Year: 2020

The story of this relationship with Balaam and Balak comes to an end this chapter, and it doesn’t end well for Balak.  Balaam does wise up and refuses to follow along with Balak for a third and final sacrifice to try to convince the Lord to turn his eyes favorably upon Moab.  Instead Balaam turns aside and see the soldiers of Israel and seems to be smitten with admiration for them.  He speaks an oracle, not because of the coaxing of Balak but of his own free will, and that oracle speaks well of what will happen with the people of Israel in this situation. 

As you can imagine Balak is furious.  I’m the one who hired you to speak on my behalf and here you go by yourself and bless my enemies.  I promised that I would make you rich, well you aren’t going to get a single penny from me.  Balaam is undisturbed by this and reminds him that he had already warned him that he could have offered all the wealth of his house but it would not persuade him to speak words which did not reflect what the Lord wanted him to say.  He could only say what God wanted him to say.

But don’t worry, he goes on, I will give you an oracle about Moab.  You can almost see Balak hesitate and wanting to say: Nah, that’s okay, I’m good.  The oracle is not good.  It speaks of the destruction of Moab and the rise of Israel.  After Balaam is finished then we simply have each of them going their separate ways.  You should not be able to convince a disciple of Jesus Christ to join your side with either money or power.  It is a lesson that is so powerful for us today as it seems that some within the Christian church in our country have sold their messages of prophecy for a seat at the head table.  

If at first you don’t succeed, if you are going against the Lord, then don’t try again!  What a chapter of futility that we find here.  So we continue  the story of Balaam, who is favored by God, and Balak, who is the king of Moab.  Balak is looking to overcome Israel which is encamped ready to take him on in battle.  He sets up 7 offering places hoping to get a positive review and a positive oracle from God which would place him in a good position to conquer Israel.  But when  Balaam comes down and tells Balak what God told him about what would happen, it was all good news for Israel and bad news for Moab.  

Maybe I was in the wrong location and God saw too many of the troops and got frightened.  Let’s go to a different location where God won’t see as many of the troops and maybe this time he will curse Israel and bless Moab.  The same thing happens and in fact this time God is somewhat insulted that Balak would think that God would change his mind so quickly.  “God is not a human being that he should lie.”we find in vs.19.  That isn’t quite starting off the way that he would like.  But the king doesn’t give up.  Let’s go up one more mountain and do 7 more sacrifices and see if this time the Lord is going to be on my side.

So what surprises me more than anything is not that Balak comes up with the idea of going to God a third time, but that Balaam agrees to go along with him and be the person who would hear what God would say.  This is true especially after God said that he isn’t going to change his mind.  He cannot curse his people the Israelites so you are wasting your time.  Let’s see what happens next chapter.

This is a story that leaves you scratching your head because in vs. 21 we have God telling Balaam to go ahead and go see Balak, the king of Moab, even though he had told him not to go previously.  Wait, first let’s set the stage.  Israel is striking fear in all the people that it comes across.  It’s next target was going to be Moab and the king and people of Moab were terrified because Israel was about to come up against them.  So the king looks out and tries to find allies.  He finds Balaam who was kind of a David figure, someone well respected as a soldier but didn’t really have nation under his care.  This would be David before he became king, of course.  

Balak, the king of Moab, approaches Balaam and tells him of the danger of the Israelites and that he will pay him if he were to come to his aid.  As result Balaam starts out to see what proposal he is offering.  God stops him and tells him to turn around in vs.13.  So he does.  Then later God tells him to go ahead with the people of Moab to visit the king just to see what he wants in vs.21.  So he does.  But then we read in vs.22 that God is pretty upset because Balaam decided to go, so somehow there is a disconnect here.   Balaam didn’t get the second message that he should not go, but he is about to get that message.

Balaam, a donkey, and an angel walk into a bar…  I know, that sounds like a bad joke but that is where we find ourselves in this chapter as God reveals himself through an angel but not to Balaam, but rather to his donkey.  Stay with me on this one.  The donkey sees an angel stopping its path, but that angel is not able to be seen by Balaam.  

There is an incredible interchange between the donkey and Balaam that is worth looking at.  At a certain point, after he had been beaten three times by his master, he says to his master (yes, we have a talking donkey in this story).  “Have you ridden me all your life?”  “Yes”.  “Have I ever acted in this way before?” “No”.  “Then don’t you think something peculiar is happening now that maybe, just maybe you should investigate?”  Then Balaam has his eyes opened and he is able to see the angel guarding the way.

It seems like we often forget to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially people that we have known all of our life to be reliable and dependent, but then it only takes one strike and they are out.  It only takes one time and we stop trusting them or thinking that they are the same people.  This is a strong call to us today to not only give people the benefit of the doubt but ask questions when things seem to go in a direction that is not normal, or not usual from what you would expect from an individual.

Israel is making its way through the wilderness in a roundabout kind of way and destruction is left in its wake.  The path that they are taking is a result of Edom refusing to let them pass.  So they try a different way.  While they make their way across the wilderness they come to the borders of other tribes and we find that they refuse to let them pass, but they just overcome them and lay waste to their territories and to their people.  

In the midst of the battles we find a couple of poetical intrusions.  Not sure why I call them intrusions, because they do seem to come from a place that is not unusual.  For example when the Egyptians were defeated Hannah sang a song and that was included.  It is not unusual for the Israelites to break out in song after a significant victory.  As a result we find two songs in this chapter.  There were a few significant victories in this chapter.  

We find the actual words of God which forbade Moses and Aaron and the people of Israel from entering into the promised land.  Once again, like an old record that keeps repeating itself, we see that the people of Israel complain.  This time the complaint is about not having water and the complaint goes something like this: you don’t really love us, if you did love us then you would have given us water to drink.  You would rather us die in the desert, if not you would have kept us in Egypt to live.  

We have heard this before where the Israelites complain and God reacts.  Well, this time his reaction is found in vs.12 after he performs the miracle through Moses of bringing water out of a rock.  The punishment is a result of the people of Israel not trusting in the Lord, and so because of that: “you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”  But it just kind of sits there and there is no real reaction from the people or from Moses.  That is a bit strange.

The chapter then transitions to Edom refusing passage for Israel, and Israel just being willing to take that.  And then it transitions to the death of Aaron and the passing on of his high priest responsibilities to his son Eleazar.  A lot happens in one chapter which will impact the future of the people of Israel.

So we begin, or maybe continue to see, these laws of purification that can be confusing and as you read the Bible from the eyes of a 21st century Christian, bewildering.  The laws are simple.  Every year the people of Israel are to sacrifice a red cow, one that has never worked the field, as a purification offering.  Whoever is involved in this offering will be unclean until the evening.  

Then there is a transition to what do we do when we come into contact with the dead.  We see a whole list of commandments that are meant to be kept and are not to be overlooked.  If you do not follow what is written then it means that the person “shall be cut off from Israel.”  So, not really something to mess around with.  Anyone who interacts with a dead person or with death is unclean for a week.  But they can come back into good graces by purifying after 3 days and then again after 7 days.  All you have to do is follow the rules and everything will work out fine.

I don’t think we have a life lesson from that last sentence, but some do.  Our Christian life is not built around a set of rules.  Our Christian life is built around a relationship with Jesus Christ which is not founded on rules but rather on the love that he has for us which was seen when he died for us.

God lays out the responsibilities for the priestly class so that those who are not in the priestly class would not feel the need to get involved in things which they do not understand.  (Sorry, a whole bunch of double, triple, and quadruple negatives there.)  I want to be sure that you understand this was before they entered the promised land and worshiped in the tabernacle which was mobile and when they found themselves wandering in the wilderness.  Still, even at that time, God wanted them to worship correctly so he gave them instructions.  He didn’t leave them to their own devices, He never does by the way.

Aaron and his family were to be set apart in order to perform the duties  that were required of them for the Lord.  They were so set apart that they were not allowed to be approached by outsiders.   I’m not really sure how that worked, just that as vs.7 states: “any outsider who approaches shall be put to death.”  That sounds serious.

Notice that Aaron and the Levites do not receive any land from the Lord just these responsibilities and the food that comes from the sacrifices.  This is unique to all the other tribes who would receive land.  I guess that would be enough to guarantee them security for generations to come.  This is to serve, according to vs.31 as: “your payment for your service in the tent of meeting.”  This is a bit of a step away from our Protestant understanding of the Priesthood of all believers.  If you want to know more about this concept see here.  

“Protestants believe that through Christ they have been given direct access to God, just like a priest; thus the doctrine is called the priesthood of all believers. God is equally accessible to all the faithful, and every Christian has equal potential to minister for God.”

Let’s put the doubters to rest, we need one way in which we can get things back under control and make sure that the people know who was chosen by God to lead the people of God.  That’s basically what happens in this chapter.  God has Moses take from each leader of the twelve tribes their respective staff and put it in the tent of meeting, or the tabernacle, or the place where the Lord was residing while they were stopped.  

When he did that the staff of Aaron sprouted to the point that it produced the fruit of the almond and people were able to gather them from the staff if they wanted.  No other staff had any other significant change to it so the people were supposed to see that Aaron was indeed, as Moses had said, the one who was supposed to lead the people in their religious life and Moses was  supposed to lead in their civic life.  

But, as  a result of this display, the people were terrified.  We can’t approach God, no one can get near, is there any way that you can change all of this because none of us feels comfortable in God being in our midst and the impending doom hanging over our head for anyone who might question his authority.  Their fear is that they would all perish.  Moses comes up with a creative response to this fear in the next chapter. 

This is a really dramatic chapter.  There are certain things that happen in the Bible that as I read it I think to myself, I don’t ever remember reading this before.  This chapter is one of them.  I’m sure I’ve read it before, but I simply do not remember the earth swallowing up alive the families of those who were rebelling against Moses and Aaron.  But here we have it.  A bit of context might help.

Do you get the feeling that the baseball cheating scandal with the Astros has not lessened, but rather that the more time goes on the more people are upset to the point where I’m thinking it will soon get out of hand.  When the season starts I don’t think there will be a single safe Astros who will come to bat.  Soooo…, it seems like things are spiraling out of control for Moses and Aaron.  He just had to deal with the disobedience of the people and their banishment to the wilderness for forty years.  Now in this chapter we have another rebellion, but this time it seems to be much more serious because you have the priestly class going against Moses and Aaron, one of their own.  

Some of the priestly class have come out against Moses and are upset because of his preferential status before the Lord.  They say: you are not the only holy one here, all  of us are holy so we should all be able to have an audience before the Lord.  We should all be able to make decisions for the people.  We should all be able to establish rules and regulations for the people.  What makes you so special to think that only you have this right and this responsibility?  From Protestant eyes this all makes sense.  After all we have what is called the priesthood of all believers.  Not one of us, not me, nor any other pastor, has a closer relationship with God than anyone else simply from the fact that we are pastors.  We all have  the same ability and opportunity to live a full life in full communion with the Lord whether a person is a pastor or not.

That really wasn’t the case in the Old Testament.  Moses and Aaron really did have the hierarchical upper hand.  They set the rules, they called the shots, and that was just how it was.  But people weren’t happy with that, especially now that things were starting to go south, we better take the reins into our own hands before things really get out of control.  You don’t often see Moses angry, but here we see him angry.  He even tells God not to pay any attention to the sacrifices of the three families who have come questioning his authority.  He tells God to disregard them.  That is very unusual, so we know we are dealing with something serious.

God has had enough and once again wants to destroy all of the Israelites, but because Aaron and Moses intervene God does not destroy all of them.  But those families who rebelled he tells the other to move away from them, and they did.  As  a result the earth opened up and they all died.  Pretty dramatic.  Those 250 people who were in the priestly class who wanted to have the same say as Moses were also slaughtered.  The people continued to rebel and God sent a plague but once again Moses  and Aaron intervene to prevent the plague from spreading any further.

Just think what would have happened if Moses and Aaron had tired of intervening for the people of Israel.  What would have happened then?  It would have been a bit of a different history from what we have now.

So we get a pretty flexible law which is interspersed with a very legalistic application to the law.  We begin the chapter with a variety of offerings that were to take place once the people settle into the promised land.  It then slides into what should happen if a person “unintentionally” were to break the law, or not follow the law.  It  is not that big of a deal if they break the law, they should present another offering and ask for forgiveness and then life goes on.  Not a problem at all if someone breaks the law unintentionally.  

But, and this is where it gets interesting, if they do it intentionally, they should be cut off from among his people.  And then we get to vs.32 where we find a person who was caught picking up twigs on the Sabbath.  Does that sound at all like Jesus and his disciples gleaning the field on the Sabbath?  Look at Mark 2:23-28 and you see this take place where Jesus says the famous: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”  

Apparently that did not fly with Moses in this chapter, or maybe the person picking up twigs didn’t try this line of argument.  All I know is that at the end of the day the poor guy was stoned to death by the Israelite.  He then tells the people to put stuff on their clothes so that they won’t forget the commandments, because bad things happen when you forget the commandments.