Gooding, David: 2 - Korah: A Humanist Cleric

In verse eleven, therefore, of his epistle, Jude brings before us three personages from the Old Testament that in those far off days were examples of the wrong kind of teaching, such as Jude said we may expect to exist in the end times as well. And he mentions, as we see, Cain saying, woe to them, for they went in the way of Cain. And then he mentions Balaam, saying, and they ran riotously in the error of Balaam for hire. And finally he mentions Korah and says they perished in the gainsaying of Korah. We notice at once that all these three men, uh, meet us in the Old Testament in the context of religion. Cain we meet in chapter four of Genesis when he was approaching God with a sacrifice in his hand. And it was because of a very serious disagreement between him and God over the nature of sacrifice, that Cain eventually slew Abel, his brother, and went out from the presence of the Lord. The way of Cain. Balaam, of course, we meet in the book of Numbers as he visits his high place and prepares his sacrifices with the help of Balak, king of Moab. He was a prophet, and as you'll see, he was also a priest, a religious gentleman. But a religious gentleman that knew the size of a half crown, you'll see, and felt that the more half crowns there were, the better the religion was. Finally, there was Korah. And as you now see, these three men are put before us in an ascending scale of wickedness. Cain was bad enough, but he was what you might call a layman. Balaam was worse because he was a prophet. A false prophet, of course, but a prophet. He did profess to know about religion. Korah was worst of all, because whereas Balaam was a prophet, Balaam was a, was a pagan prophet. Korah was not only a Hebrew, an Israelite, he was in holy orders, as we should say today. He was a minor cleric in holy orders. He was a Levite, serving with the Levites under the priests, the sons of Aaron. His sin, therefore, stands out, uh, the most terrible of all the three, because of the position of privilege that he held and then abused. I beg your leave today, tomorrow, on our two meetings to consider these three men, and your leave again to treat them back to front. We'll take Korah tonight, Balaam tomorrow afternoon, God willing, and Cain tomorrow evening. What then was wrong with Korah, and how does he in particular stand to us as a beacon light of false religion? You will notice the special term to begin with at verse eleven. these false teachers, says Jude, they perished in the gainsaying of Korah, so that what we have to fix our attention now upon in Korah's rebellion is his gainsaying. Gainsaying is Old English for to say against, to argue against. In the Hebrew, it carries also ideas of very rebellious saying against, arguing and rebelling against. The word gainsaying is used again in Holy Scripture. Let us think of the passage because we know it well. Hebrews chapter twelve exalts us as follows. For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. The word there translated contradiction is the exact same word as in Jude verse eleven is translated gainsaying. And if we'll think a moment, that will put us, put the whole thing into context for us and show us how serious this matter of gainsaying is. I was talking with one gentleman one day, and it was appropriate to ask him what he felt that, uh, the example of Cora taught us. He said that it teaches us the, the serious, um, matter of disagreeing with your pastor of the church. I said, I think, my friend, it's more serious than that. Again, saying that Korah was engaged in was of the same order and quality as what was done by the leaders of Israel's nation when they took our blessed Lord Jesus Christ and nailed him to Golgotha's tree. Consider him who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross and despised the shame. Consider him who in those moments endured this great gainsaying, this contradiction of sinners against themselves. We'll see what they contradicted was this, the blessed Lord Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, God's son in common. When he stood finally before the high priest in the high priest's court, and the priest asked him straightly and directly, tell us now exactly, and put him on oath. He said, you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, claiming equality with God. And said the high priest, as he saw the point of it, are you then, are you then claiming to be the Son of God? And he said, yes. They denied the holy and the just. They disputed his claim. They contradicted his assertion that he had come from God. Nothing less fundamental than this great fact is brought before us by the histories of Korah, Dathan, and of Byram. And so I'm going to ask you to cast, uh, the eye of your memory back to your Old Testament. Uh, if you want to keep your eye upon the text, the story comes in the book of Numbers from chapter sixteen onwards. Story given to us in some detail so that we shall be able to analyze what was at issue when Korah, the literal historical Korah, rose up and contradicted Moses and was engaged in the gainsaying of Korah. Look, therefore, at Numbers chapter sixteen and verse three. They assembled themselves, Korah and two hundred and fifty princes of the congregation. They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said unto them, you take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Wherefore then lift you up yourselves above the assembly of the Lord. Korah and his associates, many of them Levites in holy order, others princes of the congregation, came to Moses, and they denied Moses as being the apostle of their confession. They said to Moses and to Aaron, you take too much upon yourselves. Who do you think you are, you and Aaron there? Parading yourselves with such airs and graces and coming to us and saying, thus said the Lord. We're just as good as you are. Who do you think you are putting on that this whole pretence of you are the one sent to us from God? And we have to listen to everything you say, because you say you were up in that Mount Sinai, and you stood between us and God, and you brought us the table of the stones, and you were the inspired prophet. Get this into your head, Moses, they said. We don't accept your claim to be special. Everybody in the congregation is holy, just as holy as you are. You must excuse my warmth because things got very warm with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, I tell you. They had erred for months against the authority of Moses, his claim to be God's very mouthpiece to Israel. That they refused. He was the apostle of their profession. They would not have it. Is Korah a warning to us? Yes. Because, as we remarked earlier in our session, there have been many who have taught legions of undergraduates and theologians and the general public that Jesus Christ, not all he says is authoritative. Why, in some circles, young folks are taught that the Old Testament, of course, is a great deal of myth, and if you say to them that our Lord Jesus believed it and taught it as the word of God, they will say, well, of course he did, but what did he know? He was a man of his own time and didn't realize it was only myth, but of course we can see it's merely myth and not the word of God at all, and Jesus Christ was mistaken, and you don't have to listen to what he says. And with this they dispute the unique authority of Jesus Christ, our Lord. They rejected Moses. They spoke against Moses and the special position that Moses took as the one that brought it to Israel God's authoritative revelation. They spoke against Aaron. You take too much upon yourself, said they to Aaron, seeing all the people of God is holy. And there's you, Aaron, and you tell us that you're the only one that has the right to take the sacrifice and go into the holiest of all, as though you were somehow special to us, and we need an intermediary, we need a mediator like you to go in there and meet God on our behalf. We're telling you straight, Aaron, we don't accept that you're special. We're just as holy as you are. We don't need you as a mediator to make peace with God. They denied not only the apostle of their profession, they denied the high priest of their profession. Has that a warning to us too? Of course it has. What do you see? The Bible says there is but one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. Ah, but you see, that whole doctrine of a ransom implies that we were all of us sinners, and we needed a mediator to act as a ransom, as our substitute ransom, come between us and God. And it's not spilling, telling secrets out of school to say that in wide areas of Christian people will talk about the love of God to sinners, and God is prepared to forgive sinners, but should you say on what ground, then they will deny that Jesus died as a substitute, as an atoning sacrifice for sin. They will say that God would not punish anybody. We don't need anybody in that sense to come as a mediator between us and God, for God is so loving, he wouldn't, he would never punish anybody. They deny the need for a special mediator who can atone and offer a ransom in the stead of guilty men and women. This is Cor. Oh, but he did more than that, didn't he? Or at least his friends did. Let's scan down the page a little bit further. Verse twelve: Moses sent to call Dayton and to Byram, the sons of Eliab, and they said, we will not come up. Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey to kill us in the wilderness? But thou must needs make thyself a prince over us. Moreover, thou hast not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards. And if you think I have read, read that verse wrong, then wipe your glasses and clear the mist off and look at it again. But it is what they said. Did you pick it up? Verse thirteen: Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey? You say, no, no, no, no, you mean you haven't yet brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey. What do you mean you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey? You came from Egypt, gentlemen. That wasn't a land flowing with milk and honey, was it? The land flowing with milk and honey is Canaan along the road there, not Egypt. Ah, that's what you think. That's not what they thought. Listen to them. He's wearing his Levitical garb. He's in holy orders, but his companions with whom he associates and the men that support him, they're not in, uh, they're not in holy garb, and they say to Moses, look here, Moses. You know what, Moses? You've jolly well spoiled life for us, you know. There we were in a land flowing with milk and honey, and you ruined it by your teaching. We might have been enjoying Egypt with all its loveliness and its milk and its honey. You, by your narrow-minded teaching and your ideas of redemption, and you encourage the people to leave a land flowing with milk and honey and bring them out into this abominable wilderness. What would you say about men that talk like that? Do you suppose they'd been redeemed? It's their idea that Egypt was the land flowing with milk and honey, and what is more, they said, and you and all your promises, Moses, that one day you're going to bring us into an inheritance and another land flowing with milk and honey. You've not done it, Moses, have you? No. These were men that didn't believe in the inheritance out there in the future. To them, the land of milk and honey was this present Egypt. They were worldly men, of course. Makora claimed to be a cleric, and that's why I call him a humanist cleric. Of course, Paul already had to lament such people, did he not, in his own day? He said, my brethren, I want you to press on. Even I myself do not regard myself as having yet attained. I press towards the mark of the calling on high in Christ Jesus our Lord. All that glorious destiny that lies ahead, that God has put before every pilgrim on the way, the glorious inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fades not away. The blessed sight of the Savior that one day shall greet us, and we shall be like him and fully conformed to him. Why, of course, we're not there yet. This isn't the inheritance incorruptible and undefiled. Who said it was? But we're on the way there. Follow me, says Paul. But I have to tell you, and I tell you it with tears in my eyes, says Paul. There are some, they're not interested in that goal. Their heaven is this earth. They mind earthly things. During the nineteen sixties, there was a rage in America, and it penetrated a little bit of the UK. I don't know if it came to Malafonicon. It was called secular Christianity, advocated by people like Paul van Buren and others, Buren and others. They said, you know, we must give up all these ideas of heaven. They are but myths, you'll see. The real thing is now. That's right. How many there are who would talk about the grace of God? They might even talk about salvation and the love of God, but it's not any heaven they're after. It's merely trying to improve earth society now. This world is on- the only world they really believe in. And it annoys them to see people who profess to be pilgrims, unsatisfied with this world and bearing their testimony that our joys lie beyond. And then they went further, didn't they? Look at their last remark in verse fourteen. Wilt thou put out the eyes of these men? We will not come up. In other words, they charge Moses and Aaron with obscurantism and intellectual tyranny. Putting out the eyes. You, with all your authoritative teaching and making out it's the inspired word of God, and stopping people thinking, putting their eyes out, so that they have no mind of their own and can't have their own opinions. They've got to accept what you say, and we're fed up with it, they told Moses, and we're not going to submit to it any longer. That also is an accusation we should be careful to make out, be sure that we don't deserve it, shouldn't we? For when the world says, and the religious world says that, uh, because we believe in Bible, we are putting people's eyes out and intellectually tyrannizing over. Well, let's make sure we're not. Make sure it is the word of God and not some mere tradition that's grown up without any biblical authority. Because tradition in whatever quarters does have that effect sometimes of stopping people thinking. Ours is a Bible that says that we're to love the Lord our God with all our minds. We are to think with every fiber of our intelligence that God has given us, and not to do it, of course, is sin, isn't it? We are to love him with our minds, but the difference is our starting point. Think, yes, but it's got to be a mind that is submitted to God's holy, revealed, inspired word. Because it is the word of the Creator, it will not crib or cabin or restrict your thinking. It will enlarge your mind with thoughts as big as God himself, as big as eternity. There's then the gain saying of God. God give us help who are older to help our younger. They must go out into a world to meet not merely the atheist, but the liberal who wants to tell them that their belief in inspiration of scripture is intellectually confining. Oh God, help us before the young folks get out there that we shall have taught them God's word and taught them to think, so that it is not just secondhand tradition, but that it is personal experience of the wonder of God's inspired word. How would God deal with these men? The first thing he did was alarm. Told them all to collect. Everybody that agreed with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, says Moses, now I want you to collect. Get all together. But make sure, if you don't believe what these men stand for, get away. For, says Moses, you'll see if these men die, this is verse twenty nine— the common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men, then the Lord has not sent me. In other words, Moses is saying this, get clear of these men, for now God will visit them with such catastrophic judgment. And if he doesn't, then says Moses, I'm no prophet. Here is Moses staking his whole career, his whole claim to be a prophet of God on this, that God is about to judge these evil men. Stand clear of them. That day, God himself intervened in human history, and the earth opened her mouth, and they went down alive into the pit. God's answer to this kind of gainsaying is to say, gentlemen, pray remember there is a hell. It is not everywhere, is it, in scripture that our Lord emphasizes the fact of hell. It is an important study, it seems to me, that we take careful notice of what those contexts were, what those situations were recorded in the gospel, where our Lord Jesus chose to talk about hell. Didn't blazon it out at every street corner, but he did believe it, didn't he? And that very text that sums up the glories of God's love and the gift of his great salvation is a verse that at its heart reminds us there is a hell. For God so loved that he gave that whosoever believeth in him should not perish. You say, what has the fact of hell got to do with these intellectual arguments? Well, everything, my good sir. I don't know where you place yourself, but I tell you where I stand. I start with this, that I am a sinner. God's word tells me so. My conscience says it is so. I need a savior, for without a savior, I too must descend to the pit. And I tell you, I need a savior that knows what he's talking about. A savior that I can believe and stake my whole eternity upon. If you're not a sinner and don't, you don't feel, fear hell, well, perhaps then you don't need Christ. If there's a hell and you can save yourself, you don't need Christ. Say about him what you will. But you will find out there is a hell, and you cannot save yourself. I need a savior who is utterly special. I need the one who before Nicodemus said, I came down from heaven, God's apostle of our profession. And if I stake upon him my whole eternity, I believe everything he ever said. When it was over, God told Moses to take the censers that those men had used, beat them out, and nail them to the altar, so that thereafter, all down the centuries, when men came to offer their sacrifice to that altar, they saw the memorial of that tremendous rebellion. So it is still, isn't it? At our higher level. Tomorrow, if the Lord has not come, you will come around a table on which stand bread and wine, and you will remember the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Lord, how that he died for our sins that we might be forgiven. And as you remember it, you will be told to consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners. Oh, Calvary, dark Calvary. And pray, what does it tell me? It tells me this, that there is nestling in the human heart nothing less than downright rebellion against the Most High. And the biggest rebellion is not to be seen in the poor benighted savage who's a cannibal. The biggest rebellion was to be seen at Calvary, when the best religion the world had ever known, in the person of the highest religious leaders in the land, priests upon whose bonnet the very name Jehovah was written, took God's son, denied his clothes, and nailed him to a tree. Oh, alas for the human heart. How sin abounded at Calvary in the rebellion of religion against her God. And as tomorrow we sit around the emblems, it won't be so much the Jews we're thinking of, will it? We shall discover our own hearts again, be reminded that we too were rebels, and that Jesus died for us. Two other things they did. The next morning after the judgment, the people came around Moses and they said, you have killed the people of the Lord, Moses. What sentimental troddle it was, wasn't it? People of the Lord, really. But how the unregenerate religious person thinks, doesn't he? He thinks it doesn't matter what you believe about doctrine. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the people of the Lord. When a fatwa arch rebels against God. In that moment, the plague broke out upon the people. And at the command of Moses, Aaron took his censer and went in and interceded for the transgression and stayed the judgment of God. Ah yes, this is God's answer. There is a hell. There was a Calvary where God met the rebellion of sinful men and women. We have our choice. We can reject him and go down to the pit. Oh, but praise God, if we will have it, the very one whom we have rebelled against, he'll stand up like Aaron as our savior to save us from the very wrath of God. And finally, the dispute was brought to an end. When God, uh, told Moses to tell the leaders of every tribe, the heads of the tribe, to take their rods, and they brought them twelve sticks, nicely carved, beautifully polished, but as dead as Scrooge's doornail, you'll see. And they got these rods, these mesas, if you like, and they laid them up before the Lord. And when they came in the morning, number one rod was still as dead as it always had been, and so were they all up to number eleven. but number twelve, which was Aaron's, ah, it sprouted with new life, blossoms and buds, twigs and fruit. Life out of death, God's vindication of the claims of Aaron. Thus it is, my brothers. God silences men's arguments. How? By raising his son from the dead. Listen to Peter talking to the priests in Jerusalem. We'll tell you, gentlemen, he says, if you want to know in what name we have done this thing, it's in the name of Jesus, whom you crucified, whom God has raised from the dead and exalted to his right hand to be a prince and a savior, and that eternally. How did Korah ever get to that state of affairs when he would thus rebel against God? I cannot tell you, but this I know, the man was a Levite. Allow me two minutes, and I will tell you a story about Levites. Levites, says the early chapter of the Book of Numbers, were taken in the place of the firstborn. The firstborn, you'll see, had been redeemed, they had been spared, and because they had been bought with the blood of the redeeming lamb, God claimed the firstborn by the rights of redemption to himself. Later, he substituted the Levites for the firstborn. The claim, claim of redemption, they belong to God. Then we are told that the Levites were given the charge of the house of the Lord. They carried the tabernacle and its furniture. They dismantled it when they were on their journeys. They put it together at the end of the day. They bore the hard work of the tabernacle. And you know, I suspect it was very exciting when they first put the tabernacle up, wouldn't you think so? When it was all sparkling new and the gold shimmered, and the silver was polished, and the beautiful curtains, yes, yes, and the gold covered, uh, uh, frames. What a magnificent thing it was, and I expect many a Levi to now, um, um, put his chest out a little bit. He'd chosen to put this beautiful, sacred dwelling place of God up for God's people to worship in, and God's presence to be present in. I tell you something, when you have taken the tabernacle down 10,561 times, and you've got to put it up the ten thousand five hundred and sixty second time, it gets a little bit, uh, samey, you know. Uh, of course you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? You always come to serve the Lord with great delight of heart, don't you, as though it the first day you got converted. Well, perhaps you do, and perhaps you don't. Can get a little bit samey, can't it? And God, who foresaw it and knew the human heart, he arranged that before they began their ministry, these Levites had to be taken and offered as a wave offering before God, offered before God as a living sacrifice. And the echoes come to us still today, don't they? Are we genuinely redeemed? Then redemption claims us, and the mercies of God call us to offer ourselves, like those Levites, a living sacrifice. How shall they do it? Why, says the book of Numbers, just before they were offered as a living sacrifice, God ordered Moses to have another ceremony. It was a most unusual ceremony, the only time it happened in Moses' day, when they took the altar brand new. They assembled the nation around the altar, and Moses called upon the princes to bring their gifts to the dedication of the altar, so that the princes, in front of all the people, would show to the nation how they valued that altar. I think I see the scene. There's the nation, there's the children watching, and at last comes the prince of the first tribe. Oh, look at the silver, look at the wealth, look at that fine flower, look at that goblet, look at that spoon. What wealth! What a thing it must have been to see the prince bow before that altar, and expressing his heart's appreciation and valuation of the altar, he lays those sacred gifts at its foot. Where did he get the wealth from? And all his fellow princes? They got it through redemption when they came out of Egypt. Now they were given the chance to show before the nation what the altar meant to them. And to show it before the Levites. That the Levites might find help and motivation to offer themselves a living sacrifice. My brothers, God willing, I shall be with you tomorrow morning. I need your help. I'm a kind of a New Testament Levite. I'm meant to offer myself a living sacrifice, to offer my f- body, to offer my brain, to offer my mind. How shall I get the strength to offer myself a living sacrifice? Oh, my brother, when you get the chance tomorrow, help me, won't you? I shall be listening to you as you rise to lead our praise, and I see you with life's experience, leaders amongst God's people, approach the Father and tell him what Calvary means to you. And I shall say, there's that man, and I know what he suffered in life. I know what pains and difficulty he has borne. But all listen to him. How does it come that Calvary means so much to him? And perceiving that, I will say to myself, oh, if there's all that much in God that compel, can compel that man's adoration and devotion, then I want to give myself likewise to that same Lord and say with the hymn, were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all. And if you'll do that for me tomorrow, you will have added to God's grace to keep me from ever disputing the intellectual claims and the moral claims of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ.