It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.  But our God wants to be gracious towards you and give you peace.  He tells us that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but would rather that we repent and live.  Who are these people that God wants to bless?  They are the very people who had despised Him and grumbled against the leadership that He appointed.  There is more mercy in Him than there is sin in us.

Walking the dog around the neighbourhood it struck me that most of our neighbours seem to think that God is somewhat irrelevant.  But our God claims incredible things for Himself.  Our God claims the right to give life and take it.  Our God commands all people everywhere to worship Him.  Our God says that He is the one and only God.  Our God will judge all people at the end of time, and people will be assigned to heaven or hell on the basis of their relationship with Him.  Our God is anything but irrelevant.

Since chapter 11, the people of Israel have been grumbling against Moses and Aaron.  Behind their grumbling lies the fact that the despise God (16:30).  God is about to put an end to their grumbling.

1. Our God is Inapproachable

As we saw last week, Korah lead a rebellion in which he claimed all people had the right to approach God without a priest.  He was saying that we do not need a priest to stand between ourselves and God.  He saw God as approachable.  But when Korah and his followers approached God to offer incense—a task reserved for the priests—they were burned with holy fire and swallowed up by the ground.  

Eleazar the priest then took the bronze censors which had held their incense offerings and hammered in into the alter that was in the courtyard of the temple to remind people that only the priests could approach God in this way.  We must not be presumptuous before God!

The last church I worked in was a Methodist church in Richhill, County Armagh.  It was a lovely church with great people who loved the Lord.  At one stage I asked each of the small groups to feed back on what attributes came to their mind when they thought of God.  Rightly each small group included the fact that God is love.  But there was one glaring omission.  No one mentioned that God is holy.  We live in a time and culture that can have a very casual attitude towards God.  We know God as friend, but sometimes forget that He is also King.  It is in the New Testament that we read God dwells in unapproachable light and that He is a consuming fire.

If you have been swallowed up in the love of Christ and are seeking with His strength to live for His glory then you are invited to approach the throne to find grace and mercy in your time of need.  But the only reason you can approach this throne is because you have a priest, our High Priest Jesus, who has prepared the way for us to come before God.

2.Our God is Dangerous

You would have thought that the people would have learned to take God seriously after watching the ground swallow up Korah and his followers.  But no, the next day they continued their grumbling.  They say to Moses and Aaron, ‘you have killed the people of the Lord’ (16:42).  It wasn’t Moses and Aaron who had sent the holy fire and opened up the ground. Their complaint was against God!

The Lord then appeared to Moses and Aaron saying that He was going to consume all the people.  But Moses and Aaron fell on their faces and pleaded for them.  Moses told Aaron to stand between the people and the Lord.  A plague from God had already started to consume the people.  But as Aaron stood between the dead and the loving the plague stopped.  Can you see the picture of Jesus here?  Jesus stands between ourselves and the judgement we deserve.  Jesus has satisfied the demands of justice.  Without Him we have no hope in the face of the judgement of God!

These verses portray a different understanding of God than many in our society believe.  Our God is more dangerous than they imagine.  In ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, Susan is about the meet Aslan when she is told that Aslan is a lion.  ‘I’d thought he was a man.  Is he quite safe?  I feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.’  ‘Safe?’, asked Mr. Beaver, ‘who said anything about safe?  Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.

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