Numbers 16 By Paris Reidhead*
Come to the Savior now is the testimony of the Word of God on every page, it seems, and if you will turn to Numbers, Chapter 16, you will see that it is also the testimony of this portion that will engage us tonight. Since I cannot improve by any narration on the exact and beautiful language of the text, I am going to read much of this 16th Chapter. I trust that as I read you will visualize what is being read. Words are pictures, or can convey pictures, and it is this that I long for tonight, that you will see it, that it will not be simply a narration, but it will be a revelation; and you will identify yourself as one of the people. Have you ever tried to do that? that you are actually part of the scene? you are one of the spectators, or one of the participants? Do that tonight, will you? We would ask you to see it tonight.
“Now Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On, the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men: 2And they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation men of renown: 3And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord? 4And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face: 5And he spake unto Korah and unto all his company, saying, Even to morrow the Lord will shew who are his, and who is holy; and will cause him to come near unto him: even him whom he hath chosen will he cause to come near unto him. 6This do; Take you censers, Korah, and all his company; 7And put fire therein, and put incense in them before the Lord to morrow: and it shall be that the man whom the Lord doth choose, he shall be holy: ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi. 8And Moses said unto Korah, Hear, I pray you, ye sons of Levi. 9Seemeth it but a small thing unto you, that the God of Israel hath separated you from 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 unto them? 10And he hath brought thee near to him, and all thy brethren the sons of Levi with thee: and seek ye the priesthood also? 11For which cause both thou and all thy company are gathered together against the Lord: and what is Aaron, that ye murmur against him? 12And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab; which said, We will not come up: 13Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a land that floweth with milk and honey, (that is Egypt they are talking about), to kill us in the wilderness, except thou make thyself altogether a prince ever us? 14Moreover thou hast not brought us into a land that floweth with milk and honey, or given us inheritance of fields and vineyards: wilt thou put out the eyes of these men? we will not come up. 15And Moses was very wroth, and said unto the Lord, Respect not thou their offering: I have not taken one ass from them, neither have I hurt one of them. 16And Moses said unto Korah, Be thou and all thy company before the Lord, thou, and they, and Aaron, to morrow: 17And take every man his censer, and put incense in them, and bring ye before the Lord every man his censer, two hundred and fifty censers; thou also, and Aaron, each of you his censer. 18And they took every man his censer, and put fire in them, and laid incense thereon, and stood in the door of the tabernacle of the congregation with Moses and Aaron. 19And Korah gathered all the congregation against t6hem unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the congregation. 20And the Lord spake unto Moses, and unto Aaron, saying, 21Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment. 22And 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 wroth with all the congregation? 23And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 24Speak unto the congregation, saying, Get you up from about the tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. 25And Moses rose up and went unto Dathan and Abiram; and the elders of Israel followed him. 26And he spake unto the congregation, saying, Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of their’s, lest ye be consumed in all their sins. 27So they gat up from the tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, on every side: and Dathan and Abiram came out, and stood in the door of their tents, and their wives, and their sons, and their little children. 28And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent me to do all these works; for I have not done them of mine own mind. 29If these men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men; then the Lord hath not sent me. 30But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shed understand that these men have provoked the Lord. 31And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them: 32And the earth opened her mouth, and
swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. 33They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation. 34And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them: for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up also. 35And there came out a fire from the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense. 36And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 37Speak unto Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest, that he take up the censers out of the burning, and scatter thou the fire yonder; for they are hallowed. 38The censers of these sinners against their own souls, let them make them broad plates for a covering of the altar: for they offered them before the Lord, therefore they are hallowed: and they shall be a sign unto the children of Israel. 39And Eleazar the priest took the brasen censers, wherewith they were burnt had offered; and they were made broad plates for a covering of the altar: 40To be a memorial unto the children of Israel, that no stranger, which is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to offer incense before the Lord; that he be not as Korah, and as his company: as the Lord said to him by the hand of Moses. 41But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord. 42And it came to pass, when the congregation was gathered against Moses and against Aaron, that they looked toward the tabernacle of the congregation: and, behold, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord appeared. 43And Moses and Aaron came before the tabernacle of the congregation. 44And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 45Get you up from among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment. And they fell upon their faces. 46And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the Lord; the plague is begun. 47And Aaron took as Moses commanded, and ran into the midst of the congregation; and, behold, the plague was begun among the people: and he put on incense, and made an atonement for the people. 48And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed. 49Now they that died in the plague were fourteen thousand and seven hundred, beside them that died about the matter of Korah. 50Aaron returned unto Moses unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and the plague was stayed.”
We have been dealing in these weeks, since I returned to you from a month away, with the theme of Repentance, seeking to understand it, to comprehend what God meant it to mean to us. It is obviously of tremendous importance when our Lord in two verses, in one chapter, said, “Except you repent you will perish.” And we have understood that repentance means a change of mind, a change of intention, and a change of purpose. This morning in singing the hymn, “Depths of Mercy, can there be1”, the fifth verse said, “Lord, incline me to repent.” And there is a tendency for us to think that repentance is dependent upon something that God does. Let it be understood by us tonight that no one ever would repent, if God did not do something; not because we cannot repent, but because of the hardness of the heart, the obdurate spirit, that characterizes man. Men are by nature enemies of God, in open warfare with God, arrayed against Him. And what you have seen tonight on the part of Korah, and Dathan, and Abiram, is but a picture of the natural human heart in its open defiance of God. Now, if you have repented, it is because somewhere God in grace drew you out of your rebellion to see yourself, and caused you to fear His wrath, and provoked you to the place that you were willing to meet Him on His terms.
I recognize this, but I recognize that the reason why sinners do not repent is not because they cannot, but because they won’t. Repentance, being as it is, a change of mind, a change of will, of intention, and of action, is quite within the realm of possibility of every mentally and morally capable man. This is why God has commanded sinners to repent. You hear His Word, “As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn and live. Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?” (Eze. 33:11) It is quite clear, perfectly obvious from this, that repentance is an action that anyone can perform. We have thought of it as an emotion that would have to wait until there was a great emotional stirring. Such is not the case. The moment that you are aware of a sin, aware of a need, aware of failure, aware of the problem, you can repent, if you will repent. This you must see. There is only one time for repentance, and that is now... The moment of revelation, the moment of unveiling, the moment of discovery of need.
I would have you see that there is nothing more fatal in human history than delayed repentance. This is what you see tonight. The background of this is the portion we considered this morning. Israel has come up to the very border of the Promised Land;
1 “Depth of Mercy! Can there be” (1740) Author: Charles Wesley Tune: Adapt. From Orlando Gibbons, 1623
the spies have gone into Kadesh Barnea, and have returned with the report of the goodness of the land; but they have said, There are dangers there, there are giants in the land, and therefore we ought not to go up. But instead of breaking before the Lord and confessing their sin of unbelief, and from it the sin of stubbornness and rebellion against His leadership, and from it the sin of anger, and warth, and murmuring, and complaining, and hatred, and all the others that would grow from this one root, well planted in the heart. Instead of doing that, you find that they the next day said, We will go down. They had been told that they were going to perish in the wilderness, and instead of meeting God on His terms, they made their own terms: We are going to go in and conquer the land. They had failed God, and now they had failed Him the second time by manifesting their stubborn hearts.
Even in this failure, even when they were put to flight, even when the people of the land slew them, and caused the rest that survived to flee back in terror, nevertheless, they did not repent. There is no evidence of brokenness, no evidence of meeting their own conditions, no evidence of changing their mind or heart. And this is what we must see, that delayed repentance always leads to further sin. So, if I speak to you tonight, and the Spirit of God has pointed out in your life anything that grieves Him, then it is an inevitable law, just as operative as the law of gravitation, that if you leave this hall tonight with unconfessed, unforsaken sin, of any sort of kind, that there will be other sins that will attach themselves to it, the same way that an oyster will attach themselves to it, the same way that an oyster will attach himself to a rock. It will be that there is a crustacean of sin formed around your heart, for if you have gone from this hall tonight impenitent in any particular, you have predisposed yourself to disobey the Lord in another particular tomorrow. Now this, I say, is just as inevitable as the Law of gravitation. We see it happening here. They had sinned with the sin of unbelief; instead of breaking before the Lord, acknowledging their sin, asking for forgiveness, and evidencing repentance, by submitting to the ones whom God had given them, they refrained from doing that and did as we have outlined.
Now what was the effect? Delayed and improper repentance resulted in further sin. For, if there has been this evidence of a hard heart, we expect just as we have said, that there should be joined to it further failure. This is the case. Korah was the Levite, very possibly he was of some relationship to Aaron, and obviously he was concerned about his own wellbeing, his own prominence, his own importance in the camp, and we find that he has gathered to him some of the people. It is always possible to do this. It is always possible to gather some. It is strange, that as soon as there is one person in the camp that has a heart that is filled with bitterness, it is like a lodestone, just like a magnet that goes over the dirt, that does not seem to have anything on it but just pure soil. But let a magnet hover over that dirt, and you will find that there leaps up out of this soil little particles of metal that will cling to the magnet. And so it is that, if you find a Korah in any company, whether it is a small group, or a church, or a denomination, it makes no difference. As soon as there is a disaffection that is voiced it is going to cause others to adhere to it. And Korah did not have any trouble at all of getting a following. He was able actually to get two hundred and fifty princes, famous in the congregation, men of renown.
What characterized them? What was the one thing that marked them all? This. They had never broken before God, they had never bent before God, they had never bowed before God, they had all stood with stiff necks, unwilling to hear the voice of God as He spoke through Moses, and through Aaron, and them of their sin, and pled with them to repent. They had refused to do it, and so now we just see it, that there is one bird in the little tree, and then there is two, and then there are ten, and then there are 50, and now we have 250, that have been drawn together by the same thing, they have a resentment of Moses, and a rebellion against Aaron, and a desire to take things into their own hands.
Now, obviously, Moses was a man. He stuttered, or stammered, or was of poor speech, or he had at least pled this with God. And there was Aaron. Aaron was a man who led the people of Israel into the sin of worshipping the golden calf. His feet were feet of clay, but God had sovereignly chosen Aaron, and chosen Moses, and they were the ones through whom God spoke, themselves nothing but simply the conveyors of the Word. And so here we find that Korah has come, saying this, Listen to it. It is startling. You take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them. And the Lord is among them. Wherefore, lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord? What has God said about this company? He has said, You are going to perish in the wilderness. Your bones are going to bleach the desert sand. You are not going to go in. And so now, because Moses has interceded, and pled with God not to destroy them, not to wipe them off the face of the earth, and do as He said, make a new nation out of Moses, because of this, the people now have utterly forgotten their sin, totally forgotten
Moses’ intercession, completely rejected the fact that they were under the sentence of death, and they come, fighting with Moses and Aaron, saying, You take too much upon you seeing all the congregation are holy. Blinded. Sin always has this effect. Morally blinding and disfiguring, causing perception to disappear. And so this what is what is going to happen to any of us. Be it understood that this is not just an event. This is a principle. Let it be clearly known by you, that when you come face to face with personal failure, or with sin, and you fail, or refuse to deal with it, it is going to mean a distortion of your vision, it is going to mean an upsetting of all your standards, it is going to be a reversal of all the principles of right and the revelation of God’s dealing, and your world is going to turn upside down. This is what happened. Under the sentence of death, and now they say the whole congregation is holy. They have forgotten that God said they are going to die, they have forgotten that God has told them they should not go up and fight against the Amalekites, because He would not go with them. They have forgotten that they have been defeated, and above all they have forgotten that there was an intercessor that pled with God to spare them. This is what will happen to you or to me. This is the moral consequence of impenitence. This is the result of having seen sin, and having failed to deal with it. It is the inevitable. It is irrevocable that when we countenance sin then it leads to other sins, which we do not see. Right becomes wrong. Wrong becomes right. Up becomes down, and down becomes up. White becomes black, and black becomes white. And the whole world is twisted. This I say is the consequence of impenitence. And this is why it is absolutely necessary to continually keep a broken spirit, not simply to begin with repentance, and then leave it in the past, and one would begin his marriage life with the wedding, and leave the wedding ceremony in the past. It is a promise that the one standing before the congregation promised to love, to honor, to cherish, to serve, to cleave, and cleave only till death do us part, this is the promise made, and so it would be that in repentance there is a marriage fixed wherein we say, From today on I am going to please God, from this morning on I am going to serve God, from this hour on I am going to obey Him.
Now, the moment that you come to a point where you have disobeyed God, and you do not deal with that, then I say there sets in this process of moral distortion, of intellectual perversion, upsetting of the whole spiritual nature until it goes on to the place that we find set forth here. It is inescapable. It cannot be avoided. It is the moral consequence of impenitence. There is only one right way, one proper way to deal with God. And that is the way of instantaneous dealing with sin.
We have been giving you an opportunity in these past weeks to meet the Lord. We have been giving you an invitation, a right and proper invitation. But I think it should be impressed upon your mind that when you have met God, as it were, last Sunday or two weeks ago, in brokenness, that the attitude that ought to characterize you is one of continual brokenness, not just of an event, but of a new disposition, a new attitude, so that at the next moment that you grieve God, you deal with it thereon that point and at that place. It is imperative that it be so, because just as a person has been cured of infection can become reinfected, so a person that has been forgiven of past sins can have the same process of disaffection set in his heart, and it requires therefore an attitude of instantaneous dealing with everything that grieves God.
Now, you say, this is a very difficult thing. I am going to be brought under bondage by such a process. I think not. Have you ever burned your finger on a stove? And you say, O yes, I have. I have touched the hot metal and it has burned my finger. Now what did you do? Say, Well having burned my finger once, I’ll never go near a stove, or have you said, Having burned my finger once, it does not make any difference how often I burn it again. I do not think this is the case at all. You know that a stove is hot. If you are wise, you do not test it with your finger any more than you test the paint with your finger when you see a sign, Wet Paint. There is something in human nature that wants to prove it is not so, but, O dear friend, if you have ever burned your finger on the hot stove, you are going to do something else than touch it. You are not going to do that if you are wise.
Now is this become a great cross to you? Has this become a tremendous burden? Are you constantly under mental pressure, because you have got to remember not to touch a hot stove? Have you been brought to the place of frustration, because you are carrying foremost in your mind this thought, If I touch a hot stove I will be burned, and I must not touch a hot stove. Oh no. It is not that. It is the fact of your experience that becomes relevant in your need. And so it is if you have a conscience void of offence toward God, and a heart that is at rest and at peace with God, you do not have to carry in your mind, Now I must not sin, or, I must repent. This is not necessary. This is not the process.
Is everything right between you and God? Then, when you grieve Him you will be aware of having grieved Him, the same way that having touched a hot stove you are aware of having been burned. For, if you are aware of peace with God, and are
conscious of fellowship with God, do you not feel that He is so real, and the relationship so wonderful, that you will be aware of the fact that you have grieved Him, and at the point at which you have grieved Him. My contention is this, that if you are walking in fellowship with God you ought to let nothing interfere with that fellowship. Nothing is to interfere with it. And the moment that something interferes with it, you must instantly deal with that thing on the spot. For, if you allow that thing to go undealt with, and you do not instantly take it to the place where it must be properly met, it is going to have the effect of predisposing you to further sin. Just as Israel’s unbelief predisposed them to their murmuring, to their rebellion, to their presumption; and now, because they have not dealt with it at the point along the way, it has led them to open insurrection, and to defiance of God, and to their destruction.
It is, therefore, that we are to keep short accounts with God. Now put it this way. You are sitting here before me tonight, presumably for the most part at least as members by testimony of the Body of Christ. There are some among us, undoubtably, that if asked would say, No, I am not a child of God, I have never been born again. And we invite you tonight to repent of your sin and to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior. But I speak to you who by your testimony would identify yourself as the children of God. These men said, they were of Israel; and they were. And then they said, We all be holy. We are a holy people. Were they? No? Are you a holy person? No. No. Even if you are born again you are not. This is the evidence; this is the purpose of brokenness, to show you that in yourself, in myself there is no good thing. And this is the reason why the Spirit of God has so much difficulty with us. Perhaps it is because this is the way we have begun, or by our natures, but at any rate, God has such difficulty in bringing us to the place where we know that in us there is no good thing.
And so it will be tonight that, if you do not know victory and union with Christ, if you do not know the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and His indwelling presence, then you are grieving God. This is just - there is no question about it. You are grieving Him by attitude. You are grieving Him by rejecting, and by being content without the provisions of His grace. You are grieving Him by a thousand failures which can only be circumvented by knowing the Cross, and by having experienced the fullness of His indwelling presence.
Now, if you can hear me say that, and go out of here content, without having experienced the cross in its delivering work, and the fullness of the Spirit in His empowering presence, then what is going to happen tomorrow. Why, you have predisposed yourself to failure all along the way, because you knew how to have victory and you did not meet Him on His terms. And you knew how to have the power of His presence, and you were not prepared to seek Him. And so, to know to do good and do it not is sin; and the fact that you did not put yourself in the way of seeking God predisposed you to a day of failure. Light ought to be walked in, truth must be obeyed, for to know to do good and not to do it, is but to aggravate our condition.
So what is required? It is absolutely necessary that you repent tonight. What does repent mean? Well perhaps you have known about the Spirit-filled life for years, and yet you have not put yourself in the way to experience the fullness of His Spirit. Perhaps you have known about victory through the cross, and you have not put yourself in the way to experience that victory. Perhaps you have known that there ought to have been brokenness, and yet you have gone on content with failure, content with having been utterly below the standard He has set, content with having walked in a path far beyond that which He had ordained for you. And so, what is going to happen? Tomorrow there is going to be failure. The next day there will be failure. And there will be failure coming on, and each thing will cause the distortion to be greater. The stigmatism, the moral stigmatism will increase, until finally by the end of the week the whole thing will be distorted and warped. And it comes because we do not deal with the thing.
What would have happened back there, if Korah and the 250 renowned men, and the congregation of Israel, having heard what God said, and having seen the fire of the Lord come out and destroy the ten spies that brought the adverse report, what if they had fallen on their faces, and asked for forgiveness, asked for cleansing, then God could have pardoned, and God could have carried them into the land.
But what do we do. We find now that the whole thing is inverted. They said, We left the land of milk and honey, Egypt no less, where there was the crack of the slave whip, that drove them to their task of making bricks without straw, and here they had to eat nothing but leeks, and the garlics, and the onion, the cheapest of food, for the poorest of people, and there they are
treated worse than the Egyptians treated their dogs in their kennels; and as they look back on it now, they said, a land flowing with milk and honey. Oh, everything is upset, everything is twisted, and everything is warped. Egypt seems happy and beautiful. Moses seems to be an imposter that has brought them out into a wilderness. It was not Moses. It was their stubbornness, their rebellion, their unbelief, that kept them from going into this land that God had set before them. But, instead of accepting the responsibility, impenitence led to impenitence, to impenitence, to impenitence, until now they have been brought into open conflict and total rebellion. And this is the path. This is the path that you will follow. And, my dear, this is the reason why you must have a broken spirit constantly. You will never outgrow it. You will never pass it. And you must become as sensitive to it, as you are the next time your finger gets near the tea kettle, and does not even have to touch the stove or the flame. But it touches something that is hot, and you withdraw, because somehow in the past you have been pained. Now you have been pained by your failure, you have been caused grief and heartache by it, you have shamed the Lord, you have robbed yourself of joy, you have robbed yourself of blessing, you have robbed others of testimony and witness, and stood in the way of all of God’s purpose, perhaps of keeping others from going into the land.
Now you have broken before the Lord. If you have not, you must tonight. What are you going to do tomorrow? The very moment that you grieve God, perhaps it is some habit or attitude, you did not avail yourself of the provisions of His love, and you have failed God. What are you going to do? Cast yourself down in despair? Are you simply going to lay down and say, Well, no use for me to try again. Oh no. No, no. Not if you are wise. You are going to instantly judge this as sin. You are going to instantly confess it as sin, right on the spot, and ask God to forgive you, ask Him to pardon you, and learn from this, to lay hold of His grace. This is what you are going to keep a conscience, void of offence, toward God. Now it may mean that you will have to ask for forgiveness and pardon from someone with whom you work every 15 minutes, or every hour on the hour. Do not let it disturb you. I have just had the joy of watching my youngest daughter, Julia Anne learn to walk, and oh, what a thrill it is, because I discovered that she had repented of lying in the crib, and repented of creeping, and repented of sliding along on the floor, and she had made up her mind to walk. So she would take a step and sit down. Nonetheless dissuaded, she would get right up again and sit down, and get right up again and sit down, and get right up. But you know? She can walk for a long time now and not sit down. It is rather rarely that she falls, because she repented. Every time she sat down, she made up her mind she was going to get right up again, and she is learning to walk.
And my dear heart, when you have truly repented of your sin, then you have said, I will not do this thing if I die. And, should you do it, instantly you are going to break and ask for forgiveness and pardon. You cannot make peace with it. And you are not going to let it infect your heart, and you are not going to let it come in and completely pervert your vision and your judgment, and lead to these terrible sins that we say set forth here. Do you understand?
But it requires that if you have not broken that you break. If you have not broken then you must break tonight. If you do not break tonight, it is not because you cannot. It is simply because you still have a rebel’s heart as far as this is concerned. It is imperative that at some point in your career you say, I am through with sin, all sin of every kind. I am not going to make peace with it, I am not going to condone it, and I am not going to excuse it any longer; I am going to deal with it as God prescribed.
Now we believe, I personally believe that it is highly important that you should do this at the time the Spirit of God is speaking. Oh, you say, well I can do it at home. Yes, you can. But the fact of the matter is, you have gone home many times intending to do it, and you did not do it. And so I think the time for you to do it is at the point that the Spirit of God brings you face to face with moral responsibility. Now, you can repent right now. And if you do not, it is simply because you have aggravated the sin by saying, I am going to continue in it. For refusal to repent is but an open defiance and a continual spurning of God’s grace. It is necessary therefore for you to say, I am going to deal completely and totally with all sin, and I am going to deal with it now.
Now there are three rules. And whenever anyone comes for instruction, I give them these three rules, because they are absolutely essential. The first is that there be a total dealing with sin. I can assure you of this, and I am speaking now to both unsaved and to Christians, for we are dealing with the same principle, and I am speaking first to the unsaved. If you want, to come to Jesus Christ, then it is absolutely necessary for you to repent of your sins, for it is repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus. And this means a complete breaking before Him, a complete confession of all sin, a turning up of the bottom of your heart, for it is easy for the Lord to forgive all you sin as part of them. And it is necessary for you, I believe, if you
are to be a healthy Christian, well established in the way (and I speak to sinners) for you to absolutely make up your mind you are through with sin, and to come before Him and name it, and don’t leave one infected crypt in your spirit or memory. Deal with it all.
But if I am speaking to you as a child of God, it is the same thing. If you want God to meet you then it is absolutely necessary for you to do what Korah, and Dethan, and Abiram, and the people of Israel did not do. It is absolutely necessary for you to deal with all sin, in open brokenness, in frank confession, naming it and calling it by name. I think I have told you of the young woman from one of our Christian colleges that came forward in a meeting when I was speaking in a revival at that college. And she was greatly burdened, greatly concerned. She had been working in a place, there had been certain grievous temptations, and she had sinned. And she started to pray.
I said, Let’s deal with it. Are you prepared to deal with it? Oh, she said, yes. And so she started to pray, one of the loveliest little escape things I have ever seen. Lord, you know that no one is perfect. You know that all of us have failed. You know how wonderfully gracious you are, and You know, Lord, that this has been... I said, Stop. We are wasting God’s time, and you are certainly wasting mine. No use to go on like this. She said, Well why? I said, Because you are not honest. I said, Do you know what this sin is called. She said, Yes. All right. If you want to pray, tell God what it is called. And if do not want to do that, then I am just going to talk with someone else, because there is no use wasting my time. She said, Do you mean to say that I have to call this by that name? that vulgar name? I said, Your sin was vulgar, wasn’t it? She said, Yes. I said, All right. Let’s get to it then. And so she bowed, she started to break and the fountains of the deep of her heart broke up. But at long last she could say the words, and when she said the words then the Spirit of God whispered that the Blood had cleansed. But, my friend, she would have been on her knees yet if she had not been willing to break before God.
And it is not only one sin, but it is all sins. The second thing that is absolutely imperative if you are going to be in any other state than that of Korah is that you surrender everything to Jesus Christ, in total and complete abandonment to Him. There is no other way. He has got to have everything. And obviously if there has been anything in your life that has grieved Him, it has kept other things front being His. So it is not just to come and to ask for one or two things, but it is to deal totally, and to deal thoroughly, and to deal completely, and to deal immediately. And then it is to surrender everything.
But the third thing. You must believe that everything you confess, and everything you surrender God receives. In simple childlike faith, believe that when you confess your sin, and when you surrender yourself to Him, God takes it. He forgives what you confess, and He takes what you surrender. And if you will do this, God will meet you.
I think of a young man. I was just talking with his former pastor the other day. This young man was a doctor, a very clever man, a very astute man, and a fine Christian, with a real witness and testimony. And he wanted to go to the Mission field. Oh, what a list he had. I’ll never forget it. Four-wheel drive this, and six-cylinder that, and four gaskets to the other, a long list of things, and I was helping him to get it and to send him out to the field. And we worked on it, and finally got his support, and we got all of the things that he needed. And I knew that there was great evidence of need, but the difficulty was that he knew words that I just had begun to learn, and I did not understand that a person could know the words without having experienced the reality. And I was somewhat confused, by the words. But his pastor was well better acquainted with the man than I was. And he told me how before this young man and his wife left he called them, met them at the church, and he spent until 3 in the morning talking with them. And he said this: You are not ready to go to the mission field until you break before God. There is an arrogance, there is an egotism, there is a complacency, and a self-satisfaction that is going to bring you into great distress and heartache and failure. You have got everything in your outfit, but you have never broken before God in that turning up of your heart, and recognizing your utter inability and your total incapacity to be and to do that which is before you. This young man squared his shoulders and said, I am not only a Christian. I am an American. And I do not believe it becomes Christians to be weak. I believe that we should set our shoulders and fix our heads, set our jaws and say, that we are going to go through. And he said, That is what I am going to do. I cannot admit that I am hopeless and helpless, as you say, I cannot come to the end of myself. I would be utterly unprepared to go to the mission field. I am going in the strength of what I am, by the Grace of God, and I am going to perform the tasks that are before me in that strength.
Well he stayed about three years, and then he came home, and he has gone from failure, on to failure, on to failure, on to failure, until the last I had heard he and his wife were separated, that he was not seeing any of his friends, he was having nothing to do with any of these people with whom he had spent years in the past, and that he had completely given up his wife and his children. And where did it begin? It began back there in the church when the Pastor until 3 in the morning pled with him to break, pled with him to bend, and to bow, and he would not do it, and he has never been able to. And when he came back from the mission field, a failure by his own words, he saw the pastor in the first three times of meeting, and he dropped his eyes and would not even look at them. Passed him right by. And finally he met him and said, Well I guess you are kind of pleased now, aren’t you? You were proved right. And the Pastor said, O no. You don’t understand. I am not pleased. I am not pleased. But the man never gave the pastor an opportunity to talk with him. And he went on in that stubbornness. He went on in that rebellion. Now his home is broken, his witness is gone, his happiness is gone, and his whole life has been shattered simply because he was unwilling to break. And so it was with Korah, so it was with Abiram, and Dathan, and so it could be with you. But the Spirit of God is putting His finger on that in your life, on failure, on need, and He has such great provisions of forgiveness, pardon, life, victory, the fullness of His Spirit, all that God could bring. And all that God could offer and all that God is yours. But He said, The broken and the contrite spirit He will not despise. And until we are prepared to meet Him on His terms, in our utter helplessness, in our utter inability, in our utter weakness, even God cannot help us.
And, dear heart, tonight the Spirit of God is speaking to you. And He is saying to you, I want you to break, I want you to bend, I want to bow, because I want to forgive you. But have got to face the worst about yourself, and your need, and your failure, and your sins. And He will forgive you and He will pardon you, and if you will surrender what you are even though it is little to you, and certainly it has not been much to God, yet He will take that little and like the loaves and fishes He will multiply it, use it to feed the hungry. But it is all conditioned upon your breaking before Him, and bending before Him.
And what is the alternative? If you should go tonight saying, No, some other time. I won’t. I predict for you that tomorrow will be accompanied by failure, greater failure, greater moral distortion, greater moral astigmatism; right is going to seem wrong; wrong is going to seem right. And the first thing you know you are going to have been plunged into grief and despair you have never known before. Because God is longsuffering, and He is patient, but there is an inevitable law of moral gravitation that we have seen here tonight with Korah. And when we fail here, we sin there, and there, and there, and there, O my dear, do you have tonight a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men. If you do not, now, now, right now is the time to repent, to change your mind, and purpose, and intention, to confess all sin, to surrender everything, and believe what you confess, He forgives, and what you surrender, He receives.
Let us bow together in prayer. We have tried to set before you the consequence of impenitence, and impress upon you the necessity of acting now. Need I do more than simply say this, Will you? Invitation...
Father, Thou knowest this company. Thou knowest those whose hearts have been brought into this vortex of failure and unwillingness to face it. Tonight we ask it to stop, Lord. We ask for the release of those to whom Thou art speaking, that tonight will be the night of dealing. While we pray and wait, won’t you just mind the Lord. (Invitation)
Now, Father, here before Thee are a company of men and women, standing right on the threshold of eternity. Two of this company have said by their upraised hands, If I had done what I ought to have done, I would have gone in total surrender and complete abandonment to Jesus Christ. O Father of our Lord Jesus, Thou knowest. Thou understandest and seest these hearts, and dost know what stands in the way. Do Thou teach them that they can repent right now, completely break with all sin, utterly abandon themselves now. If they do not find it in their hearts to repent, we ask that they may ask Thee to begin their prayer by crying out, O God, give me a repentant heart. Cause me to see the enormity of my sin that I would cling to it rather than to Thee. We plead with Thee Lord. We plead the precious Blood of Christ upon these, and ask for the working of Thy Spirit. Thou knowest, Lord, those among us with whom Thou hast dealt. Thou knowest those that have entered into a closer walk with Thee, whose hearts have been restored to a new joy, and fellowship. We thank Thee for everyone that has met Thee in past weeks, and now, Lord, we thank Thee for Thy presence here tonight, and we pray that the Holy Spirit will continue to show us the need of brokenness. For those that have not broken, O God, let every pressure of tomorrow crowd them to Thee;
or those that have, let Thy Spirit’s presence be so wonderfully real, delivering, encouraging, and strengthening that the way shall be marked with blessing, each step they take.
Let us stand then for the Benediction. Our Father, go Thou with us as we part. Let the Holy Spirit breathe upon us, meet us, and bless us. Give to those with whom Thou art dealing such a sense of Thy presence and such a continuous probing of Thy knife of truth, that they will not rest until all is finished with which Thou art concerned. And now may Thy grace, and mercy, and peace, be and abide upon us, now and until we meet again. In Jesus Name. Amen.
* Reference such as: Delivered at The Gospel Tabernacle Church, New York City on Sunday Evening, August 26, 1962 by Paris W. Reidhead, Pastor. ©PRBTMI 1962
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Paris Reidhead (1919 - 1992)
Was a Christian missionary, teacher, writer, and advocate of economic development in impoverished nations. A spiritual crisis during this period—as he described two decades later in what is probably his best-known recorded teaching, "Ten Shekels and a Shirt"--left Reidhead with the conviction that much of evangelicalism had adopted utilitarian and humanistic philosophies contradictory to Biblical teaching. The end of all being, he came to believe, was not the happiness of man, but the glorification of God. This theme would recur throughout his later teaching.Since Mr. Reidhead's death in 1992, Bible Teaching Ministries, Inc. continues under the leadership of his wife, Marjorie, and daughter, Virginia Teitt, a dedicated Board, and the many people who have donated time and talent after being changed by God’s Word through this message. The message of the Gospel is reaching an ever-widening audience all over the world.