It Affects Everyone

Numbers 12

Have you ever been jealous of someone else? Maybe it was because of their position or even they had something that you did not? Maybe all the other people like them more than you? Jealousy is a bad thing that can destroy us. It can take all of us and make us a miserable person. Jealousy can result into bitterness. In this chapter of Numbers Moses is confronted by his two siblings, his brother Aaron and his sister Miriam. They were wondering why God was speaking through Moses and not anyone else. When reading you can sense a little jealousy coming from them. This is the typical example of brothers and sisters not getting along with each other. I know my sister and I have been mad at each other and we would say to our parents why does she or he get to do that. We always said the classic line, “That’s not fair.” They were doing this little argument and we see that the Bible describes Moses as being meek. Meek is being humble and patient and controlling your power in a right way.

God decides to have a meeting with the three of them. Again we see God being patient with all of them and explains to them that he speaks to Moses as if he was speaking face to face with him. God basically told Aaron and Miriam that he uses whom he chooses and Moses is being used. God leaves the meeting but there are some consequences with Miriam’s actions; she became leprous. This obviously got everyone’s attention and Moses cried out to heal her and he said give her 7 days to be away from the camp then she will be healed.

Sin affects Everyone

The last couple of verses of the chapter we see that the whole camp could not move on until Miriam was back into the camp and clean and ready to go. Her sin not only affected her physically but it affected the whole camp. Many times we do not realize that our sin affects other people too. We may think that it only affects us and we can handle the consequences but the truth is our sin affects everyone around us. It affects our family and our friends and can bring even those down who look up to us. Sin is such a selfish thing that we don’t realize that we not only disobey God but it can hurt those around us too. We need to think about our actions before we do anything and always ask, is this pleasing to the Lord? We should also ask, “will this affect other people?”