So Close Yet So Far (2)

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 and bowed down before these gods. So Israel joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor. And the LORD's anger burned against them. The LORD said to Moses, 'Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that the LORD's fierce anger may turn away from Israel.'"


So close and yet so far . . . Numbers 25 records that the children of Israel were encamped in a village named Shittim. The Jewish historian, Josephus, tells us that Shittim was only about 7 miles from the Jordan River, which was the threshold for entering God's Promised Land of blessing for His covenant people. Whereas the Israelites practically could see the blessing of the Lord on the horizon, they turned away from the Lord and began to worship their own carnal lusts and desire for personal preeminence. In their despicable, debased behavior, these people were defying God's right to supremacy in their lives. They in effect wanted to be gods themselves.


Of course, the Lord would not be mocked by such recalcitrance. He instructed Moses, the leader of the Israelites, to put to death those men who joined in the worship of the pagan deities of the Canaanites and participated in the grossly licentious acts of sexual immorality. Even as Moses was communicating this dictate of the Lord to the people, an Israelite man by the name of Zimri brazenly paraded a pagan woman in front of Moses and the people and escorted her to his tent to have sex with her. I can only imagine the shock on Moses' face to see the emboldened demonstration of defiance of Zimri; this wicked man from a prominent Simeonite family thumbed His nose at the Lord and wanted to flaunt His rebellion publicly.


It seems that Zimri's act of rebellion was the catalyst that triggered God's wrath; for soon after this incident, God sent a fierce plague among the Israelite camp, resulting in the death of 24,000 people. It was not until the sons of Aaron, the High Priest, put to death the brazen Zimri and his pagan prostitute that the carnage subsided. The righteous indignation of these priests in defending the honor of the Lord, seemed to be accepted as atonement by the Lord for the collective sins of the people, for God ended His judgment upon the people after the sin of Zimri and his cohort was judged.


The tragedy in this account was the nearness of the blessings of the Lord (the Promised Land) . . . blessings which would be shunned through the reckless acts of rebellion by the Israelites against the One True God. They were on the verge of entering God's rest in the "land flowing with milk and honey"; yet they were determined to turn their backs on the Lord in favor of their own wanton lusts.


We must be ever mindful that the Lord has blessings that He desires to lavish upon us . . . they lie on the horizon, but only the path of obedience will take us to them. For those who would choose to follow their own path of self-veneration, they can expect to be led away from the blessings of the Lord to the horizon of God's judgment.