There’s some thing about people who end up famous that we somehow know or perhaps know or went to school with, people who do something amazing and all of a sudden everyone knows about them. This may be hard to believe but I have meet a few famous people, I used to live next door to a couple called Arthur and May O’Neill and their daughter was a singer, yip Sharon O’Neill, I have meet Sharon O’Neill.
Not that long ago I was talking to a local lady about a hall booking and it turns out she’s got a daughter whose a singer also her name was Jill Westenra yes she’s Hayley’s mum, talk about two degrees of separation. But then there’s that time not long ago I meet the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition both on the same day as part of the earthquake response.
The interesting thing is that these people all have Mum’s and Dad’s and likely have siblings who just see them as Sharon, or Hayley or John and Phil.
Who probably just ring them up occasionally and talk to them about what their weeks been like or how it was that they were on the ‘tele’, and did you know that your nephew Jeff has just had chicken pox and what about Aunty Ann having a stroke but did you know she’s doing okay now.
You see even famous people are able in most cases to relate to someone, but there can be an issue arise with this, that’s if their nearest and dearest don’t understand just how special their sibling or child is. Our maybe there was a case of the old green eyed monster and no matter how successful and clever they are family try to thwart their attempts at success. If Mr and Mrs O’Neill had told Sharon she would be better of putting her efforts into a gardening apprenticeship, we wouldn’t have had the music for the film “Smash Palace” or Haley’s siblings told her everyone could sing as well as she could, the album “Prue” would never have happened. Or Phil and Johns folks told them they had delusions of grandeur and to get off their high horses, we might have just ended up with a couple of blokes who bored everyone around them silly with their talk about politics.
The truth is that while we are all special and are seen to have an equal weighting in the eyes of God, some people are just ‘outstanding’ in some aspect, it’s what makes them stand out, why we give them the lead or pay to hear them perform.
There are times also when especially gifted individuals stand out leading spiritually, God so empowers them with his Holy Spirit that they stand out on his behalf.
In the church we have a five fold ministry established by the Holy Spirit of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers whose roles are there to “Prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12-13)
Funny that I find my self in the teacher role, with a few notable exceptions I used to despise teachers at school. One of my favourite jokes was: What’s the difference between God and School Teachers, (Answer) God doesn’t walk around all day thinking he’s a teacher!
Now one of the warty great people I talked about last month was Moses one of the greatest, a mighty prophet also. The truth is that Moses was a great leader but he was not always flavour of the month, and even his siblings, who probably should have known better grumbled about him. We have this from Numbers 12, (Read Numbers 12.)
You see what had happened here was dear old Miriam had got her nose out of joint and it appears if the commentators are right, she ear bashed Aaron about Moses marrying that Cushite woman, a Cushite being an East African likely an Ethiopian. There was nothing wrong about this marriage in God’s eyes, as Cushite’s were not named as peoples that the Israelites were not to marry. It’s thought that Mrs Moses likely took a fair amount of Moses attention, and was there to listen and give suggestions as any worthy wife would, perhaps Miriam didn’t get to have the opportunity’s to talk with Moses like she did before this marriage, and that her loyalty card at the Nomad Café hadn’t been stamped for some time.
Then Aaron and Miriam spoke about how God had spoken through them also and really started to down play the relationship of Moses with God and Moses leadership of Israel.
Of interest here is the comment that Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on earth. It is thought as Moses wrote the book Numbers, there are two thoughts at least about this sentence that he was so humble that he wrote this under God’s inspiration, or the second and the thought I favour, that this was added by a later scribe who knew of Moses humility.
We then have God appearing to the three of them, Moses, Aaron and Miriam who were called at the same time to the tent of meeting, The Lord appearing in a pillar of cloud, he summoned Aaron and Miriam to him and spoke about just how special Moses was, not like the other prophets, but God spoke to him “face to face, clearly and not in riddles, he sees the form of the Lord”. Then the question “Why then are you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” The next line says it all, “The anger of the Lord burned against them, and he left them.”
1) The truth is that while we are out of sorts with God and remain outside his will he will not presence himself with us, tha does not mean we are not in his presence, that’s not to say that he looses interest in us, or that he is not concerned for us it means that in His Holiness he can not stay spiritually united with us, He may have His say as He did in this case and wait for the occurrence of that quaint old word to occur in a persons heart “repentance’. If this does not occur we are left with something. Just like dear old Miriam we are left Leprous, diseased, untouchable, and unclean. We are left with our disgrace!
Right now you are probably thinking Andrew has lost the plot on this one, he’s over stepped the mark, I’ve never had leprosy and I’ve been out of sorts with God before. You’d be right I’ve taken this a little metaphorically, but I tell you what, it’s closer to the truth than what you might realise.
2) There are lepers among us; there are sick people who require spiritual healing because of their actions. They struggle to get close to God because they have sinned and have failed to repent. There are people out there who carry their
dis-ease that ‘cloak of shame’ as a blanket they hide behind, adding to its weave as they continue a life of excuses and sin.
Like Miriam their sin finds them out, they are like us in so many ways, at times we are them, there are however two tracks of whiteness. Two roads to being snow white. Leprous or washed clean as snow.
The whiteness of the leper, white like snow, the full blown disease, untouchable. Or the whiteness of those cleansed in the Blood of Jesus, this from Revelation 7:14 “”These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Jesus).
While this passage is about the great tribulation, we are all to wear robes washed clean by the blood of Jesus.
3) What occurred with Miriam was that she was put out of the camp for seven days, because she was shamed, disgraced. She carried her shame, her disgrace physically as a leper. Now in this Politically Correct world we live in, we are told that shame/disgrace is an unhealthy emotion, its not.
It becomes unhealthy when we cover it with pride or when we choose to ignore it, shame brings with it a focus on the reality of our situation. With shame, with disgrace comes the opportunity for humility. With humility comes the realisation of where we stand in the true order of things. Dear old Miriam, was jealous and started into a bit of one up man ship with Moses, she dragged Aaron into it. God got involved because the leadership of the nation was in a dire position, the nation could have crumbled there and then.
God spoke to Miriam; she was disgraced and was seen to be leprous, physically. Unclean she was confined outside the camp. Interesting the stance of Aaron, immediately he pleads with Moses, “Please my lord, (lower case L) do not hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed.” Moses then pleads with God to heal Miriam.
God’s response is “If her father had spit in her face”, (an old custom of the time) “would she not have been in disgrace for seven days? Confine her outside the camp for seven days; after that she can be brought back.”
4) Miriam was disgraced because of her stance before God about Moses, spiritually she was off skew, then returned to her people they did not leave her behind, they did not leave her outside the camp forever. There was enough time for her to realise her sin and repent.
If we feel we can judge her remember, she was a prophetess and one of the Nation of Israel’s great leaders, she too sinned and needed to be put right with God and with her younger brother Moses, her leader.
So for us today, where doe’s that leave us, do we do things we shouldn’t? Of course we do, barely a day goes by when if we are honest we commit some sin against our fellow man or woman or against God. Am I wrong?
It’s the way we react to those things that is important.
The old brush off “Everyone else is doing it, so what?”
There’s the “It’s not a big deal no one got hurt.”
Or “No one will ever know.”
Maybe “It’s just between me and them.”
Or, my favourite “Whatever!”
5) Whatever, if we know our disgrace if we feel shame, there’s hope…the emotion was given for a reason, so that the dis-ease we feel does not become the leprous disease that covers us, keeping us from the fellowship of God’s people, the disease that makes us untouchable, that separates us from God’s Holy Spirit. Shame is an indication that we are to come back to God, for some that they come to God for the first time.
6) That by his Grace their disgrace is no more. This from Pauls letter to the Ephesians Church, “In him we have redemption through his blood, for the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. (Ephesians 1:7)
7) Another thing that comes out of this passage is that we are not to judge those who are out of sorts with God; they know they have painted over their sins, shrugged it off, and ignored them. Truth is, disgrace lingers deep in a soul. It will do until it’s given up to God, until in His grace it is removed.
Grace over comes all that, these words from the Lead singer of U2, Bono Vox,
Grace, she takes the blame,
She covers the shame,
Removes the stain,
It could be her name,
What once was hurt,
What once was friction, what left a mark,
No longer stings,
Because Grace makes beauty,
Out of ugly things.
Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.
In Miriam we see the Leaper made right through the realisation of her sin. In all of us, spiritual disease is with the Blood of Jesus washed clean, with the blood of Jesus washed whiter than the snow for, when we repent no shame need remain, disgrace is gone.
