you Brought your attention back to
Numbers chapter 16. Take my text this morning from
verse 41. But on the morrow, all the congregation
of the children of Israel murmured, against Moses and against Aram
saying ye have killed the people of the Lord. Now the day before
this took place actually two days before this took place three
men challenged Moses they were Dathan, Abiram and Korah. Jude in the New Testament said
beware of the ways or the gainsaying of Korah. Now Korah came before
Moses with Dathan and Abiram and said, do you take too much
upon yourself? All the people of God are holy.
So we think just as the high priest is able to take this censer
and bring it into the holy of holies, we ought to be able to
do that too. Korah had with him 250 princes
and elites in the government of Israel at that time to show
up with him. And Dathan and Abiram, they were
staying in their tents, but they were with him. Moses said to them, okay, do
you think I take too much on you and you think you have a
right to do what the priests do? meet me out here tomorrow
morning you and your two hundred men two hundred and fifty men
get yourself censors now the censor was an implement used
by the high priest on the day of atonement the holy of holies
it was kind of a canister it had a hose in it they took fire
off the brazen altar and put incense off the golden altar
on it and they used it and it produced smoke It represented
the intercessory work of the Lord Jesus Christ. His work on
behalf of His people. And so the next day these 250
men along with Korah came with their censers, filled them with
fire off the altar and incense off of the off of the golden altar, Moses
had said to him, we're going to find out if God's for you
or against you, God's with me or God's with you. He says, you
do this, offer this censer, see what happens. But what happened
was, Korah and some of his followers,
God opened up the earth and swallowed them. And the rest of the 250 God sent
fire down from heaven and scorched them all, burned them up. And all the children of Israel
and the congregation, they fled for the fear of God. They had
seen what God had done and they were scared, so they scattered
like crazy. They scattered like crazy. God also sent to Diadathon
and Abiram's tents, opened up the earth beneath them and swallowed
them and their family, their wives and their children and
their little ones, they say, and they were swallowed up. And
God revealed who he was with. He was with Moses and Aaron,
not with these false and fake priests. And like I said, there
was some scary business going on in the congregation that day
and they all fled. And then it says, on the morrow, the very next
day. That's the title of my message,
the very next day. Though the people had been witness
to the justice of God against presumptuous sin, the desire
to be as Christ and to share his glory as a priest, this is
what they had done, that's what the sin was. The earth had opened
up her maw and swallowed these offenders and vindicated Moses
and Aaron. And God has showed himself to
be the God of justice. The people, it would seem, have
been taught a very important lesson, having seen Dathan, Abiram,
and Kor and all that followed them destroyed. These rebels
had decided to be priests and offer up incense to the Lord
and sent them to hell in a flash of his wrath. However, the fact
is that men and women do not learn from being judged. They
don't learn from being judged, nor do they turn after being
punished. Isaiah said that of the whole congregation of Israel
in Isaiah 1.5. He said, why should you be stricken
anymore? You'll just revolt more and more. Fear never brings about
repentance. It never does. It's the goodness
of God that leads men and women to repent according to scripture.
Now, I could maybe put the fear of hell in you. I don't think
I could, but maybe I could get you scared up. I remember when
I was a kid, they used to talk about it a lot. It scared the
Lord out of me. I remember one guy came to a church one time,
had these day-glo chalks, and then he'd turn on a blacklight,
and he pictured it. It was awful. I was scared to
death. It didn't bring me to repentance. It just made me scared
of burning. Repentance comes when God is
good to you and shows grace and mercy and grants you repentance.
And your repentance will be to set aside and lay aside and forget
and disallow and disown everything you think about yourself that
recommends you to God. That's true repentance. That's
true repentance. All that's got to go. Well, I've
given up drinking. Good for you. That's a good thing
to do. I'm not against a fella having a glass of wine or a beer
with a pizza. That's not a big deal to me. Our Lord was talking
about drunkenness. If you've given that up, I salute
you. I salute you. I've got friends
here on the Reds who still carry around their coins from their
AA meetings after being there 30, 35 years. never drink again,
and I'm glad for them. I'm glad for them. Maybe you thought you'd done
something good or stopped doing something bad, that's not repentance.
That's not repentance. You see, Corin desired and believed
himself entitled to the office of priest, to have his say in
the matters of the sacrifice before God. to intrude himself
or insinuate himself in the work of the high priest, which is
a representative of Christ. And what happened to him is God
turned him into appetizers for the gullet of the earth and kindling
for the fire of hell. Immediately after the earth was
sated her appetite, there came out a fire from the Lord, it
says in verse 35, and consumed the 250 that followed Korah,
who presumed to burn incense before the Lord. These worms
of the dust, like you and I, had deemed to raise their heads
to be crowned with honor, but instead they were charred beyond
recognition. All that was left was a bunch
of brazen censers that they had used, and these were put to use
for which they were designed. They were set aside for the glory
of the Lord. They were holy vessels, so they
were made into plates to cover the brazen altar as a memorial
to Israel. to remember what it is to exalt
yourself when you should be humbling yourself before God. A memorial
to the fact that if you are not the high priest and you are not
the son of God, you have neither right nor warrant to interlope
into the matters of salvation. Did you hear what I just said?
If you're not the high priest, if you're not the son of God,
you have neither right nor warrant to interlope into the matters
of salvation. No right at all. None at all. Poor stupid man. He has less intelligence than
the moth that thrust herself in the candle flame, because
men at least have the capacity of rational thought, yet they
would play the ignoramus to get glory for themselves. And that's
what these men did. In this day when men and women
seek recognition and glory and have inserted themselves into
the matters of grace, It must seem foolish to find one who
is content to be where God has placed them. It must be a strange
thing to them. Jedediah Burroughs wrote a little
book called The Jewel of Christian Contentment. Burroughs said that
a Christian contentment is a rare jewel. It's a rare jewel to be
content with where God has put you. You see, God is against
the proud. He says that many times in scripture.
He says he hates the proud look. That's one of the six things
that he hates in the book of Proverbs. If a person exalts
himself, God's economy requires that such a one be abased. That's
what God requires. You exalt yourself, He's gonna
abase you. He's gonna bring you down into the dirt. Nothing is
more obvious, more discomforting, and more of a contradiction than
for a person who claims to believe that salvation is by grace to
be proud and haughty and presume influence with God. Nothing is
worse. C.H. Macintosh said, if we are
to be governed by the rule of God's kingdom, we shall find
that the only way to get up is to go down. The only way to get
up is to go down. Now our text teaches that what
has already been revealed thus far in the nature and the insanity
of unbelief And it's sufficient to remind us that unbelief never
changes. If you're an unbeliever this
morning, your unbelief will never become belief. You will not change
your unbelief. You will die with unbelief upon
your bosom because your unbelief never leaves you. It's the old
nature. It's the flesh. It's the old man. Unbelief is
intractable. It never changes. It can't believe.
It won't believe. In chapter 14 of this very book,
our Lord was about to send the people of Israel into the promised
land. And they sent out spies, and
the two true spies told them, there's no problem, we can go
in there and take it all. But 10 spies came back and said,
no, there's giants over there, and they're bad. And so the Lord
said, get you up and get into the land. And the people said,
no, we're not gonna go. They didn't believe God. They
didn't believe God. God said, well, everybody above
you who is 20 years, above 20 years of age who came out of
Egypt, y'all go back in the desert and die and become carcasses
and let the sun bleach your bones. Do that. That's, you cannot,
he said, you cannot enter the promised land. They said, wait.
Wait a minute. We'll fight the giants, we'll
go with the giants, and we'll go into the promised land, and
we'll get ready, we'll put all our gear together, and we're
going in." He said, no, you're not. But what that was is an example of
unbelief. When the Lord said, go in, they said, no. When the
Lord said, you can't go in, they said, no. Yes, we can. This is unbelief. It never changes.
It's always against God. It's always against God. It is
spoken in opposition to what the reaction of the people ought
to have been, these words in our text. There's been a divine
slaughter, and to the memorial that it showed them that their
salvation depended upon the priest to deal with God only, but here
it is penned blatantly in the divine pen, less than 24 hours
later. After seeing this, the earth
opened up, fire coming down from heaven, consuming men, smelling
the smell of burning flesh still in the air. On the morrow, it
says. but on the morrow on the morrow here it is penned blatantly by
the divine writer but on the morrow not a week later a year
later but as soon as the sun rose and the new day began as
the sun rose on those burnt carcasses the people murmured against God
unbelief never changes They murmured against Moses and Aaron. Unbelief
will never believe. Unbelief can never possess rational
thought. With the stretch of flambeed
flesh still in the air, with the tents of Cora, Dathan, and
Abiram all up for rent, with the polished plates covering
the brazen altar as reminders of how God deals with pride and
presumptuous sin the next day. The congregation murmurs. The
Virgin said murmur is the sound that any beast can make. It's
the sound any beast can make. Murmur against their leader.
Murmur against their high priest who could electively represent
Christ and his church in the wilderness. Know well that those
who fled in fear just the day before now murmur. They ran when God did this. Unbelief
doesn't have a very long memory. Not just a few, as with Korah
and his gang of 250, but not just the families of less than
the 300 slain, but all the congregation, it said, all the congregation.
There was a gathering up to Moses and to Aaron. They said, you
killed God's people. God's people? People who would
take upon themselves to insinuate themselves in the manner in which
God saves sinners? God's people? I think not. They evidently believed that
what had happened the day before had nothing to do with God. They
evidently believed that Korah and his cohorts had a right to
be priests. They evidently believed that
though God declared that they would not make it through the
wilderness without the high priest, they were convinced that they
could. In this same chapter, our Lord had called the land
of promise the land of milk and honey. They called Egypt in the
same chapter. This congregation called Egypt
the land of milk and honey. Look at the accusation laid at
the door of Moses. But on the morrow, verse 41,
all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses
and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the
Lord. You've killed some fine people,
some good Christians. That's what you've done. Some
God-fearing go to meeting Sunday, Sunday go to meeting folk. Sound
familiar? I've been asked so many times,
even by some of my relatives, why are you so hard to say that
unless folks believe the gospel as it's revealed in scripture
that they are lost? Because they are. They are. Folks say, don't you
know that these are fine people? I know they're fine people. They're
sincere people and they will sincerely and finally go to hell
off a church pew with a Bible in their hand and amazing grace
upon their lids. These are five people over at
the First Bapto Charismo Ecumenico Evangelico Bible Thumping Baptist
Church. Free Will Grace Church. They pray. They give. They attend. They labor. They weep on cue. And you just
say that they are lost because they deny that God alone, through
the work of the high priest alone, is the salvation of the laity.
That's exactly what I'm saying. That's the ticket. Well, who
do you think you are to kill such fine folk? Who do you think
you are? Those folks, they say, are God's
people. We're all going to the same place. No, they're not. God calls them infidels. And
their unbelief, as does all unbelief, as does our unbelief, deserve
the wrath of the just and right God of this universe. The unbelief
that we now possess as believers. That old man, that old nature
deserves an eternity in hell. That's what it deserved. God
sends the plague. I don't know what the plague
was, but it started killing people. 14,700 it killed. Whatever the
plague was, it was consuming the people in a moment. Because
the congregation had got together and said, God's wrong in this
situation. But God will not destroy them
all. God will not destroy them all,
although justice demands death for sin. God also must be gracious. I have no difficulty in saying
it. Some people say God don't have to be gracious. I say He
does because He said He was. If He says He was, He must. He
said, I will be gracious unto whom I will be gracious. I will
show mercy unto whom I will show mercy. God's going to be gracious.
God's going to show mercy. Justice, He is going to show
justice and wrath. God must also be gracious. He
must also be merciful. He must act in love as well as
in wrath. This is His glory. I will make
my goodness pass before you. I proclaim the name of the Lord
before you. I will be gracious unto you. I will be gracious
and I will be merciful unto whom I will be merciful. Well, how
can it be that God can be merciful to this entire, some of this
entire congregation who stood up and said, God didn't do it
right. These were good people. These
were good people. These were God's people. They'd
already said to, Korah had already said to Moses in the first part
of the chapter, all of God's people, all these people are
holy. All these people are holy. Look at verse 46, and Moses said
to Aaron, take a censer. Now he took 250 censers from
these false priests and beat them into brass plates and covered
the brazen altar with them as a reminder of their sin. But
he says to the high priest, Aaron, who is the true representative
of the people. His clothes represented the people. The ouches on his
shoulders contained the twelve tribes of Israel's names. His
breastplate was divided into twelve squares and each square
had a name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel on it. He was
a representative of the people. In other words, God dealt with
him as if he was dealing with the people. This is what the
high priest did. So it says that Moses said to
Aaron, take a censer and put fire there on off the altar and
put on incense and go quickly into the congregation and make
an atonement for them. Plague is coming, people are
dying. Quick, Moses said. Put that fire on that censer.
You get in there between them and God. You get in there, you
make atonement for them. That atonement represented that
smoke rising up to heaven represented the atonement of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He says, for there is wrath gone out from the Lord,
and the plague is begun. 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, stood between the dead and the living, and
the plague was stayed. the plague stopped right where
he was making atonement for the people with that censer the dead and those who are alive
and these yet alive though deserving eternal death they were right
along with the rest of the bunch saying you've done killed God's
people you killed good people they picture us the children
of God deserving of hell deserving of eternal damnation, deserving
nothing from God, save His wrath and His justice. God sent His
great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, our great high priest,
who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, yet without
sin. Tempted in all points like we
are, yet without sin, He sent His high priest to the cross
of Calvary. These alive, though deserving
eternal death, are us. And Aaron pictures the Lord Jesus
Christ. The fire from the brazen altar
signifies that sin has been punished. The incense represents the intercessory
substitutionary work of the Savior. It appears that these folks will
not make it through the wilderness without a high priest at all.
And neither will you. Neither will you. The very person
that these people by nature despised was the very person that they
cannot make it through the wilderness without. The very person. You see, you and I are not born
loving Jesus. Now, most people love this Jesus
that's talked about today because he's such a nice little old namby-pamby. Nobody can do nothing unless
you let him bless his poor little heart. Looks like a Caucasian
with a red beard and hair. There's something wrong with
that. He was a Jewish man. Dark skin. Probably had dark curly
hair. Probably short in stature. And
wasn't good looking. The one they got on these pictures,
he's a handsome fellow. He could be a movie star. He
could be a rock star. In fact, I've heard preachers
actually call him rock star. Bless their stupid hearts. No man would desire Him, God
said. There's no comeliness or beauty
in Him that any should desire Him. You're going to make it
to heaven without Him. You might fall in love with that
fake Jesus on velvet pictures in Walmart at Easter time and
at Christmas. You might fall in love with that Jesus. because
he's just like a tag along, something you put into your life, you take
into your life to make your life a little better. Listen to me,
if you can take God into your life, he ain't God, you are.
You're doing the taking, and he's doing the submitting, and
that's just backwards. That's just backwards. But you
see, we're born hating God. The natural mind is enmity against
God, is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be,
Romans 8, 7 and 8. We despise God. The Lord said,
moral thought that men hate you. They hated me first. Calvin said,
Calvin said, men really hate God, but all they can get to
is me. Can't get to Christ. He sits at the right hand of
the Father. You can't reach him, so you get a hold of his preachers
and wear them out. Jesus Christ and his death and life stood
between the wrath of God and those of us becoming sin for
us. He did this before we existed.
And when we began to exist, we hated Him. And it was not until
God gave us faith through the preaching of the gospel to overcome
the world of unbelief in our own heart that we began to love
Him for His grace and His mercy, not until then. It's all here
for us in this last chapter, last part of chapter 16. God
glorified as the just God and the Savior. And all of that congregation,
some perished, but some didn't. And that's how it's going to
be. God must be just. He must be just. Christ revealed
as the substitute, the intercessor, the stayer of the plague, as
the effectual great high priest. We are revealed in the wretchedness
of our rebellious unbelief and ruinous depravity, and also as
the object of the gracious work of our blessed Redeemer. Think
about that. had God killed the entire congregation,
His great name, His manifold attributes would not have been
fully glorified. But in glorious substitution
they all are glorified. His justice is glorified, for
He gets the death that He's owed. His grace is glorified, for He
shows mercy to some, and not to others. His intercession is
glorified. For it works. It's an effectual
intercession. We do not serve a failing Jesus
or a Jesus who failed to do what he wanted to do. I know the Pope
of Rome said a couple weeks ago that the Son of God was a failure
in his mission on the earth. Actually said that. What a jerk.
What a jerk. Got nice hats, but he was stupid
as a bag of hammers. Manifield attributes will be
glorified. Justice, grace, intercession,
mercy. Every one of those people that stood there and mocked Moses
and said to the people, you done killed good people. God rightfully
and justly could have killed every one of them, but he didn't.
He didn't. Love was there that day. As the high priest stood between
the living and the dead, It's all displayed in this final
part of this chapter. And it pictures all that is displayed
on the cross of Calvary. For there and there alone was
God's attributes and all of them fully displayed and fully disclosed. There we see what God thinks
of sin. And I know we've renamed all
of it. We've renamed every sin we can imagine. We have. Sin is no longer sin. Because we've renamed it. We've
given it another name. But God will kill you for your
sin. God must kill you. He must kill
you for your sin. And either He'll pour His wrath
out on you as an individual person or He has poured out His wrath
on Jesus Christ on your behalf. That's the only way you'll ever
be saved. On the cross we see His justice.
Because when Jesus Christ was made to be sin for us, who knew
no sin, God poured out His wrath in those three hours of darkness
on the Lord Jesus Christ. as it were, rolled up his sleeves
and pummeled him, beat him, and gave him the wrath to do all
his elect for an eternity of hell. He came out alive on the
other side, but Jesus Christ is the Son of God. But there
also we see something else. We see the grace of God, because
Jesus Christ knew no sin. The sin that was laid upon Him
was the sins of His people, our sins. And God punished our transgressions
in the person of His Son. And when He punished our transgressions,
nothing flowed to us but grace and mercy. And we see His sovereignty,
for He's in control of the whole thing. Of the whole thing. You think, well, what a terrible
thing that Christ was crucified. It was terrible in the fact of
it. In the fact that it was hard and painful. but it was glorious
in the purpose of it. For Christ didn't come to this
world to set up a kingdom or to make your life better. Christ
didn't come to this world to be an example for men. Christ
come to this world to die. He had set his face like a flint
toward Jerusalem, that's where he's going. And disciples didn't
like the idea, but when he told Peter, they're gonna take me
up and they're gonna crucify me, Peter said, oh, you're the
Lord, you don't have to do that. He said, get thee behind me,
see? They don't save us the things of God. You see, that which is
of God is Christ's crucifixion. That's what's of God. Their mercy,
all of it fully displayed. You don't know nothing about
sin. I don't know nothing about sin. We don't know nothing about
how depraved we are. God holds us back from what we
would do 99% of the time. And that's what happened. Don't
blame your righteousness. Don't say it's your righteousness
when it's actually God just keeping you from being how stupid you
really are. It ain't your righteousness. It's His withholding power that
keeps you in check. You know that's true. You know
the thoughts that go through your head and your mind when
somebody wronged you. You know the thoughts that go
through your mind. You don't want to tell me. You
don't want to tell yourself most of the time. But you know that
if there were no laws prohibiting you from killing people who made
you mad, you'd kill everybody who made you mad. You just would. You'd pull that pistol out of
your pocket and shoot them right between the eyes, if you could.
Laws prevent it, so we don't do it. But the thoughts are there,
aren't they? Aren't they? Sure they are. Can't kill a man
for his thoughts. God can. God will. unless he punished your sin and
then substitute the Lord Jesus Christ. We're in the wilderness,
folks, just like this church in the wilderness back here,
40 years, because of unbelief. The distance or the time that
it actually took to go from Egypt to Canaan was 11 days at a normal walk. How come it
took them 40 years to get to the promised land? 40 years,
how come? Unbelief. That's us. We're in this wilderness. How
short a journey it is. How do you get to glory? How
do you get to the promised land? Trust the Lord, Jesus Christ alone.
And we're still stumbling about in the wilderness. Because part of us, our old nature,
will never trust Christ. We're in the wilderness, folks.
We're in the wilderness. We're strangers and pilgrims
here, sojourners, is that what we're called. Thank God for our
high priest, who stood between God's wrath and what we deserved,
and interceded for us, even when we didn't believe. The people
that were spared that day were unbelievers. They weren't believers. That morning they'd said, God
did it wrong. And when God saved your soul,
you were nothing but unbelief. He gave you faith. He granted
you faith. He gave you the gift of faith,
and that's why you believed. You wouldn't do otherwise. Scripture
says this, and I'm so glad. It says it to the children of
God. believe. He, God, abideth faithful. He cannot deny himself. I am God. There is none like
me. There is none beside me. I change not. Therefore you sons
of Jacob are not consumed. You're not consumed. On the morrow Remember, judgment's gonna come
your way as far as natural judgment for men. Trials that are common
to all men, they're gonna come your way. But a bad time in this life will
never make you a child of God. It'll never make you turn to
God. When God reveals to you, what he did on Calvary's tree
on behalf of his people. If he puts that in your heart
and your mind, you'll cry out for mercy and thank God for it
and thank God for grace. Father, bless us to understand
and pray in Christ's name. Amen. All right.