Vengeance is Mine

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotions this morning. We're at numbers chapter 31 verses 1 through 11 vengeance 1 through 11 Vengeance against the Midianites numbers 30 chapter or 31 verses 1 through 11. Let's have some coffee. We'll pray. I'll give me God's word No coffee, okay. All right, let's pray father.
We thank you so much for this day What a blessing it is to get to come to your word Lord, we pray that you would please help us as we read your word. We pray that you would apply these words to our hearts. Help us, Lord, to not just let it go in one ear and out the other. Lord, we pray that you would give us ready minds and ready hearts in Jesus's name. Amen. All right. Numbers 31, 1 through 11. Which parts do you want to read? Well, why don't you read 1-4, I'll read 5-8, and you can read 9-11.
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Take vengeance on the Midianites, the children of Israel. Afterward, you shall be gathered to your people. So Moses spoke to the people, saying, arm some of yourselves for war and let them go against the Midianites to take vengeance for the Lord on Midian.
A thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war. You wanna keep reading? So there were recruited from the divisions of Israel, 1,000 from each tribe, 12,000 armed for war. Then Moses sent them to war, 1,000 from each tribe. He sent them to the war with Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the priest, with the holy articles and the signal trumpets in his hand. And they warred against the Midianites, just as the Lord commanded Moses. and they killed all the males.
They killed the kings of Midian. With the rest of those who were killed, Evi, Recham, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian, Balaam, the son of Beor, they also killed with a sword. You want to read the last part? And the children of Israel took the women of Midian captive with their little ones, and took as spoil all their cattle, all their flocks, and all their goods. They also burned with fire all the cities where they dwelt, and all their flocks.
And they took all the spoil and all the booty of man and beast. okay so we got our three questions we need to ask ourselves a what is this about b what's the and c what are we called to do all right so what's this about what do you think taking vengeance on the Midianites okay taking vengeance on the Midianites that means the Midianites had to have done something wrong first what did the Midianites do that was wrong i know this question but i i forget Yeah, so the Midianites were those who tried to hire Balaam, right? Moab and Midian, specifically the king of Moab, had tried to get Balaam to curse the people of God, right?
And so there's this whole series of times, right? He says, I can't do anything unless the Lord tells me to. It's like four chapters in the book of Numbers. Deborah and I went through all those chapters. She really wanted to learn about Balaam. So Balaam can't time after time after time four different times.
He tries to curse God's people, but instead he ends up blessing God's people But then he says to the king of Moab. Hey, look, I can't curse somebody. You know what we can do there see there's these hot girls over here in Midian and We can bring them into the camp and the Israelite guys will go gaga for them and they'll go for the girls And guess what? They'll start doing I'll start worshiping their gods, too And guess what happens? Yeah, the Midianites go along with that plan. Is the Lord happy about it? No. Absolutely not, right?
So there's this whole thing with Phineas where like there's actually two people, they're literally openly, brazenly, this man who's a leader in Israel, he's having sex with the Midianite woman in the open so people could see it. And Phineas knows that this is what's, there's a plague and it's destroying all these people in Israel because of this sin. And so he goes and he kills both of them because of it. Right, they've committed treason against the king of the universe against the covenant king jehovah himself And so god says what phineas did was right makes a covenant with phineas, right, but he also ends the plague So now zoom forward a number of years And what happens in this story?
Yeah, they kill all of them everything So they spare the lives of the women and the children, right? So they don't kill them. And what do they do with all the stuff? They take it. They take it, right? It's the spoils of war, the booty of war, right? And so they take all of this. Now, there's an interesting thing here, right?
This is the Lord who's commanding this. Notice what the second part of verse two said, right? The first part, God commands, take vengeance on the Midianites for the children of Israel. Afterwards you should be gathered to you people. What do you think that means? Moses is gonna die. Yeah. Yeah. So God's saying you're gonna die after this. Wouldn't you like that kind of advanced morning? Okay. Go do this. Yeah. But think about this.
Moses has been leading the people through the desert. And is he going to get to see the promised land? No, no. So God's telling him, Hey, I remember when you struck that rock, you're going to die after this. So be faithful even to your death, right? But you're going to, you're going to be gathered to your people.
Now here is a difficulty, right? Do you think, put yourself in the place of these ladies, right? And Israel took the women of Midian captive and their little ones. What would you feel like if you were one of those women or one of those children? Yeah. I do think this would be a really, really difficult thing. Yeah, this would be pretty traumatic, wouldn't it? Yeah. I'm thankful that we don't live in a time like this anymore.
This is where I actually get really uneasy when people want to say, oh, just like things happened in the Old Testament, we should be doing these exact same types of things today. Okay, uh, no, no the lord commanded this at a specific time or a specific reason He had a specific reason why he was choosing israel that they were going to be as promised people weren't supposed to have any foreign wives They committed this sin, which was a provocation, right? They weren't looking for this somebody provoked them for it. And this is god's judgment against the midianites Are we commanded to go take vengeance against people? No, actually, what does romans say?
Vengeance is mines I will repay them this way. So he repaid them this way. Is that the way the Lord uses now? No, he doesn't say, hey, I want you to kill this boy. Yeah, no, he doesn't. He doesn't give us those type of commands today. Right. And so we need to be careful about how do we apply these ancient stories to our lives. Right. So so that actually brings up the question. Oh, notice also who's mentioned in verse eight, very last person who's killed.
Balaam, even though he had to bless the people, bless the people, bless the people, who's he still hanging out with? The Midianites, right? He's not converted. He's not on the side of God's people. All right, so here's the last thing. We're going to skip over B best first because I want to get to C, calling. How do you think this would apply to your life? How does this show you Christ? What does this teach you about the covenant? How does this teach you to live your life?
God will repay, and sometimes he repays in different ways. Okay. Yeah. Right. So we can, we can trust the Lord, right? That even sometimes when we are tempted, right? Is God just going to let people off the hook? No, right. We don't need to avenge ourselves. We know that the Lord is the avenger. We don't need to be the avenger of blood. We don't need to. Even when temptation comes from people on the outside, we can trust in Christ. We can take the way of escape. But we don't need to go take vengeance. Yeah, I like that application. Good job, man. All right. You want to pray? You want me to pray? All right. Lord, we thank you so much. That you have.
Avenged our sins Lord for we could read ourselves into the place of Israel here thinking that we are righteous Lord neither the Israelites nor Midian were righteous and certainly we aren't either Or do you pray that you would keep us from pride and deceitfulness of our own hearts? Father, please let us trust that you are good and that you have a plan even when those who would be outside of your people would try to tempt us with evil. Lord, we pray that you would please give us strength to endure it. And Lord, we pray that you would please also give us wisdom to take the way of escape when those temptations come.
Lord, we thank you so much for giving us Jesus and giving us your spirit. In his name we pray. Amen. May the Lord bless you. May you rest in Jesus Christ. May you endure the temptations that might come upon you, and may you take the way of escape when they come, knowing that the Spirit has not made you a slave to sin. We'll see you next time. You wanna say bye? Bye.