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Welcome to this. This is the fifth of our studies on the book of Numbers, and tonight we come to the third major rebellion. It is the rebellion of Moses and Aaron against the word of God, and in the end against God himself. To put it in its context, let's remind ourselves of things historical and geographical to start with. The chapter that we shall begin with is chapter twenty of the Book of Numbers, which tells us that the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people abode in Kadesh, and Miriam died there and was buried there.
And so we meet the name Kadesh again. It is possible, of course, that this first rebellion, uh, took place, it took place at Kadesh, and it may be that the Kadesh here and the Kadesh in chapter twenty are the same. We needn't spend long deciding that question. We should notice, however, that at, because of the rebellion in these chapters here, and particularly in chapter fourteen, Israel's refusal to go into the Promised Land, God swore an oath that all those who came out of Egypt twenty years old and above would be given their own wish.
They refused to go into the land. Very good, says God, you will not go into the land. And he swore an oath that they shouldn't. And so Israel were sentenced to wander, as the English translations have it, they lived as nomads in various parts of the desert for forty years. Now, at the beginning of chapter twenty, they have come to Kadesh, probably the same Kadesh, because the forty years are almost over.
And you will observe how very little is said about what happened in those forty years. They're coming back now to Kadesh, and they are beginning to move, that is the new generation who were under twenty when they came out of Egypt, are now, of course, grown up, some of them are nearly sixty anyway, and they're beginning to move because this is the generation and those following that are eventually going into the Promised Land. We shall notice, uh, certain things about the stories as we proceed.
As I say, in the interval we have not many, uh, much history anyway, but we didn't read of very many fights and battles with the Canaanites or anybody else in these chapters from eleven onwards. Now, from by chapter twenty onwards, we shall begin to get stories of battles, because when Israel now starts to press on with the aim of entering into the land, they will find all kinds of opposition. There will be literal physical battles with the people like the, uh, the king of Arad, or again, like, uh, Zion, king of the Amorites, or Og, king of Bashan.
There will be physical battles. But tonight we shall be reminded in the second half of our passage that as Israel began to move towards their inheritance, there took place a spiritual battle on the heights of Baal and elsewhere. And we read in the older translations of the lords of the high places, probably meaning the people in charge of the hill country to which they must, uh, pass by or go into. But self-evidently, the story here of Balak and Balaam is a spiritual battle, an attempt to call in the forces of black magic and spiritism and, uh, and, uh, omens and divination and other such things in order to bring a curse down on Israel and stop them from going into their promised inheritance.
Matters therefore become serious. It's going to be predominantly a spiritual battle. The particular rebellion that is here, rebellion of Moses and Aaron is a very sad thing. But to see its significance, we ought to spend just a few moments going back to the provision God made in, uh, chapter, uh, six of Numbers before the people set out. For it was the task of Aaron, the very Aaron who rebelled against God here, it was the task of Aaron to pronounce the blessing of the Lord upon his people.
So let's take the trouble to read it, shall we, once more? It is the book of Numbers and chapter six. Numbers chapter six and verse twenty two. And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and unto his son, saying, On this wise you shall bless the children of Israel. You shall say unto them, The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. So shall they put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them. Here then, amongst many other practical details and arrangements for the transporting of the tabernacle and its furniture, questions of bullocks and carts and Levites to carry things, and this, that, and the other. In the very heart of the provid- provisions and preparations is this so-called Aaronic blessing. Let's ask ourselves again why it's there.
And it's there because one of the big dangers of the journey that they set out on here in chapter eleven, One of the biggest journeys would be that sometimes the going would be so tough that people would come to doubt whether God was really with them at all, or whether God hadn't forgotten about them, whether there was anything in the idea that they were blessed by God. And of course, this would be vital.
If the people got it into their hearts and heads that God had forgotten to be gracious and no longer loved them and no longer cared for them, then that would be perilous indeed. And of course, it's true to life, isn't it? We start out on our pilgrim pathway, most of us, with joy and gladness and songs of hallelujah, suitably put into English and modern music by those whose taste is that way. Do you see? How about you wait till middle life and beyond, or even before?
And life can get so tough. And sometimes God's own dear people begin to doubt. Why has the Lord allowed this to happen to me? How can you reconcile this with a God of love? I've been diligent in my prayer. Now look what's happened. And of course, it is part of the Sa- Satan's strategy in all the fights that we shall have to face. This is the center battlefield.
If Satan can get us doubting the love of God and ceasing to believe in his grace and his blessing, Satan has won. You see, if God doesn't love me today, then he never has loved me, and he never will, for God doesn't change, you know. And if God doesn't love me, it wouldn't be a wise thing to go to heaven, would it? To live too near Almighty God and not be confident of his love, would turn heaven itself into a hell.
It is the central battlefield of a Christian's life. And therefore, God charged the high priest himself in Israel as God's representative with a human heart and a human voice, chosen from among the people because he ought to have had compassion on the people and those that were difficult and out of the way, to gather them together from time to time, and in the name of God to pronounce the blessing of God on them, in such fashion as it ceased to be mere words and carried the reality of the Holy Spirit of God.
I wish I could do it to you tonight. All I can do is to read the word. But God make it real. It could be that this very night God is saying us something, that next week you may find a battle that will raise the question of is the grace of God and the blessing of God real. Remember the story of Job, won't you? That isn't the normal experience every day li- li- every day of every year of every believer, but things like that happen sometimes.
So we take God's blessing seriously. That gives the point to this rebellion. It was the very priest that should have made the people conscious of the blessings of God that rebelled against God himself. And it was Moses the lawgiver who rebelled against God, with the result that neither Moses nor Aaron was eventually allowed by God to lead the people into their promised land.
You say that must have been a very serious rebellion. Difficult at first sight, perhaps, to think it was so very serious. When Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to it, what was so serious about it? Well, if you want to know how serious it was, do you see, then, uh, it is good to, um, hunt up in your Bibles the occasion where the Old Testament refers to this rebellion. Three times over in the book of Numbers.
Numbers twenty verse twelve, Numbers twenty verses twenty three and twenty four, Numbers twenty seven twelve to fourteen. Three times, therefore, in the book of Numbers. In the book of Nu- uh, in the book of Deuteronomy, it is mentioned six times. And it's Moses who mentions it. I'm not going to give you the, um, numbers. Why should I? Done a hard lot of work myself looking up the concordance and testing my eyes to see if I could read the stuff, and uh, why should I give it to you?
You look it up. Grace. Pardon? Grace, Grace. Oh, Grace, yes. Yes, uh, uh, all these times over in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses constantly recurs to it and pleaded with God to let him go in at least, if not to lead the people in, till God had to say, Moses, no, you're not going in. Don't mention it again. It was a serious rebellion, therefore. So we must spend a little time tonight thinking what was so serious about it.
We'll see. The, uh, story is given us in chapter twenty, how the people ran out of water, and they complained to Moses, and Moses took it to God, and God told Moses to take the rod of Aaron and speak to the rock, and they would bring thus, bring water out of the rock. But the interpretation of the incident has become a little confused sometimes in people's minds, because it is very similar to a story told in the book of Exodus chapter seventeen.
You may care to read that story in Exodus seventeen. We haven't the time actually to turn to it and read its details, so let me tell you of it. It was when Israel had recently come out of Egypt, and they ran out of water. And it was so difficult for them, they came to Moses. And they said to Moses, Josie, why have you brought us up out of Egypt? To die in the wilderness. Better slavery in Egypt than attempting to escape and dying of thirst in the wilderness, Moses.
Why didn't you listen to us when we were in Egypt? Your crazy ideas. And they tempted the Lord. They were very serious. And, uh, Moses had to tell God, please do something, Lord, for the people talk of stoning me. This was nothing short of outright rebellion. They were going to assassinate Moses. They talked of stoning him.
And they tempted the Lord, saying, is the Lord among us or not? In other words, tempting the Lord means, to put it in crude modern English, putting a pistol to God's head and saying, God, you'll do better than this, or if you don't, we shall ditch you. That's putting God to the test, laying down conditions for him. He's got to do this, or else you'll give him up. That's tempting the Lord God, and God counts it as a cardinal sin. This was sheer rebellion, both against Moses and against God.
The interest of that story is how God broke that rebellion. He told Moses to take the rod with which Moses had smitten the river Nile in Egypt, and you remember it turned to blood. Killed all the life in it. It was the rod of judgment, therefore. Take the rod of judgment, says God to Moses. I shall come down and stand on that, uh, shallow rock there, and in front of Israel, so they can all see, you'll take your rod and you'll bring it down on.
And you say, I know what's going to happen now. God's had enough. I'm going to have these little mites of human beings order him around, and in spite of his redemption, tell him that if he doesn't do better, they'll ditch him. It'll come down on the rebels, surely. Indeed not. Says God Moses, I shall stand upon the rock in front of the people. You take your rod of judgment and you strike the rock on which I stand.
Vivid example, of course, wasn't it? What the people were doing was that rebelling against God. But as we Christians read that story, we can't help thinking of another place. How does God smash the rebel in our own hearts? And that's at Calvary, of course. When, as the hymn puts it, Jehovah lifted up his rod. O Christ, it fell on thee. Thou wast source mitten of my God, all for my sake, my peace to make.
It's difficult, my brothers and sisters, to fight against a God like that. The story is that when Moses struck the rock, the water came out. And Israel was given its first lesson that the supply of water was not merely a matter of geography, it was a matter of God's own provision. And of course, we have learned the logic, haven't we? He who spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with us also, with him also, freely give us all things?
And no sooner was that over and the rebellion cured, when Amalek turned up to oppose the Israelites, and God did battle with him and raised his own military standard, God's own military standard, you know, to rally the troops. And these erstwhile rebels, now for the moment converted, rallied under God's military standard. And with Moses sitting up aloft on the rock now and holding up his hands, and Aaron and Hur beside him to hold up his hands, because they got rather heavy, do you see, until nightfall. Israel joined in the battles of the Lord, and Amalek was defeated.
For Amalek came out to stop all further progress. And had Amalek won, that would have been the end of the journey. They had to fight their way through. Well, that's, that's how you can phrase it. It was God's battle anyway. We're not left to fight on our own. We are invited to enlist under God's military standard. You know the technical term for it, don't you? I mean, the Lord is my shepherd is Jehovah-Roei. Yes? You know that bit. And the Lord is my military banner.
The good stuff, yes, you see. Uh, Jehovah Nissi. The Lord is my Naits, my military standard. That was one incident early on. This is some forty years later. And it has similarities because the people grumbled against the Lord. And the Lord told Moses to take a rod and speak to the rock, and water would come out. But it is important to see how different the two stories are. First of all, yes, the people ran out of water.
And they came, it is said that they quarreled against the Lord, and they certainly quarreled against Moses. Why have you brought us into this place? Why must, coming out of Egypt, in order to get us into our promised land, why must it bring us through such outlandish places as this? This is no place of figs, they said, or of pomegranates or grapes or anything like that. This is nothing but sheer, thirsty desert. It's getting more than we can bear, they said. Yes, they quarreled with the Lord.
It is not said they tempted him. Nor is it said they talked of stoning Moses. This was a people at the end of its tether. Now, I'm not here to investigate you. This is not the confessional. You ever in your heart quarrelled with the Lord? Well, no fancy my asking you that. Did me never, of course. Never asked. Why, Lord?
Why have you allowed this? Why don't you intervene? It's getting more than I can stick, Lord. Why on earth did you allow it? Why don't you answer my prayers? Questioning the Lord, if not quarreling with him. Many believers have come to that point. It's amazing if n- if you don't, on your way home, sooner or later come there. And what was God's answer? This time not to treat them as rebels.
He's a God of infinite compassion on his people. So he told Moses to take the rod. You will see. And, uh, uh, and, uh, verse, this is verse eight. take the rod and assemble the congregation, thou and Aaron thy brother, and speak you unto the rock before their eyes, that it give forth its water. And thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock, so thou shalt give the congregation and their cattle, if you please, drink. And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded him.
Now, do note what rod that is. This wasn't the rod with which Moses smote the river Nile when he was there. This was the rod which, according to Numbers seventeen, let me read, uh, uh, the, the, uh, verse to you, you see. Uh, the Lord, uh, told Moses, verse ten of seventeen. The Lord said unto Moses, put back the rod of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept for a token against the children of rebellion, that thou mayest make an end of their murmurings against me, that they di- die not.
That is said because the Israelites and the person of Korah the Levite had rebelled against God and challenged the high priest, Aaron and Moses, the prophet of the Lord. So now God had given a miraculous sign to Israel. He had said to the elders of the tribes, now each of you leader, you bring your staff of office. So they brought their staffs of office, you'll see, and uh, Aaron, you bring yours, and they laid him up before the Lord overnight. And in the morning when they came, all the other rods were plain as they went in, just rods.
Aaron's rod budded and brought forth the le- uh, blossoms and almonds. A miracle of God's intervention to indicate who was the high priest of God's appointment. Take that rod, says God. Rod of Aaron's priestly ministry. Gather the elders of the people to this rock, and with the rod in your hand, so they can all see it. This is God's high priest and his gracious ministry of declaring the mercy of God and the grace of God, and the Lord make his face to shine on you.
Here they stand with the rod of priestly ministry. And says God, all you'll have to do, they've accused you of bringing them up into this wilderness, there's no water. They've blamed you. All right, says God, stand there with the rod, and you speak to the rock, and you shall bring the water out of the rock. That was nice of God, wasn't it? Because it was a miracle anyway. Do you see? But he wanted it to appear to the people that the people, that the Aaron and Moses had brought the water out of the rock by their intercession. They were genuine priests and representative of God, and God would listen to their intercessions on the behalf of the people, and God would let them bring the water out of the rock.
And in God's infinite kindness, you know, you'll bring the water out for the people and for their cattle. Remember that when next you see a cow or a bullock. Remember what God told Jonah? When Jonah would gladly have seen the city of Nineveh destroyed, root and branch. He said, well, there's, I don't know, a hundred thousand people there that don't know the right hand from the left, youngsters. And there's also much care. God's infinite compassion. And God was going to give them a demonstration of it.
Instead of which, Moses and Aaron lost their temper. And said Moses, hear now, you rebels. Oh dear. Dear, dear, dear. It was in fact Moses and Aaron at that very point that were themselves rebelling against God. Calling people in their misery and their difficulty, their pain, calling them rebels. Why haven't they got the discernment of a high priest to see it wasn't rebellion, but people at the end of their tether because of the trial that had come upon them?
Why couldn't he read their hearts like God had read it? Here now, you rebels, must we bring this? Oh. As if this was one another intolerable burden. Well, they hadn't got to do much, had they? Got to just speak to the rock. God would have brought the water out. And Moses, losing his temper, took that rod of intercession and labored the rock twice. Well, now that was serious, wasn't it? Because in one Corinthians chapter ten, Paul, remembering the various incidents in the wilderness when God brought out water from the rock, he said that Israel drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was...
Yes. It was God who was going to bring that water out of the rock. The pre-incarnate Christ. And he was belaboring the rock. We don't have to belabor, belabor God, you know, to prov- to force him to bless us. That would be a bad job if we could do it and succeed, wouldn't it? Wow. If God wasn't intending to bless us and we could force him to do it, what a god it would be, wouldn't it?
You would end up by running heaven, wouldn't you? And God as well. No, he just had to speak to the rock. And there's the sorry, sorry demonstration. And God said to Moses and to Aaron, yes, the water came out. God wasn't going to deny the people water because of the weakness of his servants and because of his servants' rebellion. The water came out anyway. But God said to Moses and Aaron forthwith, because you have not believed me, to sanctify me in the eyes of the people, you will not bring them into the land.
Mm-hmm. And later in the chapter, Aaron was told he must be taken up Mount Hor, be stripped of his garments, and in the sight of Israel he would die, and another priest take his place. And as for Moses, he would be allowed to lead the people right to the banks of Jordan. But in spite of his repeated request, he couldn't take them in. Why couldn't he? In the passages I have cited to you, their sin is variously described.
They didn't believe. It was a lack of faith. God had said, take the rod and just speak to the rock. They weren't listening, or they didn't do it. They they didn't believe it anyway, and struck the rock twice. They didn't believe. But then God accuses them of rebelling against the Lord. And in this penultimate, uh, occasion in the book of Numbers, where God mentions it, then he says, he uses a very dark word, because Moses, you trespassed against me. Now that's a word that you would use of a woman, for instance, who trespasss against her husband.
That is, she acts out of faith. Bad faith. And God accuses Moses and Aaron of having trespassed against the Lord. And above all this, you didn't sanctify me in the eyes of the people. What does God mean? Well, you see, if they'd have done what they were told and you spoke to the rock and through their intercessions, uh, the water had come out, the name of the Lord would have been glorified, and the people would have said, marvelous. We were beginning to doubt whether God really loved us, but look at this, isn't this wonderful?
And Moses and Aaron would have had the delightful occupation of being the people to demonstrate before the nation the wonderful character of God. When we read of the Lord's holiness, we normally think of his righteousness, yes? And that's true, he is holy. But holy is not, holiness is not negative, you know. Holiness is also positive. And so in the book of Ezekiel, where God, uh, promises he will restore Israel, he announces himself as the God of holiness, the holy God of Israel, because he will delight to restore them.
It's part of his holy character. Let me quote you a verse. For such an high priest became us, who is... You've got it, my boy. Who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. Because he is holy, he can, he is not one that cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmity, but was made in all things like to us. And in that he suffered when he was tempted, he is able to succor those who are tempted. A misrepresented God before the people.
That would make any preacher, teacher particularly, tremble in his shoes, wouldn't it? To get up and misrepresent the character of God to one's fellow believers. And call them rebels. When they were at the end of their tether. As though they were enemies of God. And that compassion. And represent God as an unfeeling Almighty. That's a very serious thing to do, isn't it?
Our task as believers, so to represent God. Yes, not forgetting his holiness, he's absolutely sinless and undefiled. Yes, that we must never forget. He's a God of infinite compassion and love and mercy. We must not misrepresent him. For if we do, that kind of ministry will not take the people into their promised land. No. So the, uh, sentence was passed upon them. They, uh, would never lead the people into the land.
Moses was allowed to go on to take them to the battles that lay ahead and east of Jordan, where they obtained some victories, but not to cross the Jordan and bring them into the land. And you know, it seems to me there is a lesson to be learned from it. Yeah. Aaron, the great high priest, he failed. And in front of the people, he was taken up the mountain, stripped of his garments, and another priest had to take his place. That was, in fact, of course, his son Eleazar, but not Aaron, another priest. If Israel were ever going into their great inheritance, it would have to be a different priest from this Aaron.
And what is more, if Israel were ever going to get into their inheritance, it wouldn't be Moses that would take them. Who was it then? Yes, Joshua. You'll see. And what's the significance? Well, there was never another Moses, you know. There was another high priest in Israel, son of the first one, but there was never another Moses. It wasn't Moses' son that took them in. Moses was unique, there was never another. And in the end, he wasn't good enough to take them in. And therefore, you say Joshua took them in.
And what does Joshua's name mean? Pardon? Savior. Savior, yes, you've got the idea. Um, Moses couldn't take them in, the lawgiver. What it required was God's savior to bring them in. Yes, that's very nice, isn't it? Let me just elaborate on that before we have our coffee and buns, you'll see. We often think of Israel going into the Promised Land as a picture of the believer going into heaven or something. Inheritance unde- uh, incorruptible and undefiled, fades not away.
And okay, that's a good use of the, of the pa- of the story. But first of all, it has significance at the historical level. For Israel was promised the great inheritance. Who would bring them into it? Not the Lord-giver Moses. They had to wait for the coming of Joshua the Savior. All right, that's a bit of history. Now start the same thing and look a bit bigger in history, if you will. God having spoken to the Father through the prophets over many generations in different proportions and different methods, and he gave them the law, and the law brought them into the glories of the gospel.
No? No. No. Didn't, did it? Well, what did then? Grace and truth. You've got the idea, yes. The law was given by Moses. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And historically, we're talking about past history now, all the centuries that Israel spent under the law, and Moses was the giver thereof under God, the law, it never brought them into complete forgiveness. Forgiveness of a kind, but of never a conscience made perfect. Never the freedom to come into the holiest of all. Never permanent peace with God.
That must await the coming of the greater than Joshua to bring Israel into their next stage of their great inheritance. Yeah? Marvelous, isn't it? So the Epistle to the Hebrews runs like this. There was a priesthood from Aaron and the rest of them, you see, but says Hebrews chapter seven, God did away with it. Why? Because of its inherent weakness, do you see? This is Hebrews chapter seven.
It's worth count- uh, reading what it actually says. Uh, verse eighteen of Hebrews seven: there is a disannulling of a foregoing commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect. So the priesthood of Aaron brought to its end, and another priesthood installed, which is our blessed Lord Jesus, after the order of Melchizedek. Oh, shout a few hallelujahs o- o- on that, you'll see.
Because look what se- seven goes on to say. It's a bringing in of a better hope through which we draw nigh to God. And in as much as it is not without the taking of an oath, for they, the Jewish priests, indeed have been made priests, but without an oath, but he with an oath, by him that saith unto him, the Lord swear and will not repent himself, thou art a priest forever. By so much also hath Jesus become the surety of a better covenant. Now you'll know what that means, won't you? Notice here it doesn't say by so much he's been made the mediator of a better covenant. He is that, of course.
He is the mediator of the new covenant and a much better covenant, but he's not only the mediator, he is the surety. Yes? He's the guarantor. You see, I decide, I notice all these buildings going up around Belfast, and I say to myself, I don't know, here these boys that propose these plans of these great skyscraper things, they're going to make a pot of money out of that. I think I might have come up with a scheme, you see. So I get out a scheme, and I go down to the bank, and I say, look here, you, you finance this other Joe Bloggs here, uh, do you see? Now you finance me.
Now here's my scheme. And the bank manager says, yes, and what do you estimate that cost to be? Oh, about twenty million, maybe. I see. And uh, you want us to put up that money? I do, yes. Oh. Well, um, what collateral have you got? Collateral, I say, what do you mean, collateral? Well, what money have you got that if the thing goes wrong, you could pay? Well, I, I don't have my a lot myself. I, I, I, I've got, um, let me see, I got two hundred and fifty quid in Halifax. Yeah, well, that wouldn't be quite enough.
Have you got any more? Well, my dad has a, a savings account with the post office. Yes, he has? How much in that? Oh, I think it's one hundred and fifty. Is that all your collateral? Well, yes. Well, I'm sorry, it isn't enough, you know. Not enough to guarantee the bank. And our blessed Lord's not only the mediator of the better covenant. Listen, he is the surety, the guarantor of the new covenant. Well, what a magnificent thing that is.
A new covenant that will fit us and lead us and bring us at last to glory. He is the guarantor of all the expenses that God will be at in bringing us home to glory. And he's a better priest anyway, for he can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. And if we find ourselves in a situation like those, uh, Israelites were in, in, uh, Numbers chapter twenty, he will not strike the rod, uh, strike the rock with his rod. He will intercede for us.
And because he ever liveth to intercede for us, he is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him, and brings us into our inheritance. Praise God for a better than Moses and a better than Aaron. We spent a long time on this session, on this in, uh, uh, early, uh, incident. We shall not be able to spend as much time on the rest of it, but we shall spend enough time as to make us see the connection of thought.
But just, uh, let's break off now for our coffee, and before we do so, let's give thanks for the refreshment that we are to enjoy. Our Father, with grateful hearts, as those who have known life's experience, we bless thee for giving us a great high priest that can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Who perfectly represents thee to us, and is the guarantor that thy purposes for us will eventually be fulfilled. Stir in our hearts a glimpse of gratitude, we pray, and may it promote new courage in our lives to stride forth menfully for God.
Bless now this food, for which we thank thee gratefully, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
