When Rebels Write the Hymns: An Uncomfortable Gospel Truth

While Israel wandered in the desert, Moses’s older brother Aaron was charged with managing the tabernacle. One of Aaron’s sons, Korah, was responsible for moving the furniture, and this went well until he decided to lead a revolt against his father and uncle. In Numbers 16 we read that the revolt failed and that the earth opened and swallowed the conspirators. Rebelling against God’s purposes becomes a reverse-creation. Men who came from the earth were crushed back into it, and creation’s progressive order reverts to muddy chaos. John Gerstner used to say that driving over the speed limit was cosmic treason, so reflecting on how we might contribute is a worthwhile public service.

The Bible then says that the sons of Korah did not die. It’s a weird little detail. It looks like something Moses reported just because he remembered it, but it turns out that God was telling another story that would become clear about 900 years later. Specifically, the sons of Korah would later demonstrate something very important about the gospel, and very important to the decisions we make every day.

Think about these surviving sons. Their family name was forever-tied to the nation’s earliest traitors. What Benedict Arnold was to America, Korah was to Israel. It’s a stain you do not get rid of, especially in an ancient near-eastern culture. But for whatever reason they are allowed to live, and First Chronicles tells us that when the mobile tabernacle became the permanent temple they moved from being furniture porters to doorkeepers. Then at some point they started writing worship songs. Found in Psalm 42-49 and 84-88, the psalms of the Sons of Korah are still sung in churches today. “As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Ps 42); “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord.” (Ps 84); and, “Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God” (Ps 87).

Do you see what’s happening? God placed a living offense in his most prominent space - the temple doorway - to show that Sons of Korah could become Sons of the Cross. He wanted to show there’s a place for us at the very center of where he is most active and available.

Every now and then we see that it is not a verse or a chapter that teaches the gospel, but the very structure of history and the Bible as a whole. We tend to look for micro-sections of the Bible to undo our fears and tell us what to do next, but we also need to zoom out, looking at the Bible as a single document with a single story, that is aimed directly at us, directly at me, right now.

So what should we do about this today? Two suggestions: 

1. Stop writing people off. Everyone has a big story unfolding in their lives too. Christians are never allowed to dismiss people we disagree with, who have hurt us, or who are untrustworthy. We are allowed to be careful with them, but we must remain as confident that Jesus can rescue them as we are that he has rescued us.

2. Stop writing yourself off. You cannot read the prescription from inside the bottle; you cannot see the whole picture. God is using every piece of your life for a meaningful purpose.