THE WHOREDOM OF PEOR

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God does all things for our good. For example, He took steps to protect His people from leaven if they married pagan wives. He knew the carnal mind would think freedom of religion was good and that His people would want to permit their pagan wives to continue at least some of their pagan practices, which would then cause God’s people to admire some of their worship ceremonies and to incorporate them into Christianity. And then, like Saul with Thanksgiving and David with a “better” temple, the carnal mind would rise up and do what it honestly thought was right by inventing ways to “please” and “serve” God. It is important to understand why the incorporation of pagan ceremonies into Christianity and the invention by Christians of other ways to celebrate God are offensive to Him. We must realize He wants us to do only what He says – no more and no less (Dt 12:29-31). Why does the Lord say the nice pagan practices used by His people to worship Him are abominations? Because they came from independent minds thinking on their own, because no matter how good the ideas may be they are carnal ideas that are an affront to Him, and because they challenge and resist His prerogative as the one and only Godhead.

 

We’ve already seen a number of examples of what happens when we are carnal, such as when the grapes of Eshcol turned sour when God let His carnal Christians go fight by themselves and lose. We cannot win without the arm of the Lord; He is our strength. And if we are carnal He quits helping us because we are glorifying Satan. If we do that which is right in our own opinion we shall lose the war.

 

Pagan King Balak saw that God’s people were unstoppable; no one could figure out how to defeat them because the Lord fought their battles. So King Balak contacted one of God’s prophets, Balaam, and asked him to curse God’s people (Nu 22:4-6). God told Balaam not to curse them (v.12). When offered many enticements, however, Balaam finally decided he could serve two masters: He would satisfy God’s requirement by not being the one to curse God’s people, and get King Balak’s reward by telling him the only way God’s people could be defeated. In order to view the Christians the two men went up on a high place called Peor (Nu 23:28). And there Balaam told King Balak that God’s people could not be defeated as long as they were in good with God because He fought for them. Therefore, Christianity had to be defeated from within; the people had to become leavened. Because they were special people they were supposed to live peculiar lives, lives that would glorify God by deliberately and obviously relying on Him. That included everything – even their thinking. Living that way was a struggle for them because it was contrary to human Nature and required that invisible element called faith. But if King Balak could somehow penetrate the Hebrews’ strict wall of separation from the world by putting the pagan world into their daily lives, human Nature would do the rest. The reason pagans do the things they do is those things seem good and right to them. Therefore if humanistic practices and ideas could be introduced to the Hebrews, at least some of God’s people would eventually accept them. And then, seeing sin in the camp, God would leave them to their own devices and they’d become just as vulnerable as any Gentile group. Just as Eve was the best way to get to Adam, said Balaam, so were pagan women the best way to get to Hebrew men.

 

King Balak took Balaam’s advice and ordered the women of his nation to cater to Hebrew men, acquire a reputation for better looks and better sex, become known as less argumentative and more submissive, and be prized as good wives, mothers, and companions. As a result it wasn’t long before Israel found itself in deep Shittim (Nu 25:1) because of the daughters of Moab.

 

God, Moses, and Phinehas saw that cutting off the infected members for the good of the rest of the body was necessary (Nu 25:3-9). Phinehas became a hero (Nu 25:10-13; Ps 106:30,31). God’s people went to war in an attempt to eliminate the problem (Nu 31:7). And the prophet Balaam was executed for his role in the affair (v.8). But while the Hebrews killed all the men (v.7), they decided to save the women (v.9)! That really angered Moses because he knew the women, in carrying out Balaam’s counsel to King Balak up on Peor, caused the Hebrews to “trespass against the Lord” (vv.14-18).

 

How did they “trespass against the Lord”? Certainly they in some way participated in various pagan practices they deemed acceptable (Nu 25:2,3). Does that mean they attended pagan religious ceremonies every Wednesday night? Did they pray to false deities? In some cases they probably did, but the majority of God’s people didn’t realize they’d been suckered into being unfaithful to God, suckered into prostituting themselves, suckered into whoredom. To see what I mean look at Ps 106. Verse 30 says “Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment:” Then refers to the previous verse that says God’s people angered Him with “their inventions.” If they had angered Him by attending pagan ceremonies to worship false gods it would say they angered Him with “pagan inventions.” Because it says Christians angered God with their inventions we can’t help but wonder if these were more carnal “good” ideas like Thanksgiving.

 

Notice Ps 106:28 says they joined themselves unto “Baalpeor.” Was I correct when I said Balaam advised King Balak to defeat Israel by getting them to use their Natural Reason in order to offend God? Apparently so: According to v.13 Christians stopped waiting for God to reveal His will and started thinking for themselves. And v.29 says God was angry because they used their fertile brains to come up with “good” stuff on their own!

 

What “heathen works” did Israel learn (v.35)? What “idols” were a snare unto them (v.36)? How did they sacrifice their children to devils (v.37)? By teaching them to live by “their own works” and by “their own inventions” (v.39), and to live by “their counsel” (v.43). That is the carnal mind, it is Reason, it is humanism, it is enmity against God.

 

And that is all that is required for Satan to win. That is the doctrine of devils, the leaven of the Pharisees – “serving” God in accordance with human Reason instead of according to what He says. And, in spite of everything God did to teach, to correct, and to protect His people from their own fertile minds, they were quickly suckered into the kind of ideological whoredom recommended by Balaam up on Peor.