We need to move from presumption to praise (Numbers 17)

 

Walking the dog around the neighbourhood it struck me that most of our neighbours seem to think that God is somewhat irrelevant.  But our God claims incredible things for Himself.  Our God claims the right to give life and take it.  Our God commands all people everywhere to worship Him.  Our God says that He is the one and only God.  Our God will judge all people at the end of time, and people will be assigned to heaven or hell on the basis of their relationship with Him.  Our God is anything but irrelevant.

Since chapter 11, the people of Israel have been grumbling against Moses and Aaron.  Behind their grumbling lies the fact that the despise God (16:30).  God is about to put an end to their grumbling.

1.      Our God is inapproachable

As we saw last week, Korah lead a rebellion in which he claimed all people had the right to approach God without a priest.  He was saying that we do not need a priest to stand between ourselves and God.  He saw God as approachable.  But when Korah and his followers approached God to offer incense—a task reserved for the priests—they were burned with holy fire and swallowed up by the ground. 

Eleazar the priest then took the bronze censors which had held their incense offerings and hammered in into the alter that was in the courtyard of the temple to remind people that only the priests could approach God in this way.  We must not be presumptuous before God!

The last church I worked in was a Methodist church in Richhill, County Armagh.  It was a lovely church with great people who loved the Lord.  At one stage I asked each of the small groups to feed back on what attributes came to their mind when they thought of God.  Rightly each small group included the fact that God is love.  But there was one glaring omission.  No one mentioned that God is holy.  We live in a time and culture that can have a very casual attitude towards God.  We know God as friend, but sometimes forget that He is also King.  It is in the New Testament that we read God dwells in unapproachable light and that He is a consuming fire.

If you have been swallowed up in the love of Christ and are seeking with His strength to live for His glory then you are invited to approach the throne to find grace and mercy in your time of need.  But the only reason you can approach this throne is because you have a priest, our High Priest Jesus, who has prepared the way for us to come before God.

2.      Our God is dangerous

You would have thought that the people would have learned to take God seriously after watching the ground swallow up Korah and his followers.  But no, the next day they continued their grumbling.  They say to Moses and Aaron, ‘you have killed the people of the Lord’ (16:42).  It wasn’t Moses and Aaron who had sent the holy fire and opened up the ground.  Their complaint was against God!

The Lord then appeared to Moses and Aaron saying that He was going to consume all the people.  But Moses and Aaron fell on their faces and pleaded for them.  Moses told Aaron to stand between the people and the Lord.  A plague from God had already started to consume the people.  But as Aaron stood between the dead and the loving the plague stopped.  Can you see the picture of Jesus here?  Jesus stands between ourselves and the judgement we deserve.  Jesus has satisfied the demands of justice.  Without Him we have no hope in the face of the judgement of God!

These verses portray a different understanding of God than many in our society believe.  Our God is more dangerous than they imagine.  In ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, Susan is about the meet Aslan when she is told that Aslan is a lion.  ‘I’d thought he was a man.  Is he quite safe?  I feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.’  ‘Safe?’, asked Mr. Beaver, ‘who said anything about safe?  Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.  He’s the king, I tell you.’  Our God is dangerous, but he is good!

One of the things that struck me about these verses is how gracious God is to Aaron.  Aaron has the privilege of being the High Priest.  Yet, unlike our High Priest, Jesus, Aaron knew what it was to sin.  After all it was Aaron who had supervised the construction of the golden calf when Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments.  Our holy God loves to forgive, He loves to restore, He loves to take guilty people like you and me, wash us and make us clean and use us in His service.

3.      God wants to bless you

I was thinking about these two chapters and I wondered, ‘what does God think about these people?’  Think about it.  At one stage He says that He is going to consume them in His anger.  They are a wicked people.  Yet, in chapter seventeen, we see His greatest desire is actually to bless them.

In our reading we see that God moves to put an end to their grumbling.  Twelve leaders, one from each of the twelve tribes but a staff before the ark.  A staff for the tribe of Levi, with Aaron’s name inscribed on it, is also placed there.  The staffs are left overnight, and in the morning Aaron’s staff has produced buds, blossoms and ripe almonds.  We are probably to see that some parts were in bud, other parts in blossom and still others had produced fruit (Wenham).  This is full of symbolism.

It demonstrates that God brings life to the dead.  Aaron’s staff has been resurrected.  The Christian message is one of resurrection.  We were dead in our transgressions and sin, we have been made alive in Christ.  He is the one who can make our lives fruitful.

Almond blossoms came early in spring, and tell us that fruit is coming.  A harvest is to follow.  God blesses, and His blessings increase.  He rescues us, forgives us and embraces in His love.  But it gets better.  As we lean on Him He makes us more like Jesus.  Then will come a harvest day when those in Christ will receive resurrection bodies like Jesus and an end to death, loneliness, pain and sin.  The almond blossom tells us we have a lot to look forward to.

But, maybe most of all, the almonds would have reminded the people of the lampstands in the tabernacle.  The lampstands in the tabernacle contained almond shaped cups.  Remember that the lampstands shone its light onto the twelve loaves on the table.  This pictured God’s desire to turn His face towards His people, be gracious towards them and give them peace. 

Our God is holy and unapproachable.  Our God is dangerous.  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.  But our God wants to be gracious towards you and give you peace.  He tells us that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but would rather that we repent and live.  Who are these people that God wants to bless?  They are the very people who had despised Him and grumbled against the leadership that He appointed.  There is more mercy in Him than there is sin in us.

It has been pointed out that while sin provokes God to righteous anger, God is love.  His anger is in settled and holy response to evil.  His love is the core of His very being.  He wants to show love to those who are by nature the subject of His wrath.

Now look at how the people respond.  They are not grumbling.  They are terrified.  Korah had thought that anyone could approach God, without the ministry of a priest, and his and his followers were swallowed up by the ground.  He was presumptuous.  Now the people move to the opposite extreme.  They are simply terrified.  ‘behold we perish, we are undone.  Everyone who comes near to the tabernacle of the Lord, shall die.  Are we to perish?’  (12-13).  They have failed to see that the unapproachable God wants to bless them and bringing them close to Him.  That is why He had given them a High Priest.  Our High Priest, Jesus, gave Himself for our sin, a sacrifice of infinite value.  Therefore, we can be sure that there is more forgiveness poured out from Christ than their sin in us, even though our sin is far more vile than we realise.

Conclusion

A friend of ours is into ‘spiritual’ things.  But recently she told Caroline that she has given up on God.  When Caroline told me, I couldn’t help think that that is a bit presumptuous.  In our society we think that we can stand over God and judge Him.  We seem to think that we are doing Him the greatest of all favours to believe in Him.  But God does not need us, and one day it is Him who will stand in judgement over us.  Give up on God?  I am just glad that God has not given up on me, and He will never give up on you if you belong to Jesus.  If you truly allow yourself to be swallowed up in the love of Jesus and lean on the Holy Spirit to enable you to follow Him, your High Priest will never give up on you.  

The writer to the Hebrews explains that Jesus, 'is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lived to make intersession for them' (Hebrews 7:25).  Like Aaron, Jesus prays for His people.  When we sin, the accuser will point an evil finger in our direction, but Jesus points to His wounds and says, 'I died for that one!'  

When our lives are in Christ the unapproachable and dangerous God becomes our loving Father.  Because Jesus is our High Priest we are told to approach the throne of grace with confidence.  There we will find mercy, which is what we need when we have sinned.  Don't let your sense of shame and guilt stop you from going to Him.  There we find grace for our time of need.  When temptations seem too great, when life seems to hard, when obedience seems beyond you where are you going to turn?  We should approach that throne of grace with confidence.  Afterall, we have a High Priest who gave His life that we can enjoy this privilege.