Today's Quick Word
Today’s Quick Word
Numbers 25:1-3 While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate […]
Numbers 25:1-3 While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods. So Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor. And the LORD’s anger burned against them.
This was a truly shameful episode in the life of Israel during their 40 years in the wilderness, and it cost the lives of 24,000 of them (v.9). It is important that we reflect on the different steps involved in this horrendous, almost unbelievable, sin.
The first step was not the sexual immorality itself, but the taking up of the Moabite women’s invitation to participate in their culture. The prophet Hosea draws this out when he declares God’s message: “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” (Hosea 9:10).
The first step down was lack of discernment, allowing themselves to be drawn into the lifestyle and practices that surrounded them, and it was only subsequently that they “became as vile as the thing they loved.” The Apostle James gives us two strong warnings in this regard: “… each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:14-15); and “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (James 4:4).
Jesus has given us, as his followers, a tricky task: we are to identify with our culture for the purpose of transforming it through the Gospel, but in the process we are to resist the temptation to be absorbed into it. To remain ‘in the world’ but not ‘of the world’ requires constant and watchful discernment. Perhaps today our ‘friendship with the world’ has reached a stage where some honest mutual discussion and accountability in this area would not go astray!
– Bruce Christian
