The people of Israel are on the plains of Moab across the river Jordan about 10 miles southeast of Jericho, they are preparing to enter into the promise land. The Moabites want the Israelites to leave as they are afraid the people of Israel will desolate the land of produce, so their king, Balak, hires the prophet Balaam to place a curse on the Israelites to cause the Israelites to leave. However, the Lord God intervenes and reverses the situation causing Balaam to bless the nation of Israel rather than curse the nation of Israel. The king Balak is frustrated, the prophet Balaam is frustrated.
Understand, the prophet Balaam was all for cursing the people of Israel, Balaam would produce a curse in a heartbeat, but because of the intervention of God, Balaam could not place a curse, he could only bless. So Balaam stands with Balak overlooking the people of Israel, what could be done? Balaam cannot directly curse Israel…but where a direct threat could not be effective, something innocuous could be quite effective. Rev 2:14 tells us that Balaam hatches a plan that could potentially have the nation of Israel implode upon itself. Here in Numbers chapter 25 is the result of that plan.
Remember, at this point, the people of Israel are unaware that the prophet Balaam was hired by Balak to curse them, they are completely unaware that the Moabites and Midianites are plotting against them and at this point, they just as unaware that God has intervened to stop Balaam from calling upon evil spirits to go against the them. Moab will attempt to conquer by the force of culture, and they will be very effective. There are forces, both human and spiritual, that are actively working against the Israelites, however the Israelites seem completely unaware of this.
Let me stop here for a moment. Here we are this morning, living our lives - going to work, taking care of our families, going fishing, coming to church, just living our lives. At times in our lives we have great difficulties, serious difficulties – these difficulties seem to come out of nowhere and at other times we can see that our difficulties arise from mistakes or the sin in our lives. So we live our life trying to surmount these difficulties with the help of God. All that said, here is a question for you to consider this morning: Is it you, me, God against the world we live in? Or is there another dimension involved in our lives?
You bet there is.
There is a spiritual dimension behind everything we do and experience, whether we are aware of it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. Here in our passage today there is an evil at work, and it does not want the people of Israel to be successful, and if a direct attack will not work, an indirect attack will do just fine. Let us not be ignorant, let us not be fooled by the modern world we live in, let us not continue to pretend that what we deal with day to day is only what we see and touch. We live in a spiritual world, and we are spiritual beings.
Balaam, he is a man of the occult, and a man of the occult is no friend of the people of God – he will use something out of sight, something personal, an individual decision, an individual act, a diverging of loyalty, something that appears harmless to bring down an entire nation.
What happens in our passage today, is that, a thing of culture that appears to be, well, just a thing of culture, but in reality, it turns out to be an attack on biblical morality, and it has the ability to spiritually destroy. I want us to note upfront a couple of things to keep tabs on as we go through this passage. First, notice that the ignorance of the Hebrews draws them into unfaithfulness and second, notice what starts off as against the Word of God, quickly becomes a normal event – and you know what they say – the trouble with normal, is it always gets worse.
OK. So the people of Israel are camped across the river Jordan fairly close to the city of Jericho, just living their lives and….Moabite and Midianite women invite the men to worship Baal – Peor. Now they go after the Israelite men and not the Israeli woman, not because men are weak, but because the men are the head of the household. The custom of the day was the god that the head of the household worshipped – everyone in the family worshiped. So the Moabites go after the men. See, if a majority of families worship Baal – Peor then they won’t worship the God of Israel, or listen to him either. They will cease to culturally be Hebrews, and culturally become Canaanites. Balaam knows God is real, he has had a conversation with him, and has seen him in the form of the Angel of the Lord. Balaam also knows that if he can get the people follow Baal – Peor they won’t follow God and that fellow Moses and the whole nation of Israel will fall apart, they will leave, and he will get his promised money.
I guy I went to seminary with took this church a few years ago in Montgomery Alabama that had three pastors in a row have sexual indiscretions. Three in a row. The membership of the church had fallen from over 10,000 to a few hundred, with only a few showing up on Sunday morning. I saw the same thing in Oklahoma City. A huge church of around 8,000 had the same thing, three pastors in a row with sexual indiscretions, the fourth pastor came in pledging to turn the place around…and was found having an affair as well. They had less than one hundred people meeting in a building that held about 4000. It was a depressing thing to see. A little unfaithfulness here, a little unfaithfulness there and you have an empty building and hundreds of broken lives.
These women, they invite men to worship with them. The text here insinuates that the men involved are from prominent families. This isn’t about marriage. It says nothing here about men getting wives. This isn’t about intermarriage. This is about unfaithfulness. This is about being naive and thinking culture will not effect us spiritually.
It is difficult to understand what is going on here as there is a lot that the ancient reader is assumed to know, that we as modern readers are not clued in on. Let’s look at a bit of background so we can fully understand what is going on here in this passage. What I am about to go into is not polite stuff, so listen carefully as I will attempt to be as polite as possible about something that is very impolite.
The Canaanites worshiped many gods but there main god was Baal. Baal was an intricate part of their everyday culture, really he couldn’t be separated from their culture. Here he is given a local name, Baal – Peor, because Peor was name of the regional high place. If Baal was here in Anchorage today, we might call him Baal – Denali, because Denali is our regional high place. Baal – Peor is a fertility god, meaning that the Canaanites believed that if Baal was appeased they would have abundant water and abundant crops. If Baal was not appeased they would have drought and famine.
There is absolutely nothing about Baal worship that was lovely or beautiful, it involved activities that here in America we would consider seriously criminal. People, including minors were abused, harmed, violently assaulted as an act of worship to the god Baal. These acts were ritualistic and inhuman. Verse 3 says in Hebrew “bound themselves” – Scholars know it is a term for some sort of a ritual, but beyond that, the meaning has been lost, thankfully, it would describe something very creepy. The Septuagint (the early Greek translation of the OT) translates it into “initiating into the mysteries”, clearly it has some sort of sexual connotations.
So who was Baal? His image was depicted as a member of the male anatomy.
(I’ll let that sink in for a moment)
Now this is the first time Israel has run into the god Baal. They have no real idea of what Canaanite culture is all about. These men who go to the temple of Baal – Peor don’t know what Baal is – but once they are at the temple it would be pretty evident when they see the image of who Baal is - ya think?
Basically, certain woman from Moab and Midian are told by the government to go and have relations with the men of Israel – this is not a problem for them, because this would not be immoral in Canaanite society. This is not a polite gathering these men are attending, it is state sanctioned abuse.
Look, these men go, because, you know, they will be over in Moab, and no one will see them. Understand the woman, the food, the worship, the relations, they are not in sequence – one cannot be experienced without the other. These men accept this culture and they are being unfaithful, but their unfaithfulness isn’t just to their wives, it turns out their unfaithfulness is also to the Lord God. Their unfaithfulness is to the Lord.
Hos. 9:10 “When I found Israel,
it was like finding grapes in the desert;
when I saw your fathers,
it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree.
But when they came to Baal Peor,
they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol
and became as vile as the thing they loved.
It turns out, that what they thought was over there, out of the way, out of sight, was fully known by pretty much everyone and so God tells Moses to execute the leaders. If this keeps on happening a majority of the families will be loyal to Baal, and the conquest of the promise land will never occur. Apparently the sin was being committed by the leaders or by members of the leaders families targeted by the Moabites – and nothing was being done – and what happens when nothing is done? That thing that is far out in the distance comes close to home.
Notice Moses doesn’t do exactly what God says, Moses says to execute only those involved and it is at this point that some sort of a plague begins (we see this reported in verse 8) which in the end kills 24, 000 people in Israel.
See what is happening here is that everything is about to fall apart. The unified nation of Israel is about to be absorbed into the Canaanite culture. The Canaanites will conquer not by force, or by curse - but by culture. God wants the leaders responsible taken out in front of the whole community, but that does not happen. Everyone knows what is going on, everyone knows that a growing number of people are worshiping Baal, but no one is willing to say or do anything about it. Notice that neither sentence is carried out on the leaders or the perpetrators.
The plague, that’s what gets everyone’s attention, and they all gather at the Tabernacle to lament the sin that is before God – really, what we have here is a spontaneous worship service of the whole nation of Israel before God. Still, though everyone knows what is going on, nothing is done about it….and then walks in Zimri.
Here’s the picture: People around the camp are dying of some sort of plague, a spontaneous worship service gathers of everyone who can get to the Tabernacle in the presence of God and in walks Zimri with a woman from the cult of Baal. The text in the Hebrew appears to indicate that they walk through the worship service, as if nothing is going on, to a tent that is clearly very close to where everyone is worshiping at the gate of the Tabernacle. Now this tent they walk into is a specific kind of tent. This word for tent in verse 8 is used only once in the entire Bible, what this means is that it is a tent that is foreign to Israel, it is a tent dedicated to the God Baal – Peor, a place for observance of worship of Baal – Peor. When it says in verse 6 that the man brought the woman to his family, that means not only his physical family, but also his “ancestral spiritual family”. The ritual the man and the woman would perform in the tent somehow involves calling upon the spirits of the dead. This is an occultic ceremony in the midst of a worship service of the true God.
So, is this a cultural thing, or is this something more?
Do you see how far things have gone? It started with a few wandering away to be unfaithful across the border and ends up with a guy being unfaithful in the sight of everyone - an occultic ceremony right in the middle of a worship service. Look, this guy is so bold he walks through a worship service of those worshiping the Lord God, ignores the plague effecting the community, and flaunts his unfaithfulness right at the entrance of the most holy place in all of Israel.
And everyone watches him walk by.
Are they stunned at his boldness? Can they not believe their eyes? Is everyone waiting for someone else to speak up? I think everyone is not sure what to do…..
Only Phinehas acts. Phinehas is a name of Coptic origin, meaning it is of the Egyptian language, and it means dark skinned one. He is a grandson of Aaron. 1 Chron 9:20 speaks of him as the chief gate keeper for the Tabernacle. So, Phinehas is a guardian of the Tabernacle where the holiness of God resides. Phinehas, this guardian of the holy, realizes that the actions of Zimri are a direct affront to the holiness of God, being preformed right at the gate of the Tabernacle. He follows them into this foreign tent and kills them – the plague stops.
Psa. 106:28 They yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor
and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods;
Psa. 106:29 they provoked the LORD to anger by their wicked deeds,
and a plague broke out among them.
Psa. 106:30 But Phinehas stood up and intervened,
and the plague was checked.
Psa. 106:31 This was credited to him as righteousness
for endless generations to come.
This enough to wake everyone up to what exactly was going on. We see in verses 14 and 15 that it was the leading clans of the Moabites and Midianites that was targeting the leading clans of the Israelites, using culture to destroy them.
This also happens to the early church in the New Testament. We see in Revelation chapter 2 that the church of Pergamum is charged with holding to the teachings of Balaam. The city of Pergamum was a regional hub for the various cults of the day. Everyone in the city was expected to attend the events at these cultic temples, and if someone did not, not only was the gossip intense, but they were highly suspect of being disloyal to the state. The family would suffer at work, in the marketplace, at school, it would be very difficult on everyone in the family. So, people in the church were encouraging others to adjust to the culture as a way of coping, but this cultural adjustment had the potential of destroying the church, like the Hebrews at Peor, it would produce unfaithfulness.
Now this is a very serious issue for us in the church today. Integrating the morality or integrating religious practices that are not Christian, especially in the name of culture, will lead us down a path that will end in unfaithfulness. If I take on a morality that is not biblical, even if I take it on unknowingly, will have detrimental effects on my life.
What drew the Hebrews into unfaithfulness? First ignorance, second choosing to ignore what is right and third, allowing the culture of an outside religion to become normal.
The Hebrew men never had heard of Baal, they were ignorant and so they fell. This is where many of us fail in our biblical morality – we are ignorant, but we don’t know it. Now, we can choose to remain ignorant and not know where we are failing, and be drawn into false spirituality – or – we can address the issue by becoming familiar with our Christian faith.
No one had ever told them explicitly that an experience with Baal was wrong, but, though they had never heard of Baal, they knew Leviticus chapter 18, which is very a detailed explanation of what is biblically moral in the area of human relations. It is not difficult to understand, it is very clear – these men ignored what they knew was right and then chose to follow culture instead of God.
You know, it can be hard to know and understand the Bible on your own. This fall we have many opportunities for us to get to know and understand the bible so we can apply it to our lives. In the pews we have a small pamphlet describing what we have available. After the service, please check out the various tables that are set up that describe the different Christian Education opportunities we offer this Fall. I also want to note that we will be putting together small group studies over the next couple of months – you’ll be hearing more about that later. Small groups are a great place to learn.
I also want to encourage you to attend BSF, Bible Study Fellowship, and it is starting soon. We have the details in the announcements about how to get involved in BSF. This is a very detailed verse by verse study. You will learn a great deal and make some good friends as well.
How do we not follow the ways of these Hebrew men who so quickly became unfaithful? First, we choose not to be ignorant. Second, we choose to be faithful. Third, we choose to apply what we learn to our lives.
Remember the guy I went to seminary with who took over the church that had three pastors in a row with sexual indiscretions in Montgomery Alabama? Some time later this same guy took a large church in another state, and believe it or not, he had an affair. Unbelievable. But at the new church things were different, people knew the Word of God, they weren’t fuzzy on biblical morality and they took the Bible seriously. So they quickly called this guy on the carpet and the church is still solid and very much intact. This guy is still out there, believe it or not, he’s working at another church, attempting to justify his sin to a group of ignorant people at the new church. These people, in their ignorance they serve the god Baal – Peor, and don’t even know it.
