The plot of Balaam & Balak to seduce Israel

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.

If you'd like more information, visit our website, morsecornerchurch .com. We hope you enjoy the message. Turn in your Bibles to the book of Numbers, chapter 25. Numbers 25, and the title of this message is The Javelin of Phinehas.

Phinehas and the Plague at Baal of Peor

The Javelin of Phinehas. A lot of people have heard of the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. Not as many people have heard of the javelin of Phinehas. Some of you didn't even know that Phinehas had a javelin.

I'm pretty sure you've never heard a sermon on this subject. This is something that's almost certainly left out of the Sunday school curriculum, maybe for good reason. But who was Phinehas? Phinehas was the grandson of Aaron, the high priest.

And Aaron, of course, was the brother of Moses. And Phinehas became something like a national hero in Israel. Because a plague broke out because of Israel's rebellion against God and worshiping the false god, Baal.

A plague broke out, and because Phinehas took a stand against evil, he saved many lives in Israel. So let's begin reading Numbers chapter 25, starting in verse 1. Now Israel remained in Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab.

And 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 are 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.

So you see, they're doing this right in front of Moses, right in plain view of the tabernacle. Verse 7,. 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, 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. Would have been a lot more if Phinehas didn't do this. Now is the Lord pleased with Phinehas? Look at verse 10,.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, 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 say, 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.

And may God add a blessing to the reading of his words. So was God well pleased with Phinehas? Yes, yes he was. So just a little background to this story and what's going on. So there's this man, Balak.

Balak was the king of the land of Moab. So Balak, king of the Moabites, he is living in fear of the children of Israel. He has heard how they defeated the most powerful empire on earth, Egypt, and he's worried that he's next.

He's worried for his land, Moab. So he's fearing the children of Israel. So he hires this false prophet, Balaam, who's heard of Balaam. He hires this soothsayer or false prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites.

But because you can't curse what God has blessed, every time Balaam opens his mouth to utter a curse upon Israel, what comes out? A blessing comes out. So if you know the story, this keeps happening. And because Balaam could not curse Israel, because if they're cursed, then they're weakened and then they're not as big of a threat.

So that's why Balak wanted this to happen. So because it's not working out, Balaam takes a different approach. Based on Numbers chapter 31, Balaam counseled Balak, the king, to use the Moabite women to seduce the children of Israel.

So this is plan B. Use the women to seduce the men of Israel, to tempt them into worshiping false gods, Baal. And when they did that, and when they committed sexual immorality with the Moabite women and worshiped these false gods, then that would provoke the anger of the Lord.

So Balaam couldn't curse them directly, so they devised this scheme that they'd be cursed that way. Sort of the backdoor way of cursing them. So that's the plan, and to a certain degree, the plan works.

You have to understand the children of Israel and where they are in their history. They had been wandering in the wilderness at this point for about 38 years. They are sick and tired. They are spiritually weak.

They've been wandering in the wilderness, and what have they been eating every single day? Manna. Right, the bread from heaven. So when they get up in the morning, they have manna for breakfast. When they have lunch, they have manna for lunch.

They're bread. They're eating bread for lunch. When they have dinner, they have manna for dinner. When they want a snack, they eat manna. Basically, they're living off of bread and water. Now, after 38 years of eating bread and water, you'd be pretty sick of that, I think.

So when these women of Moab show up, they're looking good to the Israelite men, I'm sure. When they show up and invite them to basically a barbecue, that's a pretty strong temptation, and they're offering them other pleasures.

So the men of Israel, some of them at least, they jump at this opportunity. But of course, there's a condition. This is what it's all about. Yes, you can come and feast and indulge in other things, but you have to bow down to this idol.

You have to bow down to Baal of Peor. Baal was the false god that the Moabites were worshiping at the time. So Israel is camped in the land of Moab in Acacia Grove. This is in the northern plains of Moab.

We don't have a map to look at it. You can check the back of your Bibles. Usually, they have a map. But again, Balak, king of the Moabites, he receives this counsel. This was all cooked up by the false prophet Balaam to have the men of Israel trick them into, seduce them into worshiping this false god.

How do you do it? Through seduction, through seduction. Look at verse 3. So because of this, it says that Israel was joined to Baal of Peor. And the result of that, the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel.

So understand the Israelites, they're in covenant with Jehovah God. But they joined themselves willfully to this other god, Baal. So what are they doing? They're breaking the covenant. And the Lord had already told them through Moses, if you obey the covenant, you'll be blessed.

But if you disobey the covenant, you will be cursed. So they joined themselves together, breaking the covenant with God. They joined themselves to Baal of Peor. Now here's why you should care. Say, well, this happened a long time ago.

What does this have to do with us today? Here's why you should care. Because as New Testament Christians, we are in covenant with God. And there are a lot of people in covenant with God who joined themselves to other deity.

Maybe not Baal, but nobody's worshiping Baal today. But you know, people do get seduced into other belief systems. People do get seduced into worshiping other false gods. They just don't call them false gods.

They don't call them Baal. So what was happening back then, it's still happening today. There's just different details. So just as faithfulness was important here in the Old Testament, faithfulness is still important.

It's just as, if not more important today. So Israel was joined to who? What's the deity? Baal of Peor. So Baal was a false god of the Canaanites. Baal, the name Baal or the word Baal, it can either be translated as Lord because they look to him as their Lord, but another name for Baal, it basically means possessor or owner.

So when you yoked yourself to Baal, he controlled you. And there's probably stories that we could look at where people were demonically possessed because they joined themselves to a false god. But that's what Baal means, either Lord or possessor or owner.

So they joined themselves to Baal. Each region back then had their own deity. The term for this is henotheism. So this is your vocab word for the day, henotheism. It's not the worship of chickens, okay?

What is henotheism? This is probably a new term for some of you. I think we've all heard of polytheism. Polytheism is the worship of many gods. Henotheism is when they worship one god, but they recognize that many, many gods exist.

So they recognize other gods, but they really only worshiped one. So there's polytheism, there's henotheism. But what were the Israelites supposed to be? They were supposed to be monotheists. So they only worshiped one god, Jehovah, and they only recognized that one god existed.

So the Lord, or Jehovah, was the one true god. There are no other gods. This is what the Israelites believed, or it's what they were supposed to believe. But like I said, in this case, each tribe or each nation had their own deity.

This was very common in pagan religions, that each had their own deity, and then there would sometimes be a female deity. And studying this, maybe you've come across this before, Baal was the male deity.

Who was the female deity? Well, there was a female deity the pagans would worship, and her name was Asherah. So there's Baal, the possessor, the owner, and then his consort, or his wife, was named Asherah.

And of course, there was sexual immorality involved in the worship of Asherah. So you have Baal and Asherah. And this is common within pagan religions, that there is both a male deity to worship and a female deity to worship.

We see this even within Roman Catholicism, which if you understand Roman Catholicism, you will know it is a mixture of Christianity. They have a lot of truth. But it's a mixture of Christianity with pagan religion.

That's why they have the male, you can worship Jesus, but you can also venerate who? Mary. So they have their male deity and their female figure that you can bow and venerate her as well. This is not what God wants.

All the way from the beginning, God, the scripture says, is a jealous God. God wants to be worshiped, him and him alone. So when God sees his own covenant people bowing down to this Baal of Peor, this makes the Lord very angry.

And by the way, God has not changed on this. If we serve Mary or the saints or any other deity, any other idol, this makes God angry. And I think we see this here with the plague in Numbers chapter 25.

So this was the plan of the Lord, giving these instructions to Moses to completely eradicate the worship of false gods from the land of Canaan. This is what God wanted, to drive out all the idolaters from Israel.

Because God knew if that didn't happen, if you allow these people to stay and if you allow their false worship and if you allow their idols, God knew that his own people would continually fall back into the worship of these idols.

And that's exactly what happened throughout their history. And God knows that you can't have a blessed and stable society when there's all these other false practices going on. Because with the worship of Baal and the worship of Asherah, these false systems of idolatrous religion included fornication, adultery, and even child sacrifice.

And God knows a nation cannot be blessed when those things are commonplace. 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, with the grace of God be with you.