I am going to read in the New English Bible, Numbers 16, from verse 1.
Now Korah, son of Kohath, son of Levi, with the Reubenites Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab, and On, son of Peleth, challenged the authority of Moses. With them in their revolt were two hundred and fifty Israelites, all men of rank in the community, conveners of assembly, and men of good standing.
They confronted Moses and Aaron, and said to them, “You take too much upon yourselves. Every member of the community is holy, and the Lord is among them all. Why do you set yourselves up above the assembly of the Lord?”
When Moses heard this, he prostrated himself, and he said to Korah and all his company, “Tomorrow morning the Lord shall declare who is His, who is holy, and may present offerings to Him. The man whom the Lord chooses shall present them. This is what you must do: you, Korah, and all your company, must take censers and put fire in them, and then place incense on them before the Lord tomorrow. The man whom the Lord then chooses is the man who is holy. You take too much upon yourselves, you sons of Levi.”
Moses said to Korah, “Now listen, you sons of Levi. Is it not enough for you that the God of Israel has set you apart from the community of Israel, bringing you near Him to maintain the service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to stand before the community to minister to them? He has brought you near Him, and your brother Levites with you. Now you seek the priesthood as well. That is why you and all your company have combined together against the Lord. What is Aaron that you should make these complaints against him?”
Moses sent to fetch Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab, but they answered, “We are not coming. Is it a small thing that you have brought us away from a land flowing with milk and honey, to let us die in this wilderness? Must you also set yourself up as prince over us? What is more, you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor have you given us fields and vineyards to inherit. Do you think you can hoodwink men like us? We are not coming.”
Their answer made Moses very angry, and he said to the Lord, “Take no notice of their murmuring. I have not taken from them so much as a single ass. I have done no wrong to any one of them.”
Moses said to Korah, “Present yourselves before the Lord tomorrow, you and all your company—you and they and Aaron. Each man of you is to take his censer and put incense on it. Then you shall present them before the Lord with their two hundred and fifty censers. You and Aaron shall also bring your censers.”
So each man took his censer and put fire in it and placed incense on it. Moses and Aaron took their stand at the entrance to the tent of the presence, and Korah gathered his whole company together and faced them at the entrance to the tent of the presence.
Then the glory of the Lord appeared to the whole community, and the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and said, “Stand apart from this company, so that I may make an end of them in a single instant.” But they prostrated themselves and said, “O God, God of the spirits of all mankind, if one man sins, wilt Thou be angry with the whole community?”
But the Lord said to Moses, “Tell them to stand back from the dwellings of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.” So Moses rose and went to Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel followed him. He said to the whole community, “Stand well away from the tents of these wicked men. Touch nothing of theirs, or you will be swept away because of all their sins.”
So they moved away from the places occupied by Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Now Dathan and Abiram, holding themselves erect, had come out to the entrance of their tents with their wives, their sons, and their dependants.
Then Moses said, “This shall prove to you that it is the Lord who sent me to do all these things, and it was not my own heart that prompted me. If these men die a natural death, and share the common fate of man, then the Lord does not send me. But if the Lord makes a great chasm, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them, and all that is theirs, and they go down alive to Sheol, then you will know that these men held the Lord in contempt.”
Hardly had Moses spoken when the ground beneath them split. The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their homes, all the followers of Korah, and all their property. They went down alive into Sheol with all that they had. The earth closed over them, and they vanished from the assembly.
At their cries, all the Israelites round them fled, shouting, “Look to yourselves! The earth will swallow us up!” Meanwhile, fire had come out from the Lord and burnt up the two hundred and fifty men who were presenting the incense.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, and said, “Bid Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, set aside the censers from the burnt remains, and scatter the fire from them far and wide, because they are holy. The censers of these men who sinned at the cost of their lives, you shall make into beaten plates to cover the altar. They are holy, because they have been presented before the Lord. Let them be a sign to the Israelites.”
And then, not the next chapter, but verse 41.
Next day all the community of the Israelites raised complaints against Moses and Aaron, and taxed them with causing the death of some of the Lord’s people. As they gathered against Moses and Aaron, they turned towards the tent of the presence and saw that the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord appeared.
Moses and Aaron came to the front of the tent of the presence, and the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, and said, “Stand well clear of this community, so that in a single instant I may make an end of them.” Then they prostrated themselves.
Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer. Put fire from the altar in it, set incense on it, and go with it quickly to the assembled community, to make atonement for them. Wrath has gone forth already from the presence of the Lord. The plague has begun.”
So Aaron took his censer, as Moses had said, ran into the midst of the assembly, and found that the plague had begun among the people. He put incense on the censer, and made expiation, or atonement, for the people, standing between the dead and the living. And the plague stopped. Fourteen thousand seven hundred died of it, in addition to those who died for the offence of Korah. When Aaron came back to Moses at the entrance to the tent of the presence, the plague had stopped.
Just once more, tell the Lord how dependent we are on Him.
O Lord, we are dependent on Thee for speaking and hearing alike this evening. Gracious Lord, draw near, we pray, and may reveal to us Thy Word by Thy Holy Spirit. Lord, instruct us. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Now, I do not know how much this evening will mean to those who have not been here on the previous occasions, especially those times when we have talked about what really covering is.
This evening, I want to speak about examples illustrating covering in the Old Testament. So I will not bother to say anything about the subject itself, or about what we have covered—the ground we have gone over these past weeks.
We know that all things recorded in the Old Testament were recorded for our instruction. It says in 1 Corinthians 10:11-12:
Now these things happened unto them by way of example;
and they were written for our admonition, or instruction,
upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
Now, we have often heard that word: “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” But it is said in this context of examples recorded for our admonition—our instruction—in the Old Testament.
So the story we have read this evening is meant to be an example, an illustration for our instruction, our education. And so are the others.
This matter of covering is illustrated everywhere in the Old Testament. All I can do this evening is select some of the more obvious examples. I was telling the brothers that I have down here a whole number of examples, and I have had to go back over them and put a red asterisk by those that I think are more important, because I do not think in this evening we shall be able to cover all the examples that even I have selected from the Old Testament.
And this, of course, will be the last of these studies for a little while. So, I have selected certain ones.
Let us start right at the very beginning, in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, chapter 3, verse 21. Adam and Eve. This is the first great example we have of the matter of covering in the Bible.
And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them.
The Lord God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them. Now, if you turn back to verse 7, it says:
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
A kind of loincloth they made with fig leaves, which they sewed together. Then I want you to look in chapter 4 and verse 3.
And in the process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering; but unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
Here we have the first example illustrating this whole matter of covering. God covered Adam and Eve when they fell. When they first sinned, He covered them at the cost of blood.
The only way He could clothe them with skins was by the death, or the sacrifice, of another life. Another life had to be sacrificed in order for Adam and Eve to be covered.
Now, there is a vast difference between taking leaves and sewing them together. There is no sacrifice there. There is no pain there. There is no death there. There is no bloodshed there.
Adam and Eve made for themselves clothes of leaves. God sacrificed another life and shed blood in order to cover them.
The old rabbis tell us that it was a lamb that was sacrificed. Although it is not mentioned here, I should imagine that it was, in fact, a lamb.
For in the story we read in chapter 4 about Abel, Abel took a lamb, one year old, just like the Passover lamb, from his flock and sacrificed it, and God had respect.
In other words, Adam and Eve had obviously passed on to their sons the fact that the only way to be covered in the presence of God was by the sacrifice of another life.
Cain tried to perpetuate the mistake that Adam and Eve made in clothing themselves with leaves. He brought of the fruits of the ground.
Now, what does this all mean? Right at the beginning of the Bible, immediately sin enters into the human race; immediately man and woman fell. God gives us, as our salvation and as our acceptance with Him, the Lamb. We are covered by the Lamb.
Now, do remember that this is not just kindergarten. I think one of the greatest problems with believers is the fig leaves they are always sewing together.
It is incredible how most of us relegate this subject of justification to the kindergarten spiritually, and suffer from our weakness of understanding over it. Therefore, all the time we are trying to work up dead works to please God, we are all the time trying to produce fruits from the ground that will make Him pleased—the work of our hands, something that has not come through death.
Something that has not come through the death and resurrection of Calvary, has not gone through that process of the cross. We are trying to bring something else to God, and to win His favour, get His acceptance, somehow make Him feel, “Well, he is a good chap. She is a good girl. Marvellous, really.”
And that becomes, unwittingly, the foundation—the basis—of our acceptance before God. Oh, the garments we sew together, the leaves that we gather: pretty leaves, beautiful leaves, sometimes quite long-lasting leaves, that we sew together as garments to come before God. And all the time God has no respect to it at all.
You may be the sweetest person, the most honest person, the most hard-working person, the most upright person, but if you come in the leaves, God has no respect for it at all. You bring the fruits of the ground; He has no respect at all. But you may be rotten, yet if you bring the Lamb, God immediately accepts you. It is the Lamb that matters.
The Lamb.
And that is simply what covering is, as far as sin goes and our acceptance with God. It is to know that if I spent the whole of my life—seventy years, eighty years—in hard work for God, it would not make me one whit more acceptable to Him.
I cannot win acceptance with God through my hard work or devotion. I cannot win the favour of God through hard work or devotion.
I can only win acceptance with God through the life of Another sacrificed for me. When I take the Lamb, when I am clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Well, I will say no more, or we will be there the whole evening on that one example. But I leave it for you to look into and pray over, and ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand.
Now I want you to move on to Genesis, chapter 6, from verse 18 to 22. This is the story of Noah. There are two illustrations of covering in the life of Noah. Here is the first one.
I will establish My covenant with thee; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
Of the birds after their kind, and of the cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
And chapter 7, verse 16:
And they went in, male and female of all flesh, as God commanded him: and the Lord shut him in.
Then chapter 7, verse 23:
And every living thing was destroyed that was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and creeping things, and birds of the heavens; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only was left, and they that were with him in the ark.
And chapter 8, verse 1:
And God remembered Noah, and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark.
What a wonderful picture the ark is of covering. Everywhere else: the judgment of God, the curse of God, the wrath of God. But in the ark, completely hidden, except for one window up to Him, everyone was kept alive.
In the ark, anyone who stepped into the ark would have been kept alive. Anyone who had willed to step into the ark would have been alive. Every animal that was in the ark was alive—not only kept alive, but fed. Not fasting, but fed. Food for them in the ark.
Here is something else, another wonderful picture from this Old Testament example. They were going from an old creation to a new. They were on their way from an old creation under the judgment of God to a new.
Now, that is absolutely true of every one of us. If we are in Christ, we are in God’s ark. Christ is God’s ark. If we are in Him, we are saved.
It was Moody who once nearly brought the Crystal Palace down to the ground, weeping with laughter, when he said, “Better be a fly, or a bluebottle, in the ark, than an elephant out of it.”
In those days people evidently found it terribly funny—the difference between a bluebottle and an elephant. But the point is this: however small, however insignificant, however mean, however unworthy, you are alive in the ark.
But outside of the ark, you may be the mightiest of creatures, the most weighty of creatures, but destruction. Oh, what a picture of covering.
There is absolute safety for us in Christ. We are kept alive. The psalmist says, “He shall keep your soul alive.” We are kept alive in Christ.
Oh, many Christians know nothing but death—the encroachment of death, the inroads of death, all that ends in the wrong kind of heaviness, darkness, bondage, limitation, corruption, all that belongs to that.
But in Christ there is quickening and fullness, and power and purpose. It is all in Him. We are kept alive. Our soul is kept in life as we learn to stay where God has put us—in God’s ark, in Christ. We are absolutely safe.
The only way out is upwards. We have only that one great means of communion upwards to the Father, in Christ. No need for anything else, really. That is all we need.
And then again, we have food in Christ. You can try to find food elsewhere, try to find sustenance spiritually elsewhere, but it is only in Christ that God gives us food. When we stay in Christ, hid with Him, abiding in Christ, we are fed.
I would rather have a famine in Christ, be tested to the nth degree, than have everything there is for us in Egypt. Why? Because God can keep us alive with a little bit of meal at the bottom of the barrel if we are in Christ. He can feed us with ravens if we are in Christ.
Better stay covered, because God will preserve us there and provide for us.
But even more wonderful for me is the fact that we, as believers in Christ, are passing from one old creation under judgment to a new. We are already in the new. The ark belongs to the new, not to the old. Do not ever think of it as part of the old. It is part of the new.
And we are in Christ. We are those whom God has placed in Christ, who are journeying to a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Judgment is on everything else.
Some Christians make a terrible mistake in this matter. They think that their old man, their old woman, their old nature, their old life, with all its attendant capacities and abilities and talents and resources, is something which God can use and has great pleasure in. But not at all.
When God judged the old creation, He judged that which was noble in it and that which was good in it. It was all crucified, all rejected. It was all put away.
So, we must understand this very simple little lesson: God has Himself judged the old creation, good and bad, and it is the new creation that really matters—what we are in Christ.
Of course, we shall find our talents come back to us when they have gone, as we say, through Calvary. We find our resources are given back to us when they have been broken at Calvary. We find that all the things that belong to us, which make up our own original personality, when they have gone through death and burial and resurrection, then He gives them back to us.
But to be uncovered is to stay in the old creation and hanker after the old creation. To get uncovered means that somehow or other we are not shut in. God shut them in.
Oh, the people who try to open the door, who are all the time sawing holes in the ark to look out, as it were, on the horizontal level. They want to see what is happening. They want to see on the horizontal level. They do not like this idea of only having a window in the roof.
Hankering after the old: “Oh, what has happened to it? Oh, but there were some lovely things about it,” and all the rest of it, trying to resurrect it. That is how we get uncovered.
There is another picture of uncovering also in Noah’s life, and we find it in Genesis 9:20-27. It is a rather unhappy incident.
And Noah began to be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.
And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done unto him. And he said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” And he said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant.”
Now, here you have another example, this time of uncovering. The ark was the picture of being covered; here you have a picture of uncovering.
Noah had done something which was utterly wrong. But the person who got himself uncovered was his son.
Now, how did he get himself uncovered? Well, it is very simple: love covers a multitude of sins. That does not mean love is a partaker of other people’s sins, but love covers a multitude of sin.
What does that mean? It means this: you do not gloat over someone else’s sin.
The easiest way to get uncovered is to gloat over somebody else’s fall, to talk about it inadvisedly, to not only have seen their nakedness, but to pass it on. “Have you heard? Have you heard about so-and-so?” Then we start to tell the details.
We are describing their uncovered state. We are passing on information—what we saw, what happened. A curse.
Now, do not think that Christians do not sometimes know a curse come upon them. Christians do. These things were written for our instruction. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
The two other brothers would not even look at their father’s nakedness. They would not take it in. They took a garment, they walked backwards—it sounds almost archaic—and they covered him.
The extraordinary thing is that when the old man woke, having done something quite wrong, the Spirit of God prophesied in him and said of his younger son, “You are cursed, because you have uncovered your father. And you are blessed, Shem and Japheth, because you covered him.”
My word, that is a searching word. I suppose not one of us has not uncovered somebody sometime or another. We have gone around talking about the details. What a serious thing this is.
Now let me move on very swiftly. I wish I had the time. I would like to talk about Abraham, and I am going to have to slip over him. But I will just give you one little clue for your own study, if you would like to note it down.
The land, as it were, spoke of covering for Abraham. While he was strong in faith, all was well. Two things sum up Abraham’s life: the land and his seed. You remember, he had no children—the land and his seed.
He never got possession of the land which God promised him, but he was told to stay within it. Whilst he stayed within it, there was absolute safety and provision.
But you know what happened on both occasions: Egypt, or an Egyptian, got him down. The first time, a famine came, and he thought, “Now, it must obviously be the right thing to go down to Egypt where there is plenty, and we will come back up into the land when it is all over.” He got into trouble. He got himself uncovered.
He built an altar; he departed from it. The very first thing he had to do when he got back was to go to the same altar that he built before he fell off, and build it again.
But it was an Egyptian also that brought his other downfall. God said that he should have a son. Abraham believed, but after a while he got more and more bothered about the way that this son should be born. Finally, his wife suggested Hagar, who was an Egyptian.
So we find these two things running through. Well, now, I only leave that to you. There is uncovering again. This time it is a matter of someone as great as Abraham getting himself uncovered by going out of the will of God.
Now I want, just again, to take another instance in Exodus 33—another example. I do not profess to fully understand this, but I pass it on to you. From verse 17 to 23.
Now, this is, of course, Moses’ great cry to God: “Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory.”
And then the Lord said in verse 21:
Behold, there is a place by Me, and thou shalt stand upon the rock: and it shall come to pass, while My glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with My hand, until I have passed by: and I will take away My hand, and thou shalt see My back: but My face shall not be seen.
The interesting thing about this example is that Moses, with all his knowledge, all his experience, and all his intimate communion with the Lord, needed to be covered in order to see the glory of God.
Now, Moses was not some young disciple just starting. He was not just out of Egypt. Here was a man who had long years with God. He had seen God in the burning bush. He had heard God speak almost face to face, in a way.
Again and again, we read in the story of the way God spoke, the way God gave him the law, gave him the commandments, gave him the pattern of the tabernacle. It was all before this.
But even a man with the intimate knowledge and experience of God that Moses had, had to be hid in the cleft of a rock, and the hand of God—whatever that means—put over him whilst the glory of the Lord passed by.
I just mention that to make us realize that there is much more to this subject than sin—being covered because of our sinfulness. There is something to do with the very nature of God Himself.
There are a number of other things also in Exodus I would like to swiftly mention. How can I go over it all? I feel I cannot say, “Now we will go on next week,” because we will not go on next week unless the Lord does something extraordinary.
All I can say is there are two ones I would like to talk about. I would like to talk about the Passover, but we will leave the Passover as a picture of covering. The tabernacle, I cannot leave.
The tabernacle is an extraordinary picture of covering. Look at Exodus 26.
Moreover thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet.
Thou shalt make curtains of goats’ hair for a tent over the tabernacle: eleven curtains shalt thou make.
And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams’ skins dyed red, and a covering of porpoise skins above.
Now, think of this, those of you who might consider this matter of covering is not so essential: for the meeting place between God and man, there had to be four sets of covering.
First, over the whole, porpoise skin. Your Revised Version says seal skins, and your Authorized Version says badger skins. The badgers’ skins—badgers, as we know, never existed in the Middle East, so we can rule badgers out.
Seals did at one time evidently come to the Sinai, but it is much more likely to be a creature that I do not know if any of you have heard of, called the dugong. This is a kind of porpoise that comes up the Red Sea. They use the skin, even today, in the Red Sea ports, for soles of shoes. That is how long-lasting it is.
So you have, first of all, right over the whole, something that is really weatherproof, that stops the sun from getting in and stops other bad weather from getting in.
Then underneath you had ram skins, tanned so that they were red. Then under that, you had goats’ hair, like a cashmere shawl. If you know anything about goats’ hair, it is very, very soft and beautiful.
Then, beneath that, you had the beautiful inner curtain that could be seen on the inside: the fine twined linen, blue, purple, and scarlet. Now, all those coverings for the place where man met with God.
We could spend the whole evening talking about the meaning of those four different coverings.
First of all, absolute safety in Christ—something that keeps out all ills. Do you know the Lord Jesus like that as your covering, as the means by which all ills are kept from you, so that you can persevere, so that you can endure? Again, you are being kept alive.
Then underneath, atonement—the ram, atonement. But what about the goats’ hair? Someone says, “But that speaks of atonement too.” Yes, but something even more wonderful: cancellation.
Do you remember the goat—the two goats? One was slain, and you saw your sins die in front of you; and the other went out over the horizon, carrying it away: the scapegoat, out of sight, out of sin.
So first you have the safety of Christ, keeping all plagues, ills, and everything else that would harm you out. Then underneath you have the atonement of Christ guarding you, and then you have justification coming out of that atonement: your sins out of God’s sight, carried away as far as the east is from the west.
Then you come to the perfection of Christ: absolute purity, fine twined linen; blue, absolute heavenliness—His origin; purple, royalty; scarlet, redemption.
Well, I only mention it to you. You can study it all for yourselves.
Then another little picture of covering in the same tabernacle: you never saw a bit of wood in the whole place. It was all covered. All covered. Inside the actual tent of meeting, every bit of wood was covered with pure gold.
The wood speaks of humanity, but the gold speaks of God’s nature, and we are clothed upon with Christ. Is that not wonderful?
Then again, if you want something else for you to go away and think about—and I am not even going to try and explain it or interpret it—you had the mercy seat, and above it the cherubim, and their wings covered it completely.
Their faces did not look up. Their faces looked down, and their wings covered it, touching. Why? Covering.
Then I want you to look at something else in Exodus 28, verses 2 to 5.
And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, for glory and for beauty. And thou shalt speak unto all that are wise-hearted, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron’s garments to sanctify him, that he may minister unto Me in the priest’s office.
Do you know the priests had garments? If you look at Exodus 28:40-43, you find Aaron’s sons:
And for Aaron’s sons thou shalt make coats, and thou shalt make for them girdles, and head-tires shalt thou make them, for glory and for beauty. And thou shalt put them upon Aaron thy brother, and upon his sons with him; and shalt anoint them, and consecrate them.
And thou shalt make them linen breeches to cover the flesh of their nakedness; from the loins even unto the thighs they shall reach: and they shall be upon Aaron, and upon his sons, when they go in unto the tent of meeting, and when they come near unto the altar, to minister in the holy place; that they bear not iniquity, and die.
How many believers can come into the presence of the Lord without the garments of salvation? They are ours, but we have left them. We come in our own clothes.
Yet every one of us is a priest unto God. For every single one of us, garments of salvation have been provided. We must deliberately put them on.
I never come into a meeting without deliberately—I do not know what people do when they bow their heads. What do you do? I remember someone made such a little tradition when they bowed their head.
I was horrified to hear once, when I was a boy—I will not tell you in what church—I heard the person next to me say, “Lord, for what I am about to receive, make me truly thankful.”
Of course, it was true in one way. I mean, they were there for spiritual food. But I am quite sure they had forgotten. It was just a tradition.
People do not know what they often do. They just come in to bow their heads; their minds are thinking about who they had just seen downstairs, or some problem from work, or something else. What do you do when you come in?
In the old days, people deliberately bowed their heads and said, “Lord, I am putting on the garments of salvation. I do not dare to come into Thy presence in what I am, but I come in what Christ is. Here I am, hidden in Him.”
Garments of salvation, absolutely covered. Garments of salvation, garments of righteousness, garments of holiness—you will find all these there if you look it up. Garments of praise.
You see, once you know you are covered, you start praising. The thing that robs us of all praise is a sense of uncleanness, or not being acceptable. We cannot praise the Lord the moment we feel that we are not really acceptable to God.
But the moment we put on the garments of salvation, praise wells up in our hearts, because we love our Lord for making such provision for us. We cannot help but praise Him when we see it like that.
Do you notice that these garments are for glory and for beauty? That is before God—for glory and for beauty.
Well, now there you are. There are some more examples, positively, of covering.
Now let us look at one or two negative examples. Firstly, in Numbers 12—Numbers 12:1-15. I cannot read all this, I am afraid, or we will be here all evening, vital as it is. But this is the story of Miriam and Aaron.
What happened was this: Miriam and Aaron fell out with Moses. They made a charge, they made an accusation, which was absolutely well-founded. But the extraordinary thing is that God refused to take their side, and they suffered very, very greatly.
Now we must ask ourselves why. You see, Moses had taken a Cushite woman for a wife. There may be—we must remember, we are going to meet Moses, so we have to be careful what we say—but maybe she was an Egyptian who had become a convert. There were such people.
We do not know, but it deliberately says she was a Cushite—that is, from Ethiopia. She was a very dark-skinned lady.
If you read in verse 2, you see Miriam and Aaron said:
Hath the Lord indeed spoken only with Moses? Hath He not spoken also with us?
And the Lord heard it.
Now, it was their attitude and the words they used which uncovered them. God is quite capable of dealing with His servant Moses. The fact of the matter is that there was evidently something else that was the root of this, probably.
All three of them had been very greatly used. There is no doubt about that. Now suddenly they came to this point of problem.
You see the results in verse 10:
And the cloud removed from over the tent; and, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron looked upon Miriam, and, behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said unto Moses, “Oh, my lord, lay not, I pray thee, sin upon us, for we have done foolishly, and wherein we have sinned.”
Now, is this not an extraordinary story? Miriam was a very godly woman—a prophetess. Aaron was a godly man—the high priest.
What they put their finger on, in one way, as far as the Cushite side was concerned, was right. But what they said was absolutely wrong.
They were touching the Lord’s order. They were touching, without even realizing it, the Lord’s anointing. They were anointed, but so was Moses. In challenging Moses, they were challenging God. They did not know it. They uncovered themselves.
Oh, how easy it is to uncover ourselves, even when we have been greatly used of God. What does it mean? She became leprous. She was unclean. Something came in that made her unfit and unclean in the house of God. Sin.
You can read the story yourself to see how it ended. Thank God, it ended happily. The Lord healed her. But it was uncovering. Oh, many believers have done this kind of thing—challenged the order of God, challenged the anointing of God. It is a terrible thing.
Now another story: the one we read together in Numbers 16, Korah’s rebellion. We have read this whole story, so perhaps we are a little more at home with it. Let me just say one or two things about this.
First of all, Korah and the whole company—Dathan, Abiram, and the two hundred and fifty—were all Levites. Now you must understand that. They were not just ordinary saints. They were Levites. They were not priests, but they were not just ordinary saints. They were Levites. They had a lot to do with the house of God and with ministry to the Lord.
That is the first thing. The second thing is, it is perfectly clear that at the root of this there was ambition and jealousy—what we have often called here a ministry and position consciousness.
They wanted ministry. I see more groups smashed up on this matter of ministry and position than any other. People who want to be elders, people who want to have some authority, people who want to have a position, people who want to have a kind of title, a handle to their name. You see, they want to be something, so as to be able to feel that they have a life.
That was what was behind this, and it was this that brought uncovering. Look at verses 31 and 32. It came to pass, when he made an end of speaking all these words, the ground clave asunder and swallowed them up.
You know, what comes from the earth always gets swallowed up by the earth. And when you have strange fire, it is fire that destroys it. That is the way God deals with it.
Before I say any more upon this very solemn subject, may I just note one thing in verse 19: Korah assembled all the congregation against them unto the door of the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the congregation.
Now, that may not mean anything to you, but it means a world to me. This man Korah was absolutely convinced of the rightness of his position. He was absolutely one hundred per cent convinced that what he had said was right.
It is even more interesting in the New English Bible that it says, in verse 27, “Now Dathan and Abiram, holding themselves erect, had come out to the entrance of their tents.” No shame. They were absolutely convinced of their rightness.
How many people think that if a person is convinced of the rightness of their cause, then they will not get uncovered, because God looks on the heart and He knows they are misguided? But what has caused the misguiding?
What has caused the misgiving? God is God. The power of God is the power of God. The fire of God is the fire of God. You cannot play about with God.
So evidently Korah, and Dathan and Abiram, were absolutely assured that they were right. You remember what they had said to Moses at the very beginning of this thing: “You take too much upon yourself. Every member of the church—your community, your congregation—is holy, and the Lord is among them all. Why do you set yourselves up above the assembly of the Lord?”
Now, this kind of thing I have heard again and again. “Oh, we all believe it. Oh, who do you think you are? Who does so-and-so think they are, asking us to do this and that and the other?”
Not thinking for one single moment that maybe God has put that person in that position. So that we are found, without even knowing it, fighting against them and setting aside, or contradicting, divine order. It is the surest way to get uncovered.
Or again, may I say that sometimes some people think, “We are all believers anyway. We all have the Spirit anyway. We are all anointed anyway. We all should have gifts anyway. So there should be a free-for-all. Does anyone think they can tell me what to do? The Spirit of God tells me what to do.”
That was the sin of Korah and Dathan and Abiram. Of course, the Spirit of God must tell you what to do, but there is divine order in the church. God has set some in the church. “Obey them that have the rule over you,” it says, and so on.
They may sometimes be rather dim-witted and a bit stupid, but you just be careful. I must be careful that we do not set aside divine order and find ourselves contradicting God.
This is also very interesting: a little later on, this bitterness sounds so spiritual. Now, they were convinced of it because it all sounded so spiritual. “We are all priests. We are all holy. The Lord is amongst us all. We have all had the Passover lamb. We have all come out of Egypt. We are all equals before God,” all of which is so good, right?
Then they say this: “What is more, you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey.” You notice that they said, “Is it a small thing that you brought us away from a land flowing with milk and honey?” They invert God’s order.
In other words, what they are saying is, “Purpose? Purpose? You say God is doing something? A fox could push it over. God is not doing anything in this company. God is not doing anything here, or amongst you.” Rubbish. Rubbish.
All this talk about the—what really is, we have left a land flowing with milk and honey instead of being brought into a land flowing with milk and honey. Such talk brings uncovering.
What is the result of it? Here it is: they died. It came from the earth, and the earth swallowed it up. The strange fire was consumed by fire.
But I want you to notice something else which, to me, makes my knees wobble. It is in verse 41: “Next day all the community of the Israelites raised complaints against Moses and Aaron, and taxed them with causing the death of some of the Lord’s people.”
Now, that shows how well Korah, Dathan, and Abiram put over their case. Everyone who listened said, “Well, you know, they have got something. They really have got something. It is absolutely right what they are saying. You know, it is quite scriptural.”
When they saw the judgment, they said, “This is terrible. I mean, Moses and Aaron should not have done this.”
I am not joking, but some years ago, when we saw something of the very same kind of situation, two people came to me and said, “You have caused their death. You should have done so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so.” The very same kind of thing. It is amazing. Human nature has not changed in thousands of years.
But all the same, what happened? Everyone who got themselves involved in this way got uncovered. You read the plague again. If you listen to such things and do not dissociate yourself, you become involved. You yourself become a partaker of someone else’s sin and uncover yourself.
So, here is the seriousness of this whole matter.
I could dwell on many others. I would like to talk about the spies in Numbers 13, because the spies well and truly uncovered themselves. Here is a very interesting thing. They said, “We cannot go up into the land to take it. If we do, we shall be destroyed, us and our children.”
Joshua and Caleb said, “We can go up. We are perfectly well able to go up.”
Now, the interesting thing is that the people who thought that they would be destroyed by going over to possess the land according to the Word of God and the promise of God died in the wilderness. The very thing they said would happen to them in the wilderness.
They uncovered themselves through unbelief, and they fell through disobedience.
I think of Achan too. I hope there is no Achan amongst us. Achan covered something in his tent. He dug a hole in his tent and buried three things that he pinched from Jericho.
By covering it in his tent, instead of confessing it and bringing it to the light, he uncovered not only himself, but the whole of Israel. That is what you and I can do when we do not walk in the light.
Some people say, “Why was Achan stoned to death?” He would not have been stoned to death if he had owned up. If at the very beginning he had said, “It is me.”
But he waited until the lot went through, one after another after another, right down to him. Joshua had to say to him, “Now then, give God the glory. The lot has come to you, Achan. What have you done?”
Finally, and only then, did Achan own up. I do believe that if he had only owned up before, some mercy from God would have been shown to Achan. But he would not.
Well, I pass it over.
I want to speak about another case which we find in 2 Samuel 6. We move on now to 2 Samuel 6, verses 1 to 11. Again, I cannot read it all, but I will just read verse 7.
And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his rash act, and there he died by the ark of God.
Now, here I find Christians terribly upset about this incident. Here was a man bringing the ark of the Lord, the ark of the covenant, back from occupied—from alien—territory, where it had been seized by Philistines.
All he did was, when the oxen became restive—they probably jumped up—the ark slid, and he ran forward to push it back on, and the Lord smote him and he died.
Now, the New English Bible says, “For his rash act.” His rash act.
God never, ever judges anyone without cause. So if you think that dear old Uzzah was a dear, sweet believer, sensitive to the Lord—no, that is not so. Rashness does not go with fear of God.
The rash act meant that there was no fear of the Lord in his heart. To him, it was just a job: bringing back the ark of the covenant. “Oh, oh, it is the job. Do we do it?” They were Levites as well, of course.
Of course, you know that it should never have been on a cart. It should have been on shoulders. It should have been on their shoulders. It would never have happened.
There are many things we can think of in connection with this story. But I think what I would like to underline is that there was no fear of the Lord.
How many believers put their hand out to steady the ark of the Lord? I see more people uncover themselves in this matter, perhaps, than any other. They think something is happening. They think they must rush forward and push the ark back onto the cart.
Nearly always there comes uncovering. The result of the uncovering: spiritual paralysis and death.
Well, I leave it with you, so you pray about it and over it.
Oh, there are many, many others. I think of Job. I think this is one that I will just, for one moment, dwell on. If you look at the book of Job, you might wonder where on earth covering comes in the book of Job, but here it is in Job 42:7.
And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath. Now therefore take unto you seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and My servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept, that I deal not with you after your folly; for ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath.”
Now, any of you who know the story of Job must surely be a little surprised, because some of these speeches of these three friends of Job were amongst the most wonderful in the Bible. Their insight, their understanding.
I find myself sometimes unable to take some of these wonderful sayings from these gentlemen because of this verse, but I find some of them amongst the most wonderful in the Bible.
And some of the things Job said, in my estimation, were some of the most terrible things in the whole Bible. When he says to the Lord, “You are playing a cat-and-mouse game with me. You are just trying to tear me to pieces. You are trying to kill me. Who are You? If You were an ordinary person, I would take You to law.”
You read it in the New English Bible, or better still in Moffatt. You are in for the shock of your life—some of the things Job said.
Now, at the beginning, remember, Job never said anything. When the calamity fell—Job, his sons died, his oxen died, everything was taken from him—he bowed down, it says, and worshipped the Lord, and said:
The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
Then he went and sat on a dunghill. Then came his three friends, and for the first blessed seven days, they kept their mouths shut. But not for long.
They could bear it no longer, watching the misery and agony of Job. So they began with these marvellous speeches, where they travelled all around the world, explored the solar system, travelled over the whole universe, plumbed the seas, became amateur botanists, and I do not know what else—zoologists, biologists, geologists, weathermen, the lot.
It all came back to one thing: “Job, you have sinned.”
Slowly, bit by bit, they got Job to uncover himself.
Oh, sometimes how we do this to one another. Oh, how we do it when someone has some calamity fall upon them which cannot be explained. All the dear believers will keep their mouths shut for a few hours, sometimes a few days, and sometimes a week. Then finally they cannot bear it any longer.
In they come with all colours flying to put us right. “It was this, and this, and this God is showing you. We knew it. We saw it coming. You had to go this way.”
Finally, you are prodded into a place where you have to say something. Then, as you go on, you find yourself saying the most terrible things.
But you know, in actual fact, the Lord smiled not at the three friends, but at Job. “Oh,” said Job, “You take me to court, would You?”
Finally, He comes to Job, and the Lord says to him, out of the whirlwind, with all these different things, and finally says to him, “Job, I want to ask you a question now. Why did I create the hippopotamus?”
It is a good question, is it not? Why did I create the hippopotamus? Job had no answer.
But the lesson went home. What the Lord was saying is, “Job, you do not understand. There are things beyond your understanding.” And Job said, “I have said too much. I will say no more.” And he bowed before the Lord.
Now, you would have thought that Job was the one who got uncovered, but the Lord said, “No. I understand, My dear servant Job. It was an evil spirit. It was Satan who did all this to him, to prove him.”
It certainly brought out a lot, but I understand My servant Job. But these are the three that have put together such marvellous sermons—Spurgeon-like sermons, things that would have filled the Westminster Chapel with Ben Williams. They have not said the thing that is right of Me.
They have uncovered themselves, and unless they quickly offer up a sacrifice and get Job to pray for them, there will be trouble.
The three did the wise thing. They rushed off, got a sacrifice, and asked Job if he would pray for them, and the matter was put right.
Now, there is a little lesson for all of us. Sometimes, when a person is under the dealings of God, we can start to try and help and, in so doing, get ourselves uncovered.
Well, time has nearly gone. I have got so many other ones I could tell you.
There is Hezekiah, in 2 Kings 20:12-21. You know the story, do you not? Dear old Hezekiah, such a man of God. He had seen God’s victories. He had seen the Lord come in in a mighty way.
Then the Babylonian ambassador came to lunch, or dinner, and they were talking about the beauty of the palace. Hezekiah got carried away and said, “Oh, you have not seen anything. Come with me.”
He took him right into all the vaults of the treasury and said, “Look at all this.” Of course, the Babylonian ambassador was absolutely impressed. “Marvellous. Absolutely marvellous, Hezekiah.”
“Yes, we are not such a titchy little state after all, are we? Yes, we are something.”
The Babylonian ambassador was deeply impressed, but when he went out, the prophet of the Lord said to Hezekiah, “You have done an evil thing. Because you have done this thing, Babylon shall come and shall take all these treasures away—not in your lifetime, but in your son’s lifetime.”
Unwittingly, Hezekiah uncovered himself and the people of God. How had he done it? Well, I suppose we would say that it was really the casting of pearls before swine.
He had absolutely no business to show the enemies of God the treasures of God. I think sometimes some of us need to learn that simple little lesson.
Pride. Oh, what God has done for us! Then suddenly we start to talk about it in a way as if it is all us. We can talk about a work such as this, its history, in a way that seems to suggest that we are wonderful people, that we are marvellous people, and that this is because we are here. Without even realizing it, we have uncovered ourselves.
I think of Uzziah. Actually, those verses I gave you before were Uzziah. If you want Hezekiah, that is 2 Kings 20:12-21. Uzziah is 2 Chronicles 26.
Uzziah was a jolly good king. It actually says of him that he sought the Lord for understanding and wisdom, and the Lord blessed him very greatly. But then it says that when he became great, he was corrupted.
How did this corruption come? It is most interesting. He went into the house of the Lord with a censer and went into the holy place. He was the king.
The high priest went and said, “You have not done the thing that is right. Not even the king is permitted to come into this place.”
Uzziah was angry, and instantly became a leper. He went out from the presence of the Lord into a separate house and was not even buried in the royal tomb.
How is it possible for a man who was so greatly used of God, who was such a godly man, to end up uncovered? Yet, I am afraid to say that it is possible.
That is why we must all remember the word:
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
Then one other little instance. I should really speak about David, of course. I would love to speak about David and Bathsheba, because it was at the time when kings go forth to war, but not David. He stayed at home.
As he stayed at home, sitting on the roof, perhaps he was composing a psalm, playing the lute or the lyre, he saw Bathsheba bathing herself on a roof. From that moment, temptation became sin.
The Lord Jesus taught us in the pattern prayer to pray:
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
In other words, if David had been out in the forefront of the battle, where he should have been, it would not have happened.
I can speak about the point when Satan stood up against Israel and tempted David to number them. One version says Satan stood up; the other says God moved David to do it. So it shows that sometimes God allows Satan to do something, as He did with Peter. Satan has obtained by request.
The numbering of the people took place. It was a terrible plague. But the wonderful thing in both these instances to do with David is that both of them, when confessed, became part of the purpose of God.
From Bathsheba was born Solomon and Nathan. From the numbering of the people, when it was confessed and put right, David found the site of the house of God, the place where the house of God was to be built.
But the last thing I just wanted—I would like to have dwelt on David—is one that maybe few of you remember. It is the incident of the man of God and the old prophet. It is in 1 Kings 13:1-32.
It is an extraordinary story. This man of God was so faithful. He went to Bethel and he stood by the altar. He had come from Judah; he went to the northern kingdom.
He stood by the altar, which was a false altar, and he uttered the Word of God—a prophecy that God would destroy this place and take the whole nation into captivity.
The old prophet had also been used of God, but he evidently got a bit lethargic in his old age. He heard from his sons about the man of God and his prophecy, and he said, “I would like to go and see him.” So he went to see him.
He said to the man of God, “Do come and have a meal with me.”
“No,” said the man of God, “I cannot do that. For God told me not to eat anything, not to take any drink on my journey, but to come in and to go out, and not even greet anyone.”
“Oh,” said the old prophet, “but God has spoken to me as well. God has told me that you should come to me for a meal.”
He persuaded the man of God. The man of God went in for the meal with the old prophet, and suddenly, during the course of the meal, the old prophet prophesied and said, “You have been disobedient to the Lord. You shall not be buried in the sepulchre of your fathers.”
The man of God went up, saddled his ass, went out, and a lion met him in the way and killed him.
Disobedience.
You can fulfil ministry in disobedience. Oh, may God preserve us from all these things.
Thank God for the ark in which we are safe. Thank God for the Lamb, whose blood has cleansed us, and in whose righteousness we are clothed.
Thank God for the tabernacle—our life hidden, hid with Christ in God. Thank God for the garments of salvation, the garments of praise.
There is no need to be uncovered. But may every single one of us take note of these solemn instances of uncovering, as well as covering, because, you see, these things were written for our instruction, our educational admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, how solemn these things are. We are dealing with things, dear Lord, in which not just the young ones amongst us need to take note, but the eldest amongst us need to take note.
Oh, Father, we pray together that we shall learn some of these lessons, and may learn how to abide in Christ; how to know what it is to have a life hid with Christ in Thee, Father.
Oh, by Thy Holy Spirit, keep us from uncovering ourselves in any way at all.
Lead us, we pray, Father, not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. We ask it together in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.