60+ Luncheon - Pastor to 60+ Dave Skorupa - February 26, 2026

All right.

Bear with me for just a moment.

For the past several weeks, Bobby Dyer, in his wisdom, has been reminding me to turn on a recording so that we can share what we're doing with people online a few hours later after the lunch is over.

However, I have not been able to remember to turn this on.

And so we've had several weeks go by where we've had lessons in here, but we haven't been able to share them online.

It's not Bobby Dyer's fault, it's my fault.

Because what normally happens is at about this time is there's some distraction that takes place somewhere in the room, and I focus on that distraction more than turning this recording device on.

But today I got it nailed, so Brother Bobby, this one's for you.

Okay.

We'll give it a little bit of a pause so he can remove all of that in the recording.

All right, I'm glad that you're here with me today as we go into the book of Numbers in our chronological Bible study.

Now, when you started looking at those early chapters, it read almost more like an accounting spreadsheet than it did the Word of God, right?

Because you have so many people from this tribe and so many people from that tribe and all of these numbers of people.

Now, in my Sunday school teaching of several months ago, I was able to sort of take all of those different numbers of the different tribes and show where all of those different people camped.

And they camped either north, south, east, or west of the tabernacle.

And if you measured all of that out, what you discovered was that as the people of Israel were camping in the wilderness, they camped in a shape that was very much like a cross.

A cross.

One very large extension, then you had the tabernacle, and then on the other side a somewhat shorter extension.

And then going north and south from the tabernacle, you had these links that are almost equal in number.

And I say almost, and sometimes people say, oh, so it was almost across, but it wasn't across.

And I'm like, oh, come on.

You know, in the human body, if you were to take a tape measure and you were to measure my left arm and you were to measure my right arm, and it the same would be the true for every single one of you, one of your arms is actually longer than the other.

And so when those numbers almost match up for what we would call the cross beam where Jesus' arms were nailed, we see that God in his perfection makes one just a little bit longer than the other one, because that is a reflection of the reality of the human body.

Then you get into Numbers a little further, and you have all of these stories of the people camping in different places.

As you get into the book of Numbers before you get to chapter 12, what you see is a section where, let's see here, you see a section where the people are complaining and they cause other Israelites to complain, and Moses has to deal with that.

There's a lot of complaining that goes on in the book of Numbers.

Whole lot of complaining.

And guess what happens to the people when they complain in the book of Numbers?

Not good things.

Not good things.

And you really, when you go through Numbers, I find that my heart goes out to Moses, who has to put up with all of that complaining.

And what we're gonna find today in chapter 12 is that the complaining wasn't limited to the people who were with Israel.

It wasn't limited to Israel itself.

It even got right into Moses' own family.

So we're gonna begin here in chapter 12, and let's begin in verse 1.

Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married, for he had married an Ethiopian woman.

So they said, Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses?

Has he not spoken through us also?

And the Lord heard it.

Now the man Moses was very humble, more humble than all the men who were on the face of the earth.

Suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, Come out, you three, to the tabernacle of meeting.

And so the three came out.

Then the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and he called Aaron and Miriam, and they both went forward.

Then the Lord said, Hear my words.

If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision.

I speak to him in a dream, not so with my servant Moses.

He is faithful in all my house.

I speak with him face to face, even plainly, and not in dark sayings.

And he sees the form of the Lord.

Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?

And so the anger of the Lord was aroused against them, and he departed.

And when the cloud departed from above the tabernacle, suddenly Miriam became leprous, as white as snow.

Then Aaron turned toward Miriam, and there she was, a leper.

Aaron said to Moses, Oh, my Lord, please do not lay this sin on us, in which we have done foolishly and in which we have sinned.

Please do not let her be as one dead whose flesh is half consumed when she comes out of his mother's womb.

So Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, Please heal her.

O God, I pray.

Then the Lord said to Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, would she not be shamed for seven days?

Let her be shut out of the camp seven days, and afterward she may be received again.

And so Miriam was shut out of the camp seven days.

And the people did not journey till Miriam was brought in again.

And afterward the people moved from Hazaroth and camped in the wilderness of Peran.

And that's where we will stop with today's reading.

Not a joyous story in the book of Numbers today.

I just want to clear something up really quick.

You see that the woman who is Moses' sister, her name is Miriam.

There are people who think that I named my daughter Miriam.

No, her name is Marian.

There's a difference.

Now, what's kind of funny there though is my best friend has a daughter and her name is Miriam, and I've never brought that up with him.

I just kind of let that go.

A couple of things I want to notice here.

If you have your Bible and we're in chapter 12, but if you go to chapter 11, what leads up to chapter 12, chapter 11 begins with an observation that the people complained and it displeased the Lord.

And the Lord sent fire to consume a little bit of the camp there because of their complaining.

Also, when you're in chapter 11, you get more complaining.

You find out that people who weren't even Israelites but had left Egypt with the Israelites to escape slavery, that they started complaining about the fact that they were eating manna every day.

Imagine that, you're being fed every day, and your response is to complain.

Well, their complaints, when those complaints met the ears of the Israelites, the Israelites didn't say, Hey, you're an outsider, why are you complaining?

Instead, the Israelites said, Yeah, you know, this manna is getting kind of old.

We are getting kind of tired of this.

And the people began to actually cry out, and they made a public spectacle of themselves.

They would go to the doorway of their homes and cry out so that other people could hear them.

And they said, We're so tired of this manna.

If we could only get some meat to eat.

And the Lord heard them.

And so what the Lord did is he sent a message saying, Okay, you want some meat?

All right.

And the Lord sent a tremendous number of quail to the Israelites.

So much so that the Bible says the quail was stacked up roughly three feet high.

And everyone spent the whole day and the whole night gathering quail.

And we're not sure about this, but the way the language in the Bible suggests is that some people were so hungry for quail that they decided to just go ahead and start eating the raw birds.

Okay?

Like well, you know, people do silly things when people are acting silly.

And that the Lord was so angry with them that he struck the people with a plague.

And I can't help but think, well, did the plague come from the quail that they were eating, or did the quail come from God doing something else?

I'm gonna side on the side of God doing something else because that sort of points more to the supernatural power of God.

But it struck them with a quail.

You would think after that that no one would be complaining about anything.

God said he would send them so much quail that it would be coming out of their nostrils.

I hesitated on saying that, but I thought most of you would be finished eating by now, so it would be alright.

But but they complained so much that God, not only did God show that he could do anything to satisfy their complaints, but he did it in such a way that he taught them a lesson that you shouldn't be complaining anymore.

And it's immediately after that story that we see that two more people decide to complain, and it's part of Moses' own family.

You know, it's one thing when people from the outside who aren't even a part of your people group, it's one thing when they complain.

And it's another thing when people who are in your people group complain.

But boy, when family complains, that's just the worst.

That's absolutely the worst.

We need to remember Moses' brother Aaron had been set aside in a special position as the high priest of all Israel.

He had been set aside to be the leader of the people in their sacrifices and in maintaining a proper relationship with Almighty God through what God had revealed he wanted them to do.

The way that verse one talks about this, it says that Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he'd married, for he had married an Ethiopian woman.

Now, normally, the way that things would be written, the person with the higher rank and the higher position of authority would be mentioned first.

The person with the lesser status would be mentioned second.

Yet in Numbers chapter 12, verse 1, it says Miriam, the sister, and Aaron the brother, spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman.

Numbers 12:1

So Miriam's name is mentioned first.

It's a real hot spot right there.

That sort of tells us that perhaps Miriam was the instigator and that Aaron went along with his sister.

And then we're told that their complaint against Moses was that he had married an Ethiopian woman.

Now, given that the outsiders had started all of the complaining about the quail, when they mentioned that Moses is married to an outsider, someone that's not an Israelite, there were probably people who were willing to hear that argument and say, Yeah, yeah, those outsiders, we wouldn't have complained about the manna if it weren't for those outsiders who got us all riled up.

And what's Moses doing being married to an outsider?

What's going on here?

And so the Israelites would have perhaps given him a little bit of a hearing.

On top of this, since the woman that Moses married was an Ethiopian, she probably had darker skin than the average Joe and Jane Israelite that were walking around.

And so people's prejudices might have been kicking in as well.

And so, as they are making this argument against Moses for marrying an Ethiopian woman, we think that that's actually what's going on here until we get to the very next verse, verse 2.

Because in verse 2, we're told that Miriam and Aaron said, Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses?

Has he not spoken through us also?

That is a direct challenge to the authority of Moses as God's chosen leader during this time in the wilderness.

They are basically saying, you know, go we follow Moses because God talks to Moses, but you know something?

God talks to Aaron.

And you know something?

God talks to me.

And in fairness, Miriam had spoken under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit when she recited a poem shortly after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea.

So she wasn't lying there.

And God had spoken to Aaron, not all of it was good.

At one point, God told Aaron, hey, I had to blast your sons because they offered profane fire.

Don't you get upset?

We covered that in here two weeks ago.

But there were other times where God had spoken and Aaron was present when God was speaking.

And so the thing is, we think that, okay, Miriam and Aaron, they're basically claiming they're on the same leadership ground as Moses, but then we see these four words, and God heard it.

And that sort of puts everything in a different light.

We're told in verse 3 that Moses was very humble, more humble than all men who were on the face of the earth.

Now we think that Moses wrote Numbers, and it must have felt very strange for him to write that sentence.

And some people even go so far as to say that since that sentence is there, it's proof that Moses couldn't have written the book of Numbers.

But it reminds me of a story.

Years ago, before I got into ministry, I was in the nonprofit sector.

And the area of the nonprofit sector that I worked in was in communications, public relations, a lot of copywriting, all of this thing.

And from time to time, I had to make award certificates for people that the nonprofit was recognizing as a community champion.

And so I would design the certificate, I'd choose the paper, I would, on the computer, I would come up with a design and make it look all official.

I would choose the frame and the glass and the mounting, all of this kind of thing.

And then one year they decided to honor me for some stuff that I had done, and I had to make my own award for myself.

They didn't even have the common decency to say, hey, we're gonna get someone else to make the award for you.

All right.

Now, in their defense, they were already they were honoring like 12 people at the same time, and I was one of the 12, okay?

But that day, it felt so strange that day.

I was designing that award, and there was my name on it, and all this kind of thing.

And I had to I had to go through the process of recording an honor to myself.

And then I see this passage where it says Moses was very humble more than all men who were on the face of the earth.

And rather than think that that is proof that Moses was not involved in the writing of Numbers, I just sort of sympathize with Moses and said, Yeah, been there, done that.

You know, that that that must that was an awkward day.

It was an awkward day when Moses was having to write that under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Uh we know that suddenly the Lord comes on the scene.

The Bible even uses the word suddenly in verse 4.

That means unexpectedly, God appears and he tells Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, come out of the door of the tabernacle and come to see me.

Now, let's uh move here just a little bit, because I'm getting ahead of my notes.

All right.

So God has Moses, Aaron, and Miriam come to him at the tabernacle.

Last week, did we do the two goats here last week?

Thank you.

I'm doing so much I'm getting confused in my lessons.

You remember that when we were talking about the two goats last week, that one of the things that the priest did is he took the blood from the goat that was sacrificed and he sprinkled it on the seat, the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.

I mentioned last week that the Ark of the Covenant, which was in the tabernacle, was seen as the throne of Almighty God.

That's why, as you read through Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and eventually Deuteronomy, you see that the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire that was with the Israelites always settles over the tabernacle.

Settles over the Ark of the Covenant.

The tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, was seen as the throne seat of God.

In many ways, the tabernacle was the capital building of God's work with the Israelites during the time that they were going through the Exodus.

Months ago, we covered the temple, which was built many generations later, and how it was modeled on the tabernacle.

And so this idea of anything that happened at the tabernacle was happening in the official capacity of God as the ruler over the Israelites.

And so he tells them, he doesn't just settle the score right there.

He says, come to the tabernacle.

In other words, he's about to do something that's official and needs to be seen that way.

Isn't that neat how God, in his way of doing things, even though he is Almighty God and anywhere he is, is a place of official business.

But for our sake, as flawed human beings, he allows us to have things like a church building or the Old Testament temple or the Old Testament tabernacle as places to go.

The Lord says to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, come on out to the tabernacle, and they go there.

Verse 5 says, The Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and speaks to them, and the Lord, the way he speaks, beginning in verses 6 through 8, it is in a poetic style that is pretty much lost once it's translated into English.

But if you're reading in your Bible, you'll see that what the Lord says is indented in a way that you don't normally see other things that the Lord says.

And what the Lord basically says is, you know, I've got prophets, and I speak to my prophets in a certain way.

I speak to them in dreams.

What the Lord is saying is that he speaks to his prophets in a way where there is a layer of separation between him and his prophets, and that layer of separation is not present with the way that he interacts with Moses.

Now, if you jump forward into your New Testament time, you find Jesus is having lots of arguments with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and all these people.

They had varying opinions as to whether or not the prophets were, the writing of the prophets were inspired by God, but the one thing they all agreed on was that the writings of Moses were inspired by God.

Because they understood that what God wrote under the Lord's authority happened in a special way that no other person enjoyed.

Moses met with the Lord face to face.

Now we know that to see the face of the Lord would be to be struck dead in a moment.

So somehow God did something, and there was still a layer of separation there in some way, shape, or form.

But Moses met with the Lord in a way that wasn't rivaled by anyone else.

It was unique.

And yet, what are Miriam and Aaron doing?

They're saying, oh.

Moses is no different than we are.

You know, we've been involved in what God is doing.

Moses isn't special.

There's nothing special about Moses and what's God's reaction?

He's taking them to the woodshed of the tabernacle and teaching them a lesson.

Verse 9 says, the anger of the Lord was aroused against them, and then the Lord departed.

And when the cloud departed from above the tabernacle, suddenly Miriam became leprous as white as snow.

So what happens is when the Lord, when the cloud of the Lord departs and they're able to see each other again, there's Miriam.

And Miriam is struck with leprosy.

She is as white as snow.

I don't know exactly what that looked like, but I know that it was enough of a shock that Aaron cried out.

And he, it's kind of interesting because Aaron, when the cloud lifts, Aaron doesn't turn to Moses.

He turns to Miriam, almost like he's waiting for his new set of instructions.

And then when he sees that she is leprous, he turns to Moses and says to Moses, Oh my Lord, lowercase L Lord.

As if to say, okay, Moses, I'm not going to be under her authority because look at her.

I'm going to be under your authority, Moses.

He shifts gears again, and his loyalty returns to his brother.

Now this tells us something about Aaron, doesn't it?

After all, it was Aaron who, under the influence of the Israelites, when Moses was talking to God, Aaron was the one who made the golden calf.

Right?

And when Moses came down, and Moses says, What are you doing?

It was Aaron who said, Well, you were gone, and the people gave me this gold, and I put it in the fire and outhopped this calf.

He wouldn't even take direct responsibility for what it was that he had done.

So now we're about a year after that, and Moses' sister says to Aaron, Oh, nothing special about Moses.

You and I could do this job.

And Aaron's like, oh, okay.

You get the impression that Aaron was kind of weak.

He was a weak-willed man who was easily led by others.

And that makes you wonder why in the world did the Lord call that man to be the high priest?

I don't have an answer for that, but I do have something to ponder.

I do have something to ponder.

If Aaron as high priest was a strong-backed man who was a natural leader of men, people might have started worshiping Aaron rather than worshiping the God that Aaron was serving.

Okay.

So let's keep going here.

Because I want to show you that two more things before we close.

First, when Miriam is struck with the leprosy, God could have at that moment just left her in that state.

And he would have been perfectly justified in doing that.

Because she was trying to upset the leadership structure that was present among the people that he had rescued from slavery.

But instead, what he does is he makes her leprosy last for a short time, a short but perfect time, seven days.

God created the world in six days, rested on the seventh.

Seventh throughout Scripture is often seen as a number of completion or perfection.

So Miriam is going to be struck for seven days.

She was immediately sent outside of the camp, which limited the number of people who would see her in that terrible situation.

There was a mercy there.

And finally, God could have put Miriam outside the camp with that leprous condition, and then the cloud of the pillar of cloud or the pillar of fire could have moved somewhere, requiring everyone to pick up their tents and follow where the Lord was moving.

But instead, God stayed put there in that spot so that Miriam could go through the seven days and then be restored to the people.

Now, again, on Sunday morning recently, because we're in Bible recap, we found ourselves in the book of Leviticus on Sunday morning with a class that I'm helping out with teaching.

And in Leviticus chapter 14, there are all of these steps that a person is supposed to take in order to be declared clean of leprosy.

Leviticus 14 · chapter mention

Do you remember this?

It's very bizarre, very strange to our reading at least, this passage.

But there are pictures here that are very helpful.

First off, the person who had been struck with leprosy had to go to the high priest, and the high priest had to examine that person to make sure that the leprosy had been removed.

And so I imagine Miriam going to her brother and her brother having to examine her to make sure that the leprosy was gone, and the whole time her brother is thinking, I could have been struck like this just as much as she was.

And finding her to be clean, they would then go through a system of sacrifices.

The first step involved some birds, and some birds would be killed, and some birds would be set free.

And this goes back to our story last week of the two goats, if you will.

One has to be sacrificed in order to show that sin has to be punished.

The other goes free as a reminder that the sin is now gone and isn't coming back.

Y'all ever try to chase a bird that flies away?

You ever try that?

My daughter's got two parakeets, so I guess I do too.

And one of them's name is Bluey and the other's name is Lucky.

The one that's bluey is blue, and the one that's named Lucky is green.

And so Bluey and Lucky had this irritating habit of getting out of their cage when my daughter opens the lid of the cage for a few hours.

And I've had to chase these birds around my house.

It's absolutely terrible.

It's a what a waste of time it is.

I'm tempted to open the door.

But chasing you, once a bird gets away like that, you're not going to find that bird.

That bird is gone.

And so one bird goes free, the other is sacrificed.

The person who had leprosy has to wash their complete body and they have to shave off all of their hair, even their eyebrows and all of the hair of their body.

They have to shave it all off.

And they do this for two reasons.

One, so that the priest can confirm that leprosy hasn't shown up anywhere else.

But two, have you ever seen someone who's had all of their hair shaved off, or perhaps their hair has fallen out because they're going through some kind of treatments or something like that?

It doesn't matter whether that person is 25 or 85, when you see a person who's had all of their hair shaved off, the thing they look most like is a newborn baby.

It's just the way it is.

And so here you would have this picture of the person cleansed from leprosy looking like a newborn baby.

In other words, they're they're new in the eyes of everyone who knows them, everyone who sees them.

And if you know anything about Passover and your New Testament and everything, whenever we see sacrifice of lamb, you should be thinking, does this point to Jesus?

Alright?

A lamb would be sacrificed.

They would take oil and they would mix it with some of the blood from the sacrificed lamb.

And then the priest would put that on the right earlobe, the right thumb, and the right big toe of the person who'd been cleansed from leprosy.

Very strange.

They would mix it with the oil, and this mixture would be applied to these three places.

And then the rest of the oil would be poured over the shaved head of the person who had been cleansed from leprosy.

What's going on with all of this?

Well, it's a picture, ladies and gentlemen.

It's a picture.

The shed blood of the sacrificed lamb is pointing to the shed blood, the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.

The person who has been cleansed from leprosy symbolically has been cleansed from sin, because sin and leprosy were seen as linked in the Old Testament teaching.

Moving forward, a lamb has been sacrificed.

We think of the sacrifice of Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, and his blood has been applied to the right ear of the person.

Therefore, what they hear and think about should go through the filter of the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

Blood has been applied to their thumb.

The things that they do with their hands, the things that they make, that should go through the filter of the shed blood and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The blood and the oil has been put on the big toe of the right foot.

Where they go, where they travel, should go through the filter of the shed blood and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Finally, the oil is taken and it's placed over their head, symbolizing the idea that all of them, their complete being, should live life from that point on through the knowledge of the kingship, as they would anoint a king in the Old Testament, the kingship of the one whose blood was shed, Jesus Christ the Lord.

All of these are pictures.

And what do we call it when a person is saved?

We say that that person is born again.

Well, here's this person that looks like a newborn baby, having all of these different symbols of Jesus and his sacrifice being put upon them.

That Jesus Christ is the one who cleanses us of our sin.

These people have been cleansed of their leprosy.

And so here we have this picture being enacted upon what many would call the premier female leader of Israel, Miriam, the sister of Moses.

Do you think people were interested in that day when she was restored to the people of Israel?

No one got healed of leprosy in seven days in Old Testament times.

The fact that this was happening so quickly, when she was welcomed back in the camp, it's not like her hair grew back immediately.

Another part of what's talked about in Leviticus is you were supposed to stand outside your tent so that people could see you and see that you were no longer a leper from a period of time.

I'll bet every woman within a five-mile radius was trying to make a beeline to Miriam to talk to her about what was going on.

And what would they see?

They would see a woman with not a hair on her head, who looked like a newborn baby with these weird blood stains on her ear and on her thumb and on the big toe of her right foot, all of that pointing to Jesus Christ.

Miriam did a better job serving the Lord as a recovered leper than she did saying, I'm in a position where I should be treated equal to Moses, even though he's been uniquely chosen by God.

In both cases, God was glorified.

Amen.

And I would apologize for that, but I wanted to get you guys out at a decent hour.

So let's go ahead and close in prayer and we'll be dismissed.

Heavenly Father, we love you.

We thank you.

We rejoice in these pictures of the Old Testament that point us to you.

Lord, we thank you for your servant Moses, for Miriam and for Aaron.

We are thankful that you use their lives to point us to Jesus, to freedom in Jesus Christ.

As we leave here today, may we be men and women who continue to be dedicated to the reading and meditating of your word.

Bless this church as we reach out to so many who need to hear the gospel.

And Lord, we we just pray for your loving arms of comfort and protection at all times.

We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, and God's people said, Amen.

We are dismissed.