9/4/2023

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Acknowledge Him in all your ways and He will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 2. 5-6)

“So Balak son of Zippor, who was king of Moab at that time, sent messengers to summon Balaam son of Beor, who was at Pethor, near the Euphrates River, in Balak’s native land. Balak said: “A people has come out of Egypt;  they cover the face of the land and have settled next to me. Now come and put a curse on these people as they are too powerful for me. Perhaps then I will be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land. For I know that whoever you bless is blessed, and whoever you curse is cursed.’” (Numbers 22.4b-6)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

What does Balak know? As we read the story found in Numbers 22, we must ask ourselves “What is really going on?” The heart of the story exists in the truth which Balak himself dispenses concerning Balaam: “For I know that whoever you bless is blessed and whoever you curse is cursed.” Does Balaam really have such power in and of himself? And how does Balak know of Balaam’s reputation? What may be at work behind this scene is the information that Balaam is from Balak’s home country near Pethor. How he came to be King of Moab some four hundred miles away is not fully known. Let us also consider that Pethor is only about fifty miles away from Haran where Abraham’s father and family lived. There is a strong connection between the God of Abraham and these people. We saw it as well when Moses considered the words of his father-in-law, Jethro or Reuel, who was not only a shepherd but a priest of Midian who believed in the God who ruled on the mountain in Sinai. It was on that mountain that God revealed Himself to Moses and began the process of liberating the descendants of Jacob Israel from their four hundred year sojourn of slavery in Egypt. Scholars suggest that the Magi who visited Jesus in Bethlehem two years after He was born were from these areas north and south. They would have come into Israel, especially Jerusalem, from the east. All of this I offer simply for us to hear that there may be more in the story that we should consider straitway. Was Balaam a foreign mystic used by God for the purpose of establishing the Hebrews back into the Promised Land? We know that God worked through foreign powers to effect His purpose. Joseph himself established the truth that “what was meant for evil, God used for good.” Could the story of Balaam be another one of those stories to be put into evidence as to the supremacy of God and those who are His people in spirit and in truth?

It is interesting to note that Balak called the “horde” moving in next to his land “a people who have come from Egypt.” Does he really not know who they are as Israelites whose “father” was Jacob who inhabited Israel before going down to Egypt due to the famine? If Balak was from the region of Pethor and Haran, did he really not know of the stories of Abraham from the Ur of the Chaldees? Would he not know that Abraham who in the midst of a polytheistic religion in Babylon was consulted by the God who had no name and directed to a land He would show him and make it his own. It was that Abraham who heard the promise of his God that his descendants would be a numerous as the grains of sand along the seashore (or the desert) and as the stars which populated the heaven above. Was it a means of diminishing “those” people by simply refering to them as “people coming from Egypt”? Or did Balak know better and believed, while he would not profess such a faith, that the God who informed and affirmed Balaam’s success in blessing and cursing being the same as those of the Hebrews would have a distinct advantage? And we can go further into considering what Balak knew as he consulted also with the Midianites. Remembering Moses’ father-in-law was a Midianite priest, did he see that he might be able to stack the deck against this “people from Egypt.” Of course, Balak obviously was playing both ends against the middle. Scholars suggest that his name was connected to the worship of a metal bird which was consulted for guidance. In the morning it would be faced to the sun and in the evening to the moon. For seven days it would be consumed by incense as an offering to the god of the bird. Strange that the “bird” warned Balak to not confront the people and let them pass. But, Balak refused and took other means which would better suit his purpose of defending “his” land and resources. And isn’t that the underlying truth in this whole story?

What the world wants is to have cursed that which opposes their own advantage and propose a blessing to those who fall in line with their thinking. Balak, using whatever advantage of religion he could muster, called in his “ace in the hole with this foreign God” to curse Israel in the name of God. As Israel was aligned with said God, they would respond accordingly and move away. It didn’t happen. God directly Balaam to speak the truth to Balak concerning the inevitablity of Israel fulfilling their blessing which had already been given. And while Balaam found himself caught between the proverbial “rock and a hard place,” he could do nothing other than what God had said. Do we find ourselves in a similar situation from time to time? Do we do what is right in the eyes of God or what is of assumed value for ourselves in the eyes of others? As people of faith we are called to make those tough decisions and have those fierce conversations. Moses was caught in those situations as well. Because he fell pray to his own humanity instead of trusting in God, he was not allowed to lead the Hebrews into the Promised Land. He watched from a distance so close and yet so far as they departed across the Jordan. Do we need to straighten/straiten out of thinking on these matters of faith and duty as we march ahead to the Promised Land of a New Heaven and a New Earth to dwell in a New Jerusalem? It is one thing to know God. It is a totally different thing to believe God and act in faith to do what is right and good in His sight.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN LIGHT OF GOD’S WORD:

Father, You have revealed to us best in Jesus the Christ. By Him and Him alone shall we gain the eternal life and our place in eternal rest, living for You always. Show us more and by Your Holy Spirit instruct us in the way we should go, the truth we should reveal and the life we shall live with you forever. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.