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Posted by Angella Diehl, Webmaster on April 27, 2024 under Featured | 
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Join us each Sunday at 10:45AM on Facebook for a live transmission of the Sunday service.
Sunday, April 28, 2024 Order of Service and Hymns
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Posted by Angella Diehl, Webmaster on under Sermons | Be the First to Comment
Sermon Notes for Sunday, April 28, 2024 (click to enlarge).
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on April 18, 2024 under Ask the Pastor | Be the First to Comment
A friend asks:
“If God forbad Israelites from marrying foreigners, why was it ok with Moses?”
* * * * * * * * * *
Great question! The passage you’re referencing is Numbers 12:1; where it says, ”Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman ['Cushite' in the original Hebrew] whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman.” So then; did Moses disobey the command of God? And were Miriam and Aaron right to complain against him?
There are a couple of ways to answer your question. One way–as some have approached it–is to suppose that the woman mentioned in Numbers 12 was the wife that Moses had already married. Her name was Zippora. She was first mentioned in Exodus 2:21. There was a sense in which a woman of Midian (which Zippora was) could be identified as Cushite (i.e., from Ethiopia). In Habakkuk 3:7; we’re told,
I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction;
The curtains of the land of Midian trembled (Habakkuk 3:7).
And if that’s the case, then Moses would have taken this ’Ethiopian/Midian woman’ as wife back at a time before he was called by God.
But there are also those who argue that this woman was someone that Moses married after he had married Zipporah–possibly as an additional wife, or as a second wife after Zipporah had passed away.
There’s not enough biblical data to know if Zipporah was dead or alive at the time of the event of Numbers 12. But let’s suppose that the woman in Numbers 12:1 was an Ethiopian or Cushite woman who was indeed a different woman from Zipporah. This would have been during the time of the very beginning of the journey to the promised land. The refusal of the people to enter the land had not happened yet (i.e., Numbers 13-14); and so, it would be before wandering in the wilderness as a punishment. And the command to not marry foreign women would not be given until forty years later when the next generation was about to enter the land; and it specifically applied to intermarriages with the people of that land.
Just before the second generation entered the land, Moses warned the people–in Deuteronomy 7:1-6–
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire.
“For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:1-6).
So; the command that God gave Moses for the people at that time was not yet in application at the time when Aaron and Miriam complained against Moses. What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be any rebuke from the Lord with regard to Moses’ action in this case. Remember that one of the great heroines of the Bible is Ruth, and she was a Moabite woman who embraced the God of Israel. Perhaps so also did Zipporah … or the other wife (if indeed she was another wife).
Personally, I suspect that the reason for Aaron and Miriam’s complaint against the wife had to do more with jealousy against Moses; and that the ’foreign wife’ (whoever she was) was merely a convenient excuse for their bitterness.
I hope this helps.
Blessings,
Pastor Greg
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on April 3, 2024 under AM Bible Study | Be the First to Comment
AM Bible Study Group: April 3, 2024 from James 1:9-11
Theme: In times of trial, all believers can rejoice if they glory in their unfading riches in Christ.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
Click HERE for the live-stream archive of this Bible Study.
