Episode 73: Are you Phinehas or Zimri?

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible church. We're on a rollercoaster, Edward. A rollercoaster headed toward what?

The rollercoaster of Arkansas weather. That's right. I mean, yesterday, it was almost 90 degrees in Marshall.

And I think the low tonight is like 33. That's right. So, happy February.

Yeah. 90 degrees in February. Isn't that awful? I'm sure Russ Roden was so happy. I'll tell you this, because it's a leap year,

I'm kind of thrown off. March 1st is 300 days till Christmas. But this year,

February 29th is 300 days till Christmas. Also February 29th.

February 29th. What happened? I'll test your historical knowledge. February 29th, 1640.

What happened? 1640. I don't know.

I'm thinking if it's 1640, that's a little bit, that's what, four years before they came out with the first London Baptist Confession.

That's right. So, I don't know. But you're on the right track. It does have to do with Baptist.

It's a birthday. It's a Baptist birthday, February 29th, 1640. John Bunyan.

No, close, I guess, kind of. Benjamin Keech. Oh, Benjamin Keech. Yeah.

February 29th. So, happy birthday. What would that be? 400, well, not 400, 384.

Benjamin Keech tomorrow is, well, by the time people listen to it, it's off, but 384.

His scowl looks like he's 384 years old in his pictures sometimes. Yeah.

We've got a brother in our church, and his birthday is February the 29th. And, of course, we all joke with him, you know, that he's like 11.

You know, he's 40. My wife and I joke that we, and we kind of did start dating on the 29th in 04.

So, this is what, let's see, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24. This is our fifth anniversary.

Right. Fifth anniversary and six kids. A wise man would get married on the 29th of February.

Then he'd only have an anniversary to remember once every four years. Maybe, because he could be once every four years.

You have to do a big one. So, anyway. Okay. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast.

You're tired of our banter. I am your co -host, Alan Nelson, one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas.

And with me, Eddie Ragsdale, pastor of First Baptist Church of Marshall.

We have a good show for you today, I hope. We're going to be looking at Numbers 25 later.

So, if you're sitting around at the table or something, you can pull out your Bible, Numbers 25.

But before we get to that, Eddie's been on some adventures. We're going to let him talk about those adventures.

Tell us about the Ligonier Conference. So, it was a really, really good conference.

We went there and there were four speakers. So, the first night, it was a night, it was a Friday night and a

Saturday. So, the Friday night, Burt Parsons spoke, done a great job.

And also, Derek Thomas spoke. What was the theme? Well, the theme was basically renewing your mind.

So, can you imagine Ligonier doing that? But basically, what they did was they had six messages and they exegeted

Romans 12 from the beginning to the end of the chapter. Yeah. So, there were six messages.

So, the first night, it was Burt Parsons and Derek Thomas, and they took the first two sections.

So, Burt Parsons took the first two verses, and then

Derek Thomas took, I think, verses three through five. And then they had broke out the rest of it into four more sections.

And then on Saturday, the preachers were Dr. Stephen Nichols and Jason Helopolis.

This was the first time I'd ever heard Jason Helopolis, but he'd done a fantastic job.

And they each preached twice on Saturday, working through the other four sections.

Of course, they also had a question and answer time. But it was a really good conference, really handled that text well.

Even Derek Thomas admitted that there is no text in the New Testament that tells you that you should baptize babies.

So, it was great. Yeah. It was really good. So, overall, good conference.

Did you pick up any books? I did pick up some books.

I picked up a handful of books. I picked up A Guide for Church Discipline by Jay Adams.

I picked up A Copy of Chosen by God by R .C. Sproul, of course. That's really good.

And let's see, what else did I pick up? I left them sitting over on – I picked up a book about the

Lord's Supper. And I picked up something else. I can't remember what it is. I've got it laying over on the table across the room.

So, I picked up a few books. A Change of Heart by Alan Nelson. They didn't have that one. That wasn't in the bookstore.

I will say this. I thought they had the best bookstore deals that I've ever seen at a conference.

As far as the markdowns, it was really worth going in the bookstore, because they really had the books.

Because I went there basically saying, I've got enough books stacked up that I haven't read yet. I'm not buying any books.

And I actually went into the bookstore just to help one of the guys I was with. He was like, man, you need to show me some books

I need to get. And so, we went into the bookstore, and I started looking. I was like, man, these are too good of a deal.

I've got to get at least these four or five books. So, they were really a good deal.

That's funny, brother. Okay. And then, one last adventure. So, on the way home, not to get too much into the weeds of what we were doing, but we went up there.

Me and a brother in our church and his son went up there, because his brother -in -law lives in Ohio.

And he's a recent convert. And he wanted to go to this Ligonier conference, but he didn't want to go by himself.

And so, we said, well, man, we'll come up. We'll all go to it together. Well, he is recently converted, and he's been attending a

Lutheran church in Cincinnati, where he lives. And so, on our way home, we came through Cincinnati, and we went to church with him at the

Lutheran congregation there. And I'll say it was the first time I've ever attended a

Lutheran congregation. And I just want to share some of the really good things.

You know, it's easy to go into something that's not your own tradition and maybe point out the things where you're like, they didn't do that very well.

That wasn't helpful to me or whatever. But I'd like to point out three things

I think that they did really well. Top of the list, they read so much

Scripture. I mean, it was amazing how much Scripture they read. And I thought it was fantastic.

They had readings from the Old Testament, readings from the New Testament. You know, of course, they said the

Apostles' Creed and those things. But there's so much Scripture reading, as well as the

Scripture reading that went along with the sermon. And so I was really impressed by the amount of Scripture reading.

The second thing I would point out from attending the Lutheran church that I just thought was really good.

We know that we have a difference in our understanding of the Lord's Supper. And I really like the way that they fenced the

Lord's table. When you came in the door, they gave you a printed out liturgy that had all the different Scripture readings and the different things that are going to be said.

It told you when to sit and when to stand and all the responsive readings and things like that.

But it also had a statement on communion. And it told you exactly,

I mean, if you were a visitor to this church, it told you exactly how you could know if you were a person who ought to take the

Lord's Supper or ought not to take the Lord's Supper. You know, where their view was and all those things.

And of course, you know, I wasn't I wasn't going to take the Lord's Supper. I don't agree with the

Lutheran view, but I was thankful for the way they fenced the Lord's table.

I thought it was really good practice, the way they handled that.

And the third thing I would say is, you know, for a very high church type meeting,

I think I kind of expected that when it was over, you know, people would kind of leave.

And they they hung around and they fellowshiped very loving congregation, really wanted to talk, wanted to discuss the things the

Lord talk about evangelism. I mean, we just had a great time. We were probably there and we were trying to get back on the road.

And we were probably there at least 30 to 40 minutes after the service, just in conversations with with the church members there.

So it was, you know, a lot of I mean, it was just a great time to spend with other believers, even from a different, you know, a different spectrum of the church than than our own.

But it was it was I really wanted to commend, you know, those things, because I think sometimes.

We can get caught up in pointing out all the well, I don't like how they do that and they're wrong about the

Lord's Supper and stuff. But they really did a lot of things. Well, I don't know if you know,

I mean, like, I don't know if I could do that. I don't know. It'd just be hard. It'd be hard for me to give up, you know, a

Sunday to do that. But I mean, you know, I'm saying, like, even if I was traveling, it'd be hard.

But I mean, I'm not I'm not, you know, criticizing you. I'm just saying that's that's something else.

But I'm glad that you're able to share that experience. And also, like you say, the positives from that experience.

We need to get our original plan. We had intended the way we went from here to Columbus was we took the northern route.

So we didn't go through Cincinnati and we meant to come home that way. And we thought that we were on there.

We were coming home the northern route. And when we got out of Columbus, I was going to try to just find us a

Baptist church to go to on the way home. That was the plan. And then when I jumped on my phone to look,

I told the brother I was with. I said, we're on the southern route. We're headed to Cincinnati. And he said, we are.

I said, yeah. I said, if we're going to Cincinnati anyway, we ought to go to, you know, his brother -in -law's church just to encourage his brother -in -law was really was really the idea.

And, you know, we worshiped the the gospel that was preached that day was,

I would say it was the gospel that was preached. And so, yeah, it was it was a good meeting.

Amen. Well, I promised our listeners we're going to look at numbers 25.

You know, you mentioned the scripture reading in the service, and we ought to be we've said this many times, we ought to be

Bible readers. And one of the way down the line benefits of Bible reading is it gives you opportunity to think about podcast episodes.

But this just came from my daily my daily Bible reading. And I just had a thought. So I'm going to read.

Here from numbers 25. And I'll begin in verse one.

While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab.

These invited the people to sacrifices of their gods and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.

So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the

Lord was kindled against Israel. The Lord said to Moses, 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.

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.

When Phineas, I say Phineas, Eddie, like Phineas and Fir, but maybe

Phinehas might be better. I don't know. I say Phineas also. When Phineas, the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman, through her belly.

Thus the plague of the people of Israel was stopped. Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were 24 ,000.

Just a side note, the man's name is Zimri. It is listed down there in verse 14.

So we have Phineas and Zimri here. And anything initially you want to say?

I have some thoughts. Some thoughts came to me this morning. Eddie, as I was reading this, but anything just you want to say?

I know you're preaching through Judges. So I just finished up Judges chapter 2 in the first few verses, verses 1 through 6 of Judges chapter 3 this last

Sunday. And so if I'm keeping the generations correct, those would be the great -grandchildren of these people in Numbers 25.

Maybe the great -great -grandchildren depends on how you count the generations there from Moses to Joshua.

But what we see is Israel keeps falling into the same sort of sin because the great -grandchildren or great -great -grandchildren of these people are falling into the same worship of the

Baals, the same covenanting with those people.

And what it says actually in Judges 3, 6 is that they gave their daughters to the peoples of the land and that they took their daughters as wives for them.

And essentially, entering into those marriages, the problem with that, you know, so often you hear people, oh,

God was against interracial marriage. No, he wasn't. What he was against was entering into covenants with people who were not covenanted with God or worshiping false gods.

That was the issue. And so we see that right here in Numbers 25. The people are entering into covenant with the false gods when they enter into these marriage covenants with pagan believers.

Yeah, and it says that the people ate and bowed down. So they invited the people to the sacrifice of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.

You know, so much we can say. I find this so relevant. I have several contemporary applications.

Like one might be this whole idea of the Alistair Begg controversy, which I think both of us love

Alistair Begg. But I do agree with what MacArthur said. I don't know if you've seen that or not.

But isn't that so true? You go to someone else's religious festivity, and then you're soon bound to their gods.

But anyway, that's what happens there. Sure. But something else I wanted to say, just a thought came to me as I was reading this.

I don't think you'll find any of these verses on Caleb's verse of the day. No, you won't.

Let's be real, though. The Bible is not this sanitized little, you know, pick -me -up.

That's not its design. It's telling this grand story. And like one of the things we're talking about covenant theology tonight at our church.

And so, you know, one of the things, there are two kingdoms. And that's what you have even here, this warring between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of Satan.

You have the seed of the woman, which is ultimately Christ, but also references, of course, the faithful, those born again.

And you have the seed of the serpent. You see this, like, this is all, I mean,

I know we're not that far removed from Genesis, but I think it makes the whole Old Testament make sense.

But the thing, well, something that just came to my mind. Okay, so this is still isn't what

I wanted to bring up. One of the things is verse four. This came to mind as I was just reading just now.

The Lord said to Moses, 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. A couple of things that tells us.

One, what is God's disposition towards sin? Yeah, yeah.

He hates it. Hates it. You're going to hang them in the sun. And then you have, let's see, is there any way we can get to the gospel from verse four?

You have these representatives of the people to hang in the sun before the

Lord, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.

Eddie, can you help? Like, is there any way that maybe, is there some way, the word for hang here is impale, the idea of impale.

So is there any idea, like, I don't know. Can you help me? Can we get to the gospel from there? Yeah, they're hung up.

They're bearing the sin of the people before the Lord so that the Lord's anger can turn away from the covenant people.

And we see the Lord Jesus, he is our covenant head. The thing that is different here is that where the chiefs are guilty for not leading the people in righteousness,

Jesus, the innocent one, goes and in his innocence, he takes on our sin on him so that we are freed from our sin.

So, yeah, we see a beautiful picture here of what it really means to understand this idea of federal headship and representatives.

And, you know, there's even a little bit of an illusion here, I would say, an illusion to the idea that, you know, that the chiefs are put up there and.

And they're up there, they're held up as this as Lord, you know, turn your wrath away from your people.

And you go back to even John chapter three and how John chapter three points back to the raising up of the serpent on the on the pole.

And and, you know, the people were to look to the serpent and and they were going to be forgiven.

And you see there in John chapter three, it's actually Christ who's lifted up and we look to him and we are forgiven.

And so, yeah, I think I think we see it definitely here in verse four. We see this federal headship of these chiefs as they're hung up before the

Lord. And and the wrath of God is turned away from God's covenant people and people.

That's right. Turned away. That's this. I was looking at the Hebrew. It's the word they're a shoe, which is if you're familiar, you know, that's the same word that we use for repent.

The fierce anger of the Lord turned away from Israel, you know, for people who say, well.

Penal substitutionary atonement that was invented in the Reformation. Like, no, it wasn't propitiation.

We see a picture of propitiation even here in in the most random of places, if you will.

Numbers twenty five. God's wrath is turned away by this sacrifice.

Well, as you say, we have it's not even worth comparing, but it is a picture pointing to the sacrifice of Christ, which, as you say, the innocent one, the righteous first Peter three eighteen in place of the unrighteous, where God's fierce anger, you might say, is not only turned away from his people, but actually satisfied.

That's a beautiful picture of the gospel there. Yeah. We see in Christ both propitiation and expiation, you know, that sin being carried away.

Yeah. So the thought I had when I was reading this morning and I mentioned his name earlier,

Zimri. You have two different people. You have

Zimri. And you have Phineas. Zimri, actually, if you go down to verse fourteen, two different people

I want to mention anyway. In verse fourteen, it says the name of the slain man of Israel who was killed with the

Midianite woman was Zimri, the son of Salu, chief of a father's house belonging to the

Semitonites. So depending on how you read that, either Zimri was chief of a father's house or Salu.

Either way, though, the point is Zimri is either a chief or the son of a chief.

So he's just not just this random person. So you have Zimri and you have

Phineas. And this is the exhortation I have for us today. And then we'll walk through this.

The exhortation I have, Eddie, is we need more pastors today with the spirit of Phineas.

And much less with the spirit of Zimri. Obviously, I'm not exhorting us to kill anyone.

You might say Phineas had a backbone. And by the time he got through with Zimri, Zimri didn't.

But here's the point. Verse six. 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.

So let me set this up and then I'll pitch it over to you. So the setup is Israel, this is the language of the scripture, is whoring with the women of Moab.

And God is judging them. And even in the midst of this judging, even in the midst of this, because it says the people are weeping, in front of everybody, not ashamed of it, here comes

Zimri strolling in with this Midianite woman saying,

I don't care what are you going to do about it. I'm going to commit physical adultery, physical mortality.

And so the application I'm making is, now there's a lot of physical application we can make in our day.

Our people in the world today, they don't care. Used to, it was taboo to live with a girlfriend or whatever before marriage.

Now those people are teaching Sunday school. But what I'm saying is you have a lot of churches and a lot of pastors.

We could even go to the SBC, even leadership in the SBC anymore. But that's not the only place.

I'm talking about once conservative places. I'm not talking about the liberal. That's easy to talk about. I'm talking about evangelicalism, where they're like Zimri.

I don't care. I'm going to flaunt spiritual adultery in front of God and everybody.

So thoughts, now I'll pitch it over to you for a second on that. No, I think you're exactly right. And what we're seeing here is you're seeing one man who is arrogant and openly rebellious.

And it's high handed how that he's sinning against the Lord. And another man who's zealous in his desire to honor the

Lord. I mean, that's really the distinction here. One's high handed in the way that he goes against God.

And the other is motivated to do whatever is necessary to honor the

Lord. So I want to get to him. But let me just give some tangible examples.

The other day, I was watching a clip from that Super Bowl service on a

Sunday night. And I don't know. I have no idea, Eddie, what in the world they were doing.

But the woman, like they do a coin toss or whatever. Is it where she kicks the

Bible? I didn't see it, but I heard about it. She kicks the Bible off the stage.

It's like, and now here's the deal. In the best light possible, I paint it. I'm sure she didn't mean to kick it off the stage.

Maybe. I have no idea. That's the best light I can paint it. But other than that, this is absolutely,

I think, an application of this text. We're not even hiding it anymore. We're not even like, hey, you really should read your

Bible while secretly no one's reading it. This is we're going to kick the Bible off the stage.

And what are you going to do about it? That's the kind of stuff that's going on in churches today.

We're going to allow unqualified men to pastor or preach or deacon or whatever.

We're going to allow women to fulfill roles that they shouldn't. We are going to ignore the scriptures.

We're going to flaunt our spiritual adultery out in front of everybody.

Thoughts? No, you're exactly right. We see it.

We see all these assemblies of people.

I'm trying to use a word other than church. They call themselves churches. But they're flaunting their sin against God.

They've got their rainbow flag out front, and they're affirming of different genders and different sexual orientations or whatever the buzzwords of the day are.

And what are they doing? They're just saying right out in the front, we don't care what God thinks. There you go.

We don't care what God thinks, which is exactly what Zimri was saying. Yeah.

I don't care. It doesn't matter. Right. It doesn't matter. A flagrant defilement of the holiness of God, of the righteousness of God, of the authority of God, is

I don't care. I care about pleasing my flesh more than I care about the greatness of God and even the good of his people.

Because one man's, not just one man's sin, but there is a lesson here too that our sin carries with it consequences more than just ourselves.

And we can't divorce what he's doing here. This sexual sin with this

Midianite woman from worship. Yeah. It is a pagan act of worship.

Yeah. It is the worship of a false God. You know, I think so many people believe they really have been convinced by secular culture that all they're doing with the casual cultural view that we have of the body today is that they're not doing something spiritual in the hookup culture of today.

But they are. It is absolutely an act of worship when these people are engaging in these acts.

They absolutely are. And Zimri here even knows it. He knows that's what he's doing.

And he's engaging in this rebellious act of worship of the false gods.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And that's something to mention larger picture here.

Our society is not post -Christian. Our society is pagan. That's right. Absolutely pagan.

Right. Oh, we're just atheists. We don't even believe in God, which number one, that's not true. A lot of people aren't even saying that.

But number two, even if they do say that, it's not true. The sexual immorality is pagan.

Mm -hmm. Yeah. And so anyway, so here's the deal. In verse 7, when

Phineas, the son of Elisha, the son of Aaron, the priest, so he's the grandson of Aaron, saw it.

He rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman, through her belly.

Thus, the plague on the people of Israel was stopped. So this is very graphic, actually.

It is. In the very act of adultery, Phineas says enough is enough.

You know, this contrast between Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron. You're quite a ways ahead of me in your daily

Bible reading. That was my reading just a couple of days ago, and I was thinking about that as we were reading this,

Nadab and Abihu. Yeah. So they offer strange fire. So here's the thought, and I'll kick it to you.

The thought is, all these people watching and one man says enough is enough, and he's going to do something about it.

And I think that in our world today, and you know that I was involved heavily, probably too heavily, in SBC politics and SBC trying to deal with all that kind of stuff.

And what I saw behind the scenes is there are bad actors in the

SBC. But I think even a worse problem is a lot of people, and there are good actors in the

SBC too, by the way. And I commend those, grateful for those brothers.

But a big problem in the SBC are the people who are weeping, maybe internally, maybe behind closed doors, maybe disagreeing with stuff, but they ain't picking up their spear.

Look, obviously, I am not, let me just be clear in today's wild west of craziness.

I am not advocating killing people. We're making a spiritual application from this text.

But it is time that the people of God, particularly pastors, leadership of God, pick up their spears, or how about this, pick up the sword of the spirit.

That's right. And kill the deeds of the flesh, and stand up to those who are desecrating the worship of God.

Right. I kick that to you now. Yeah, and I think part of it probably is people don't know what they can do.

Sometimes they think, I can't do anything. I think that happens politically. People think, well, what's one vote?

And then I think when big things like the SBC, people feel like, you know, it's not going to matter whatever

I try to do. But here's the thing. Eliezer, what did the

Lord give him to do right in front of him? Well, he did that. And I think for a lot of us, what can you do?

Look at your local church. You know, get to work serving the Lord in your local church and preaching the gospel in your local community.

You know, that's what we can do. And we can be zealous for Christ right where we're at.

You know, and I think a lot of times we get caught up being concerned about things that we can't affect, that we end up not being zealous with the things the

Lord has given us, has put right in front of us. You know, you mentioned Nadab and Abihu. And what we see at both in that passage and in this one is just how serious the

Lord takes worship. Listen, it is a capital offense, false worship.

Yeah. And we don't think so today because we see all these people both out and out pagan worship.

And then a lot of things that are basically pagan worship, but it's called a Christian church, maybe like the drop kicking the

Bible. And we see it not receive the immediate, you know, fire raining down from heaven on it.

And so we think God's not taking it seriously. But he is. The wrath is being stored up against that kind of wickedness.

God hates false worship. And it will be punished.

And that's a good application. Yeah, go ahead. No, I was just going to say it is going to bring the fire of God as it did the destruction of Nadab and Abihu.

And here's the zealous destruction of Zimri by Eliezer. And God's going to bring judgment on false worship always.

I think there's a particular, a potent application for rural churches.

And that is, we may think, well, no one is seeing our bad worship.

No one is seeing, you know, we're not kicking the Bible off the stage, but we're not taking the worship of God seriously.

But no one's seeing it, so we're okay. God sees it.

God sees it. God sees the people who are operating with improper motivations.

God sees the people who are not applying the principles of worship properly.

He sees the hokey services where the scriptures are not ever read, where prayer is barely made, where the sermons are not faithful to God, where manipulation has happened, whatever the case may be.

And I'm just saying for the rural church, we need to take up and consider what you just said.

God hates spiritual adultery. God hates idolatry.

God hates false worship. So, all very sobering thoughts there, brother, and I think they have an application to our churches.

Just because other people may not be seeing it, you need to remember, God sees it.

And you say, in this scenario, Phineas is the hero, if you will.

He does this, commended, praise God. God blesses him, by the way, because of it.

You can keep reading on. But I want to say this, too. There are multiple stories that we could think of in church history, even some in the scriptures, where the person that stands up, like Phineas, is not the hero.

He's the one that suffers. Imagine if Phineas is the one that stands up and the whole congregation says, no way, and turns around and stones him.

Well, guess what? Phineas still did right. And that's the thing. So, I'm encouraging pastors here.

This came out in the best way for Phineas, and it hopefully will come out the best way for us.

But even if it doesn't, we need men with the spirit of Phineas today, and women, too.

You can't just be like, well, that's the man's job. If you see something taking place in terms of desecrating the worship of God, it's time to say something.

I'm just saying the responsibility falls upon men, particularly pastors.

So, I'm saying it's worth saying something. It's worth taking up your quote -unquote spear and doing something, even if it comes to great personal cost to you, because it's not about you.

This is about the worthiness of God and ultimately the good of His people. Right. Yeah, whether it's

Phineas here or JL, the spirit is the same. We're going to seek to glorify

God and the good of His people, His covenant people, and if that means a spear through this pagan wickedness that's happening here in Numbers 25, or in JL's case, a tent peg through the temple, that's just what it has to mean.

But we know, ultimately, the spear, like you said, the sword that we have, is the word of God, the message of the gospel.

And so we need to take that and use it in battling against the paganism all around us.

And here's the thing. We've got to recognize that the paganism's not just in some country that ends in Stan, and the paganism's not in post -Christian

Europe, and the paganism's not just in California or Los Angeles or New York.

It is in our towns. It's in our rural communities. The paganism's all around us.

We have to take the gospel against it. And be careful that it's not in your churches.

That's right. Well, one last thing. Obviously, we know the true hero is Christ. Phineas strikes another, and the wrath of God is assuaged, the text, if you go down and read.

But in the gospel, as we mentioned earlier, you have

Christ, who doesn't strike down the spiritual adulterers. Instead, he says,

I'll be counted as a spiritual adulterer for the sake of my people. Yeah.

God made him to be sin who knew no sin. So our spiritual adultery, our idolatry, our breaking of the

Ten Commandments, and then some, is laid upon Christ, who is greater than Phineas.

God punishes Christ on behalf of his people, and he raises, again, victorious over death, hell, and the grave, so that we can run to him.

So that those of us who are guilty, which is all of us, those of us who are guilty of spiritual adultery in our lives can repent and be forgiven.

So if that's you, Pastor, repent. If that's you, church member, repent, and let us go to this gracious gospel and remember

Jesus took our sins upon himself. And that ought to burn within us a holy zeal for the

Lord. And patience. There ought to be patience. But there also is a line at times that we say, no, no.

You can't do this. You must repent. You know, the last thing I would say on this, and this is something

I mentioned to our church as we're looking there in Judges, of course the Lord judges all men, right?

All men are under the covenant of works. All men are required by the law of God, by the moral law, you know, to honor

God and not to worship other gods and all those things. But I think in the

Scripture we do see that God judges his covenant people when they turn away in idolatry and in spiritual adultery.

He judges them in a way that he doesn't judge the other nations. He judges the other nations, but he judges his people even differently because he's disciplining those who were in covenant with him.

And in the old covenant, of course, it's a mixed covenant. There's believers and unbelievers. But we need to realize in the new covenant,

God still disciplines, brings discipline even on new covenant members. And I think sometimes we almost act like, oh, well, we're under grace, so it's fine.

But no, there really is discipline for God's children. And so we want to see that.

We don't want to go off into sin. We want to walk in the discipline and the instruction of the

Lord. That's right. And at the end of the day, is

Christ worthy? And the answer, of course, is yes. He's worthy of churches, conventions, denominations, associations that take the things of God seriously.

So let us have, spiritually speaking, more of the spirit of Phinehas and let us kill the spirit of Zimri among us, even any of that lurking in our own hearts.

I think it's a helpful episode. I know it's helpful for me. It was encouraging to me, challenging to me, even just chatting with you about it.

We didn't even rehearse any of this other than I text you, hey, read this. You had no idea where I was going.

I read it, and I was like, okay. Is this the right, wait, did you text me the right?

Yeah. So anyway, well, all right, brother. Good chatting with you as always.

Thank you guys for listening. I'll let you sign us out. We'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.