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Well this morning is going to be an exciting morning. We are going to cover 23 verses in the
Bible. Do you believe it? Over the course of 6 months we will cover 23 verses.
Open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 8. We're going to look at one verse in the New Testament. 18 out of Torah are numbers.
Numbers in the Torah and the instruction and then 4 in the
Psalms. So 1 Corinthians chapter 10, but it's so packed full of information we'll be going back to the
Old Testament. 1 Corinthians chapter 10, let me read you the verse and then we'll talk about the subject at hand.
And catch you up to the context specifically. Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 8.
We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did and 23 ,000 fell in a single day.
We live in a society today that is sex saturated. Sinful illicit sex is promoted in every way, shape and form.
I think our culture is popularized by infidelity.
Society bombards us with sexual sin 24 hours a day.
Quite some time ago physicians Wood and Dietrich wrote a book called The AIDS Epidemic and they said this.
A society spends the most time and energy once the basics of life are satisfied on what it deems most important.
In ancient Hebrew and American Puritan writings, one can hardly read a single paragraph without encountering a reference to God Almighty.
What items have replaced God in our communication media? Sex, money and self -love satisfy the time and energy requirements for what is sacred in our culture.
These are the gods of the new age. It's a crazy world and everybody here knows that.
Often our society acts like Judah. God says of Judah in Jeremiah 5,
What do we do? The world influences the church and then how do we stem the tide?
After all, really how bad is sexual sin? And if we're not careful we can buy into tolerance, acceptance, forgetting what
God says about sex. Isn't it fascinating when you study 1
Corinthians? There's a lot of information in here about sexual immorality and sexual purity.
There's a culture at Corinth that spilled into the church and sexual sin was everywhere.
And now I thought it was enough that Paul addressed it in chapter 5 and in chapter 6 and in chapter 7.
And now he addresses it in chapter 10 as well. Sexual purity. An easy sin for Christians to fall into is sexual immorality.
Because if you're not thinking properly, you'll say to yourself, I've been justified by faith in Christ Jesus.
I cannot be more justified. I cannot be less justified. I cannot be more forgiven.
I cannot be less forgiven. I cannot be more regenerated. I cannot be less regenerated.
And if I sin sexually, it's already covered. Because when God forgave me because Christ's death was so great,
He forgave me past, present, and future sins. And for the people that like to come to the edge of liberty, they fall into certain sins.
People that like to push the limit and say, I'm free in Christ, come what may, they run up and like lemmings that run off the cliff, they fall into sexual immorality, they fall into idolatry.
And Paul says, be careful. Of course you are justified by faith alone. And of course you are free in Christ.
But you're never free to push the limits and sin. So Paul says in 1
Corinthians chapter 10, lots of people were blessed in terms of the Israelites, but they didn't all make it.
And so he says in chapter 10, 1 to 5, all, all, all, all, they were all blessed, yet only some of them made it.
And then he gives four exhortations for those who like to push their liberties. We saw two weeks ago, number one, don't be idolaters.
And you can see it right there in 6 and 7. Remember chapter 10, verse 6? Now these things about the
Israelites, concerning the Israelites took place as an example for us. A bad example, a tragic example, that we might not desire evil as they did.
What would be some of the evil that they desired? One, do not be idolaters as some of them were.
As it is written, Exodus 32, the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play.
And now Paul gives the second exhortation. He tells them the second thing that you can fall prey to as Christians.
Everyone here could fall prey to this very issue. Whether it's with only your mind, our mind and body, you can fall prey to sexual immorality.
And God wants chastity. God wants purity. God is a
God who, of course, has designed sex. And He's not some Victorian prude. But He has a context for sexual relations.
That is in the marriage bed. And so here's what Paul does. And he talks in a way that Christians sometimes don't like.
Here's how Paul talks. I'll just make it as blunt as possible since I think Paul is fairly blunt here.
If you are a Christian and you entertain in sexual sin, God might kill you.
That's a sermon. In other words, sexual sin is a very, very big deal.
Pornography is a very, very grievous sin. Mental adultery, mental fornication is very, very serious.
How serious? Can you imagine? For sex, God killed 23 ,000 people in a day.
But I thought if you're not hurting everybody, anyone, it's fine. I thought if you both love each other, it's fine.
Think about what the world says. Go for it. Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food, right?
You're hungry? Eat. You've got a desire for sex? Go for it. And in the context of marriage,
God is, again, Song of Solomon, 1 Corinthians 7. Enjoy. Eat, drink, and be merry, as it were.
The Christian sex ethic is not, no. But the Christian sex ethic is only in marriage.
And those who entertain these ideas and then actually do it,
God says it's a very, very big deal. And look there again at the text, verse 8. And 23 ,000 fell in a single day.
Remember verse 6? These things are given as an example for us that we might not desire these evil things.
Now, I said I was going to do 23 verses today. That's just one verse here in 1 Corinthians. But what's loaded in?
This is like some kind of zip drive just filled full of all kinds of information.
What is Paul quoting? What account is he referring to? What is he alluding to?
What's going on in the background when you're thinking about reading the New Testament? We've got 70 % of the Bible as Old Testament.
He's referring to something that happened in the Old Testament. And by the way, no one here is going to sleep when we go through this next chapter.
It is amazing. It is one of these chapters where you read it and you almost want to say, I almost wish that wasn't in the
Bible. Because it is stark. It is sharp.
And it's a good lesson for all of us. Let's turn to Numbers chapter 25. Numbers chapter 25.
This is the passage which Paul is referring to in 1 Corinthians 10. And it's hard to understand 10 .8
unless you get numbers down. And this will help you when you think of purity and desiring that you would live a life commensurate with your calling.
If God has called us as a faithful God, we want to respond to Christ's great love for us and His death for us and His resurrection for us with a holy life.
Since God is holy, we want to be holy. And the world is going to say you're missing out if you don't indulge and engage.
And God is going to say you are going to be missing out if you don't indulge and engage.
You'll be missing out on assassination. How about that? You say, well, God doesn't kill every
Christian that commits sin, sexual sin. Does He? No. But every sexual sin committed by a
Christian is worthy of death. God is just very generous. God is just very gracious.
But as we watch what happens in Numbers 25, we're all going to say, wow,
I hope something happens today besides learning this passage. I hope you think, I've got to start reading the Old Testament.
It reminds me of the time I was up at the Anchorage Inn up on York Beach and I was sitting in the
Jacuzzi. I think I've told you the story. And there was another young man sitting in there. And he was probably 12 or 13 or something.
He thought he was kind of a big shot. And I kind of got in the Jacuzzi and I said, hi, how are you? And he said, my dad's a policeman in Rentham.
Oh, hi. That's good. I didn't know I was doing something wrong by getting in the Jacuzzi. And I said,
Rentham? Wow, I'm the mayor of Rentham. I said, no,
I'm not really the mayor. I'm a Bible teacher. And he said, the Bible's boring. I said, really?
Yeah, that time where that guy snuck in the tent and wanted a place of, you know, shelter and he laid down his head.
And that other lady got out the tent spike and the hammer and put it up to his temple and drove it through for the glory of God.
That part, and he goes, I guess I didn't really read that part. This would be one of those other chapters when you read it and you just think, golly, wow, that's in the
Bible. Have I ever said golly? I've preached for 15 years here. Morning, noon, night,
I've never said golly. Gal darn? See, we don't say darn in our house.
Paul's quoting numbers, and when we read in our mind numbers, the book Numbers, it's where we get the word arithmetic, arithmetoi.
And the Hebrew, though, it doesn't call it Numbers. It talks about in the wilderness because that's really the key for the book of Numbers.
If you'd like to understand Numbers, you can say to yourself, there's a lot of numbering, chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, et cetera.
It's all talking about numbers and all the numbers in Numbers. That's true. But 48 times something else is going on, and it's the word closely translated as wilderness.
It's about the wilderness. What happened to Israel in the wilderness? The fifth word of the
Hebrew text of Numbers 1 -1 is in the wilderness. And so it's what's going on in the wilderness.
And here we come to chapter 25, Israel's final rebellion. And Paul is going to use this as a lesson.
Read the Old Testament so you learn these lessons. Chapter 22, 23, 24,
Balaam, Balak, we think that they're kind of in the rearview mirror. He tried to get him to curse
Israel, but didn't, and God discombobulated the whole thing, and he couldn't curse, and we're hoping that's all behind us.
But there's more than one way to skin a cat for false teachers. They're going to try to get
Israel to sin sexually, and then God will judge them that way.
If you want God, if you want to get rid of a people and you can't get rid of a people, then let's get them sinning against their
God, and then God will get rid of their people, get rid of His people. This chapter, chapter 25, doesn't have anything to do with Balaam in terms of the exact word in Numbers 25, but let me just read you
Numbers 31, just for a second, one verse. Behold, these, on Balaam's advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the
Lord in the incident of Peor. And so the plague came on the congregation of the
Lord. So here's what's happening, 22 through 24, Balaam, Balak, trying to get rid of Israel, didn't seem to work, but there's another way to infiltrate the believing people, the nation of Israel.
How do you, how would Satan say, you know, how can we get into the minds of these people to disobey
God? How could we get, let's use today's terminology, how could we get a Christian to sin? They seem to be doing so well in every other area, and I'll tell you the area that Satan uses, and it's sex.
I don't, I used to keep a file, I try not to keep it anymore, of pastors that have fallen to sexual sin.
And if I use that for pastors, I'm sure the file would be much bigger for congregants who fall to sexual sin.
Seemingly everything else is right, but then when it comes to sexuality, and it comes to sexual sin and engagement, they lose control, and God says it's a very big deal.
No matter what the world says, it's okay, enjoy it, the media is pushing it down our throats.
And God says, you know what, sexual sin is a sin against God. Watch what happens to Israel.
They're so close to the promised land. We would say they're so close you could taste it. They've waited, they've waited, and they're so close, and now, chapter 25, verse 1.
And as I'm going through this, by the way, I do want to say this is a good case study in how quickly sin can happen, how sin spreads so quickly, how bad sexual sin is, and how many people are affected by it.
It's just this Mach 4 acceleration of sexual sin, they just go headlong. You've met people probably like this, they just lose their mind when it comes to this issue.
Chapter 25, verse 1. Starting off with defiling language, putrid language.
This is the kind of language that it just reeks as you read it.
You go out of town for two weeks and you've forgotten to dump the trash. And you've put a bunch of Sloppy Joe meat in the trash can and you forgot to dump it, and you open it up and you smell that.
Just how rancid, how gross. Sloppy Joe stuff is gross anywhere, anyway.
And you just go, oh, it's just the odor. I'm telling you, this passage has an odor. It just is, it's vile and it's supposed to be.
It talks about things that you just think, you know what? By the way, I would never have thought I would talk about this in public in my entire life.
But it's in the Bible, so we preach right through it. And you don't understand 1 Corinthians 10 unless you get Numbers 25 right.
While Israel lived in Shittim, or the Asiagrove, the people began to whore.
By the way, whore is usually used of a female. Here it's used of the people, the men.
They began to whore with the daughters of, of all people, Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods.
And then with language that you remember from Exodus 32. And the people ate, and the people bowed down to their
God. Who, who is the people? The Israelites. The Moabites seduce and the people, the
Israelites, eat and they bow down. So think, Israel, Corinth, get together to worship the idols, go have sex as worship.
That happened both back in those days with the bales, right here.
Let's have our feast, and then you have communion, except communion is fornication.
That's exactly what happens at Corinth. Let's get together back in those days, let's have a wonderful feast in front of all these false gods.
And then the communion is not bread and juice, communion is a whore. Now, who can come up with such a thing that communion with God is sexual immorality with a prostitute?
Now just how sick is that? Something that's supposed to be reserved for the marriage bed as pure and holy.
Something to be thankful for, now it's whoredom. What kind of language began to whore themselves with the daughters of Moab?
This is the action of men. This is harlot language.
Pagan religions of the day, eat, prostitution, later. Matter of fact, remember if you have thought about Corinth or remember what
I've said or you've been there, there's that big hill at Corinth and a thousand priestess come down from that top of the mountain every day at night time for worship.
The act of worship is perverted sex. The sex god is alive and well.
Now God had been clear to Israel. Let me just read you a little bit of Leviticus.
The Lord spoke to Moses saying, Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God. As they do in the land of Egypt in which you have been living, you must not do.
As they do in the land of Canaan into which I'm about to bring you, you must not do. So the way they do their sexual perversions in Egypt or in Canaan, don't do what they do.
Do not walk in their statutes. You must observe my regulations and you must be sure to walk in my statutes.
I am the Lord your God. Do not defile yourselves with any of these things for the nations which
I'm about to drive out before you have defiled with all these things. The land has become unclean and I have brought the punishment for its iniquity on it.
Do not let the land vomit you out because you defile it just as it has vomited out the nation which was before you.
I am the Lord your God. How can I get a curse on these people?
You know what, I'm going to tell this prophet to curse them. The curse came out of the prophet's mouth as a blessing, chapter 22, chapter 23, chapter 24.
So let's get the Israelites by bringing in the prostitutes, bringing in the women and let's get them to fall that way.
They invited people to the sacrifices, chapter 25, verse 2, of their gods and the people ate and bowed down.
A far cry from, you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not bow down to them or serve them,
Exodus 20. Now it's interesting, I want you to think through this.
The language is pretty cloaked, both in 1 Corinthians and in Numbers. Why? Why isn't there all kinds of lurid, intimate details like a
Mark Driscoll book? Answer, because they knew when they read this exactly what was going on and number two, more importantly.
The scripture cloaks language in such a way that when you see it, you don't want to say, great,
I want to do it. You can listen to someone or watch something go on that's lurid and salacious and be tempted and drawn into it if you're not careful.
Because it's so graphic, it's so clear, it's so descriptive. But you know, the scriptures don't do that.
It's given to us in such a way that when you read it, you don't say, I want to embrace it. You say, you know what, like charcoal's on my lap, hot charcoal,
I want to get rid of it. You see the evil, you don't get enticed into it.
The poison multiplies, the virus spreads, verse three. This language is crazy.
So Israel, in every way, shape and form, yoked himself to this false god,
Baal of Peor. And the anger of the
Lord, Yahweh, was kindled against Israel. That's very powerful.
God became enraged. They bound themselves with body and with worship and God, literally the
Hebrew is, got a red nose. Language that helps us,
God doesn't have a nose that's red. But if you describe a man as angry, then you can understand, that's a good way to understand
God, anthropomorphically. Well here, it's not even like a man, it's like empathy.
This is, here's your free word of the day. This is anthropopathic language. Woodward's looking at me like, what?
It's like anthropomorphic, except it's anthropopathic. Empathy, it's talking about emotions.
The emotions a man would have, mad. There's his wife there with another man and he's enraged and he's angry.
That's exactly what's happening here. The wrath of God. And do you know what's interesting?
Yahweh was enraged against the Moabites. What does that say?
He was angry at Israel, his people. The Moabites, they'll get theirs later.
But here, they're coupling themselves with the false god. They're succumbing to these enticements.
People risk everything for five minutes of pleasure. They do it as Christians.
They risk it all for a bed of fornication. This is not just for Israel.
Paul is writing to the church of Corinth. You know what? Better be careful because this world will allure you into sexual temptation.
And unless you're with your wife, then what you do with another person is an obscenity.
What you do with another person is vile. And you can talk about love, and you can talk about tolerance, and you can talk about acceptance.
No one's getting hurt, and God says it's carnal and it makes him angry.
I don't know how far I should push this, but I guess I can say this. When worship centers become brothels, something's wrong.
And back in those days, the religion of the day was, let's get together for a pot providence, and then let's go to the back of the building, to the tent where the brothel is, to continue the worship service.
It's a madhouse. For Israel, it was a breach of the covenant that God had made with Israel.
And now we're going to see God dealing with sin promptly and mercifully.
Promptly and mercifully. Mercifully because if God doesn't excise this cancer, it's going to be bad.
If only we would deal with sin in our own life and in the church like this. Figuratively.
Verse 4. And Yahweh, the personal covenant -keeping name of God, Lord, said to Moses, let's have a discussion.
Let's have a dialogue. Let's bring in some of the leaders of this side and some of the leaders of this side, and we'll sit down at the table and we'll talk about it a little bit.
Discuss it. We'll converse. 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 Baal of Peor.
Hang them in the sun before God. Oh, it will help if they're hung before the people because they'll say, sin cost,
I better run from it. But this is before God. Hang them in the sun. Execute them publicly.
Hang them high. The reflex action of God, when the reflex hammer hits his knee, as it were, it kicks out with, put him on a gibbet.
Why? Because atonement must be made. Atonement needs to be made.
Otherwise, it's going to spread to everyone. Somebody satisfy
God's holy nature by atonement. He's holy. One of the shocking things in my life is when
I was taught this truth, that God is jealous. The second shocking thing that was taught in my life is, you ought to be jealous for God's glory.
You ought to be jealous with God's jealousy. You ought to say everyone in Scripture who is jealous with God's jealousy,
God commended. Our society says, oh, forget about it. You've got to be known for what you're for, not what you're against.
This is all this kind of nice and love and it'll all work out. Jealous for God's jealousy.
Covenant agreement has been broken. And so in the broad daylight, kill them.
Used here in Hebrew as a judicial execution. Verse 6,
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 the people of Israel, while they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of meeting.
People are dying because of a plague, because of this immorality. People are being put up on gibbets.
Some godly people are mourning, and they're sad that God has not done this to the people, but that the people have done this and deserve this from God, and they're weeping.
And behold, one of these people of Israel. Now this is going to be, by the way, really bad if it was a
Midianite man and a Midianite woman. It would be really bad if it was a Moabite man and a Moabite woman.
But this is a man from Israel and a Midianite woman. And it's not going to take much imagination to figure out what they're doing.
One commentator said, This is the most, quote, outrageous action of apostate behavior known anywhere in the
Torah. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Now what tent and where, there is some debate, but it's blatant, it's unspeakable.
While this is going on, most likely at the front of the tent of meeting, here comes an
Israelite man with a Midianite woman, and they're going to take this tent that is supposed to be for worship, and then do in that what they would do at the brothel other places.
Talk about in your face. Talk about, you know what, let's just take this woman in and engage in worship right there in front of everybody.
People are out here weeping because God's judging. People are dying. People are being gibbeted. And now we're going to have this.
And the text says, The Midianites, with a definite article, that is to say, most likely it's a person that was of prominence.
Maybe she was the high priest. But she was known, the Midianites. You wouldn't have to even say her name, the
Midianites. Very conservative commentary said,
Women priests were so very closely tied to the sexual outrages of Baal and Asheroth worship, that the very notion of a woman priest conjured up images of sexual worship.
Perhaps this is the principal reason that Israel had no women priests. Verse 7.
Here's a couple in the act. Defiling, shaming, perverting.
Will someone do something? Standing up for God and His character?
If I had another son, this is what I would name him. Except his nickname would be
Finney, and then that would conjure up other information. When Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation.
Priests don't have spears. He must have grabbed one from some soldier and took a spear in his hand. What's going on?
Here's a couple committing fornication right there. Everybody else is shocked. They don't know what's going on.
They're speechless. What do we do? How do we take care of this? They're horrified.
They're playing the whore. What do we do? Phineas is going to do something.
Now look at the language in chapter 25, verse 8. He's got the spear in his hand, and he went after the man of Israel.
See this whole covenant relationship? God's covenant people, Israel. And he went into the chamber and pierced both of them through the back, out the stomach, in the stomach, out the back.
He pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman, through her belly, through the lower region.
You're going to have some kind of sexual sin. The punishment is going to fit the crime. Phineas knew
God's law. Phineas knew God's jealousy. Thus the plague of the people of Israel was stopped.
Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were 24 ,000. 1
Corinthians says 23, 24. If you get bogged down to 23 or 24, which one rounded up, which one rounded down, which one was killed?
23 ,000 on the first day, 1 ,000 more died the day later, or however you reconcile them, you've missed the whole point of everything.
I have a question. What would the media's take on this be? What would the
New York Times say about Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the grandson of Aaron?
Phineas means dark -skinned. One lexicon says
Negro, dark. Plague is checked by piercing them through.
What would the media say? What would God say? What's the aftermath? Let's find out. Matt 25, verse 10,
And the Lord said to Moses, Kill Phineas. Is that what he said?
And the Lord said to Moses, I'm a God of love. Sinclair Ferguson is one of my favorite theologians.
And I like what he says in his Scottish way. When people say to you, We have great worship at our church.
By the way, they usually mean we have great music. It's like rock and roll, coffee house, Code Orange, you know, all this kind of stuff.
We have great worship at our church. And we know that worship is preaching and singing and giving and everything's worship, just not the singing.
But when people say to Sinclair Ferguson, Come to our church because we have great worship. Sinclair Ferguson always says,
I think I'll let God be the judge of that. We have great worship.
The Lord said to Moses, And by the way, If I could sing, here's what
I would do. If I could throw my voice, here's what I would do. I would read the next two verses, and simultaneously I would go,
Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. This is language of pomp, circumstance.
This is language of celebration. This is language of applause. For what Phineas did, we get out, this is like getting with words, the medal of valor pinned on you.
This is the ceremony of commendation. The language of applause.
And by the way, if you're standing there, and you're the dad of Phineas, or you're the grandfather, or you're related.
You ever have somebody that you know, and goes and graduates the Naval Academy, and you think, I'm a relative.
Just kind of want to stand up straight, don't you? And think, you know what? If Luke went to West Point, and graduated with honors, you can just imagine me standing there going,
I'm the dad. That's the language here.
Jealous for God's jealousy. They're going to do that in the face of God.
Phineas, the son of Eleazar. Dun, dun, dun, dun. This is it, I'm telling you.
I'm sure that's not a song, I'm just making it up, but it's good. The 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 him my covenant of peace. And it shall be to him and his descendants after him, the covenant of a perpetual priesthood.
And get ready to have your world rocked. Because he was jealous for his God, and made atonement for the people of Israel.
It's not shocking that he did this in God's eyes. It was commendable. Commendable that he would put a stop to that with a javelin.
Through the both of them. It's interesting. He made atonement.
Now, in Israel's economy, if you sinned, you'd have to die. And often you would have a sacrifice.
You would have something in place of, and you would kill an animal instead. Except the animals weren't needed here, because it was so flagrant.
So instead of an animal sacrifice for atonement, it was the two people.
They made atonement by their own lives. Just a side note.
What God says is right is right and wrong. It's a lot different than what our society says is right and wrong.
Isn't that true? Society says abortion is mother's choice. It's part of her body.
And what does God say? It's a living being. And the list goes on and on.
As long as you love each other, etc. God says, here's the realm of sexual engagement.
The marriage bed. Listen to Numbers 3.
This shouldn't shock us about Phinehas. The Lord said to Moses, saying, Bring the tribe of Levi near, and set them before Aaron the priest.
They shall keep guard over him and over the whole congregation before the tent of meeting.
As they minister at the tabernacle, they shall guard all the furnishes of the tent of meeting and keep guard over the people of Israel as they minister at the tabernacle.
And you shall give the Levites to Aaron and his son. They are wholly given to him from among the people of Israel.
You Levites, you guard the tent of meeting. Guard the people. Two people go in there and do that.
Phinehas knew exactly what to do. Sacrifice the two human offenders.
That word, by the way, atonement there in your text in Numbers 25 means to atone by offering a sacrifice. Somebody has to die.
It's not going to be an animal. It's going to be them. No animal needed. When I think of false doctrine, when you think of false doctrine, of course we want to teach sound doctrine, but we also have to refute false doctrine.
I want to be jealous for God's jealousy. Don't you? If someone says something denigrating about the
Lord Jesus Christ, is there anything in you that wants to say, for the fame of the glory of Christ Jesus, that's not true.
I will stand up against that. I will impale false doctrine. People say, well, I don't want enough of this kind of after -false doctrine.
I want to impale it by running it through with the javelin. Not the people, but the doctrine.
I want to stand up and people say, well, you know what? It's our will and Christ's death that saves.
I want to just take a javelin and impale that because it is the will of God Almighty who saves, and God alone.
I'm jealous for God's jealousy. He made atonement for the people.
And people celebrated. Now, go with me if you would to Psalm 106, and this is put in the form of a song.
And this is even going to blow your mind further because of what is said. Made atonement?
My jealousy? It even gets wilder. Psalm 106.
What does the psalmist have to say in a fascinating way about this account? Psalm 106.
And then we'll go back to numbers and then finish it up. Psalm 106 verse 28.
The psalmist recounts this. And you're going to kind of... You'll hear the same language.
You'll get it. But there's some new stuff here. Then they yoked themselves to the veil of Peor and ate sacrifices offered to the dead.
Psalm 106 verse 29. They provoked the Lord to anger with their deeds and a plague broke out among them.
And Phinehas stood up. By the way, that means to stand up as a mediator.
He's going to be the mediator. He's going to stand in between the wrath of God and the people.
This is not just like I'm standing up now. This is to stand up as mediator. The high priest, the mediator.
And he stood up and intervened and the plague was stopped. And now get ready for the head gasket to blow.
And that was counted to him as righteousness from generation to generation forever. It was counted to him as righteousness.
He made atonement by offering not the animals but the people. And what Phinehas did was counted to him, reckoned to him as righteousness.
I know we're not supposed to have heroes in the Old Testament. No hero except God. Don't dare to be a
Daniel, but I'm going to break my own rule. Be Phinehas today. He made atonement and it was credited to him as righteousness to all generations forever.
Check the plague. He interceded. He was the representative. He was the mediator. He was acting as the priest.
He was in the line of Aaron as a priest. And he did the right thing and God said, you know what, I'm going to reckon that to you as righteousness.
Sounds like with Abraham, reckoned to him as righteousness. Let's go back to Numbers chapter 25.
We need to wrap this up or I'm going to not keep my word about 23 verses. Numbers chapter 25.
Numbers 25. After the celebration and the commendation of Phinehas, after everything is made sure to be given to them as honor, him as honor and the family, now we find out what these other people's names were.
We've gone from family honor to family shame. From family glory to the name of the slain man of Israel.
Remember, he wasn't just a Moabite, a Midianite, who was killed with the Midianite woman was
Zimri. His name means my remembrance. His name means don't ever forget his name.
Ever met a man named Zimri? I doubt it. The son of Selu.
Boy, what a dishonor that would be to be the father standing next to him. Chief of a father's house belonging to the
Simunites. And the name of the Midianite woman who was killed was, could have been
Jezebel, but next to Jezebel in infamy was a lady named Cosby and her name means liar, my lie, deceiver.
The daughter of Zor, who was a tribal head of the father's house in Midian. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, harass the
Midianites and strike them down. Strike them down.
What does the rest of the text say? I should finish this off so we get the 23 verses. For they have harassed you with their wiles, with which they beguiled you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of Cosby, the daughter of the chief of Midian, their sister who was killed on the day of the plague on the account of Peor.
Okay, big picture. A, is anybody here sleeping? No? I saw one guy kind of do that about 15 minutes ago.
I'm not kidding. Paul writes to the
Corinthians and he says, you like to go do some idolatry? You say it's okay to do.
You slip into some immorality. You say it's an okay thing to do. And Paul says, like in Numbers, God judges sexual sins.
It is without question that America today is under the judgment of God.
If we keep doing all this stuff, God's going to judge us. Friends, Romans 1 is explicit. Judgment of God comes to countries like us because what we have done, and we are feeling that because God has given us over,
God has given us over, God has given us over. Not just with venereal disease, but with mental illness.
You want to know what happens when a man and a woman are together and it's not in the marriage bed?
I'll just show you the backwash of the whole thing by looking at America. And Paul says, and he includes himself in 1
Corinthians, we must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did. John the
Apostle says in Revelation 2, but I have a few things against you, Pergamum. You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught
Balak to put a stumbling block before Israel so that they might eat of the food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immoral things.
I just want to say one last thing, 1 John 2, if you'll turn there. If you are sexually pure now, by the grace of God, I want to commend you for living a life in commensuration with who you are in Christ.
And if you're sexually sinning now, calling yourself a Christian, whether it's pornography or anything else, today is the day of repentance, of forsaking.
And I want to show you how great Christ Jesus is when it comes to forgiving. And since you're still alive,
I assume He has not killed you, and now you have an opportunity to repent. What a gracious God, what a merciful
God. We need atonement. They needed atonement, and Phinehas provided it.
They needed to have righteousness credited to them. God did it. And look at how great
God's forgiveness is through Christ Jesus for every sexual sinner here. Here's the good thing.
Would you like to wear white in God's eyes, married or not married? How would you like to have God see you and see you as a virgin if you're not married?
How would you like to have God take a look at you and say, you know what, I no longer see you huddled over a computer screen in your basement at night when your wife's upstairs.
Wouldn't you like to be seen by God? Not looking at another woman with lust or another man with lust, but seen by God as pure, holy, righteous.
Seen by God as someone not defiled or defiling, but standing up for God's jealousy.
How could that be done? Even if every one of us today could live perfectly for the rest of our lives with perfect sexual purity, we still would need an atonement.
And look at how great Christ is for all sexual sinners here today. Look at how
John writes, 1 John 2, 1. My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
But if anyone does sin, and that's including sexual sin, we have an advocate.
Christians always have an advocate. They forever have an advocate. Someone to stand up in our place.
Not someone like Phineas, who's a human, but someone who has divine righteousness, because he's not just human, but he's divine.
We have an advocate with the person we need to have an advocate with, that is the Father, who gets red hot in the nose with anger for sexual sin.
How can we appease Him or satisfy Him? Oh, the Son sure can. We have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Perfectly righteous
Son of God. And do you know how much He atones for sins, verse 2? He is the propitiation.
He makes satisfaction for the wrath of God. He drinks the cup all the way down for all your sexual sins.
He's the propitiation for our sins. And not just for ours only.
Not just for the Jews. Not just for the in crowd. But also for the sins of the whole world.
How great is that? If you're a sexual sinner here today, you are seen by God based on the
Son's work, as clean and pure and white as the driven snow. That's good news for sinners.
And since that's happened to us, why would we want to return back to the vomit of sexual sin ever again?
He is the propitiation for our sins. And not only ours, but also the sins of the whole world.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank
You for how You work in people. Phineas is one of them.
I thank You that by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we can be completely forgiven for all our sins.
And we take You at Your word, that when we look to Your Son in faith, that we are cleansed, that we are clean.
And so Father, as there can be sexual sin in churches, even by forgiven people, I pray that it would be stopped.
The plague would stop. Immorality would stop. And Father, for those here today that are ensnared, enslaved, caught up in sinning as Christians, with their minds, with their bodies in front of a screen,
I pray that Your grace would be greater. I pray that You'd use Your word and change people. Father, we know with You we have an
Advocate, and His name is Jesus Christ. And what we can't do on our own,
He has done and can do. Be gracious to us in Christ Jesus' name we pray. Amen.