Israel’s Harlotry in Moab / The Javelin & Zeal of Phinehas (Numbers 25)

All right, we're gonna be looking at Numbers 25 and Israel's failure in the plains of Moab.

So you can see the map here. Everyone can see that, just about everybody.

So there's the plains of Moab right there at the bottom, but we'll get into that in just a few minutes.

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 Eliezer, 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 both of them through, 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.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses. Phinehas, the son of Eliezer, 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.

Therefore saying, behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, 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. Now the name of the

Israelite who was killed, who was killed with the Midianite woman, was Zimri, the son of Selim, a leader of a father's house among the

Simeonites. And the name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cosbi, the daughter of Zer.

He was head of the people of a father's house in Midian. Then the

Lord spoke to Moses. Harass the Midianites and attack them, for they harassed you with their schemes by which they seduced you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of Cosbi, the daughter of a leader of Midian, their sister, who was killed in the day of the plague because of Peor.

Okay, so this chapter is not for the faint -hearted, obviously. So tonight we're gonna be looking at chapter 25.

And if you remember from last week, we covered the story of Balaam.

And it was Balak, the king of the Moabites, who hired this soothsayer,

Balaam, to curse the children of Israel. But you remember the Lord would not allow Balaam to do that.

Every time he opened his mouth, instead of a curse coming out, out came a blessing.

So because Balaam could not curse Israel, he took a different approach. And based on what is said in chapter 31,

Balaam counseled Balak to seduce the Israelites with heathen women.

This way, when they committed sexual immorality and they worshiped their false gods, that would provoke

God's anger. And that's the plan. We can't curse them, so we're going to weaken them through this scheme that they cooked up.

So here in Numbers chapter 25, we read about Israel's final failure in the wilderness because next they're going to enter the promised land.

So this is their final failure. We've seen a lot of failures, haven't we? So this is the last one.

Let's begin by reading Numbers 25, one through three. It says, now Israel remained in Acacia Grove and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab.

And they invited the people to sacrifice, to the sacrifice 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. So this is because of Balaam's advice to Balak.

So where is Israel camped? Where are they? In Acacia Grove.

Okay, does anyone else have anything else? Another word, another, okay.

Yeah, so it's either Acacia Grove, that's in the New King James or some of the modern translations. The other name of that place is

Shittim. So they are, this is right here in the plains of Moab.

So this is the land of Canaan. Here's the Dead Sea, the plains of Moab. Here they are right here.

And when they enter into the Promised Land, they have to first cross the

Jordan River, which is right here. And what's the first city they come to on the way into the

Promised Land? Right, Jericho. So they're gonna have, we all know the story of Jericho.

Before they have that victory, first there is this failure. Okay, so this is the scheme that Balak and Balaam, Balaam kind of cooked up and the

Israelites are led away to worship false gods, how? Through seduction.

So think about it this way. Let's say there's a Christian man and he has convictions.

He wants to do the right thing. And then someone comes along on the street and says, hey, let's go worship some false gods.

What's he gonna say? Yeah, he's gonna say, no way. Why would I wanna worship false gods?

Get outta here. That's not gonna work, right? But let's say a beautiful woman approaches him and says, hey, come with me to a feast at my temple and I'll sort of make it worth your while.

Wink, wink. All of a sudden, now you understand there's a temptation there, right?

Especially if you consider who's being led astray. These are probably young Israelite men, single men, many of them.

They're in the wilderness. They're not having any fun in the wilderness. They're eating manna every day. And here these women come along and try to get them to go to this feast and all the rest of it.

You can at least understand why they're tempted to go. It seems like they're more than happy to go along with it.

Why? Because they're already in a weakened spiritual condition. And when people are in a weakened spiritual condition, they tend to do things they normally wouldn't be inclined to do.

So not only was there this physical harlotry with the women of Moab, this is also spiritual harlotry from the men of Israel.

Why is it spiritual harlotry? Or explain that. What does that mean? They're trying to get back on God and worshiping a strange

God. Right. Yeah, so they're in covenant with the Lord.

Jehovah is Israel's God, but they're playing the harlot. That's the common

Old Testament illustration. They're playing the harlot by joining themselves to this false

God, Baal of Peor. And of course, God is going to punish them for this.

So what would be... I always try to think about the modern day application or trying to take some

Old Testament story that might be hard to relate to and try to bring it in to our modern context.

I think this type of thing is very common. Not the exact same thing, but evangelicals today, there'd be many

Bible -believing Christians who would never convert to another religion all on their own.

They would just not make that decision to do that. However, if they meet somebody, if they start dating somebody who's of another religion, all of a sudden, these two religions don't seem all that different anymore.

Right. Some of those convictions start to kind of trickle away. I'm sure there's a lot of men in Bible college right now that would never in a million years convert to Mormonism.

But if they met a young, beautiful Mormon girl who's from a wealthy family and she's interested, all of a sudden, the

Mormon Jesus doesn't seem all that different from the Jesus of Christianity. Like we understand this type of thing happens, right?

So, yeah, this scenario, I think, has played out time and time again.

Jim. I think another application is very similar to that, but people that might be in a weakened state as believers, maybe because of something that has happened in their life and they haven't been able to express it in any way, and they run into somebody that says, look, come with me, come to my church, you're gonna love it there.

We've got music, we've got all these things that are gonna heighten that person and take them out of their misery.

Yep. And that's an enticement. And it isn't very long because that music just kind of energizes the soul and the mind.

And before you know it, that person is saying, you know what, that guy preaches a pretty good message.

You know, and he sounds almost like my pastor. I met some people, you know, and so on and so on and so on.

And that's how it sometimes is. So you're saying people are seduced through music sometimes.

Yeah, exactly, because music is a medium that can affect people emotionally. Yeah, no, that's true.

I told the story of when I was listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, when they sang,

Come Thou Fount, and I'm listening to the, I mean, yeah, it's very attractive. But you kind of know in your mind, no, that's not right, because that's

Mormonism. But you're right, yeah, music does seduce people. A lot of people make a decision based on what church am

I gonna go to, based on the music. That's not what you wanna base it on.

You wanna base it on the truth. You wanna base it on the true gospel, obviously.

But, so that's what's happening here. They're being seduced, basically, by this physical relationship, and people are still seduced through that.

But just relationships in general. I think of how many churches have lost people over the years.

Maybe you think of 20 years ago, churches have lost people who 20 years ago would never have supported gay marriage or any of the stuff that's going on now.

But in 2022, a daughter comes home from college, a son comes out of the closet, a grandson comes out of the closet.

Whatever happens, next thing you know, out comes the rainbow flag. And their convictions, the things they believed before, because of this relationship, it's compromised.

That's usually what leads people astray. Not reading the

Bible and changing your mind based on the text. It's your affections for other people that lead you away from God.

And really, it's just a different form of idolatry. So, you know,

I bring up these examples because sometimes it's hard for us to read about the actions of the children of Israel.

And we look at what they're doing, and it's so clear to us, it's wrong. Why are you doing this?

How can you worship Baal of Peor? And it's hard to relate to, it's hard to understand.

But again, there's people who still do this type of thing, just with different details.

So - I think they had a full stomach, too. Yeah, well, I mean, that was part of it. They ate with them.

Right. Yeah, if you're eating bread every day and someone invites you to a barbecue, that sounds good.

Right, because if we look at the Bible as, okay, here's a story of people thousands of years ago who did something wrong and God punished them.

I mean, why should we care? Like, this is how people think. What relevance does this have to my life?

But all of a sudden, you bring it into the modern day and give some examples like that. It's like, we all know somebody who's done that, right?

Yeah. Okay, so they have fallen away into idolatry.

Verse three, and it says, so Israel was joined to Baal of Peor in the anger of the

Lord was aroused against Israel. So the Israelites, again, are in covenant with the

Lord, but they had joined themselves by worshiping a false god.

They have joined themselves in a covenant, really, with Baal. All right, so we have to understand this about us and the people we know and care about.

We are in covenant with the Lord too. Israel was in covenant with God, that's a different covenant, but we also are in covenant with the

Lord. Our children, our friends, fellow church members who have been baptized into Christ, all who know

Christ, we are baptized into the covenant spiritually, right? So we are in covenant with God, amen?

Amen. Okay, so if we are led astray, it's a very similar, very similar thing.

People today are not bowing down before graven images typically, but there are other types of idols.

As we've talked about a million times, anything you put over and above God, anything that becomes more important to you than your relationship with God is an idol.

So Israel's joined to Baal. Okay, what do we know about Baal? Is there only one

Baal? Or there - No, depending on the nationality of the country that Baal was worshiped.

Right, so Baal was a false god of the Canaanites. Baal actually means Lord. So the word

Baal means Lord. You remember Paul told the Corinthians that there are many lords.

Now there's really only one true God, but there are many false gods, many lords. So each region, you know, there is a

Baal for this region, a Baal for this region, another Baal for this region. There are all these different lords or all these different Baals.

So what's another word for this? We think of, there's polytheism, which is the worship of many gods.

But then henotheism is the word for, okay, we believe in one God, but it's the God of our region.

And then there's a different God up here. The Israelites were what? What's the word for the

Israelites and for us? Monotheistic. Right. So Israel, they were monotheists, or at least they were supposed to be, right?

Because this plays out throughout their history. But that idea of one true

God, one God of the entire creation, this was actually a very rare thing in those days.

For some people, it was almost unheard of. So for the Israelites to worship just one true

God, who is the creator of heaven and earth, again, very, very rare, but each region, each nationality had their own

Baal. And Baal had a consort. What's another word for a consort? Partner.

Partner, a wife. Yeah, yeah. Baal actually, it was believed, had a wife or a consort.

And who was Baal's wife? Asherah. Asherah, right. Yeah, you're on the right track.

So there's Baal and Asherah. And this is a hallmark of pagan religion where there's a male deity and a female deity.

And I've talked many times how Roman Catholicism is a blending of biblical

Christianity with paganism. And you know, in Roman Catholicism, what do they have?

They have the worship of God and Jesus, but who else is right up there?

Mary. Mary, right. That's what pagan religions do. There's a male deity and a female deity.

Although in fairness, they would say they don't recognize her as a deity, but if you look at their veneration of her, it's hard to see a difference between their veneration and worship.

All right, any questions so far? Okay. So it was

God's plan to completely eradicate the worship of all false gods from Israel.

See, this whole plot of land, God wanted it all. And actually the whole world,

God wants it all and he's gonna get it. But that's what God's will was to eradicate false gods from Israel.

Why? Because he knew that if it didn't happen, people would continually be led astray into these false systems, which promoted, as we're seeing here, promoted fornication, prostitution, some of the more extreme pagan religions, child sacrifice.

And you cannot have a blessed and stable society when these behaviors are commonplace.

And I would argue that's one of the reasons why we see our country starting to crumble is we don't have this stable society with the family and the home because all these things are just normal.

Abortion. Sure. Yeah, you could just go down the list. They don't even use the word prostitution anymore.

Now they're called what? Sex workers. That's the new term to kind of take away the stigma.

So the same, again, same things that are going on here are happening right now in the

United States. And a lot of people aren't even aware of it that this stuff is being legalized because they don't talk about it.

God has a zero tolerance policy. Right?

Yeah. You know, we think on the New Testament, there's grace and there's always grace for people who humble themselves and repent and come to the

Lord. But here in the Old Testament, this is a nation that is a theocracy.

God rules in Israel. There is zero tolerance. And just reading Numbers chapter 25,

I mean, it's clear. The leaders, Moses and Phineas, they're just not putting up with this at all.

Yeah, look at verse four. Then the Lord said to Moses, take all the leaders of the people and do what?

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 are joined to Baal of Peor.

I think a lot of modern readers look at this and, oh, isn't this terrible? Because this is just not something that you see, right?

Today, if someone worships a false God or there's all sorts of, well, it's normal, right?

God didn't want it. He didn't want it normal in Israel. And he doesn't want it normal now.

If you look at it in that context, yes, people would say that because that would be the natural reaction.

But the error is that they don't know God. They don't know his righteousness, his justice.

And so, yeah, they would condemn that. I'm thinking a little of God that kills people. Well, that's the thing.

You read these stories and they're kind of gruesome, right? And then you hear the sound effects with the

Bible reading, which doesn't help that, I guess. But remember what

God did. He drowned the entire world in the flood. I mean, this is just a little blip.

The flood, he killed everybody on earth. And again, the common response, oh, that's terrible.

I wouldn't wanna worship a God like that. And people don't. But this is the only

God that there is. And the fact that he hasn't judged the world again, right now, in that same way, just shows how gracious he is.

And he gives people time because he does love people. And he gives people time to repent.

That's why I think that when Christ comes back, before anything he's saying, he's gonna say, enough.

Yeah. Enough. Yeah. Yeah. So this is swift action.

It's done openly. It's all in public. And it's meant to send a message, right?

And it's meant to be a deterrent that people would see these people out there dead and this would send the message, okay, we don't wanna do this because that's what will happen.

So a strong message needed to be sent because look at what happens next. Starting in verse six, you have a man that walks through the camp with one of these

Midianite women and everyone knows what's going on and what they're doing. And they walk right in front of everybody.

They walk right by the tabernacle and they walk right in front of Moses.

And it's almost like, okay, here's what we're doing. What are you gonna do about it? We're gonna denounce it.

Right. Yeah, so they are flaunting it right in front of Moses.

Verse seven, it says, "'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 both of them through," which would indicate that they were on top of each other.

"'The man of Israel and the woman threw her body so the plague was stopped among the children of Israel.

And those who died in the plague were 24 ,000.'"

So Phinehas, if he didn't act, what would have taken place? He did this and the plague was stopped.

So if he didn't do this, many, many more people would have died.

And verse 11 says that because of his zeal, God's wrath was quenched, basically.

So, yes, Jim. Can we go back to verse six? I'm troubled by part of what it says here.

Okay. "'And indeed, one of the children of Israel came and presented to his brethren a

Midianite woman beside Moses and on the side of all the congregation of the children of Israel who were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of Median.'"

That phrase right there, who were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of Median, why were they weeping prior to this?

Why all of a sudden now they're starting to make, I'm not sure that it's that same answer we've had in the past about, well, now they get caught.

Now they feel bad. Now they're gonna cry about it. Sure. So why, who were, they were weeping at the door of the tabernacle.

24 ,000 reasons. You hear that? Yeah. There's 24 ,000 reasons why they're weeping.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Thank you. Yeah. And even if these people totally disagreed and were horrified by what the

Israelites did, still seeing 24 ,000 of your own countrymen die.

And at this point, you know, it still could spread. Yeah. I think there's plenty of reason to be weeping.

Anything else on that? Okay. So yeah, if Phineas didn't do anything, many more would have died.

So looking at all of this, instead of falling all over myself, trying to defend

Phineas's actions, here's the bottom line. This is a theocracy. God is giving revelation and instruction to Moses.

Phineas was not a vigilante. He was a high -ranking official and he's carrying out legal orders, right?

Because God told them to do this. So was God pleased with Phineas or displeased?

Phineas, I can't believe you acted so rashly. He appreciated his deal. Right. I appreciate it.

Couldn't have played you to stop. Yeah. At least won't terrorize you. Glad somebody stepped up.

Yeah. Yeah, Phineas is actually showing zeal. He's doing what

God said. I'm sure there's a lot of people who are a little hesitant about it. So there's probably a couple million

Israelites we've, you know, speculated. And is there 2 million, 2 1⁄2 million, maybe 3 million

Israelites in the wilderness? They're people just like anybody else. I'm sure the normal sinful things were happening weekly or daily.

Moses is not some bloodthirsty tyrant who's just looking to crack down on anyone who steps out of line.

All of these things that we're reading about like Korah and his rebellion, what's happening here, these are high -handed acts of rebellion.

You could view it as treason, really. So Korah, you know, he tried staging a coup.

And for all practical purposes, this man basically by walking by the tabernacle with this

Midianite woman, he's basically spitting in Moses' face. Which means he's -

In the Lord's face. What? In the Lord's face. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was gonna say. He's spitting in Moses' face basically, which is not any different than spitting in God's face.

Or he's making a statement that, I don't stand with the Lord. I stand with the Midianites.

I'm on their side, or I stand with Baal. So this is a nation. These can be seen as treasonous acts.

Now today, acts of treason happen all the time. And you read about it on the news and different levels of treason, obviously, but people get away with it.

And it doesn't seem to be such a big thing because historically we've seen our nation is stable and people aren't as worried about it.

But especially when you have a newly formed government, acts of treason are dealt with like this.

And if you think about it, they've only been a nation for how long? 38 years.

Yep, 38 years. And there's been a lot of coup attempts. There's been several attempts to take

Moses out. So if you look at it that way, then yeah.

I mean, this is just standard practice. So who is Phineas? He's the hero of the story.

Who is he or what's his position? Aaron's grandson. Aaron's grandson.

And Aaron was the first high priest. Remember a few chapters ago, we talked about Aaron's death.

So who's the high priest now? Eleazar. So Phineas is the son of the high priest, which means once Eleazar is gone,

Phineas would be essentially the number two leader. This isn't what he's called, but you could almost view him as someone who would be like the vice president.

He'll be right up there at the top. So yeah, he's the grandson of Aaron and the future high priest.

So he's the hero of the story. An example is made out of the idolaters. The Lord is very pleased with Phineas so much that he makes a covenant.

When we talk about the Old Testament covenants, what are the covenants that usually come to mind?

What's the first covenant you read about in the Bible? With dad and me.

Who? All right, well, that's fair. When's the first time you read the word covenant?

Yeah. With Noah, right? There's a covenant with Noah. There's a covenant with Abraham.

There's the covenant with the children of Israel through Moses. There's the Davidic covenant. The new covenant is mentioned in Jeremiah chapter 31.

This is a covenant that usually almost gets no attention, that God makes a covenant with Phineas because he killed two people with a javelin.

I've never heard a sermon on this topic. But look at verse 12. He says, therefore say, behold,

I give him my covenant of peace. That's an interesting way to put it, considering everything.

Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, 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.

So this is the priestly covenant. Because of Phineas' zeal for God, an everlasting covenant was made with him basically that through his line would come.

This is what Pastor John MacArthur says about this. Because of Phineas' zeal for God's holiness, the

Lord made a covenant with him so that through his family line would come all future legitimate high priests.

So Phineas would be the high priest and all the legitimate high priests would now come from him.

Now there's a little wrinkle in this story going forward.

Who knows what it is? Now it's true, this does come to pass, but who wants to take a stab at this?

What's the potential problem? Is that true? Or do all future high priests come from Phineas?

No, no. Is Christ in the line of Phineas? Well, you remember

Jesus has a different priesthood. Jesus is of the order of Melchizedek.

So Christ's priesthood is different. But the Levitical priesthood, here's what ends up happening.

During the reign of David and Solomon, there were two priests who ministered.

Who remembers the two priests from those days? Nathan. No, Nathan was the prophet, but there was a

Bithar and Zadok, remember? And which one was legitimate?

There's not supposed to be two. There's supposed to be one, but somehow there ended up being two. Who was from the line of Phineas?

I mean, we're really going deep. If you know these, if you know this, I'm impressed. They all go back to Levi.

They all go back to Levi. They all go back to Aaron, that's true. But after David's death, a

Bithar sided with Adonijah. If you remember, Solomon was supposed to be king and his brother tried to pull off, here's another coup attempt.

So a Bithar was deposed because he tried to raise

Adonijah to the throne when God wanted Solomon on the throne. So Solomon deposed a

Bithar and restored the priesthood to Zadok. And Zadok was a descendant of Phineas.

So if you know that story in Israel's history, this covenant is fulfilled and the

Lord's words come to pass. Okay, chapter 25 closes with the

Lord telling Israel to attack Midian, or he says to harass

Midian. Do they deserve it? Absolutely, yes, they do.

So the Lord tells them, attack Midian because of this thing that they did with this scheme between Balaam and Balak that led the

Israelites astray. So what's the takeaway? If you have any spiritual principles or anything that you take away from this,

I'm interested to hear it. But here's my takeaway. Just as Israel was in covenant with God, again, so are we.

So are all church members. We are in covenant with God through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

So when we do see somebody straying from God, we should have zeal for the

Lord. When we see someone in covenant with God starting to dabble with another religion or just departing from the faith, we should have zeal and we should want to bring them back before they join themselves to some false religion or false ideology.

So in conclusion, to quote from 1 Corinthians 10, 11, where the apostle

Paul speaks of Israel in the wilderness, he says, all of these things happen to them as examples for us.

They're written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come.