Good evening, everybody. If you'll
open your Bibles to Numbers chapter 16, that's where our text will
be this evening. We're gonna spend most of our
time in this chapter, but I'm gonna read some select portions
before I Unveil I guess what the two stories contained in
this chapter are so if you'll read with me starting in verse
31 And it came to pass as he had made an end of speaking all
these words That the ground clave asunder caved under and was under
them and the earth opened up her mouth and swallowed them
up and and their houses, and the men that appertained unto
Korah and all their goods, they, and all that they appertained
to them, went down alive into the pit. And the earth closed
upon them, and they perished from among the congregation.
And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of
them, for they said, lest the earth swallow us up also. And
there came out a fire from the Lord, and consumed 250 men that
offered incense. Jehovah, God, here has made his
wrath known. These people were swallowed up
into the ground and taken alive, and everything with them, and
they died. Can there be any mistaking his
position about how he felt about what they did? Why? Why is this response required
from the Lord? What led us here? I wanna look
at that first. What led us here? So if you'll
turn it up to the first of the chapter, I'm gonna quickly kinda
move through the story that led us up to here. Now Korah, the
son of Ishar, the son of Kohath, and the son of Levi, and Dathan,
and Abiram, and the sons of Eliab, and Om, and the son of Peilath,
and the sons of Reuben took men. And they rose up before Moses,
was certain of the children of Israel, 250 princes of the assembly,
famous in the congregation, men of renown. And they gathered
themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto
them, You take too much upon you, seeing that all the congregation
are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why
are you then lifting up yourselves above the congregation of the
Lord? And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face. And he
spoke to Korah and all his company saying, even tomorrow the Lord
will show who are his and who is holy and will cause him to
come near unto him. Even him whom he's chosen will
he cause to come near unto him. This do, take you censors Korah
and all his company and put fire in them and put incense in them
before the Lord tomorrow and it shall be that the man whom
the Lord doth choose, he shall be holy. You take too much upon
you, you sons of Levi. Now turn over to verse 11. For which cause both you and
all that are your company are gathered together against the
Lord? And what is Aaron, that you should murmur against him?
And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab,
which said, we will not come up. Is it a small thing that
you brought us up out of the land that flows with milk and
honey, to kill us in the wilderness? Except you're making yourself
altogether a prince over us. Moreover, you've not brought
us into a land that flows with milk and honey, or given us inheritance
of fields and vineyards. Will you then put out the eyes
of these men? We will not come up.' And Moses was very wroth,
and said unto the Lord, Respect not thou their offering. I have
not taken one ass from them, and neither have I hurt one of
them. And Moses said unto Korah, be thou and all thy company before
the Lord, thou and they and Aaron tomorrow. Move over to verse
20. And the Lord spake unto Moses
and Aaron saying, separate yourselves from among this congregation
that I may consume them in a moment. And they fell upon their faces
and said, oh God, the God of spirits and of all flesh, shall
one man sin and will you be wroth with the whole congregation?
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the congregation,
saying, Get you up from about the tabernacle of Korah, Dathan,
and Abiram. And Moses rose up and went unto
Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel followed him. And he
spake unto the congregation, saying, Depart, I pray you, from
the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs,
lest you be consumed in all their sins. So they got up from the
tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram on every side. And
Dathan and Abiram came out and stood in the door of their tents,
and their wives, and their sons, and their little children. And
Moses said, hereby you shall know that the Lord hath sent
me to do all these works, for I have not done them of my own
mind. If these men die the common death of all men, or if they
be visited after the visitation of all men, then the Lord hath
not sent me. But if the Lord make a new thing,
and the earth opens her mouth, and swallows them up, and with
all that they appertain unto them, and they go down quick
into the pit, then shall you understand that these men have
provoked the Lord. So, We know the rest of the way this
story works out. The ground opens and these people
go into it. And Korah has taken upon himself
to rebel against the commandments of the Lord for the office of
the high priest. They thought that they were capable
of offering incense in the presence of the Lord just as the high
priest. You see, these were the sons of Levi. They were the servants
in the temple, but there was only one high priest. And only
a high priest could offer the incense before the Lord in the
Holy of Holies. But they said, no, we're gonna
do it too. And you've taken too much on
yourself, and I reject your leadership, and we're gonna do it too. We're
no less than what you are, is what he was saying. This signifies
him, in burning incense, offering prayers for the people. of God,
and only the high priest could come into the presence of the
Lord. So Korah and his followers did not regard the office of
the high priest, which is occupied by Aaron, and the authority of
God speaking through his prophet, Moses, two of the offices of
the Lord Jesus Christ. They hated Aaron. They really
hated Moses. You can read throughout all the
history of these people from the time they left Egypt All
they talked about is wanting to go back to Egypt and the reasons
why they hated Moses. So they would rather go back
and be slaves than to be under the leadership and authority
of Moses. Moses heard directly from God. He did signs and wonders that
God enabled him to do to show forth his power. He brought about
plagues through the Lord's word unto Pharaoh. He freed millions
of slaves from Egypt. This had never been heard of
before and never heard of since. They followed in the desert,
they cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. the parting
of the Red Sea, the destruction of Pharaoh, all these things
demonstrated God's authority and power, and this came through
the mouth of Moses. So anything you heard about God
at this point, it came through his mouth. So there was a voice
of authority in Moses. In both of these offices, the
high priest and the prophet typify the Lord Jesus Christ. Moses
was a man. Jesus of Nazareth became the
God-man. He came here and became a man.
And if you saw him, you would see nothing remarkable. And the
same is true with Moses and Aaron. And you can hear the responses
of the people who did not respect either of them. You led us in
the wilderness to die. We wanna be back where we are
and you're exalting yourself up above us and we're no different
than you. And there's a part of you that can understand some
of their angst in being a human being, having somebody else talk
to you like that. Only you can talk to God, but I can't. Oh,
Aaron, only you can approach, but I can't. So they didn't have
respect for God, his word, or his servants. And you consider
this, when did they take up stones to kill the Lord? During his
life, there were times where the religious of the day, they
took up stones to kill him. What were those times? There
were two times recorded, and one is before Abraham was, I
am. And secondly, I and my father
are one. And what he was telling them
is I am the very God of the Bible. I am God. He was telling them
that and that infuriated them because this exposes who we are. Whenever we start hearing the
word of God, we rebel against it. Well, I don't like that.
And so they took up stones to kill the Lord himself. They hated
the high priest, which is Aaron, and they hated his prophet, Moses,
which typifies the hatred men have of Jesus Christ. The Jesus
Christ that is preached in most places today is not the one who
is in the Bible. Simple reading can tell you that,
but most people check their heads out at the door when they come
in. It's a hatred for Jesus Christ,
and we as men hate him for who he is. Once we find out he's
sovereign, he is in charge, he is the one who sets all things
in order, and by him all things consist and all power is under
his hand. We don't like that because what
that means is I have none. I have no ability to influence. Men hate him. and his word because
he tells us who we are. We're sinful. We can't approach
and we won't approach. And you're telling me that Christ
only died for a select people? That means I can't come. They
don't understand. They don't even understand the
word. They're not listening. They hate him for who he is.
And this is typified by the rebellion of Korah and his followers. the
rebellion against the high priest, and the rebellion against the
prophet. God would not allow his name to be maligned. And
this is the same error that is being made today. Men and women
say things like this, you believe that, And I believe this, but
we both worship God. We're both trying to get to the
same place. I believe in the same God you do. I just believe
some different things than you and why can't we focus, why focus
on the differences? Let's focus on what we have in
common. You have heard this. If you've talked to anyone about
what you believe, you've heard this. Well, you know what? Cora said the exact same thing.
He wasn't approaching a different God. He was approaching the same
God that Moses was. How did the Lord interpret his
approach? We can see that in his word.
The Lord is the interpreter of his own word. And he executed
swift destruction upon these men because they did not approach
him through the high priest. We have no right and no ability
to approach God but by Jesus Christ. And if we do not approach
him that way, we will meet this same end. There is no gray area
here. There is no differences to discuss.
This is the word. And God killed all those who
espoused this same saying. Their wives, their children,
everything they have was taken away. They both approached the
living God, but one sought him after the wrong order. Now if
you look here, we read the story, we know what happened to Korah.
Now look here at what happens towards the end here. In verses
39 and 40, Eleazar the high priest took the brazen censers which
were offered and they made broad plates for a covering for the
altar. For what purpose? In verse 40,
to be a memorial unto the children of Israel. that no stranger,
which is not of the seed of Aaron, comes near to offer incense before
the Lord, that he be not as Korah in his company, as the Lord said
in him by the hand of Moses. So, you know the story up to
here. They made a memorial. What's
the purpose of a memorial? A memorial, well, you go visit
our nation's capital, there's all kinds of them. A memorial
is so we remember. is to make mention of a particular
person or an event. We're gonna make a memorial so
you don't forget what happened here today. No one comes near
the Lord who is not of the seed of Aaron. You could only approach
by the high priest. And you remember, excuse me,
up to this point, as soon as the ground swallowed them up,
everyone else who did not go into the pit, what happened?
Well, first they saw it. And then they ran scared because
they didn't want to fall in either. And they didn't want to get consumed
by the Lord. So this was one day, verse 41,
the next day. But on the morrow, the next day,
all the congregation of Israel murmured against Moses and against
Aaron saying, you've killed the people of the Lord. This is the
very next day. Did you not see what happened
the day before? Think about this, this is us,
this is us, we are all, you know, we feel like we got ourselves
right one minute, the next day it's like reset, and you're starting
all over. They saw these people taken alive. Moses told them why it was gonna
happen, how it was gonna happen, and by whose hand it was gonna
happen, and then it happened. And then the next day they start
doing the same thing, the ones that lived. They blame Moses
and Aaron. You've killed the people of the
Lord. Now, never mind the rebellion, the challenging of the offices
of God that he set up, and the way God said that you have to
approach and do things, which actually led to all this. Never
mind all that. But you've killed the people
of the Lord. They're ignoring everything that
God said at this point. And you know what? It is no different.
when you are challenged for standing for the integrity of what the
scriptures actually teach to the people of this world. Men
are dead in sins. You are hopelessly dead in sins
because of what your father Adam did. You have adopted his nature
because you were born that way. You can't change. You cannot
and you will not come to God because once you find out who
he is, it's an offense. And we, by nature, the scriptures
tell us, we hate God in and of our flesh. Christ only died for
the elect, only those for whom the Father gave him. When you
start standing for what the scriptures actually teach, men get offended.
People don't like that because it makes them uncomfortable.
It takes away their ability to control the situation. We're
all control freaks by nature, some of us more than others.
And when you take that away, that's when people start getting
angry. The focus moves away from what God actually says in his
word and becomes, right, I know, but this is what I think. How
much more can we show our depravity when the creation starts telling
the creature how he needs to run things and why what he's
doing is not fair? And as I was chewing on that
a little bit, I was actually thinking on this, walking through
my house, and I was feeding the fish tank in my kids' room. I
was like, this is no different than these stupid fish in this
tank that I come in here. The only reason they live is
because I throw fish food in there. I don't really care about those
fish, but yet I do that to keep them alive. I'll throw a little
food in there. No different than them being able to communicate
with me and say, listen, this food you're giving us is crap.
like we don't like it it's actually made of fish flakes and you're
making us eat it and we don't like it we want something else
and oh yeah I don't like the color of the wall you know and
the way that you said this I didn't really like the way you spoke
to me so I'm gonna need you to actually back up and approach
me differently next time you come in the room this is no different
than the way we try to reframe what God's word says that we
don't like. It's funny, we laugh at it, but
it's true. We check our brains out when we start thinking about
things in this book, but that's the reality of it. It's no different.
Well, in verse 42, and it came to pass when the congregation
was gathered against Moses and against Aaron that they looked
towards the tabernacle of the congregation and behold, the
cloud covered it and the glory of the Lord appeared And Moses
and Aaron came before the tabernacle of the congregation. So what
we see here, you can imagine this. Everybody has confronted
Moses and Aaron. A crowd now has formed around
them. You can imagine shouting, they're angry, they're getting
this mob mentality where they start getting worked up and they're
screaming at them. And at this point, they're gonna
kill them. If something doesn't happen, they will kill Moses
and Aaron. But then, we see the Lord step in. What is called
the Shekinah glory of God comes down over the tabernacle. God's
presence, God's glory being contained in one place where we can see
it. It came down over the tabernacle. And in verse 43, they came before
the tabernacle, the congregation, and the Lord spake unto Moses
saying, get you up from among this congregation that I may
consume them as in a moment. And they fell on their faces.
So God here has made a great end to this error of Korah. And
now the same people who learned the error of Korah are now doing
the same thing. They're coming after God's high
priest, they're coming after God's prophet, and they will
kill them if something doesn't happen. And the Lord descended
in the cloud and spoke to them and said, step away, I'm gonna
wipe them out. Just back up and it's gonna be
taken care of. The Lord came to defend his servants.
That's something to consider. And we see something very interesting
here, and I don't know that I've taken it into context for what
it is until I started looking at this passage. You see the
humility and the meekness of Moses and Aaron. You see something
that we're told, Moses being the meekest man on the earth.
I hear and I see that, but I see it here in the word. His meekness,
because upon hearing that God was ready to wipe out these people
who would have killed them's existence, Moses and Aaron fell
on their faces. Now I know me, and if I was in
their position and surrounded by these people and had gone
through all this, two days of this, and despite all they'd
seen, God threatened to wipe out Korah and his followers and
actually everybody at first, but they fell on their faces
before the God and we pleaded for your lives to the Lord. We
went through yesterday, the Lord consumed Korah and all his followers,
We fell on our faces, we pleaded for your lives, God spared you,
and now, the very next day, you're at this again. You deserve everything
that you're gonna get. So I'm gonna back away, and I'm
gonna allow the Lord to obliterate you, because this people is,
they're stubborn, they're hard-necked, they don't listen. I would have
stepped away and said, I'm done with this, this is enough of
you. So, but yet Moses and Aaron didn't do this. They fell on
their faces a second time. And in verse 46, and Moses said
unto Aaron, take a censer and put fire therein from off the
altar and put on incense and go quickly into the congregation
and make an atonement for them. For there is wrath gone out from
the Lord and the plague has begun. He said to take a censer. A censer
was a fire plate that the priest carried, and they gathered coals
in that fire plate from off the altar. And then smoke came up
off those coals, and they would throw incense on, and smoke would
come off those. So they're told two things. First
is to get a censer. And the second is to get fire,
but not just any fire. We're told to get the fire off
the altar. And so what is the significance
of the fire off the altar? First, that was God's instructions
for how to burn incense and how to approach him. But the significance
of the fire off the altar is that's where the sacrifice was.
The sacrifice is the atonement. That's the means by which I can
even approach unto God. That's the means by which I have
peace before him, is the altar. The fire, the coals and the fire,
it represents the sacrifice. So that's where the, you don't
dare approach unto him in prayer, in anything, without the sacrifice. This is the atonement. So they're
told to get the censer, get the fire off the altar, because it
came from a sin atonement. And this is the means by which
God's wrath, we're told, will be held back. The atonement is
a word for appeasement. And the Lord is appeased, he's
angry, but the sacrifice consumes all the anger. It takes everything
that is required away. It consumes that. It's where
God and man met. Now you take the incense, this
represents our prayers to God. It's the incense that goes up.
It signifies also the Lord's prayers for his people. And so
whenever you see Aaron here, you see him as the high priest
of Israel, but it's also a picture of the Lord. And the same as
Moses is the prophet, it's a picture of the Lord as the prophet. Now,
we're told there's wrath gone out from the Lord and the plague
has begun. You consider this that the plague
is even here in this world right now. The Lord sent a plague to
consume them. The plague here is death and
each person in here, we have been exposed to this plague.
And this plague will have a different time period to enact upon your
mortal body than the person next to you. But at some point, death
has 100% success rate. And the plague has begun even
here. And we may die tonight, we may
die tomorrow, maybe a long time from now. We don't know, but
we do know this, we will all die at some point. If no atonement,
if no payment is made to God for your sins and for my sins,
we will be standing guilty before an all-powerful, almighty, living
God who is furious with each one of us in here. And there's
nothing that you can do or say to save yourself. You need an
atonement. You need a sacrifice. You need
peace with God or else it's over for you and me. We have nothing
else. There is no way that we can get
out of it. We will all be forced to deal with him one day. Now
you can imagine what they're looking at right now, Moses and
Aaron. The people were told the plague has begun. People are
falling down left and right, right in front of them. They're
standing there and you can see, I'm sure you hear screams because
somebody next to them they love just died. This plague is coming
through so you see screams and terror and people dying. And
in verse 47, and Aaron took as Moses commanded and ran into
the midst of the congregation and behold the plague was begun
among the people. And he put on incense and made
an atonement for the people and he stood between the dead and
the living. and the plague was stayed. Despite all the evil,
you consider this, everything that these people had done, they
were ready to kill these two men. But yet, despite all that,
the Lord making it out for them, saying, I'm just going to wipe
them out in a moment. And they said, no, don't. They
fell on their faces. Why? This is their meekness.
And then Moses gave instructions to Aaron. He said, you go get
fire off the altar and you get it, put it in the censer and
you run out there and you wave it. Despite all the evil, the
unbelief and the rebellion of this people and God killing them
with a plague of death, Aaron ran out into the midst of it.
You consider that. I tried to really put myself
in his shoe. Would I have been able to do that? Aaron ran out
in the middle of it, to save the people, fully knowing it
may cost him his life. He wasn't immune. Why would Aaron
be any different than them? He ran out into the middle of
it, knowing it may cost him his life. But he knew if no atonement
was made, everyone was lost. What a picture of our Lord. You
consider what he did. the way we are, ungodly, unbelieving,
sinners, shaking our fist in his face every day, and yet he
became a man, swimming in the filth of everything that comes
out of us, to be denied, to be reviled, to be hated every single
day, knowing that he had the power in his fingertip to flatten
the earth and everybody on it, and yet he endured it. He ran
into the middle of the plague out of love for unbelieving,
ungodly sinners. Aaron here, like our Lord, endured
criticism. He endured doubt. He endured
hatred of the people for whom he represented. How much more
so, our Lord? What did he have to endure in
order to make payment for my sin, for your sin, for the sins
of all his people, had to bear? We have no concept of this. We
really don't. But yet he did it out of love.
Because we don't understand, because if it's us, there comes
a point where we become offended enough, it's not happening. But
with him, his long-suffering nature, he's merciful, and the
Lord came in a way we could never do. He stood between the living
and the dead, and the plague was stayed. Aaron stood between
the living and the dead. waving the censer, waving the
smoke, which are the prayers of the people, lit from the fire
from off of the altar. He was staring death in the face. It said he stood between the
living and the dead. That means people dying right
in front of him and then people behind him not. That's how close
he was to it. His face was right in it and
what would have made him any different than the person in
front of him that fell dead? The only difference is he had
the prayers of the people. He trusted a whole time believing
that God would honor his covenant. The burning of the incense from
the fire off the altar represent a sacrifice accepted. And he
was waving that in the face of the Lord saying, this is your
sacrifice. You said, you said that you would
cease to be angry with us for our sins. And this is the means
by which it, and he was waving it in the face of the Lord to
say, I'm asking for mercy because otherwise everybody's gone. He
was asking the Lord to honor his covenant. And our high priest,
he did the same. The Lord Jesus Christ, he endured
the weight, the pain, the penalty of sin, as no one ever even knew
or could. You can't bear the penalty of
your own sins. You can be punished, but there's
no end to it. There's no way that you can actually
bear the full burden of it, because that's why hell is forever. That's
why there's no end, because there's no satisfaction in your death.
The Lord bore all these things, and even while being nailed to
the cross, staring death in the face, knowing that death was
come to take him when he gave release of it. But he was staring
death in the face. He prayed from the cross. It's
the same symbolism as waving the censer right here. Believing
that his father heard him even when his father forsook him.
He believed, just as Aaron did, that God would honor his covenant.
that once the sacrifice came into the picture, sin was punished. He became our sacrifice. He is
our substitute. In verse 49, and they that died
in the plague were 49,700 besides them that died about the manner
of Korah. And Aaron returned unto Moses
and entered the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and the
plague was stayed. And you consider this, this work
of Aaron that we saw here, we've seen, this is the same work as
the Lord Jesus Christ. He stands between the living
and the dead. And all those that are found
in him are living. All those that are not found
in him, not believing him, they're going to be dead. So why would
he do all that for me? I'm not worthy that someone should
endure pain and suffering, let alone death. Love is the reason. Love became the remedy in offering
himself up, thereby stopping the plague of death, of hell,
of punishment, of sin, removing sin so far. It's not just that
sin is forgiven. He took it a step further. It's
now been forgotten. He talks about removing our sins
from us as far as the east is from the west. How far is the
east from the west? It's infinitely far apart. It's
as far as it can be because it keeps going. There is no distance
that it covers. So it's so far it cannot even
be measured how far because it keeps growing, how far it is
from us. I can approach unto God and not be consumed in Christ. I have confidence that I can
come before him because of the sacrifice, because of the censure
that was waived of his sacrifice, I have peace with God. Now this
Old Testament story pictures the love of Christ for his people,
it pictures his sacrifice, but you consider this Aaron's life
went on after this and there would be other plagues, other
enemies, other trials, other rebellions that he would deal
with. But when Christ died, he put all those things down. All
of my enemies forever, they're gone forever when he died. All who would oppose me, all
who would hurt me, all who would condemn me, past, present, and
future, it was all put away when Christ died. So this unchanging
priest, whose priesthood is forever, has put away sins forever because
he never dies. His sacrifice is perpetual. It
was always before the Father. Salvation is finished now, and
you are called right now to believe it. And in doing so, you are
showing forth that his prayers from the cross, just like the
waving of the censer of smoke, that those prayers were for you.
And you are commanded to rest in it. And I'll leave you with
this. It's all that you have. And if
you're only left with what you have, then you find out it's
all that you need. And when you know that it's all
that you need, and that everything is found in what he did, it becomes
all you want. I pray the Lord gives us that
same view of him as our unchanging, ever-living High Priest.