We are in the Book of Numbers, chapter 16.
We're going to read the introduction to an episode, and
then we're going to read another episode of what happened to
God's people in the wilderness. That's what the book of Numbers
is all about. So let's hear now the word of
the Lord #16. Now Cora the son of Ishar, the
son of Kohath, the son of Levi, Nathan, and Byram, the sons of
Eliab, and on the sons of palace sons of Ruben, took men, and
they rose up before Moses with a number of the people of Israel,
250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well
known men. These assembled themselves
together against Moses and against Aaron, and said to them,
you have gone too far, for all in the congregation are holy,
every one of them, and the Lord is among them.
Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?
When Moses heard it, he fell on his face, and he said to Cora,
until all the company in the morning the Lord will show who
he is and who is holy, and will bring him near to him.
The one whom he chooses he will bring near to him and then we
move over to the next chapter to another incident which happened
shortly after this one. The Lord came to Moses saying
speak to the people of Israel and get from them Staffs, one
for each father's house, from all the chiefs according to
their father's houses. 12 Staffs.
Write each man's name on his staff.
Write Aaron's name on the staff of Levi, for there shall be one
staff for the head of each father's house.
Then you shall deposit them in the 10 of meeting before the
testimony where I meet you, and the staff of the man whom I
choose shall sprout. Thus I will make to cease from
me the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble
against you. Moses spoke to the people of
Israel, and all their chiefs gave him Staffs, one for each
chief, according to his father's house. 12 Staffs and the staff
of Aaron was among their Staffs, and Moses deposited the Staffs
before the Lord in the tent of the testimony.
On the next day Moses went into the tent of the testimony, and
behold, the staff of Aaron and the House of Levi had sprouted
and put forth buds and produced blossoms, and it bore ripe
almonds. Then Moses brought out all the
Staffs from before the Lord to the people of Israel, and they
looked, And each man took his staff.
And the Lord said to Moses, put back the staff of Aaron before
the testimony to be kept, as a sign for the rebels, that you
may make an end to their grumblings against me, lest they
die. Thus did Moses, as the Lord
commanded him, so he did. And the people of Israel said to
Moses, Behold, we perish, We are undone, We are all undone.
Everyone who comes near, who comes near to the Tabernacle of
the Lord, shall die. Are we all to perish.
The answer to that question is, yes, the word of the Lord.
You may be seated. You may be seated.
Two different episodes here. And this, of course, is not.
Begin the strain that we're familiar with.
This entire book has been story after story of God's people in
the wilderness under the leadership of Moses and Aaron.
And they are on many occasions and in various ways and reasons,
provoking the Lord. They are testing him.
They are pushing him to the brink.
In fact, he does come to the brink on a couple of occasions.
The Lord says, I tell you what I will do.
I will just wipe out this whole nation and I'll start over with
you. Moses and Moses pleaded for the
people, and as the good the priest that he and Aaron were,
they pled for the people and the Lord had mercy.
They reminded the Lord that the covenant was with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and he needed to fulfill his covenant in God.
Said, I'm a covenant keeping God, and I'm gracious and I'm
slow to anger. And so as they become, began to
know the Lord, they begin to mediate for the people before
the Lord, and the Lord spared them time.
Again you remember, let me just review a few of them back in
chapter 4, which we didn't look at.
The people had a strong craving, a strong craving.
And the Lord ended up wiping out the people that were complaining
and grumbling and and saying to Moses, we'd rather died in
Egypt. It was better in Egypt than it
is out here in the wilderness. Why did you break bring us to
this land? You told us you were bringing us
to a land of milk and honey. And here we are in the desert
and the Bible says that a great plague came and killed them,
those that were complaining. And to the others the Lord
performed a miracle of salvation.
He sent from the sea a great breeze that brought in a huge
flock of quail, and that quail served as a meat to go along
with the mana and to satiate the people of God.
In Chapter 11, there's a story about, and I like the way the
ESV says it, Usually I'm going back and talking about the way I
like the King James Version saying something.
I like the words that's used here by the translators.
The rabble, the rabble. You know, every church has a
rabble. You you just have to pay
attention for a while and find out who they are.
The rabble and he defined of those who dwell on the outlying.
They're the people that are on the edges of the camp.
They're the people that are the furthest away from God's
presence in the Tabernacle. They're the people that are
furthest away from the leadership that surrounds the
Tabernacle, that the the the tribe of Levi and all of his
three sons and Moses and all over there they're further out
from even the their own kin. Folks.
What's worse is they're the ones that are the nearest to the
pagans. They're the nearest to the
world. They're the nearest to the
Canaanites and all of the godless people around and
they're under their influence. These are the out outliers.
That's the rabble, and it's the rabble that brings up the
complaining against Moses in Chapter 11.
In chapter 12, another one we didn't look at, but it's Aaron
and Miriam. Aaron, of course, is Moses
brother, who now is the designated priest for the
nation, as we learned today by God's choosing.
And Moses the leader and the younger sister, along with
Aaron, decide that they have as much going for them spiritually
as Moses does. They had looked at Moses.
I said, you know, I remember when he was nothing but a snot
nosed baby in a in a in a basket, in the bulrushes.
And here he is lording over all these people and leading.
We have as much capacity. In fact, Miriam says, I'm of the
older one and I've got great insight and nurturing capacity.
The Lord speaks to me. The Lord inspires me.
I need a women's ministry and I need to serve all the people,
the men and the women. And Aaron says, well, I'm the
one with all the gifts. I'm the one that does the
talking. I'm the one that has the gifts
up front. So what do why do we hate Moses?
And they, they led among themselves a confrontation with
Moses. And by the time the Lord got
through with them, Miriam had leprosy, and Aaron was a
quibbling mass of insecurity. The Lord dealt with them on that
occasion. And then on another occasion we
saw this last week. They went to spy out the land
and the report came back. And you know, the story went all
over it last week about the Minority Report, the majority
report. And they decided then, lack of
faith that they would not go up into Canaan and possess it the
way the Lord said he had given it to them.
Because they just didn't think they could win the battles.
They didn't think they could conquest.
They needed a little more experience.
They needed a little more attend a few more church services, a
few more apologetics lectures before they could really go and
do the things that the Lord had called them to do.
And so they they rebelled against the Lord.
And it wasn't so much that they refused to go in.
That was bad enough. But what was even worse?
You remember they said, let us choose a leader who will lead us
back to Egypt. That's apostasy, that's
deconstruction, that's departing the faith, that's turning back.
A rebellion often is led by people who really care, who want
to reform, who like it the way that it is, but they feel like
it needs to be better. And a rebellion can be of a good
sort or it could be of a meaner sort, but it's still people who
care about that particular leadership and that particular
structure and that organization in the direction and the goals.
And so they they lead this little movement to kind of
rectify some things and reform some things.
And it forms a a rebellion of sorts.
And that's bad enough. But an apostasy is when you turn
your back and walk away and go back.
So God's people are continually provoking him, and then in 14 we
find that the Lord said he was going to after they had had
failed him at Katy Schmarnia and entered the land with the the
spies report in chapter 14. The Lord said you're going to
all die in the wilderness, and He decided.
Then the Lord told Moses to tell the people that they themselves,
those people that were standing on their two feet and doing
everything they were doing then would not be the generation that
would enter the land. There'd be another generation,
which means they had 35 or 6 or 7 or 8, whatever years under 40.
It was left to be led and wandering through the wilderness
before they ever once again came back to the point of entry into
the land of Canaan. And now we come to Chapter 15,
and we have a formal rebellion. Let's just look at a few things
about it. Number one, it was led by a guy
named Cora. He's referred to in the New
Testament as having led a rebellion.
The book of Jude talks about the way of Cain, the rebellion of
Cora. It talks about the error of
Balem. These are three outstanding Old
Testament examples which we won't go into all of them, but
they're they're ways of apostasy, unbelief, turning
back, turning aside, opposing God in his gospel, in his
Christ. And so we are warned even in the
New Testament not to be like these guys.
And this is one of them. Here the rebellion of Coralite
was a large rebellion and they these people that are named, are
principally the sons of Levi, which means that they're kinsman
to Aaron and Moses, because they're descended from Levi as
well. That's the tribe that the Lord
will designate to be the priestly tribe the tribe and the
Levites the the the people there.
So the tribe of Levi was had they felt more than one capable
leader. And this Cora and notice what he
did. He, He and He was joined by the
way, by the sons of Ruben, who by the way were the tribe that
kept closest to the Levites on that side of the camp.
They were, they were their near neighbors.
They were also pretty close tribes growing up.
You remember the first four sons of Jacob were born to Leah and
Simeon was the oldest. And then they went down Simeon,
Levi and Judah. Those were the four sons of
Joseph and Leah which formed the 1st 4 patriarchs of the sons of
Israel, the sons of Jacob. So they've always been close.
Like Judah and Benjamin were always close.
Asher and Gad were close. If you study the confederation
of tribes over the Old Testament, you'll see how
certain ones kind of stood together.
Dan and half tribe of Manassa I'll stop.
Mainly I'm stopping because I don't remember the rest of them.
So they they select and notice how it's done.
It's from the congregation they choose from the assembly.
Well known men, a little democracy in action.
They took personalities, they took well known leaders of the
clans and the tribes, and they put them together and they
started a rebellion. A pretty good company for Moses
to face a fellow Levite and his cohorts.
Some men from Ruben and probably well known men to to Moses.
And these men were chosen by the people.
And this was the accusation they'd again made against Moses.
Anarity said. You have gone too far.
It was. We've had enough of your
leadership. You have taken us beyond the
point of competency. You have been acting on the
Peter Principle. You've been promoted beyond your
capacity and so they brought these accusations to Moses and
said for all the congregation are holy.
And if you'd have seen Aaron a few months back, leading the
worship service down around the golden calf, you wouldn't have
been impressed with this holiness anymore than you would
have your next door neighbor there in Levite land.
And God had consecrated the people and called him to
holiness. So the people have a status
equal. There's no one more outstanding
than any other in our company. We are we, we have a good policy
of equity in this tribe and we expect it to be implemented in
the government. And so that's what we are
looking for. We're looking for a people who
have been chosen by the people and come out of a congregation
that is holy, every one of them, And the Lord is among them.
In other words, they're just as spiritually qualified as you.
Why then do you exalt yourself above the assembly of the Lord?
And Moses, basically, as he often does, his meekness and his
humility calls him, and often he just instead of being defiant
and lording it over them, he simply falls on his face.
Before the Lord, Moses and the Lord had their own conversations
going through this whole time. It's unbelievable what the Lord
dealt with and how he propped up and held and ministered to Moses
when when Moses went through it in normal enormous amount of
trouble. One of the the chapters that we
haven't looked at is when when he bears this burden he can't
handle by himself. And the Lord gives him support
and they select elders from the people.
But he falls upon his face before the Lord and he says
decor in the company. In the morning the Lord will
show who he is and who is holy and will bring him near to him.
Knows tomorrow we'll let the Lord demonstrate who ought to be
the High priest of Israel because that's really the
crisis. It's a crisis in the priesthood.
It's not just Moses leadership, it's who's the priest.
Notice the spiritual terms that are dealt with.
The Lord is with them. They're holy.
This is the spiritual leadership of the people, not just the the
the governmental leadership or the the leadership that Moses
gave. In so many ways, this was the
spiritual leadership. This was a rebellion against
God's choice of Aaron or or as they thought Moses choice of
Aaron. And what kind of nepotism is it
when you're given an assignment to get your brother to join up
in the company with you at the top of the company?
And this is what they were accused of.
You see, Moses always had trouble back, way back when he
killed the Egyptian. Do you remember when he saw the
Egyptian abusing one of his brothers?
He he killed the Egyptian. And the next day he went back
and one of the Jews said to Moses, who are you to rule over
us? This, this people have from the
very beginning, they've all had their doubts about Moses and his
leadership. This time.
It's Aaron now, amount of time, so I won't tell you the rest of
the story. You got a homework assignment.
Read the rest of chapter 16 and it's long and it's involved.
And you're going to find God judging the people and you're
going to find the the people being pleaded with by the Lord
to get away from this group of rebels.
Korah and his cohorts and these 250 chiefs of the clans of
Israel get away from twice. The Lord has to warn them
because what he does is he opens up the earth and they're
swallowed up hole. They go into shield alive into
the heart of the earth. They're buried alive literally.
And anybody that was near them slid into the big chasm.
So the Lord had separated the people to get back and this
causes the people once again to be humbled and and they're
judged. And then they take the the
sensors that had been used by these 250 men that were with
Cora. And they took those sensors
which were made out of precious metals, maybe even gold, and
they beat them into a big cover that they used to cover over the
altar. It was probably a second
covering that went over the whole altar, which had of course
the chair beam, the mercy seat, that over the arc of the
covenant, which provided a protection, a hedge against
anybody approaching God. These people who tried to come
and approach God and to assume the spiritual leadership were
dealt with by God. Now oh, and then then the big
take those censors and start a fire, and there's a big fire,
and now the fire comes, a plague.
And he was only Aaron rushing in with his censor in the middle of
it all that stood between the fiery plague and the people that
spared him. I don't know if they put this in
the 10 commandments or not. Just a lot of drama in the a lot
of good movie making out in the scenes in the Old Testament,
I'll tell you that. But let's look just for a moment
here at this, this one that happened in 17.
This is now a direct crisis of spiritual leadership.
They're directly disputing Moses.
And the Lord brings the test, tells Moses what to do.
Let each tribe, the 12 tribes bring their leader and how their
leader someone representative as one of the plans to put a staff.
And Moses takes the 12 Staffs, the just the regular staff and
puts them before the Lord overnight.
And the next morning when he goes in to the 10 of meeting,
the Staffs were unaffected, all of them except for one, and that
was the staff of Levi. And it was not only had been
changed, but it had been sprouted and and caused to bud.
And to bloom and to bear fruit. And that's highly symbolic of
the touch of the Spirit of God upon something.
And it's likely that the white blossoms of the almond bud,
Lily, white, pure white, were symbols of the purity and the
holiness that God demands. And so the significant thing
there, when you see the The thing is this is the is what was
said and the people said to Moses, behold, we perish, we are
undone. And it says are we all to
perish. There was this final horrible
conviction came upon them when they realized the nature of
their rebellion and what they had done.
They realized that they had committed virtually an
impartinable sin, and they knew they stood in the judgment of
the Lord. Now there was a Hebrews passage
there in your in your bulletin that I didn't read.
And the reason I didn't is because I have selected one just
a few chapters earlier than that one, and by way of application.
And I'm going to read a couple of paragraphs of this particular
Hebrews chapter 3 by way of application, because this, this
particular chapter applies directly to the provocation that
we just read about. Therefore this is the writer of
Hebrews exhorting the Christians here.
Now this word Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a
heavenly calling, consider Jesus the true chosen high Priest, the
Apostle and high Priest of our confession, who was faithful to
him, who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful at all of
God's house. For Jesus has been counted
worthy of more glory than Moses, as much more glory, as the
builder of a house has more honor than the house itself, for
every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is
God. Now Moses was faithful at all
the God's houses, servants to testify to the things that were
to be spoken later. But Christ is faithful over
God's house as a Son, and we are His house, be the church.
We, the Christians, are His house, if indeed we hold fast
our confidence and our boasting and our hope.
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit said today, if you will hear His
voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion,
Cora's rebellion, and the others on the day of testing in the
wilderness where your Father's put me to the test and saw my
works for 40 years. Therefore, I was provoked with
that generation. And they said they will always
go astray in their hearts. And they have not known my ways
as I swore in my wrath. They shall not enter my rest.
Are we all going to die in our sins?
Yes. Yes.
That's exactly where we're determined to die.
That's where our choices of leadership, our choices of life,
our choices of living, our choices of serving, that's where
they leave us. We're so helpless and depraved
in our soul that that is our destiny.
We will not not survive it. You won't survive this life into
the next life without eternal life.
And this life is in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
And listen so, so now the admonition.
Bear with me just a couple of minutes.
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you and unbelieving
heart leading you to fall away from the living God that's
falling away. That's that apostasy that says
we'll choose a leader and go back, but exhort one another
every day, as long as it's called today, that none of you
may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original
confidence firm to the end. For who were those who heard and
yet rebelled the story we just saw this morning?
Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?
And with whom was he provoked for 40 years?
Now, as it was those who had sinned, whose bodies fell in the
wilderness? And to whom did he swear that
they would not enter his rest? But to those who were
disobedient, so we see that they were unable to enter because of
unbelief. Don't let your heart that is
hard. Don't let your heart that's in
rebellion. Don't let your heart that is
that is this the very theater and arena of sin and your
disobedience cause you to miss. How shall we escape if we
neglect so great salvation? The only way to go to an
eternity of punishment and perdition is to trample over the
blood of Christ. Why will you die, O Israel?
I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord,
Come to Christ, come for salvation.
Hear him, receive him, embrace him, look upon him, believe in
him, trust him, Follow him all the way through death's door
into eternal life. Come and and the day of
salvation is only one day in Scripture.
Today. Today.
Don't let the sun go down tonight unless you know how your
soul is with God. Is it well with your soul?