Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Do You Indulge In? | Torah | Numbers 25

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

What’s distracting you from God? Do you have any little sins that keep coming back? Do you indulge in any unhealthy temptations or desires? In today’s episode, Jensen looks at Numbers 25 to share how seemingly small temptations can pull you away from God. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Numbers 25

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. We're going to be jumping right into Numbers 25 today. Now, if you've missed the last few episodes, God's people are currently in the wilderness, and they're living near the Moabite people. And in the previous chapters, we've learned that the king of Moab wanted to bring curses on the Israelites because he and his people feared them. But his plan backfires, and God makes sure that every time he tried to curse the Israelites, they were blessed instead. See, God is making sure to protect and be faithful to his people.

You'd think that this positive energy would continue, that people would be grateful, their relationship with God strong after his provision and blessing. And yet, chapter 25 enters the scene. Verse 1, the men began to indulge in the same. sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods. So Israel yoked themselves to the Bail of Peor and the Lord's anger burned against them. So here, in the first verses of chapter 25, we see the Israelites giving themselves over to their lustful desires. They indulge

in sexual immorality, and that indulgence leads them to worship and to join themselves to other gods. The irony here is hard to overlook. A foreign king tries with all his might to set Yahweh against his people, to curse them, and he fails, only blessing them in return. But it is the Israelites' own inability to resist the temptations of lust that cause God's anger to burn against them. Last week, I was reading a Facebook post. One of my family members had shared it, and it was a Christian who was angry about a new show that Disney's putting out. The show is called Little Demon, and the show apparently will follow Satan's daughter, who is titled by the show The Antichrist, as she tries to fit into her town. Now, one of the actresses whose part of the series has talked about her excitement over normalizing paganism. The Facebook post in question was outraged and passionately. warning people against letting their kids watch this show because of the premise. Now, this show in particular seems to be pretty obviously not biblical. So it makes sense to want to stay away from it. But here's a thing. I think, I think sometimes we're so focused on the big evils in front of us,

the massive red flags and hazards pulling us away from God, that we overlook the other ways the world is luring us into bed with them. Like we put our foot down at shows about the Antichrist, but we indulge in a drama with heavy language and sex scenes because the cinematography is epic and the storyline is genius. And this isn't just a television thing. Many Christians are fighting to keep their schools free of certain agendas to protect their children, while at the same time they're indulging in traveling sports teams that keep them from being a part of a church. church body on Sundays. See, we're prone to become so fixated on the enemy king trying to curse us that we forget our own hearts can just as easily lure us away from a right relationship with God.

It's easier to fight against the things that seem to be at war with us, but it's another to recognize the ways that quiet temptations are pulling us from God. There is a reason that the serpent came into the garden and tempted Adam and Eve with fruit that looked pleasing to the eye. He didn't give them a knife and try to convince them to murder each other. He didn't come in with an army trying to destroy them by force. No, he quietly lured them into believing that sin could taste good, could feel good, could be good for them. And we all know how well that worked on the human heart. I am sure that living in the wilderness, the women around them, the feasts, the food, the lifestyle of their neighbors looked good to the Israelites. They just wanted a bite,

to taste and see if it was as good as it looked. I can imagine the Israelites justifying their choices. It's just one time. It's just one meal. I'm only doing it for her. I don't really care about bail. Or maybe they knew they shouldn't, but they wanted to feel love. loved, feel accepted, feel valued. Maybe they felt they deserved to indulge their desires. So they did it. They took the fruit and indulged. Do you ever feel yourself doing this? Maybe you have your guard up against certain big sins you've decided to avoid in your life, but you find yourself wanting to experience the world the way the people around you do. You want a Sunday morning in bed and brunch out with your friends.

You want to keep up with the Joneses and the influencers on your phone so you spend and shop and give yourself over to greed, indulging your desires to look like them, vacation like them, live like them. You want to have a social life like the people you see around you, so you drink a little too much, flirt a little too much, and cross a few little boundaries so you can experience life like they do. It's these little choices to indulge, to take. a bite of something that looks so good that can quickly plant our feet on a path of rebellion against our Creator. And that's exactly where the Israelites found themselves. In their choice to indulge their desires, they brought the Lord's wrath against them. And in return, the Lord

called for the leaders who had given themselves over to this sin to be put to death. And a plague was sent on the people of Israel. Now what comes next is hard to read, but it helps us get a picture of the severity of what has been done here. The people of God haven't just given themselves into a little temptation. Their choices have led them to yoke themselves to a foreign God, to forsake their God who has protected and provided for them. And because of their dishonor towards a holy God, they now face the consequences. As the people are following God's commands to stamp out this rebellion, we read verse six. Then, an Israelite man brought into the camp a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses

and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting. So this Israelite man was a leader, a man who had given himself over to lust and yoked himself to bail. and in the midst of God's judgment, in the midst of an assembly of people weeping over their sin and the sins of their people, he parades his choice. It's a bold statement of dishonor to the Lord. But we follow a holy God. A God who will not be dishonored and because of these actions, one of the priests immediately puts this man and the Midianite woman with him to death. And the Lord commends his actions. He stops the plague because of his actions. He stops the plague because of the men. He's of his righteousness, and he warns the people against falling into the same trap of temptation again. In the second half of Chapter 25, we see two starkly different reactions to the failure of the people of Israel. There are those who recognize their brokenness and weep before the Lord, and there are those who dig in their heels, defend their sin, and proudly display it.

I would assume that every one of us has found themselves at one time or another indulging in quiet temptations. I'm sure that with enough reflection and prayer, we would all find the ways that our hearts are indulging in desires that are slowly pulling us into rebellion against God. The question is, when you see it happening, when you're confronted maybe by a friend, maybe by a sermon, is your reaction to defend your sin? To justify it? To proudly live in it? Or are you able to humbly admit to yourself and others your failures? To genuinely mourn the ways you've indulged your desires and dishonored a holy God. I'll be honest, and my husband can attest to this, far too often I'm a defender. I don't like to be wrong. I resent critique more than I sit under it. and my first reaction is not often the right one. But I pray that each day I would look more like

the assembly of people who came together and wept before a holy God over their sins and the sins of their people. Adam and Eve, when faced with the reality of their choices, they pointed the finger and deflected. Our sinful nature is predictable. But God calls us to faithful obedience and humility. Going from here today, there are two things that I want to challenge you to set aside time and reflect on this week. First, I want you to evaluate your life, the choices you make, the things you give your time to, and prayerfully consider if there are areas of your life that you're slowly indulging unhealthy desires. And second, spend time mourning and humbly repenting of the world. ways that your choices have put you in rebellion against God. See, as we do this, my prayer would be that

God would open our eyes to see our sin and soften our hearts so that we can humbly stand before him and find peace in his mercy and grace. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help encourage you in the middle of the work week and bring you deeper in your walk. with Jesus. Thanks for listening.