Zeal, Judgment, and Justification: The Man Who Stopped a Plague Text: Psalm 106:28-31
Introduction: The Treason of the Heart
Psalm 106 is a long and sorrowful catalogue of Israel's covenant infidelity. It is a national confession, a history lesson in high treason. And it is our history lesson, because the human heart does not evolve. The temptations to spiritual adultery are the same in every generation, they just change their clothes. The theme of this psalm, as we have seen, is the salvation of ingrates. It is a story of God's steadfast, covenant-keeping love, a love that persists despite being met with wave after wave of our spiritual prostitution.
The particular incident that the psalmist recounts for us here is one of the ugliest in all of Israel's wilderness wanderings. It is the story of Baal-peor, which you can read in its sordid detail in Numbers 25. Israel was on the very doorstep of the promised land, and at the instigation of the wicked prophet Balaam, the women of Moab and Midian came into the camp as deliberate sexual snares. But this was not simply about fornication. The sexual sin was the gateway drug to the hard stuff, which was idolatry. The two always go together. Immorality is the liturgy of a false god. Israel was invited to the party, and the party was a sacrifice, and the sacrifice was to a demon.
This was not a minor slip-up. It was a corporate, national act of apostasy. It was Israel, the bride of Yahweh, running into the arms of a filthy pagan deity. And God's response was not muted. His anger burned, and a plague erupted in the camp, and thousands began to die. It is in this moment of crisis, this perfect storm of sin, judgment, and death, that one man stands up. One man, Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron the priest, is filled with a holy zeal for the glory of God. His actions are shocking to our modern, effeminate sensibilities. They are violent, immediate, and decisive. And they are righteous.
What we have in this short passage is a condensed lesson in the nature of sin, the necessity of judgment, the character of true faith, and the meaning of righteousness. We live in an age that wants to worship a god who is all tolerance and no holiness, all affirmation and no jealousy. The events at Baal-peor, and God's commendation of Phinehas, are a direct assault on that idol. This is a story about how the treason of idolatry is met by the zeal of righteousness, and how that zeal, in the economy of God, can stand in the gap and turn back wrath.
The Text
They then joined themselves to Baal-peor,
And ate sacrifices offered to the dead.
Thus they provoked Him to anger with their actions,
And the plague broke out among them.
Then Phinehas stood up and interceded,
And so the plague was checked.
And it was counted to him for righteousness,
From generation to generation forever.
(Psalm 106:28-31 LSB)
Covenant Adultery and Dead Religion (v. 28)
The psalmist begins by identifying the specific nature of Israel's sin.
"They then joined themselves to Baal-peor, And ate sacrifices offered to the dead." (Psalm 106:28)
The phrase "joined themselves" is a strong one. It means to be yoked, to be coupled. It is covenantal language. Israel, who was in a marriage covenant with Yahweh, yoked herself to another god, Baal of Peor. This is spiritual adultery, plain and simple. We must understand that idolatry is not primarily an intellectual error, where you get the number of gods wrong. Idolatry is covenantal treachery. It is giving the loyalty, affection, and worship that belongs to the one true God to a created thing, or worse, to a demon masquerading as a god.
And what was the liturgy of this adultery? They "ate sacrifices offered to the dead." This is a phrase dripping with contempt. The gods of the nations are not competitors with Yahweh; they are nothing. They are lifeless idols. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that the things the pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God (1 Cor. 10:20). These were not sacrifices to "lifeless gods" in the sense of inert blocks of wood, but rather to gods who were utterly powerless to give life. They were part of the realm of death, ruled by the prince of death. To eat their sacrifices was to have communion with the realm of the dead. It was to forsake the living God for the dead gods, and the result, as we will see, is death.
This is a perpetual temptation for the church. We are constantly tempted to "join ourselves" to the Baals of our age. Whether it is the Baal of sexual liberation, the Baal of political power, the Baal of materialism, or the Baal of self-esteem, the sin is the same. It is an attempt to serve two masters, to yoke Christ with Belial. And the worship always involves eating sacrifices offered to the dead. It means participating in the dead works of our culture, imbibing its dead philosophies, and communing with its dead priorities. The result is always the same: it provokes the living God to anger.
Provocation and Plague (v. 29)
The consequences of Israel's sin were immediate and divine.
"Thus they provoked Him to anger with their actions, And the plague broke out among them." (Psalm 106:29)
God is not a detached, stoic deity. He is a husband, and His love is a jealous love. Jealousy is the appropriate and righteous response to covenant unfaithfulness. If a man discovered his wife in bed with another man and felt nothing, you would not call him loving; you would call him a monster. God's anger here is not a petty tantrum; it is the holy reaction of a spurned and righteous lover. Their actions, their whoring after other gods, provoked Him.
And this provocation had tangible consequences: "the plague broke out among them." God's judgments in the Old Testament are often startlingly physical, and this is for our benefit. It teaches us that sin is not an abstract concept. It has real-world, deadly results. The plague was a physical manifestation of the spiritual sickness that had already infected the camp. They had communed with the dead, and so death broke out in their midst. Twenty-four thousand people died (Numbers 25:9). This is what happens when a nation gives itself over to idolatry. The wages of sin is death, not just for individuals, but for cultures.
We must not imagine that we are immune. When a society embraces sexual chaos as a civil right, when it celebrates the slaughter of the unborn as healthcare, when it bows down to the idol of the autonomous self, it is provoking God with its actions. And while the judgment may not take the form of a sudden pestilence, we should not be surprised to see a plague of broken homes, a plague of fatherlessness, a plague of addiction, a plague of nihilistic despair. The forms of the plague may change, but the principle does not.
The Zeal of Phinehas (v. 30)
In the midst of this national disaster, one man acts.
"Then Phinehas stood up and interceded, And so the plague was checked." (Psalm 106:30)
The psalmist says Phinehas "interceded." But if you read the account in Numbers, you see that his intercession was not a quiet prayer in the corner. As the congregation was weeping at the entrance of the tabernacle, a prince of Israel named Zimri brazenly paraded a Midianite princess named Cozbi right past Moses and into his tent to commit fornication. It was a public act of defiant, high-handed sin.
Phinehas saw it, and a holy zeal from God came upon him. He took a spear, went into the tent, and ran both of them through, pinning them to the ground. This was his intercession. It was an act of judgment. He executed the righteous sentence of God upon public, unrepentant sinners, and in so doing, he stood in the gap on behalf of the people. He turned back God's wrath by identifying with God's zeal against sin. His action declared that Israel, or at least a remnant within Israel, was on God's side against this apostasy. And because of this act of righteous judgment, "the plague was checked." The judgment on the two became the salvation of the many.
This is a hard truth for our soft generation. We think intercession is only about gentle prayers. But sometimes the most loving thing you can do for the body is to cut out the cancer. Church discipline, confronting sin, standing for righteousness in the public square, these are all forms of Phinehas's intercession. They are acts of love for God's holiness and love for God's people, protecting them from the spread of sin and the certainty of judgment.
Counted for Righteousness (v. 31)
Finally, we come to God's evaluation of this zealous act.
"And it was counted to him for righteousness, From generation to generation forever." (Psalm 106:31)
Now, we must be very careful here. This is the same language Paul uses to describe Abraham's faith in Romans 4. Does this mean Phinehas earned his salvation by this act? Was he justified by works? Not at all. To think that is to fundamentally misunderstand the gospel. Justification is, and has always been, by faith alone in the promised Messiah. The righteousness that saves us is a perfect righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, which is imputed to us, or counted to our account, when we believe.
So what does this mean? It means that Phinehas's act was the public vindication of his faith. It was the evidence of a heart that was already righteous by faith. His faith was not a dead, abstract assent; it was a living, active, zealous faith that acted. And God publicly honored that faith-driven action. He "counted it for righteousness" in the sense that He declared it to be a righteous act, an act that perfectly aligned with His own will and character in that moment. It was an exemplary act of covenant faithfulness that would be remembered as a standard of righteousness for all future generations. God was not saving Phinehas because of the spear; God was rewarding the faith that threw the spear.
This is the relationship between faith and works. We are not saved by our works, but we are saved for them. True, saving faith is never alone; it is always accompanied by the fruit of obedience. Phinehas believed God, and he was zealous for God's glory, and that faith erupted into a decisive, righteous action. And God put it on the record, forever, as an example of what true loyalty to the covenant looks like.
The Greater Phinehas
The story of Phinehas is a glorious one, but it points to a far greater one. Phinehas was a son of Aaron who, with a spear, turned back the wrath of God by executing judgment on sin in the camp. But he is a shadow of the great Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the ultimate Phinehas. He saw the plague of sin and death that had broken out upon all humanity. He saw our whorish idolatry, our communion with the dead. And filled with an infinite zeal for His Father's glory and an infinite love for His people, He stood up to intercede.
But His intercession was of a different sort. He did not take up a spear against us. He took up a cross. He did not execute judgment on the sinner; He stood in the place of the sinner and took the full force of the plague, the full fury of God's wrath, into His own body. On the cross, the brazen sinner and the holy judgment of God met. Jesus was run through for our transgressions. He was pierced for our iniquities. And by His wounds, the plague was checked forever for all who are found in Him.
And just as Phinehas's act was counted to him for righteousness, so the perfect obedience of Christ, His entire life of zeal and His final act of judgment-bearing on the cross, is the righteousness that is counted to us. When we abandon our own filthy-rag righteousness and cling to Him by faith alone, God looks at our account and He counts Christ's perfect righteousness as ours. This is the great exchange. This is the gospel. Phinehas stopped a plague for a generation. Christ defeated death forever. Let us, therefore, be zealous for Him who was zealous for us.