when I read this passage. First, stay in your lane. God has called each of us to different responsibilities and has invested in each of us different levels of authority. If your leader is in sin, then you should confront him. We can see Galatians 6 for that. If you think he is making a bad decision, you can appeal to him as a father, as 1 Timothy 5.1 says. But most of the time, it is our job to follow the leaders God has given to us, not to question or rebuke them. Whenever we speak to someone we are supposed to follow or serve in a way that presumes equal or greater authority to that person, we have shown a level of pride that is not pleasing to God. A second application is, let the Lord fight your battles for you. Humanly speaking, Moses had every right to defend himself, but he did not. Because of his humility, Moses allowed God to take up his cause and vindicate him. The New Testament urges us to follow that pattern ourselves. Romans 12, 19 commands us, these are the words of the NIV, do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord. It takes real humility to let God fight for you when you are being mistreated or your authority is being usurped. Instead of fighting for ourselves, justifying our actions, and angrily denouncing our opponents, what if we trusted God enough to let Him handle the situation? So what's the state of your humility? The title of the humblest man ever is taken But each of us can and should follow Moses' example in our own lives. If you are a follower, be a good follower and stay in your lane. If you are a leader and you know what you are doing is right before the Lord, let him handle the criticism and fallout that comes your way. This is pleasing to God because it puts all of our cries for justice in his righteous hands to execute. So I hope this was helpful to you today. And if it was, please consider signing up to receive it in your email every day. Go to dailypbj.com slash subscribe for that. Please also consider joining my community by supporting me on a monthly basis. Go to dailypbj.com slash support for more information and to sign up for that. Please share this with someone who could be encouraged by it in their life. Maybe someone who's receiving criticism as a leader that they don't really deserve. And I'll see you next time. May God bless you. Hope you have a great day today.