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Podcast Introduction

Today is Monday, so we’ll read from the Law. We’ll read Numbers 25-28  I’ll have some comments after the reading. And of course I’ll have an “On This Date In Church History” segment for you, too. I’m calling today’s episode “One Righteous Man.”

Comments on Numbers 25

In Numbers 22-24 Balak tried to get Balaam to curse God’s people because was afraid that they were a threat to him because they were so numerous. He wanted to drive them from his land. Balak was sure that if Balaam would curse them, he would be able to defeat them. 

But God told Balaam that these were His people, and he should not curse them. God would not allow it. God protected His chosen people from outside threats.

But here in chapter 25, what happens? Israel brings a curse on themselves *from God* because of their own behavior.

They begin to commit sexual sin with the women of Moab, apparently in the service of their god of fertility, Baal-Peor.

I have often heard the argument that prostitution is a victimless crime, especially if both parties are willing participants. Of course that’s hogwash. But I’m not here to discuss prostitution and the damage it causes. What I do want to say is that God’s judgement on Israel as a result of this sin should tell you everything you need to know about how the God of the universe thinks about it.

God told Moses to  “Arrest all the leaders of the people, and hang them up before the Lord in broad daylight, so that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel.”

So those who had a responsibility to lead the people in righteousness, and who seem to have even participated in this great sin, were to be executed. And later in the chapter, we learn that God sent a plague on the rest of the people. Twenty-four thousand died from the plague, and it was only because Phinehas killed with a javelin one of the Israelites and the Midianite woman he was publicly having sex with at the entrance of the Tabernacle that God stopped the plague. 

Sexual immorality is not something that we should take lightly, beloved.

That’s the lesson that comes through loud and clear.

But there’s another lesson that I mentioned in passing at the beginning of my comments.

God did not allow Israel to be attacked from without. But because of moral and spiritual breakdowns within, they almost came to a terrible end. If it wasn’t for the zeal and indignation of Phinehas, the plague that God unleashed on them might have ended them.

It was the action of one righteous man that stopped the destruc