Do you know who “treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God”? It’s Jesus!
What wreckage is left in the path of those who defy God! Not only do Korah and his Reubenite co-conspirators go “alive into the pit” (Num 16:33), but “fire came out from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense” (v 35). Then, in spite of these dramatic judgments, the very next day the whole congregation murmured against Moses and Aaron, saying, “You have killed the people of the Lord” (v 41). Reading this, it looks like a mob ready to strike: “Now it happened, when the congregation had gathered against Moses and Aaron, that they turned toward the tabernacle of meeting; and suddenly the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord appeared” (v 42). The minute the Lord appeared, Moses thought, Oh no! “Get away from among this congregation,” said the Lord, “that I may consume them in a moment” (v 45). Again, overwhelmed by God’s awesome holiness, Moses and Aaron “fell on their faces.” Without a moment to lose, “Moses said to Aaron, ‘Take a censer and put fire in it from the altar, put incense on it, and take it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them; for wrath has gone out from the Lord. The plague has begun’” (v 46). Sure enough, although Aaron “ran…and made atonement for the people. And…stood between the dead and the living ; so the plague was stopped” (vv 47-48), there were still 14,700 funerals! Our hearts cry out, Stop already! When will this carnage end? See the answer. It is a cross upon a hill. It is Jesus now hanging “between the dead and the living.” As God’s enemies, we were under the sentence of death. But “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16).