Well, as we all know, we're involved in a study of the life of that great man of God, Moses. And today, we come to Numbers chapter 12. Now, Numbers chapter 12 reminds me of a verse in the New Testament, Hebrews chapter 6 verse 1, which says, Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and let us press on to deeper things. And what we're going to talk about today certainly qualifies in my thinking as some of the deeper things of God. It certainly qualifies as going for higher ground, as the great hymn says, because today we're going to talk about the biblical principle of meekness.
Now, let me give you just a little bit of background before we dig into Numbers 12. Remember, the Israelites had been camped at Mount Sinai for a little about a year. Then God said, It's time for you to leave and head for the Promised Land.
And as we pick up the story here, the Israelites are traveling across the Sinai desert en route to the Promised Land. So verse 1, here we go, Numbers chapter 12, Then Miriam and Aaron, and by the way, you know, this is Moses's natural sister and his natural brother, began to speak against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married. For Moses had married a Cushite woman. Now, a lot of commentators believe the woman in question here is Zipporah, Moses's wife of 40 years. But some other commentators suggest that she may have passed away and that Moses may have just recently remarried. Well, I don't know which one it is, and it really doesn't matter because good or bad, Moses's marriage is not the real issue here.
There's only a smokescreen for the real issue. Verse 2, here comes the real issue. And Miriam and Aaron said, Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not also spoken through us as well? And the Lord heard what they said. Now, you understand what Miriam and Aaron are saying here. They're saying, Hey, we're prophets just like Moses is.
I mean, God has spoken through us just like he's spoken through Moses. And who does Moses think he is walking around, bossing everybody around, telling everybody what to do when he's not the only prophet in the whole nation of Israel? Now, what we really have here, friends, on the part of Miriam and Aaron is an attempted mutiny against Moses and against Moses's authority. And what I find very interesting is that God had already given both Aaron and Miriam positions of great authority in Israel themselves. I mean, Aaron was the high priest of the entire nation of Israel. Miriam was a recognized prophetess within the nation of Israel. But what we learn from this passage is that Miriam and Aaron were not satisfied with their position or their authority. They wanted Moses's position and his authority. Okay, verse 3.
Now, Moses was very meek. Uh-oh, there's our word. There it is. Hold on.
We're coming back. Moses was very meek, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth. So the Lord said to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, You three come out to the tent of meeting. So the three of them went out. Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent and he summoned Aaron and Miriam to step forward.
Now, I don't think I'd have want to have been in their sandals right about now. Do you? No.
Okay. And when both of them had stepped forward, the Lord said, Listen, guys, if there is a prophet among you, I will make myself known to them in visions and I will speak to them in dreams. But this is not the way it is with my servant Moses. With him, God says, I speak not in dark sayings, but openly face to face.
And he beholds the very form of God. Remember what Miriam and Aaron had claimed. They had claimed, Hey, God speaks to us just like he speaks to Moses. And God's response is, Oh, no, I don't Kimo Sabe. No, no, no. Moses has much higher prerogatives with me than you guys have.
He has a face to face relationship with me. You two guys, God says, are not even in the same ballpark as Moses. Verse eight continues. Why then, God says, were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?
How dare you rebel against the authority, God says, that I personally gave to Moses. Then the anger of the Lord burned against them. Verse nine and the Lord departed. And when the pillar of cloud lifted from above the tent, behold, Miriam had become a leper with skin as white as snow. Then Aaron said to Moses, Oh, my Lord, I beg you, please do not hold this sin against us, which we have so foolishly committed.
Do not let Miriam be like a dead person whose flesh is half eaten away. So Moses cried out to the Lord and said, Oh, God, please heal her. May I please point out to you that these are the very first words Moses has spoken in this whole chapter.
These are the first words he has said since this whole attempted mutiny began. And would you notice, amazingly, the words he speaks are not words of revenge, but are words of compassion and forgiveness. Verse 14. But the Lord said to Moses, You know, if her father had but spit in her face, Moses, she would be ritually unclean for seven days, wouldn't she? So what God says is confine her outside the camp for seven days. And after that, I'll heal her.
And then she can return to the camp again. So in his mercy, God agrees to grant Moses's request. He agrees to heal Miriam, Moses's sister, but not before he teaches her a lesson. And in fact, the lesson that he wanted to teach her was a lesson that God wanted to teach the whole nation of Israel through her example. And you say in what lesson was that? Well, I'd like to sum up that lesson in the words of an old Jim Croce song that goes like this. You don't tug on Superman's cape. You don't spit into the wind. You don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger and you don't mess around with Moses.
You got it? Or with the authority that God gave him. I kind of like that. You didn't like the Jim Croce song? No, I was going to sing it.
But then I thought that would be tragic if I tried to sing it. But the point God was trying to make is, hey, I put Moses where he is. If it's time to remove him, I'll remove him. Don't you dare mess with him.
And I think he made that point pretty strongly. Now, that's the end of our chapter for today. But we want to stop now and ask the most important question of the day. And you know it, so are you ready? Yes, yes? All right, I want to hear you guys up there nice and loud. Here we go.
One, two, three. Yeah, you say loud. So what?
Say, I don't even like Jim Croce's music. So what difference does any of this make to me, huh? Well, let's see if we can help you with that connection. You know, it's interesting when we look in the New Testament. We find the New Testament talking about this very same issue of meekness.
Remember, that's what we're going to talk about today. We find the New Testament talking about it as well. Jesus said, Matthew 5, verse 5, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Jesus said, Matthew 11, 29, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble in heart. Friends, whatever meekness is, it's clear that it's an important part of the Christian life. It's an important part of being Christlike.
And since being Christlike is the goal of our earthly life, well, then this is a pretty important topic for us to have some understanding of. So then, what exactly is meekness? Biblical meekness. Well, remember, Numbers 12 said that Moses was very meek, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth. And what this means, therefore, is that if we analyze here in Numbers 12, Moses's reaction to Miriam and Aaron, what we ought to get is a perfect definition of what biblical meekness really is.
And that's what we're going to do in just a moment. But before we do that, I have two very brief preliminary comments I want to make about meekness. The first one is that meekness is not weakness. Yeah, Moses was meek, all right, but he was also one of the toughest and one of the most courageous men on the face of the earth. You'll remember that he survived 40 years on the backside of the desert. You'll remember he beat up the shepherds who were trying to take advantage of Deathrow's daughters at the well.
You'll remember that he stood toe to toe with Pharaoh Amenhotep II, the most powerful ruler on the earth in that day, and he brought this man to his knees before God. No, my friends, meekness is not weakness, and don't you ever think it is. Number two, the other preliminary comment I want to make is we must understand, second of all, that meekness is a response. It is a response to being mistreated. You see, a person can be as meek as the day is long, but meekness will only become visible when we're being mistreated, when we're being picked on, when we're being oppressed like Moses was here in Numbers chapter 12. I mean, nobody sits around and says, okay, I think this afternoon I'll just go out and be meek.
No, no, no, it's not a proactive thing we do. It is a response to the harmful things other people do to us. Now, since we all have enemies in the world, since we all have people in our world who don't like us, since we all have people in the world who sometimes want to undo us and they want to undermine us and they want to do to us exactly what Miriam and Aaron tried to do to Moses, and these people, they may be at our workplaces, they may be at our school, they may be relatives that we have, they may live in our neighborhoods or be co-workers with us. Folks, since we've all got people like this, it would seem to me that understanding meekness is really important because every one of us is going to get a chance to practice meekness a good bit of our lives since these kind of people are all around us. So with that little bit of introduction, let's figure out what meekness really looks like. When you look at Moses' example here in Numbers chapter 12, we find three characteristics, three component parts that make up meekness biblically.
Here they are. Number one, characteristic number one, is that meek Christians have an absolute confidence in the sovereignty of God. A meek Christian is a person who really believes with all of their heart that their God is in utter sovereign control of every detail of their life. They also believe that because God is in sovereign control of their life, even the actions of their enemies are also included in God's perfect plan for their life. And they believe this to such a degree, listen, that even when they're being mistreated, even when they're being oppressed, even when they're being plotted against, they are so certain that God has sovereign control over all of what's happening to them that they're able to respond with absolute calmness.
Isn't that what Moses did right here in Numbers chapter 12? Here Aaron and Miriam are scheming against him, undermining his authority, trying to steal his leadership position. What does the meekest man on the face of the earth do? Well, he does nothing. He just stands there calmly and watches them.
You say, yeah, that impressed me. I mean, how can the man just stand there and do nothing and just look at them like that? Well, because Moses knew something, friends. Moses knew on the one hand that if his sovereign God had decided to remove his leadership role from him, that God was using Miriam and Aaron to do it, and that was okay. And on the other hand, Moses knew that if God had decided not to take away his role of leadership, then there was absolutely nothing that Miriam or Aaron or any other human being alive could do to take away the authority his sovereign God had given him. So either way, Moses just stood there and could face Miriam and Aaron and all their actions with utter calm because his focus, don't miss this, was not on them. His focus was not on what they were doing to him. His focus was on the impregnable sovereignty of Almighty God.
You see that. Now, I love Joseph. He's another great example of this.
You remember the story. Joseph's brothers hated him. They couldn't even speak to him in peace. They sold him into slavery into Egypt and thought he was dead and gone forever.
Twenty years later, he reappears as the prime minister of Egypt when they visit Egypt. And here's what he said to them. You want to see someone who believes in the sovereign plan of God over his life?
Watch this. Genesis 45, verse 8, he says to his brothers, So then, it was not you who sent me to Egypt, it was God. Oh, yeah, you guys were involved in it, but you were just pawns.
Don't you understand? It was God's sovereign plan to send me here. He had total control over what you were doing, had already overruled it, and had already planned it into my life. Now, there's a man who sees the world through the eyes of the sovereignty of God. And even the Lord Jesus himself saw the world this way. You remember when he stood before Pilate, John chapter 19, and Pilate said to him, Don't you realize that I have the authority to release you or to crucify you? I love what Jesus said to him. He said, Pilate, you have no power over me at all, son, none, except that which has been given you from above by my sovereign Father.
That's all you've got. Friends, me Christians have a big God. Me Christians have a sovereign God, and they have a sovereign God, not just in the way they write their doctrinal statements.
They have a sovereign God in the way they perceive all of life, in the way they interpret all of life, and in the way they react to all of life. Number two, characteristic number two of meekness is that meek Christians rely on God to defend them and not on their own human energy to do so. See, a meek Christian knows that no scheme of man can ever upset or alter God's sovereign plan for his life. A meek Christian understands that even though man may plot against him, and even though a man may scheme against him, and even though a man may carry out treachery against him, he understands that you know what? All of this already has been worked into the sovereign plan of God for his life, and there's no need for him to defend himself in the energy of the flesh. If he needs any defending, God will take care of it.
Now remember here, and I want to say this, this is very important. Remember that in talking about meekness, we are not talking about exercising our legal rights when it comes to someone's criminal behavior against us. Remember even in the Old Testament that God wrote laws into the Old Testament and said that you could prosecute someone for criminal behavior against you and that that person would be punished.
This is not what we're talking about. When we talk about meekness, friends, we are talking about our personal rights, our personal status, our personal privileges. We are talking about people who are trying to do us wrong on a personal level, and what we're saying is that when it comes to defending his own personal rights or his own personal position or authority or status that God has sovereignly granted him, a meek Christian leans on God to be his personal defender instead of taking matters in his own hands to defend himself. Once again, isn't this precisely how Moses acted in Numbers chapter 12 when Miriam and Aaron rose up and mutinied against him? Did he take matters in his own hands? Did he try to defend himself? Did he lower himself and go down to their level and try to do treachery against treachery?
No, no, no, no, no. He just said, you know what? If my position needs defending, God will take care of it. You know, the Lord Jesus lived the very same way. 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 21 says, Christ left us an example that we should follow in his steps.
And what was this example he left us that we should copy? Verse 23 says, while he was being reviled, he did not revile in return. While suffering, he uttered no threats, but rather, watch now, he kept on entrusting himself to God who judges justly.
The Lord Jesus said, hey, you know what? I'm not going to defend myself. The Lord will take care of defending me. This is why David said, Psalm 27 one, the Lord is the defense of my life.
Of whom shall I be afraid? You know, I've been in full time Christian work over 30 years. And one of the things that I've observed over all these years, and it's to my dismay I might mention, is how many hyper defensive Christians there are in the world. I mean, these are Christians who are defensive about their personal rights, about their personal status, about their personal reputation, about the place they have in the pecking order, about whether they get the spotlight when the spotlight's being passed around. I mean, threaten their rights, threaten their position, threaten their status, threaten their claim to the spotlight in any way. And I mean, these people become porcupines, friends. And you know, I learned a long time ago that it's just not much fun to be around these people because it takes way too much emotional energy to tiptoe through their tulips. You understand what I'm saying? What's worse, these people are a terrible witness for the Lord Jesus Christ because they give off an impression to people around them that they don't have a sovereign God that they can trust to defend them.
They've got to take matters in their own hands and do it themselves. And what's even worse is that these people miss the deep joy of God in their life that comes from simply letting the Lord himself take care of our personal defense. Listen, God loves to defend his children, my friends. I mean, just look at how marvelously God sprang to Moses' defense here in Numbers chapter 12.
The problem is most of us never leave room for God to defend us because we're too doggone busy defending ourselves. And you know, the other thing that happens when we let God defend us that's good is by the time it's all over and the dust clears, friends, our integrity is still intact. Our testimony is still intact because we didn't lower ourselves and go down and mud wrestle with those people. We didn't cheapen ourselves to go down and use their own treachery against them and match scheme for scheme.
We took the high road. And when God vindicates us and when God protects us and when God finally defends us, we can hold up clean hands and say we didn't have anything to do with it. We didn't plot against them. We didn't scheme against them. We didn't do treachery.
We didn't do a thing. God stepped in and did it for us. And this is the way the Lord wants us to live, friends, in a way that communicates to our world that we have a sovereign God to defend us.
We don't have to worry about defending ourselves. Number three, third characteristic, and finally, is me Christians are able to genuinely forgive their enemies. And see, here's how a me Christian sees the world. On the one hand, a me Christian says, Well, if my enemy succeeds in demoting me or in lowering me, then it was because my sovereign God ordained that it was my moment to be lowered and all this person was was a pawn in the hand of God.
And so how can I hold that against him? On the other hand, a me Christian says, Well, if my enemy failed in their attack against me and God stepped in and defended me and preserved me, well, then God showed me great mercy I don't deserve. And as a recipient of that kind of mercy, I'm obligated to show that kind of mercy. So either way, friends, me Christians can forgive anything. Hey, again, isn't this precisely how Moses acted here in Numbers chapter 12? I mean, didn't he forgive his sister and pray for his sister after she rose up and tried to steal his position and throw him out of his leadership role? Hey, I think of Joseph again. Genesis 50, when his brothers were scared, he was going to take revenge on them after his dad died.
Here's what he said. He said to his brothers, Genesis 50, 20, he said, You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. Now there's the sovereignty of God right there.
Then he goes on to say, Therefore, in light of God's sovereign control of this whole thing and in light of the mercy that God has shown me, I'm the prime minister of Egypt now, therefore, he says, you do not need to be afraid, for I will provide for you and your little ones. And so Joseph comforted them and spoke kindly to them. Friends, this is true forgiveness because this is forgiveness that is not rooted in our human emotions or feelings. It's forgiveness that is not rooted in the energy of the flesh. This is forgiveness that is rooted in the sovereignty and the mercy of God.
And meet Christians or masters at showing this kind of forgiveness. You know, in 1861, Abraham Lincoln, of course, was elected president of the United States. And when he was elected, he appointed as his secretary of treasury, a gentleman named Salmon P. Chase. Mr. Chase had been the governor of Ohio. He had been a US senator from Ohio and Lincoln chose him to be a member of his cabinet. Well, almost immediately, Mr. Chase began working against Mr. Lincoln, began undermining his boss, Mr. Lincoln, and his goal was to win the 1864 nomination by the Republican Party to be president. He didn't want Lincoln to be renominated. He wanted the nomination. What he did is from his position on the cabinet, he began courting every enemy that Lincoln made during his first four years and bringing them in and telling them that if he were president, he would do it differently. He would do it the way they wanted it done.
You talk about Absalom at the city gate, friends. This was he. Well, as we all know, Abraham Lincoln won renomination in 1864, and as we all know, he won the presidency again in 1864. But the story doesn't end there because right after his reelection, Lincoln had a choice to make. He had to choose a new Supreme Court justice, a new chief justice for the United States Supreme Court, and he began toying with the idea of choosing Salmon P. Chase. Well, his advisors went crazy.
They came in and vehemently argued against it and said, don't you dare do that. Don't you know what he's been doing and saying about you? I mean, if you pick him and you make him the chief justice of the Supreme Court, all he's going to do is use that position of higher authority to attack you more. Here's what Lincoln said, and I quote. He said, as to Chase's talk about me, I do not mind that.
He has not always behaved well lately, and people say to me now is the time to crush him out. Well, Lincoln said, I am not in favor of crushing anybody out. Lincoln went on to say, if Mr. Chase has said some hard things about me, I, in turn, have said some hard things about him, which I guess squares the account. He finished by saying, Mr. Chase is a very able man, and he is the best man for the job. And so on December the 6th, 1864, four months before his death, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Salman P. Chase to be the ninth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, I might add, to Chase's utter astonishment.
Couldn't believe Lincoln did it. But you see, my friends, this is how meek Christians live. They trust God to deliver them from the schemes of their enemies, and then after God does, they forgive the schemers, they forgive their enemies from their heart.
Now let's summarize. What have we learned today? Well, we've learned that meekness is a strategic part of being a deep and mature and Christlike Christian. And we've also learned that meekness is not weakness at all. Meekness is a way of seeing life. It is a way of responding to mistreatment by others in life that is based upon believing that we have an utterly powerful, totally sovereign God who is in absolute control of every detail of our life, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and that no act of man falls outside of God's sovereign plan for our life. And then meekness means that this sovereign view of God issues out in two everyday ways. Number one, it issues out in us having a non-defensive posture towards people who scheme against us or seek to demote us or to harm us in any way. And number two, it issues out in our having a forgiving spirit towards the very people who are trying to take us down. You say, okay, Lon, understand what meekness is now.
I got it. So, Lon, what if my meekness quotient is not as high in my life as I wish it was, huh? I mean, what if I need to grow a little bit in meekness?
I mean, how would I do that? Well, friends, remember what we said. We said meekness is the result, meekness is the outflow of having a huge sovereign view of God. Friends, where do we gain, where do we get a huge sovereign view of God?
Well, we get it out of the B-I-B-L-E. That's where we get it. Folks, if you want to grow in your grasp of the massive sovereignty of God over this world and the massive sovereignty of God over every little piece of your life, I'll tell you where you go to get it. You go into the Word of God. You stop reading Time magazine as much and you stop reading Newsweek as much and you stop reading the Washington Post as much and you go into the Word of God and you read it not looking for theology and not looking for prophecy or anything else like that.
We go into it looking for the character of God and saying, Lord, show me who You are. Show me Your sovereign power over this world. Show me Your sovereign control over my life. And I promise you, as your grasp on the massive sovereignty of God grows bigger, your meekness quotient will grow bigger too.
You won't even have to try to make it grow. It'll grow all by itself because all it is is an outflow of us having a view of the sovereignty of God that is big as the Bible says it is. Now, some of us here, let me say in closing, we've got an opportunity to live this principle out right now in our lives because we've got Miriams and Aaron right now in our lives. Some of us are going to get a chance to live this out before the day is over.
Some of us may get the chance tomorrow morning when we go to work, when we go to school. And, you know, friends, I'm here to tell you that the only way we can really live and react to enemies and people who are trying to hurt us in a way that honors Christ is to do it by means of biblical meekness. Anything else will dishonor Christ.
If we lower ourselves and mud wrestle with these people, it will dishonor Christ. And the beautiful part about it is we don't need to. Friends, a sovereign God has already seen what they're doing. A sovereign God has already overruled what they're doing. And a sovereign God has already planned what they're doing into His good and perfect plan for your life.
It's all done. And because of that, when you see them later today or you see them tomorrow, you can smile at them. And you can say, I wouldn't suggest it out loud, but you can say to yourself, you know what, you don't even realize it, but you're just a pawn. That's all you are.
You're just a pawn on the chessboard of my life that God, the sovereign God, is moving around. And you know, you can say to them, if you knew how much good God was going to bring into my life through your mistreatment of me, you hate me so much, you treat me nice. You understand that?
You got that, didn't you? Yeah, okay. So smile at them and bless them and forgive them and let them go on their way, folks. And trust God to defend you if you need to be defended.
You have a sovereign God who is perfectly able to deal with them and perfectly able to take whatever they do to you and turn it around for good in your life. That's what a meek Christian does. That's how a meek Christian sees the world. That's how a meek Christian lives.
And that's how a meek Christian brings honor to Christ with their life. May God help us do that. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thanks for talking to us today about real life.
I'm talking right down where we live, where the mud's flying and the dirt's flying and people are doing nasty things to other people. And I appreciate you giving us a strategy, Lord, a biblical strategy for how to live and react to all of this in a way that brings glory to Christ. Lord, I pray by the power of your Spirit that you would help us to go out and live like Moses and like Joseph and like the Lord Jesus Himself and return meekness for mistreatment. Lord, remind us that meekness is not weakness.
In fact, it is great strength. It's the strength to trust God instead of trusting ourselves for our own plan and for our own defense for life. Lord, change our lives because we were here today and because we sat under the teaching of the eternal Word of God. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. And what did God's people say? Amen.
