If there was any doubt if Balaam served God or not, the answer is found in this chapter. It was he that led the Israelites into idolatry and sexual sin. (Numbers 31:16)
As a result, 24,000 Israelites died.
This was the second time the Israelites fell into this kind of sin (Exodus 32).
More, this is what we saw in Numbers 15. This wasn’t unintentional sin. This was defiant sin.
That was clearly seen in the man that Phinehas the high priest killed in verses 6-9.
While people were dying because of the plague God had sent, and Moses and the other Israelites were mourning before God, this man defiantly went into his tent to sleep with this woman in an act probably related to Baal-worship.
It’s interesting that sexual sin was tied so closely to idolatry in that time. Interesting because sexual sin has become the idol of this age.
So many in society take sexual sins lightly to the point they no longer consider them sins at all. (Romans 1:24, 26-27, 32)
But to God, these are sins worthy of death. (Romans 1:32; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10)
That’s why Paul in looking back on these two incidents wrote,
Don’t become idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and got up to party.
Let us not commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in a single day twenty-three thousand people died. (1 Corinthians 10:7-8)
How about you? Do you take sexual sin as lightly as this world does?
Moment to Moment (Bible blog) 