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Number seven, beginning at the end of that chapter, verse eighty four. This was the dedication of the altar in the day when it was anointed by the princes of Israel. Twelve silver charges, twelve silver bowls, Twelve golden spoons, each silver charger weighing 130 shekels, and each bowl seventy.
All the silver of the vessels, two thousand and four hundred shekels after the shekel of the sanctuary. The twelve golden spoons full of incense, weighing ten shekels apiece. After the shekel of the sanctuary, all the gold of the spoons, and twenty shekels. All the oxen for the burnt offering, twelve bullocks, the rams twelve, the he-lams of the first year twelve, and their meal offering.
The males of the goats for a sin offering, twelve. And all the oxen for the sacrifice of peace offerings, twenty and four bullocks, the rams sixty, the he-goats sixty, the he-lambs of the first year sixty. This was the dedication of the altar after that it was anointed. But just turn over the leaf, will you? Because here in chapter seven, we have had one view of the altar. Now we are to read of another.
Chapter sixteen of Numbers and verse thirty six. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest, that he take up the censers out of the burning, and scatter thou the fire yonder, for they are holy. Even the senses of these sinners against themselves, these sinners against their own lives. Let them be made beaten plates for a covering of the altar, for they offered them before the Lord, therefore they are holy, and they shall be a sign unto the children of Israel.
And Eleazar the priest took the brazen censers which they that were burnt had offered, and they beat them out for a covering of the altar, to be a memorial unto the children of Israel, to the end that no stranger which is not of the seed of Aaron come near to burn incense before the Lord, that he be not as Korah and as his company, as the Lord spake unto him by the hand of Moses. One view of the altar then in chapter seven, and another view of the altar in chapter sixteen.
And if your thumb is still in the place, you will easily turn back now to chapter eight this time, if you will, please. You will see that in the opening verses of chapter eight, following directly after the view of the altar at its dedication, there follows the view of the lampstand. Let us read the verses. Chapter eight, verse one: and the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and say unto him, When thou lightest the lamps, the seven lamps shall give light in front of the lampstand. And Aaron did so. He lighted the lamps thereof so as to give light in front of the lampstand, as the Lord commanded Moses.
And this was the work of the lampstand, beaten work of gold, unto the base thereof and unto the flowers thereof. It was beaten work, according unto the pattern which the Lord had showed Moses, so he made the lamp stand. And what a delightful object it was, wasn't it? That beaten work, I mean. If you remember your Exodus, you'll remember that the beaten work was very cunningly and expertly done. It was beautiful beaten work so that it was made to look like a bud of the almond tree. And then a little, a little higher on it, that bud, as though it had opened out into a blossom of an almond blossom.
And then a final stage where it was made to look like the almond itself. It was a delightful piece of work, like an almond tree with the central trunk of the tree and the six branches coming out of it, and all stages of life and beauty in it. It was a delightful thing, made, I say, to look like an almond tree with its buds and its blossoms and its fruit. A view of the altar and a view of the lampstand with its almond blossoms. Lovely. And, uh, turn over again, if you will, not now to chapter sixteen, but to chapter seventeen.
Seventeen, verse s- uh, six. And Moses spake unto the children of Israel, and all their princes gave him rods, for each prince one, according to their father's houses, even twelve rods. And the rod of Aaron was among their rods, and Moses laid up the rods before the Lord in the tent of the testimony. And it came to pass on the morrow that Moses went into the tent of the testimony, and behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded and put forth buds and bloom blossoms, and bare, ripe.
Interesting, isn't it? Well, the second, the second view of the altar is followed by another view of the almonds, whatever that means. And just to complete our preliminary studies and get our bearings, let's go over to the New Testament to learn a technical term. The epistle by Jude, please. Verse eleven: Woe unto them, for they went in the way of Cain and ran riotously in the error of Balaam for hire and perished in the gainsaying of Korah.
Note the term, if you will, the gainsaying, the contradiction, if you like, the rebellion, in other words, of Korah. One other place where that word is found in the New Testament, the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter twelve, and that will complete our reading for the moment. Verse three: For consider him that hath endured such gainsaying, such contradiction, you know, like the contradiction of Korah. Consider him that endured such gainsaying, such contradiction of sinners against themselves.
That you wax not weary, fainting in your own souls. May God give us good understanding of his word. The Book of Numbers. A very easy book, is it not, to read for us Christians and to apply to ourselves for this simple reason. The Book of Numbers is the story of Israel's journey across the wilderness, from the land of Egypt until they arrived at their great inheritance. A long and eventful journey. And as we read of that, of course, we cannot help thinking of ourselves because it is common knowledge that we too are on a journey, redeemed, at least I hope we are, by the grace of God and by the blood of Christ.
We are on a journey through life to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. Easy, I say, for us to see the parallel between Israel's experience and ours. I said that the book of Numbers is about the story of Israel's journey across the wilderness. It is in the most part. Chapters eleven to the end of the book, chapter thirty six, are indeed concerned with Israel's journey across the desert to their great inheritance.
But the first ten chapters of the book are not the journey, they are devoted to preparations for the journey, and a very sensible arrangement that is, is it not? For Israel, we're about to cross the Sinai Desert, and the Sinai Desert, like any other desert, is not altogether a Sunday afternoon picnic. Even today, if you were thinking of crossing over the Sinai Desert, you wouldn't go in your carpet slippers. It was a kind of an afternoon stroll, tempted by a warmer than usual sun and to escape the rain of Belfast. Oh, how nice. I think I'd go a walk across the Seinei Peninsula.
No, you'd need a little bit more preparation than that. Indeed, if you were thinking to take your jeep, the authorities would even still tell you, be sure you've got a, a, a double drive, you know, one of those things that drives both ends. And, uh, you would have to give your name into the authorities, so if you didn't turn up in forty eight hours, they could come and look for you. Because even today, with all our sophisticated travel, the Sinai Desert is such a place as some people get lost. The late Bishop Pike went out for a walk in the Judean hills of the Sinai Desert and never came back. And thinking of that reminds us that the journey that we are on can be a dangerous journey, can't it?
Oh, it's not all danger. Oh, thank God there are a few oases here and there with some palm trees and some blue water and a few dates, and in the mercy of God, now and again we're allowed to spend the odd month in an oasis, aren't we, on the way home? Thank God for all the oases that make life worth living, and when you get up out of your tent in the morning, there's a nice warm sun and a beautiful water and the palm trees and the dates and what have you. Oh, you'd say I'd like to stay here forever. Trouble is you can't, can you? For Christian life is a journey. Enjoy every bit of it you can, my dear young friend. Enjoy it all. There are some lovely things to be enjoyed, but there are dangers.
I think if I speak of friends I knew twenty five years ago in this province, they once journeyed with God's people. I don't know where they are now. Wandering. Lost. With a very big question mark over their heads as to whether they are true believers, gone a wandering. Or whether they're not. No wonder then, if the journey can be a dangerous journey, that God spent ten whole chapters full of history preparing Israel for the dangers they would meet.
Now, I'm no grandfather, though goodness knows I'm, I'm old enough to be one. And I don't want to talk as though I were one. But I understood this meeting was primarily convened for our younger brethren and sisters. Oh, my dear friend, you're on your way to glory. Do take God seriously and get hold of the provision he has made to get you across the wilderness and home safely at last. I do remember when I was a nipper, and it was a great treat for us, come the summer holidays, for Mama to take us down to the nearest seaside place called Felixstowe, twelve miles away on the ten twenty six express train, as we thought it was.
The trouble with Mama was she would spend so much time doing the preparations. Here were we all five ready to go at half past seven in the morning, but first she had to get the breakfast, and then she had to make the lemonade, and then she had to cook the buns, and then there were the sandwiches, and all just in case we fell in the sea and got wet here with the towels. And there we used to stand around getting in any any mischief we could because it was so boring, you see, we wanted to get going. But Mama, who knew the dangers and perils of the seaside beach, even when it was meant to be a holiday, felt it wise to spend some time on the preparations, yes?
We had likewise be wise to take seriously God's preparations. And I hope in my four weeks with you to take this angle upon the book. Each week we shall study one of the great preparations that God made, and I trust we shall see the sense of it. But if we don't see the sense of the preparation, then I shall ask you to look with me at to what actually happened in the course of the wilderness, and then, by God's grace, you'll see the point of it. Then you will see it wasn't for nothing. That God made them wait and prepare to prepare.
And that's why we have read in our reading together tonight of two views of God's altar. For before Israel started out on their journey, God got them and made them stand by the altar and watched the princes of the people come laden with their gifts as the altar was dedicated, and the nation watched as those princes expressed what to them was the value of that altar. You say, why waste time at such a ritual when there's a big and exciting journey in front of you?
Why? Because it was meant to teach them lessons that they would sorely need when they got across that wilderness, and so they did. They hadn't been many miles across the wilderness when there broke out a vast rebellion. God had to show his disapproval by two things, by opening the very earth and swallowing up the tribe of Korah, and then taking the censers of two hundred and fifty apostates and having them nailed on the altar. To remind Israel of how seriously those men had gone wrong.
Two views of the altar, one in the preparation, one on the journey. Now, because it is that that we're thinking of, we shall find tonight that we are particularly interested in that part of Israel's nation that is called the Levites. So let me take a moment to tell you about the Levites and their duties. As the Israelites traveled across the Sinai Peninsula, it was the Levites who had the responsibility for the transportation of the tabernacle and all the vessels of its ministry.
Every morning when the camp moved, along came the Levites, and when the priests had made the appropriate arrangements, then the Levites took the great altar and took the bars upon their shoulders and heaved it steadily across the wilderness. They did the same thing with that heavy, uh, copper laver. They did it with all the other sacred vessels of the tabernacle, the tabernacle boards themselves, and the coverings and the skins. The Levites it was. Day after day, were responsible for transporting the tabernacle and its vessels.
We'll see. What would have been the sense of making vast progress across the Sinai Peninsula, forty years later coming to the borders of the Promised Land, now about to cross Jordan and go in and find you'd left God behind. Can happen, can't it? Oh, my dear young folks, believe me, it can happen. Men and women who ran well, redeemed by the blood of Christ, and started to journey toward God's heaven.
And somewhere and somehow, we kind of left God behind in the pressure of studies, in the pressure of business, by the sheer joys of life, or else by life's sorrows. And the worship of God gets squeezed out of their lives, and the things of God take such a backseat that in the end... they're left behind. So God made provision, and there were these Levites, therefore, to to see that they, these things weren't left behind, they had to be brought with them.
It would have been a pickle, wouldn't it? One night, here's a, here's a Israelite, um, shall we call him Eliezer? And on the journey, you know how it is, perhaps you don't. He's fallen out with his brother, you know, and had a few fisticuffs and, uh, terrible goings on across the wilderness. And as they encamped that night, the man, before he goes to bed, is full of remorse. What a fool he's made of himself, how he sinned against the Lord and against his brother, and he wants to find forgiveness, and, uh, he comes to the priest and he wants to offer a sin. Oh, well, anybody seen the altar? Oh, do you know the Levites were playing football and they backed up in such a hurry?
Uh, when the crowd moved, they they left the thing behind. Oh la. Difficult, wouldn't it? I say, what about you? The great doctrines of our faith, the atonement, regeneration by the Holy Spirit. The intercession of Christ. They don't carry themselves, do they? You say, what do you mean? Well, my good young folk, just pretend the impossible. Suppose one day a selective atom bomb came to Clockfern, and all your older brothers and sisters were taken home to glory all of a sudden, and only you were left.
And your next door neighbor, who was not a believer, and she came to you and said, my dear, I need, I, I need to get, you know, to, to, to find God. Could you explain to her the glorious fact of the atonement. You say, no, I couldn't, but I said my elder. No, he's gone to heaven. Could you explain how to be born again? Do you know what the intercessions of Christ are and how they function and why we need them?
You see, these doctrines don't exist in thin air. They are retained in the church as living people get hold of them and carry them. And that requires a lot of devotion and hard work, doesn't it? To know which way round the altar goes and that laver thing and what it does. I say it not with a critical heart, but there are some churches, you know, aren't there? They've left the altar behind. You'll not hear nowadays the doctrine of the atonement preached.
And people professing to be Christians and have no idea of the great matter of regeneration or how it is affected. Why? Well, they got left behind at all. Oh, my dear young folks, as you travel from earth to glory across this dangerous desert land, God will say, I want faithful men and women who shall be able to carry these things. As Paul said to Timothy, the things you've heard from me, you transmit them to faithful men who in their turn shall be able to teach others also.
Most even in so-called assemblies, the great fundamentals of the faith somehow get left behind. Well, of course, transporting the little tabernacle, there was a lot of hard work and sweat. I suspect, you know, when it began, it was not, not a little romantic. Wouldn't have you volunteered? It wasn't open to volunteers, of course, but wouldn't have you have volunteered to be a Levite? To see those beautiful curtains, what ho! And, and that incense altar, la! You know, and we're privileged to take it, and we know exactly where to put it.
See? Beautiful, marvelous, yeah. And when you've taken it down ten times and put it up ten times, you're still thinking, yeah, marvelous. You wait till you've taken it down five thousand six hundred and seventy two times, and have now got to put it up seventy. Third time. Phew, I've done it all before. Phew, do I have to put it up every time? I mean, why can't we make do tonight? I don't know what this old peg here is for. Why do we have to keep taking that with us as well? You know, or perhaps you don't know. I tell you, it's a feeling that can come over you in middle age if you're not careful.
The sheer slog of carrying the great fundamentals of our doctrines. It was such a severe, rigorous duty. Before they started, God made it very clear to the Levites he wasn't for deceiving them. He made it very clear what was, uh, involved, for he had the whole nation assembled. There in front of the whole nation, so to speak, in their ritual, they took the Levites, not literally, of course, but they took them and offered them as a wave offering before God.
They offered them a living sacrifice to the Lord. And as we stand there watching them, the words of the New Testament ring in our ears, don't they? From Paul, that great apostle and evangelist, my brethren, he says, I beseech you by the mercy of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. You'll scarce get through to the other end, my dear good Christian man and woman. You certainly won't get through with credit. Unless you are prepared to heed that exhortation and say, yes, Lord.
Be it hard work, be it enjoyable or difficult. First of all, Lord, let me get it straight. Here I am, a living sacrifice. You see, that's difficult. And as one wit said, living sacrifices are difficult from dead sacrifices. Dead sacrifices, once you put them on the altar, keep there. Living sacrifices have the unfortunate habit of being put on the altar and then getting up and getting off again. God, in his wisdom, just before he asked those Levites to present themselves that they may be offered a living sacrifice to God to do their arduous duties, God had them come and stand in your imagination, along with me, by that altar, if you will.
So I thought we were meant to be on the journey. Yeah, yeah, yes, so we are. But take a minute, my good friend. The journey will be rigorous, your duties unceasing. However, will you sustain them all the long years of the wilderness, unless you listen to God's invitation and for a moment now or two come and constantly come and stand again by the altar. There they stood, with the sun glittering on the copper of the altar, and all solemn and expectant.
Now Moses, in the name of God, invites the princes of the tribes to come to the dedication of the altar, and as they come to bring their gifts and tell the nation before them how they value that altar. I think some of the younger Levites must have looked with open mouths as they saw first one prince and then another come, and that beautiful large silver dish and the sun glinting on it. Oh, what's that? A silver bowl full of fine flour.
Marvelous. And look at that, that's gold, that's cool. The man is going to give a, what oh, a mighty great ornamental ritual gold spoon. Wow. Full of incense. Bullocks and sheep and goats for the sacrifices. I wonder if one of the younger Levites went up to one of the princes and said, sir, I don't mind my asking you, do you? Where did you get all that, that gold and silver from? What are you giving it away for? I think the old gray beard would have said, my son, my son, you born since we came out of Egypt, perhaps.
Mm. And you don't remember the bitter bondage down in Egypt, do you? We were penniless stony, broke slaves, we were. This wealth, I owe it to the redemption of God who brought us out of Egypt, and even as we came redeemed by the blood of the Passover lamb from the wrath of God himself, God had the Egyptians press upon us this wealth. This is redemption, my dear young man. That's where I got it from. Why are you giving it away? Oh, but my dear young man, see what that altar signifies.
Your everything to the blood of the redeeming sacrifice. And my dear young folks, will you not come with me to a bigger altar? Stand just a moment with me by the cross of Christ. Oh, what I would love to do right now, I mustn't I dent. I'd love to take twelve of the senior brethren and say, come on, now tell my young friends here what the cross of Christ means to you.
Well, I tell you, you young folks, you'll get some of these old white-haired folks over here come, who long on the journey, and they'd write up and they'd say all the same thing. What would we give? Why, they'd say in their words of the hymn, were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my heart, my life, my all. I'd like to get the sisters, but that wouldn't be appropriate, would I?
Oh, that dear old gray-haired sister, they'd come and tell you the same. Why, in life's value, and the longer you go on in life, here is life's value. All the value of redemption, they'd say. Got the arthritis now, you know, but I, I worship a Christ who loved me and redeemed me in the sense that he redeemed me from the guilt of sin. One day he's going to redeem my very body. Make it like the body of his glory. All for the wonder of him by whose perfect obedience unto death we are saved.
Blood cleanses us from all sin. Stand by the altar. As you think of the death of Jesus Christ, God's son, for you, let me ask you, what would you give? Now his cross were erected once more in this building, and you were asked to come and tell us what you would give. What would you give? You say, Mr.
Preacher, I'd gladly give my heart, my soul, and all I have. What I fear is I can't keep it up. Ah, God's thought of that. When he'd given those Levites a vision of that altar, then we read how he gave Moses a vision of the lampstand. I don't know how much the Levites understood about that and its, uh, symbolism. You are privileged, aren't you? You see things in it that they could not possibly have seen. You know the key to its symbolism, and you say that lampstand, that lovely golden lampstand with its oil lamps, and God says to Moses, Moses, speak to Aaron that he light the lamps, and Aaron did so, and the historian gives you a nudge in the ribs.
Look at that! Oh, when they lit the lamps. Oh, the splendor of that. Ah, that lampstand. That's how it is in some modern homes, you know. Can I tell you a secret? They don't just have electric light, nor do they just have a sixpenny old, um, holder from Woolworths, but when they turn the light on, oh, oh, the lampstand itself is beautiful. And the housewife expects you to notice it. Don't you fail to notice it? Goodness me. It's meant to be beautiful. God is a lampstand, and it's Christ, our blessed Lord, and the whole Holy Spirit has come down from heaven. What for? To glorify the Savior.
Oh, the wonder of his beauty. If his cross was wealthy, our blessed Lord in his risen power, see how beautiful he is with every stage of life within him. Life in the bud and life in the flower and life in the fruit. He lives by the power of an endless life. And the glory of it is that just as that lampstand had one trunk and six branches, and the branches could produce almonds just like the main trunk could, because it was in the tr- they were in the trunk. So your blessed Lord has risen. And you are in him.
And his life in you. Oh, my Christian friend, you hadn't a hope of fulfilling the tasks that God will lay upon you as spiritual Levites. Were it not for him who's risen in the power of an indefatigable life, he never grows weary. And he's in you. And able to put forth the strength and beauty of his life. Through you. No wonder Paul prayed that God would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, that the eyes of our hearts being illuminated.
To know what is the hope of his calling and what the exceeding greatness of his power towards us who believe. Does it sound all mystical to you and not very practical? Oh, I beg of you. You young folks, if you don't know what it means and it sounds unpractical, oh, pray God, give God time to show you. Ask your elders, ask somebody, what does it mean to have the living Christ in me? How else will you perform your duties all down the years of your journey home?
We'll see now as we come to the actual journey, what happened. We've been thinking of the vision of that altar that God gave the Levites as well as Israel, so that the Levites might willingly offer themselves as living sacrifice to God. Ah, and it was among the Levites, wasn't it, that in the course of the journey, that terrible rebellion took place. Certain Korah, Levite, helped on by other men from the tribe of Reuben, but he, their leader, rose up and outright rebelled against Moses and Aaron.
How serious it was, I needn't tell you, for Moses was the one who came from God as Israel's prophet and apostle sent from God. And Aaron was the high priest appointed by God. And Korah rose up and led a rebellion against both the apostle and the high priest of their confession. You say, what's wrong with him?
I expect he hadn't been looking at the altar just recently, had he? His charge was as follows, according to Numbers sixteen. first of all, verse three, said he to Moses and Aaron, you take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them. It is the claims of Moses and Aaron to be apostle and high priest. Nonsense, said Korah. We're all equal here. You're no more than we are. Repudiate your claim. It's just you becoming arrogant and arrogating to yourself these astounding claims that you come from God, Moses.
And that Aaron is the only one capable of being the high priest to enter to God for us. Nonsense, says Korah. You've made it up. You've taken it upon yourself. We're all holy. Any one of us could be priests. And as for you, Moses, and you're constantly saying, thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord. It all made up, Moses. We could say, thus saith the Lord, with equal authority as you. And then they said, verse, uh, fourteen, Wilt thou put out the eyes of these men?
You see, we heard enough of it, they said. This is nothing other than intellectual murder. We've got to bow down to what you say, Moses, and we mustn't think for ourselves, and when we can see through your scheme, you just come on us like a ton of bricks and put it all out. And either we submit and we shut our eyes and just take what you say. It's intellectual suicide. Tell you another thing, some of them said. Notice, look at that, verse thirteen. You brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey.
What? Not read it right? I have. Say, no, no, no. I've brought them up out of Egypt. If you're going to take them to a land flowing with milk and honey, ah, but these chaps think differently. You've brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey. Egypt was a jolly good place, Moses, if you weren't so narrow-minded. All your Ten Commandments things, killing everybody's sports. We once lived in a land flowing with milk and honey, and you take away all these innocent enjoyments from us. And you haven't brought us in to your supposed paradise, Moses, said they.
Haven't brought us into any land flowing with milk and honey, which was about true because they were in the middle of the Sinai wilderness. The whole thing doesn't work anyway, they said. You're nothing but an old killjoy, Moses. Narrow-minded laws and the rest of it. When eventually the very earth opened and swallowed them up, then the people said, chapter sixteen and verse forty one, you have killed the people of the Lord. Hm. If they'd have lived in our day, they'd have said, there you are, they were just as good as Christians as you.
And you condemned them. Ho, ho, this is a sizable pickle to be in, isn't it, Wat? We take it seriously, surely. What happened there, led by Korah, in the gain saying of Korah, is not altogether an isolated event, is it? It happened again centuries later when Jesus, our blessed Lord, came, the apostle and high priest of our profession. The leaders of the Jewish nation, mark you the leaders, not the ordinary people so much as the leader- leaders who were priests and Levites, weren't they?
And they rose up, and they contradicted the blessed Lord Jesus. As if that weren't serious enough, the Apostle Jude warns his fellow believers years after Calvary, says he, there are some still abroad now today and to be found in churches. Guilty of the gainsaying of Cora. You say, we haven't come across that, Mr. Preacher. God be praised.
How old are you? Twenty five. That's a jolly good age. God be praised if you manage to get to seventy five without coming across it. But if you come across it without being forewarned, it can be a very bitter thing. They who rise up in the very name of religion, sometimes in the name of the church and Christianity, and they deny the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, our Lord. They deny his apostleship. They deny he was born of a virgin, that he came from heaven.
They deny his high priesthood. They deny his bodily resurrection and ascension. And they say that these are exaggerated claims that he made, or else subsequent Christians made for him. I had a Jewish gentleman at lunch with me just the other day. Said he, David, my boy, why do you all Christians always campaign against our institutions, our high priesthood? And all is Jewish. You made it up, he said. He claims that Jesus is somehow special and is the son of God and come down from heaven and gone back to heaven.
You made it up. Or if your Jesus taught it, then it was blasphemy. He took it upon himself. Some academics will tell you, won't they, that if you're going to believe the Christian message, you've got to commit intellectual suicide and let the Christians put your eyes out. And others are still to be heard saying, you can't take it seriously. I mean to say, you spoil everybody's fun. Follow Moses and Jesus, that's old fashioned stuff. And anyway, they say, what about this heaven that Jesus is supposed to have brought you to?
Where is it? You haven't got it yet, have you? And you're ruining people's lives. You're telling them to forego their pleasures here, and you give them no pleasures such as you promise in your gospel. Where are they? Where is this heaven? What do you say? What's the evidence they're wrong? We read the New Testament. The writers of the Hebrews faces the criticism, doesn't he?
The same criticism leveled against Moses and Aaron was leveled against our blessed Lord. You take it upon yourselves, said Korah. You take too much upon yourselves. Did Jesus? Hebrews chapter five says the writer, I would have you know that Jesus did not glorify himself to become a high priest. No, no. I took advantage of the argument to remind my Jew. It isn't us Christians, you know, that started it. Your Old Testament says it, that one day Aaron's priesthood would go, there will come a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
This is not something that Christians made up. It's not something that, in that sense, Jesus of Nazareth made up. There it stood in his word. Priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek. The pattern is in Old Testament. And his qualification, he glorified himself, did he? No, he didn't. What he did do, says Hebrews five, he lived a life of perfect obedience, son though he was, and he allowed God to vindicate him. Learned obedience by the things that he suffered, and being made perfect, and coming through all his tests and demonstrating his sinlessness.
God exalted him from the dead. Our high priest did not take it upon himself. Come and stand by his cross, if you will, then. And let us use our ancient story to help us perceive once more what is involved in the cross of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Consider him, who endured this great contradiction, this rebellion like Korah, against himself.
When Korah sinned, God through Moses invited them to come with their senses. All right, you come and offer your incense. And as they came, the very earth opened and swallowed them up. Afterwards, God told Moses that they were to take the senses of those men and beat them out into plates and nail them on the altar. They might remain there, a testimony forever. Come, friend, come stand by Calvary once more.
What is its significance? Well, let me not be emotional. This is history. The cross of Christ stands as the great exposure of the rebellion of the human heart. For the Jesus who died there rose from the dead, his deity now vindicated, his claims vindicated by the resurrection from the dead, demonstrated to be the Son of God, and that being so, see what his cross says. That not atheists and outlaws, but deeply religious men rebelled against God's Son, incarnate.
That's all human trouble. Oh, sirs, I'm not going to put your eyes out tonight. God be thanked for all your brilliant perceptions and insights and philosophical discussions. But God challenges you to come and stand by his son. Come, say, will you approach God on your own two feet? That's what I want to know of you. I'm not going to put out your philosophical arguments. I'm going to say to you, sir, I'm going to say to you, madam, will you come to God and make your own way there? Come if you dare.
When you spun your last philosophical argument, and I find him exceedingly and fascinatingly interesting. Fact is, sir, you are a moral sinner like I am. You come to God, swinging your own sensor, you'll perish eternally. Our problem is sin. Problem is dark rebellion of the human heart. It's nothing less than that. A fallen race involved in a rebellion against God Almighty. It is true not merely of the man in the gutter, it's true of Caiaphas in all his religious robes, religion itself, at the cross of Christ, a form of rebellion against God.
We have no room to criticize our Jewish friends, either in the past or now, for we too were like them. How do I know Jesus Christ is true? Our friend, now see the wonder, or consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners. Being God incarnate, how did he bring himself to put up with it? Why didn't he screw us out like a man will smash a little mosquito of a summer's night? Because it has irritated him. Oh, but consider him and the amazing grace of it.
He endured the rebellion of sinners against himself. The story tells us that after the earth opened and swallowed them up, then the plague of God began to run among the people, and the very high priest whom Korah had denounced took his censer and ran among the people to save them from the plague of God. Consider him. All you who know your hearts infected with the deadly rebellion of sin, endured our rebellion, that he might procure for us salvation.
So you you're take taking this view, you are unchristianizing, unchurching thousands of people. Well, sir, they make up their minds about that, don't they? You will not have Christ. And his sacrifice. And his intercession. There is nothing else, but a fiery looking forward to of judgment that shall consume the adversaries. You say, suppose it is true, it is true.
Demonstrated to be true by the fact he's risen from the dead. Say, Mr. Preacher, you're not in heaven yet. No, I'm not in heaven yet. And as a believer, I have had to forego certain sinful things that the world counts pleasurable. Do you pity me? Brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, said Korah. Well, he'd forgotten the other side of it, hadn't he? He'd forgotten that if it flowed with milk and honey, that Egypt that he was talking about, it was a place of cruel bondage and serfdom. And got to be delivered from it, even if there were no joys.
I tell you something, I'm not in heaven yet. I tell you something about this Lord Jesus Christ, who is my savior. He is half. For if you stood by his cross, you stood again by his altar. Let me finally ask you to consider Aaron's rods with all their buds. God, I'll settle this forever. I'll tell you who my high priest is. Lay up your rods before me. When they came in the morning, Aaron's rod budded and brought forth his almonds. New life! Oh, the beauty of it! Thus does God settle the question that the Jesus Christ who endured a contradiction of sinners against himself and died at Calvary, he's entered in.
Oh, sir, I don't have to put my eyes out to believe him. And I tell you why. When you've finished all your philosophy, I repeat, I find it exceedingly interesting. But when you've finished it all, you leave me a sinner. And what's more, you leave me a man journeying through life, and I see the beginnings of the end of the journey, you know. What hope can you give me? As a human being going through a temporary world, living, I may add, in a temporary universe that one day itself will come to an end. I want some solid hope.
I want to know, is there a world out there, and how can I be sure of it? For if there isn't a world out there, then I'm just going round in circles, getting nowhere, and have no ultimate hope. And I have in Christ the Savior who walked this earth, is risen. I tell you what, he's in. He's in. And as sure as he's in, that glorious eternity of God, he will bring me home at last. I have him as an anchor and have that fellowship with him by God's Holy Spirit and the new and eternal life of God already within.
And the anchor hold the rope that goes between me and Christ. And the anchor on the other shore. And I shall be home one day, at last. Two views of the altar. And looking upon the altar, the cross of Christ, my Lord, I may at the beginning of the journey, hearing the call to duty and to work, and perceiving the wealth of the cross of Christ, reply where the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small.
Lord, I give myself. The view of the altar, in the thick of the battle of life's journey, in the midst of apostasy and a godless, unbelieving world. How do I know Jesus Christ is true? And God will point me once more to the death of Christ and to his resurrection. The Lord bring us ever and again back to the cross of our Lord Jesus, there to draw our strength.
There to learn the very wisdom of God and the resources God has to bring us home unfallen and faith unbroken to our eternal inheritance. Shall we pray?
