Many men have triggered judgment; this message is about two such men. The spirit which destroyed them must yet be overcome by the Remnant before we see the total victory that God has for us as the Body of Christ. The spirit that would assail the Body of Christ has to be overcome. It may have been overcome in your own life and may not be a problem to you personally, but that spirit will war against the Body of Christ until the Body rises up in victory to overcome it. We can’t just ignore it. Anything that Satan brings against you or the Body of Christ, to destroy your effectiveness is not just going to go away. Satan will keep it there, until we overcome and destroy it.
Now Korah the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took action, and they rose up before Moses, together with some of the sons of Israel, two hundred and fifty leaders of the congregation, chosen in the assembly, men of renown. And they assembled together against Moses and Aaron, and they said to them, “You have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?”
When Moses heard this, he fell on his face; and he spoke to Korah and all his company, saying, “Tomorrow morning the Lord will show who is His, and who is holy, and will bring him near to Himself; even the one whom He will choose, He will bring near to Himself. Do this: take censers for yourselves, Korah and all your company, and put fire in them, and lay incense upon them in the presence of the Lord tomorrow; and the man whom the Lord chooses shall be the one who is holy. You have gone far enough, you sons of Levi!” When Moses said to Korah, “Hear now, you sons of Levi, is it not enough for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the rest of the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to Himself, to do the service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to stand before the congregation to minister to them; and that He has brought you near, Korah, and all your brothers, sons of Levi with you? And are you seeking for the priesthood also? Therefore you and all your company are gathered together against the Lord; but as for Aaron, who is he that you grumble against him?” Numbers 16:1–11.
Verse 19: Thus Korah assembled all the congregation against them at the doorway of the tent of meeting. And the glory of the Lord appeared to all the congregation. Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them instantly.” But they fell on their faces and said, “O God, Thou God of the spirits of all flesh, when one man sins, wilt Thou be angry with entire congregation?” Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the congregation, saying, ‘Get back from around the dwellings of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.’ ” Then Moses arose and went to Dathan and Abiram, with the elders of Israel following him, and he spoke to the congregation, saying, “Depart now from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing that belongs to them, lest you be swept away in all their sin.” So they got back from around the dwellings of Korah, Dathan and Abiram; and Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the doorway of their tents, along with their wives and their sons and their little ones. And Moses said, “By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds; for this is not my doing. If these men die the death of all men, or if they suffer the fate of all men, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord brings about an entirely new thing and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that is theirs, and they descend alive into Sheol, then you will understand that these men have spurned the Lord.” Then it came about as he finished speaking all these words, that the ground that was under them split open; and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, and their households, and all the men who belonged to Korah, with their possessions. So they and all that belonged to them went down alive to Sheol; and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. And all Israel who were around them fled at their outcry, for they said, “The earth may swallow us up!” Fire also came forth from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense. Numbers 16:19–35.
Now down to verse 41: But on the next day all the congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron, saying, “You are the ones who have caused the death of the Lord’s people.” It came about, however, when the congregation had assembled against Moses and Aaron, that they turned toward the tent of meeting, and behold the cloud covered it and the glory of the Lord appeared. Then Moses and Aaron came to the front of the tent of meeting, and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Get away from among this congregation, that I may consume them instantly.” Then they fell on their faces. And Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer and put in it fire from the altar, and lay incense on it; then bring it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them, for wrath has gone forth from the Lord, the plague has begun!” Then Aaron took it as Moses had spoken, and ran into the midst of the assembly, for behold, the plague had begun among the people. So he put on the incense and made atonement for the people. And he took his stand between the dead and the living so that the plague was checked. But those who died by the plague were 14, 700, besides those who died on account of Korah. Then Aaron returned to Moses at the doorway of the tent of meeting, for the plague had been checked.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel, and get from them a rod for each father’s household: twelve rods, from all their leaders according to their fathers’ households. You shall write each name on his rod, and write Aaron’s name on the rod of Levi; for there is one rod for the head of each of their fathers’ households. You shall then deposit them in the tent of meeting in the front of the testimony, where I meet with you. And it will come about that the rod of the man whom I choose will sprout. Thus I shall lessen from upon Myself the grumblings of the sons of Israel, who are grumbling against you.” Numbers 16:41–17:5.
This is not a very enjoyable story to read. Though these were people led of God, Satan was able to instill a rebellion that caused them to come against the man of God. People are no able to understand that it’s their own actions which result in the judgment that comes upon them. They immediately turned and said, “It was Moses who caused the death of all these people,” when it was the rebellion within their own hearts which caused the death. Moses acted as the man of God to see the judgment come upon them.
The sin of Korah can take place only when a Living Word is being revealed. Babylon doesn’t produce such problems. Satan is not seeking to destroy or to disrupt what Babylon is doing. In fact Satan is out to encourage them. But where a Living Word goes forth, where there is an army of God to possess an inheritance, then Satan begins to stir things up. The more you seek to walk with God the greater the pressure upon you, to be drawn aside from that dedication and intensity to walk with God. Only when God moves in such periods of great revelation of Himself does Satan work to overthrow in such a manner. When the people of God are aggressive, Satan gets aggressive.
The issue of the pattern of submission to authority arises when man responds to divine revelation. Where there is divine revelation, there has to be a divine authority and a divine submission to that authority. Without that word, there is no reason for authority and no need for submission. God has put an emphasis on authority and submission for the past twenty-three years because it is so necessary. The sin that will pervade in these last days is the sin of lawlessness, with each man going his own way, not being subject to the law of God or to the pattern that God has provided for man to walk in.
There have been three great peaks of revelation: when God spoke to Moses, when God spoke through Christ and in the early Church, and now once again as God speaks through our apostle as we approach the Kingdom.
God appeared to Moses and continually gave him a direct word of revelation by which he led the people. Probably at no other time in the history of man has anything been as definite as when God spoke through Moses and led the people. God revealed Himself again when He spoke through His Son, Jesus Christ, sent to earth in human flesh to perform the will of God. He said, “I do only those things that I see the Father do.” He had a direct word from the Father, and He moved according to that word. It wasn’t always according to the understanding of man. His disciples themselves did not understand the things which Christ did, but no one could deny that He moved by a revelation that God gave Him. There were also many who did not agree with Moses, but they had to accept the fact that God talked to him. But God led the people through Moses; He led them through Jesus Christ when He was upon the earth, and in this last day God is raising up apostles and prophets to lead His people.
An apostle hears the word of God and has direct revelation from God and who leads the people according to that revelation. We are moving through the end time into the Kingdom! God is bringing no less a revelation and no less a word of direction today than He did in other periods of time.
What is more important, to move into Canaan, or to move into the Kingdom? What is more important, to see the church of Jesus Christ upon the earth, or to see a remnant move into the Kingdom and see Satan defeated. It is very easy to get the idea that you are exalting yourself, but I believe just as Christ said, “For this hour I was born.” I believe that for this hour you were born. I believe that we were born at this time to bring forth what God purposed upon the earth. And we are here today by the design of God to be a part of the Kingdom of God.
I rejoice in everything God has done, but I know that God is not blessing for blessings’ sake. God is not giving you a ministry for your own sake, but for His own sake. None of us are hangers-on in this army of God. We are here as soldiers of Jesus Christ and of His Kingdom. What God did for you, He did for you because He needs you. God gives you a ministry because He needs that ministry in the Body of Christ. It’s time that we do some serious thinking and realize there is no such thing as playing with this that God has given us! It is given to us that we might do the will of God!
It is easy to forget your place in the pattern, when God blesses you. As long as the blessing is flowing, you tend to forget the necessity of staying in your place in the pattern. We feel that everything is going fine because God is blessing us. Out of God’s goodness He blesses us and sometimes we forget. Korah was very blessed to be freed from slavery and to see his family suddenly have a future. He himself had a position with the blessing of God upon him.
It is not enough for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the rest of the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to Himself, to do the service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to stand before the congregation to minister to them? Numbers 16:9.
To hear God and to have His favor were blessings used by Satan to stir up rebellion. The third verse of chapter sixteen says, And they assembled together against Moses and Aaron and they said to them, “You have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” This is something we cannot afford to forget: the blessing doesn’t rest upon you as a personal favor from God because He likes you—He blesses you because He wants to use you as a member of the Body of Christ to bring forth the will of God. We have God’s blessing but that doesn’t mean that God wouldn’t think of doing something against us. The blessing of God is upon us because we have heard and responded to the word of the Lord and have come under submission to the word of the Lord and are moving as a Body to do the will of the Lord. That blessing will remain upon us as long as we remain in that place and position. When we go outside of that we go outside the opportunity of the blessings of God.
Satan opposes the pattern because he opposes the idea of man in God’s image, which is what the pattern is to produce. Satan opposes the very pattern to which you have become submissive. He doesn’t have to destroy us; just move us out of the pattern, and we’ll destroy ourselves. You get outside that pattern and Satan is not going to oppose you anymore because you’re not going anywhere. As long as we stay in the pattern we are going to have Satan oppose us continually.
I believe that Judas was moved according to his own understanding of God’s will. Judas wanted Christ to sit upon His throne, which is what Christ told them He was going to do. He told them He was going to rule as King, and they would rule and reign with Him. But Judas’ concept was to see Christ upon an earthly throne, to put Rome down and begin to rule the earth. It would have been a fantastic thing for Christ to sit upon the throne and right all the wrongs in the earth.
It is easy to judge Judas without understanding his viewpoint. He did as many of us do; he judged according to his own understanding. I don’t believe his act of betrayal was intended to result in Jesus’ death. It was intended to force Jesus to move in His own defense and to take the throne that he believed was rightfully His. He didn’t understand Christ or the ways of God. Judas did not see that His throne was a thing of the Spirit. He didn’t understand that it was the purpose and the will of God that Christ should die, and that he was becoming an unwitting tool in the hand of Satan to bring the thing to pass. His remorse at seeing Christ condemned to die was so complete that he could only commit suicide.
Now when morning had come, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put Him to death; and they bound Him, and led Him away, and delivered Him up to Pilate the governor. Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to that yourself!” And he threw the pieces of silver into the sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself. Matthew 27:1–5.
Satan sought to destroy the Christ, and he used Judas to betray Him. I don’t know what this does to you but it brings solemnity to me. It was not Judas who was trying to destroy Christ, it was Satan; and he found someone who was taken up with human understanding and could be used as a tool to see it happen. I see this same thing today. I don’t believe that there is one of us who would seek to destroy the Body of Christ. But we can be innocently going off by ourselves, thinking independently—“I don’t understand this,” or “This is the way it should be done.”—and become like Judas, a tool that Satan can use to destroy the Body of Christ. This spirit has to be eliminated from the Body of Christ until there is nothing of human understanding upon which we rely. We cannot stand in human wisdom but in the revelation of the word God gives, and move according to this and be safeguarded in it.
Satan works on the flesh that is allowed to reign uncontrolled by submission. It becomes the nesting ground that Satan uses to produce his desired destruction of the Body of Christ. According to our own understanding, we have often felt that things are not going right. The disciples all fell into that same error. So many times they complained because Jesus was not fulfilling the role they thought He was to fulfill. They thought He should be healing more, appeasing more people, not saying such harsh things, being more diplomatic, acting more like the king they felt He was to be. I’m sure that if you and I had lived at the time of Jesus upon the earth we’d have felt the same way. “If Christ is to be a king and has this power and authority, why isn’t He using it? At the pool of Bethesda, why heal one person and leave the rest? Why didn’t He do this or that?” The Pharisees, too, criticized: “Why does He have to heal on the Sabbath? Why can’t He heal on the other six days?” They had only human understanding. Christ was moving by revelation and direction from God, but they were motivated by human understanding. It’s so easy for us today to criticize them and fall into the same pit ourselves for many times we are moved by human understanding rather than realizing what God is doing by divine revelation.
We also move by our own impulses; how often we are tempted to put our hand to the ark to steady it. God didn’t quite estimate that there was going to be a bump in the road and that the cart was going to dip and the ark might fall off, so you move by your impulse to steady the ark. For most of us this is an evidence of a flesh that’s not quite dead. For others it is the lack of dedication to see it dead. These are the things Jude describes in his epistle.
But these men revile the things that they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These men are those who are hidden reefs in your love-feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. And about these also Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts, speaking arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage. Jude 10–16.
This is what Jude is speaking about. Now understand this. Satan wants more to destroy the Body of Christ than the physical body of Jesus. He wants now to see that corporate Body of Christ destroyed. Revelation 12:4 says, And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven, and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. Satan has one objective in mind, and that is to destroy the Church of Jesus Christ; to destroy those that are coming forth in the Kingdom.
We are living in a momentous time. This walk of God, though very joyful and full of blessings, is a very serious thing. We are not here just to receive blessings, but we are here to do the will of God; we are the Body of Christ. Satan is after the Body of Christ that is raised up in this day to do the will of God. There will be a remnant that will stand in this day. Satan seeks those who have a part in the Body but who have their own self-seeking and understanding in which to plant the seeds of discord and rebellion. The ones whom Satan used in days past were members of the congregation, members of God’s own chosen people—but it was human understanding that created the bed for these seeds to be placed. That is what Satan is seeking today—a people with their own understanding, members of the Body, who have never had a real vision of what God is bringing forth today.
Judas was one of the twelve with authority over sickness and demons, yet he stole from the treasure because his vision of glory was money. The judgment of sin on the cross and the judging of the Jews as a race, the judging of Judas, were all triggered by Judas’ betrayal. All of these came into being planned and purposed by God, but triggered by a sin from within the Body, just as Korah triggered off a vast judgment upon Israel, upon himself. Look at the thousands who died because of that which Korah triggered off.
Let us be a part of what God is doing. It’s not the acts of those outside that trigger the judgment, because God moves through identity with His own people. God uses His own people. The spirit of rebellion of Korah leads to the sin of Judas.
So many times we allow a little rebellion to come up, or a little self-understanding. It is not simply rebellion, it is that you reason things out until in your reason you say, “This doesn’t look right to me. It doesn’t make sense.” That reasoning becomes a force that causes you to hedge or hold back in submission, and that spirit will lead to the sin of Judas’ betrayal.
You ask, “Is it that big a sin, having that little rebellion or my own understanding?” Maybe not in itself, but what it leads to is the problem. If we have found the protection for the weakness of our flesh and our spirit by submitting these weaknesses to the authority over us, we will not be a threat to the Body. Whatever weakness or problem you have, keep it under subjection by moving in submission. You may have problems of rebellion or understanding, but keep these submitted to the authorities in the Body, and God will lead you and let you be part of the Kingdom in this last day. We shall be steadfastly holding to that place He has positioned us in, and steadfastly beholding His face, being changed from glory to glory.
This may not be a problem with every individual and I doubt if it is, but it is a spirit that has set itself to destroy the Church of Jesus Christ.
That spirit has to be bound and kept out of the Body of Christ. We’ve got to recognize that Satan is after us, recognize that Satan is trying to destroy us, and rise up to say, “There will be no spirit, no spirit that Satan will allow to come in to destroy the Body of Christ.” If we see it come up, we’ll cut it down.
There can be no spirit of rebellion or judging by human understanding. There must be leadership with a word by which this Body moves. You may not understand, but be committed to follow after the word God gives. Let the spirit of submission prevail, and become strong and this Body will stand. If not, the spirit of Korah will be used to come against the Body of Christ in this day. He will not be able to destroy the work of God, but he can surely work havoc.
We have set ourselves to be an instrument of God and not an instrument of Satan in this day. Stand against any rebellion, that our walk with God be guided by revelation. God has raised up authority and we’re going to move under authority. Be submissive to the authority that God has raised up. Along with the blessings will be the warfare. Along with the warfare will be the overcoming and the victory!