Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Good morning. 945.
[00:00:07] Good morning. Hey, if I have not had the chance to meet you, my name is Michael Fueling. I'm the lead pastor here. If you have a Bible, open it up to the Book of Numbers. We're going to be in chapter 25 this morning.
[00:00:20] I want to start off and I want to read to you from Jesus in Matthew, chapter 16 verse.
[00:00:27] And here's what Jesus says.
[00:00:30] He says, I will build my church. And he's palpably aware of what is going to be the primary thing that's going to stand or try to stand between him and building the church. And he says, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I want you to notice something here. The church is not on the defensive.
[00:00:53] The church is not also offensive. The church is on the offensive.
[00:00:58] It is attacking. The church is taking ground. The church is unafraid. The church is confident in victory. So if the posture of the church is onslaught of hell, what do you think their response to the church is going to be?
[00:01:20] Do you think they're going to take it very well and sit back and be like, yeah, onslaught us. We'll just sit back and take it? Probably not. For New Testament Christians, this is really, really great news. If you have trusted in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the spiritual forces against you have been disarmed to a degree. And so that the primary attack on Christians, not exclusive, but primary, is psychological, intellectual, cultural, and temptational. And yes, I know temptational is not a real word, but could we just make it a new word in Eng language? Temptational. Okay, good.
[00:01:53] And there are exceptions, but this is the primary way the demonic realm is going to attack believers psychologically, intellectually, culturally, and with temptation. And if I could use like one word to describe the demonic realm's attack on Christians, I would steal a word from spycraft and the word would be subterfuge.
[00:02:18] Subterfuge. It's one of my favorite words. And here's what it means. It's a deceitful device or strategy used to achieve a goal. In particular, it's trickery or deception intended to hide, escape or evade something.
[00:02:33] Do you guys know what the most historic example of subterfuge is?
[00:02:39] You'll notice as soon as I say it. It's the Trojan horse. And if you don't know what the Trojan horse is, let me just tell you quickly the story. It's likely mythology with pieces of truth dropped in, but it's about the 10 year legendary conflict between the Greeks and The city of Troy. And so after years of siege, the Greeks couldn't break through Troy's walls. So what they do is they build this very large, hollow Trojan horse. And what they do is they fill it with their best and brightest and they put them in there, and then they sail their ships away. And the people of Troy think it's some kind of gift. It's a surrender. It's a gift to the gods. And so they sail their ships away. And then if I was in, I don't know the horse, I'd be afraid that they would set it on fire. That's just me. But.
[00:03:21] So they sail away. And then at nighttime, everybody goes to bed. They get out, they burn the walls down, and all the ships come back, and Troy is destroyed in Greece. Greece wins. And everybody dies. All right. Subterfuge simply exploits weaknesses that you most likely didn't even know you had.
[00:03:41] So when we get to Numbers chapter 25, this is the true story of how 24,000 Israelites fall prey to the oldest Trojan horse in history.
[00:03:53] Numbers chapter 25 tells us the true story of a group of Israelites who had no idea whatsoever that a plot to destroy them was being formed behind their back and implemented. And they fell literally right into the trap. So numbers 25 is subterfuge in action. And I want you to look at verse one.
[00:04:13] It says this. While Israel lived in shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab.
[00:04:21] So, unfortunately, I need to draw your attention probably to the most powerful word in this chapter. It's the word whore. When Israel is accused of whoring or whoredom, it's actually a verse that comes up multiple times in the Old Testament.
[00:04:35] It's not just simply sexual unfaithfulness. So. So whenever the people of Israel are going to be unfaithful to Yahweh, usually in sexuality and worship, this word, this Hebrew word, comes up, and it is the strongest word not just to explain the breaking of a covenant or a violation of the covenant, but of a breaking of the covenant of God with his people. There are actually no words that are stronger than this to describe what they've done. So in other words, the relationship with God, the absolute most important relationship in their life, more important than their family or their spouse. It wasn't just violated, but it is shattered into pieces when they are whoring. Now, I need you to understand something. So you might be new to the Bible, and I want to bring you into this story.
[00:05:19] I want you to bring you into maybe the religion of the Moabites and the religion of the Hebrews.
[00:05:27] They both worshiped God with their sexuality.
[00:05:31] If you were part of the Moabite clan, if you will, what you would do is you would participate in vile and grotesque sexual acts publicly. And you would do these things because you believed that the gods would see it and they would respond to you and they'd be like, good job. And then they would bless you and give you the things you want. If you were a Hebrew, you worshiped God through faithfulness to your family, faithfulness to your bride, and faithfulness to your God. And so both of them understood that sexuality is an act of worship, but they did it in completely different ways.
[00:06:07] If you're reading the New Testament, the New Testament actually goes back and describes the gods of these nations or these tribes. And they basically called them for what they were. They weren't actual real gods. They were demons masquerading, presenting themselves as a God. But really they were just demons trying to trick these nations. It's another example of demonic subterfuge. And so here's what we find.
[00:06:31] The demons understand that if you control a person's sexuality, they are your slaves and you can control them for life.
[00:06:46] This is not a 3,000 year ago thing, this is a today thing.
[00:06:51] Anybody who can control your sexuality will control your life and sexuality outside of God's boundary. And I need you to hear me. Always enslaves sexuality outside of God's boundaries.
[00:07:09] Always enslaves.
[00:07:12] And if you wonder why there is a cultural obsession with sexualizing the next generation, it is so that they can control them.
[00:07:23] If you. This is such great news. I need you to hear me. If you are disciplined sexually, if you are faithful to your husband and to your wife, if you honor God with your sexuality, hear me. They have no control over you.
[00:07:42] If you can control this by the power of the Holy Spirit, they can't move you to the left or the right. They. This is one of the greatest acts of defiance against the demonic realm that you can participate in. Is to say, I'm not gonna buy your subterfuge. I know your trickery, your beguilery, your wiles. I know all of it.
[00:08:00] I'm not gonna fall prey to this stuff because this is the primary means by which people are enslaved.
[00:08:07] So anybody who wants to control you will try to influence you sexually. Verse 2, these, it says, these are the hypersexualized daughters of Moab.
[00:08:18] These invited the people, that's the Israelites, to the sacrifices of their gods and the people. The Israelites ate and bowed down to their gods. Psalm 106, 28 says it this way.
[00:08:32] Then they, the Israelites yoked themselves to the BAAL of Peor and ate sacrifices offered to the dead. So the process is simple.
[00:08:42] It was an invitation to a meal. It's just a meal. It's no big deal.
[00:08:47] It was a meal at an inappropriate location.
[00:08:52] It was a meal with inappropriate people.
[00:08:55] And unexpectedly, like, I mean, we're here, you know, we don't want to be rude. We got to eat the meal they offered us, even though it's an act of worship to a demonic God. Like, you know, we don't want to, like, offend them. We got to be nice, right?
[00:09:07] And it leads to verse three.
[00:09:09] So Israel yoked himself to BAAL of Peor, and this is how it went from a conversation to a meal to a place, to something sexual.
[00:09:22] And the Israelites were probably convinced that these women really liked them. And we're going to see this in a few verses. It was all a trap.
[00:09:31] It was all subterfuge.
[00:09:34] It was all a complete and total setup to destroy and to control the people of Israel.
[00:09:42] I'd be remiss if I didn't say this, but do you know, this is from my experience and the most common way a young person walks away from the faith, whether it's temporarily or long term, they date a cultural or non Christian. It's the same story every time.
[00:09:58] It's just a date, just a kiss.
[00:10:03] Maybe they'll become a Christian.
[00:10:05] It's just sex.
[00:10:07] And do you recognize the word yoke, by the way? From the New Testament? The Apostle Paul is like bringing us back to this very word here. And what he's saying is that amongst the people of God, it's not a suggestion, it's actually a command. We do not yoke ourselves to unbelievers, period.
[00:10:23] All right, so pop quiz. How do you think Yahweh feels about this?
[00:10:27] Not good. So what's interesting here, okay, is the last book, Leviticus, Best sermon series ever. Leviticus, chapter 26.
[00:10:35] Very clear. Okay? Here's what God says. If you're gonna go worship idols, you get terror, disease, and defeat. And then if you don't repent at that point, he'll bring you drought and famine. And then if you don't repent at that point, he'll bring you wild beasts, sword and pestilence. And that's where we're at right now, okay? And if they won't repent of that, then they're gonna get exile among the nations. So these men who are falling prey to this, they know what the word of God says. They're trained well, okay? They know that if they do these things, what the outcome is gonna be. But they participated anyways. And so verse three informs us, 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.
[00:11:19] And 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 BAAL of Peor.
[00:11:37] So in case you're reading this and you think to yourself, the God of the Old Testament is really overreactive, like, this feels like overkill. What I really appreciate is that what Moses does here is that he now tells us a story.
[00:11:54] I'm going to be honest, it's a gross story.
[00:11:57] But there were probably hundreds of stories they could have told to illustrate why these people received the judgment of death that they did.
[00:12:08] And so this story that comes up next, it's here for two reasons. Number one, it is to illustrate how sexual immorality is enslaves a person, blinding them so that they do things that they would never otherwise do with a clear head. And the second reason the story is told is so that anybody who tries to accuse God of being overreactive would for millennia be able to look back and say, he's not overreacting. In fact, this level of grotesque sin needed to be dealt with decisively. And by the way, you wouldn't tolerate it either. So here's what happens in verse six.
[00:12:43] Behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman. Now, if you've been kind of reading through numbers, what you found is that Israel was getting stronger. And Moab knew that they could not defeat Israel militarily. So they aligned with the Midianites. But even together, the two of them could not defeat Israel militarily. And so here's the idea. These are pagan nations with pagan gods.
[00:13:10] They are Israelites are not supposed to be mixing with them in any way, shape, or form. So should an Israelite man ever be with a Midianite woman, everybody, the answer is no. Good, you might say. But Moses. Okay, different situation, but that was a while ago. So here we are. Now they're forbidden. You can't be with the Midianite women. Okay, so where did this Israelite man bring the midianite woman? Verse 6 says, to his family.
[00:13:37] That's weird.
[00:13:38] So if you're in Moab or you're in Midian, this would be applauded. And by the way, if you're a wife, there's nothing you could do about it anyways. This would be just another sacrifice to the gods. And this would be something you would do to secure your family's fertility or financial income or their prosperity or something of the sorts. And you had to do these kinds of things. And so, like, if you were in Moab, okay, that's what you do. This is not what you do amongst the people of God.
[00:14:02] By bringing another woman into your home, it's not just a violation of your marriage covenant. It is a violation of your divine covenant with Yahweh. This is the epitome of whoring. Now, we're gonna learn later in verse 16 that the woman's name is Cozbi or Cosby. And she's not just any woman. She is actually the daughter of the Midianite chief. She's a princess.
[00:14:26] And we're gonna actually learn a little bit later in this chapter too, that the man, his name is Zimri. He is the son of one of the top leaders in Israel.
[00:14:37] These are two well known, powerful people.
[00:14:41] And so verse six is not done yet. The Israelite man Zimri brought this foreign princess into his home. And this was 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. Okay, I wanna just bring you into the story.
[00:15:03] The people are repenting, the Israelites, the majority, because of the sin, the sexual sin of all of these men.
[00:15:11] And they go to the tabernacle where God's presence is, and they are weeping and they are begging God, will you forgive us? God has had a plague sweep through. People are dying and they're just begging, God, forgive us, heal us. The sin is gross and it's evil.
[00:15:28] While they're doing this, Zimri walks past visibly, so that the entire congregation sees him, a known person, with the princess of Midian, also probably dressed in a way that it's unmistakable who they are, acting in a way that is hypersexual. So everyone knew what was about to happen, then goes to the tent. And we don't know if this was done visibly outside, if the tent doors were open. But apparently, like, everybody can see exactly what is happening. And so this man, who is supposed to be devoted in covenant to Yahweh, brings this foreign woman into his home, in front of his family, in front of his Children in front of the people, in front of the prophet, in front of the priests, in front of God himself. If you guys remember, a few weeks ago, we talked about high handed sins. Okay? This is what we call a high handed sin.
[00:16:25] And apparently it was being done publicly in a way that everybody knew or could see exactly what was going on.
[00:16:34] Verse 7 says this. When Phinehas, this is the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest. So this is like one of the key leaders in Israel. When he saw it and notice the language, he didn't hear it. He's seeing this.
[00:16:47] He. He rose and left the congregation. He took a spear in his hand and he went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them. While they're together, you can imagine what's going on. The man of Israel and the woman through her belly.
[00:17:06] In case you're wondering how is this not like murder, it's because Phinehas was one of the authorized men to execute judgment of the people around him. And so he was authorized by God to do this.
[00:17:19] Look at verse eight. This is the fallout.
[00:17:21] Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped.
[00:17:25] Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were 24,000.
[00:17:31] How did 24,000 fall for this one?
[00:17:39] They were tricked by subterfuge.
[00:17:42] You're going to watch this come full circle here. But number two, they were uniquely emboldened by the gap between sin and judgment.
[00:17:50] When the Lord leaves a gap between sin and judgment, the humble heart is grieved at what he's done, but the rebellious heart is empowered. Have you ever done something really stupid that probably deserved immediate judgment and that God doesn't actually enact that judgment in that moment? I think we've all been there.
[00:18:09] That is a moment of kind grace.
[00:18:12] And the humble heart realizes what they've done.
[00:18:16] The humble heart is like God. I'm sorry, but the rebellious heart is emboldened and empowered. The rebellious heart digs deeper and says, it's like God's not even watching anyways. It's like he doesn't even care. And they just sin deeper and deeper.
[00:18:31] So I want to be clear with you, so you don't miss this here.
[00:18:35] There are two kinds of people in the nation of Israel. The vast majority were for Yahweh. The vast majority loved God. They weren't perfect, but they weren't worshiping Baal. They weren't doing these grotesque things.
[00:18:51] It was the 24,000. It was the minority.
[00:18:54] And it's just not lost on me that the minority of People can hijack a family, a church, a culture, a nation.
[00:19:02] And the responsibility of the people of God is to get on their face and repent. Which is one of the reasons why internally, like this whole semester, as we kind of end 2025, we're focusing it as a church on really looking inward in our heart and saying, God, what do I need to repent of? What are the things in my heart that I need to get right with you? What are the big decisions that I need to make? And so this has been a kind of a theme. And so you might be new here, and you're like, wow, man, this guy's preaching heavy. It's because, well, a, it's in the Word, but B, we really are calling each one of ourselves, myself included, to a season of God. Would you expose the sin that is inside of us? Because we are all sinners. And I really, Lord, I don't want to take the stuff in me into 2026. I want to do what is necessary in my own heart and life to have a pure heart before you. But the sin of the minority needed to be dealt with. It needed to be dealt with. Decided it was cancer to the entire nation of Israel.
[00:19:58] Now, if you had received Romans or Romans numbers, chapter 25, and you were part of the original audience, here's something you would understand. You would understand geography. I'm going to go with 99.9% of us don't know all the geography of Israel. So I want to just take a few minutes. I want to bring you into some of the geography because it's kind of what brings this story full circle.
[00:20:20] Shittim, which is where they are at. It's the very last location before the Israelites are going to enter into the promised land. And so the promised land is being controlled by Canaanite religions and tribes.
[00:20:35] And those are all just demons masquerading as gods controlling these tribes. And then you have Yahweh, who is controlling the people of God and all of these tribes, all the demons behind them. They know if Israel comes in here, they're going to win. Nobody can defeat Yahweh. He's the God of gods. He's the king of the universe. Nobody can stop him. So they know this. And so here we are. We're in Shittim. We're in the very, very last place before they're going to go in and start conquering. Number two, Shittim is a valley surrounded by mountains.
[00:21:05] So here's what we learned in the chapters prior. Pastor Dean, he had the privilege, the joy of trying to preach three whole chapters in a 37 minute sermon. So thank you, Dean, you're amazing. But here's sort of what he covered, and I'm going to go a little bit deeper. The king of Moab, he realized he could not defeat Israel militarily, and so he wanted to curse Israel. And so what he did is he found the most powerful diviner, cursor, prophets that was in the known world. The dude was a guy named Balaam. And Balaam lived 400 miles away in Mesopotamia. And so Balaam, the king of Moab, called Balaam and said, I'm going to pay you tons of money. I want you to come down here and I want you to do what you do best, curse these people so that they are completely destroyed.
[00:21:57] At the end of the day, here's what happens. Balaam gets to a point where he's like, listen, Yahweh won't let me curse them.
[00:22:05] And so the king of Moab's like, yeah, but I'm paying you money, bro. Like, I need you to figure out a way to destroy these people. And so what's interesting is that what the king of Moab does is he brings Balaam, this evil prophet, to the mountains, just overseeing Shittim, where the people are at. Balaam, the evil prophet, never seems to go into the actual camp of the people of God, but him and the king of Moab are looking down on them and plotting out a way how to destroy, destroy these people.
[00:22:35] And number three, in the mountains looking down on Shittim is a really specific place. It's called Peor.
[00:22:42] And Peor is just a few miles away from Shittim, where the Israelites are at. And this is where the darkest parts of BAAL worship would take place.
[00:22:51] When the Moabite women would go to the man and would invite them. They wouldn't invite them to their tents, they would invite them up into the hills, into the mountain in piercing.
[00:23:00] And this is where they would do grotesque, disgusting things. And so here's what we find. We find the king of Moab and we find the evil prophet Balaam. And they're all in Peor, looking down in Shittim, into the nation of Israel.
[00:23:15] And so Balaam says to the king of Moab, their God won't let me curse them.
[00:23:21] So Balaam comes up with another idea. We can't defeat them militarily.
[00:23:26] I cannot defeat them spiritually through curses. But what we can do is we can corrupt them from the inside out through subterfuge we can corrupt them morally. Numbers, chapter 31, verse 8 describe the plan that they came up with on these mountains.
[00:23:41] Behold, these, on Balaam's advice caused the people to act treacherously against the Lord in the incident of purpose.
[00:23:52] And so the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. Revelation chapter 2, verse 14 gives a different angle but says it this way. Balaam, who taught Balak, that's the king of Moab, to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols. And by the way, when the meal begins, where does it end up?
[00:24:16] And practice sexual immorality.
[00:24:20] Here's the subterfuge, here's the trap, here's the Trojan horse, the Moabite women and the Midianite women.
[00:24:28] It was a trap.
[00:24:30] They didn't love them, they didn't like them. It was a demonic tactic to destroy the people of Israel to break their covenant relationship with their God so that their God would destroy them, so that they could not go into the promised land or harm Moab Midian. It was a genius tactical strategy of subterfuge and 24,000 of them fell for it.
[00:24:57] Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual morality. And here's what Balaam the evil prophet knew.
[00:25:10] Break their covenant with their God.
[00:25:12] Their God is holy. Their God will break them. Which brings us to our so what's number one?
[00:25:19] When Satan can't curse you, he will corrupt you through subterfuge.
[00:25:25] I want all of us to be clear headed on some of the most common spiritual Trojan horses, what I would call demonic subterfuge.
[00:25:36] Here's a list. Number one would be occult and spiritual practices like tarot cards, psychics, astrology, Ouija boards, crystals on the surface harmless, but have proven to be portals for demonic spirits and are explicitly forbidden by God's word. No exceptions.
[00:25:59] Number two, altering drugs. On the surface, it's an escape from reality. It doesn't hurt anybody who cares. Like you know that cultural mantra that we hear? If it doesn't hurt anybody who cares but have actually proven to be a demonic portal that opens up unbelievable demonic influence into someone's life. Number three, New age self help spirituality. Manifesting energy, healing, meditation, detached from God. I mean it's like empowering, it's self help, but it doesn't hurt anybody. But what you don't know is these are actually demonic practices designed to separate you from reliance and trust on God and his Word, let's get even more just explicit false religions and heresies. One of the things that demons love to do is to create new religions. And so you take some weird version of Christianity and then you break off an essential piece of the gospel.
[00:26:53] You present it as spiritual, but it doesn't have any power. And so you get Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and they have no gospel. They, they say they're Christians, they use the words, but they actually don't have the gospel because they change it. And it's not just trying to be mean to anybody. It's like, no, like one of my jobs is to out these dark tactics so that you are clear headed on what they are and what they're not. Anybody who claims to be quote unquote Christian and rejects the gospel, okay, is a part of what the Christians call a corporate.
[00:27:20] And so we don't call it a cult to be mean, we call it a cult so that we are clear headed. It is unbelievably dangerous to mess with the gospel of Jesus Christ. When you change one aspect of the gospel, the gospel is no longer there and it has lost all of its power.
[00:27:36] Let's go in a different direction because sometimes subterfuge and spiritual Trojan horses, they use maybe some things that are not inherently bad, but if they're not protected, could be dangerous. So here's one. Social media, anybody ever doom scroll, doom scroll, doom scroll, doom scroll, doom scroll. Weeks go by, months go by, years go by, years of your life. Oh my goodness, like the day of Judgment. I think there's gonna be a whole separate category of judgment for like here are the hours on Instagram that you have doom scrolled. Here's what you could have done had you not done that. Okay, so what you don't know, like we all like to think we are intellectually strong and we're above it. But what you don't know is that as you doom scroll, they are finding your weaknesses, they are finding your interest by what you slow start, slow start, et cetera. And they are curating things for you. But here's the deal.
[00:28:29] Darkness finds the things, the sins that you're uniquely susceptible to. And it is not uncommon. After weeks, months and years of doom scrolling, people have found themselves being given over to ideas that are not true, but they are profoundly susceptible to subterfuge. You don't even know it's happening to you and they're against you.
[00:28:49] Number six, bitterness and unforgiveness.
[00:28:52] On the surface, you are protecting yourself from hurt Nobody's ever going to get through this armor again. No one's ever going to be able to hurt me. But what you don't realize is the New Testament says that bitterness and unforgiveness, at the end of the day, it's a demonic trap. They want you to be bitter because it makes you susceptible to their tactics. If you get bored in the message, read 2 Corinthians 2, 10, 11, and you'll just see the most simple, easy trap. You just harbor and lick your wounds and you rage, whatever. And now you become a tool of demonic influence.
[00:29:26] Lastly, and these aren't the only ones, these are just kind of the top seven as I kind of just watch humanity and life and counsel and pastor that, that I have seen come to the. To the surface. But number seven, back to the most common act of subterfuge in historic and modern times period. Sexual immorality.
[00:29:45] There is no more effective or efficient way to steal a person away from their God than through their sexuality.
[00:29:51] I just want you to sit on that. There is no more effective or efficient way to steal a person away from their God than through their sexuality.
[00:30:02] 1 Corinthians 10, 8. Speaking about numbers, 25 says we must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did. And 23,000 fell in a single day. Now, I have to say this because some of you won't hear anything I say until I say this, but Pastor Michael number said 24,000, correct? This is 23,001 day. And the last thousand were after that. The whole point was that it was severe and immediate. And then there was an aftermath of some who died afterwards.
[00:30:31] We must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did. And 23,000 fell in a single day.
[00:30:40] Sexuality is not just a physical weapon, it is a spiritual weapon.
[00:30:47] And dark forces know how to use this weapon effectively.
[00:30:53] Pornography, it's harmless, it doesn't hurt anybody, etc. In reality, you are a slave and you know it.
[00:31:02] You're not in control. And I'll just. Here's how you know, because not after too long, you realize you can't stop.
[00:31:09] You try fasting from it and you can't.
[00:31:12] You're now being controlled. But it's not just that. It's sexual immorality in general. There's something so powerful about this force that when it's taken out of the body boundaries of a healthy marriage, we don't have the capacity or capability to control it. It will almost always take control of us.
[00:31:29] And so the same subterfuge used against the nation of Israel millennia later is now being used against every single one of us. And it's not just 24,000 who have fallen.
[00:31:41] There is no tactic they will not use.
[00:31:46] They can't make you lose your salvation, praise God for that. But they can cause you to heap shame and to be frozen spiritually for years on end, and to not build the kingdom of God. That seems to be one of the most powerful impacts of demonic subterfuge through sexual immorality. So let's see how this ended for everybody. Look at verse 16.
[00:32:07] The Lord spoke to Moses saying, I appreciate this, actually harass the Midianites and strike them down.
[00:32:15] For they have harassed you, and I need you to look at these words. They have harassed you with their wiles, with which they beguiled you.
[00:32:24] In the matter of pur. They weren't for you. They don't like you.
[00:32:30] They were tricking you. Their goal was to destroy you. It wasn't. They're not interested in you. It's wiles and beguiling. And in the matter of Cosby, that's the. That's the daughter of the chief of Midian, right, Who went into the middle of the tent and got killed with a sword. Their sister. So it wasn't just. By the way, the chief of Midian didn't just send one of his daughters in, he sends two in, who was killed on the day of the plague on account of pur.
[00:32:53] Numbers, chapter 31, verse 8 says this. They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain.
[00:33:00] And then it says, and they also killed that evil prophet Balaam, the son of Beor, with the sword.
[00:33:08] And finally, in case you were wondering, did God just kill a bunch of random people or was his judgment Precise? Deuteronomy, chapter 4, verse 3 says, this says, you saw with your own eyes what the Lord did at BAAL Peor. The Lord your God destroyed from among you everyone who followed the BAAL of Peor. But all of you who held fast to the Lord your God are still alive today. One of the things I appreciate about the judgment in Exodus and Leviticus in Numbers is that it's precise, is that God's judgment is fair.
[00:33:47] And every single one of these 24,000 people knew better.
[00:33:51] Sinned big, high handedly, publicly, in a way that they knew exactly what the consequence would be if they did it.
[00:34:00] We step back and we look at sexual immorality. I want to give you just maybe a simple sentence that I think Captures the heart of, I would just say every true Christian I've ever met.
[00:34:13] And simple.
[00:34:14] I want to be free.
[00:34:17] I don't want to be a slave. I want to be free.
[00:34:21] I don't want my life to be turned to the left or to the right by lust or sexual morality. I don't want to give another woman or another man control over my heart and my life. I don't want to antagonize my God by willful sexual immorality when I know, like, I know what he has called me to. And it's just this one statement of God, I want to be free.
[00:34:42] I want to be free from demonic influence. I want to be free from lust. I want to be free from a slave to this stuff. I want to be free to build the kingdom of Jesus. I want to be free to love one woman or one man. I want to be free. And this is just a sentence that I think captures what I think. So many of us, when we look at our sin struggles, and it might not just be sexual immorality.
[00:35:03] Again, I gave you top seven Trojan horses, spiritual Trojan horses. You might have something else where you're just like God, I want to be free. I want to be free.
[00:35:12] Freedom is one of the most beautiful, wonderful gifts God is offering to his people.
[00:35:19] And so when you trusted in Christ, here's what you received. You received forgiveness and all these incredible things. And you were given the power of the Holy Spirit. But I think we've all realized this. Do you know what we can do? Even with the Holy Spirit, we can choose to enslave ourselves.
[00:35:32] And it doesn't mean you're gonna lose your salvation, but it doesn't mean you're gonna lose. I don't know, like, your effectiveness, it does mean that you're gonna experience just kind of this shame and guilt and remorse. And, like, I want you to be free from that. I wanna be free from that. And we've all got something in our life that we're just like God, I want to be free. And so God. God is offering you not just forgiveness from sins, but freedom.
[00:35:56] And the pathway to freedom. And this is the hard part is always repentance.
[00:36:01] It's always full ownership of what you've done. It's always shining light on it. It's always turning away. It's always turning to Christ.
[00:36:11] And so repentance is one of the hardest things to do. The darker the sin, the harder the repentance is because we get embarrassed really easily.
[00:36:19] But on the other end of repentance, is freedom.
[00:36:23] I could not give you a better gift than to say freedom. You're free from your sin. You no longer need to be controlled by it.
[00:36:31] And God gives you the Holy Spirit and forgiveness. And this is where you get to participate and say, I'm just not interested in being a slave anymore. I'm not interested.
[00:36:41] It doesn't sound like fun to me. Anybody else? No. And now you have the opportunity to walk in freedom. Slow and steady. It's difficult. Don't get me wrong. The darker the sin, the harder it is to repent. I get it. But there is an awesome, incredible gift on the other side of repentance, and it's freedom. I want freedom. And the second, so what is simple? Where is God calling you to repent in your personal life, in your family and or in your church family? The goal is not to shame you.
[00:37:09] I don't really find to be shame a great motivator. It doesn't work for me.
[00:37:13] The goal is to call you to something better. The goal is to cast a vision in front of you of freedom and for you to run towards that.
[00:37:23] Because it is far better to live in freedom than it is in guilt, secrets and shame. If you're here and you have never trusted in Christ before, you get the freedom.
[00:37:34] You have to have confession.
[00:37:36] And so every single person in the world gets forgiveness of sins in the same way you get it by confessing your sin and coming to Jesus and telling him you were sorry, asking him to forgive you. That is how it happens. And then you're gonna start the process of repentance, and that is turning away from your sin and turning to Christ.
[00:38:00] But if you want the power of the Holy Spirit to turn away from your sin, you're gonna need to trust in Christ and take deep, sincere ownership over your sin. I have great news for you. 100% of the people who've ever come before Jesus and told him, genuinely, I'm sorry, will you forgive me? I believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. 100% of them have been forgiven and 100% of them will be given the Holy Spirit. And you will have everything you need now to repent and to walk in freedom.
[00:38:30] Love you and thank you for just. You're so incredible to preach to Village Church. I just gotta say that, like, these are heavy messages, but like your desire to become more like Christ, it's absolutely beautiful. I would stand up and preach the hardest messages that the Word gives with you any day. So, Father, thank you for how good you are to us. Thank you, God, that your word just does not avoid any subject. You're just so blunt, direct to the point. And you give us these stories that speak not just to our minds, but to our hearts. And so, God, would you help us to truly repent?
[00:39:12] Each one of us individually, we all have our own stories, our own challenges, our own things to overcome, our own secrets. But God, we want to be free.
[00:39:20] We want to be free to follow you, to go where you call us, to be free from demonic influence. And so, Lord, would you, by your Holy Spirit, would you bring to mind for each one of us a next step toward freedom. And then, Lord, would you give us the courage to take that next step?
[00:39:38] And Lord, I know that for some here, they've never trusted in Christ. And so, Lord, would you show them the beauty and the goodness and kindness of Jesus and, and what he's done on the cross for their sins?
[00:39:47] God, I pray that you would draw people to sorrow over their sin and they would experience salvation for the very first time. Not because they're good, but because you are faithful. So, Lord, thank you that we who have trusted in you were forgiven. We are empowered. And now, God, would you help us? Because this is a crazy, dark world and the attacks are coming from left and right and up and down, and sometimes it's just hard to keep our brains straight.
[00:40:11] But God, would you give us the eyes to see the attacks and the courage to follow you no matter where you call us, especially in repentance? We love you and we pray all of this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
