Stop The Plague From Entering Your Home / Church

Thank you for listening to this message from the ministry of Morse Corner Church in Leverett, Massachusetts. Morse Corner is a non-denominational church that is committed to the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our church was founded in 1896 by two students of the famous evangelist D .L. Moody. We seek to encourage and edify the body of Christ through the proclamation of God's word through the ministries of the local church.

The Blessing That Followed Phineas’s Zeal

If you'd like more information, visit our website morsecornerchurch .com. We hope you enjoy the message. So because of the zeal of Phineas, God blesses him that all future legitimate high priests will descend from his line.

This is a major honor. This is a major blessing. Isn't that what every believer wants? Not only do you want to be blessed by God, wouldn't you love to have that assurance that not only are you going to be blessed by God, that your children are going to be blessed by God and that your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren and on and on it goes that they will all be blessed by the Lord.

That's what happened with Phineas. So what's the application? What does this mean for us? Well, in order to receive God's blessing, sometimes you have to do the hard thing. Phineas was the only man who rose up and did this.

I'm sure many people wanted to, but he was the only one who did it to receive the blessings of God. We have to have courage. We have to do the difficult thing. We have to fight the good fight of faith in Israel.

I want to say this. I know all of you know this, but just in case a critic is listening later on, we're not calling for violence. Don't say, okay, I'm going to read this. I'm going to go home and get a spear or a javelin and I'm going to go after the...

No, obviously that's not what we're about. In the Old Testament, Israel was a physical nation. So therefore they fought physical battles. In the New Testament, the church is referred to by the Apostle Peter as a spiritual nation.

Therefore, the battles we fight are what? Spiritual battles. So any fighting and that kind of language, we're talking spiritually, not physical. But again, you knew that. All right, let's get into the application.

Secularism as a Competing Religion

What does this mean for us? What can we learn from this story? As I said, I don't think anybody today is worshiping Baal. I've never met anybody who worships Baal, certainly not Baal of Peor. But a lot of people are seduced and they are seduced away from the worship of the one true God.

Sometimes people are seduced into cults and false religions. But I've noticed today that's not the common thing. We've never, to my knowledge, we've never lost anyone to Hinduism or Islam. We've never lost anyone at this church to a false religion.

What we are losing people to, however, is the false religion of secularism. Secularism is the religion of our day and we have lost many people to it. But what does that mean, the religion of secularism?

So this is what happens. God's people who are in covenant with the Lord are being seduced into this different set of beliefs. They're being seduced into a false worldview. What is it called? Becoming woke?

Have you heard of this? Becoming woke? Becoming progressive, right? In adopting secular values. You say, yeah, but this secular, this isn't a religion, pastor. It's not a religion. Yes, it is. It is most certainly a religion and I will prove it to you.

The people who follow it, they are devout. I would argue they are more devout than most Christians I know. They are devout in their belief system. It's defined in the dictionary Larry filled us in on Wednesday that religion is defined as what?

A set of beliefs, right? Your belief system is your religion. And what you do as the result of what you believe, that is your religion. Whether you call it a religion or not, it's still a belief system.

So here's the proof. Here's the proof that secularism is a religion. We have our creation story, right? We have the book of Genesis, the creation account. They have their creation account, which is the Big Bang and evolution.

We have our eschatology, our end of the world scenario, the return of Christ and Armageddon. They have their end of the world scenario with climate change. They're coming up with an answer to all of our beliefs and their polar opposites.

So we have creation. They have evolution. We have the return of Christ and Armageddon. They have climate change. We have our standards of how to live. They have their standards. We have our definition of marriage.

They have their definition of marriage. We have our idea of blasphemy, right? You are not supposed to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. There are certain things you're not supposed to say. They have their definition of blasphemy, which they call hate speech.

We have our God and Jesus Christ. They have their God, who is government and secular culture. We follow the scriptures, which never change. Their religion is consistently changing. They go along with whatever the next thing is.

We have the saints, along with preachers and teachers. They have politicians, social media influencers, and Hollywood celebrities. Kim Kardashian is far more influential on our nation's youth than John MacArthur and Charles Stanley.

And you know that that's true. Oh, it's not a religion. I don't care what you call it. It's capturing the minds of our children and our grandchildren, and even some adults. It is most certainly a belief system.

And if you look at their beliefs with our beliefs, again, they're at odds with one another. The two sides are in an epic battle that will continue until the end of days. So either we can stay loyal to the true God and follow the Lord Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Bible, or we will follow along with the God of this age, and we will be seduced as he blinds the eyes of the people of the world.

And that's what he's doing. And again, I don't think under my ministry I've ever lost anyone to Islam, Buddhism, or any cult or false religion. I've lost many people to the secular religion. They are joining themselves to Baal of Peor.

He's just not called Baal. He's called something else. That's the trick. So like this story in Numbers chapter 25, Christian men and Christian women are being seduced. They're being led astray. They would probably never do it on their own.

But then they meet somebody, right? Isn't this what happened in Numbers 25? The Israelite men, they're worshiping God. They're serving God. And then these women come along, and all of a sudden, everything changes.

They're not convinced by some doctrinal argument from the Law of Moses. They're convinced because they met somebody. This isn't always true. But sometimes, oftentimes, when somebody falls away from the faith, or they were worshiping God that was important to them, or they stopped going to church, or something happens, they renounce Christianity, my first thought oftentimes is, okay, what's her name?

What's his name? Who is it? Well, that's what often happens. See, if a Christian man or a Christian woman was walking down the street, and somebody came up to them and says, hey, come and worship Baal with me, they would never do it, right?

Or if somebody came along walking down the street and said, hey, come and join this false religion, or renounce your faith. Renounce Jesus Christ. See, a Christian is not going to do that. But they will do it if they're seduced into it.

Let's say a Christian man is walking down the street, or however it happens, a beautiful woman approaches him, or they meet, they start talking, or it can go the other way, obviously, with women meeting a man.

But let's say this man meets a beautiful woman, and she's atheist. She's an agnostic. Like, in his mind, he knows, you know, the Bible says, or the pastor says, you shouldn't be yoked together with unbelievers.

I shouldn't date an unbeliever. I shouldn't get married to an unbeliever. But, you know, he likes her. So he's seduced into it. That's the kind of thing that leads people astray. And, you know, some people, that's already happened.

It's in the past. And some people can stay serving God even though they've kind of made that mistake. But a lot of times the unbeliever will draw people away. And it happens all the time. So they meet someone.

They start dating. Someone belongs to another faith, or they are of this secular worldview. And all of a sudden, you know, they start noticing all these things in the Bible that are really troubling to them.

I mean, the Bible has this story of this guy who has this javelin, and he thrusts to me and kills him. I mean, can we follow a God like that? See, these stories never bothered them before. But once they're seduced into this new system of thought, now they're seeing contradictions in the Bible, and they're bothered by all this stuff.

They're not really convinced by the text or what's in the text. They're seduced through this person, this ideology. Here's the point. Their relationship with that person causes them to sever or at least severely disrupt their relationship with the God of heaven.

This happens all the time. So I bring up these modern examples because we need to take the word of God and apply it to the modern day. Otherwise, people will look at this story in Numbers 25 and say, okay, yeah, that happened 3 ,500 years ago.

So what? What does that have to do with me? The same things are happening today. It's just different details. People are being joined to bail appeal today. He's just not called bail appeal. He's called by another name.

What does the scripture say? There's nothing new under the sun. So we need to take principles in scripture and apply them because this is repeating itself. The same thing over and over. So let's not fall into these same traps.

Amen. Are you personally? And if you know someone, a loved one, friend, coworker, neighbor, and you see, yeah, this is what's happening. They're being seduced by this false ideology. Recognize it is what it is.

And then maybe you can talk to them about we need to rescue people. Right? And one last thing. Phineas, Numbers 25. Look at verses 7 and 8. Phineas, the son of Elias, he sees what's happening. Instead of just standing around and watching it like everybody else, Phineas is blessed by God because he's the one guy who says, no, I'm going to do something about this.

So Phineas, the son of Eliezer, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw it. He rose up from the congregation and took a javelin in his hand and he went after the man of Israel. We need to go after people. Not with a javelin, not with a sword.

We need to go after them and we need to save them. We need to go after them and pursue them and encourage them to come back to the faith. We need to go to people and tell them that, hey, I love you and I see what's happening and I don't want this for you.

Because if you yoke yourself to another God, to another religion, what happens? The plague. The plague was upon the children of Israel. But because Phineas stood up, the plague was ceased. So I'm just one man.

I'm just one woman. What can I do? Here's what you can do. You can keep the plague or you can at least try. You can try to keep the plague from entering your home. We can stop the plague from entering our church.

When we see our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters starting to stray, we can exhort them to stay faithful. Let them know what's at stake. With Israel and the promises of God, again, it's a physical nation.

It was more earthly things at stake. But in the New Testament, these are matters of eternity. So in conclusion, let's be faithful. Let's be men and women of action like Phineas. Fight the good fight. Don't allow yourself or those you care about to be seduced and be joined to Baal of Peor.

Prayer, Application, and Closing Exhortation

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I just ask that you would use this message to open our eyes, to light a fire under us, to see what's at stake. Lord, souls are at stake. And I know what your word tells us, Paul, to the Corinthians.

He said all of these things were written. All of these things happened to them as examples. And they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. And Lord, I pray that if there's someone here who's never placed their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, that they would do that.

For, Lord, if there's someone who recognizes I've been influenced, I've been seduced, and I know that I've been strayed. Lord, I pray you would use this message to bring them back. And I ask it in Christ's name.

Amen. Thanks for listening. I'm Pastor Michael Grant from Morris Cornick Church. If you'd like to listen to the complete message or if you'd like more information about the ministry, visit our website, MorrisCornickChurch .com.

And we'd love to have you join us some Sunday morning here in Leverett. Until next time, may the grace of God be with you.