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Commentary on "Power Struggle"

PHIL HARRIS

 

Day 5: Wednesday, November 11, 2009

 

Overview

We see that Korah’s rebellion continued for a time after his death. We then see the amazing response of Moses and Aaron when we read verses 41-50 of Numbers 16. The whole congregation comes against them with the false charge that they have killed holy men of God. Logic would seem to indicate that those who had died the previous day had died at the hand of God because of their rebellion against God and was not at the hand of Moses and Aaron. However, unbelief is a tragic form of blindness that prevented them from seeing the consequences of their own sinful condition when standing before a holy God.

 

Observations

The curious thing with the lesson for today is that the author dwells on the continual irrational behavior of a people blinded by their unbelief but does not search out why Moses and Aaron choose to stand “Between the Living and the Dead”.

The ‘faith of Moses’ was what motivated the actions of both him and his brother.

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. (Heb. 11:24-26 ESV)

Most importantly, we see in what they did, a God motivated love and concern for the Hebrew people.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. (I Cor. 13:1,2 ESV)

God warns each of us, including the Hebrew people, that there is a hell and that it is a place of eternal torment. A place to be avoided at all cost.

"And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. (Matt. 18:8 ESV)

14,700 died and faced an eternity of torment. The faith and love of Moses and Aaron, displayed by their actions gave the living time to repent of their unbelief.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. ” (John 3:16-18 ESV)

 

Summary

  1. We know that the penalty of sin is death. God warns us, the same as he did for the Hebrew people in the wilderness, that the final penalty of death is eternal torment in hell.
  2. God so loves the world that he has personally provided a way of escape from this penalty by the covering blood of Jesus Christ.
  3. Belief in the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ removes the blindness of the living and separates them from joining those who are dead and in a place of torment. This is the message of Moses and Aaron who stood between the living and the dead.

 

GO TO DAY 6

 

Copyright 2009 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised November 2, 2009. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Glendale, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.

The Sabbath School Bible Study Guide and the corresponding E.G. White Notes are published by Pacific Press Publishing Association, which is owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist church. The current quarter's editions are pictured above.

 

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