God's Blessing at Baal-Peor
Minister: |
Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: |
7/3/2011 PM
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Text:
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Numbers 25:1-18
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Psalters: |
166, 418, 184, 291 |
- Abominable sin.
- Balaam was the devil s willing instrument to lay before Israel this temptation (Num. 31:16; Rev. 2:14).
- After his attempts to have God curse Israel failed, he sought to make Israel sin and become curseable to God.
- Balaam s advice was that they be swallowed up spiritual through the lust of their flesh (Hosea 9:10).
- The real nature of this sin is that of Israel joining themselves to Baal (3a).
- The plot seems successful. Four evidences.
- First, there was the exercise of lusts for pleasures of the flesh.
- Many of the leaders and princes in Israel were singled out as guilty (4).
- A great many were guilty as implied in the number killed in the plague: 24,000.
- The sin was openly committed by a prince of Simeon (Zimri) and a Midianite princess (Cozbi) (6).
- Jehovah s blessing remains executed.
- Above all, God s blessing remains on His people.
- God s blessing in shown in His anger (3b).
- God commands the sinful leaders to be disciplined (executed) by means of public church discipline (judges).
- 23,000 (I Cor. 10:8) of the common people were killed in a disciplinary plague.
- Above all God s blessing is seen in the zeal He gave to Phinehas.
- This grandson of Aaron hastened forward to inflict just and public punishment on Zimri and Cozbi.
- God evaluation is that He is pleased with it (Psalm 106:30,31).
- Good lessons are to be learned.
- Paul sets this incident before the Corinthians and us as a warning to deter from the sin of fornication (I Cor. 10:8).
- The specific identification of Zimri and Cozbi gives them perpetual infamy.
- The reference to the zeal of Phinehas sets that up for an example of zeal for the Lord.
- God s blessing never leaves His people; it always rests on us, for it is unconditional!!!