In our day and age you’re allowed to talk about Jesus. But what you’re not allowed to do is talk about him in any kind of exclusive way. To suggest other religions are wrong. To suggest he’s the only way to God. Those kinds of claims really stick in people’s throats today. They’re too hard to swallow.
A couple of weeks back I was talking to someone who doesn’t come to church. She explained that all religions are basically the same. They’re just wearing different clothes.
I guess that’s what a lot of people think today.
Jesus doesn’t allow us that luxury. One of Jesus’ more famous sayings is John 14 verse 6. I am the way, the truth, and the life; no-one comes to the Father except through me. There are two halves to that sentence. Firstly he says I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. You can come to God through me. Nobody has a problem with that. It’s the second half of the sentence that people choke over. No-one comes to the Father except through me. There’s no other way to God.
I doubt many of you will have heard of John Shelby Spong, Jack to his friends. He’s an 82 year-old retired Bishop from America. Although he’s a bishop, he teaches that much traditional Christian teaching is wrong. Jesus wasn’t really God incarnate. The miracles never occurred. Jesus was not raised bodily. Prayer is pointless. And so on.
He was in Britain in 1998 for a conference, and I watched him on a TV show. I forget which – something like Question Time. In response to a question from the audience, he said this: It is true that Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ But that is not to say that there is no other way.
The trouble is, Jesus didn’t only say “I am the way, the truth and the life.” He also said that there is no other. And it’s this that jars for the modern mind.
Well this is nothing new. Our Bible reading talked of Israel in the desert 15 centuries before Jesus. God had appointed Aaron to be the first high priest. The people could cope with that. What they couldn’t cope with was that this was exclusive. It set him apart. Why can’t there be other priests as well?
Korah’s Rebellion
To track the story, we have to go back to the previous chapter, chapter 16.
250 leading men of Israel staged a rebellion. They’d had enough. Their leaders were 4 men named Korah, Dathan, Abiram and On. Verse 3: You have gone too far. For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?
So God and Moses put on a demonstration. All 250 of them were to offer incense before the Lord the next day. God would show who he accepts. The fated day comes. Korah, Dathan and Abiram are swallowed up in a massive sink hole that opens before their tents but nowhere else. And the other 250 are destroyed by fire from heaven.
God has shown that approaching God is not something that anyone can just do.
They should have known this already. When God gave them the law at Sinai, he asked Moses to fence off the mountain. If anyone stepped foot on the mountain they would have died. But they forgot quickly. Or they just didn’t get it. They just haven’t grasped that God is holy and you can’t bounce up to him as though he were you best mate.
So 250 of them died. Do you think they now get it that God is holy?
No. They turn on Aaron. Verse 41: On the next day all the congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and against Aaron, saying, ‘You have killed the people of the Lord.’
Moses and Aaron had done no such thing. You could say that God had killed them. But it would be more accurate to say that this is something the 250 did to themselves. They chose to barge into God’s presence. They did it.
But no, the people blame Moses and Aaron. At which point God’s anger flares up even more. The people start dropping like flies. It’s only thanks to Aaron’s quick action that it wasn’t a bigger tragedy. 14,700 of them died. But Aaron took fire from God’s altar, where the sacrifices are carried out, and he carried that fire into the middle of the people. He was saying to God, please accept the sacrifices that were offered in this fire and don’t kill the people. And so the plague stopped.
It was a sad, sad day in the life of Israel. But the irony was that they blamed Aaron for killing them. When in fact Aaron had just saved their bacon.
There’s a terrible accident at sea. A cruise liner starts to sink. The ship’s crew work round through the night to evacuate everyone safely on a lifeboat Tragically, 5 lives are lost. Everyone else is safe. It’s a traumatic night for the crew. The memories of those 5 will haunt them forever. But thanks to their efforts, it was just 5.
Nobody would have thought to blame the crew for killing anyone. They saved many lives. Just not everyone
Aaron saved many lives that day. By acting as priest, the vast majority of the people survived. He was a hero. They needed him. But instead of being glad at this, the people latch onto the fact that nobody else can be a priest. Why just Aaron? And they blame him. It’s the exclusive bit that they don’t like.
Aaron’s staff
Which brings us to the passage we had read. God wants to settle this bickering once and for all. So he sets up another test.
Each of the twelve tribes is to get their leader. Each leader is to hand over his staff. They are to write their name on it so that there’s no mix-up later.
What God says will happen must have baffled them. The man he chooses as his priest will have his staff sprout.
So all the sticks go into the tabernacle, God’s special tent. And the sticks spend the night with God. Then in the morning, Moses goes to get them.
I wonder what they expected to find. I imagine most of them expected all the sticks to look very similar to when they went in. One of them should have budded, so they all get out a magnifying glass to pour over each one. Is there the tiniest sign of a green shoot on any of them? And then they all break out arguing as to whether this or that counts as a shoot.
That’s not what happens. Aaron’s staff has sprouted, there are flower buds on there, some of them have opened up into lovely white almond flowers, and in some places there are ripe almonds ready to pick. All in one night, on a piece of dead wood.
It’s absolutely extraordinary. It’s clearly a miracle. God has made the result of this test so clear that nobody could argue with them. Aaron is the one God has called to be a priest. And nobody else.
Now that’s settled, the people breathe a huge sigh of relief. Except they don’t .They panic. If anything, they go hysterical. You can hear the tone of it in the way their sentences are clipped. Verse 12: The people of Israel said to Moses, ‘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?’
They’ve finally twigged what they should have seen all the way along. God is holy. You cannot just stroll into his presence in the same way you’d walk into a coffee shop or a pub.
I’m sure you’ve seen films with a hostage situation in it. The armed crew enter the bank. Everyone on the floor. This gun is loaded; I’m not afraid to use it. People look panicked. They don’t know what to do. This kind of thing only happens in the movies. But then one of the robbers lets off a firearm. They don’t even have to point it at anyone. The sound of a gun being discharged is enough. Outright panic breaks out. We’re going to die. These guys are serious.
Something like that happens to the Israelites. They’d already seen some of God’s power. That had impressed them. But suddenly they realise that God is serious. His holiness is real. They’re doomed.
Except they’re not. They’re not doomed at all. They’ve forgotten that one of the staffs did bud. And shoot. And flower. And produce almonds. It came alive.
The word for stick or staff is the same word as the word for tribe. One of the 12 tribes can enter the presence of God and live. Not all the staffs were dead. And because God has given them Aaron and his sons, the people have priests that God accepts. They can have God live among them. Through their representatives, they can enter the sanctuary. They need not die.
Jesus our Great High Priest
What has all this got to do with us?
Well God is the same God. He’s still holy. We’ll come back to that thought.
But Aaron is not our priest. We need to read on in our Bibles until we get to the book of Hebrews. There we find that Aaron and his sons were just a shadow. They looked forward to Jesus. Now that Jesus has come, he’s our priest forever.
The old priests had to make sacrifices every day. That’s because their sacrifices never really dealt with the people’s sin. Jesus offered himself once for all time.
God then raised him from the dead. This shows vividly that his sacrifice for our sins on the cross was accepted by God. He’d done it. He’d paid for the sin of everyone who trusts him.
Then he returned to heaven. The tent that Moses and Aaron made was only a copy of the real sanctuary which is in heaven. Jesus entered the real thing. And he’s still there today as our perfect high priest.
We’ve got far more than a stick covered in white flowers and almonds to show us that God accepts him. We’ve got his resurrection from the dead and his ascension into heaven. Jesus is our priest. And God approves.
Application
We said at the start that people object to some of Jesus’ exclusive claims. How dare he say he’s the only way to God!
Think this chapter in the Bibles calls for two responses from us.
First of all, it invites us to feel God’s holiness. God is holy. No human being can just stroll into his presence. The people here finally grasp that. And they go into hysterical panic.
Have you ever felt any of that sense of panic about God? Have you ever felt totally unworthy to be in his presence? “If I ever met God I would die.” I’m not saying we should feel like that all day every day. But if we’ve never felt like that, we’ve not met the real God. We’ve met a very scaled-down version of him. A tame, domesticated copy of the real God.
But God doesn’t want to leave us in panic. That’s not where we stay. He gave them Aaron, and he made his staff blossom so that the people could know that there is a priest that God accepts. And he’s given us Jesus. He’s raised him from the dead, so that we can know he is the priest that God accepts.
Once we’ve grasped God’s holiness. Once we’ve grasped that Jesus is our perfect priest. Then everything changes. Jesus claimed that there’s no other way to God. That’s not news. We know deep-down that approaching the living God is not cheap or easy. What’s amazing is that there is a way to God at all. Jesus claim to be the only way to God is most wonderful.
God is holy. We would all die. But we don’t need to feel terror at the thought of meeting God. Instead we can approach God with complete boldness and confidence because Jesus has already entered heaven on our behalf.
As we pray. As we think of God. As we think forwards to our own death and the day we meet God. Jesus wants to move us from panic and terror to a calm confidence that he is all that we need. And so we can approach God with boldness now. And we can greatly look forward to meeting him in person on the last day.