James tells us that sin looks like a cute baby at first, but it grows into a monster and kills us!
Do you see the horrible danger of the sin of Israel in the plains of Moab? If the men could stand up to giants like Og but fall before the women of Moab, the nation could become so corrupted that all hope for a line leading to the Messiah would be lost. All efforts to provide unique clothing, diet, ceremonies, and covenantal laws would come to nothing through their unequal yoke, for “Israel was joined to Baal of Peor” (Num 25:3). This corruption could spread through the whole camp, so judgment must be swift and severe. “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders before the Lord, out in the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel’” (v 4). This was not God losing His temper. He sees all the damage and despair that would cascade down the ages from such open sin. Broken-hearted wives; corrupted men; Moabite families with entirely the wrong idea about the God of Israel; children born out of the marriage bond, spurned and scorned; the testimony of a holy God and His people ill spoken of; and so much more. So what had been done under cover must be brought “out in the sun.” But then, to our utter dismay, as many of the Israelites “were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of meeting” (v 6), one of their own brought a Midianite woman shamelessly right out in the open! I don’t know how to say this delicately, but Phinehas the son of Eleazar, Aaron’s grandson, saw this. Grabbing his javelin, he followed the couple to their tent and brought their sin to a sudden end—shall we say, the sharp end. “So the plague was stopped” (v 8), but not before 24,000 died! Another sad reminder that “sin, when it is [finished], brings forth death” (Jas 1:15).