Numbers 25
The Soul of the American Church
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Israel’s Harlotry in Moab
25 Now Israel remained in Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. 2 They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. 3 So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel.
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders before the Lord, out in the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.”
5 So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Every one of you kill his men who were joined to Baal of Peor.”
6 And indeed, one of the children of Israel came and presented to his brethren a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. 7 Now when Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose from among the congregation and took a javelin in his hand; 8 and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her body. So the plague was stopped among the children of Israel. 9 And those who died in the plague were twenty-four thousand.
10 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 11 “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the children of Israel, because he was zealous with My zeal among them, so that I did not consume the children of Israel in My zeal. 12 Therefore say, ‘Behold, I give to him My covenant of peace; 13 and it shall be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the children of Israel.’ ”
14 Now the name of the Israelite who was killed, who was killed with the Midianite woman, was Zimri the son of Salu, a leader of a father’s house among the Simeonites. 15 And the name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cozbi the daughter of Zur; he was head of the people of a father’s house in Midian.
16 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 17 “Harass the Midianites, and attack them; 18 for they harassed you with their schemes by which they seduced you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a leader of Midian, their sister, who was killed in the day of the plague because of Peor.”
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Nu 25:1–18.
Transcript
Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in Southeast Iowa. We want to thank you for listening today and we pray that you’ll be blessed by both hearing God's Word as well as having it applied to your life and your heart.
Well, we're going to continue our biographical preaching series with Balaam. And we're gonna be turning in our Bibles to the Book of Numbers. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. A little bit of context, remember the story of last week? God did not allow Balaam to turn God's heart away from His people, and Balaam had tried to get the Lord to allow him to call down curses, and God wouldn't because God had promised. And in Numbers chapter 25, we find out something different. The second half of this story with Balaam.
As we start this, the second half of the story of Balaam, we need to address something that happens in all of our lives. Have there been times in your life when you have known spiritually, emotionally, experientially, that there's something that's blocking your relationship with God? There's something in your life that is keeping you from joy in Christ. If we are honest, all of us have been there. Well, today we look at that very issue of what is it that stops us from fully enjoying communion with God? Fully having joy in Christ. And, surprise, surprise! It’s a three letter word: sin. And our call this morning, as we look through the life of Balaam, the second part of his life, is to put off sin and idolatry and to live to Christ. To put off sin and idolatry and to live to Christ. As we go through life of Balaam, we're going to see what that looks like.
So look with me at Numbers chapter 25. “Now Israel remained in Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders before the Lord, out in the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.” So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Every one of you kill his men who were joined to Baal of Peor.” And indeed, one of the children of Israel came and presented to his brethren a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping at the door of the Tabernacle of Meeting. Now when Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose from among the congregation and took a javelin in his hand; and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and thrust it through both of them, the man of Israel, and the woman through her body. So the plague was stopped among the children of Israel. And those who died in the plague were 24,000.”
We’ll stop the reading there for now. And we see here that Balaam was that person who had tried to get God to curse His people and couldn't. And so now the Moabites and the Midianites, who had tried to hire Balaam, they can't get God to turn away from His people, so they get people to turn away from their God. And how did they do it? They do it through sexual immorality and idolatry. And see, we often think about, in our day, those two are separate things, right? We think about idols and we think about a little wooden or gold statue and people bowing down to that thing. And that's true, but this idea of who is Baal of Peor, who is this pagan god?
Well, I'm gonna give you a little bit of history here about what's going on. Baal is a storm god. He's the god who brings down rain upon the ground and his mistress is Asherah. And you worship these two goddesses. And when you worship both of them, you have fertility both in your family and in your fields. And so when you would go to the Baal altar or you would go to the Asherah pole, you weren't just offering a burnt offering, but there was pagan prostitution happening there. There was sexual immorality that was happening in the pagan worship services. And so when it says that they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, this is a disgusting sexual, it's just gross. We can't say what's going on there with kids around. This is wickedness.
And so they know that they can't get to the people by turning God's heart away from them. But by offering them sensuality, they could turn the people's hearts away from God. And this is what we find that's happening. And in the midst of all of this, the Lord is angry. They had heard God say in the second commandment that the Lord their God was a jealous God. And yet they had blatantly, in the open, turned their hearts away from the Lord and towards Baal. Towards this pagan god.
And it's not just that, but one of the leaders of the tribe of Simeon walks in. There's a plague going on when all this happens. God is angry, and He sends out a plague. 2000 from every tribe die. 24,000 people are dead. And there are corpses hanging up in the hot Moabite sun that are decaying right in front of them. And one of the men walks in to the camp with his harlot Moabite woman with him, walks into the camp displaying his sinfulness in front of everyone while the people are weeping. At the Tabernacle, their loved ones are dead. And this man is blazing in his sinfulness.
And we find Phinehas who's one of the chief people of Levi, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the high priest, and he is righteously filled with indignation and grabs his javelin. And he chases them down and he runs it through both of them and kills them. And the Lord is satisfied with this. The plague stops. And if we kept reading in Numbers 25, we would see that God Himself makes a covenant with Phinehas and with his household. He is pleased with this.
Why? This is a gruesome story. This is an ugly story. Why does God put this in the Bible? Well, there's a reality that sin is disgusting. Sin is gross. Sin rips apart families. Sin offends people. Sin makes things that were supposed to be pure and beautiful and good and makes them base and ugly and disgusting, something that we turn our heads away from and say, “That's not right.” You can't just play around with sin. We can't just accept sin in our lives. We can't just accept sin in our communities and in our family. The Lord shows us here who does the righteous thing and it is Phinehas who is zealous for the Lord's Name and for His glory and for His honor, and goes on the attack to end this plague, to end this sin. And likewise in your own life, you need to kill the sin that's in your own life.
But what does all this have to do with Balaam? I mean, Balaam was not even mentioned anywhere here. I want you to turn over just five chapters with me to Numbers chapter 31. Numbers chapter 31, and we'll see how this ties in with Balaam. We’ll read the first 16 verses.
“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the children of Israel. Afterward you shall be gathered to your people.” So Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Arm some of yourselves for war, and let them go to war against the Midianites to take vengeance for the Lord on Midian. A thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war.” So there were recruited from the divisions of Israel one thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. Then Moses sent them to the war, one thousand from each tribe; he sent them to the war with Phinehas,” Phinehas is now the captain of the army, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, with the holy articles and with the signal trumpets in his hand. And they warred against the Midianites, just as the Lord commanded Moses, and they killed all the males. They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of those who were killed—Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. Balaam the son of Beor they also killed with the sword. And the children of Israel took the women of Midian captive, with their little ones, and took as spoil all their cattle, all their flocks, and all their goods. They also burned with fire all the cities where they dwelt, and all their forts. And they took all the spoil and all the booty—of man and beast.”
“Then they brought the captives, the booty, and the spoil to Moses, to Eleazar the priest, and to the congregation of the children of Israel, to the camp in the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho. And Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the congregation, went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was angry with the officers of the army, with the captains over thousands and captains over hundreds, who had come from the battle.” Why? Verse 15, “And Moses said to them: “Have you kept all the women alive? Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.””
See, when we fight against battle, it must be total warfare. The Midianites and the Moabites are in a treaty against the people of Israel. And so when they go to war, they win the war. But instead of leaving the women, instead of leaving the goods or utterly destroying them, what do they do? They take those same women, the ones who that man had brazenly brought into the camp, they bring all the women back with them. This means they're bringing all the idolatry of Baal back into the camp with them. And who put them up to this? Verse 16, who put the Midianites and the Moabites up to this? ““Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor.”” It was Balaam, who couldn't curse God's people because God would not turn His heart from His own people. But Balaam was the one who told the Midianites and the Moabites, “You know what you can do to get them? Intermarry with them. Get their women to follow your gods. Appeal to their flesh. Appeal to their desire for sensuality, and then you'll find their weak spot.”
There is supposed to be vengeance on the Midianites is what verse one and two says, and the kings of Moab are killed, all five kings. And Balaam himself is also killed. But the reality is, when they bring these women back into the camp, they had once put away that idolatry, that's what Phinehas had done in killing that sin, and now, they’ve brought it right back into the camp.
You might be thinking, “Okay, this is great. Wonderful history lesson, Pastor. Great. We don't have Balaam in the church now. This is just a story for the Old Testament.” Well, turn back again to Revelation chapter two. Revelation 2:12-16, page 1089.
““And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write, ‘These things says He who has the sharp two-edged sword: “I know your works, and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. And you hold fast to My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days in which Antipas was My faithful martyr, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam,”” What are these doctrines of Balaam? What are the teachings of Balaam? What’s going on in the New Testament Church? This is only maximum 80 something years away from Jesus’s birth and there’s already Balaam back into the church. What is these doctrines, these teachings of Balaam? Well, he put a stumbling block before the children of Israel to one, verse 14 at the end, “to eat meat sacrificed to idols,” and two, “to commit sexual immorality.”
We find these two things that happened in the church. The Nicolaitans are there. There are people who are in the church who have said, “Well, the Old Testament law is gone.” Right? “We don't need to worry about that anymore, so we can engage in sexual immorality, and we can eat the meat sacrificed to idols,” and just like we kind of scratch our heads, “How do those go together with Baal in the exact same way in the pagan cultures of Rome?” If you were alive during John's time in Revelation chapter two, and you went to any of the pagan cults, you would find at almost all of their temples, places of prostitution where you could go and engage in sexual immorality and offer your sacrifices and eat the meat that has been sacrificed to idols. And the Bible is clear here, that is not acceptable. God hates it.
This is part of the pagan religions of its own day. This is why Paul, specifically, in First Corinthians chapter six, when he's dealing with this issue, he says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?” You can't just treat your body like garbage, going and selling yourself and intermarrying and eating the meat sacrificed to idols and engaging in sexual promiscuity at the temples. This isn't acceptable behavior.
But again, you might be saying to yourself, “So what? That's pagan culture. We don't deal with that today.” Right? We don't have across the street a temple of Asherah, and it's a giant corn stock or something. We don't have that issue today. I'm gonna propose to you that there's a much more insidious issue that the American Church is dealing with right now. A much deeper and darker problem that's far more pervasive than Balaam, could have ever have tried during the time of Moses. In 2005 in a study studying Christianity today, there were pastors who were asked, “What are the major issues, sexual issues in your church?” 9% said there was sexual abuse issues that they had in their church. 14% said unwed pregnancies. 16% said sexual dissatisfaction. 28% said sexually active teens. 30% said they had issues of adultery and their congregations. But a full 57% of pastors, this was 2005, by the way, this is before the iPhone was created, there was already 57% of their congregations were struggling with pornography.
Pornography today, in our country is a $6 billion industry. And every single one of you, I'm just gonna put it out there, I'm guessing you know at least one person in your family or in your friend group who has struggled with this issue. And it is not something that the church is immune to. Indeed, it’s even worse than that. In 2017 studies had states with the highest percentage of highly religious people, generate a disproportionate number of Google searches for sexually explicit material.
For those of you who are conservative theologically, especially if you're conservative politically, do you know why you get sexually explicit or sexual inuendo type advertisements on your side bar and at the bottom of news articles? Because Balaam is still trying to suck you in today. Because the doctrine of Balaam is alive and well, trying to turn your heart away from the Lord. The evangelical church is plagued by this. In 2005, 70% of 18 to 24 year old men each month access pornography. And if you think that this is just an issue with men in the church, no. In 2004, 9.3 million evangelical women access pornography every month. And again, that's a 15 year old statistic. It's only gotten worse. In 2004, the average exposure for little children to accidentally find some type of sexually explicit material on their computer was age 11. Now that's down to age eight. Your sons and your daughters, by the time they are eight years old, before they're in the fourth grade, before they have held hands with a person, with a little boy or little girl, before they have kissed another person, they're going to run into sexually explicit material.
And if you think that this is just okay, that's the evangelical world. But we reformed people, we have our theology together, right? We dot our I’s and cross our T’s. We know our doctrine. I just put out an informal poll on a reformed group with 20,000 people in it. And of the people who responded, 95% said that they had at one point counseled someone in their church who was dealing with pornography. I thought, “Okay, well, that's a broad group. I’ll narrow it down to just a group of pastors within our denomination.” Just within the Reformed Presbyterian Church. Right? We got it all together, right? Our doctrine is perfect, right? We don't have this problem. 100%. 100% of the pastors in the RPCNA who responded to the question said that they have or they're actively counseling someone with pornography in their congregation.
Do not be fooled. Balaam’s doctrine is alive and well in the American Evangelical and Reformed Church today. Satan wants nothing more than to turn God's people's hearts away from the Lord. The world knows that it can't turn the Lord's heart away, but it sure knows the weakness of your flesh. It sure knows the weakness of the boys and the girls and the men and women in our midst.
So the question is, what do we do? What we do? We need to be more than just being on guard against this. We need to examine our own hearts. Turn over with me to James chapter one. Just a few books over, James chapter one. If you get to Hebrews, you’ve gone too far, it’s only a few pages. James chapter one, page 1072. The issue here is, we might think, “Okay, this is a big issue. So we need to worry about everything out there. We need to go on campaign against the sin that's out there.” But the reality is, you need to turn the light of God's Word to examine your own heart. And James 1:13-15, this is what God says about this, “Let no one say when he has tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”
We need to examine our own hearts. We need to be on guard and question our own desires. And even if this isn't an issue with your own heart, regarding sexual immorality, ask yourself, “Where does the temptation for sin and idolatry reside in your own self?” Whether it's gluttony, whether it's gossip, whether it's that you can't stop buying things, whatever the sin it might be that you're lying, that you are prideful, whatever the sin is, stop looking outside of you that's causing it and examine your own heart. John Calvin is famous for saying that our hearts are a factory of idols. We need to start the warfare in our own hearts. We need to go to war with our own desires.
But I’d like for you to turn over just a few more books to Romans chapter six. Some of you have been engaged in this war for weeks, for months, for years, for decades, but Romans chapter six gives us a hope like none other. As we seek to be link Phinehas’s, putting to death our idolatry and sin and living to Christ, Romans chapter six, page 1003. Verses six through eight, “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we also shall live with Him.”
There is a lie from the pit of hell that is going to try to convince you that you are a slave still now to your sin, and it’s not true. If you're in Christ, you are not a slave to your sin. If Jesus Christ dwells in you and you are in Christ, the bonds that have bound you to sin have been broken and you can have victory over sin. Now, I'm not gonna tell you that this is your entire life, you're never gonna have any battles. But as my wife was encouraged by one of you not too long ago, it is not that you are never going to have any more battles, but the battles you're going to have in a few years are going to be different types of battles. Because as you fight against sin and temptation in your life, as you put your foot upon the neck of one giant, you have slayed that one and you keep him dead and down you go and you fight more. But you're always going to be filled with this fight. The theologians called this, “you have to put to death the sinful desires that are in you”. This is called, “The Mortification of Sin”. That's a big word, right? Mortification. Well, you know what the root of that is, right? You know what rigor mortis is, right? When somebody dies their dead body gets rigid. Or somebody who takes care of a funeral home is a mortician. You need to mortify, you need to put to death your sin. You can't play around with it. When we fight in our Christian life, it is not a simple act. It is not something that we passively do, but you actively fight against sin in your life and the Lord by His Spirit, relying on Him will give you measures of victory.
But don't be fooled. Don't be fooled. If you think that you have this sin under control, you have a ravaging lion who's hanging out in your closet waiting to devour you anytime you open the door. You cannot play with sin or idolatry, acting as if you can grab hot coals and bring them to your chest and not be singed and burned. It will happen. Sin scourges us. Sin burns us, sin cuts us, sin puts a wedge between you and Christ. You must be on the attack. You must be grabbing that Sword of the Spirit, that sharp two-edged sword, and you must whet its blade every morning with your own battle against your heart, and against your desires. When you pick up your sword every morning and you read, His Word becomes a lamp unto your feet. He's the one who shows you to watch out for that pot hole. He's the one in His Word who shows you there's a trap there. Satan has that snare and it's ready for your feet. Make sure you avoid that one. Remember those people over there? This is why God gives it to us in stories. He shows us the walk of people's lives so we can see, “Oh, hold on. I remember what David did. Something like that is happening in my life. I got to avoid this.”
But unless you know God's Word, you're always going to be falling into that pit again and again and again. And how many of you has your heart been broken? Have you felt this pain and the sting of the results of sin and the agonizing loneliness when your Savior seems far away from you, but your sin is always before you. You must put to death sin. And we must live to Christ. This is why Paul tells us in Romans chapter 12:1, that “You are to offer up your body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”
This is why you must be in prayer. You need to be praying. God, lead me not into temptation. Lord, remove these stumbling blocks. Father, let me be so united to You that I would not desire to sin any more. And I promise you, for some of those of you who are struggling with the sins of sexual immorality, or any other type of sin that specifically involves your mind, God promises you that you are renewed in your mind. Scientists have proven this in a big term called neuroplasticity. And one of the best things I love about working with people who are struggling with sin is that when they have victory over the sin and they had been in the habit of thinking a certain way and being plagued by a sinful thought pattern, that after they have fought that battle for a length of years, they reprogram their brain, and the Holy Spirit no longer brings those thoughts to mind all the time. The Holy Spirit can do this in you. He does do this. This is the promise that He gives us. This is why we must be in Christ. This is why Paul says in Galatians 2:20 that “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loves me and gave Himself up for me.”
Do you see why Jesus tells you that you must pick up your cross daily and follow Him? You must put to death the sinful desires of your flesh. You can't play around with sin. You can't tame the lion. You cannot let idolatry come into your camp. You must be like Phinehas. You must put it to death and you must live to Christ. And this isn't legalism. This is freedom. This is telling you, “Rely every single breath on Jesus Christ.” Once you feel like, “Oh, okay. I've got this under control,” you better drop down on your knees and pray that the Holy Spirit keeps fighting with you and for you. Live to Christ. Put away sin. Put away idolatry. Do not live according to the doctrines of Balaam. Have your heart and your life and your mind filled with the love of Jesus Christ.
Let's pray, “Lord, we thank you so much that You are so good to us. Holy Spirit, we pray that You would apply these words not just to our minds, but that we would know them in the reality of our life. God, free us from sin. Lord, give us boldness to fight. Lord, sustain us, grow us, build us, God, we plead. Only You can do it. In Jesus’s name, amen.
Thank you for listening to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP church in Morning Sun, Iowa. We pray that you would be blessed as you grow in your love for God, your love for His Word, as well as your love for His people. Until next week, God bless you.