GREAT principles of God’s action come out thus wherever Satan and men are confederate against His holiness and His order in the midst of His people. So in this chap. 16 the intercession of Moses and Aaron takes the first place. They fell upon their faces and said, “O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wrath with all the congregation?” And the judgment was limited to Korah and his house, upon whom the earth opened its mouth, and the fire of the Lord consumed the men who had offered incense. The censers of these sinners against their own souls were hallowed, so Eleazar was commanded to take them up out of the burning, and scatter the fire yonder. The broad plates made from these censers for a covering of the altar, were to be a sign and a memorial to the children of Israel, that no stranger which is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to offer incense before the Lord. The murmurings of the congregation become now a further consideration for God, if so be that the people may be spared. This is met by the rods supplied by the princes according to the house of their fathers, twelve rods-laid up before the Lord in the tabernacle of witness; and on the morrow, behold the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds. “And the Lord said, bring Aaron’s rod again before the testimony to be kept for a token against the rebels, and thou shalt quite take away their murmurings from me that they die not.” It is precious to watch the reserves of God’s grace abounding beyond His people’s sin everywhere, and to see the introduction of Aaron’s priestly rod of intercession and power lighten up this central part of the book of Numbers, so that Jehovah can still go on with His people. The ashes of the red heifer, and its establishment at that time as an ordinance for Israel as “a water of purification,” is the fit companion for the rod that budded, and chap. 18 falls in beautifully between the two—as proving how God Himself delights to take the lead, and have the first fruits of all His increase returned to Him, in the worship and praise of His beloved people. The timbrels of Miriam and the women who danced and sang at the Red Sea were changed for the murmurings of the wilderness, and in chap. 20 Miriam dies-the time of song ceases. The people also diode with Moses and Aaron, and said, would God we had died when our brethren died before the Lord. Moses and Aaron likewise fail to sanctify the Lord at Meribah and perpetuate the use of the rod to smite, instead of superseding at by speaking to the rock—precious type to us of Him who said, “if ye shall ask anything in—my name I will do it.” Christ has been smitten by the rod of divine power for His people, and is now become the rod that budded in the prevalence of His intercessions on high; we have but to speak, and it “shall be done.” Aaron is stripped of his garments, and they are put upon Eleazar his son—Moses also is warned that he shall not enter into the land, because they rebelled against the Lord at the waters of Meribah. In the next chapter the people sink yet lower, and speak against God and against Moses—and the Lord sent fiery serpents among them, and much people of Israel died. Like as before, when the Lord turned the valley of Achor into “a door of hope,” so now the fiery serpent becomes the door of everlasting deliverance from his bite, by “the lifted-up Son of Man” upon the cross. In beautiful correspondence with this follows the well of springing water, of which the Lord spake to Moses, saying, “Gather the people together and I will give them water to drink.” The provisional and typical rods are superseded, and the Lord Himself gives His people water. Like we read in the Apocalypse of such things as the temple, and the sun and moon being set aside because the “Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple, and the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” Then Israel sang this new song, “Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it; the princes digged the well” by the direction of the law-giver with their staves.
Here we may observe that the ministry of Christ in the Gospel of John begins where the ministry of Moses may be said to end. The brazen serpent, in our Lord’s intercourse with Nicodemus, was continued by the well of living water, when He talked with the woman of Samaria; for how could merely typical and provisional things be repeated by Him to whom they pointed? For their anti-type they must be fulfilled and superseded, and this is one great difference between the whole economy of Judaism and Christianity, between law and grace, between flesh and spirit, and betwixt a worldly sanctuary and the true one, “which the Lord pitched and not man.” So the rod in the hand of Moses had done its work, and gives place to the mighty power of God which He wrought in Christ, “Who was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification.” So the rod of Aaron that budded and bloomed, and brought forth almonds between the evening and the morning, has given place to the intercession of Christ, who has passed into the heavens, and “ever lives in the presence of God for us.” The fiery serpent, and his bite too, is set aside by mediation and the lifted-up Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should never perish but have everlasting life. All this is very precious to us; for the whole provocation of the wilderness journey, and the people who made it, was typically provided for and met by the mediator Moses and the Aaronic priesthood and their respective rods; so that the brooks of Aaron, and the well of water at Beer (whereof the Lord spoke to Moses) become the place of their refreshment, where he gathers them together and gives them water. At the close of their journeyings, and just before they are all numbered for their inheritance in Canaan, the princes and the nobles make this new and last use of their staves, and dig the well in token of what the pathway led to, before they cast these staves away. After this, God takes a remarkable place for Himself and for His people against Balak and Balaam; not suffering any divination or enchantment or power of the enemy to prevail against them— “He reproved kings for their sakes, and said, touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm,” and turns Balaam’s curse into a blessing. Looked at in the light of all Jehovah’s promises, and the ways of their accomplishment in Christ, He only vindicates Himself when He says of the people, “I have not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel.” Looked at in themselves they were a stiff-necked generation, whose rebellion was judged in righteousness in the valley of Achor; or else provided for in grace, by the rod of priestly intercession.
Nevertheless, the murmurings which were thus met, like their sins which were forgiven on the great day of atonement, still left the fallen nature upon its seat of mastery over them. It is their second leadership under Joshua, and the onward journey which their “feet had not heretofore trodden” across Jordan, as following the Ark of the Covenant into Canaan that typically puts aside flesh itself, Blessed be God, if the Red Sea affirms their justification from sins through a crucified and risen Christ—this river of Jordan declares that the further necessity of sin in the flesh is met by our own death and resurrection. The rod of Moses was for deliverance out of Egypt, and from under the enemy’s power: “The horse and its rider were thrown into the Red Sea.” The rod of Aaron was to remove from between God and the people all their own murmurings against Him on their journey; but these all give place (when the wilderness is trodden) to the Captain of the Lord’s host, and to Joshua, and the priest’s feet which bore the Ark, and before whom Jordan divided its waters and stood upon a heap. This is a great turning point in the history of God’s ways with His people, whether then or now, for on the other side of Jordan the conflict is not with an evil nature merely and its murmurings within, but with the Canaanites, and the enemy’s power without who is to be overcome. Over Jordan is the promised land, and the rights of Israel must be made good in actual combat against the enemy, just as now by Christian circumcision and separation from the flesh, as dead and risen with Christ, we “wrestle against wicked spirits in the heavenlies, the rulers of the darkness of this present world.” Moses and Aaron with their services and rods, like Miriam and her timbrel, and the women and their dances, with all that generation, have recorded their histories and served the ends and purposes of God, and are passed away with the wilderness journey. Other objects of infinite wisdom and love have come out, and form another book in the chronicles of the ‘heavens and the earth; Joshua and Caleb, the Captain of Lord’s host, Gilgal, Rahab the harlot, and the spies commencing these new records. Our business has been to show the sufficiency of the two rods for making known the ways of God and His people on the first stage of their mysterious but wonderful journey; and yet to spew the insufficiency of the rods, for the full and ultimate objects of God’s glory with His beloved people
Abraham and Melchisedek, Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Eleazar, Samuel and the prophets, David and Solomon, are all necessary in Old Testament Scripture to unfold the ways and mind of God towards man on the earth, and to reveal the coming glories and offices of the anointed Christ, through whom they have all been made yea and amen. We who by grace have another and different standing, as one with the risen and glorified Lord, at the right hand of God in heaven, study our calling and adoption under the anointing of the Spirit, as revealed by Christ in the four Evangelists, when Jesus was on earth; or as further made known, by the Holy Ghost and the Apostles in the Epistles to the Churches, now that our Lord has been received up into glory.
The two rods are but a section, and a very small one, of what nevertheless forms a part of that infinite whole which embraces Christ as the Christ of God; or goes to make up” that fullness which dwells in Him, “in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Connected with the Church, He “is the fullness of him that filleth all in all,” but this is not our subject in this paper.
(Concluded from page 172.)