The Woodshed

March 16

Numbers 12-13

Psalm 34:15-22

Proverbs 8:10-13

Mark 13:24-37

The Woodshed

“And they said, ‘Has Yahweh indeed spoken only through Moses?  Has He not spoken through us as well?’  And Yahweh heard it.  (Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.)  Suddenly Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron and to Miriam, ‘You three come out to the tent of meeting.’  So the three of them came out.”  Numbers 12:2-4 LSB

Thankfully I was never taken out to the woodshed as a child, but I have heard many stories about  kids being taken to the woodshed for a good old-fashioned spanking.  Whenever I read about this encounter with Miriam and Aaron, I always think of a woodshed.  God heard Miriam and Aaron grumbling about Moses and He called them out to the “woodshed” to deal with it.  He defended Moses and told them that Moses was indeed the one He spoke through.  He then asked why they were not afraid to speak against His servant Moses.  Instead of a spanking, God made Miriam leprous.  Aaron and Moses begged God to heal her.  He did heal her, but He gave her a seven-day time out outside the camp to think about her actions.  Divine discipline at its finest. 

            We are given another bit of information in these verses that is very important.  We are told that Moses was very humble, the most humble man on the face of the earth.  If we look at the Bible as a whole there seems to be nothing God detests more than pride.  There are numerous verses in the Old Testament and the New Testament about the dangers and consequences of pride.  (Proverbs 16:18-19, 26:12, Mark 7:20-23, James 4:6.)  Likewise, there are many verses about humility and the fact that God loves a humble heart. (Proverbs 22:6, Micah 6:8, Luke 14:11, Philippians 6:3-4.) Miriam and Aaron were guilty of pride and God humbled them.  We aren’t told specifically why Miriam was the one that God punished with leprosy and not Aaron, but it is implied that Aaron humbled himself, confessed his sin and begged for forgiveness for both of them, but Miriam did not.  Perhaps her time alone outside the camp gave her the needed time to humble herself and then be restored to fellowship.   

            God hates pride because it is a rejection of His authority and is ultimately a form of rebellion against Him.  Pride elevates our importance and our will above God’s will.  God knows the devastating effect pride has on our lives.  It destroys relationships, ruins our ability to love God and other people and it causes us to focus our attention on me, me, me.  “Doing nothing from selfish ambition or vain glory, but with humility of mind regarding one another as more important than yourselves, not merely looking out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.  Have this way of thinking in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men. He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  Philippians 2:3-8 LSB  It is far better to humble ourselves than to have to be humbled by God.