The Terror of His Nearness Text: Numbers 17:12-13
Introduction: The Aftershock of Holiness
We come now to the end of a terrifying sequence of events. The ground has opened up and swallowed Korah and his cronies. Fire has fallen from Heaven and consumed 250 men offering illicit incense. A plague has swept through the camp, killing 14,700 people in a flash of divine judgment. And now, a dead stick has blossomed and borne almonds overnight, a quiet but potent miracle, to settle once and for all the question of who God has chosen to mediate between Himself and His people. The controversy is over. The rebellion has been pulverized. God has made His point with terrifying clarity.
And the result is not a cheerful, back-slapping revival meeting. The result is a cry of absolute terror from the sons of Israel. They are not celebrating the confirmation of Aaron's priesthood. They are cowering in their tents, looking at the tabernacle not as a place of comfort, but as a divine radiation zone, a place of certain death. They have seen the holiness of God up close, and it has undone them. Their response is the necessary, logical, and sane reaction of sinful men when they are confronted with the raw, unmediated presence of a holy God. They are finally beginning to understand the problem.
Our modern sensibilities are allergic to this kind of thing. We want a God who is approachable, manageable, safe. We want a God who is more like a cosmic guidance counselor than a consuming fire. We have domesticated the Almighty, turning the Lion of Judah into a housecat we can pet. But the Israelites here have just seen the lion roar, and they are terrified. This terror, this stark realization of their own creaturely finitude and sinful uncleanness before the Creator, is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is a sign that something has finally gone right. They are, for the first time, seeing things as they actually are. Their cry of despair is the first step toward a true understanding of grace. Before you can appreciate the good news of a Mediator, you must first be thoroughly convinced of the bad news that you will be incinerated without one.
The Text
Then the sons of Israel spoke to Moses, saying, “Behold, we are breathing our last breath, we are perishing, we are all perishing! Everyone who comes near, who comes near to the tabernacle of Yahweh, must die. Are we to breathe our utter last?”
(Numbers 17:12-13 LSB)
A Right and Proper Panic (v. 12)
We begin with their desperate cry to Moses:
"Then the sons of Israel spoke to Moses, saying, 'Behold, we are breathing our last breath, we are perishing, we are all perishing!'" (Numbers 17:12)
This is not hyperbole. This is a theological conclusion based on empirical evidence. They have just witnessed death on an industrial scale, delivered directly from the hand of God. They have seen that nearness to God, for a sinner, is a fatal condition. Their statement, "we are perishing, we are all perishing," is a confession of their corporate state. The problem is not with a few bad apples like Korah. The problem is with the whole bushel. They are all implicated. They are all unclean. They are all combustible in the presence of holiness.
Notice the progression of their understanding. Before, they were arrogant. They said, "You take too much upon yourselves, for all the congregation is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them" (Num. 16:3). They were presuming upon a democratic, egalitarian holiness. They thought that because God was "among them," they could all just saunter up to Him as they pleased. They had confused God's covenant presence with casual familiarity. They wanted access without mediation. They wanted God without His terms.
God answered their presumption by showing them exactly what it means for a holy God to be "among" a sinful people without a mediator. It means judgment. It means the earth opens. It means fire falls. It means the plague consumes. Their casual doctrine of holiness has been graphically refuted. Now, the pendulum has swung from arrogant presumption to abject terror. They are finally grasping the Creator/creature distinction, not as an abstract theological point, but as a terrifying, life-or-death reality. This is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom. They are not wise yet, but they are at the beginning. This is the kind of holy terror that prepares the heart for the gospel. Until you know you are perishing, you will never ask to be saved.
The Tabernacle as Ground Zero (v. 13)
Their fear is focused on a particular place, the very place God had established to dwell with them.
"Everyone who comes near, who comes near to the tabernacle of Yahweh, must die. Are we to breathe our utter last?" (Numbers 17:13)
The tabernacle was meant to be the heart of the nation, the place of communion, forgiveness, and worship. But they now see it as the epicenter of their peril. To come near is to die. They are not wrong. God had given extensive and explicit instructions about how to approach Him. There were veils, priests, sacrifices, and cleansings. These were not arbitrary rules; they were gracious provisions. They were guardrails on the edge of a cliff. The rebels, in their pride, had crashed through the guardrails, and the whole congregation saw them plunge into the abyss.
Their question, "Are we to breathe our utter last?" is a cry of utter helplessness. If the place of worship is the place of death, what hope do we have? If drawing near to God means being consumed, how can we possibly live as the people of God? This is the fundamental question that the entire Levitical system was designed to answer. And the answer is that you cannot approach God on your own terms. You cannot approach Him in your own righteousness. You must come through a designated, divinely-appointed substitute. You need a priest.
This is why the very next thing God does, in chapter 18, is to reaffirm the ministry of Aaron and the Levites. He tells Aaron, "You and your sons and your father's house with you shall bear the iniquity connected with the sanctuary" (Num. 18:1). The priesthood was established to stand in the gap, to absorb the danger, to bear the guilt, so that the people could draw near to God through them and not be destroyed. The people's terror was the necessary prerequisite for them to appreciate the grace of the priesthood. They had to be terrified of the disease before they would value the cure.
From Terror to Trust
This episode is a foundational lesson in the grammar of worship. The holiness of God is not something to be trifled with. It is glorious and beautiful, but it is also dangerous to sinners. The modern church has largely forgotten this. We talk about rushing into God's presence, about being casual with the Almighty. We have torn the veil in our theology, but not in the way the writer to the Hebrews means it.
The terror of the Israelites was a good and necessary thing. But it is not the final word. It is the beginning of the story of redemption, not the end. This fear is meant to drive us to the provision God has made. For them, it was the Aaronic priesthood and the sacrificial system. For us, it is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the true and better High Priest. He is the one who entered the true Holy of Holies, not with the blood of bulls and goats, but with His own blood (Hebrews 9:11-12).
The Israelites cried, "Everyone who comes near... must die." And the gospel responds, "Yes, that is true. And so He did." Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, drew near to God on our behalf, and He died. He absorbed the full, unmitigated wrath that was due to us for our presumptuous sin. He took the judgment so that we could receive the grace. Because He perished, we who trust in Him will not perish.
Therefore, we can now do what the Israelites rightly feared to do. We can "draw near with confidence to the throne of grace" (Hebrews 4:16). Our confidence is not in ourselves, in our own holiness. That way lies the fate of Korah. Our confidence is entirely in our Mediator. The terror that gripped the Israelites should grip every person who thinks they can stand before God on their own merits. But for those who have fled for refuge to Christ, that terror is transformed into a holy and joyful awe. We do not lose the fear of God, but it is transfigured. It is no longer the craven fear of a criminal before the judge, but the reverent, loving, trembling awe of an adopted son before a holy and glorious Father.
The Israelites saw the tabernacle and said, "If I go there, I will die." The Christian looks to the cross and says, "Because He went there and died, I can go to the Father and live."