Two weeks ago we looked at Numbers 11 and the uprising of the rabble against Moses to complain about the lack of variety in the food. Between then and now there have been two more rebellions – first from Miriam, his sister, and Aaron, his brother the high priest. As well, ten of the twelve men who explore Canaan come back with reports of giants in the land and the impossibility of their taking it.
In Chapter 14 the people rebel and want to choose a leader who will take them back to Egypt. They wanted to choose a leader who could take them backwards. In response, God declares that none of the people (with two exceptions) will enter the land and they will wander in the desert for forty years – one year for each day they spent exploring the promised land.
Finally, they go up to fight the Canaanites against the counsel of Moses and they are defeated.
So, we are in Chapter 16 with a different kind of rebellion.
- Verse 2:
These are not rabble and outsiders like before. These are the leaders of the community – the 250 men who were hand-picked to help Moses bear the burden of leading. They are, in the KJV, men who are “famous” in the community for their integrity.. They are the most educated. The upper class. They are not celebrities – just famous for being famous.. They are, literally, those who are called. They are those who should have been the last to be fooled by a deceitful demagogue.They should have been warning the people but, instead, they were endorsing him.
What kind of deception must it have been to influence 250 of the wisest men in Israel? What would overwhelm that many seemingly smart people without using force? How could one man so distort the reality of so many?
Eric Metaxas in his book “Bonhoeffer” asks the same question about the German Church and the Prussians. “How was the Lutheran church and the leadership of Germany fooled by Hitler when they thought he was such a buffoon? They thought he would help them get the recovery of national pride and power they wanted and they could then control him. Little did they know what kind of devil they had summoned.”
What is more powerful than calling? What is more powerful than the collective wisdom of 250 men? Envy. Resentment. Association with power. Pride.
- Verse 3:
“You have gone too far. The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly.”
This in spite of the facts of the last several chapters. Grumbling, rebellion, cowardice, lying, and disastrous defeat. “We are as holy as you are.”
This same logic is sometimes used under the guise of the priesthood of all believers.
1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God…” Korah and his followers want to depose Moses and Aaron because they are being elitist. It’s an appealing argument, isn’t it? It makes sense. You’ve had the office for long enough and it’s time to give others a chance. After all, none of us is better than anyone else. We are all created equal. They are the first populists – the forerunners of Huey Long and others who use the “goodness” of the people for their own purposes. What God meant as a blessing to the nations they have distorted to mean privilege and power. They want the status of leadership…but not the sacrifice. To do this they distort the meaning of the priesthood of all believers. We’ll see how that plays out.
Too often, this argument is used to prove our own authority or as my children used to say, “You’re not the boss of me.” We’ve all felt that way, have we not? After all, religion is a private matter and we each have access to God directly without a priest or intermediary. Korah was only demanding that Moses recognize he was not special or anointed in any way other than the way they all were. This was a rebellion against those perceived to be the elite.
Priesthood of All Believers:
“Of course, Luther did believe that all Christians had direct access to God without recourse to “the tin gods and buffoons of this world, the pope with his priests.”
But for Luther the priesthood of all believers did not mean, “I am my own Priest.” It meant rather: “In the community of saints, God has so tempered the body that we are all priests to each other. We stand before God and intercede for one another, we proclaim God’s Word to one another and celebrate His presence among us in worship, praise and fellowship. Priesthood of believers, then, has more to do with the Christian’s service than with his or her status.
No one should deny the importance of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. It is a precious and irreducible part of our Reformation heritage and our Baptist legacy. But let no one trivialize its meaning by equating it with modern individualism or theological minimalism. It is a call to ministry and service; it is a barometer of the quality of our life together in the Body of Christ and of the coherence of our witness in the world for which Christ died.” Timothy George
C.S. Lewis addresses the attitude of “I’m as good as you” in Screwtape Proposes A Toast:
No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which he refuses to accept.
And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: “They’ve no business to be different. It’s undemocratic.”
What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy”is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like (all the other) Stalks.
For “democracy” leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first sign of criticism. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be.
- Verses 8-11:
The special situation of the Levites. Deuteronomy 18
“The whole tribe of Levi—is to have no allotment or inheritance with Israel. They shall live on the food offerings presented to the LORD, for that is their inheritance. They shall have no inheritance among their fellow Israelites; the LORD is their inheritance, as he promised them for the LORD your God has chosen them and their descendants out of all your tribes to stand and minister in the LORD’s name always.”
They were there to serve the people and the priests but they did not have power. They were close enough to power to want more of it. Even the wisest of them, those who were famous for integrity and leadership, were susceptible to it. They wanted the power and position of the priest and of Moses – and felt they deserved it. Still, they did not understand the actual nature of the role. They thought the power was in the office and if they had the office they would have the power. Like the disciples of Jesus, they wanted to be great. Even worse, they wanted not just to be great but as great as Moses. They wanted his greatness and his anointing.
It reminds me of the account of Simon the Sorcerer in Acts 8:9-24:
“Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.” Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”
George Herbert was a village priest who struggled his whole life with ambition. In 1633 he wrote “Submission” and these are two stanzas from that. It illustrates the struggle of the Levites to live so close to power without having it for themselves:
Submission.
Were it not better to bestow
Some place and power on me?
Then should thy praises with me grow,
And share in my degree.
How know I, if thou shouldst me raise,
That I should then raise thee?
Perhaps great places and thy praise
Do not so well agree.
It’s a common temptation – not just to Levites. Just spend a week in Washington or Austin. It is filled with appointed and elected people who have been deluded.
- Verses 28-35:
Leadership was never Moses’ idea. He resisted it from the beginning and many times complained about the burden of the people. I don’t think he could have identified with those who say, “I’ll do this as long as it is fun and when it’s no longer fun I’ll do something else.” It was never fun for Moses. It was always a burden – especially now that those who were called to relieve him have turned on him.
What happens to them?
They are allowed to do the work that is reserved for the priests – to carry the fire to the Tent of Meeting. That is what they wanted after all – to be equal to Moses, Aaron and the priests. It was not enough to minister to the people. They wanted more.
But as they stood at the entrance to the Tent the ground literally gives way beneath them. The fate of Korah and his two friends is terrible. The earth opens up and swallows them, their households and all their possessions. “They went down alive into the grave, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community.”
The 250 leaders are consumed by fire. In other words, a whole generation of leadership is wiped out in one day. Every single person who was called and elected is destroyed by their devious and greedy heart.
Korah and all his men and possessions are destroyed…but not his descendants. Numbers 26:11 mentions his line did not die out along with this word: Korah and his followers died and they served as a warning sign. Not just a warning for his contemporaries but for generations to come. This is what eventually happens to those who follow demagogues.
As well, there are several Psalms attributed to the “sons of Korah”.
One particular line in Psalm 84 makes us think there is some redemption years later.
84:10: “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. O Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.”
His grandchildren learned the lesson he never did. They learned what is important in life. They learned that honor and favor are bestowed and not grasped. They learned that trust in God and a walk of integrity – not envy and deceit – are the source of good things.
Ironically, one of his descendants is the great prophet Samuel who fights the people over the reverse issue – they want a king to rule over them. They do not want the responsibility for themselves. They want a king. They want someone who will fight for them – no matter how mad, dysfunctional and corrupt Saul turns out to be.
Verses 46-50:
The true nature of the priest is to stand between the living and the dead and to make atonement. That is what Korah and the others did not understand. He wanted the power of the position but not the sacrifice. He wanted to be over people but not to risk his life for them. He used the language of religion and the ignorance of the people for his own purposes…and was swallowed up alive. You might say his base collapsed and took him with it. It’s a lesson for all of us – especially in an election year. Be careful of aligning with those who use religious language to fool the wise and appeal to the anger and resentment of the people. Be careful of those who desire more power but not sacrifice. Beware of those who betray their own calling to advance themselves and corrupt leadership.
For it is not just the deluded leaders who are destroyed. As a result of their treason against God a great plague broke out and before Aaron could intercede almost 15,000 people had died. The sin of the 250 was responsible for an even greater loss. God judged the people – even the innocent – for the sin of the leaders. Had it not been for a true priest standing between the living and the dead many more would have been lost.
Even those who we think wise and called can be fooled. That is when we need most to understand that we are all priests with the responsibility to intercede for each other and to help each other not fall into the trap of delusion that leads only to being swallowed up alive, consumed by fire, and punished by the plague that follows the sin of a few.
“Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”