Love Israel

Guest (Male): Shalom and welcome to Veahavta Yisrael, a Hebrew phrase which means "you shall love Israel." We hope you'll stay with us for the next 30 minutes as our teacher, Dr. Baruch, shares his expository teaching from the Bible. Dr. Baruch is the senior lecturer at the Zera Avraham Institute based in Israel. Although all courses are taught in Hebrew at the institute, Dr. Baruch is pleased to share this weekly address in English. To find out more about our work in Israel, please visit us on the web at loveisrael.org. That's one word, loveisrael.org. Now, here's Baruch with today's lesson.

Dr. Baruch Korman: We see biblically that there has been some judgment. We talked last week about how Balaam did something, that he taught Balak, the king of Moab, how to cause Israel to stumble. And what was that stumbling? Into idolatry. Israel consistently has that problem with struggling with idolatry, and that shouldn't surprise us because we all do.

What is idolatry? Idolatry is a desire to get your needs and your wants and your desires met through an alternative god. And therefore we turn away from truth. We turn away from the one true God, the God of Israel, and what do we do? We embrace false gods that are not gods at all—gods of wood and gold and silver and bronze, who cannot speak, who cannot hear, who cannot smell, who cannot move.

So they're powerless. But nevertheless, we see an increasing number of people in this world being deceived by these false gods. And again, I'll repeat myself: it is so tragic that when we are in Asia, we see so many false places of worship where people are making sacrifices. When I talk about sacrifices, I'm talking about gifts and offerings that they make—not blood sacrifices, but rather simply those of fruit and vegetables and gifts and finances that they give these statues.

And we know something: these statues can't do anything, as I said. They don't see, they don't speak, they don't smell, they do not walk; they are powerless. But nevertheless, people are bowing down to them. We need to come out of the foolishness of this world and embrace the truth of Scripture.

Let's pick up where we left off last week. You'll recall that Balaam taught Balak how to put that stumbling block before the children of Israel. And what happened? Well, as we concluded last week, we saw that based upon this plague that God sent upon the children of Israel for their disobedience, there was a total of 24,000 people who lost their lives.

Now, some scholars also want to point out that there are those leaders that also we talked about earlier on in the text, where Moses was told to take the leaders of the people—the heads, literally, of the tribes—and to hang them before the Lord in the sun, in order that God's anger would turn away from Israel. And Moses was obedient, so there was a lot of death on that day because of Balaam's sinful counsel.

Let's move on. Let's go now to verse 10 of Numbers chapter 25. Again, we're in Numbers chapter 25, we're now ready for verse 10. And you'll recall that there was an individual, Phinehas, son of Eleazar, the priest. Now he is a descendant of Aaron, that means the priestly family. And what we're going to find is that he did what he did out of a zeal, and God shares the same type of zeal—a zeal for righteousness and holiness and obedience.

Look if you would to verse 10, where it says: "And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned my anger from upon the children of Israel in his zeal with my zeal in their midst. And I did not utterly consume the children of Israel in my zeal." So God was zealous. What's He zealous for? Truth, obedience, submissiveness, humility. But the children of Israel were not displaying any of these things. What were they displaying? They were displaying a selfishness.

They wanted what they wanted, and therefore, because of that, we see this disastrous event took place, where we see at least 24,000 individuals being slain by this plague that we mentioned in verse nine. Let's move on. We see that God, because of the zeal of Phinehas, did not utterly consume the children of Israel with this zeal.

Verse 12: "Therefore say, 'Behold, I am giving to him'—and remember, this "hineni," this expression here that we find, speaks of something of great significance—'behold, I am giving to him'—and notice the present tense of this word "noten," which is always a clue of something that's being emphasized as well—'behold, I am giving to him My covenant of peace.'" Now this peace is a peace between man and God.

And we see that it is because Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, had this zeal—zeal for God's truth—that he is going to inherit this covenant and be a key person in this covenant going forth among the children of Israel. He says here, look at verse 13: "And I have been with him and for his seed after him this covenant of 'kehunat olam,' which means this eternal... and the word 'kehuna' comes from the Hebrew word 'kohen,' which means a servant."

So he says here: "It shall be to him and to his seed after him a covenant of service." And notice, this is eternal service. Now, this word "eternal" is a kingdom word, so kingdom service in exchange for the zeal that he had for his God. And what happened? Well, notice the end: "and he atoned concerning the children of Israel." Now, let me just simply say that atonement is good.

And when we look at the Torah, we find that what the Torah provides is indeed atonement. But we need to remember something: God is interested in that which is of perfection. And that's why we see in the Scripture that the Levitical priesthood and the law from the Levitical priesthood did not produce perfection. And therefore there had to be a change.

And that change can be summarized with a greater priesthood. What priesthood? The order of Melchizedek. And we see that he did something: he blessed the children of Israel with what? He blessed first Abraham with that blessing of wine and bread. And I would suggest to you strongly that this offering that Melchizedek received from God—we're not talking about how the Levitical priests received from man and then gave to God, we're talking about something in my opinion is greater than that—that this order of Melchizedek, he received from God and he blessed humanity with this bread and wine.

And understand that grape juice has the same status of wine according to Judaism. And therefore, in my opinion, this blood and this bread relates to the Lord's gift, meaning Messiah's gift of His blood and His body that we're called to remember, which was done and offered up on Passover, which is connected to redemption.

So notice it says: "and he atoned concerning the children of Israel." Verse 14: "The name of the Israelite man that was struck when he struck the Midianite woman, this was a man by the name of Zimri." So both of them were struck, both of them lost their life, but now we're talking about Zimri, the son of Salu. Now Salu, if you do a good study of this, it means to be weighed or that can also mean considered.

So God considered what this man was doing. And we see that it was Phinehas who behaved and brought death upon him. And what we find is that he was weighed, this action, and what was his action? Idolatry. He was going to offer up a sacrifice to a pagan god, a false god, and this was going to be followed up with eating an offering that he would make, and it was finally concluded with sexual immorality.

And these things are not consistent with the character of the kingdom of God. And therefore he was punished, and that's what the Scripture says. Look again at verse 14: "The name of the Israelite man that was struck when the Midianite woman was also struck, his name was Zimri, the son of Salu, who was a leader of the house of his father." So this is just not anyone, and we know what house he belonged to: he belonged to the tribe of Simeon, meaning the tribe of Simeon.

Verse 15. Now notice, not only is the man being spoken of, but also the woman. Why? Accountability. We talked about this last week, that God is a God of accountability. It says: "The name of the woman who was struck, this Midianite woman who was struck, was Cozbi." And understand something: that word "Cozbi" relates to deception. It relates to that which is false.

And she was the daughter of Zur, and the head of her tribes of the house of her father, and we find again that she was not Jewish; she was a Midianite woman and from Moab. And notice what it says: "among Midian," who... meaning her father was a Midianite. And we find that there's a spiritual connection between Midian and Moab.

Let's move on, look now to verse 16: "And the Lord said to Moses, saying: Harass..." and this word means to afflict, it's a word of trouble. So He basically is saying: "trouble the Midianites and strike them." So as a response to what happened, we see something: we see that there's going to be an accountability. What is that accountability?

It has to do with God striking the Midianites who were part of this deception that was led by the women of Moab. We learned that last week. And then keep reading, notice what it says: "Trouble the Midianites and strike them, meaning to punish them." Why? Look at verse 18: "For they are troubling you with their extortion, which they extorted you by means of the incident of Peor"—this is this idolatry that the children of Israel fell into—"and concerning the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of the leader of Midian, their daughter that was struck on the day of the plague concerning the incident of Peor."

Now, when we look at this Scripture, we see something: we see over and over there is that emphasis on what we talked about last week, Baal-Peor. Baal is simply a name of a false god. And we see that the children of Israel struggled with this false god repeatedly, the Baal. Now, that is a term in modern Hebrew for a husband. And what we find here is this: we see that there was Baal and Asheroth. What was that? It is derived from a woman, the name or the word for a woman, and it speaks simply about a husband and a woman coming together.

And the problem is this: it's not in a godly covenant, but in an idolatrous context, which leads to sexual immorality. And understand something: when we look at idolatry, there was a sexually immoral component that accompanied idolatry. This is something that we have to realize. And this is what was going on in this place called Baal-Peor, when the children of Israel fell into idolatry and we saw that one, a leader of the people, were going to do what?

Well, he was going to go and do something: commit this pagan act of idolatry and then to consummate it with sexual immorality. And when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he was overcome with a righteous zeal. And what did he do? He prohibited this one from carrying it out before the children of Israel.

Now, remember something: when we looked at this text last week, it says that it was done not only before the children of Israel in the sight of all the people, but also Phinehas saw it. And when he saw it, he was overcome with this righteous zeal, and he responded by judging this one. It was not an incident of retribution, but rather it was a godly vengeance, or we see here the word "zeal."

Biblically speaking, there is a connection between zeal and the righteousness of God. When we behave zealously, we are committed to righteousness. And this is what this passage is telling us over and over about Phinehas. And it was because of his commitment to righteousness, what do we see? We see that he became the recipient of God's covenant.

What does it say? "Briti," My covenant, "Shalom," My covenant of peace. So we see that God rewarded Phinehas because of this behavior. And let me just simply say that anytime we are motivated by righteousness, God is going to reward us. That's what we should be committed to. And I have said many, many times that when we look at Hebrew poetry, there is a preference to see in Hebrew poetry, and what's the number one characteristic of Hebrew poetry? Parallelism.

What is parallel to righteousness frequently? We see the term glory. So what do we learn from that? It is when one behaves righteously that they are manifesting the glory of God, which we were created to do. We all know the verse from Genesis chapter 1 verse 27 where it says that we were created "betzelem she-elohim," meaning in the image of God.

Now, of course, that does not mean that we look like God. God is Spirit. What does it mean? It means that we are called to reflect. That word "tzelem" is better understood as a reflection. And therefore we are called—and the only way that we can do this is by having experienced redemption—that we can now, through that redemption, begin to reflect the character of God.

Now, when we go back to this passage, I want us to remember something because we are changed, we are that new creation. And what does the Scripture say? Well, notice: he talks about a "brit" twice. "Brit" is the Hebrew word for "covenant." So he mentions in verse 12: "Behold, I am giving to him My covenant of peace." And then he clarifies and gives us greater revelation concerning this covenant of peace.

And it goes on to say: "and it shall be to him and to his seed after him a covenant of eternal service." And that eternal service is going to be where? In the kingdom of God. So over and over we see how through the redemption of the Messiah, which is through the blood of Messiah, we are changed. We have a new location. What is that location? The kingdom of God.

We have a new identity. What is that new identity? We become servants of the living God for how long? Forever. And that word "forever" or "eternal" is a word that hints to the kingdom of God. So notice how our Scripture concludes. It says: "and this came about after the plague," meaning this: after the plague was concluded, we see this transfer.

What transfer? We see that God gave to Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, that he inherited a new responsibility. Why? What caused him to have this great zeal? So let me ask you a question: are you zealous for the things of God? We can even be more specific: are you zealous for the things of the kingdom?

And understand a principle: when we are zealous for kingdom truth and kingdom character, and we base our life, our decisions, our word on kingdom truth, we are going to have a very pleasing witness to God before others. Meaning people will see that commitment. They will know something, and what will they know? That we are not sons and daughters of this world, but we have that new identity.

What is that new identity based in? Redemption. That we become the redemptive people of God. And without that redemption, we can never expect something. When you understand redemption properly, let me just say it this way: when you understand redemption from a biblical perspective, you will see that there is a close connection between redemption and restoration.

But let us be reminded of what we have been restored to. Through redemption, we have been restored, yes, our relationship with God. We've become part of the people of God, the family of God. But there's another important truth: that we become reconciled to God. And through that reconciliation through redemption, we are restored to the will of God.

Why is that so important and so seldom taught today? Because even today among believers, there's still that struggle between what God has commanded and what I want. And if we're ever going to be mature, if we're ever going to be individuals that are pleasing to God and have that witness, that testimony that is honoring to Him, glorifying Him and pleasing to Him, we have to understand something: we have to be committed to the will of God.

This is what salvation does. Salvation brings a change in my life where no longer am I committed to what I want, because what I want is rooted in my carnal or my fleshly nature. I'm a new creation; those former things have passed away. Behold, all things are new. What's the word "new"? It's a kingdom word. Now, through this redemption, I have been restored to the will of God. That's what I'm committed to. That's what I'm concerned about. That's what I am going to do: I am going to be committed to kingdom truth.

Now, the kingdom comes—and we'll close with this—the kingdom comes in two stages. We find that the first stage is called the millennial kingdom. And we find there that Messiah is going to rule over that kingdom for a thousand years. And what is going to be the basis of that millennial kingdom? Well, we don't have to guess; we don't have to speculate.

It tells us in Isaiah chapter 2 and it speaks about the last days, "acharit hayamim," where it says: "Ki mitziyon tetzei Torah, udvar Adonai meYerushalayim," which means: "For the law will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord of Jerusalem." Now, why is that so important? Well, very important because that Scripture is showing a connection between the law and the word of God.

The law is indeed the word of God. And it's only when we recognize the authority of God, what's going to change in our life? Well, as long as I think I'm the boss and I'm under my authority, what am I going to do? Pursue sin. This is what the children of Israel were doing. Why? They fell into idolatry. Why? Because they wanted what they wanted.

What we want is never good. We need to grow, we need to mature, and we need to embrace the truth of God. And when we do, there's going to be a change in us spiritually. When we say "yes" to God's truth, what's going to happen? God is going to move in our life; He is going to give us the ability of self-control.

That is a great fruit of the spirit, self-control. And not only will we have self-control, by means of that self-control, there's going to be an additional benefit: discernment. We will make God-pleasing decisions. It's only when we are recognizing the authority of God, an absolute authority over of us, and then we're going to demonstrate we're under God's authority by acting in a way that shows discernment.

What is discernment? Discernment is agreeing with God. It is a commitment to God's will, God's purposes, God's plan, and recognition that what I want is not good. That's why we see... let's look at one more Scripture. I think that this is such a basic passage of Scripture. Look if you would to the book of Judges, chapter 6 and verse 1. It says here: "And the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord."

Now, what is evil? My thoughts, my will. Whenever I do not agree with God, what's the outcome? Well, when I do not agree with God, I'm going to be doing that which God sees as evil in His eyes; it's just that simple. But we need to realize something else in the word of God. We also see something that is very important in the Scripture.

If we look, for example, in the word of God, it talks about the children of Israel—this is also related to the time of the judges—what does it say? They did what was "yashar." What is "yashar"? Straight or upright. What it means here is this: they were not trying to sin. What were they trying to do? That which is straight, meaning that which is in accordance with God's will.

But here's the problem: they wanted to do what was upright, but in their eyes. And whenever... and we saw this back in Judges chapter 6 and verse 1: when we do what is right in our eyes, it is evil in the eyes of God. Why? Left to ourselves, we will always be deceived. We have to have that spiritual renewal.

What is that spiritual renewal? It's becoming that new creation. How? In the Messiah. And it's only when we are in Messiah are things going to begin to change in our life, that we will begin to understand our new identity. What is our new identity? Servants of the living God. We're going to demonstrate a commitment to His will, His word, His truth, rather than being deceived to think that we are intelligent enough to make godly decisions. We are not.

It's only after we have been redeemed by the blood of Messiah. It's only in this new creation then and only then do we have the potential to do what? The potential to obey God. This is this liberty or freedom that the word of God speaks of. It's only as a result and outcome of being redeemed by the blood of the Lamb then and only then are we able to experience liberty.

What type of liberty am I talking about? The liberty to serve God. That is freedom, that we're no longer under or in the bondage of sin, but we have been set free from that in order that we might serve God. And that's why, when we look at the book of Numbers chapter 25, and we see... let's go back to that same passage we were looking at earlier, Numbers chapter 25.

Notice what it says here: that he is being given, that is he is being given a covenant of... it says, "Brit kehunat olam," a covenant of service, eternal service. Eternal is a kingdom word. That's what we become committed to: the kingdom of God. And it's only when we are kingdom-minded... what does that mean? When we're walking under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, we will be kingdom-minded.

And it's only going to happen, that anointing, when we are committed to the ways of God, that we understand that our ways are going to deceive us. Our thoughts are not the thoughts of Gods, our ways are not God's ways. We have to do what is wisdom, and what is that? We need to agree with God. How do we agree with God? By honoring this book, by having reverence for this book, by implementing the truth of this book into our life.

And when we do, God is going to move mightily. He is going to change us. We are going to be that new creation, and we will serve God faithfully. We will have a testimony that is pleasing to Him, we will bear witness of kingdom truth, and what else? We will be people that are well-pleasing to God, and that's what our call truly is. So I'll close with that. Until next week, may God bless you, and may you walk and live under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Until next week, shalom from Israel.

Guest (Male): Well, we hope you will benefit from today's message and share it with others. Please plan to join us each week at this time and on this channel for our broadcast of loveisrael.org. Again, to find out more about us, please visit our website loveisrael.org. There you will find articles and numerous other lectures by Baruch. These teachings are in video form; you may download them or watch them in streaming video. Until next week, may the Lord bless you in our Messiah Yeshua—that is, Jesus—as you walk with Him. Shalom from Israel.