Sermon Tone Analysis

Me

This October will be 21 years that Danielle and I have been married.

But what a lot of people don’t know is that we are over 20 years married and neither of us are in our 40s yet (although I am inching closer and closer as the months go by).

We started dating our freshman year of high school, back in 1998.

We both graduated high school in May of 2001 and in October of 2001 we got married (and Ms. Maxine was actually there).

I was 19 and Danielle was 18 and at that point we had been together for three and a half years already and we both knew without a doubt that we would be together forever and we decided why not start forever early.

However, at 19 and 18 years old, we had more than our fair share of detractors to our marriage.

We had so many people try to talk us out of it because we were so young, because we hadn’t gone to college yet, because we didn’t have a ton of money saved up, because we were too young to truly know what love really is… And I highly doubt that even remotely scratches the surface of the various complaints we heard about it…

But, we both knew we were destined to be together, that we were each other beshert (Yiddish for preordained or destined), we knew that we loved each other and wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.

Don’t get me wrong, we had absolutely no misgivings about some fairy tale happily ever after, we were well aware that marriage, though great, is not easy nor is it for the faint of heart.

We both come from families where our parents had been married for about two decades by the time we got married, and who are still married another 20+ years later.

We witnessed the struggles and battles of marriage and making a life together.

Despite the many objections we heard, we still wanted to get married and we wanted to beat the odds, and we knew that as long as God was in our relationship we would succeed no matter what the world threw at us because God had blessed us.

And a little over two decades later here we are still married, still happily in love, still pushing forward together.

We have definitely had our ups and downs, we have definitely had our struggles and difficulties, as any marriage would.

But the what has carried us through it all is that we know God has blessed and ordained our marriage and we refuse to be the destroyers of it… And the truth is, no matter what any of our detractors 20+ years ago had to say or tried to do, only Danielle or I could destroy our relationship, and we refuse to throw in the towel…

We

We all have experience with people talking trash about us… We all have experience with people trying to convince us that what we believe is fake, or that what we feel God calling us to do is wrong, or that we are good enough, or smart enough, or attractive enough, or thousands of other accusations and lies the enemy tries to use to rob us of what God wants to do in and through us.

Heck, half the time we are often our own worse enemies as we speak the same kind of lies over ourselves… Or we doubt ourselves and/or what God is doing in our lives… Or we doubt our worth or why or how God could love us…

But, the truth is, as with mine and Danielle’s marriage, the outside world cannot rob us of what God wants to do in our lives… They cannot rob us of the fullness of the blessings and promises God has in store for us… We have the option to believe and trust in what God says or to buy in to the garbage being spewed at us by the world around us… But it is ultimately our choices that make or break our efficacy for the Kingdom of Messiah.

God

This week we read Parasha Balak, Numbers 22:2-25:9, in which we read of Balak the Moabite and his fear of what Adonai would do through B’nei Yisrael to the Moabites because of what Adonai had done to Sihon and Og and the Amorites.

So Balak recruits Bilaam to come and speak a curse over B’nei Yisrael so that he could hopefully defeat them.

After some back and forth God allows Bilaam to go with Balak’s men but he is specifically instructed to only do and say precisely what God says and nothing else.

Along the way we see that Adonai see’s something about the intentions of Bilaam’s heart and sends an angel to slaughter Bilaam by the sword and Bilaam’s donkey saves his life, but not before the donkey physically and audibly talks to Bilaam.

Adonai once more reminds Bilaam of the importance that he speak only what God instructs him to say.

Ultimately, Balak brings Bilaam to three different and sequentially better vantage points to get Bilaam to curse Israel, and all three times the Word of the Lord will only allow him to bless Israel.

The third of which gives us the foundation for a powerful piece of traditional Jewish liturgy that we recite every Shabbat here at CMC, the Ma Tovu which we find rooted in Numbers 24:5 in the midst of the third blessing Bilaam speaks over B’nei Yisrael.

Balak becomes enraged with Bilaam for having been hired to curse Israel and instead, three separate times, speaking blessing of them, for which Bilaam reminds him that Balak was warned that Bilaam could only say exactly what HaShem instructed.

Lastly, in Numbers 25 we read of the infiltration of the Moabite pagan prostitution and idolatry in the camps of Israel, Pinchas brings an end to by driving a spear through the Simeonite Zimri and the midianite woman, Cozbi, who he was flaunting sinful relations with in front of the Tabernacle, Moses, the priests, and all of Israel.

Today, as we discuss Parasha Balak and the reality of the account of Bilaam and Israel, I want to focus on one particular aspect of what we see in this narrative.

And as we do, I want us to keep this spiritual principle in mind as we move forward…

Principle: The desire of God’s heart is to bless us, whether we realize and experience the fullness of His blessing is completely up to us.

(Repeat)

Let’s dig into the text together…

As we do, I want to set up what we’re looking at today by going back to Genesis 50 and Joseph’s interaction with his brothers after the death of Jacob.

You planned evil against me, but God had planned it for good… This is the exact reality we see throughout Parasha Balak.

Balak, the king of Moab, intended evil against Israel, but no matter how hard he tried, God had it all planned out for good… Curse turned into blessing… Blessing turned into liturgy recited in Jewish tradition for millennia now…

Now, before we go very far, we have to setup the story a bit real quick.

We see three people groups mentioned right out the gate as we begin reading Parasha Balak: the Moabites, the Amorites, and the Midianites.

Who exactly are these people goups?

If we look back at Genesis 15:18-21 you’ll read...

So you’ll notice that the Amorites are one of the original people groups that Abraham is told his descendants would dispossess.

The Amorites are also one of the people groups we read about in last Parasha Chukat, specifically in Numbers 21:21-35, when Sihon (the king of the Amorites) and Og attack Israel and Israel is victorious.

Now the Moabites and the Midianites who team up together in Parasha Balak to hire Bilaam to curse Israel, they are two very interesting people groups, particularly because they are linked directly back to Abraham himself.

See, the Moabites are the descendants of one of Lot’s incestuous relationships with his daughters after the fled when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.

And Lot is the nephew of Abraham that Abraham brought along with him when God called Abraham to leave his father’s household behind and to journey to a land that Adonai would show to him.

So, had Abraham not brought Lot with him on this journey, had he left his father’s household behind as instructed, the Moabites would not have been a continue problem for Israel.

Now the Midianites are interesting too… If we look at Genesis 25:1-5 we read this…

Notice Midian, the ancestor of the Midianite people, is a direct descendant of Abraham through his wife Keturah that he took after Sarah died.

All of his children with Keturah he sent off to the east so that they would not attempt to ruin Isaac’s inheritance.

Through the Midianites and others seen in Joshua, these other descendants of Abraham who he cast off to the east later become tremendous thorns in Israel’s side.

So Balak, the Moabite, sees that Israel has defeated the Amorites, which the sages tell us historically Moav depended on the Amorites for protection.

So he becomes worried about this potential threat before him.

He sees the shear size and magnitude of this caravanning people, I’m sure by now word has traveled to Moav of how Israel was brought out of Egypt in miraculous form.

Balak is terrified… In fact, they say, Numbers 22:4

So Moab and Midian team up together in this fight… But I want to point out something very important here, Israel was a touch over 600,000 warriors strong, the nation as a whole moving through the wilderness would have been anywhere from probably 3-5 million strong, and they were a brand new, infantile nation.

But the lands that they were traveling through were well established, they were nations who likely had much larger and well organized fighting forces.

But there was something different about Israel, there was something the Moabites and Midianites saw in Israel’s victory over the Amorites… There was a force fighting for or with Israel that the Moabites and Midianites didn’t think they could overcome.

They fully recognized the blessing of the Hand of God upon Israel, they may have not understood what exactly it was, but they could absolutely see it and they knew it could mean doom for them.

So they send elders to Bilaam to hire him to come and curse Israel.

They recognized fully could not defeat them physically because there was something spiritual, something supernatural to their strength and presence.

So they thought if they could curse these people then they might be able to defeat them militarily afterward.

However, Israel is blessed by God, and no curse of man is going to overcome the blessing of God.

The men come to Bilaam and try to hire him to curse Israel, but Bilaam says he has to consult Adonai first.

At first the Lord tells him not to go with them, but then after some back and forth (honestly because I believe Bilaam really wanted that payday…) the Lord finally lets him go and tells him he is only to speak exactly what Adonai says, nothing more and nothing less.

Now, I don’t want to go into too much on the narrative of the politician… I mean talking ass… Sorry, talking donkey… But one thing I want to point out is that the whole reason the angel of God was going to kill Bilaam is because Adonai knows the heart.

I believe Bilaam was likely trying to conjure up some plan in his heart and mind of how he could sneak a curse in even though he knew God wouldn’t let him.

He wasn’t by any means trying to be faithful to HaShem, he was trying to get that payday…

Bilaam arrives with Balak and Balak is elated that he will finally have this supposed prophet speak a curse over this dangerous enemy of his and he rushes out to greet Bilaam, and again Bilaam reiterates that he can only speak the words Adonai puts in his mouth.

He has given ample warning, and will continue to do so through the Parasha.

The next morning Bilaam has seven altars erected and offers a bull and ram on each one, then he goes to seek the voice of God.

To which Balak loses his mind and says, what are you doing?

I am paying you to curse them and you bless them instead?

What the heck…?

But instead of Balak getting the picture, he decides the problem is that Bilaam doesn’t have a good enough vantage point to see how terrible this Israel is… So he takes him to another place where he can see the people better, maybe then he will be able to curse them.

Again seven altars are built and a bull and ram are offered on each one.

Again Balak goes to encounter of HaShem and this is what happens.

Balak flips out again, this time he responds, “Look, just don’t say anything… I hired you to curse them and you can’t even get that right… Don’t curse them or bless them, just shut up!!!”

Then Balak again realizes maybe the problem is just that Bilaam can’t see the whole nation… He can’t get the full picture of how bad things really are… So he takes him to the top of Peor to overlook B’nei Yisrael.

Again seven altars are built, and a bull and ram are offered on each one.

Rashi says that Bilaam is having seven altars built because in he is trying to invoke the memory of the Patriarchs… Balaam said to God: The ancestors of this people built You seven altars, and I have prepared the equivalent of them all.

Abraham built four ; Isaac built one; and Jacob built two—one at Shechem and one at Beth-El.

And again, Bilaam lifts up his eyes, he sees the tribes of Israel and the Ruach Elohim comes over him…

Now, I read all of the blessings of Bilaam spoken over B’nei Yisrael to point out something… God has immensely blessed Israel.

Not just through the words Bilaam speaks over them rather than cursing them.

But all along, the blessing of the Hand of HaShem has been upon Israel.

It began with the faithfulness of the Patriarchs of Israel, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it continued through the development of the 12 tribes of Israel, it was made obvious in the freedom brought from slavery in Egypt, and throughout the wilderness journey of Israel, no matter how many mistakes they made, the blessing Hand of HaShem was always upon them.

It didn’t matter if it came to a showdown with the remnant of the forces of Egypt, or the battle against Sihon and Og, or the current crisis with Balak and Bilaam of which, odds are, the tribes of Israel were not even aware.

And there was nothing anyone external to the People of Israel could do about that…

But…

Principle: The desire of God’s heart is to bless us, whether we realize and experience the fullness of His blessing is completely up to us.

After all of this, which again at the time Israel probably knew nothing at all about what Balak and Bilaam were up to, Balak figured out that if he couldn’t curse Israel because of Adonai’s blessing upon them, then he’d have to get them to destroy themselves.

In Numbers 25, Moabite and Midianite women are sent into the camps of Israel and the people of Israel begin to have immoral sexual relations with them.

Now the Moabites and Midianites were pagans, sex was a part of their worship practices.

See Balak was trying so hard to destroy Israel by bringing a curse upon them, but he couldn’t do that because the blessing of the Hand of HaShem was upon them.

But the biggest threat to Israel wasn’t anything anyone else could do to them, it was Israel’s on proclivity for falling to temptation.

This isn’t to say that our Jewish people have some enhance capability to sin, not at all… The reality is sin is unfortunately a prevalent reality for fallen humanity.

We see this reality portrayed in the lives of many key people throughout the Bible.

Over and over again we see individuals whom God desires to bless, those who walk in divine anointing choose to walk contrary to Adonai and His ways, choose to chase after the ways of the world and in turn reject the blessings and promises of God.