Miriam challenges Moses because of his marriage to a Cushite woman. She seems to be motivated at least in part by prejudice because he has married a woman of a different skin colour. God responds by giving her a skin disease. God strongly affirms the marriage between one of the Old Testament’s most famous Jews and his African wife.
People misunderstand the distinction between the commands to foreigners and sojourners in the Old Testament and wrongly assume that God was against non-Jewish ethnicities. This message shows God’s heart to reach the nations in the Old Testament.
Church-going slave owners used the curse of Ham to justify their enslavement of Africans, reading their prejudices into the text and ignoring humanity’s creation in the image of God. The church missed its opportunity then. What will it take to get it right this time?
Moral and spiritual failure often leaves us feeling like we’re in the doghouse. We can feel stuck and struggle to find a way forward. This message looks at how God meets us in those times and clears a path to our restoration.
