A Pattern of Atonement

Psalm 106, verse 28. All of these little stories

Psalms 106:28

we're looking at, they've all been really short.

They're all up to this point. It brought us back

to Israel's time as they were brought out of

Egypt, how they wandered in the wilderness, their

constant disobedience, their grumbling, their

complaining. All of these stories are bad. These

are bad. Nothing good is happening in these stories

that we're looking at. This chapter is about

Israel's unfaithfulness to God. Remember the

previous chapter was that God was faithful to

his people, and then this chapter is a reminder

of their continued unfaithfulness. And so tonight

we are going to look at another passage, another

story that's also going to bring us back to the

Old Testament. looking in the Psalms and then

working our way back to where these stories are

found in the Old Testament. And this one's tonight.

It's got a lot of passages that we'll try to

look at. There's kind of a lot of connection

to this story. So let's pray, and then we'll

get started. God, we come to you. We thank you

for your good word. I pray that you help us to

understand what's going on here, that we see

the importance of your word, that these stories

are a reminder to us, warning to us, dear Lord,

that we pay attention to the things that we do

and the way that we act, dear Lord, that we would

be those who are obedient to you, that we don't

have to learn hard lessons, God. And I pray that

you just be with me as I preach and teach your

word, that it'll all be for your glory. In Jesus'

name I pray it. Amen. All right, Psalm 106, verse

Psalms 106:28

28. It's talking about the Israelites here. It

says, They aligned themselves with Baal of Peor

and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods.

They provoked the Lord with their deeds, and

a plague broke out against them. But Phinehas

stood up and intervened, and the plague was stopped.

Now, again, this is like most of the other little

sections we've looked at, three verses, four

verses. A short little story. that draws us back

to kind of a bigger story that we see in the

Old Testament. Now, if you flip in the Old Testament

to Numbers chapter 25, Numbers chapter 25, and

Numbers 25 · chapter mention Numbers 25 · chapter mention

I would encourage you this week for homework,

if you want to read the chapters before to get

a little bit of a background and see what's going

on or read the verses that come after to see

the whole story unfold. But we're going to look

at Numbers chapter 25. verses 1 through 13. This

Numbers 25 · chapter mention

is going to recall this story that we are talking

about. Now, the problem, as we see in Psalm 106,

is that the Israelites aligned themselves with

the Baal of Peor. Now, we see Baal mentioned

several times in the Old Testament. Usually,

it's attached to a place. In this particular

instance, it was attached to Peor. So Baal just

simply means Lord, the Lord of Peor, the God

that they worshipped, essentially. The false

god of the people of that area is really what

it's talking about. Now remember, God had told

his people that they were to have no other gods

before him. They weren't supposed to worship

idols. They weren't supposed to seek after other

gods. And that was the problem. They were doing

that. They had begun to seek out these other

gods. They were interacting with these other

gods. They had sexual immorality that was taking

place. They were eating food sacrificed to these

gods. Things were bad, and so we see God bring

his punishment on them. We see this plague mentioned

here, and we also see Phineas mentioned, that

he was the one who kind of stepped in for them.

Now, we've seen that theme throughout several

of these stories that we've looked at. God's

people disobedient, God's wrath comes on the

people, and there's somebody that steps in to

intervene for them. We see that with Aaron. We've

seen it with Moses. Now we see it with Phinehas.

Now we just get a little brief outline of the

story in Psalm 106, but Numbers 25 tells us the

rest of the story. In verse 1, it says, While

Israel was staying in the Acacia Grove, the people

began to have sexual relations with the women

of Moab. The women invited them to the sacrifices

of their gods, and the people ate and bowed in

worship to their gods. So Israel aligned itself

with Baal of Peor, and the Lord's anger burned

against Israel. All right, so we have the scene

set for us. What's the problem? God had told

his people not to marry these foreign women.

Now, is that because God is against foreign people?

Well, not exactly. Because if you look at the

genealogy of Jesus, for instance, one of the

names you see in there is Rahab. Well, she's

not a woman from Israel. She was a Canaanite.

And so God wasn't necessarily just against foreigners.

He told his people to love the foreigners and

to be kind to them on some occasions. But there

were also plenty of these foreigners that they

came up against that were evil people. And justice

was served. God oftentimes would tell his people

to destroy these people, not because he didn't

like certain people, but because many times these

people were doing a lot of evil stuff, like really

serious evil stuff. They weren't innocent people.

And so God didn't just not want his people to

associate with foreign women. The reason why

he gave such commands is there was a reason,

and that is because these foreign women were

going to lure the Israelite men away from God.

Now, here's something that you guys may not be

aware of, but this is a newsflash. Men like women,

and they'll do just about anything for women.

Now, I don't know if y 'all figured that out

yet. but I suspect you probably have. Man, you

know that's to be true, because one day you've

had your eye on a girl before, and you pretty

much would say or do anything you could to get

to spend time with them. I remember one day,

Jennings, there was a hog that was killed. He

was going to skin it, and I knew Michelle was

going to be at their house. That's before we

got married, and I volunteered to go help skin

the hog. Now, what do I know about skinning a

hog? I mean, you might as well have told me to

go out there and build an Eiffel Tower. But I

was like, oh, yeah, I'll come over there and

help because I wanted to hopefully get this.

And so we get over there, and then you know what

he says? I'm getting off track. He says, well,

we're going to take this down to one of my buddies

in Gillsburg and do it. And I was like, Gillsburg?

I don't want to go to Gillsburg to skin a hog.

So anyway, the point being is men will do whatever

it takes to be close to a woman, and women can

kind of have their way and tell men what to do,

and men will just kind of cave in and do it.

And these women, well, they were worshiping false

gods and they were doing a lot of evil things.

And God didn't want the men of Israel to be led

astray. But they were led astray. They started

hanging out with these foreign women. They started

giving in to sexual immorality and doing things

they shouldn't have done. And pretty soon they

start worshiping the gods of these foreign women.

All right, verse 4. The Lord said to Moses, Take

all the leaders of the people and execute them

in broad daylight before the Lord, so that his

burning anger may turn away from Israel. So Moses

told Israel's judges, Kill each of the men who

align themselves with Baal of Peor. An Israelite

man came bringing in a Midianite woman to his

relatives in the sight of Moses and the whole

Israelite community while they were weeping at

the entrance of the tent. All right, so God's

not happy with what's taking place here. This

is very serious. God said, don't do it. They

did it. They were led astray. The most important

thing, don't have any other gods before me. And

now these men of Israel have got other gods before

God. So God tells Moses, all right, these people

who are doing these things, they need to be killed.

It's a death sentence. It's pretty serious. God

takes this serious. After the fact, this dude

comes up. He's got a foreign wife, a Midianite

wife, and just bebops right up in the middle

of the crowd in front of everybody. Now, having

a Midianite wife is not necessarily a bad thing.

Even Moses' wife was a Midianite. Again, the

problem was maybe not so much that the women

were foreign, but that the foreign women had

false gods. Now, you know, there are foreign

women who... who fear God. Rahab, I just used

that example, she's one of them. She was a foreign

woman, and even though maybe the rest of the

people in her group didn't fear God, she did,

and guess what? God spared her. So what God really

wants is people who fear him and serve him. There

certainly were foreigners who did love God and

fear him and serve him, and he didn't just say,

get out of here, you're a foreigner. But the

real problem was most of these folks didn't worship

God and fear God. They worshiped their false

gods. And so this Israelite man and this Midianite

woman, Come up in the middle of the crowd. Verse

7. When Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron,

the priest, saw this, he got up from the assembly,

took a spear in his hand, followed the Israelite

man into the tent, and drove it through both

the Israelite man and the woman through her belly.

Then the plague on the Israelites was stopped.

Now that was pretty serious stuff right there.

Phinehas, the son of Aaron, he takes matters

into his own hands. He said, okay, this was the

command of God that the men of Israel who were

guilty of this need to be killed. And he goes

in and he kills this man and he kills this woman.

It's pretty serious. God does not take sin lightly.

And we see that in this example. All right, let's

read on a little further. At the end of verse

8. Then the plague on the Israelites was stopped,

but those who died in the plague numbered 24

,000. All right, now this is a theme that we've

kind of seen. We've seen it in some of our past

examples with Aaron and with Moses. They were

disobedient. A plague came on the people, and

there had to be some type of intercession there.

There had to be some type of atonement that was

made. Somebody had to step in on behalf of God's

people, or they were going to be destroyed. And

in these other instances, we see that a lot of

people die. I mean, not all of them. There were

probably a few million, a couple of million at

least, Israelites at this time. And we see some

big numbers of them dying, 24 ,000 that are mentioned

here that die from this plague. Now, this same

story is also referenced very briefly in the

New Testament. Now here's why I like this story

that we're looking at in Psalms. This story is

a good example of how a lot of passages throughout

the Bible kind of tie together in a cool way,

and you see how things tie together. So we see

this story referenced in Psalm, which brings

us back to Numbers 25, and then it also points

us forward to 1 Corinthians 10, verses 7 and

1 Corinthians 10:7

8, where Paul uses this example for the Corinthians.

He says, Don't become idolaters, as some of them

were, as it is written. The people sat down to

eat and drink and got up to play. Let us not

commit sexual immorality, as some of them did.

And in a single day, 23 ,000 fell dead. Now,

Paul is referencing this story here. Now, you

may be saying, well, the number's 25. It said

24 ,000. 1 Corinthians 10, it says 23 ,000. Well,

you'd be right. And it could be that there was

just some error in copying through the years

and maybe what Paul was looking at had a different

number. Or maybe 23 ,000 died in one day and

the other 1 ,000 died another day. Because Paul

says 23 ,000 in a single day and Numbers says

24 ,000 died total. So maybe some of them, the

bulk of them died in one day and maybe there

were a few. But even though those numbers don't

line up perfectly, this is the story that Paul

is referencing here. These are the events that

Paul is referencing. All right, back to Numbers

25 in verse 10. The Lord spoke to Moses, Phinehas,

son of Eleazar, son of Aaron. The priest, I'm

sorry, I told you all Phinehas was the son of

Aaron a while ago, son of Eleazar, my mistake.

Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, the priest

had turned back my wrath from the Israelites

because he was zealous among them with my zeal.

So I did not destroy the Israelites in my zeal.

Therefore... I grant him my covenant of peace.

It will be a covenant of perpetual priesthood

for him and his future descendants because he

was zealous for his God and made atonement for

the Israelites. All right, so Phinehas steps

up. He's the one that spares the people. Yeah,

a lot of them die, but he steps up and he makes

atonement for the people. We're starting to see

a theme here as we go through Psalm 106. And

these stories we're looking at, The theme that

keeps repeating itself is, is God's people sin,

and someone else steps in and makes atonement.

This is the third person that's done such a thing.

Aaron was first, then Moses, and now Phineas

has made atonement for the people. Now, this

atonement was justice being served. That is,

these people had committed some sin that God

said not to commit, and the punishment had to

take place. Justice had to be served for atonement

to be made. And so we see this theme in the Old

Testament that should, as we have read through

the Scripture, if you ever have or maybe you

haven't, but when you read through the New Testament,

you should start to see some connections that

Jesus is the intercessor for us. He is the one

who makes atonement for us. He is the one who

pays the price for us, all right? Justice had

to be served in this story for there to be atonement.

Now justice has to be served. God is a just God

and justice has to be served. Now in our case,

we don't have a priest coming and using his spear

to strike us dead. In our case, it's Jesus who

took the punishment on our behalf. It's Jesus

who paid the price so that atonement could occur

for you and I. So we see this theme of continual

unfaithfulness for God's people, and there continually

being a man who stands in the gap. We saw that

language used of Moses a couple of weeks ago.

A man who stands in the gap. Now, you may remember

when we talked about Moses that Moses said, I'm

going to go before God and I'm going to see if

I can make atonement for you. And he goes before

God, but what God says is that... Moses is not

able to make atonement for the people. The people

are going to suffer the consequences of what

they've done. Now, in some way, I believe that

God's wrath was kind of subdued by Moses interceding

for the people, but Moses in and of himself was

incapable of making atonement. The atonement

that was needed for humanity is not something

that Moses could offer up, even though he had

a heart to do it. And he said, God, If you won't

forgive them, then take my name from your book.

Even though Moses had the heart to atone for

those sins, he didn't really have the ability.

But Jesus does have the ability. There was some

atonement that was made through the sacrifices

and through the people that spoke up and did

what they did for justice to be served in the

case of Phinehas or whatever was going to be

offered before the Lord. There was some atonement

that was made, but it was not a perfect atonement.

It would atone for a little while, but it could

never atone someone's sin for eternity. It never

could fully pay the price that our sin deserved.

And that's why Jesus is so perfect. Now, these

guys that served the Lord, they were righteous

here. Phinehas is called a righteous man. It

was credited to him for righteousness for what

he did. Well, these were godly men, but it took

God himself to pay the price for us through Jesus

Christ. to be the atonement that we needed. And

so there's some beauty in this story because

we say, golly, when we look through Psalm 106,

why are these people so unfaithful? Why are we

so unfaithful? I mean, we're in pretty bad shape.

And praise the Lord, we have somebody that's

even better than Moses and better than Aaron

and better than Phinehas, somebody who was nailed

to a cross for us in Jesus Christ. And so these

verses serve as a warning in a sense, like, hey,

don't do this. Okay, Jesus has died on a cross

so our sins can be forgiven, but we see that

God took these sins pretty serious, and, well,

guess what? He still takes sin pretty serious

today, so we should think about these things.

And, you know, as Paul says in the New Testament,

well, just because grace abounds all the more

doesn't mean that we just sin all the more so

that grace can abound all the more. Like, we

have to understand the price that Jesus paid

was a powerful price. It does atone for our sins,

but... It's not a license to sin. That grace

should change our heart and transform our lives.

And so we see that beautiful theme through these

stories. Now, one other kind of bonus to this

passage. This is no extra charge. But talking

about how stories kind of tie together. Well,

if you go back and you read the chapters around

Numbers 25 before that, you see the story of

Balaam. Now, you may remember that story. You

may have heard it or maybe not. But Balaam was

a guy that there was another guy who wanted Balaam

to curse Israel. And he was going to get paid

to do it. And the Lord wouldn't let Balaam curse

Israel. We see several times that... He just

can't do it. I think it's three or four times

that he tries to do it. You may recall the most

memorable part of the story is Balaam's donkey

talks to him. Long story short, Balaam is supposed

to curse Israel, but yet he never curses Israel.

But by the time we get to the New Testament,

we see Balaam is not talked about in a very good

light. Now, I'll read over just a few scriptures

real quickly from the New Testament. that talk

about Balaam, that talk about all these things

are in the same time frame when Balaam is being

discussed. In 2 Peter 2, verses 15 and 16, it

2 Peter 2:15

says, They have gone astray by abandoning the

straight path and have followed the path of Balaam,

the son of Boser, who loved the wages of unrighteousness

but received a rebuke for his transgression.

A donkey that could not talk spoke with a human

voice. and restrained the prophet's irrationality.

All right? So this was a warning that Peter was

given to these false teachers. And he was saying

that these false teachers were like Balaam in

the Old Testament. And Balaam is not spoken of

in a very good term here. He says that he's one

who loved the wages of unrighteousness. Well,

wait a minute. If you go back and you read the

story, Balaam doesn't... Doesn't curse Israel.

So what's going on? Why is he looked at so negatively?

Well, we see another example. In Jude, verse

11. Woe to them, for they have traveled in the

way of Cain, have abandoned themselves to the

error of Balaam for profit, and have perished

in Korah's rebellion. Again, Jude's talking about

some evil folks here, and he's comparing them

to some folks that we know in the Old Testament.

Cain, Cain and Abel. Cain killed his brother.

That's pretty evil. Balaam, who we're talking

about, who's the main focus here. Well, he abandoned

himself to the heir of prophet, it says. And

then Korah. You may remember just a couple of

weeks ago we talked about Korah's rebellion.

That's one of these stories of Psalm 106. He

got a group of folks together and said, Hey,

we don't like Moses. We're going to rebel against

him. And these are some evil folks that Judah's

saying, Hey, these folks I'm talking about, they're

like Cain. They're like Balaam. They're like

Korah. Okay, again, Balaam is not a good guy.

All right, let's look at one more example in

the New Testament. Revelation 2, verse 14. This

Revelation 2:14

is in the letter to Pergamum, and Balaam is used

as a warning. Now, they were doing pretty good

in some areas, but then there was this warning

that they needed to pay attention to. It says,

but I have a few things against you. You have

some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam,

who taught Balak to place a stumbling block in

front of the Israelites to eat meat, sacrifice

to idols, and to commit sexual immorality. Okay,

so here, some of the folks in Pergamum are being

compared to Balaam. Now, Balaam was supposed

to curse Israel. He didn't curse Israel, but

he sure is looked out in a negative light, but

this verse tells us what he did wrong. It says

that he taught Balak to place a stumbling block

in front of the Israelites. Okay, so he didn't

curse them, but he said, here's how you can get

them to stumble, and they did stumble. And how

did they stumble in Numbers 25? Sexual immorality

and eating food offered to idols. And Balaam

was responsible for that. Now, if you continue

reading the little past, Numbers 25 and Numbers

31, here's what it says in Numbers 31, verses

Numbers 31:15

15 and 16. This is after the main verses about

Balaam before. And now we see in the Old Testament

where it tells us what Balaam did. He says, Have

you let every female live, he asked them, yet

they are the ones who at Balaam's advice incited

the Israelites to unfaithfulness against the

Lord in the Peor incident so that the plague

came against the Lord's community. So even though

Balaam never just outright cursed God's people

like Balak wanted him to, Balaam was responsible.

Because in his advice, he said, here's how you

can get them. Here's how you can get them with

these foreign women. So by the time we flip a

few chapters on over in Numbers 31, we see the

story that we're looking at in Psalm 106, the

story that we just looked at in Numbers 25. We

see these stories coming back full circle. And

so we see a lot of stories tying into each other

here. In the Old Testament, in the New Testament,

Balaam and Phinehas and... All this stuff, it

all ties together. And that's the beauty of God's

Word. That's why it's important for us to read

God's Word and to try to read the whole Bible

at some point in our life. Like, I get it. It's

a lot of stuff. And there's a lot of stuff we'll

read as we read through the Bible that we say,

man, I don't get that. I don't understand that.

But there's little stories and little pieces

that we pick up along the way. And as we begin

to go back and really study and dig in deep to

God's Word, we start maybe to see some of these

pieces come together and see how these things

tie together. And a lot of things in the Old

Testament, or New Testament, bring us back to

the Old Testament. And a lot of things in the

New Testament point us forward to Jesus Christ.

I would say everything in the Old Testament points

us forward to Jesus Christ. And so Psalm 106

is... It is rich in these Old Testament stories

that we've looked at, most of them coming from

the book of Numbers. It is a rich and vibrant

reminder to us about the importance of not giving

in to sin, but most importantly, it's a reminder

to us of what it means to have one who makes

atonement for us. We see glimpses of people who

attempt to do that in the Old Testament and to

some degree are successful. But ultimately, they

point us to Jesus Christ, who is perfectly successful

in every way to atone for us. Let's pray. God,

we come to you. We thank you for your word. We

thank you for this story. It's kind of heavy,

but I thank you for letting us be able to study

it and ponder on it tonight and to see how your

word ties together. We thank you for these examples

of what these leaders that we're looking at,

Moses and Aaron and Phinehas, what their leadership

looks like and how... Dear Lord, leaders should

be ready to do what you call them to and to make

atonement for the people. But we thank you first

and foremost for Jesus Christ, the ultimate atonement

that's been made for us, dear Lord, the one who

took the punishment that we deserve. God, we

deserve that same punishment as that Israelite

man and Midianite woman in the story, dear Lord.

But we thank you that Jesus made atonement by

taking that punishment for us. And I ask these

things in Jesus' name. Amen.