One of the greatest threats to God’s people continues to be the temptation to just go along with the unbelieving world, to put our faith in things we can see and touch instead of in God, to do what feels good or what makes sense to us rather than to follow God’s Word. That was the temptation that faced God’s people as they reached Acacia Grove, just across the Jordan River from Jericho. They had faced 40 years of privation in the desert, but when the pleasures of the flesh came calling, they just couldn’t resist.

What was so tempting to them? Well, the false gods of the Ancient Near East basically promised rich harvests and fertile flocks and herds to their devotees – as long as their worshippers were willing to give up some grain or animals to them. And to sweeten the deal, the worship of some of these fertility gods involved ritual prostitution. It’s no wonder that this potent combination of sex and money led the people astray – we still face the same sorts of temptations today, don’t we?

But that’s not to say that we are called to deal with our temptations the same way that they were. Because ethnicity and religion were more or less synonymous in the Ancient Near East, the only way to remove idolatry from the midst of a people was to remove the idolaters – and that meant putting them to death. Today, as Christ’s Kingdom spreads around the world and extends across all racial and cultural lines, we are called to pursue greater holiness not through capital punishment but by eliminating sinful thoughts and practices from among us, even while we call all people to follow and serve Christ with greater consistency.

So, what can we learn from passages like these? We must be just as determined, just as ruthless to root out sin from within our hearts as God’s Old Testament people were to remove sinners from their community. We must give sin no quarter. We must make no compromise with the worship of self. Instead, we must live the life of Christ, loving and serving God and other people, regardless of the cost to the self, regardless of how little sense it makes or how bad it feels sometimes. That’s what faithfulness to God involves – today, and every day.

Numbers 25:1-9 (NASB)

While Israel remained at Shittim, the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab.
2 For they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.
3 So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the LORD was angry against Israel.
4 And the LORD said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.”
5 So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you slay his men who have joined themselves to Baal of Peor.”
6 Then behold, one of the sons of Israel came and brought to his relatives a Midianite woman, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the sons of Israel, while they were weeping at the doorway of the tent of meeting.
7 When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he arose from the midst of the congregation, and took a spear in his hand;
8 and he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and pierced both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman, through the body. So the plague on the sons of Israel was checked.
9 And those who died by the plague were 24,000.