Numbers 11-13

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Chapter 11: My goodness, I am not sure what to write about.

• Should we talk about how Moses prays and how that affects the Lord?  When I pray do I really comprehend how that actually affects the Lord?  Verse 2: Moses prayed and the fire died down!
• Do we talk about complaining??  What in the world!!  Wait….that’s me.  All the Lord has provided and yet I still find things to complain about.
• My favorite….Moses’ conversation with the Lord!

The complaining has BEGUN.  The Lord has 2 plans.

1. He takes 70 elders to help share the burden of leading these people.  It’s like herding cats at this point.  The Lord gives 70 men the Holy Spirit so that they can help manage these whiner babies!  (How cool is it to see the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, so many of us think of it as a New Testament gift)
2. He is to give them what they ask for (we will see this MANY times as we continue to read….otherwise, we wouldn’t have the books of Kings!).  These people were given redemption, freedom, safety, food, shelter, AND the community with the Lord…and they wanted MORE!  Wanting it was one issue, But ACTING on it was another!

Chapter 12:  Find Moses, Aaron and Miraim.  They are siblings!

What in Sam Hill is going on here!  Miriam and Aaron call Moses’ wife a “Cushite” as a racial slur.  We do not know if this is Moses’ wife Zipporah (the Midianite) or if he has a different wife now (I think it is a different wife).

As much as I would love to say “that’s sibling rivalry”,  it’s not.  It is jealousy and pride.  Aaron is also very aware that Moses grew up in Egypt and married a non-Israelite.   The Lord inflicts Miriam with a skin disease that changes her “color”, the very characteristic she was using to instigate the issue of Moses’ wife.  Aaron was not inflicted because that would disqualify him from priestly service.   What does Aaron do?  He confesses.

“Please, my lord, I ask you not to hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. ¹² Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother’s womb with its flesh half eaten away.”

Once again, Moses prays and God relents.

Chapter 13  HUGE HUGE CHAPTER!!

Let’s pull the two names out that we are going to follow: (Circle them in your Bible)

⁶ from the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh;

⁸ from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea son of Nun; (Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the name Joshua.)

Joshua in Hebrew means “Salvation”.

The 12 spies went into the Promised Land.  They traveled 150 miles in 40 days.

Here is a panned out view

It is the Big BUTT Chapter!  It is everything the Lord Promised BUT

²⁸ But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. ²⁹ The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.”

³¹ But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.”

They might as well have said “BUT they are more powerful than the Lord!!”  

I want you to stop and think about the hardest prayer you have right now.  “Lord I need you to…”  think of the lost person in your life, the stronghold someone might have, the situation someone is gotten themselves into.  Pray for them.  When you are done did you say in your head after “ but they won’t change” “That won’t happen”….etc.  If you did,  you might as well have said “But they are more powerful than the Lord!”