God Sees Our Sin - Numbers 25-28

Numbers 25:14-15 (ESV)

The name of the slain man of Israel, who was killed with the Midianite woman, was Zimri the son of Salu, chief of a father’s house belonging to the Simeonites. And the name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cozbi the daughter of Zur, who was the tribal head of a father’s house in Midian.

In chapter 25 we have the story of the nation of Israel committing the sin of idolatry.   Since the king of Moab, Balak, could not get the prophet of God, Balaam, to curse Israel, Balaam gave him a different option.  Balaam’s counsel to King Balak was to not destroy Israel with weapon from the outside, but with false doctrine on the inside.  He convinced Balak that instead of creating a way, throw a party; an idol worshipping party.  Israel fell for this deception and it becomes a moment etched in history. Even the New Testament writers mention it (2 Peter 2:15 and Revelation 2:14).   The result of this sin caused an Israelite man (named Zimri) to bring home from the idol worshipping party a “wife” named Cozbi.   This was such an abomination to God that He sent a plague on Israel. It was only when the priest, Phiehas, went to their very bedroom and killed them both, that the plague stopped:

Numbers 25:7-8 (ESV)

When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped.

God takes time in this book of Numbers, above, to name to the two.   God knows who sins against Him.  The same thing happened to a husband and wife in the New Testament in the start of the early church:

Acts 5:1-2 (ESV)

Ananias and Sapphira

But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

These two only lied about the amount of the sale of some property. They embellished that they gave all of the money, but didn’t.  They lied to the Spirit of God in worship.  They were struck dead.   God knows those who sin against Him.   We ought not to think, when we sin, that God does not see.   Just ask David in his adultery with Bathsheba.   

Galatians 6:6-8 (ESV)

6 Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches. 7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.