God's Blessing at Baal-Peor

Minister:
Date: PM
Text: Numbers 25:1-18
Psalters: 166, 418, 184, 291
  1. Abominable sin.
    1. Balaam was the devil s willing instrument to lay before Israel this temptation (Num. 31:16; Rev. 2:14).
      1. After his attempts to have God curse Israel failed, he sought to make Israel sin and become curseable to God.
      2. Balaam s advice was that they be swallowed up spiritual through the lust of their flesh (Hosea 9:10).
    2. The real nature of this sin is that of Israel joining themselves to Baal (3a).
    3. The plot seems successful. Four evidences.
      1. First, there was the exercise of lusts for pleasures of the flesh.
      2. Many of the leaders and princes in Israel were singled out as guilty (4).
      3. A great many were guilty as implied in the number killed in the plague: 24,000.
      4. The sin was openly committed by a prince of Simeon (Zimri) and a Midianite princess (Cozbi) (6).
  2. Jehovah s blessing remains executed.
    1. Above all, God s blessing remains on His people.
    2. God s blessing in shown in His anger (3b).
      1. God commands the sinful leaders to be disciplined (executed) by means of public church discipline (judges).
      2. 23,000 (I Cor. 10:8) of the common people were killed in a disciplinary plague.
    3. Above all God s blessing is seen in the zeal He gave to Phinehas.
      1. This grandson of Aaron hastened forward to inflict just and public punishment on Zimri and Cozbi.
      2. God evaluation is that He is pleased with it (Psalm 106:30,31).
  3. Good lessons are to be learned.
    1. Paul sets this incident before the Corinthians and us as a warning to deter from the sin of fornication (I Cor. 10:8).
    2. The specific identification of Zimri and Cozbi gives them perpetual infamy.
    3. The reference to the zeal of Phinehas sets that up for an example of zeal for the Lord.
    4. God s blessing never leaves His people; it always rests on us, for it is unconditional!!!