Sonlight Devotional

Scripture reading: Numbers 12

The Lord has been speaking to me about the preparation of His temple. I want you to look at it with me today. The first temple mentioned in the Old Testament is the Tabernacle of Moses in the wilderness. Moses had to prepare this Tabernacle very precisely and then God began to appoint the ministry for it.

God said that if one of the ministers had a death in his family, he could not minister in the congregation until he was cleansed. I want you to hear me, brethren, because I believe God is speaking something very definite to us. If you had a death in the family in the Old Testament, if your wife or your child died, and you had to handle the dead, according to the Law that God gave Moses you could not just bury your dead and go minister again in the congregation.

This Old Testament principle has a spiritual meaning: If you have had a divorce or are going through a divorce, if you are going through warfare with your wife, or if your house has been out of order—do not minister! Put it aside. That does not mean that you cannot praise God. That does not mean that you cannot sing, but DO NOT minister. Do you know why? Because if you do, you will minister death to the congregation. God said that if you are unclean, you must go through a certain process until you are cleansed.

Miriam, Aaron and Moses’s sister, played the timbrel. When Egypt was destroyed, when the power of Egypt was drowned in the Red Sea, God anointed Miriam. She and the women began to dance and sing, “Praise God for the victory!” (Ref. Exodus 15:20). So then, Miriam was a mother in the church before God. However, Moses had married an Ethiopian woman. She was not an Israelite and it says in Numbers 12 that Miriam began to talk against her brother, Moses, because of his wife. It also says that, because of this, God smote her with leprosy.

We know that leprosy is a sickness. Somebody may say that God cannot put a sickness on you. But this is a case where God smote Miriam with leprosy. Moses went to God and said, “Oh God, save her!” God answered Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? Let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again.” (Numbers 12:14) So they put her out of the camp for seven days until she was cleansed.

I want you to look at God and see how He works. He is not dealing with things from our human viewpoint, our angle. He is dealing with things from His point of view. The Tabernacle was made exactly as God would have it be made—stitch by stitch. The women had to do a certain amount of stitches to make the cloth for it because even the cloth was “holy.” Brethren, do you understand what we mean by “holy?” “Holy” means “of God.” We can just make it an easy description, “holy” is “GOD.” If God says so, then it is holy. If God does not say so, then it is not holy. So everything must either be holy or unholy! There is no in-between.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 2002)

Thought for today: Let us therefore walk very carefully with God so that He can consider us to be holy and we can minister in His Tabernacle.