Thank you. Let's remember what Jude is, the head of God, the Holy Spirit, to write as a warning and ultimately as a comfort to us because God is good and God is faithful. and what God promises must come to pass. And so the promise of God is that these people will, in their various attributes, come into the churches of God. And it's a reminder, again, that we are so desperately in need of an intercessor. We are so desperately in need of a saviour.

Because one of the great problems that we all have is that we read these stories of Korah, Dath and Abiram, we read the stories of the Pharisees and we say, well, that couldn't be me. We've already fallen. That very thought is the very thought of rebellion that lay at the heart of these men, isn't it? That we think that we're better than them. Who makes you to differ? Who makes you to differ?

It also causes us to speak and claim, to speak to eternity-bound sinners on behalf of the Lord to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. I'm sure, and I may as the Lord allows, speak about it at some stage in the not-too-distant future. But I've looked again and again at Philippians chapter 1 and 2 and see the context of what Paul is talking about there in Philippians when he says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. And I think so much of the fear is that Paul had met this God. The Lord Jesus Christ did this to these men all that time ago. And we, like these men, like Cain and Balaam and Cora, are people in this world, in this day and in this time, have the most extraordinary privilege. of having the truth of the gospel declared to us, having the character of God declared to us, being brought, I pray, into the very presence of God.

And so I pray that we don't see this as just an old story. This is something that is going to happen in the Church of God until the Lord Jesus Christ says that's enough. And these men are pictures of what it is to go from the very presence of God Almighty and the very company of his people and go alive into hill they went down to the pit it says they went down to the pit of hill they went down alive and Cora and his group who had the senses were burnt with fire by the Lord Jesus Christ they were just evaporated there's what an extraordinary scene before us

And these are the ones that Jude is warning. He says, woe to them. They have gone in the way of Cain, run greedily after the error of Bralam for reward, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. We need a saviour. We need a deliverer from the destiny of these men. These men fell with the word of warning in their ears. They went to hell trampling over Moses as he lay in the dirt interceding for them. How serious is the gathering of the Lord's people? As serious as God describes it to be.

I met two people last week within hours of each other, and one of them told me as he was heading off to Mass and taking some friends of his to Mass in a Catholic church, I said, what does God think about that? He said, oh, God doesn't care what we do. We could be going to a car show. We could be going to a barbecue. Another fellow told me that I read my Bible at home. There's no need, no point coming to church. I get more out of reading my Bible than listening to you. Well, thank you very much.

These men are set before us as examples and I pray that the prayer is on our lips, you know, as As Graham read to us out of Colossians chapter one, there is a God who reconciles his people to himself. And when we look at these examples, we need to be mindful of not looking at other people, because every time we look at other people, we'll be getting it wrong completely. We need to be looking to ourselves and looking to God. This is a story and these men are there to humble the children of God. Moses fell on his face. Abel pleaded with Cain and preached to him. Balaam had a donkey speak to him and he was given the very words of God. He mouthed the words of God And all three of them are emblematic of what it is to rebel against the Word of God, against Christ. They speak against Christ, and they speak against him, his Word, and they speak against him, his priest.

Moses in this story represents the Word of God. If you turn with me back in your Bibles to Numbers chapter 12, And you'll see that I want us to understand, if the Lord will open our eyes, we think if people get warnings, if we think people have things laid out before them, then they'll understand. We really do, don't we? We think if we have good enough evidence, then out of that evidence will come someone who actually understands and worships God.

But this same rebellion that we read about in Numbers 16 had happened just beforehand in Numbers chapter 12. And who was doing it? Who was the one rebelling against? Who were the ones? Miriam and Aaron, first one of chapter 12. They spoke against Moses. And they spoke against him because he had an Ethiopian woman. And they say, they say, just as these other And they said to him in verse two, hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Has he not spoken also by us? Miriam sang at the crossing of the Red Sea. Aaron witnessed remarkable things and said remarkable things. Has not the Lord spoken by us? And didn't the Lord hear us? He did. But who is Moses to stand above these people?

He says, Verse 6, he said, Hear now my words, if there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful With him will I speak, mouth to mouth, even apparently, not in dark speeches, and in the similitude of the Lord shall he behold. Wherefore then, were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them. Miriam was leprous. Aaron pleaded for her. Miriam stayed leprous for seven days because her rebellion against Christ was like spitting in his face.

This story, I pray, is a story that causes us to be humbled, a story that reveals the holiness of God. If you come near to God, God is going to reveal himself as holy. If you turn back to the previous book in Leviticus chapter 16, we have the most remarkable picture. If you can have time, I pray that you might have time to read these chapters and put them into their context, you'll see that the most extraordinary privileges were laid upon Nadab and Abihu and the most extraordinary warnings. And they actually saw a fire come verse 24 of chapter 9 of Leviticus. and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat which all the people saw. They shouted and they fell on their faces.

The very next scene, the very next scene after all of the privileges laid upon Nade Abinabayu is that they presume to come into the presence of the Lord with strange fire. Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer and put fire therein and put incense thereon and offered strange fire. What's strange fire? Strange fire is fire that doesn't come off the altar. Strange fire is any fire that doesn't relate directly to the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's a strange fire. which he commanded them not. And they went out of fire from the Lord and devoured them. And they died before the Lord.

These were Korah's cousins. And the Lord says to Moses, says to Aaron, don't you cry. Don't you weep for them. This is a great story that reveals that in the face of the extraordinary wickedness and ongoing wickedness of men, God overrules to bring reverence and a blessing and a fear. and he saves his people. He wants us to see again and again in these particular stories that those who go down into the pit do so by deliberate, open, continued rebellion.

spiritual good. As Romans 9 says, they make themselves fitted to destruction. Once again, we can read the story of Korah and Tremble, but unless the Lord opens our hearts and gives us a heart to love him and to revere him and to see him in his holiness as glorious to us, then we will not learn any of the lessons. I pray that this is a cause for us to do as Moses did and fall on his face.

We live amongst a people who are engaged in these particular sins that we have laid out here before us. They are a reminder, and Korah is a reminder, the gainsowing of Korah is a reminder that you can only come into the presence of God and not be consumed with holy wrath. When you come in the Lord Jesus Christ, you come with the Lord Jesus Christ, you come by the Lord Jesus Christ, robed in his righteousness, washed in his blood, and you come calling upon his name to save you.

These guys, as I said earlier, had a knowledge of the holiness of God. And yet, in the place of the most extraordinary privileges, they acted with the most extraordinary willful rebellion against their own souls. As I said, can warnings reach them? It didn't. It didn't. Can witnessing great miracles reach them? No, it didn't. Can the word of God reach them? Only if he sends it with power. Oh, how precious it is to be made dependent and to be made humble.

This is a rebellion. This is a rebellion. That's what that word means. Gaines' saying is to be anti-word. It's to be anti-word. In this rebellion, Moses represents the word of God and Aaron, and the word of God is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And Aaron represents the Lord Jesus Christ as the great high priest who alone goes into the holy of holies. And in and of themselves, these men are nearly 100 years old now, in and of themselves, there's just nothing about them at all. They don't look anything other than the most ordinary people.

And yet, if you'd still been there in the camp of Israel and you'd see Korah and Dathan and Abirah and all those princes standing up in all of their finery and all of their pride, and all of the extraordinary privilege that God had put upon them, you would have said, these men are something. They led possibly the majority of nation Israel for a time against God Almighty.

No wonder Paul says to the Corinthians, I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with the enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power. And the reason is for the weakness of the preacher that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, not looking at what man did, but in the power of God. Your faith stands in the power of God. Listen to what Paul said about himself. He said, these letters are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible. I was told that last week.

Okay, Moses not only spoke the words of God, was given the words of God, but in Exodus 24 verse 4, he wrote all the words of God. What an extraordinary man Moses was.

Okay, let's go and have a look at Korah and his life. As I said earlier, he was a cousin of Moses and Aaron. He was of the tribe of Levi. And the tribe of Levi, if you go and read all the extraordinary privileges they had, they were the ones that didn't have to go out and work. They had the food brought to them. They were the ones that had the special place of being encamped around the tabernacle to protect and to serve the tabernacle of God. They had the most extraordinary privileges. They were servants at the temple. They were close to the worship of God, but they weren't priests. There was an office reserved by God for Aaron and his sons. And that was just to picture that there is just one High Priest and there is just one person who comes into the presence of God, into the Holy of Holies, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And when Moses made all of those things and instituted all those things, what did he do? What was the pattern? what he saw in heaven, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

The Korah had all of these remarkable privileges and he was a greatly influential man as we see. 250 men stood with him and in his rebellion with those other Nathan and Abiram and on. There were thousands led into this rebellion. He had great leadership abilities. He was able to persuade the most powerful in the land. He was able to persuade those people who had seen all of what these people had seen, had seen what had happened to Miriam, had seen what Aaron had done in pleading with the Lord and pleading with Moses. They are able to persuade these people that they are better than Moses and that you can follow us and we can take the place of Moses.

This is the gainsaying of Korah. What's gainsaying? The word literally means is anti-word, anti the word of God. to speak against. He speaks against Moses, but really what he's doing is speaking against God Almighty. And what was the first words that came out of Satan's mouth? Hath God said? Did God really say? Did God really say? Is this really the truth of what God is saying? And he enticed Steve to think, well, I can actually stand in judgment of the word of God, and I can actually make a decision.

Look what's happened in all these years. Korah, he spoke against Moses, he organised a rebellion against Moses and Aaron. And Psalm 106 verse 16 says that he envied. There's a commentary in Psalm 106 on many of these passages in verse 16. And they envied Moses. Also in the camp, and Aaron, Aaron, the saint of the Lord, they envied them.

His gainsaying, his rebellion was against God's word given by Moses and against God's high priest, against Christ the word and Christ the priest. And if you noticed when we read verse three there, listen to what he says in verse three. Like all false teachers, they will use the word of God and then they'll twist the word of God to make it mean something which is very clearly not does not fit with the rest of the context of all of the scriptures.

Listen to what he said, because these are the only words that are recorded of Korah here. Did Moses take anything upon him? It was all given by God. Do you remember how Moses was? He was an 80-year-old man, a shepherd in the desert. When God comes to him and says, you're going to do this remarkable task for me, Moses says, I can't speak. I'm a stutterer. I need someone to speak for me. God gets angry with him. You take too much upon yourself.

And then listen to this. This is his reasoning. Seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them, Wherefore then you lift yourselves up above the congregation of the Lord. We're as good as you, Moses. We have the right to do the things you do.

The reality is that that phrase, the kingdom of priests, and listen to what Exodus, what the Lord said in Exodus chapter 19. as they just come out of Egypt and cross the Red Sea and come to Mount Sinai. God said, you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So therefore, I can be a priest, is what Korah was reasoning. Therefore, I can be a king. I can use the words of God to justify that.

When Satan came to the Lord Jesus Christ, what did he quote? scripture and scripture and scripture. And he takes it completely out of context. These words, this kingdom of priests and kings and priests under God is a reference to what all of God's children are in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the word of God, in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the priest of God, in him who brings us into the very presence of God.

When Korah uses those words and speaks against Moses using the words of God, did God really say that 100% of Israel Korah knew better than that. He'd seen Aaron appointed. He'd seen all of what happened to Moses. And he's now, as Psalm 106 says, he's envious of them. He wants to take their place that they believe that they have taken to themselves. He wants the position of Moses and he wants the position of Aaron.

Korah is saying effectively, according to the word of God, everyone has equal authority and I claim the authority to speak and rule on God's behalf. And I have 250 princes with me and we're all going to do the same. That's exactly what Miriam and Aaron had done earlier. It's amazing how the false teachers, these gainsayers, These Balaams and these Canes and these Kauras that come into the Church of God will take the Word of God and twist the Word of God.

You know, you know the myths that are proclaimed these days in the name of God. They use John 3.16 all the time, all the time. God, there's an organisation here that teaches scripture in the schools around this district, and it's called 316. Why? Because they believe that John 316 means that God loves all of humanity exactly the same, and therefore he sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for all mankind exactly the same. and that salvation is an offer in your hands, that God has given man a free will, and by the exercise of that free will, he can believe and be saved by his own acts.

John 3.16 is one of the myths of this age from people who use the scriptures all the time. The number of conversations I've had where the centre of it, the grid through which the people who rebel against the absolute sovereignty of God and the sovereignty of his grace, and what happened on the cross of Calvary, the word of God and the priesthood of God, that is a grid through which they have to squeeze everything in the scriptures.

And yet, and yet, if God loves everyone, why? And he loves all of the world in John 3. 16, why doesn't he pray for them in John 17? If he's dying for them on Friday, why doesn't he pray for them on Thursday night? If he loves all humanity the same way and Christ is dying for them all. There are so many examples of this throughout, isn't it? So many false teachers take something of the word of God and then twist it. and twisted in such a way that they, like Korah, I love that word gainsaying, he by speaking against Moses was gaining for himself, wasn't he? He was speaking against, but the purpose of it all was that he would gain for himself.

A kingdom of priests doesn't mean that there is no order and no authority in the church of God. God makes. his ministers. Listen to some of these verses. I'll just read them out to you, but in 2 Corinthians 3, verse 6, who has made us able ministers of the New Testament. They minister, God's servants minister the eternal covenant in the blood of the Lord Jesus. Paul describes himself in Ephesians 3, verse 7, where I was made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. He speaks of being a faithful minister. He's just a servant. Moses was a servant. What was Moses doing while these people were rebelling? He was on his face in the dust, pleading for them. Moses, as we'll see later on, didn't claim that authority for himself other than the fact that God gave it to him.

And Cora's rebellion spread, gainsaying in the hands of people as impressive as Cora and with as big a following as Cora and Abiram and Dathan and on. They'll always have a following. People are always looking to numbers. Cora had a rebellious heart. He said, I will, I will. That's at the heart of all rebellion, isn't it? Oh, well, you shall be as God's courses through the veins of all of us. Don't think that we're not like Korah in our Adam flesh. There is a resentment to authority. The tiniest baby, as soon as it has the opportunity, is going to rebel against the authority of mum and dad, isn't it? All humanity is saying, and religious humanity as well, is saying, we will not have this man reign over us. We will not have God being God as he declares himself to be God. That was a rebellion in the church in Nazareth, isn't it? They went from church. praising the gracious words that the Lord Jesus Christ spoke and in a heartbeat they were taking him out to a 3,000 foot cliff to throw him over.

The resentment that Cora had was a resentment about God being God and about God having the right to do with his own as he sees fit. him having the right to build his church and put the stones in that building exactly where he desired to have them. Cora had an envious spirit. Cora was a clever man. and he managed to allure most of the leaders of the congregation.

There's so much that I pray the Lord will teach us about the gain saying of Cora. In the churches of God, the promise is that these men shall come. And these men are going to come and these men will only be exposed by God's work in their heart.

One of the things that's remarkable, there was this extraordinary rebellion with 250 princes and huge numbers of the tribe of Reuben and the other tribes around them. And Moses hadn't said a word. And Aaron hadn't said a word. And it almost appears as if they didn't know what was going on until the Lord opened up the hearts of these people when their time to be exposed was there.

God tests his people. But I love how Moses responded. He just prayed and he prayed and he prayed and he pleaded with them. They had rebellious hearts that were covered with sheep's clothing. And they had rebellious hearts, like all rebellious hearts are going to be revealed in the Lord's time to his people at a time of his choosing, in a way of his choosing.

They creep in to spy out the liberty, the blessing, the order, the peace, the love, the common salvation in union, the extraordinary union that the Lord Jesus Christ and his people enjoy. And they don't understand it, but they see something of it, and they saw the evidence of it in the life of Moses and Aaron, and they were envious of them. And they subvert that peace through lies about scripture. They notice the blessing of God on his people, and they're envious of the privilege.

God says to his people, you're mine. God says to his people, you're going to be ordered in your journey through this world, and you are going to be brought into a place of my presence, and you're going to hear my words. Faith comes by hearing. Hearing is the preached word of God. Faith comes by hearing. They resent authority, the porers of this world, and they undermine God's anointed leaders. And obviously they'd done this in such a way, an underhanded way, that their intention was to damage and destroy the fellowship using the words of God.

I love, and I tremble when I say I love it, but I love the fact that God says, and they perished before it happened. When he's speaking of these false teachers, it's in the aorist's completed tense. I don't like using Greek, but it means that it's already done. As far as God's concerned, their perishing has already happened. They will be judged, and they have been judged by God Almighty. And God's people are encouraged in the midst of all this to be like a Moses. And to be mindful of the fact that we are going to deal with these people, the Canes and the Balaams and the Kauras, until the Lord returns. It's ordained of God.

Only a new creation can take away the rebellion that's in my natural heart. I'm a rebel by nature. Born that way. I'm a rebel by practice. I practice it, and I'm a rebel by desire. I actually like getting my own way. You just ask anyone around, and we all do, don't we? You shall be as God's. Beats through every fibre. The only thing, the only cure, as we'll see after the break, the only cure is a new creation that loves God and loves his people, loves his authority, loves his reign, loves his grace in salvation, loves the way he builds his church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against us. And most of all, they love his shed blood for sinners like us.

It's also a reminder that envy is a hidden sin. With tides, there's so much on the outside that can hide a heart of envy. Pilate knew that the Pharisees were envious of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not many others in that religious city did. And envy is revealed when authority is proclaimed. Envy is a powerful force. Envy is rebellion against God himself. He has the right, God has the right, to do with you and I as He sees fit. Amen. He does have the right. He is God. We are not God. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He rules and reigns over all things.

But also it's a reminder to us that we are, like these people, in a place of extraordinary privilege. A house built together by the Lord with the capstone and the cry of grace, grace unto it. We have no reason to envy those who don't know God. We have no reason to envy positions of privilege. God knows how to humble them. Moses was the most privileged man in the Old Testament scriptures. And three times in this passage of scripture, Moses was in the dirt. His face in the dirt, God will humble. If he's going to use someone, he'll humble them.

Cora's end is a shocking end. What a shocking day that was. What a shocking day that was. Fancy being in that camp and there a whole family, their tent and all their possessions swallowed up by the dirt instantly all around. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people going down.

But as we'll see afterwards, after the break, the next day, what happens? More rebellion. More rebellion. What a great picture of us. What a great picture and what a great wonder it is that the Lord Jesus Christ thankfully has power over all flesh. I pray that he exercises power over our flesh today and gives us hearts to love him, gives us hearts to bow, gives us hearts to submit.

and not be like the others that go about to establish their own righteousness and don't submit to the very righteousness of God. What a wonder it is to have a righteous saviour. May he work love and grace in your hearts. Amen.