Study

Balaam, Balak, and the talking Donkey: Numbers 22 and 23

/ / Leave a comment

Before I start I have to say that this study isn’t about the donkey.  There are tons of teachings, preachings, and even songs about the donkey out there.  No, this study is about Balaam.  Specifically Balaam’s first encounter with the messengers from Balak, and his first message from the LORD.

Numbers 22:12-13, “God said to Balaam, “You shall not go with them.  You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed.”  So Balaam rose in the morning and said to the princes of Balaak, “Go to your own land, for the LORD has refused to let me go with you.” (ESV)

Notice something interesting in what Balaam told the messengers?  He didn’t tell them all of what God had said.  It reminds me of how a child may act when he asks his parents if he can do something.  They say no and explain why.  The child then goes to his friends, pouting, and says, “my parents won’t let me.”  Balaam is acting the same way, and in doing so, two things are set in motion.

First, Balaak is encouraged to ask again, but with more reward promised.  I wonder if Balaam didn’t hope this would happen…

Second, an opportunity to honor God was lost.  God’s words were changed in that Balaam only reported some of what God said.  Balaam never reported the explanation God gave.  Balaam dropped the bit about a blessing.  Balaam was looking for immediate rewards (from Balaak for cursing Israel) and thus chose to ignore God’s promise.

So to do we today change God’s words.  One way is that people who give “a word from the Lord” may interpret those words into something different – something the speaker thinks the hearers want or need to hear.  This is a dangerous thing to do.  It puts one into the ‘false prophet’ camp.  However, much more rampant is the other way God’s word is changed.

The majority of us take some of God’s word, ignore or explain away other parts, and then run with it.  We forget that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  I see way to many examples of this behavior to even begin to list, but here are two examples:

God said (somewhat contracted for emphasis ), “Don’t eat pork … therefore you should be holy for I am holy.”  (Levitcus 11 and Deuteronomy 14).   As Balaam only reported the first part of what God said, so people only report the “Don’t eat pork.”

The blessing is deliberately left off to make it easier to disregard the command in favor of the immediate rewards of the world (eating anything we want), just as Balaam didn’t say that Israel was to be blessed as he was looking for rewards from Balak.

Another example is this, “Don’t store up treasures for yourself… for where your treasure is, there your heart is also.”  (Matthew6:19-24).  All of us make excuses why we can’t give to charities or the poor.  We remember only the command “don’t store up treasures for yourself” and disregard it in favor of immediate “rewards”, forgetting the blessing that would come (in this case, our heart being in heaven).

So it comes down to this.  Yeshua (Jesus) never said that following God wouldn’t require hard choices.  Rather he said the opposite with such as the words, “take up your cross daily and follow me.”

It is making those hard choices that refine us into the holy people we are to be.  Choosing to follow His word, even when it goes against what we want to do, or what everyone around us is doing, refines us to be the set apart (holy) people God wants us to be.

  • Yosef

 

The Bronze Serpent – Numbers 21

/ / Leave a comment

This weeks reading includes Numbers 21, where we find the Israelites again complaining about food, water, and even the manna God continuously gives them!  God says, ‘enough is enough’ and gave them something to really complain about: serpents whose bite was fatal.

After Moses prayed, the LORD had Moses make a bronze serpent and put it up on a pole where anyone could look at it.  And anyone who was bitten, and didn’t want to die, could look at the serpent on the pole and be healed.

One of the surprising things about this story comes much, much later.  In fact, several hundred years (give or take) later.   Long after this event, when Israel has been in the land for a long time, and there are kings over Israel, we find King Hezekiah reigning, and we are told that ‘he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD.’ (2 Kings 18:1-4).  One of the things King Hezekiah did was to destroy the serpent.  Yes, it was still there!  And over time, it had become an object of worship to the Israelites.  A blessing of God had been turned into a snare!  How could this have happened?  Yet we see the same sort of thing today in our churches and synagogues.

Over time, we take God’s silence about something as an indirect approval. 

God never told them not to keep the serpent after it had served its purpose, and no one, not a single leader prior, ever mentioned it.  After all, it was God ordained, wasn’t it?

In the same way, we take teachings and traditions that may or may not have made sense at the time of their authorship, and over time, incorporate them into our worship, even though God’s word may speak against such practices.  This practice is ripe throughout Christianity and Judaism.  Christianity takes away from God’s word as Judaism adds to it, yet we find God saying, “do not add to or take away from my Word”  (Deut. 4:2, echoed by Yeshua (Jesus) in Matt. 5:18-19).

In the same way, we can easily become insensitive to God’s blessing and even dislike it (the manna in the story).  This should not be!  That is why God tells us to remember His works.  Over and over He tells us (even in the “10 commandments” – Exo. 20:8-11 as one example).  That is why He gave us His calendar (see Lev. 23), which, unfortunately, Christianity has completely thrown out.  This led, among other things, to modern Christianity’s focus only on the here and now, and sometimes the future.

To sum up, we need to always be willing to judge our own actions, traditions, and teachings by the word of God, and to be willing to change when we see something that isn’t in line with His word, even if goes against a centuries old teaching or tradition!

That God hasn’t judged all that we do that is against His word, and often even done “in His name,” is a wonderful manifestation of His grace and forgiveness through Yeshua.  But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t follow His word.

  • Yosef

 

 

 

 

Numbers 16 – Korah’s Rebellion

/ / Leave a comment

In Numbers chapter 16 we find Korah, a Levite, and a number of other leaders of the people of Israel, rising up and challenging Moses.

God had already ordained how the Israelite society was to run, and had given specific jobs to the Levites and to the priests (who were also Levites, but descendants of Aaron).  Korah and those others thought that they should have more responsibility as they regarded themselves as also “chosen”, though they veiled their complaint by saying that the entire community was holy (set apart to God) and therefore all should have more privileges in drawing near to the tabernacle.

It’s interesting to note God’s response.  He had every one of them bring a censor to burn before the LORD.  At first, this doesn’t sound odd as burning incense before the LORD is one of the things that is done in worship (service) to God.  Numbers 16:49 reminds us, however, that no one other then the priests are to do so.  Korah and the others knew this, yet they figured that should also be allowed to serve God in that way anyway.  They wanted to choose themselves.  If they had paid attention to God’s words, they would not (hopefully) have done what they did.

This isn’t the only place in scripture where God apparently tests people by asking them to do something against His word.  In the other three places I can think of, though, the situation was not people rebelling against God, but person’s following God, and He asks them to do something odd anyway.  The three situations I can think of are:

Abraham was asked to offer up Isaac.  Human sacrifice is abominable to God yet he asked Abraham to do so.  Interestingly, Abraham was about to do just that, but God did not allow it as that would have been an anathema to Him.  In this instance though, Abraham never questioned why God was asking Him to do something abominable.  He just started to do it.

The next situation is God asking Ezekiel to bake bread on human dung.  Ezekiel objects and God then says to use cow dung.  This is a very interesting situation and worthy of its own study.

The last situation is known as “Peter’s Vision” where God lets down a sheet full of animals and tells Peter to rise, kill, and eat.  Peter counters that he has never eaten anything unclean.  God goes on to use this incident to make a very powerful lesson to Peter and to us (and that lesson has nothing to do with food!).

Why do I bring up these situations?  Does God really test people?  What do you think?

From the story of Korah we can learn the following.  God is not a reed blown about in the wind depending on human desires and wants.  His way is set and He wants us to follow it.  I know many Christians will counter that “we are under grace, not law.”  But does freedom truly mean that we can do things as we see fit, as long as we say “the Spirit showed me” or add “in Jesus’ name” to it?  I find the story of Korah a strong caution against such rationalizations.  Of course we need to be led by the Spirit of the living God, but Korah and his group were using a similar comment (saying all were holy) to justify their actions.  Korah did not fool God, and neither can we when we try to go against His word by using “Jesus” as a justification.

  • Yosef