4-26-26 If You Spit in God's Face (Numbers)

Join Pastor Ken as he looks at Numbers 12 and the issues of racism.

Transcript

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So now when I was a boy, there was a certain Alabama coach who was known for not letting black kids play on his team, no matter how good they were. And his assistants were recruiting, and they found a young man that was an incredible running back. But they knew the coach's attitude, so they basically had him come out to practice one day, and they said, Coach, we got somebody we really want you to see. Of course, he kind of frowned when he saw the young man out there and they handed him the ball. He ran through the defensive team in practice, breaking tackles, jumping over people, spinning around, ran all the way to the goal line. And they turned to look and see what the coach was saying. He said, Wow, look at that Indian run. See, racism has a way of making us look ridiculous, doesn't it? It has a way of making us look foolish. In fact, sometimes the opposite effect, the attempts to incorporate people, can also look very ridiculous. I was reading in one of my Civil War magazines that there was a monument placed in Ohio to Chinese Americans who had served in the Union in the Civil War. And they had done some research and decided that they had found some soldiers that fit in that category, so they raised money and put a monument in. And it turned out their evidence that these were Chinese Americans was the last name Lee. I wonder if Robert E. Lee knew that he was Chinese American. The illogic of race and racism makes people look ignorant. It causes problems. But it's not a new problem. It's one that goes all the way back to the scripture. So take a look with me, if you will, at Numbers chapter 12, beginning with verse 1. And stand as you are able for the reading of God's word. Numbers 12, 1 through 15. While they were at Hazaroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married. For he had indeed married a Cushite woman. And they said, Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also? And the Lord heard it. Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth. Suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting. So the three of them came out. Then 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. When there are prophets among you, I the Lord make myself known to them in visions. I speak to them in dreams. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly, 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. When the cloud went away from their tent, Miriam's skin had become diseased as white as snow. And Aaron turned to Miriam and saw that she was diseased. Then Aaron said to Moses, O my Lord, do not punish us for a sin that we have so foolishly committed. Do not let her be like one stillborn, whose flesh is half consumed when it comes out of its mother's womb. And Moses cried to the Lord, saying, O God, please heal her. But the Lord said to Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut out of the camp for seven days, and after that she may be brought in again. So Miriam was shut out of the camp for seven days, and the people did not set out on the march until Miriam had been brought in again. This is the word of God for the people of God. Please be seated. Racism, no matter what form it comes in, brings out the worst of us. It's built often on fear, prejudice, hatred, injustice. Abraham Lincoln famously said that we should call upon the better angels of our nature. A man who knew as well as any president does the effects of racism that had torn a country apart. He knew that racism draws on the worst demons of our nature usually, and that we even find racism among our heroes of faith. Aaron and Miriam criticize the leadership of Moses. The idea begins with that they are talking behind his back. It says they start talking about his leadership and complaining about his wife, probably to anyone who will listen to them. Now, of course, it becomes clear that the real issue is that it's a power grab. They want to have more of the power and authority that he has, but instead of coming up and saying that straight up, they start spreading bad news, saying things that are destructive behind the God-appointed leader's back. They claim that they should have at least equality with Moses. Aren't they from the same family? Aren't they siblings? Now we know by this point the quality of Aaron's leadership when he's left alone with the people. They end up with a golden calf, they end up in trouble, and he tries to shift the blame on the people when he clearly participated in making the golden calf. Miriam, though, has been positive up to this point. She's probably the sister who watches over Moses as a baby when he is found by Pharaoh's daughter. When they come out of Egypt and have that incredible parting of the sea and coming to the other side, she is the one who sings a song of praise and celebration. She is called a prophetess. But here she joins with her brother in a grab for power. And Moses' wife's race becomes a way to attack him. Now, this doesn't seem to be Zipporah. In fact, there's one place that says that he sent Zipporah away, which can be a divorce type thing, or maybe she's passed away, or maybe there's an additional wife. We don't know exactly what's going on, but we're clearly told that she is Cushite. Cush in ancient Hebrew is Ethiopia. It's the land that's south of Egypt, Sudan. It's a land where the people have dark-colored skin. We know that aspect of racism. It has a long history in the United States, in politics, especially. Playing the race card has been going on from the beginning of our history as a nation. It resulted in the most destructive war that we've ever had. It resulted in a race-based slavery that was very destructive to our history, and it still gets done today. How often have people used this to distract others, to get them on their side, to put them down, to try to make themselves look better? You know, they've done studies that show that the poorer classes of white Southerners actually suffered from the existence of slavery. It made wages go down, it made it more difficult for them to make a living. It was only the upper class that owned the slaves that really got benefits from that. And yet these poor Southerners fought often on the side of the South for slavery in the Civil War because it made them feel superior. It made them feel special despite their inability to benefit from it. Many Northerners didn't want to fight the Civil War because they feared that if the slaves were released, they might come to the North and create competition for jobs and impact them negatively in a financial sense. And then, of course, we know what happened after the Civil War, where laws were passed and racism was able to continue to enslave people who had been officially made free. The Archibunkers of the world are still around today. You remember Archie, that guy that was just so ridiculous because he was so prejudiced about everything and typically made a fool of himself constantly by being so prejudiced and put everybody down. Today, race is used in lots of different ways for politics, for jobs, for housing things, for discrimination, to get an advantage, to get out of trouble. When I was a young graduate student, I taught at a little Baptist school that was close to where I lived in Georgia. I taught a night class, and one of the students I caught cheating, I not only saw him copying his person sitting next to him's test, but he turned in a paper. He didn't even bother to retype it. He just marked out the person who had originally done it and wrote his name above it. So I reported him, and then I got a call from the president who said, Well, he's saying that you're just doing this because you're racist and he's a black student and you're white. Now, there ended up being five other black students in the class who all said, Yeah, he was cheating. We saw him too. And so it didn't go anywhere, but it reminded me of how sometimes that card can be played lots of different directions. God is not pleased with our human racism. God answers the challenge that the humble Moses will not deal with himself. He steps in, he calls Aaron and Miriam to the tent. He tells them, in no uncertain terms, I have chosen to make Moses' leadership something that's real. I speak to him in a special way. He has a special relationship with me that you don't have. And then he gives this ironic, poetic, you might say, punishment to Miriam. The one who has complained about Moses' dark-skinned wife is turned white as snow with leprosy, with the skin disease that's feared in ancient times, that they had to be declared unclean. They'd be put out of the camp because it might spread. Others might get it, and they look like somebody that was dead while still alive. She is struck with the opposite of what she had complained about in that sense. And she has to petition Moses, the one she's complained against, her and Aaron, in order to intercede for her to heal her. And God says, nope, she will stay leprous for a week. If you dishonored your father and he spit in your face, you had to be unclean in a week. If you spit in your father's face, you had to be unclean for a week, and they have dishonored God as well as Moses by questioning his leadership and by the way that they have done it. Now, at this point, you might be thinking, now, wait a minute, God may not be racist, but he sounds like he's sexist. Didn't Aaron also rebel? Why is he not also punished when Miriam is? Well, again, the scripture's really silent on that. He does get upset about the punishment. What I think is going on here is he's the priest. He's the one that offers the daily offerings. He's the one that is the one that offers their sin offerings and takes care of all the holy things. And if he's made unclean for a week, they don't have a priest to go into the sanctuary and do so. And so it's concentrated instead on her, even though the effect is on Aaron, who also realizes they've done wrong. We're not sure. What we do know is God is no more pleased with racism today as he was then. It's based on a bad motive. It's based sometimes on fear, it's based on ignorance, it's based on an outward thing, it's based upon self-seeking, injustice, hatred. We can go down the line. None of these are Christian characteristics of how we're supposed to treat other people. Whether they're a brother and sister in Christ or whether they're somebody on the outside, we're not to treat them in any of these ways. And God expects us to act better as his people. That speech that Martin Luther King Jr. gave, the I Have a Dream speech. He talks about the future of a country where kids can play together, no matter what the color of their skin, where they have opportunities no matter what the color of their skin, where they are treated with justice, no matter what their racial group. I mean, isn't it kind of ironic that we judge people on the color of the skin, but we don't on the color of their eyes? I mean, what's the difference? The type of blood that we have, of course, they found out that, you know, it's not racially based. People have different blood types, but we don't judge them on the basis of that. Why would we be so ridiculous about it? Well, folks, we still have a long way to go. In our country, in our lives. Until we realize that the color of our skin or the way our hair acts or the shape of our nose or whatever, it's not a sign of somebody's character, whether somebody is good or bad, somebody's caring or uncaring. And we can't act like it's somebody else's problem because it's not. It's not a southern problem. You know, the most segregated city in America is Chicago, Illinois. We tried to do a ministry there, a ministry to the Hispanic churches, and we found out that the El Salvadorans don't worship with the Mexicans, who don't worship with the Colombians, and it's the same way in the white neighborhoods. You got the Czechs, you got the Poles, you got the Germans, they all had their own separate neighborhoods within the city. But what's even more embarrassing is that the most segregated time of the week in America is Sunday morning worship time. Now, part of that is people gravitate to different styles of worship. They feel more comfortable there, but part of that is there's been a long history of racism. And the churches that have concentrated so much on having this variety and having this group of uh those that are not the majority have typically been the ones that have that the least. It's like the more you concentrate on racism, the more it seems to be there. It's being able to see beyond the outer factors to the hearts of people. Or as my friend Bob Phillips says, I choose my socks on the basis of the color, I choose my friends on the basis of their character, about my connection with them, not some outward factor. Seeing people as individuals, caring about them as individuals. It's time to drop the weapon of racism, and it is a weapon, it's a weapon that's used on all different levels in all different ways. It refuses to see an individual, it sees a group instead. It refuses to judge fairly, it goes by prejudices and assumptions. The scripture tells us very clearly that God loves all the people he created and that we were all made of one, and he likes a rainbow, apparently, and he calls us to live as those who look on the heart, not the skin, not the outward factors, not the things that are just seen but really don't have an impact. Were you taught to be racist? Join the club for most of us, right? I mean, many of us were taught by our parents, our grandparents to be racist. I remember my grandfather and my mother, it was her dad, having a huge fight because I had brought a friend over to my grandparents' house that was a black friend from my class, and he made a remark about it that was very racist. And my mother tied into him, and we had this huge family blowout because that was the way he had been taught, it had been passed down, and she wasn't willing to have it go on. Do you have hesitations about others? You know, the best antidote is to get to know people, to get to know them as an individual, to connect with them. And when you get to know people, you find out they have the same hopes and desires and fears. They have the same things that that get them excited. And even if they have different things, often there are things that you understand and you can sympathize with and you can connect to, things that you might be able to love them for. It's easy to hate a faceless group. It's harder to hate a person that you know, a person who's been there for you, a person that you've connected with, a person that you've broken bread together, or shared a drink together, or laughed with or danced with or celebrated a sports victory with, or we could go down the line. And you find out that people are people. We all have the same need for a relationship with God. We all want to be loved and want to be able to love others without fear. We're all made in the image of God, and Jesus Christ died for all of us. And you know what the scripture says over and over again, and I think sometimes we don't realize this, is that he died in order to make a new people, a people made of all races, all colors, all backgrounds. Now it also says, if you go back to the book of Acts, that the first real huge blowout in the church was, can we let these Gentiles come in? Because they're a different race than us Jews. And God had to drag them kicking and screaming to the point of realizing that Christ died for all people. He loves all of us, and we need to learn to love each other because we're going to be spending eternity with these folks. That is, if we're right with God and trusting in Christ to get us there. God sent his son to die for people that he loved. And then he created a people of all races and tribes and nations and genders, and we can kind of go down the line. And he taught us to love one another, and he said, love one another as I have loved you. That's a tall order. Love one another as I have loved you. That kind of love goes way beyond our looks. He wants us to become brothers and sisters in Christ. A love that is deeper even than our family relationships, a love that requires the incredible work of the Holy Spirit within our hearts. But it's possible. And it happens. And some of you have experienced that yourself in your own journey. That realization that this isn't taking us anywhere, this racist stuff. This hatred stuff, this tribalism, this division, this fighting, this we could go on and on and on. We need to come together as the people who have been acclaimed by Jesus Christ, the people made into the family of God by Jesus Christ. The people who give their allegiance, their worship, their praise, their honor to Jesus Christ, the people that look to Jesus and get beyond these human divisions. Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, help us to be the people that trust in you and are able to go beyond the things that divide us, the things that are earthly, the things that are happenstance, the things that are on the outward aspects. Help us to be able to care for one another and bless one another. Give us the power to overcome the fear that makes us think that the other is going to be a threat to us. Help us to be clear-eyed. And to be able to relate to people on the basis of honesty and justice and truth, to reach out and bless because we have been blessed, to invite because we want to include all, to know that you love people and that we are called to be your people, your hands and feet in this world, loving others as well. Help us to trust in you and become mature Christians as we move beyond the past that we were a part of to the future that you have planned. For we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.