Sexual & Spiritual Seduction
If there's one lesson that we can learn from this chapter, it's that people's romantic involvement can impair their judgement, leading them into compromising situations they never would have imagined.
The word seduce usually refers to sexual temptation but the Bible contains many stories about people who were tempted in another way...SPIRITUALLY!
The concept of faithfulness can be applied both to our spouse and our God.
The Israelites were camping at Acacia when some of the men wandered off to have sex with local Moabite women--a direct violation of God's command. Soon after, the Israelites were joining the Moabites in their idolatry, worshiping foreign gods like Baal--evil imitations of the Almighty Creator of the universe.
From the moment he created the human race, God knew we had a weakness for both sexual and spiritual infidelity. Although the two don't always go together, in this case one led directly to another.
One of the Israelite men even brought a Midianite woman back to his tent for "overtime." One of the young priests showed what God thought of this by killing both the man and the woman with a single thrust of his spear. Then God commanded the Israelites to attack the Midianites for deceitfully convincing them to worship foreign gods.
God created men and women to love and honor him. He also gave us the ability to love one another through the gift of sexuality. We don't always use these gifts wisely, and when we trip up, there are immense consequences. But if we seek faithfulness--both in our walk with God and in our sexuality--we will bring beauty and life to our world instead of ugliness and death.
**Worship Leaders** It is extremely important that you have a period of RECOVERY after worship. Just like in Numbers we are in battle week after week...The "Holy Ghost High" that we're on after worship is the same high the Israelites were on after their victory. And just like our spirit feels great and has climaxed, our flesh wants to do the same thing...If we're not careful when we recover from the battle, we'll find ourselves in the same situation as some of the Israelite men.
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