Word of Salvation – September 2013

 

Numbers 25 – IT ALL BEGAN WITH A PARTY

By John Westendorp

(Sermon 25 in a series on Numbers)

Scripture Reading: Numbers 25.

Singing: Book of Worship 359 / 106 / 469 / 528

 

Introd: I’m sure we’ve all discovered that sometimes the advertisement is better than the product.

We ordered some wonderful new gizmo we saw advertised in a magazine.
But when it arrived we were disappointed – it didn’t measure up to the advert by a long shot.
It didn’t look anywhere near as good as in the colour picture in the magazine.
And what the advertisement claimed for it just didn’t match up to reality.
That made you wonder:
Which is the real product? The one in the catalogue or the one you bought?

The same also happens in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In Scripture we have some marvellous pictures of the Christian Church.
She’s the glorious Bride of Christ… the pure spotless wife of the Lamb of God.
She is pictured as the loving and caring community that welcomes all kinds of people.
But in the church that you have joined there is often selfishness and prejudice.
And the garbage that is so prevalent in society also finds its way into your church.
That makes you wonder:
Which is the real church? The one in the Bible or the one to which you belong?

The same happens here in Numbers.
Balaam has said some wonderful things about Israel.
We’ve had two chapters in which Balaam struggles to express the glory of Israel’s blessings.
He even made the amazing statement:
No iniquity is seen in Jacob, no mischief is observed in Israel.
Two glorious chapters in which Balaam sings the praise of these wonderful and blessed people.

But now suddenly in chapter 25 we are swept off that mountaintop of wonder and awe.
And we land with a crash in some scenes where the garbage of sin could hardly be worse.
That makes us wonder:
Which is the real Israel… the one pictured in Balaam’s oracles or this Israel here?

A] THE SEEMING INNOCENCE OF ENTERTAINMENT.

1. The events described in this chapter didn’t just happen at Israel’s initiative.

It’s not that some Israelites decided to check out their Moabite and Midianite neighbours.

And well… they got carried away – and rest, as they say, is history.

No! The Moabites and the Midianites invited them over.
And if you’ll turn over to Numbers 31 you’ll see who it was who was responsible for that.
Moses mentions in chapter 31 the name of a man we know well:
The same Balaam who made all those wonderful sayings about Israel in the previous chapters.

Moses is speaking in a context where Israel has just defeated Midian as God commanded.
And he rebukes the army for keeping all the women alive.
And then notice what he says in Numbers 31:16:
They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and were the means of turning the Israelites
away from the Lord in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people.

It seems Balaam made one last-ditch effort to get some reward money out of the Moabite king Balak.
He said to Balak: “Sorry, God wouldn’t let me curse these people because they are blessed.
But let me give you some advice. You can destroy this nation and remove the threat.
Just get them to break the commandments of their God. That will totally ruin them.”

2. So what specific advice did Balaam give to king Balak to get Israel into trouble?

Imagine a moment that Balaam gave king Balak this advice:
“Balak, why don’t you just invite the Israelites over for a worship service to Baal?
Because if you get them to do that they will be breaking the first of their Ten Commandments.
And their God will be so angry with them that He will destroy them.”
Would that approach have worked with Israel?
Surely Israel would have seen through such a blatant invitation to come and worship Baal.

One commentator suggested Balaam took a different approach.
He said to king Balak: You want to destroy them. Well, have you tried sex?
Get some your virile young men and women to seduce the Israelites.

One of their Ten Commandments forbids adultery… get them to break that commandment.
That will surely cause God’s anger to break out against them.
And particularly if they then also get those whom they seduce to come and worship Baal.

Again I can’t imagine that approach really working with Israel either.
Sending people an invitation to come and join in an orgy of sexual indulgence doesn’t work.
At least it doesn’t work with decent respectable people.

No! A deception took place. We read about that in verse 18.
God tells Moses why Israel is to treat the Midianites as enemies.
(By the way, it seems that in this alliance between Moab and Midian, Midian took the lead.)
So Midian is to be treated as an enemy. And why? Notice the reason.
“Because they treated you as enemies when they deceived you in the affair of Peor…!”
There was a certain deviousness about the advice that Balaam gave Balak.

3. The way I read Numbers 25 is that Balaam advised Balak to throw a party.

Put on a great feast! I mean, who wouldn’t come to a harmless little old party?

Make sure there’s plenty of good food to go round and of course, everyone loves some entertainment.
But then include in the entertainment some fairly laid back worship to Baal.
And hey, parties are often famous for a bit of hanky-panky between the sexes.
Do it that way and Israel will get sucked in and they will break the commandments of their God.

But what begins with a party… with entertainment… ends in disaster for Israel.

It was a party at which they conformed to Midianite culture.
They conformed to the religion of the Moabites and Midianites.
And they conformed to the sexual morality of the Moabites and Midianites.
Conforming to the world around them… but it all began with a feast… with a party.

Please turn a moment to 1Corinthians 10 to see how relevant this story is for us today.
Paul tells us there that all this was written for our instruction.
<<< Read 1 Corinthians 10:6-8 >>>

Today the devil doesn’t normally come and tell us straight out to follow false religion.

He doesn’t usually invite us to participate in blatant sexual immorality.

But so often he arranges for someone to throw us a party… and we fall for it.
How many one-night stands have happened over the years that began with just a party?
I recall well from my years in commerce the hanky-panky that went on at Christmas parties.

We live in a culture that is big on entertainment… and entertainment was what Balak provided.
And Christians by the score have been sucked into sin… but it began with entertainment.
I think of the four-wheel-drive enthusiast who now no longer goes to church.
On Sunday’s he’s out worshipping a false nature-God who doesn’t expect you to go to church.

B] THE DUAL SINS: IDOLATRY AND FORNICATION.

1. Numbers 25 shows us clearly what this feast for Israel led to.

It says the people ate. But then it adds: …and they bowed down to their gods.

You can imagine how it went.
When we Christians eat we first say grace… or at least… I hope we still do.
And if you have unbelieving friends over at your meal they will politely close their eyes.
Out of respect for your views they will quietly put up with your religious ritual.

But here the shoe is now on the other foot. God’s people are the guests at the party.
And of course the Midianites say grace too. Well not quite.
They sacrifice some of their food to their idol… to Baal.
And so the Israelites politely put up with the religious ritual of their hosts.
And they too bow down to Baal Peor.

And once they’ve done that it’s not too hard to take the next step.
So that later in the program, when there’s a full-blown worship service to Baal they join in.
I can imagine that someone of them had no trouble justifying it either.
Hey… don’t we, at the end of the day, all worship the same god?
We’re just being broad-minded and treating this as an ecumenical worship service.

But no! They broke God’s command not to worship any other gods… not to bow down to idols.
They provoked God’s anger by this idolatry… or by what the Bible calls spiritual adultery.
God considers Himself married to His people so this idolatry is spiritual harlotry.
Full blown worship of false gods… and it all began with a party… with Moabite entertainment.

It makes me wonder how many Christians have been enticed away from Jesus by entertainment.
I’ve seen it happen… the young man who loved his football.
And he got chosen for the State team… so he ducked out of church early to get to practice.
The following season he didn’t bother coming at all anymore when the footy was on.
And before too long Church was given the flick altogether… he lived for his god, sport.
And it all began with some entertainment.

2. Numbers 25 shows us that this entertainment led Israel into something else as well.

The consequences of this party was also that Israel got involved in sexual immorality.

And again it’s easy to imagine how it went.
At a party you not only eat… you also drink. And soon you drink a little too much.
And the atmosphere and the drinks lower your inhibitions… and some flirting takes place.
One thing leads to another and soon couples are disappearing to make out together.

So they add to their sin of idolatry also the sin of adultery.
Actual physical adultery accompanies their spiritual adultery.
And so they break not only the first commandment not to worship other gods.
They also break the seventh commandment which God gave to protect marriage.

Today we must not see the seduction of the Israelites by the Midianites as something unusual.
It wasn’t the Moabites or the Midianites who had been given the seventh commandment.
It was Israel who had been told by the Lord God that sexual immorality was inappropriate.
Sexual laxness was just part of the Moabite and Midianite culture.

We shouldn’t be surprised when unbelievers and pagans play fast and loose with sex.
It shouldn’t surprise us when someone who is not a Christian is unfaithful to his spouse.
But we should be appalled and grieve when Christians fit in with this pattern of the world.

3. One of the questions that arises in this chapter is which of these two sins came first.

Some commentators argue that sexual looseness led to the false worship.
These people figure that the scenario went something like this:
As the party got more and more lively people got carried away with each other.
Those alluring, sensuous Midianite women seduced the Israelite men.
And once you’ve already broken the seventh commandment… hey, what does it matter?
Breaking the first command as well doesn’t seem quite so perverse anymore.

Or maybe the Midianite women said: You’ve slept with us now you may as well worship with us.
And with the passion of lust frying their brain cells, the Israelite men meekly caved in.

It happens doesn’t it? There are people who have caved in to sexual promiscuity.
Why then should they bother believing in the God of the Bible anymore… why still serve Him?
So you conjure up for yourself a false god – a god who doesn’t mind marital unfaithfulness.
And you then worship that idol god of your own making.

Others argue that the false worship of Baal Peor came first and led to the sexual immorality.
And I’m personally inclined to agree.
We must remember that the Baals were essentially fertility gods.
And the sensuous nature of the worship of these fertility gods encouraged sexual promiscuity.
In fact temple prostitution played a significant role in the worship of the Baals.

We could also look at it another way.
Once you’ve turned your back on the God who gave the law then it doesn’t matter.
As someone has said: When you stop believing in God then anything goes.

In any case the two parts of God’s law belong together… and we see that so clearly here.

Stop worshipping the true God and then you can more comfortably sin against your marriage partner.

Sin against your marriage partner and it becomes so easy to ditch your faith in the God of the Bible.

C] THE SEVERE MERCY OF GOD THRU PHINEHAS.

1. What is really troubling in this chapter is the blatant nature of the sexual sin.

That is strikingly seen when one of the sons of a leader takes a Midianite woman home.
And, amazingly, we read that he does so in full view of all of Israel.
This man has no sense of shame. He regards this as quite the normal thing to do.

It seems that he walks right past Moses with this Midianite woman on his arm.
He passes all those concerned Israelites who are weeping there before the Tent of Meeting.
And he goes with her into his tent to continue what they began at the party.

That’s a powerful picture of the hardening effect of sin.
And how quickly it seems to have happened.
This man thinks that what is wrong and sinful has become lawful and normal.

And again there is a lesson in that for us.
In our culture we don’t even talk anymore about promiscuity and sexual immorality.
As long as it’s done between consenting adults everyone else should butt out.
It’s a private matter and people should keep their noses out of other people’s bedrooms.
Unfaithfulness is rampant… and divorce is accepted as a sad but normal part of life.
No one makes a fuss of those things any more in today’s culture.

And the tragedy is that we in the church begin to think it’s normal too.

And that we must be broadminded-enough to tolerate these things.

2. But God doesn’t tolerate it. That’s why God had recorded in this chapter the action of Phinehas.

This man is probably little more than a youth… he’s the grandson of Aaron the Priest.
His actions are graphically portrayed… giving the chapter a kind of X-rated classification.
He follows this man and this woman to their tent. Why?
Not to congratulate them on their broad-mindedness.
Not to bring them a bunch of flowers to mark the occasion.

No! Phinehas takes along a spear and he barges into their tent.
And he pins the copulating couple to the ground with the spear… both of them together.
Phinehas does that despite these two people being from leading families.
He shows no favouritism towards them on the basis of their status. They die at his hands.

To understand the actions of Phinehas please keep two things in mind.

First it seems that Moses and the leaders of the nation were frozen into inactivity.
God’s severe judgment pronounced to Moses is to kill the leaders of these immoral people.
(And it seems that there were a high number of leaders actually involved in this sin.)
God commands that the bodies of these dead leaders then be exposed in broad daylight.
That was meant as a kind of shock therapy to make Israel wake up to itself.

But we don’t read of Moses actually doing that.
Instead Moses calls Israel’s judges and he tells them to each go and put to death the guilty.
But we don’t read of that actually happening either.
Here is the leadership of the nation frozen into inactivity so this young man Phinehas acts.

Secondly, we need to remember that Phinehas was a Levite and from the family of priests.
Guarding the purity of the Tabernacle was his responsibility.
And protecting the holiness of the camp was part of his job description. So he acts decisively.

3. Why? Because God’s anger burned against Israel. And we see that so clearly in this chapter.

The seriousness of Israel’s sin is seen in God’s judgment on Israel.
When the leaders procrastinate in judging the guilty God strikes the nation with a plague.
And we read that 24,000 people in Israel died.
From the census in the next chapter is seems that especially the tribe of Simeon was affected.
It was from the tribe of Simeon that this man came whom Phinehas speared to the ground.

The seriousness of the matter is also seen in God’s judgment on Midian.
They are now declared to be Israel’s enemy and are to be destroyed.
And in chapter 31 the last task of Moses is actually to carry out that judgment against Midian.

But the seriousness of the matter is also seen in the blessing pronounced on Phinehas.
We read (v.13) that God considered that Phinehas had made atonement for Israel by his act.
Because of the blood he shed in that decisive act… God halts the plague.
And God blesses Phinehas for the generations to come.

If you wonder about the severity of God’s judgments here then you haven’t understood God’s holiness.
The seriousness of breaking God’s commands is so very clear in Numbers 25.
Especially the sin of idolatry… of worshipping false gods.

But the mercy of God is also clear… yes… it’s a severe mercy… as God accepts Phinehas’ actions.

And that’s also the answer to my opening question: Which is the true Israel?
The Israel of Balaam’s oracle’s… or the Israel that fornicated and worshipped Baal?
Because of God’s severe mercy shown through Phinehas the blessed Israel is the real Israel.

Today we have experienced an even more severe mercy: God’s mercy in the blood shed on Calvary.
God dealt with our sin and perversion through the cruel death of His own belolved Son.

And that answers my other question: Which is the true church?
The true Church consists of those who have been forgiven; cleansed thru faith in Jesus.
It’s we who know God’s severe mercy in Christ who are the blessed Bride of Christ.  Amen.