Numbers: 15-16

What’s Happening?

After Israel fails to enter the Promised Land, and after God declares that the older generation will die in the wilderness (Num. 14:22–23), God immediately turns toward the younger generation who will one day return. He gives them commands about sacrifices for when they enter the land (Num. 15:2–3). This is God’s quiet reassurance that the relationship is not over. The sacrificial system that makes atonement (Lev. 1–7) will still accompany them into the land. Israel is still the kingdom of priests God intended them to be (Ex. 19:6).

For a moment it looks like things might actually be improving. The people even obey God’s command to put a Sabbath-breaker to death (Num. 15:32–36). Israel seems to be stepping back into obedience, but the peace doesn’t last long.

Three Levites—Korah, Dathan, and Abiram—rise up with 250 community leaders to challenge Moses and Aaron (Num. 16:1–3). Their complaint sounds spiritual: “We’re all holy.” But Numbers makes it clear that their rebellion is not against Moses; it is against God himself (Num. 16:11). These men forget that while all Israel is a priestly people, God has still chosen Aaron’s family for the priesthood (Num. 16:5–7; Ex. 28:1).

What happens next shows what happens when people grasp for a priesthood God hasn’t given. The rebels take censers and attempt to ascend into God’s presence on their own terms (Num. 16:17–18). But when they do, the ground beneath them opens up and swallows them alive (Num. 16:31–33). Instead of ascending into a higher spiritual place, they descend into Sheol—the realm of the dead. The 250 who follow them are consumed by fire from the Lord (Num. 16:35). Their attempt to claim God’s priesthood results in their being claimed by death.

But while the false priesthood collapses, the true priest is revealed. As a plague spreads through the camp because of the rebellion (Num. 16:46), Aaron takes his censer—the censer God commanded him to carry—and runs into the middle of the people. He stands “between the living and the dead,” and the plague stops (Num. 16:47–48). The difference is unmistakable. The censers of the rebels led to Sheol. The censer of God’s chosen priest leads to life. God validates Aaron’s priesthood, not through political power or self-promotion, but by giving life through the one he appointed.

Israel is a kingdom of priests. But they do not become priests by grabbing authority for themselves. They become priests by standing under the priest God has chosen. That is how they will be brought near. That is how they will live.

Where Is the Gospel?

This story sets the stage for Jesus. Like Aaron, Jesus is the priest God has appointed to stand between life and death (Heb. 4:14). He is the one who intercedes, the one whose ministry God recognizes, and the one through whom God brings his people into his presence.

But Jesus does what Aaron never could. Where the rebels were swallowed by Sheol, Jesus enters Sheol willingly. He descends to the depths of death and then rises from it, carrying resurrection life with him (Rom. 6:9–10). And where Aaron halted a plague for a moment, Jesus breaks the power of sin and death forever (Heb. 2:14–15).

Israel’s rebellion was a refusal to accept God’s chosen priest. Humanity has done the same. But instead of the earth opening its mouth to swallow us, Jesus offers himself as the one who goes into death on our behalf and then ascends out of it. Because he is the priest God has chosen, his life-giving intercession is effective. His priesthood is the way God brings us near.

And the gospel goes even further. The same Jesus who stands between life and death also makes us a kingdom of priests (Rev. 1:5–6). We do not seize the priesthood for ourselves; we receive it as a gift under his authority. We share in his life. We share in his nearness to God. And we share in his ministry to the world.

Where the rebels grasped upward and were pulled down into Sheol, Jesus descends so that he might lift us up. He raises us out of death and brings us onto his mountain of life (Eph. 2:6). In him, we finally become the priestly people God promised we would be.

See for Yourself

I pray the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to see the God who appoints the priest we truly need, and that you would see Jesus as the true priest who stands between the living and the dead, who descends into Sheol and rises again, and who makes us his kingdom of priests on the mountain of life.