In order for God’s people to express God and to represent Him, there must be both the priesthood and the kingship. Even the New Testament tells us clearly that in God’s redemption He has made us priests and kings (Rev. 1:5-6; 5:9-10). Thus, we have the priesthood and we are in the kingship. We have the priesthood so that we may express God. This is related to the image of God. The kingship is for God’s dominion. God created man in His image and gave him dominion over all the creatures (Gen. 1:26). This is the kingship for God’s kingdom. In the church today there is still the need of the priesthood to express God and the kingship to represent God. In the coming millennial kingdom, we shall also be the priests expressing God and the kings representing God (Rev. 20:6). Furthermore, for eternity in the New Jerusalem we shall be priests and kings (Rev. 22:3-5) expressing God through our priesthood and representing Him with His dominion in our kingship. From the first chapter of Genesis through the last chapter of Revelation, the Bible is very consistent about these two aspects of God’s corporate people.
Moses, representing the kingship, and Aaron, representing the priesthood, were put together for God’s leadership. As we have already mentioned, they were both raised up and built up. God did not take Moses and put him into the leadership immediately after he had completed his education in Pharaoh’s palace. No, after Moses had been educated, God brought him into the wilderness where He built up his leadership. Moses was born into a Jewish family and thus received the knowledge concerning God. Since he did not have a worldly education, God raised up the circumstances to enable him to receive the highest education in Pharaoh’s palace (Acts 7:22). I believe that his education was higher than that of a Ph.D. Although he was so well educated, he was still not qualified to be the leader. During his first forty years, Moses learned of God and gained the world’s best education. After that, he had to spend another forty years in the wilderness in order to be built up as a leader. The Bible does not afford us a clear record regarding the leadership of Aaron, but, in principle, Aaron must have also been under God’s building hand. When Moses told the Lord that he was not eloquent but was “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exo. 4:10), the Lord said that Aaron, his brother, who could speak well, would be unto Moses “instead of a mouth” and that Moses would “be to him instead of God” (Exo. 4:14, 16). Only after Moses and Aaron had been built up as leaders were they able to take the lead.
The journey through the wilderness was a test to the Israelites. When the Lord sent Moses to the children of Israel, He told him to speak to the people, saying on His behalf, “I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto...a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exo. 3:17). This was a good promise. The children of Israel were delivered out of the land of Egypt and they should have entered into the land of milk and honey. But due to their unbelief, which is recorded in Numbers 14, they could not enter in. Eventually, in Numbers 16, the rebels blamed Moses and Aaron, and not their own unbelief, for their not entering into the good land. The rebellious ones said, “Is it a small thing that thou has brought us up out of a land that floweth with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, except thou make thyself altogether a prince over us? Moreover thou hast not brought us into a land that floweth with milk and honey” (Num. 16:13-14). Numbers 17:10 refers to these rebellious ones as “the rebels.” The Hebrew word rendered rebels means “sons of rebellion.” These sons of rebellion seemed to be saying to Moses and Aaron, “You promised to bring us into a land flowing with milk and honey, but you have not done it. Don’t you know that the land out of which you brought us was a land of milk and honey? You have not fulfilled your promise.” These sons of rebellion even said that Egypt was the land of milk and honey. What rebellion!
Who were these rebels? The first was Korah. Korah, who was a Levite (Num. 16:1), considered himself to be the same as Moses and Aaron, who also were Levites. Korah might have said within himself, “You two are Levites. How about me? Am I not also a Levite? Why must you take the lead, while I have no share in it?” Two of the other rebels were Dathan and Abiram, descendants of Reuben, the first son of Jacob. Considering themselves to be the tribe of the birthright, they might have said, “You Levites are number three, but we, the sons of Reuben, the first son of Jacob, are number one. Since you came after us, why should only the two of you take the lead?” Eventually, they all said to Moses and Aaron, “Ye 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?” (Lev. 16:3). This was the subtle, devilish argument and condemnation within those rebels. What a rebellious root we see here!