Numbers 12:8-15 “‘Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?’ The anger of the Lord burned against them, and he left them. When the cloud lifted from above the Tent, there stood Miriam–leprous, like snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had leprosy; and he said to Moses, ‘Please, my lord, do not hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother’s womb with its flesh half eaten away.’ So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘O God, please heal her!’ The Lord replied to Moses, ‘If her father had spit in her face, 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.’ So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on till she was brought back.”

When God’s judgments fall on people in the Bible, sometimes people accuse God of being mean. TV personality Bill Maher said, “God in the Old Testament is a psychopath. He just kills, kills, kills for no reason…” But that isn’t right.

No one understands better than the Lord does how far human beings have fallen in their self-willed rebellion against their Maker. It doesn’t take a very robust faith, as C.S. Lewis once pointed out, to believe that the One who made us and who knows our every thought, knows when it is no more use to try to change us, when there is no more hope of us ever coming around to the right side, and no more use in giving us further chances. It doesn’t take a very robust faith to believe that he knows just how severe his intervention would have to be to shake us back to our senses so that we can be saved. It is not a sad commentary on God, but a sad commentary on the human heart, that the miserable death of hardened souls is sometimes necessary to soften others and lead them to repentance.

So it is with Miriam and Aaron here. The Lord was not out to destroy them. He could have already done that easily enough. He is out to win them. And if the only way to turn these two around was to inflict Miriam with a deadly disease that would see her body slowly rot away while she was still alive, he would not spare her body if it meant he could save their souls. Aaron quickly confessed their sin. God’s mercy may have been severe, but it was effective. Aaron and Miriam repented.

And then the Lord showed his grace. Rather than a life-sentence of misery and a slow death, Miriam was quarantined for a week and able to rejoin society healthy and whole. In these terms the Lord expressed his forgiveness.

God has taken our death away, too, not merely by healing our bodies, but by giving the leprosy of our sin to his Son, and letting it kill him in our place at the cross. Now he has brought us back and joined us to his family of faith, forgiven and restored.

The lesson of this account is not a threat: be good to your spiritual leaders or else. It is template, a pattern, an illustration of how the Lord deals with his people in their brokenness and sin. He confronts what’s wrong. He defends what’s right. He leads us to repent and then he shows his mercy. Receive that mercy. Then follow where he leads.

Numbers 12:3-8 “Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. At once the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, ‘Come out to the Tent of Meeting, all three of you.’ So the three of them came out. Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud; he stood at the entrance to the Tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When both of them stepped forward, he said, ‘Listen to my words: 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.”

There are three ways that the Lord defended Moses and his character here. First, for us the readers, he records that Moses was “more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” Sometimes we might get the idea that a leader has it coming. He has been so arrogant, so drunk with power, that he needed someone to knock him down a few notches.

That was not Moses. He was not perfect, by far. But he had not pursued this position as leader of Israel. The Lord practically had to force it on him. Moses had objected that he wasn’t qualified. “I don’t really know you that well, Lord. I am a nobody that no one will want to listen to. I am not very good at speaking.” Apparently, this humility had not left him even after the many miracles God had done through him and the defeat of one of the world’s super powers.

The Lord wants us to know this about him. Real leaders don’t have to puff themselves up by bragging about their accomplishments or constantly comparing themselves to others, at least not Christian ones. Humility is a trait of biblical leadership, and Moses was a role model of that trait.

Second, for Aaron and Miriam, the Lord defended Moses as “faithful in all my house.” Moses had not used his leadership for his own advantage. He wasn’t a third world dictator living in luxury while his people starved. He didn’t impose his own rules or ideas in place of Gods. He did not see himself as above the law and give himself permission to commit sins anyone else would be punished for. He delivered God’s word to the people straight and unvarnished even when the people talked of replacing him. God said, “Jump!” and Moses said, “How high?”

There is no character trait the Lord desires more in his leaders than faithfulness. In the New Testament Paul wrote the Corinthians, “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful” (1 Cor. 4:2). Nowhere does he say that a leader must prove successful, though more than one pastor has been shown the door for lack of results. He doesn’t say that a leader must prove popular, or even socially skillful. Faithful, doing his best with the gifts God gave him: that was Moses. That is still the kind of leader the Lord will defend if his ministry comes under attack.

Third, the Lord points out how he had clearly demonstrated his satisfaction with Moses and his leadership by the way he dealt with the man. Unlike any other prophet before or since, the Lord spoke to him “face to face.” No other mere mortal ever came closer to seeing the form of God himself than Moses did. No other man in his time was given a more direct word from the Lord than this man.

Moses occupied a unique place in God’s plan. We don’t expect our spiritual leaders to have such direct contact with the Lord today. Nor is it necessary. We have the word of Moses’s great successor Jesus, who brings us God’s word of grace even more directly. “In these last days he (God) has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:2). “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

Our great need is for leaders today to whom the Lord has revealed himself in his word, people who are open to God’s revelation and put their trust in it. Then we need them to deliver it to others faithfully, regardless of the cost to themselves.

Numbers 12:1-2 “Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. ‘Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?’ they asked. ‘Hasn’t he also spoken through us?’ And the Lord heard this.”

The issue driving Aaron and Miriam’s power play looks particularly ugly from our vantage point thousands of years later. They were critical of his “mixed marriage.” He had married a non-Israelite. They were indulging their racist prejudices.

We see that racism and ethnic prejudice is not a recent invention. The evil thought processes behind it don’t even have to run along racial lines. We are not certain whether “Cushite” refers to people from Ethiopia or to a tribe much more like the Jews in physical appearance. But it is the same sinful way of judging others that turned so many European peoples against their own neighbors for centuries, or led the Hutus to commit genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda, or created the killing fields of Cambodia. Aaron and Miriam suffered from the same moral disease in their day, and we must constantly guard against our own tendency to judge others because they look, sound, or think differently than we do. You can’t embrace racism or prejudice of any kind and love your neighbor at the same time.

The end game for the brother and sister seem to have been Moses’ position as leader of the nation. “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” “Yes he had,” was the simple answer. It was a privilege that the Lord had used Aaron and Miriam as his mouthpieces at times. That in no way invalidated the ministry he had given to Moses. Moses was clearly the one the Lord called at the burning bush.

Their questions were meant to imply more than they really proved. Their arguments did not lead to the conclusion they were implying: “We have just as much reason to be recognized as the leaders of this people as Moses does.” Again, political attack ads are not something we have invented in our time, only refined. This was bad politics, bad church politics, if you will. It stunk as much then as it would now.

And it still stinks pretty bad. Few things drive people away from the churches more than the pathetic way Christians will wrestle for control. Young people become disgusted by their own parents when they see them act this way. It’s not the only reason so many have given up the faith of their fathers, but it is a major one. New members are appalled when they run into it. For non-Christians, it is all the reason they need to avoid churches altogether. It is truly a political game no one can ever win.

Jesus’ own disciples played these kinds of political games during his earthly ministry, arguing about which one of them was “the greatest.” Jesus confronted their sinful ambition by revealing what God is really looking for in a Christian leader: “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43-44). “Will you love and serve my people, your fellow believers?” is God’s great concern, not seeing his leaders scratch and claw their way to the top of some kind of pecking order. Jesus’ own life is the great example: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10: 45).            

Jesus’ service and sacrifice is more than an example to follow. It is the salvation of his people. It redeems us from our sins. It is the price that sets us free. He sets us free not only from guilt and death. He even releases us from the selfish ambition that tries to assert our own interests over the people we are here to serve.

Ephesians 6:13-17 “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waste, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

You may recognize that all of these pieces of armor are related to God’s saving work. And some of them may be hard to distinguish from each other. Paul lists them in the order a Roman soldier would put them on. I am going to talk about them by grouping them according to function.

Some of these pieces make it possible for the Christian soldier to maneuver properly when he comes under attack–the belt of truth, and the gospel of peace worn on the feet. Paul isn’t talking about truth as an abstract concept–everything that may be true as opposed to everything that may be false. He certainly doesn’t mean to use “truth” the way that so many people use the word today: “It is true if it works for me.” I once met a man who had struggled with a gambling addiction. He almost lost his business and his family. Today he keeps his addiction under control by following the spiritual disciplines and meditation of some Eastern swami. When another pastor and I tried to share the gospel with him, he didn’t want to suggest that there was anything wrong with our version of truth. I mean, if Jesus worked for us, who was he to say there was anything wrong with that. But he already had a truth that was working for him, and he wasn’t willing to trade it for the truth we were offering.

There is only one truth Paul has in mind when he urges us to put on the belt of truth–Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life. This is the truth Jesus meant when he said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” It is the truth of Jesus’ teaching, the truth that sets us free to belong to him, not just any old truth. It is the truth Jesus had in mind when he told Pilate, “I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” This truth that Jesus is our only Savior keeps everything in place around our souls and our Christian life, so that Satan can never trap us or corner us with his lies. And with the gospel of free forgiveness on our feet we can stand our ground, or make our escape–whatever the situation calls for at the moment.

Much of this armor is protective. It covers the most vital parts: the head and the heart. So we have God’s righteousness over our heart. What is it that steals the heart out of your faith and Christian life most easily? Isn’t it feelings of guilt? Isn’t it the burden of some sin? Look at Adam and Eve. Didn’t their guilt just cut the heart out of their relationship with God? They no longer run to him as the Father who loves them. They are afraid, and they hide. Adam makes God out to be the enemy and blames God for giving him a wife and making him sin. The beating heart of faith has been cut right out of him.

Righteousness covers the heart–not a righteousness that is full of holes because it is produced by sinners. It is the righteousness of Romans chapter 3. “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” God sets the righteousness of Jesus Christ–his perfect life and his innocent death–over our hearts, and the devil can’t turn us against God or make us feel afraid anymore.

So, too, the faith God has given us–not so much my act or my virtue in trusting God, but more the wonderful truths of God’s love and mercy my faith takes hold of–acts as a shield and puts out the little fires of temptation, doubt, or fear the devil tries to light in my soul before they do real damage. Maybe I will never be so wise and intelligent that I can win a battle of wits with the devil. But if I can just keep salvation in front of me–I know my Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep; I know that my Redeemer lives–then I have a helmet to protect my mind from Satan’s deceptions.

At last, we have one weapon to go on the attack, “The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” You know, the devil must laugh his pants off when some Christians come after him with rubber and wooden swords, like “the sword of man-made science and scholarship” or “the sword of feel-good messages” or “the sword of empty-emotionalism” or “the sword of false tolerance and political correctness.” Those swords do nothing but give him a nice massage, or a good back scratch.

But take the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God, out of its sheath and start swinging, and the devil will start running. God gives us spiritual weapons for spiritual battles. Don’t be afraid to use them.

Ephesians 6:10-12 “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the fall armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Paul identifies our most dangerous enemy as the devil and his angels. He is not merely imaginary, as some believe. Ten years ago New York Magazine asked Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia if he believed in the devil. He answered that he did. The reporter seemed surprised. One commentator later concluded, “We have a lunatic on the court.” That kind of denial of Satan’s existence is just the way the devil wants it.

It is part of his schemes. If he can’t convince you that he is stronger, kinder, more reasonable, and more fun than God, then he doesn’t want you to think that he exists at all. That’s because denial of the devil’s existence tends to go along with denial of belief that there is a God, a denial that sin has eternal consequences, a willingness to rethink what is right and what is wrong.

He has always been clever at playing both sides of an issue, at finding a way to make seemingly contradictory beliefs or behaviors serve his purposes. If he can’t get you to indulge your sinful desires, he will fill you with pride about how superior you are. If he can’t fill you with pride and blind you to your sin, then he will drive you to despair that God could ever be gracious to you. If he can’t drive you to despair of God’s grace, he will lead you to see God’s grace as a kind of license to sin all you want, as a sign that sin isn’t really so bad if God can forgive it so easily. If he can’t get you to take grace as a license, then he will convince you that grace has all kinds of conditions and stipulations attached to it, so that it ends up being no real grace at all. It’s like a game of chess, and the devil has a way to counter your every move, and he is always thinking at least three or four moves ahead.

Except that it is no game at all. It is a fight for your eternal soul. And look again at what Paul calls your spiritual enemies: rulers, authorities, powers of this dark world, spiritual forces of evil. These aren’t just ghosts that jump out and say, “Boo!” There is real power and influence here. These spiritual forces inflict real cruelty on people. They create genuine misery–suffering, shame, fear, doubt, and unbelief.

In Daniel 10 one evil angel was able to delay one of God’s good angels from delivering a message for three weeks until the Lord finally sent the archangel Michael to intervene. If that scares you a little bit, good! Far too many people fail to take the devil and his angels seriously. Of course, in Christ we have the victory, but only in Christ. If you and I are going to be strong for our battle, we need to know our true enemy.

Acts 3:6-8 “Then Peter said, ‘Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.’ Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God.”

Jesus’ gifts changed the lame man’s life in two ways. Most obvious is the change to his temporal life, his earthly state. In an instant he goes from being a cripple to a man who can walk and jump. This was no slow process of healing and physical therapy. He didn’t have to suffer through surgery, wait for the cast to come off, spend months doing special exercises. The feet and ankles not only became strong. He instantly knew how to use them, though he had been crippled from birth.

You or I probably aren’t going to receive a miracle on this scale. That doesn’t mean we haven’t been receivers of Jesus’ mercy on our lives or haven’t been blessed as Christians in the way he cares for our physical needs each day. Who knows what tragedies he has kept away? Look at the standard of living the poorest of us enjoy compared to most people through most of time. As believers who know Jesus’ grace and mercy, we have been given tools to cope with the curve balls life does throw at us, faith that can offer us less stress and more contentment right now without changing the externals at all.

And don’t think that Jesus’ gift to the lame man meant only changes that made his life easier. Today his feet and ankles were healed. Tomorrow he had to find a new way to support himself. He couldn’t go on begging. He would have to work, and likely that work would mean sweat and sore muscles. I suspect he was grateful for the opportunity, but being able-bodied comes with its own unpleasant features. Don’t be surprised when God’s material gifts in your life come with their own uncomfortable or unpleasant side effects. Homes and property and vehicles and even healthy bodies have to be maintained, or they aren’t so enjoyable to have and use. That maintenance can be expensive or cost us long hours of hard work. This isn’t heaven yet, no matter how the Lord blesses us here, and it is another gift of his that allows us to recognize that.

The second change Jesus’ gift brought to the lame man’s life was spiritual. It filled his life with faith-born praise. “Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God.” Everyone has God’s gifts working in their lives, even all the wicked. “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous,” Jesus pointed out in the Sermon on the Mount (Mat. 5:45). You know that’s right. My unbelieving neighbors have lawns just as green as mine, and homes as just as comfortable.

But God gives an even greater gift when he gives us the faith to see his gifts. The crippled man, of course, had no doubt where his legs got new strength. This filled his heart and mouth with praise, praise that spilled over into the way he was walking and jumping around the temple.

Do you suppose he felt good about his gift? You know, it is hard to feel sorry for yourself, it is hard to be bitter, it is hard to complain or be depressed when your mouth is full of words and songs of praise for God. It’s not that we lack reason to praise him. It’s that we don’t take time to think about his gifts. It’s that we let our attention drift and lose awareness of his gifts. If we will only remember and consider Jesus’ gifts, then they can change our hearts as well, and we can know something like the praise and joy of the man who received new strength for his legs and feet.

Acts 3:1-5 “One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer–at three in the afternoon. Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him as did John. Then Peter said, ‘Look at us!’ So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.”

Go back a couple of months or so, to the first Easter weekend, and Peter and John were timid, cowardly men afraid to venture far from the house where they were hiding. Even after they saw Jesus’ empty tomb they stayed behind locked doors. Even after Jesus appeared to them Easter night, they laid low while they were in Jerusalem. Up until Pentecost day they stayed close to the other disciples in their rented home in Jerusalem.

But things were starting to change. After he rose, Jesus explained to them the meaning of his death on the cross and its necessity. It wasn’t a tragedy. It was the basis for the forgiveness of all sins, the salvation of the world. Their courage grew. Jesus poured the gift of the Holy Spirit out on them on Pentecost Day, ten days after he returned to heaven. Peter and John were bold to preach to the crowd of thousands that gathered to see what all the commotion was about when the Spirit came. Now they were regularly meeting with other Christians in the temple courts, openly practicing their faith perhaps just a couple hundred yards from where Jesus was tried and condemned. They were no longer timid cowards. The gifts of the gospel and the Spirit were turning them into brave soldiers of the cross.

Like Peter and John, we are people Jesus has given his gifts of grace and life so that we, in turn, could be givers. Maybe we have never hidden behind locked doors afraid that people might find out we are Christians. Maybe we don’t share those religious Facebook posts that suggest you aren’t a real Christian, or that you are ashamed of Jesus, or afraid to be identified with Christ if you don’t share it, not because we actually have any fear or embarrassment about our faith, but because we don’t want to encourage that kind of manipulative innuendo.

But maybe when we are face to face with a live human being, and the opportunity presents itself to bring our Savior into the conversation, we are afraid or uncomfortable to go there. Only one thing changes that. Jesus’s gifts make us givers of those same gifts. The more we hear, the more we understand, the more we receive his gifts of forgiveness, his promises of love and life, the less fearful we become, the bolder we are to tell others what we believe, especially when it comes to God’s grace.

Look again at Peter and John here. When the man asks them for money, what do they do? “Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, “Look at us!” Have you ever pulled up to a red light at an intersection where someone was panhandling? What do most drivers do? They try to avoid eye contact, so that they don’t have to engage with the person asking for help. Sitting at our church’s booth at the county fair, I notice a similar thing from the opposite side. I would like to engage people in conversation, but many walk by without looking at me. They avoid eye contact because they don’t want to talk about church or spiritual things.

Peter and John don’t avoid looking at the lame man. They initiate it. They are not afraid to involve themselves in this man’s life. They don’t find it a nuisance or distraction. Jesus’ gifts to spiritual beggars like themselves had changed them. It turned them into givers, men ready to show love and compassion to a crippled man seeking a gift.

Jesus’ gifts turn us into givers, too. That doesn’t mean we become easy marks for every con man who wants to relieve us of a few dollars. The apostles could identify the real disability, and thus the real need, of the man begging in the temple. We can be careful, too. But when we serve a master as generous as Jesus, we don’t have to fear getting involved or being taken advantage of. We can trust him to guide our giving and use it for his good purposes.

Deuteronomy 4:9 “Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.”

God’s commands have value for our future. But you know how easy it is to sort of loosen up and take things less seriously with time. You know how with your first child you try to create an absolutely sterile environment, but by the time you get to your third or fourth you let them eat food off the floor and clean their binky by sticking it in your own mouth? You know how when you first make a recipe you measure everything precisely, but after a while you sort of eye it up and substitute ingredients for something that’s close? I once made macaroni and cheese by substituting ice cream for the milk. Don’t judge me. It worked.

The Lord doesn’t want us to let the same things happen with his commands. “Do not…let them slip from your heart as long as you live,” Moses says. Their value, their impact, their importance doesn’t get old, even if we do.

And don’t neglect to pass them along to the generations to come. “Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” Why mess up their lives? Why hold out on them? With money, Dave Ramsey talks about “changing your family tree” by teaching your children to use it better than you did. But with God’s commands, why “change the family tree” when you can keep a good one going. It doesn’t matter that your children are a new generation. Teach them what’s right. God’s commands will be worth keeping for as far as the future goes.

If you ever visit the state of Arizona, you should know that it is against the law to let your donkey sleep in the bathtub. I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble. That’s been the law of that state since 1924, but my guess is that the reasons for it have come and gone, and you can safely forget that little piece of legal trivia as soon as you leave here today.

God’s laws haven’t lost their value. They are the guide to a life that works, the basis for a good witness to others, an inheritance for our children’s children, and worth putting into practice today.

Deuteronomy 4:6-8 “Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?”

The closer a society conforms itself to God’s commands, whether it’s a society of two in a relationship, or several in a family, or tens to hundreds in a church, or more still in a city or country, the better it functions. There are no perfect examples since all sin and fall short of the glory of God. But even in societies dominated by Christians, where there are problems, dysfunction, or just plain evil, that results from a departure from God’s commands, not from obedience to them.

A woman who attended my church noticed something strange after a few weeks. We had all these whole, complete, functioning families in one place. It didn’t look much like the world from which she had come. Statistically, I can tell you there is a reason for that. We often hear that one in two marriages ends in divorce. But a study by Paul and Richard Meier revealed that when the entire family attends church together, that drops to one in 40. And when Bible study and prayer are part of the home life each day, it drops to one in 400.

The point is, there is something appealing about happy functioning families. There is something appealing about people who are polite and courteous and don’t swear like sailors. People are drawn to groups of people that seem genuinely content with life, though they may not be particularly “rich.” This is the kind of lifestyle God’s commandments create if we keep them. More and more people may slander his commandments for being prudish, even an offense to human dignity and freedom. But they are still attracted to the lifestyle it creates. They may even be envious of it, and will try to reproduce it outside of God’s commands. That will always create a kind of mutant, an imperfect counterfeit that cannot function like the original.

Moses’ words served as a kind of prophecy for Israel. The golden years for this nation under Kings David and Solomon were far from perfect. The lives of the kings sometimes read like a soap opera. Yet it was a highpoint in the faith and life of the people. That produced a time of relative peace and prosperity. It was a witness to the nations. It was enough to draw the Queen of Sheba from over a thousand miles away to come and find out what was going on. She left praising Solomon’s wisdom and God’s love for this people.

But note how Moses slips something even more fundamental than commandment keeping into this description of Israel’s witness. “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us when we pray to him?” One of the Lord’s favorite words for Israel in Deuteronomy is “stiff-necked.” At least a half dozen times he picks up the theme of Israel’s rebellion in this book. And iniquities separate us from God.

Yet the defining characteristic of these people is that the Lord is near them. They were a forgiven people. And so are we. Our most important witness to the world around us isn’t found in our love or morality. Every day we fall short on those. But we belong to the God of grace who sent all our sins to the cross with his Son. He does not hold them against us. He does not let them divide us. He is near us. By faith he even lives in us.

A broken world just as sinful and damaged as we are needs this witness most of all, because they need this grace from God most of all. But often it will be the witness of our lives, keeping his commands of love, that will attract their attention first and give us the opportunity to introduce them to the Savior whose blood cleanses their souls.