Numbers 12:9-10 Bible Study | Episode 754

August 29, 2024

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Numbers 12:9-10   Bible Study | Episode #754

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to hope alive, applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today, in Jesus name.

Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in numbers, chapter twelve, and we're dealing with Miriam and Aaron, and they're. Well, they're murmuring against Moses. They really were trying to begin a process by which the people stopped listening to Moses and listened to them. And we understand it was based off of their being upset that Moses married a cushite wife. And God came down and told them to meet him at the. At the tent of meeting. And the cloud of the lure or the shekinah glory of God, which is what the cloud represents. It's the glory of God came down upon them, and he called Miriam and Aaron forward, and he told them something. He spoke to them face to face, but he spoke to them face to face about his servant Moses. And so they had the opportunity to hear about God, but they had the opportunity to hear about goddess, hear from God directly in really not a great moment in their life. And they had basically been fomenting rebellion against Moses. And it was based off of a worldly understanding, a worldly sin, a sin that comes from the world. Something that is nothing, not innate to us in the sense that we are. We're born with the sin nature, but we're not necessarily born hating people based off of some difference they have in their skin tone or their height or weight or anything like that. We gain those things from society. And so this was one of those things that we were kind of. That it's picked up. And I say that because of the way God deals with it, with them. It says, so the anger of the Lord aroused against them, and he departed, meaning that God removed the shekinah glory, removed the cloud. And when the cloud departed from above the tabernacle, suddenly Miriam became leprous, as white as snow. And then Aaron turned toward Miriam, and there she was, a leper. And leprosy is a disease that is in scripture pretty regular. It is a skin disease. It's based off a bacteria that gets on your skin, and it is one that ultimately can lead to death. I think it's called Hansen's disease. Now. It is something that we can treat with antibiotics, and it's something that can be. You don't have to die from it anymore. But back then, it was an outward skin disease. And I want to go through some of these things so that you can kind of begin to think about them. Because the leprosy is a picture of being unclean. And remember, we're not unclean because of. We're not unclean because of the things that come. That are. Come from the outside in. We're unclean from the things that we allow into our heart to go out. And as, as, as you deal with the different pictures of sin in scripture, and there are lots of them. And remember, there's two aspects to sin. And whenever you're thinking about it, you need to deal with that. There is sin, which is a nature, the sin nature that is passed on from generation to generation, from Adam. And it is the curse of sin. It is the overall nature that man has to do what is not God's will or not God, and a desire to seek after our own will and place it above God's will. That happened in the garden. And it is called. It is in the Bible. It's called sin or our sin nature. And for believers, every one of us have a sin nature. Now then, you have the idea of sin in the sin with the capital s meaning our nature. And then sin or sins, which are the actual act of sin, the actual doing or the actual thoughts or the actual intentions of our hearts. And those are so numerous that they're really hard to even identify. So much of our life is separated from God, and so much of our life is not understanding who he is or knowing his will. And it's so difficult, some of the things that we do, and oftentimes you don't even realize it. It is a sin. It's. I'm just doing. I'm doing. It's just not. It's not right. And you don't know. You don't even know that it's not right. And those are just. There's so many during the day, so much during the day that you don't. And don't. You don't even realize it, don't even know that it's going on. That that's who you. That's what's going on. And they can be so destructive for us. And so the whole idea of walking with God is God begins to deal with those things in our lives. He begins to, you know, he begins to just come up and say, oh, you know, he changes us. I mean, that's really what happens. I mean, it's just. And oftentimes it can be very dramatic for some people, and then they begin to walk in it. And some people, it's just one of those things that just slowly you just mature in your faith. And as you mature in your faith, trusting God and walking with God, he begins to just kind of remove those things from you. He just kind of brushes them off and gets those things out of your life to the point where, you know, you can remember back when you were engaged in those things, but you just didn't do them. You don't just don't do them anymore. You just walk away from them. And that's the way God is a lot of times with our sin. But that doesn't negate the fact that we have a sin nature that Jesus paid for on the cross and that we have a daily, uh, a daily outflow of sin for my life, which is just acts of. And. And wheels of. Of not God. And. And, um, we get those things from inside of us. But oftentimes, because the world is under the curse of sin, we get them from outside of us. So the. The bombardment of sin that we live in, the world that we live in, and the life that we live means that we get a lot of that stuff from outside. We get. We get outside pressure to be like the world. And then, by the way, we were attacked in different ways. You're attacked in your flesh. The. The youthful lust that we have, our desires for things that are not good for us, or. Or. Or at least we. We desire them in such a way that we don't use them in moderation, and they destroy us. We have the. We have the soulish sin, the several. The issues of our settle, which are. Which are our will. Either chasing after God or not chasing after God. It's really affected by the world. We either choose to be as the world is or we choose to not be. It's called worldliness or carnality. And what it is is it's not something necessarily like a lust, a desire, my flesh, that I just got to do it. But it's just one of those things I just get into. I just get into doing with my life. I fall in with those around me and start acting and doing the things they do. And you know how that goes, especially when you were a teenager. You know, all your friends said the same things, spoke the same language, acted the same way, they laughed at the same stuff. And then, you know, when you got to be a young adult, you look back on it and go, you know, that was weird. And then you run into that. You run into that friend of yours you hadn't seen in seven, eight years, and they're still acting that way. And you go, I mean, it's almost like. And. And you realize I acted that way back, you know, five, six, seven years ago. And. And, boy, it must have been really terrible for people to see me doing that. I mean, you can identify. We all can identify with that. And then sometimes we run into a friend that has matured and mature broke past us and we realize, oh, you know, maybe I should grow up, too. And. And then, you know, you realize that you need to be changed also. And those are the worldly things. And usually when we come to scripture and we deal with someone who is blind or we deal with someone who is deaf, or we deal with the young man who had the issue of falling down and going into fits or the woman with the issue of blood. See, all those things are kind of inside us. And for me, when I think about those other things, I think about the picture of the sin that's innate to me, that lusty flesh. Easy for me to say, that lusty flesh that just kind of controls me and steers my life in directions that are destructive. But then also I think about. I think about the things like leprosy and their picture of sin also same thing. But it's kind of come from the world. It's outside. It comes from the world. And so when I'm thinking about this, as far as Miriam is concerned, I realize, you know, Miriam was probably hanging out with her friends. And, you know, Moses, you know, you almost get the feeling that this is kind of one of those things where she's mad because Moses didn't choose who she wanted him to choose to be his wife. He chose this ethiopian woman, and she found a reason to dislike her. And the reason she disliked her is where she came from, her skin color and where she came from. That's. That's why she chose to dislike her and chose to murmur against her. And it likely came from some other things. You know, lot of matchmaking going on and support. You know, you don't know it, but support might have passed away. And so they're just trying to figure out who Moses, who's going to be the woman that Moses takes as a wife, because now that it's going to be important for them and for their leader and who he's with, and she's going to affect a lot of his life. They figured out they didn't like this woman, and they figured out reasons why not to like her. And I want you to think about that. That is a worldly method. That's worldly methodology. That's worldly thinking. I look at somebody, and I see what the world says about them, rather than looking at them and talking to them and spending time with them and seeing what God is doing inside of them. And that's what led to this. And so this, the. The punishment or the outward appearance of her sin that God is going to use here is leprosy, which is a picture of you letting the world have control of you to the point that it destroys you. And that's what happened here. She, in some ways, you know, a lot of this is. A lot of this is you just got to kind of think through it and say, okay, what could it have been? Because it doesn't give us that a lot of its supposition here, but we're supposing that it could be some of these things. But we do know that the leprosy is an outside thing, and it usually is a picture of the sin of the world that gets on us and destroys us. And so she has the leprosy. And you go, well, why didn't. And Aaron said to Moses, oh, my leopard pleads to not lay the sin on us, and which we have done foolishly and in which we have sinned. And you go, well, why didn't Aaron get leprosy? Well, remember, Aaron's in many ways, and it's difficult to say this in scripture, but he's presented as a coward. He doesn't stop them from making the golden calf. He doesn't. He does. It's quite evident that the instigator of this whole rebellion against Moses is Miriamen, and Aaron's just going along with her. And in many ways, Aaron is a go along to get along person. And there are a lot of people like that. But you can't go along with things that are destroying people just to get along with people. You can't do that. You have to either get away from it or stand up against it. And if you don't have the courage to stand up against it, you can at least get away from it and not nothing. Place yourself in the middle of it or be around it. So that it destroys you. Also, if you're not able to convince others to not chase after the world using God's word or using the conviction of your heart of what God has shown you, then get away from those who do. Get away from those who are going to do the things that are outside of God's will and outside of God's plan. Remove yourself from them. You know, the New Testament teaches us bad company corrupts good character. What does that mean? Well, if you. If you stay at the company of certain people, you're going to take on their character. And if you. If you. If you're. If it's regular practice of you to be around successful people, you're going to be successful. If it's a regular practice of you to be around people who are addicted to substances, you're going to gain an addiction to substances. If. If it's a regular practice of you, of you to become and be like a certain group of people, you're going to begin to take on their actions. And if it's a practice of you to be around those who are trying to figure out how to chase after God, you're going to eventually be encouraged to chase after God. And the world has a major effect on us, but the world that we live in is the world that we choose to live in. We're in the world, but we're not of the world. We're gonna have to be around these things, but I don't have to choose to be of them. I can choose to be of the group of people that, that are chasing after God. My wife and I were talking yesterday, and so many people, when they talk about moving to the lake up here in Lake Martin, Alabama. Dadeville, Alabama. Elect city, Tallassee, real town. This area that is around the lake. Jackson's gap. Don't want to miss anybody. The Elmore county side over there. A lot of long people, when they move to the lake, the summertime is great because there's boats everywhere and people everywhere, and, you know, it's just a big old good time all the time up on the lake. And then when fall gets here and football season starts, you have less and less people. But people are here during football season. Then the holidays hit, and after the holidays, there's about three months of nobody, nobody from the outside world being at the lake. Just the regular people of the towns and, and the regular people who are permanent residents on the laker here. And it's, you know, shorter days and cold and. And no leaves on the trees. And it's not as sunny. And, and they say that they're, they're, you know, they're, they're. It's depressing. Well, it's not depressing. I've never found it to be pressing here during the winter time. You know why it's not depressing during the wintertime? Because I have a. I have a world of faith, a family of faith that I'm with all the time. So wintertime is just as busy for me at my work here on the lake with the church, with the family of God that I'm around. And so the world doesn't, the outward appearances of the world have no effect on me because, you know, I'm here spending time and fellowshiping and involved in ministry and doing the things that are kingdom things here. And so oftentimes it's even a little bit more exciting to be here during the wintertime. Why? Because it's just us. And the summertime's a lot of ministering to those who are passing through or who are not here all the time. And it's an exciting. It's an exciting time during the summer, but the winter is really a great time of growth and a great time of, of personal fellowship with God's people and growth for the church itself, internally. Why are you bringing that up, Chad? Well, I'm bringing it up because Miriam hung out with some folks who wanted to decide what and who and how Moses lived and when he chose someone they didn't like. Some of them didn't like her because of how she looked. Some of them didn't like her from where she's from, and some of them didn't like her because who she was. And we don't even know any of that stuff. But the world makes its decisions about you, and it's usually never, never good decisions. Eventually, the world's going to destroy you. The world hates you, and the world is going to come after you. And so no matter what it was, there was going to be a time and a season which they were going to say they didn't like this woman. And Miriam made herself a part of that, and ultimately it destroyed her. You know, I found in my own life, in my own walk, that I don't listen to other people and what they say about other people. Initially when I deal with them, I may hear it. I may hear that they've had this problem or they dealt with this situation or this is who they are. And my, always, when I meet somebody, I try to figure out what about them I like. That's the first thing I try to do, there's something about them. And some people, it's hard to figure out. Sometimes you got to look them up and down all over and talk to them from a long, long time before you figure out something you like. I mean, really, there are people like that. But most of the time there's something about somebody I can figure out how to like immediately. And you go, why do you do that? Well, because I want to eventually love everyone, as my lord has commanded me to do. And I'm going to try to figure out how to. How to like you and not to dislike you. Because I do know that hatred in my heart is destructive, and I've had a lot of that in my heart, and it is painful and it's a cancer. And when I allow the hatred of this world to take over, it's leprous to my skin. And so we shouldn't want that. We should, we should want to learn how to love those, even the unlovable, even the ones nobody else wants to love, like the woman at the well. We need to. We need to want and desire to find something about them. And like I said, there are some who you gotta look hard for something about them that you like. Because as you begin to like a person, as you begin to have an affinity for a person, you can figure out how to love them as God loved them. But if you're always looking for a reason not to, you never will. And if you never do, you really don't have the love of God in your heart. You can't. And you're not going to experience God's best. And that leprosy is always going to be out there trying to get on to you because it's, it's the world's destructive power because it's under the curse of sin. Some things to think about. Aaron didn't help his sister by telling her not to act that way because, well, that's who he is. He's just never going to actually deal with problems. But Moses did, and God does. And when you really actually begin to deal with things and help people through things, that's where really hope and life is.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep.

You you, that he'll make his face.

To shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today. In Jesus name.