After we've heard God's Word proclaimed, we'll sing a couple of hymns expressing our need for our Lord Jesus Christ. So right after the sermon, we will sing Hymn 15. As it puts to music the prophecy of Isaiah 40 about the coming of Christ, our Messiah and Savior. Hymn 15 all stands as after the proclamation of God's Word. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Boys and girls, have you ever been doing something you knew you weren't supposed to? Maybe hiding away somewhere in a corner of the house? And so when someone, maybe your parent, came around the corner and surprised you, you jumped in panic. And your big shock was because of your guilty conscience. Or maybe you studied the life of Martin Luther for Reformation Day, and you might know the story of when Luther was traveling when he got caught in a huge thunderstorm and he was absolutely panicked. Now have you ever experienced a large thunderstorm before? Were you terrified? Maybe as children we might be tempted to be scared of thunderstorms, but as an adult it's a little bit of an overreaction. Now, of course, we get to see thunderstorms from the safety of our house when Luther was out in the open, where it is a lot more scary, but Luther's terror was mostly due to his guilty conscience. Thunderstorms, more than anything else, remind us that God is in control, and bolts of lightning that flash down from heaven and can fry you to a crisp, and thunder crashes, these things come directly from God. And Luther realized his sin and knew that he was a terrible sinner. And he struggled with a guilty conscience his entire life. And so when he was caught in this thunderstorm, and he saw so clearly how many sins he had committed, he was sure that God was sending it to punish him and was going to strike him dead. And there's another story in our text of a overreaction. At the end of our text, the Israelites saw a walking stick that had sprouted, sprouted flowers and even sprouted ripe almonds overnight. And their reaction is not to go, wow, how amazing the Lord is that he can turn a dead walking stick into a live branch. Their reaction is to say, we will perish. We are all undone. Are we all going to die? And why did the Israelites have this reaction to a branch? It's their guilty conscience. They know that they have done wrong in rebelling against the Lord and against Moses and Aaron. And they feel in their hearts that God is angry at them, that He is just waiting to punish them and strike them dead. And so do you ever have that guilty feeling, that guilty conscience, that you're such a terrible sinner and God must be so often angry at you? When something bad happens in your life, like a thunderstorm or anything else, do you imagine that God is sending it to punish you for your sins? Or do you never really have a guilty conscience, a guilty feeling? You're pretty confident with how you go about your life? Well, this morning we studied the Israelites. their guilty conscience, their guilty reaction, and what led up to it. And we learn what it means that we have to be a holy people, but we also especially learn what it means that God provides atonement, and how we should feel before God. And so I've summarized our text with a theme quoting from that reaction of the Israelites. We are lost. Are we all going to die? And we'll see how God makes atonement for us, and we'll see this in the three sections of our text. Firstly, the altar cover, the atonement offering, and the fruit-bearing staff. So firstly, the altar cover, the first part of our text from Numbers 16. As we begin our text in Numbers 16, verse 36, the 250 men who offered unauthorized incense before the Lord had been burned up by fire. completely consumed, and all that was left of them was the censers, the bronze bowls that they used to offer incense offerings to the Lord. And the Lord instructs Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the high priest, to take these censers and to hammer them flat and to put them together and use them as a cover for the altar. For, God says, these censers are holy. And that's quite a remarkable statement from the Lord, because the incense offering that they contained was so profane, so unholy, that it caused the men who offered it to be burned up by the fires of the Lord's judgment. And yet God says that the censers of these men are still holy. They were used to make an offering for the Lord. And so they have become holy. Holy in the sense of that they are dedicated to the Lord. They are to be used for the Lord's service. Once something has become holy, God is telling us, it cannot go back to regular use. That would profane it. It must be wholly dedicated to the Lord forever. And so that is a reminder to us, as we saw also last time, we are holy because we are dedicated to the Lord. The purpose of our life is to serve God. And so that means that whether we are elders or deacons, whether we own a business or operate machinery or stay home to raise our children, all of our life is holy because we are living it for the Lord's service. And now a lot of our work is pretty thankless, changing diapers, sweeping floors, listening to complaints. And we might wonder, why am I doing this again? Does anybody appreciate my work? Is there any point? But our work is holy because we do it for the Lord. And perhaps worse, we might feel very unequipped. to be holy, to serve God. We are sinners. All of our work is done in weakness and imperfection. So we might wonder, can I really be holy, dedicated to God? But what our text tells us is that we don't start out holy. And we are not holy because of what we have done. We, like the censors, are holy because God has chosen us, God has set us apart, and dedicated us to his service. And so God can take sinful things, whether these unauthorized censors or weak human beings, and he can make them holy and use them for his service. And so that changes everything about our work. We aren't doing it for people, for their praise, but for God. And it also means that nothing is meaningless. The most banal task in our life is done out of love or can be done out of love and thankfulness because of God. And these censers were made as a covering for the altar of burnt offering. Not because the altar was rotting, exposed to the elements or something, but so that it could be a reminder to the people of Israel. As the people of Israel, over the generations, would come to the tabernacle to make an offering to the Lord, an offering for sin or something like that, They would see the altar with its bronze covering and it would remind the people, as the Lord says, that no outsider who is not of the descendants of Aaron should draw near to burn incense before the Lord lest he become like Korah and his company. And so every time the Israelites would approach the tabernacle, come near to the Lord's presence to make an offering, they would remember Korah and how all of his men died with fire before the Lord. And they would remember that the Lord is a holy God, and they may only approach the Lord as he commands in his word. For example, they themselves were not allowed to go into the tabernacle, into the holy place. They themselves were not allowed to make the offering. They had to give it to the priest to offer on their behalf. And the Lord still today is a holy God. And so the New Testament continues to warn us that we must worship him acceptably with reverence and awe for our God still today is a consuming fire. And so that is why our worship still today is careful to be done according to God's word. And we are to worship God with reverence. And so we might wonder, what does that mean for us? How holy must we be? How careful must we be in our life to worship the Lord? Well, chapter 16 verse 27 tells us something that we would consider perhaps unthinkable if we weren't told. It says in verse 27 that when the Korah, Dathan, and Abiram perished before the Lord, their whole families were there. Their wives, their sons, and their little ones. They were with them when they were swallowed up into Sheol. And when you hear those words, you might wonder, how can this be? How can the Lord do this? But the point is that their fathers were representing them. Their fathers were their covenant heads and so they were guilty by association. Just like every single one of us today is guilty of the sin of Adam who sinned as our covenant head in the Garden of Eden. And so the children bear some of the guilt and the fallout of the sins of the fathers. It's what we read in the commandment that we hear every single Sunday. God punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. Our text reminds us that that's not just some vague threat. That is actually true. That is how justice for sin works. But because God is a just God, that also means that he is fair, that he does not punish the innocent for the sin of the guilty. And so because the wives and the children perished, then we could say that either they were shared somehow in the guilt for the sin. Maybe the wives encouraged their husbands in their rebellion. Maybe the families together would talk up how wicked and evil Moses and Aaron were, and so foment a rebellious spirit in their families. Or maybe what was a punishment for Korah and his followers was not a punishment for their families. Today, for example, there are covenant children and babies who die in earthquakes, just like the children of Korah, Dath, and Anabir. Are those children being punished? No. God is using earthquakes to rescue his children from this life, which is no more than a constant death, and to bring them quickly into the arms of Jesus, which is better for them by far, as Philippians 1 says. And so this text though reminds us what it means to be holy to the Lord, to be dedicated to the Lord, and it reminds us of the consequences for not doing so. And so we are called to look at ourselves and ask, do we take the worship of the Lord seriously? Do we worship a Lord only as is right in our own eyes? Come to worship when it is convenient? Once a Sunday when we could come twice? Changing churches when something doesn't go our way? Then it is likely that our children will take it even less seriously. And their children maybe not at all. And that's a common pattern. repeated over and over both in the life of the Israelites as each generation abandoned the Lord and also still today. Or if our worship is just an outward worship, coming to church faithfully, but in our heart there is no actual true love and worship for the Lord, then our children will see and will copy If in our houses there is little love for the church or little love for the saints, but instead they are full of criticism of other people in the church or of the church council and their decisions or of the minister and his sermons or of our federation and its problems or anything else, then our children will hear and they will say, why would I go to church if everything is so negative? And so we are warned here that we must take our holiness of the Lord seriously, not just for ourselves, but also for the sake of the next generation. Our hearts must be truly filled with love for the Lord. But the positive thing, the blessing that we learn from our text, is that today these words are true no longer. No longer are only certain people allowed to come before the Lord. No longer is the worship of the Lord restricted to only certain families. At Jesus' death, the way into God's presence was open for everyone. That was symbolized by the tearing of the curtain in the temple. And so, now we can all enter God's presence without fear. Not because God is any less of a consuming fire today than he was in the Old Testament, but because his fire that we all do deserve for our sins was poured out on Christ. Jesus suffered the agonies of hell, the pain of the everlasting fires of hell. And so now we can enter God's presence in Jesus' name without fear. And so that was something that was not true for the Israelites, but they had to look forward to that one day. But the congregation of Israel did not understand any of this, as we see in our second point, the plague and the atonement offering. The Israelites had no concept of holiness of God for immediately the next day we see that they grumble together against Moses and Aaron and say you have killed the people of the Lord. Isn't that unbelievable? Korah, Dathan, and Abiram died in a supernatural way and Moses declared beforehand that the Lord would do this to show the people of Israel that it was not Moses and Aaron who were in charge but it was the Lord. And so the earth opened up and swallowed some of them, and fire came down from heaven and consumed the rest. And so it could not be more obvious that this was not Moses and Aaron's doing, this was the Lord. And yet the people of Israel come against Moses and Aaron and say, you have done this, you have killed them. It makes no sense. But it's a reminder to us of how foolishness, sin is. Our sin makes no sense. We all sin because we want to gain some pleasure or some benefit for ourselves. But sin never benefits in the end. It always leaves us and our loved ones hurt and angry and let down. Its pleasure is temporary and turns bitter in the end. And yet we keep on doing the wrong thing, expecting that this time it will work out. This time something good will come of it. And so we too are just as senseless as this people. And again, as we've seen before, the Lord threatens to kill the entire congregation, and they certainly deserve it. And so he tells Moses and Aaron to leave, to go far away, and God will destroy them, the rest of them. But Moses and Aaron don't. They stay right there in the midst of the congregation, risking their own lives. If God kills the entire congregation, then Moses and Aaron will die too. But Moses and Aaron, they fall on their faces in prayer, pleading for the Lord's mercy. And so the Lord does spare the whole congregation from an instant death. But, we read, wrath goes out from the Lord and a plague begins. That's verse 46. And so Moses commands Aaron to take his censer and to take fire from the altar and incense and to offer this incense offering to the Lord as an atonement for the congregation. An atonement here in this verse, in verse 46, has the sense of the New Testament word propitiation. It's to turn away the wrath of God, to appease God's anger, to make it stop. And again, we see Aaron here risking his life for the people. Because Aaron goes out into the middle of the assembly as the people of Israel are dying all around him from the plague. And he offers incense and he makes atonement for the people and we read that he stands between the dead and the living, making atonement for the people before the Lord. In other words, he's again saying, Lord, if you want to keep this plague going, you have to strike me down too. And so here we see Aaron as a true high priest, literally standing between sinners and an angry God, and offering atonement for their sins. And it's an amazing thing that Aaron did here, because not only do the people deserve no atonement for their wickedness and their ungratefulness, they most definitely didn't deserve atonement from Aaron, who they blamed for everything that happened. Even after Aaron and Moses had unselfishly led the people for all of these years and got no thanks, just ungratefulness and rebellion. And yet, at risk of his own life, Aaron intercedes for the people and atones for their sin. And so the plague stops. And here, of course, Aaron points ahead towards our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus also, the Bible tells us, met supreme ungratefulness when he came down to earth. The very people whom Jesus came to save rejected him. And we too, in a sense, reject Jesus every day, every time we deliberately sin and live out our wickedness and our desire for sinful pleasure. And yet, Jesus gave his life for us, ungrateful sinners. And like Aaron, he stood between God's wrath and us, shielding us from God's anger and the punishment for sins. But unlike Aaron, Jesus didn't have a censer and incense and an atonement offering to turn away God's wrath and stop death. Jesus himself bore the wrath of God that we deserve for our sins. He took our plague, our curse, on himself and he suffered for us and died our death that we deserve for our ungrateful and wicked sins. And so in Jesus, our plague also stops. He has borne all of God's wrath and turned it away from us. Put yourself for a minute in the shoes of Israelites, as people are dying all around them, and they're panicked and afraid. Will they or their loved ones be next? And their guilty conscience, like we heard some examples earlier, stabs them in the heart. I should be next, it tells them. I have rebelled against God. I deserve death. And so guilty and ashamed, perhaps they bow their heads and wait for death. But then something changes in the air. And they look up, and they see Aaron standing before them, smoke rising from his censer, and he makes atonement for them on their behalf. Praise to the Lord! And the plague recedes, and the dying stops. And so, of course, they collapse to the ground in grateful exhaustion with a prayer of thanks that they have been saved, but perhaps also wondering, why? Why me? Why have I been saved when I'm just as guilty as all those who have died? And they marvel at God's grace to them. And so it must be with us, as we see all of those around us living in wicked rebellion against God and destined for judgment and eternal death unless they repent. We are not haughty and say, well, they deserve it. Look at all that wickedness they're doing. Because we recognize that we deserve death too. We should be headed for plague and eternal suffering. And yet we can look up and with the eyes of faith, we can see Jesus hanging there on the cross, making atonement for us, turning away the wrath of God. We have been snatched from the jaws of a terrible eternal death. And why has God spared us? Not because of anything we have done, only because of his grace and mercy that he shows to us. And let's also look at our third point, the fruit-bearing staff, chapter 17. God wants to establish, beyond any doubt, that Moses and Aaron are in charge because God has called them to leadership, not because they've exalted themselves. And so he commands all the leaders, one from each tribe, to bring their staff and label them as theirs. And Moses places these staff before the Lord, so in the Holy of Holies, in front of the Ark, in the presence of the Lord. And God, he says, will cause the staff of the man he has chosen to lead to sprout. And, says God, he will rid himself of the constant grumbling against Moses and Aaron by the Israelites. And these staffs, these were wooden walking staffs. So once upon a time, they would have been the branch of a tree. But a strong, sturdy branch would have been cut off the tree, it would have been shaved smooth, and all the knobs worn off or polished off it. And it is a branch of a tree that's long since dead, polished smooth to be free of splinters and suitable for walking through the desert for these many years. And so the idea that such a walking stick can sprout is, of course, unimaginable. But God is the taker and giver of life. So just as God can cause the earth to open up and swallow people alive into Sheol, so God can give life to a dead walking stick. And so the next day, Aaron's staff, which represented the tribe of Levi, had not only sprouted, but had budded and blossomed, produced almonds which had ripened, all in one night. And the Lord, in a sense, goes overboard here to prove that his word is true. If the staff had just grown a bud or two, you might be able to argue that Aaron had recently cut it off a tree maybe, and he only just fashioned it into a walking stick, and it was still maybe a little bit alive and so somehow it had sprouted. As unlikely as it would be, of course, to find such a stick in the middle of the desert. But no stick can sprout and bud and blossom and produce fruit and ripen that fruit in one night. As we know from our own fruit trees, that takes seasons, months. And so the Lord makes very clear here that the Lord has done this, and so the Lord has chosen Aaron and Moses. And finally, in verse 12, all of what has been happening starts to sink in to the hearts and the consciences of the Israelites. That Moses and Aaron truly are leading the people on God's behalf, and their rebellion against Moses and Aaron is actually a rebellion against God, and they are rebels, and any rebels who grumble against God deserve death. And so they admit here that they deserve death. In chapter 17 verse 12, they say, Behold, we perish. We are undone. We are all undone. Everyone who comes near, who comes near to the tabernacle of the Lord shall die. Are we all to perish? And that's it. That's the end of the story. Their question is just left hanging there. Are we all going to die? We aren't given an answer. And so we're left to consider that question for ourselves. Are they going to die? What about us? Are we lost? Are we going to die? And it's good that the Israelites can finally admit this, admit that they have sinned, that they deserve death, that they are not worthy to come before the Lord. But will they die? Well, Aaron's staff is to be placed before the Lord's presence in the testimony as a reminder that the Lord has placed the priests in charge and the Israelites must listen to the priests. But also as a reminder that the Lord has given the priests, especially the high priest, the only one who's allowed to actually go in to the Holy of Holies, whoever see that stick. That He has given the priests as their mediators to stand between them and the Lord, to make atonement for them, and turn God's wrath away so that they will not die. And that's why God promised at the end of verse 10 that they will not die. And so today we have Jesus as our mediator in heaven making intercession for us. And so when our guilty conscience stabs us in the heart and says, what have I done? I deserve to die. We can answer back that we will not die. And for us too, it is good that we understand the seriousness of sin and God's judgment through the generations. But we also can understand God's mercy. For example, as we saw last week, every Psalm of the sons of Korah is a reminder of that mercy. Because though Korah, Dathan, and Abiram and their families perished, the sons of Korah actually did not die. Numbers 26 verse 11 tells us that while the sons of Dathan and Abiram perished, the sons of Korah did not die. How did they not die? How were they spared the earthquake that swallowed up their families and their fathers? Well, the sons of Korah must have heeded the Lord's warning and moved away from the tents of their father. That is to say, they repented of their sins. They fled from the wrath of God, fled from the sins of their fathers, and pleaded with God to save them. And he did. And so the sons of Korah continued to serve God through the generations, even being appointed as gatekeepers for the temple by David. and writing the Psalms of the sons of Korah that you can find in your Bible. And so we have in our text a warning, a threat as it were, that if we do not take the holiness of the Lord seriously, whether in worship or in our life when we are dedicated to the Lord, then His justice may not just sweep us away, but also our loved ones as well, that He visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation. But we also have the great blessing of knowing that the Lord is so much more merciful and gracious than we deserve. No matter what we have done, no matter what rebellion we are guilty of, anytime, even at the eleventh hour, like the sons of Korah, we can repent, we can turn from our sins. And because of the atonement of Christ, because he suffered for our sins in our place, God will spare us and we will not die. And so today we do not have to wallow in our guilt. We do not have to be like Luther, plagued by a guilty conscience, terrified by God and his judgment. Because when we repent of our sins and seek salvation in Christ, our sins are washed away into the depths of the sea, and God no more looks us in anger. He's not waiting for an excuse to thunder down judgment on us. He forgives our iniquities, and he loves us as a father loves his children, and he pours out blessings on us. He does not spare us any good thing, but gives us everything we need and turns even evil to our benefit. So, beloved, take sin and God's holiness and God's justice seriously, but take his mercy even more seriously, and it, know that it is forever. Are you sorry for your sins? Do you love Jesus? Then you are forgiven and set free. We do not perish. We are not undone. We will not die. Amen. Let's sing in response of our need for atonement and how God sends it