February 8 - Numbers 12:1-14:45

Miriam and Aaron are rebuked by God for not showing respect to Moses.  They didn't approve of his Cushite wife.  Typically, God wasn't excited when you took a foreign wife.  Were Miriam and Aaron jealous?  Where they doing that thing we do when we think it's unfair that someone is put in authority when they're so obviously fallible?  Leadership is not about perfect but how a failed person deals with their failure.  It's not about our sin.  It's about God's grace.  Our leaders are not perfect.  But the God they follow should be.  

Moses leadership is not because he's perfect.  It's because he has a relationship with someone who is.  And God reaffirms that this relationship is different.

He says, "When a prophet of the Lord is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions, I speak to him in dreams.  But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house.  With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord."

Is God inferring here that His relationship with Moses is superior to that of the dreamer Joseph?  

You know, we'd think it was pretty awesome of God spoke to us in dreams.  Many of us long for that kind of communication with the Father.  But there's something superior to visions.  There is plain sight.  Moses had a relationship that was more direct, more personal and less mystic.  He had a face to face relationship with God.  So what did the Lord's face look like to Moses?  Is looking at the face of God like staring up into the skies?  And what's it like to see your reflection in His eyes?

God's Eye -- The Helix Nebula.

The people don't have confidence that they can conquer...even with God.  They're looking for another way.  They're looking for something that doesn't require as much commitment, that doesn't force  you into looking into the eyes of God.  Only Caleb and Joshua give a good report and plead with the people to heed God.  (Oh, and by the way, Caleb is from the House of Judah.)

Plague 3 -- The spies who came back and gave a negative report are visited by a plague and die.