Moab Seduces Israel - You Didn't Hear This One in Sunday School - Numbers 25

so numbers chapter 25 tonight well Israel lived in Chatham the people began to with the daughters of Moab these invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods and the people ate and bowed down to their gods so Israel yoked himself to the bale of peor and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and the Lord said to Moses take all the Chiefs of the people and hang them in the Sun before the Lord that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel and Moses said to the judges of Israel each of you kill those of his men who have yoked themselves to bale a peor and behold one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of people of Israel while they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of meeting when phineas the son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest saw it he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them the man of Israel and the woman through her belly thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped nevertheless those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand and the Lord said to Moses phineas son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel and that he was jealous with my jealousy among them so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy therefore say behold I give to him my covenant of peace and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel the name of the slain man of Israel who was killed with the Midianite woman was Zimri son of Sal You chief of a father house belonging to the Samia Knights and the name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cosby the daughter of zarur who was a tribal head of a father's house in Midian and the Lord spoke to Moses saying harass the Midianites and strike them down for they have harassed you with their wiles with which they beguiled you in the matter of peor and the matter of cosby the daughter of the chief of Midian their sister who was killed on the day of the plague on account of peor so that's that's our story tonight it's one thing to throw out there to us to get us started here is that we tend to think we in our human minds we tend to think that sin is not that big of a deal we tend to think of it as something that can be dismissed something that can be overlooked and something that you know is wrong but we just make mistakes and it's not that bad we have limited knowledge and experience and the sins that we entertain in our lives or might otherwise entertain our often Pleasant and and enticing even and so we tend to think well it can't be that bad but in reality sin is separating ourselves from the source of life and everything that is good we are cutting ourselves off from God and all that he is and so just like we have terms for our relationships God has terms for our relationship with him too so for example if you're married you don't cheat on each other that's kind of standard and if you have a friend you don't steal from that friend for example this these are kind of basic terms that we have in the relationships that we are in God has terms for our relationship with him - and when we just discard them or dismiss them we do so at our own peril some observations of this story here if you look back in your Bibles at the last two chapters you'll see that it says Balaam's first Oracle Balaam second Oracle third Oracle these these are this if you familiar with this story Balaam is hired to pronounce curses on Israel by the Moabites in the Midianites and when he goes to curse them God actually makes him bless them and so this is right after that God takes these curses and he turns them into blessing of him and immediately after God blesses them the Israelites worship other gods so this is kind of like kind of like the when Moses received the Ten Commandments and right after he received those Ten Commandments and the people were all happy that they had them then they turn around and they make this golden calf it's supposed to remind us of this so Balaam has paid to curse Israel and God turns those curses into blessings and the Israelites turned God's blessings into curses this is the way that it usually works god is good to us and we stab him in the back god is good and we are sinful this is a recurring theme in Scripture and these first two verses here you might notice that Israel's seduction to worship Bale came in steps so it says the people began to with the daughters of Moab then these invited the people to the sacrifice of their gods and the people eight had bowed down to their gods so it's like there is some stages here so first they were sleeping with them fornication then they were invited to these sacrifices and then they ate those sacrifices and then finally they bowed down to their gods it's kind of this incremental thing in psychology you can get people to do something by asking them to do something small and if you can get them to do something small you can just increase it little by little and eventually people are doing exactly what you want them to do this is how people get involved in cults you ask them to do something small and then something a little bigger than something a little bigger and then eventually you are giving this cult leader everything that you own it's the nature of humanity and then there's verse three here this is the first time the Bible mentions bail this is the first time and if you know much about the rest of the Old Testament you know that bail is a Canaanite god of fertility and thunder and the word there actually means Lord interestingly so when you bow down to bail you are recognizing another Lord other than the Lord you're replacing God and this introduction of bail with the Israelites would be their ongoing struggle there was if there's one God the one false god that Israel always had a problem with it was bail bail comes up again and again throughout the Old Testament the Israelites could never seem to shake this false God they were always drawn to him for one reason or another bail would thereafter tempt Israel and eventually be their downfall both the northern and the southern kingdom were seduced by bail continually and jeremiah in nineteen it says this people have forsaken me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of judah have known and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocence and have built the high places of bail to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to bail which i did not command or decree nor did it come into my mind so bail even involved sacrificing your children human sacrifice and bail would continue to be the thorn in the side of the Israelites and this is where it started right here it seems when we're reading this story it seems that the leaders of the people were leading in the idolatry - it sounds like it wasn't just some random Israelites it sounded like the leaders were kind of taking a primary role in this because in verse 4 it talks about how God is pronouncing sentence on the leaders of the people and then later on it said that the one who brought that Midianite woman into the camp was not just anybody but somebody from a very prominent leader family one of the heads of the family of the Samia Knights and so it seems like the leaders of the people were kind of taking a primary role here it's always bad when the leaders are the ones causing people to stumble and then verse 6 there is this plague that was going on there were many people who were about to be executed and the whole community was there at the entrance to the tent of meeting they were weeping about what was happening and there's this guy named Zimri who brazenly disregards God and the whole nation you have this plague that was killing thousands you have a bunch of leaders who are about to be executed and everybody's weeping and can you imagine that scene and then right in front of all of that doing the very thing that is causing all of this it's almost like he was trying to rub it in everybody's faces but this is what I'm doing and I don't care doesn't matter so he parades this in front of all of them so just to try to give you an idea about this let's say let's say you're in an army and you're at war and let's say that in this war that you're in you are suddenly losing all kinds of battles left and right there's all these casualties and you're losing ground and the enemy is winning and it's all because there were some generals who were selling secrets to the enemy there are some generals way back there and they are not on the front lines but they're selling secrets of our position to the enemy imagine that now now imagine that one of these generals crosses enemy lines and brings back one of their generals bringing them back to headquarters to talk about the battle lines and how to attack us best that that that's you can't imagine that happening that's kind of what's going on here this is the cause of all of this and death and yet he's parading it right in front of them all verse 14 it talks about it names this guy who did this Zimmer II was a son of a powerful man and it seems that because of Zimmer E's family nobody wanted to confront him at least it's easy to believe that that's what's going up here why would only one person stand up well this guy's a member of a very prominent family and his dad is a leader of the people he probably is wealthy he probably controls a lot of what's going on in society this is probably not somebody you want as your enemy and then it talks about the woman that he brought to that woman's name Cosby it says she was a daughter of a Midianite tribal head so you have two very prominent people here because of Cosby's family I bet you that nobody wanted to start a war you know if the daughter of a chief of the neighboring nation comes into your camp and gets killed that's bad news that could be a declaration of war and the Midianites are not exactly just some pushover nation either you don't want to tick them off so because they were prominent people only one person had the guts to do anything about it only Phineas had the guts to act and do anything about it at all otherwise why wouldn't there have been a hundred of them saying why are you doing this at least but it says nope it doesn't even say that that happened it's like they were paraded in front of everybody and nobody did anything at all only Phineas had the guts to act on this and from what it says in verse eight there Phineas apparently catches them in the act and stabs them together in the new American Standard it says he went after the men of Israel into the tent and pierced both of them through the man of Israel and the woman through the body so just the way that is worded there you can kind of it's it kind of paints a picture a little bit and in this scene this this event here only one Israelite died for the plague to end there were lots of leaders who were sentenced to death and Moses had commanded all of the judges I want you to go around into each of your groups and I want you to slaughter anyone who is guilty but in the end only one is our light had to die for the nation to be saved and it's kind of similar to what the high priests around Jesus time said where he said it is better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish and then John adds this commentary he did not say this on his own but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish people and not only them but for all the children the scattered children so verses 10 through 13 thus phineas sky he's rewarded he's recognized his zeal earns him a permanent priesthood so God says because of what he had the guts to do he is going to have a permanent priesthood him and his whole family from now on because what he did he ended the reason the people were alienated from God he interceded for them that's what priests are supposed to do they're kind of the intercessors between the people and God and he did that he went in between them and he made he ended the reason why they were separated and that is what Jesus did to on the cross Jesus Christ killed the reason we were alienated from God Colossians 2 13 and 14 puts it this way and you who were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh God made alive together with him having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands this he set aside nailing it to the cross so Jesus took that upon himself and it was nailed to the cross he killed the reason why we were alienated from God and also because of what Christ has done and his zeal kind of like Phineas here Christ has an eternal priesthood now and a good chunk of the book of Hebrews goes into this in great detail I had a few verses here isaiah 53:11 and 12 by his knowledge shall the righteous one my servant make many to be accounted righteous and he shall bear their iniquities therefore I will divide him a portion with the many and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors Philippians 2:8 9 and being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name Hebrews 6:19 and 20 we had this sir and steadfast anchor of the soul a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain or Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf having become a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek and then Hebrews 7 24 he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues or lives forever so Christ like Eliezer who stood up and killed the reason why we were separated from God got rid of sin Christ now has a permanent priesthood in heaven for us and it details that much more in the book of Hebrews now have to put this out there because Christ already died for sin Christians do not kill sinners so it is not zealous for any of us who catch somebody committing a sin to just kill them that is not how we do things Christ already died for sins and so there's no reason that we need to kill anyone on the contrary we are told that we need to love our enemies and like Christ on the cross that we talked about this morning we need to even forgive them whether they deserve it or not now the state has the power of the sword bible does acknowledge that but as far as we are concerned we as individuals we are not to kill anyone so the zeal of Phineas is not it's not the way that we need to handle our zeal today however sin is still very perilous to us first Corinthians 10 mentions this very story as a warning to us today even after Christ has died and we are saved by grace first Corinthians 10:5 3 nevertheless with most of them that is the Israelites God was not pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness now these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did do not be a dollar tears as some of them were as it is written the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play we must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did and 23,000 fell in a single day that's this story and then a couple verses later verses 10 and 11 and 12 now these things happen to them as an example but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come therefore but anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall this is not just for people back then this is written down for us today so that we would take warning about the seriousness of sin and the perils of turning our back on God now this is the same New Testament that talks about how we are saved by grace and that we are free because of what Christ has done for us at the same time sin is still very perilous and we cannot underestimate it because we are still turning our back on God and so doing it like Israel here's kind of our warning here like Israel we as believers are brought down not by opposition but by seduction if we are brought down particularly in terms of faith it's not because we were opposed or we had problems it's because of something that we desired something that we wanted so if you look even at Israel's history they faced fierce armies that they should have lost to they conquered impenetrable cities like Jericho they endured 40 years in a harsh wilderness that's not what stopped them they were brought down by the seduction of idols that's what defeated Israel that's why they fell it was not because of what opposed them it was because of what they were drawn to now we tend to be preoccupied with the wrong things we tend to be preoccupied by opposition you know society is becoming more secular and less friendly to Christianity for example we are preoccupied with that we were preoccupied with people perhaps persecuting us or sliding us because we are Christians or even sickness and death but those things don't usually shipwreck faith those are not the things that take us away from God they are difficult to go through for sure but in terms of faith that's not what brings us down not usually we don't need to be concerned about opposition we need to be concerned about what we are attracted to what we are drawn to and what we might want to yoke ourselves with and so we as believers must always be wary of our attractions what are we attracted to what are we drawn to the allure of possessions pleasures or worldly honor for example these things overthrow faith these things are what hamstrung us and our walk with Christ these things are what bring people down so it's not what we hate that's dangerous it's actually what we love if our loves are misplaced they will bring us down they will take us away from God and we need to take warning about that even though we are saved by grace sin is still very perilous to us so let's take this warning from this chapter in numbers and let's pray Lord our God in heaven we are glad that we are saved by grace but lord help us not to dismiss sin to take it lightly or lord help us to see it as it truly is as it as it cuts us off from you separates us from you the Lord help us to avoid it like the plague and to recognize it for what it is and to instead Lord place our love and be attracted to you and who you are and all that you give to us in Jesus name Amen

Channel: Aaron Vriesman

Views: 1,358

Rating: 4.8974357 out of 5

Keywords: sermon, Numbers 25, Numbers 25 explained, Numbers 25 sermon, Moab seduces Israel, Baal worship at Peor

Id: _unxno-8wqY

Length: 28min 23sec (1703 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2018