Amen, please be seated. What a joy it is to witness the baptism of the Lord's little children always warms my heart. I'm glad to participate. We're turning to Numbers chapter 23.
So if you came for a heartwarming Father's Day message, you showed up in the wrong congregation this morning. So I'll just recommend that you go online and find one of those. Sermons online. I didn't even realize I would be preaching on Father's Day, but began some study of the fascinating story of a talking donkey that's given to us here in this book.
Of course, it's much more than a talking donkey. We have a very foolish mercenary prophet and we have a king who thought he had a good plan and that fell through. And then we have God Almighty who succeeds perfectly and entirely in his plans. Numbers chapter 23.
Let me begin by just reading a small portion. If you'll turn to verse 19, we'll reverse 19, 20, and 21. And this is found in the second oracle or pronouncement of blessing that Balaam issues towards the people of Israel. Numbers 23.
19. God is not man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said and will he not do it or has he spoken and will he not fulfill it? Behold, I received a command to bless.
He has blessed and I cannot revoke it. He has not beheld misfortune in Jacob, nor has he seen trouble in Israel. The Lord their God is with them and the shout of a king is among them. Let's pray now.
For Father in heaven, we know that we desperately need you in all things and at all times. But certainly we need for you by your Holy Spirit to open our hearts, our minds, our understanding, and our souls to your holy word now. And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.
The title of the sermon, if you like sermon titles, is Words Matter. Words Matter. Ask one of the famous divisions of the Marines in 1943 in World War II, the Navajo Code Poppers. Words Matter.
A man named Philip Johnson thought to himself, you know, I lived with my parents as missionaries among the Navajo people for some period of years. I can speak it fluently and he thought America has used codes before based in other Native American languages in other war efforts that had existed already, the use of the Choctaw language in World War I. And so he proposed this to his superior officers and they gathered together 29 Navajo men who said, sure, let's see if we can figure out how to code this language. The Navajo language wasn't even a written language at that time.
So they put together a program that was used in the Pacific Theater as the U.S. fought in the Second World War and that program produced what all of the Marines involved in Iwo Jima said was responsible for their success there. A month-long campaign by the Marines in Iwo Jima resulted in our taking that island and all the men who were responsible for it said, thank you to the Navajo. And they produced the Navajo did over 800 messages within that month long campaign without any error.
It was really a remarkable project and undertaking with great success. And that's because words matter. And so we see that taking place in Chapter 23. But we have to step back into Chapter 22 because a few weeks ago when we looked at Chapter 22, we just spent time in a running commentary just getting our minds around the narrative.
What exactly had taken place in that chapter in those pages? But one question we didn't answer at that time was the very what was the nature of the project that this King named Balak gave to this prophet, this mercenary prophet named Bailey. Now pardon me for a moment if today I crossed my wires a couple times trying to say Balak and then I say they just sound too similar and I might do that a couple times. So I understand I did read the text but you may hear me misfire there on those names.
But the King Balak over the country or rather the group of people named the Moabites, King Balak had a problem on his hands and he was staring down the gun barrel of an invasion. He feared he couldn't repel. So he decided let's pull out all the stops. I have to do all the things to try to survive what I see as an impending invasion by this people group who are many a number and have just come out of Egypt and not by Egypt's good will.
And so Egypt was a country to be feared, people to be feared in that time and Balak is now concerned himself. Well that's the beginning and opening here but let me try to give you some guidance as to where we're going this morning. Two parts to the sermon. Two parts keeping it simple.
Part one, who's really doing what? I think we have to ask ourselves what is the nature of this cursing that Balak has asked Balam this false soothsayer to perform. What is he asking him to do? We're asking who's doing what here getting our minds around the working characters in the story and then we have to ask ourselves in part two who's saying what?
So first is who's doing what and the second part is who's saying what? What are we talking about? What's taking place now in chapter 23? So part one is mostly a reflection on chapter 22 and part two is an exploration of chapter 23.
Well, Balak has called Balam who is known to him as perhaps either the most popular or the most successful prophet who would have connection to the spiritual world. He's looking for someone who's got an edge that he doesn't have. Now, likely he's hoping that Balam has a direct line, a red telephone to the big man up above that one they called Bail. That's what he's hoping for.
But I think he's going to settle for Bail's VP or anybody down the chain. He just needs some help and he wants to get it however he can. And so he's called on Balam. Balam issues immediately a caveat to the whole project and says well, the true one true in living God, he's just going to let me say only what he determines.
And he says this several times to Balak, but that doesn't deter Balak from trying again and again at least four times here that's recorded for us. So in reality, Balak is doing nothing more than what probably 90% or more of any world rulers have done in human history. Hey, we need all the help we can get. Let's pull in the spiritual world.
If we can manipulate religion to favor us, let's do it. I think it was 2003 that there was a movie now some 20 years old produced, you may recall the title gods and generals, and it was about the war between the states and the curious thing or rather the reality of those two different armies, the armies of the south and the armies of the north was that they both were determined to call upon God. They were both determined to read their Bibles and they hoped for revivals within their camps and they all recorded such. Why?
Because when we in human history enter war and warfare is on the doorstep, one of the third first things we want to do is call on someone who knows more or the God who has a little more firepower than the next one. So Balak's not doing anything strange or unusual at all for a pagan or heathen king. This is a natural response. Let's pull out all the stops and do all we can.
And if you think that sounds a bit strange or you say, well, you know, maybe those curses really worked a whole lot better. Maybe they knew more how to get a hold of the spiritual world in that day. I don't think so. I think it's very much the same as our own.
You could take a trip to the Fayetteville now. I don't know when they could schedule you in, but this is the northwest Arkansas and NWA psychic. Listen to how they put themselves forward. I'm not recommending you go.
I'm just saying they're there. Our talented psychics are gifted in seeing the past, present and future for those who are open to the experience. Using tarot cards, clairvoyance and empathic energy. Our psychics are able to give answers to life's most complicated and challenging questions.
Having been in business for over 30 years. This is beginning to sound like one of Balam's advertisements. The psychics at NWA psychic center have helped thousands reach their goals and fulfill their true potential. I think that's I don't just think that's certainly what Balak was doing.
I'm going to call on these kind of people who have this kind of connection for the spiritual world. You know, in the 60s and 70s. I was around in the 70s, not the 60s, but I've read about the 60s. The Ouij board was rather popular during that time conducting seances and making an effort to reach the other side where people have already gone.
I could tell you one scary story that my mother related to me years ago, but we have to move on in this text. So if you want to hear it afterwards, just quiz me on it. This is what Balak and Balam then are doing. They're making an attempt to manipulate the spiritual, the immaterial world for their own material needs or benefit.
And Balam's quite willing because he's supposed to be paid pretty well by the end of the project. So we're curses then real. We're asking another question to answer our first question who's doing what somebody wants said you can answer in a dialogue between people. You can answer a question with a question and the response was why can't I?
And so this is what's happening here. So we're using questions to answer our primary question who's doing what? We're curses real, of course, sometimes. When a man issues or a woman were to issue a curse or a blessing, on what ground or authority do they do so?
And who is supposed to bring in the spiritual world to make the curse real or to happen? We're not talking about somebody who simply hired someone else to take another person out. That's not a curse. I suppose in some way you could review it as such or view it as such, but that's not what we're talking about.
The attempt to manipulate the spiritual world for some kind of physical result. So if the curse has always worked, nope, do they today? Are curses real today? Sometimes, depends on the engagement of the spiritual world and what God has determined to do.
And that's what we see through the rest of this passage. The curses have no value, nor do any blessings unless it is God himself blessing or cursing. Or if God does it, then it is so and it will be so. And there is no mistake in it.
I did think about curses being real or true in our day. And while they may or may not take place depending on what they are, and sometimes we just use curse words. I hope we don't against people, but some people do certainly against us. It doesn't mean that there is nothing happening when someone issues a pronouncement of disgust or judgment.
For we have Proverbs chapter 18 and verse 21 saying death and life are in the power of the tongue. And then we have the man James writing in his epistle titled James. How careful we ought to be with our tongues because we can set the world on fire. Now why is that true?
Because words matter. Words matter. What this is leading us to is the fourth question in part one. Who then has true authority with words that lead to blessing or cursing?
That's really the point in question here. Who has true authority? And there is only one. And he appears in this passage in God Almighty.
And this is why a talking donkey features into this narrative, into this story. It's because God will make a fool of a mercenary prophet making his words of value on God's determination and rule. And uses a donkey to speak truth just as surely as a man might. So God is saying I am here in this process and in this story at every point and in every way.
I can open Donkeys mouths and they will speak more truth than a man writing it. In the history of mankind and throughout history, throughout the world, God above will rule with words of truth and sovereignty. And the rebellion here below will try to have its own way in the same manner. We will continue to be in a war of words and revelation in our lifetime.
It matters who you listen to. It matters who you and I pay attention to. We must be hearing truth and be careful to reject error. But in the end, we can summarize all of this as to who is doing what in this very simple phrase that a German man has given to me.
And you might even be able to guess who that is. I'll leave that to your discernment. But the German phrase or expressed in German is their mench date, won't go out linked. Now, some have offered the American translation or English translation, man proposes and God disposes.
And that's a nice way to say it because it rhymes and you can catch on to it quickly. But I asked a German if that's really quite the literal translation and he said to me, well, it's a little bit more as man or mankind or men think that's the thing. Men think or think with a plan thinking towards a future with a goal, something they intend to accomplish. That's about like a bale here.
They have a plan. They've fought through this. They've planned. But God linked is God steers.
So man proposes, but God disposes or man thinks and plans, but God steers and executes. And that's what took place in chapter 22 and 23 and 24, those chapters are the outflow of God's involvement, not just in history, but God making the history be what it is. So that's part one. Part two is now some reflection upon the content that is here in chapter 23.
We asked who's doing what and we've essentially answered that. But now who's saying what? What's being said in this chapter? And here we have three persons.
I've referenced them already. We have a fearful king. We have a mercenary prophet and we have God almighty. Two times here in this chapter and in two different geographic locations, Balak will offer sacrifices on seven altars, one bull and one ram on each altar.
So Balak is resorting to any bloody sacrifice ritualistic offering something to bring down the attention of whichever God he can get a hold out of the time, whichever zip code he can get closest to is what he's after. And he wants, Balak wants divine assistance. And as he wants this, he's thinking of every option to make it happen. It is a heathen attempt to get the divine to assist the mortal.
The content of these two oracles that are here, these two pronouncements of blessing is not at all what Balak had designed, but it is actually the substance of this chapter is guiding our thoughts and our minds to these pronouncements of blessing. And from here, there will come two more in chapter 24. These prophecies will intensify and escalate to Israel's favor by God's design and by his plan and his rule. It's God who made human language and expression and he hasn't turned it over to the manipulation of man or any other spiritual forces.
So Balak ends up delivering two oracles pronouncements of blessing in this chapter. The first one is fairly concise, just a few verses, seven, eight, nine and ten. But each new one, the next one to come, intensifies in revealing the details of a generational history forming blessing on this nation and by extension on God's people throughout time, us included. Since there were intended curses, maybe we can understand a bit of what the curse might have been or the intention of it by looking at what the blessing was.
We don't have to discover exactly what Balak's intentions were or Balam's, but they probably tried to be as broad. They were shooting as broad as they could. They weren't thinking of just a one-time military defeat. They were hoping that they could get a sweeping disease to run through all the Israelite camp.
They were aiming for something that would destroy Israel for many, many years to come. God, however, issues blessing, not just in corresponding gravity to the curse, but he outruns and out performs the curse in his blessing on these people on Israel. So let's just look at two particular thoughts that come out of these two oracles. I want to just take a couple of moments with you to consider two items.
The first one, Oracle 1, Balak asks the question, how can I curse whom God has not cursed? How can I denounce whom the Lord has not denounced? That would be sort of the core of that oracle. The next oracle has a core just a little bit longer because it's more extensive in its revelation.
Turning to the second one and looking in verses 19 and 20, it's fundamentally the same expression, but more focused upon God himself. God is not man in verse 19 that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not fulfill it?
Here are questions being asked, but the answer is already known. Behold, I received a command to bless. He has blessed and I cannot revoke it. So there are two sides here.
I can't curse whom God hasn't cursed and I must bless whom God has blessed. We're capturing it in either way you want to frame it. So the first statement I want you to consider or the first thought here is Israel's prior status of blessedness. And what I mean by prior status is when Israel showed up down here in the plains, mountains surrounding the plains, it's Balak and Bailan who are on the mountains, evidently even unknown to Israel.
Israel's down in the camp, refreshing, regrouping, whatever it is that they need to do, worshiping certainly. And so they're down in the plains. They don't know this is taking place. Israel doesn't know.
But when Israel showed up as they left Egypt, and in fact, well before they left Egypt from the moment that God declared to their father Abraham, he would bless them. They are under the strict blessing of God Almighty. They have left Israel or they have left Egypt under blessing. We're told they even plunder the Egyptians.
They could go to their neighbors houses before they left and ask for all the good stuff. We need some silver and gold. We're getting out of here. We're on our way.
And Egypt is nearly left destitute by the time all of their slaves leave with all of the gold. It's a remarkable story. So here Israel lands at this point just outside of Moab already with God's blessing. And Bailan is simply saying, now I cannot undo that.
So that's point one. Israel's prior status or state of blessedness. Now, what's the cause? Why would God bless this people?
He even says, you aren't special. I didn't pick you because you're smarter, because you're prettier, because you're wiser, because you got more stuff. He says he chose them in spite of their lack of all those things. And because they had so little, because God will make himself known by the little list of things.
Well, it's found here. Why do they have the status of blessedness? How has this come to them? Why is it theirs?
Verse 21, P of speaking of God has not beheld misfortune in Jacob, nor has he seen trouble in Israel. The Lord has declared his people judicially righteous in his eyes. I don't see the flaws. I don't see the sin.
I don't account it to you. Now, there's further revelation that brings this out to us more in these oracles. But God is declaring his people free and clear of guilt. And that is why he will bless them.
He has promised to do so, but God doesn't stand around throwing out blessings to the guilty and the unrighteous. He pours out his blessing and help his happiness to his people and upon his people who are his by having his righteousness. So these are two anchoring points in the following oracles or statements or pronouncements of blessing that are yet to come. It's as though Paul had read this passage when he penned Romans 8 and verse 31.
What then shall we say to these things? And he'd spoken of God giving righteousness to his people. If God is for us, who can be against us? There is none.
There is none who has a greater word. There is none who can curse. There is none who can bless besides God, not with finality, not with perfect authority. And we can take a great deal of comfort as the Lord's people in knowing that he will execute all of his plan throughout time, throughout history, for our good and for his namesake and for his glory.
Why? Because he has determined to bless his people and he will do so because he gives them his own righteousness and finds no fault in them. Let's wind up with just two points of application. What do we take from this?
As we look at the fact that the world around us is dangerous and can be dangerous and is dangerous to a spiritually, not just physically, because it was true of Israel. It's true of us. And this kind of thing can be going on. This blessing or cursing can be going on even without our knowledge.
So we know that the Lord is watching over us. But what are we to take away from these challenges? Words matter. Who's doing what?
Who's saying what? Looking at the Lord's pronouncement upon Israel. I think there are two points to take away. And one comes just a few years after this event with Balaam.
Moses is delivering his last series of sermons in the book we call Deuteronomy. And in chapter eight, our Lord quotes this again at a later time when he's tempted by the devil. But Moses said to the people of Israel, and he speaking of God humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. That's certainly true of this passage.
Israel lives by the words of the mouth of the Lord. And so do we. So my encouragement to you is keep listening to sermons, keep digging in, read, study, learn, grow, is. Learn grow in this written word and pray that the Lord would open your eyes.
We also be doing this just regularly because we need his word to teach us truth and help us avoid error. And the second application is this. Don't worry too much about people with curses. There's folks running around cursing Christians and missionaries and political leaders.
They're certainly dangerous. There are false features and false prophets always willing to work for a buck and say the something misleading. They're out there. They're dangerous.
Let's not worry so much about the curses. We are encouraged by our Lord himself to seek his blessing to call for his blessing, asking to bless your family, asking to bless those you love, asking to bless you in your work. Ask for his blessing. We are allowed to ask for it.
We're encouraged to ask for it. We should end his righteousness. Seek his righteousness through our Lord Jesus, where it's having his righteousness that brings true blessing, happiness, and deed. Let's pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you give us warning and that you give us so much blessing by your word and through your word. Now settle your word into our hearts. We pray that we might love you more sincerely day by day.
We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.