All right. Good morning, everybody.
As you find your seat, if you would open your Bibles to the
Book of Numbers, Chapter 25. We've been going through numbers
for several months now and we've just recently finished a study
on the the prophet Balaam. We've been looking at him for
the past several weeks. And this morning we're going to
be changing stories, and we'll be in Numbers 25 for the next
two weeks at minimum. This morning I was going to do
the whole chapter, but it was just way too much material.
And so this morning we're going to look at verses one to six.
So let's read the text. Open sent a word of prayer.
The title of the sermon this morning is this Yoked to Sexual
Sin. And so let's read the text and
we will jump into the sermon after praying #25 beginning in
verse one. While Israel lived in Shateem,
the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab.
These invited the people to the 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. And 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 bail a pure. 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. And we'll stop right there if
you will pray with me. Lord, I pray this morning as we
get to a sensitive subject. God, would you help me to live
in the tension. Help us all to live in the
tension of your abundant grace. That there is grace upon grace
for your children, even those who have fallen into sin or
sexual sin, and help us to live in that.
That side of the tension with the other side of our holiness
matters. And that we must strive for
holiness. God help us to live in that
tension this morning. Help me God, to present both
sides of that as I work my way through this text.
As we all work our way through this text, I pray this in Jesus
name, Amen. Gordon Wenham, who is a
commentator, writes this. The Bible startles its readers
by the way it juxtaposes the brightest of revelations and the
darkest of sins. The law giving at Sinai was
followed by the making of the golden calf, the ordination of
Aaron by the disobedience of his sons, the covenant with David by
the Bathsheba affair, Palm Sunday by Good Friday.
Here we have another classic example of this pattern.
The wonderful prophecies of Balaam are succeeded by the
great apostasy at Piore. In this way, Scripture tries to
bring home to us the full wonder of God's grace and face of man's
incorrigible propensity to sin. End Quote.
Over the past few weeks, we've looked at these 4 prophecies of
Balaam where God is blessing his people.
And these four blessings are followed up by Israel yoking
himself to their sexual sin and their idolatry.
So this morning we're going to look at this the first part of
the story, the 1st 6 verses, and we'll hopefully get to the next
part that the, the, the remaining of it next week.
I've been going through, I've been weaving together exposition
and application. But this morning I'm going to
give exposition first and then I'll give application at the end
this morning. So let's start looking at our
exposition of the text, looking at it verse by verse.
Let's start in verse one. While Israel lived in shateen,
the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab.
Now before we look at our text this morning, I I think it would
be beneficial for us to jump ahead in the book of Numbers for
a brief moment. And why is because often the
narrator of narrative does not give us details that you wish
were there and we have to look at other places for them.
And, and the reason for this is that the narrator gives us
pieces of information that shed light on this story.
Last week we saw that after Balaam had given his four
prophecies and he had blessed the people of Israel four times,
Balak went home and Balaam went home.
The only problem is that Balaam didn't actually go home.
In Numbers 3116. This is what Moses says, Behold,
these being the Midianites, on Balaam's advice, cause the
people of Israel to act treacherously against the Lord
in the incident of Peor. And so the plague came against
the congregation of the Lord. So all the way in #31 we're told
that Balaam gives advice, and then Revelation 214 explains
what that advice was. Jesus says you have some there
who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put
a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they
might eat food, sacrificed idols, and practice sexual
immorality. Now here's what this means.
It appears that since Balaam was not able to curse Israel through
the front door, he found a back door instead.
He taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons
of Israel, a stumbling block in the form of Moabite women.
Balaam couldn't curse God's people.
He couldn't he he didn't get paid.
But he found a different way. He found a way to make them
stumble. The narrator says that while
Israel was living in Shateem, the people, which is really the
men, began to whore with the daughters of Moab.
Now translations here vary That word whore can mean play.
The harlots translated that way can mean to indulge in sexual
immorality. It can mean to begin to
prostitute themselves. But the basic idea is that the
men began to commit sexual immorality with the Moabite
women. That's what's going on here.
Look at verse 2. These invited the people to the
sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to
their gods. Now as bad as the sexual
immorality was, it actually got worse.
These Moabite women would invite the Israelite men to the
sacrifices of their gods. And the Israelite men, when they
would go to these sacrifices, they would actually eat the food
that was sacrificed to the gods. They would even bow down to the
gods with the women. Now God had previously warned
them about this in Exodus 3415 to 16.
God says this lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of
the land. And when they whore after their
gods and sacrifice to their gods, you are invited.
You eat of a sacrifice you take of their daughters for your sons
and their daughters whore after their gods, and make your sons
whore after their gods. God warned them this would
happen. God warned them not to do this,
and yet they did it anyway. Even Solomon and all his wisdom,
the wisest man living at the time, and all his wisdom, when
he was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods.
Now why would these men do this? Because their desire for sexual
gratification was greater than their desire for God's
glorification. Look at verse 3.
So Israel yoked himself to bail a peor, and the anger of the
Lord was kindled against Israel. Israel yoked himself to bail a
peor. Now what does that mean?
Well, on the front of your bulletin is a yoke.
If you are a farmer and you need to plow the ground, you often
will plow the ground with two oxen.
Now oxen will not just naturally walk together side by side,
right? You put two oxen together and
they'll just go off and do their own thing.
They won't walk. So farmers will use what's known
as a yoke. There's a cross beam and then
there's two holes for the animals heads.
And this, this yoke would keep the animals together so that
they walk in tandem. So they plow a straight line and
this, this yoke. The narrator uses this imagery
there, says that Israel willingly yoked himself to Baal,
a pure. Now this is the first mention of
Baal in the Hebrew Bible, but it certainly will not be the last.
We will see Baal come up over and over again.
This is the Canaanite fertility God.
Baal is the Canaanite fertility God.
And as a result of this yoki look at God's response to this.
The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.
Think about that. God has just spent the past two
chapters blessing His people, but now His anger is kindled
towards them because of their immorality and their idolatry.
Look at verse four and 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.
If we are wondering how angry is God, verse 4 answers that
question for us. The Lord gives Moses
instructions. He says take all the chiefs or
the leaders of the people and hang them in the sun before the
Lord. But I want to make 4 notes about
this punishment #1 why the chiefs?
Why the leaders? Well, there's actually two
options here. A Them might refer to the
offenders. When it says hang them, who is
the them? Them might refer to the
offenders. So the way to read this would be
take all the chiefs of the people and hang the offenders in
the sun. That's one way to read it.
Or B them may refer to the chiefs, meaning Moses was to
hang all the chiefs of the people.
Either is possible, and there's really no good way to discern
which is objectively correct. But most commentators think it's
B that's the take the chiefs and hang the chiefs because that's
that's the closest antecedent. That would seem to make sense,
but then you got to wonder why? Why, why?
Why are they to hang only the chiefs?
How do we understand this? Well, first, Peter 417 says that
judgement begins with the household of God.
And I assume that a judgement begins with the household of
God. I assume that in that household
it also begins with the leaders. James 31 says teachers will be
judged with greater strictness, and that's true of teachers.
I assume that's also true of leaders as well.
The leaders will be judged with greater strictness #2 He says to
hang them. Hang them is probably not a good
translation. Probably the better translation
is impale them. That's what it probably
literally means it it literally translates as disfigure them and
probably through impaling. This is a brutal punishment #3
He says do it in the sun. Why?
Why does he say that? Meaning, this is not to be done
behind closed doors. This is not to be done Outback.
This is to be done in the sun. This is to be done for all to
see. God wanted all of Israel to see
the punishment for this egregious sin.
And #4 he says, hang them in the sun before the Lord.
Why did you say before the Lord? This is a reminder that their
sin is against God. They sinned before the Lord.
Now they will be judged before the Lord.
And I want you to notice the reason for such a harsh
punishment. It sounds punitive, but it's not
primarily punitive. It's propitiatory that the
fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.
We call this the doctrine of propitiation.
You may have seen that term before.
Israel has angered a holy and righteous God, and this anger
will not go away on its own. You ever been angry?
And if enough time passes, it just goes away, right?
You get angry at something and you get distracted.
You get busy and you just kind of forget you're angry.
You get busy doing something else.
That's not how it works with God.
God's anger doesn't go away. He doesn't get distracted.
He doesn't forget, He doesn't get busy.
God's anger must be dealt with. It has to be dealt with.
Look at verse 5. And Moses said to the judges of
Israel, each of you kill those of his men who have yoked
themselves to bail of peor. Now there's two ways to
understand verse 5. Verse 5A.
If the them in verse 4 refers to the offenders, then chiefs in
verse 4 and judges in verse 5 are the same people.
They're one in the same. Moses is telling the judges to
kill the offenders. Or B.
If the them in verse 4 refers to the chiefs, then it appears that
Moses fails to carry out God's command.
In verse 4, it appears that Moses alters God's command to
only kill the offenders. It's hard to know either way.
Here's what we do know. Moses has the leadership of
Israel get involved in the judgement of Israel.
Moses says the leaders are to get involved in the judgement of
Israel. Now this is similar to what he
did in Exodus 32 when they built the golden calf.
Remember when Moses went up the mountain to get the 10
commandments and when he came down they had built a golden
calf. And then Moses said this who was
on the Lord's side, Come to me. And all the sons of Levi's
gathered to him. And he said to them, pull out
your sword on on each side. Put put your sword on each side
of you and each of you go kill his brother and his companion
and his neighbor. And the Levites went up and down
the line, killing those who had built this golden calf.
Now, whether the judges actually do this or not, whether they
actually carry out this command or not is debatable.
Because later we're going to see that a plague comes, kills
24,000. You kind of wonder, was the
plague in addition to this, or did the plague happen because
they refused to actually do this?
We don't know. Look at verse 6 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.
The narrator now makes a hard pivot.
He makes a hard pivot to a new story, and he does this by
saying this and behold, meaning something shocking is about to
happen. One of the Israelite men brought
a Midianite woman to his family. So he's he's married, he's
married, he's got kids. He goes and finds a mini night
woman and he brings her to his own family.
And notice he doesn't do this in secret.
He did it in the sight of Moses. He did it in the sight of the
whole congregation in broad daylight.
And to make matters worse, he does this while Moses and the
people are weeping over their sin and weeping over their
judgment. This man can hear the weeping of
his people, and he does it anyway.
This is a very, very low point in Israel's history, but like
always, God will raise up a deliverer, which we will get to
next week. We'll stop there with our
exposition of the text application.
I have 10 truths. This is why I could not do the
whole chapter. I have 10 truths from these 6
verses #1 God's blessing comes from divine grace, not human
merit. God's blessing comes from divine
grace, not human merit. Numbers 25 is a crazy story.
There's no way around it is a crazy story.
But you know, what is the craziest part of this story, to
me at least, is the juxtaposition of the previous
two chapters and chapter 25. It's the juxtaposition of it.
Balak hires Balaam to curse Israel and rather than curse
them, he spends 2 whole chapters blessing the people of God.
And here's the thing. It's not as though God doesn't
know what's coming next. It's not as though God bless
them. And then they did this and he's
like, oh man, why did I bless? Maybe I should have listened to
Balak. It's not as though God didn't
know what's coming next. He knew good and well God knows
the future. God knows that his people are
about to engage in this egregious sin.
And yet God tells Balaam, bless them.
Why? Because God's blessing comes
from divine grace, not human merit.
God created Adam and Eve knowing they would disobey him.
God raised up. David to be king to replace
Saul, knowing that he would kill a man and commit adultery.
Jesus chose Peter as his disciple, knowing that he would
deny him three times. And friend, God chose you and
me, knowing every single sin we would ever commit.
If there is one thing that we learned from the scriptures, it
is this. God doesn't bless us because of
our merit, but because of His grace. 2 If Satan can't get us
through the front door, he will attempt to use the back door.
If Satan can't get us through the front door, he will attempt
to use the back door. Balaam and Balak couldn't curse
Israel through the front door. So what did they do?
They found a back door. Balaam got Balak to put a
stumbling block to the people of Israel.
And how did he do it? Through Moabite women.
You see, Satan is a master at finding our weaknesses, and he's
been around for a very long time.
He is very clever. He is a master at finding our
weaknesses and exploiting them. He will try one method, and if
he is not successful, he will try another and another, and yet
another. He will keep going until he
finds a stumbling block that works.
I remember several years back when we were getting broken into
what seemed like almost every month.
There was a time when we got broken into.
Like it felt like every month we would secure up 1 area only to
find out that we needed to secure up another area.
We got to a point where we realized we can't have any easy
access points because if we do, people will find it.
They will find the access point and they will enter through it.
That's just how it is. And that's how it is with Satan
too. Listen to me when I say this.
There cannot be any unlocked back doors in your life because
Satan will find them. He will use them, he will
exploit them #3 Pornography is a God and one of the most worship
gods in our culture. Pornography is a God and it is
one of the most worship gods in our culture.
As bad as the sexual sin was in this story, what made it worse
is that it led to their idolatry.
The men were invited to the sacrifices of to bail.
Not only did they go to the sacrifices, but they actually
ate the food that was sacrificed to the idol to bail.
They even bowed down to bail. Now, I think it can be easy to
read this story. Maybe you read, just read the
story. Maybe you're listening right
now. It can be easy to think.
Listen brother, I know that I have sin in my life.
I know maybe I even have sexual sin in my life.
I've never bowed down to a false God.
And yet how many men and even women all across the world bow
down in front of their computer screen or their phone screen?
I want to be clear here, pornography and, and I want to
be clear if you say, when I say pornography, I'm using the way
my wife defines it because you might think like, oh, it's only
like that hardcore stuff. I mean, anything, any images
that 'd be hardcore. Pornography is a God and it is
one of the most worshipped gods in our culture.
I was looking up statistics on pornography.
I was going to give statistics and to be honest, I, I chose not
to because the numbers are all over the place.
They're so they vary so much. You kind of wonder what's true.
I don't, I mean, I don't even know what's true, right?
I hear this, I hear that. I have no idea.
It's hard to know what's true. It's hard to know what's
accurate. So I, I'm not a big fan of
speaking anecdotally as evidence, but I think in this
case it maybe has merit. I'll speak anecdotally for my 22
years of being a Christian, and especially the past 14 years of
being a pastor. I've never met a man who did not
struggle with pornography at some point in his life.
Never I've had. Several women confess to me that
they struggle with pornography at some point in their life.
Several, not like one or two. I've had several women confess
this to me. I've even had married couples
confess to me to watching pornography in their marriage
together. Here's why this is such a
dangerous God in our culture, because next week we're going to
see that this sexual sin killed 24,000 of the Israelites.
And yet every day pornography spiritually kills 24,000,000
Americans. Every single day.
And that's being conservative. Your computer screen, your phone
screen is the 21st century temple of this world.
Do you hear me when I say that your computer screen, your phone
screen is the temple of this world?
That's the modern day temple. Brothers and sisters, be careful
who you bow down to. 4 You cannot kill desire with effort
alone. You must kill desire with
desire. You cannot kill desire with
effort alone. You must kill desire with
desire. It's tragic how many of God's
men had a weakness for women, right Started with Adam start in
the garden. Adam listening to his wife
rather than listening to the voice of God.
David's weakness was women, so was Samson's, so was Solomon's,
so was these Israelite men. You kind of wonder, why did so
many of God's men fall into sexual sin?
Like, why? I think it's very simple because
God has made certain desires very strong.
I mean, why do we struggle with being overweight?
Is it not that God has made desire for food and comfort very
strong? Do we not love our food?
Do we not love our comfort? Why do we struggle with sexual
sin? Because God has made the desire
for physical pleasure very strong.
And this is so important that we get this You cannot kill desire
with effort alone. It won't work.
Effort alone will never be strong enough to kill desire.
It'll never be strong enough to put these desires down.
If you try to manpower this, willpower this, you won't.
Your willpower is not strong enough.
We all know this. The Apostle Paul writes in
Colossians 223. These have indeed an appearance
of wisdom and promoting self-made religion and
asceticism and severity of the body.
Here it is. But they are of no value and
stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
Effort alone is of no value and stopping the indulgence of the
flesh. We must kill desire with desire.
The only way to kill a strong desire is to have an even
stronger desire. It's the only way to do it.
Your desire for the holiness without which no one will see
the Lord must be stronger then your desire for 5 minutes of
gratification. 5 There is no dating and idol, there's only
being yoked to it. There is no dating and idol,
there's only being yoked to it. It's no secret that the younger
generation is putting off marriage.
No offense to anybody. In the 1950's, the average age
that men got married was 22 and women 20.
You realize that in the 1950's, the average age in America that
men got married was 22, and the average age for women was 2075.
Years later, those numbers are now 30 and 28 respectively, and
they are climbing. Sometimes I'll see a couple and
they tell me they've been together for seven years.
They're like, oh, we've been together for seven years.
I assume they're married. Like you've been together for
seven years. You must be married.
Who dates for seven years. And then I quickly realized
that, oh, they're not married, they're dating.
You see, the benefit of dating is that you're not yoked.
You date someone, you're not yoked to them.
Or in the South, we call it hitched.
There's no formal commitment. You can back out whenever you
want, no harm, no foul. I mean, there's consequences,
but it's not sin. It's not sin to break up.
It is a sin to get a divorce. It's not a sin to break up.
Here's why this matters. I wonder how many of these men
who went to the temple of Baal, ate of Baal's food, and bowed
down to Baal thought of themselves as simply going
through the motions. I imagine that's how they
justified it. They thought, well, we have
these women. We like these women.
We think they're better looking than our Jewish women.
Or we think that they have some, you know, or maybe they're just
different, right? Sometimes it doesn't matter if
they're better looking. You just want something
different. We want something different.
And this is just a necessary step in order to keep the
relations open with these women, right?
I really like her. She invited me to her feast.
All right, all right, All right. And yet that's not the
perspective of God's word, the narrator says.
So Israel yoked himself to the Bale of Peor yoked himself.
He doesn't even say they yoked himself to the women.
Did you notice that? Even though that's true, he says
they yoked themselves to the Bale of pure.
What we learn is that there is no dating and idol, and there is
no dating God either. There is either being yoked to
God or being yoked to an idol. I've talked to people through
the years and they have defended that they're not walking away
from the faith. They're not walking away from
God, right? They say, look, I'm just
exploring this new relationship with the lost person.
I'm still a Christian. I'm still a Christian.
I'm not walking away from the faith.
I'm not walking around Christian, you know, I'm just
exploring this new relationship with the lost person.
Or someone takes a job and they say, look, I'm not giving up on
the church. I'm not giving up on
Christianity. I'm just taking this job, even
though this job is going to take me away from church and I'm
going to miss church every single Sunday.
I'm just, it's just the necessary step for me, OK?
It's part of my career, right? I've talked to people about
that. Hear me when I say this,
brothers and sisters, there is no such thing as dating and
idol. There is only being yoked to it.
You're either yoked to God or you're yoked to an idol.
There's no middle ground. Number six, God is angry with
our sexual sin. God is angry with our sexual
sin. Now I want to be clear that if
we are in Christ, God is not angry with us.
Period. Let me be very clear on that.
If we are in Christ, God is not angry with us, period.
God is for us. God delights in US, but that
doesn't mean that God doesn't get angry with us for our sexual
sin, the text says. And the anger of the Lord was
kindled against Israel. Now here's why I think this
point needs to be made. I think it can be.
You go to a lot of churches and this point will not be made
because there's a fear of the church walking away feeling
condemned. But here's why this point has to
be made, because everything in the world, everything outside
there, everything is attempting to minimize this set.
Minimize it. I mean, how many songs are
written today containing lyrics about sexual immorality?
How many? There's a song I heard on the
radio recently. I didn't realize it's actually
an old song. I thought it was new, but it's
actually old. I was singing it and I I didn't
know what they were saying because I couldn't understand
it. And I kept singing it.
And then I realized what I was singing was promiscuous boy and
promiscuous girl. And then after I heard it, I was
like, Oh my gosh, why am I singing?
How many songs are written today around the theme of sexual
immorality? How many movies today don't have
a sex scene or an implied 1? Not among married couples?
How many advertisements are centred around some sexual theme
or some sexual innuendo? You see, it permeates all of our
culture. It permeates all of society.
It's everywhere. Again, statistics vary greatly,
I understand that, but almost everyone I looked up said this
one that somewhere around 90% of people have had sex before they
were married, 90%. The average age now today of
people having their first sexual encounter is 17.
That's Abraham and 10 months 17. And when you are surrounded by
this much of A prevailing culture, it is all too easy to
become desensitized to it, isn't it?
We just get desensitized to it. We forget that God is angry with
our sexual sin. When you read the story, it's
clear that God is not just a little bit angry, He's angry
enough to have these people impaled.
He's angry enough to put 24,000 of them to death.
You see, we need stories like this.
We need stories like this to remind us My holiness matters.
It matters #7 Jesus was hanged in the sun before the Lord for
my sexual sin and for your sexual sin.
Jesus was hanged in the sun before the Lord for my sexual
sin and for your sexual sin. And if you're there and you're
saying, look brother, I've never committed any sexual sin, OK?
Just substitute idolatry in that sentence.
Let me tell you out the word sexual sin.
Just substitute idolatry there. As stunning as verses one to
three are, verse 4 is equally stunning, is it not?
If not more, we read verses one to three and it just kind of
stuns us. And then you read verse 4 and
it's even more stunning. God commands Moses to hang,
probably impale either the leaders of the people or the
perpetrators of this sin. And he tells Moses, do it in the
sun, meaning in the sight before all of the people.
I got exposed to sexual sin at an early age, maybe around 5th
grade. I was maybe around 1111 years
old. For the next 15 years of my
life, I engaged in more sexual sin than I care to recount.
One thought that I've had at least 100 times in my Christian
life is this. Why wasn't I punished?
More Why don't I have leprosy? Why is it?
One of my. Children died because I deserve.
It. I.
Deserve it, I can scarcely even think.
About it sometimes without tears coming to my eyes.
And I always come back. To the same answer.
Because Jesus was. Hanged in the sun before the
Lord, for my sexual sin, and for yours for yours.
That's the only answer I come up with. #8 The greatest problem
facing our world is that there. Is a holy and righteous.
God who is angry with sinners the greatest problem facing our
world is that there is a holy and righteous God who is angry
with sinners the world kind of. Feels like it's falling apart.
Doesn't it? Especially if you watch the
news, which. I I don't think it's.
A good thing to do, but if you ask people what?
Is the greatest problem if? You were to go walk out on the
streets and ask people what is the greatest problem facing our
world right now? You probably get a myriad of
answers. Some people might say war.
War is the greatest problem facing our world right now.
War with Russia and Ukraine, War with Israel and Palestine, war
with Israel and Iran. Some people might.
Say climate change. There's melting ice caps, global
warming, stronger storms. Some people might say AI.
We don't even know the threats of AI.
Maybe it's going to kill us all. Some people will say pandemics.
COVID you thought COVID was? Bad the.
Next one will be even worse. Food supply.
Overpopulation, economic instability, and on and on and
on and on. But here is the objective
correct answer. There is an objective correct
answer, and here it is. The greatest problem facing our
world is that there is a holy and righteous God who is angry
with sinners. The reason that God said.
To hang these men in the sun was not primarily to punish them for
their sin, though that was part of it.
That wasn't the primary reason to do it.
The reason was that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away
from Israel. Neither war nor climate.
Change, nor AI, nor pandemics, or food supply or economic
instability compare to this central and universal problem
facing all of us there. Is a holy and righteous.
God who is angry with sinners, and something must be done about
it. Something must.
Be done about it. And Jesus did.
He did something about it. There is only one way.
For God not. To be angry with us.
There's only one way and it was. Read in our benediction
recently. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry,
and you perish in the way, for His wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all those who take refuge in him #9 We all have a
corporate responsibility when there is sin in the
congregation. We all have a.
Corporate responsibility. When there is sin in the
congregation, it's interesting that later in the story we're
going to see that the Lord put 24,000 men to death through a
plague. But before he did this, he.
Commands Moses. To either hang all the chiefs,
or to hang, or to have the chiefs hang all the
perpetrators. And then Moses commands the
judges, who may or may not be the same people as the chiefs.
Moses commands them to personally kill all the men who
have yoked themselves to bail. Now why did God do it this way?
He did it this way to teach the people that we all have a
corporate responsibility when there is sin in the
congregation. Now this was.
Not an anomaly. In Deuteronomy 13-6 and nine,
God says that if one of your family members, your brother,
your son, your daughter, or even your wife tries to get you to
serve other gods, God says this. You shall kill him.
Your hand shall be the first against him to put him to death.
Think about that. It's not God's job.
To deal with this sin, it's not even moses's job to deal with
this sin. It is the people's job to deal
with this sin we all have a corporate responsibility when
there is sin in the congregation.
Last point #10 Shame is a. Tool like a.
Hammer. It can be used for destruction.
It can also be used to build supporting structures.
Shame is a. Tool like a hammer it.
Can be used for destruction. It can also be used to build
supporting structures. I did a Friday night series on
Shame a few years back and I realized as I was teaching on
shame that it's a very tricky subject.
It's a lot more tricky than I thought it was at first.
Shame is a lot like a hammer. A hammer can be used for
destruction. It can also be used to build
supporting structures. It is a dangerous place to be
when we have lost all shame. That's a dangerous place to be.
And that's what happens in verse 6.
This man who brought this Midianite woman to his family,
he has lost all sense of shame. Not only does he bring a woman
to his family, he brings a foreign woman, a foreign
idolatrous woman, to his family. Not only does he do it in broad
daylight, but he does it in front of Moses, in front of the
congregation, while they are weeping.
He's lost all. Sense of shame now while it's
true that shame can be very. Dangerous in the Christian life.
It can be. Shame can kill.
A person spiritually. Shame.
Can also be very useful. I want.
To be clear, that shame. Will not 'cause us to obey for
the right reasons. Shame is not a tool that will
get you to obey for the right reasons, but it may serve as a
bridge to the right reasons. What do I mean by that?
One of the. Motivations for obedience There
are many motivations for obedience the Bible gives us
like over 50 one of the. Motivations for obedience.
Is this thought I? Would be.
Ashamed for my church family to know that I did this.
I would be horrified if you knew that I was doing.
This that is not a. Bad motivation.
That's a good motivation. Don't tell yourself there's no
shame. There is shame, Paul.
Says you. Should be ashamed.
There is no. Condemnation, I pray.
That if any of you have sexual sin in your life and I know why
are. You harping on this because
that's what the text is about if.
Any of you have sexual? Sin in your life, kill it, you
won't go. To heaven if you don't.
Kill it. Not perfectly.
Nobody kills their sin perfectly.
There are no people in heaven addicted to pornography.
Hear me when I say. That you must put it to death.
Let's pray.