6-7-26 Blessings from Curses (Numbers)

Join Pastor Ken as he continues in his series through the book of Numbers.

Transcript

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Maybe you heard the story about the family that was going to Europe and they had their extended family come over the night before to get ready, and there was an argument between cousins, and the youngest one gets in trouble and gets sent up to the third level of the house for the night. And on the way up, he tells his mother, I wish I didn't have a family. I wish that is for bad, a curse, if you will. The next morning the alarm goes off late, and they're all rushing around and they all take off, get their bags, rush to the airport, and they forget the boy upstairs. And he is convinced when he comes down and finds himself home alone that he is there because he cursed his family. He told them that he didn't want to have a family. Curses often start as a part of a story, or they're often in the start of a story. Think about Beauty and the Beast has a curse that has to be reversed. The Hocus Pocus has a curse. Even Shrek has a curse, although it's a little confusing about which way it eventually goes. It's also related to that idea of superstition. When I was a boy, if we were driving someplace in town and a black cat went across the road, my mom would turn around and go a different route to get home because you had bad luck if you were the first one to cross after a black cat. If you broke a mirror, you were really in trouble because you got seven years of bad luck. And if you were walking with somebody and you went around a pole, you had to say bread and butter, or you'd have a bad problem with your relationship. And my dad always said, if you give somebody a knife, they have to give you a penny, otherwise, it will cut the relationship between the two of you. But can humans really make curses happen? Do we really have to worry about black cats and broken mirrors and things like that when it comes to our fate or our future? Well, let's take a look at Numbers 23 and talk about blessings and curses. Please stand as you're able for the reading of God's word. Numbers 23, first of all, verses 1 through 12. Then Balaam said to Balak, Build me seven altars here and prepare seven bulls and seven rams for me. Balak did as Balaam had said, and offered a bull and a ram on each altar. Then Balaam said to Balak, Stay here beside your burnt offerings while I go aside. Perhaps the Lord will come to meet me. Whatever he shows me I will tell you. And he went to a bare height. Then God met Balaam, and Balaam said to him, I have arranged the seven altars, and offered a bull and a ram on each altar. The Lord put a word in Balaam's mouth and said, Return to Balak, and this is what you must say. So he returned to Balak, who was standing beside his burnt offerings with all the officials of Moab. Then Balaam uttered his oracle, saying, Balak has brought me from Aram, the king of Moab from the eastern mountains. Come, curse Jacob for me. Come, denounce Israel. How can I curse whom God has not cursed? How can I denounce those whom the Lord has not denounced? For from the top of the crags I see him, from the hills I behold him. Here is a people living alone and not reckoning itself among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the dust cloud of Israel? Let me die the death of the upright, and let my end be like his. Then Balak said to Balaam, What have you done to me? I brought you to curse my enemies, but now you have done nothing but bless them. He answered, Must I not take care to say what the Lord puts into my mouth? This is the word of God for the people of God. Please be seated. So as we saw at the beginning of last sermon, Balak hires Balaam to put a curse on Israel because he is afraid of the conflicts that might come in the future. Balak sees Balaam as a sorcerer, a witch, a person who has power, maybe a shaman of some type. He believes that Balaam's curse has the ability to alter the future. It has the power to weaken the people of Israel so that he can defeat them in battle. It has the power to harm them, just as a blessing has the power to cause them to be stronger or to help them. How many horror movies start or have a curse in them? The curse of the old gypsy lady that gets offended with somebody and puts a curse on them and then bad things happen. The curse of the crime victim who has been exploited by somebody that sticks to the one that committed the crime, the curse of the mummy, the voodoo curse, the sorcerer's curse. Multiple times, Balaam, when he goes with Balak, goes through this process of trying to get God to allow him to do what he's hired to do. But each time, instead of a curse, God makes him speak a blessing. They do this whole ritual of seven altars with actually 14 victims, a ram and a bull on each. It may have even been this idea that you had multiple offerings for multiple gods, but here they're all concentrated on the Lord, and then Balach has to stay by the altar, and then Balaam goes off to get this word from God. And as you continue through the story, this happens several times. Finally, God gets to the point that just the offerings aren't even there. He just talks to Balaam directly and tells him what to say directly. There's an aspect to this that approaches magic. And it's very common when it comes to magic, especially in ancient times, to keep asking until you got the answer you wanted. Balaam keeps asking God at Balak's suggestion, hoping to get an answer that he wants. Hoping to get the response that he wants. There's an incident in Roman history where a Roman general, Claudius Poulcher, was leading the Roman fleet and they were about to fight the Carthaginians, and they would do this augury. They would check out the results to get the gods favorable with birds, and they had chickens that were supposed to eat, and that would give them a good sign. And they put out the food, the priests, and the chickens won't eat it. Maybe they were a little seasick. And they do it again, and the whole fleet's waiting, and they do it again, and finally, Claudius Pulture, the general, grabs the chicken, throws it into the sea, and says, If it won't eat, let it drink. And then Rome lost the battle hugely, and he was put on trial for not listening to the gods, not waiting to get a favorable answer. Balaam is just as stubborn. He just keeps trying again and again. And let's pick up the story again with Numbers 24, 10 through 14. Then Balaak's anger was kindled against Balaam, and he struck his hands together. Balak said to Balaam, I summoned you to curse my enemies, but instead you have blessed them these three times. Now be off with you. Go home. I said I will reward you richly, but the Lord has denied you any reward. And Balaam said to Balak, Did I not speak to your messengers whom you sent to me, saying, If Balak should give me his house full of silver and gold, I would not be able to go beyond the word of the Lord to do either good or bad of my own will. What the Lord says, that is what I will say. So now I am going to my people. Let me advise you what this people will do to your people in days to come. Balaam is not the sorcerer. He's not the person who can alter the future that Balak thinks he is. Now, Balaam, on the other hand, sees himself as a diviner, a seer. He does the other part of magic. He predicts what's happening in the future. He tells the word of what can be something that's going to come. And he says again and again, he can only tell what God shows to him. He can keep asking God, and he keeps asking God, wanting God to change his mind, but God does not do so. And he realizes that when it comes to the future, when it comes to actually changing the future, he has no power there because God controls the future. It's not something that's subject to doing the right ritual or doing the right, saying the right words or the hocus pocus or whatever. See, in paganism, in the idea where you've got multiple gods, you could play one God or goddess against another one. You could pray to your favorite God that they would be able to give you special favors and go against sometimes the other gods or the gods of the other nation, and it would be a question of which God was stronger than the other. And there was a belief that humans could tip the balance through their offerings, through their sacrifices, through their ways of asking God. But the reality is there's only one God. And we cannot manipulate that God. There's only one God who holds the future in his hand, and we don't have the power to control him. In fact, folks, think about it. We usually have a lot of trouble controlling ourselves in general. How could we think that we would be able to control God? Balaam realizes that all he can do at the best is get a word from God that tells him what might happen. Now that's valuable, of course, but it's not what Balach is looking for. Neither one of these men see God clearly and act accordingly. God is not for sale to curse our enemies. Sorcery, black magic, spells are all forbidden by death in the Old Testament. And the fact is that there's not a reality to them that works anyway because we cannot manipulate the power of God. You can't control God in this way. He is the one that holds history and the future in his hands. When I was a student at Oklahoma University, I lived in a huge dormitory, and there were people that tried to buy into this idea of magic. They tried to do things to have control over other people in their life. They tried to learn the arts, if you will, of doing that. The scripture makes it clear: if you do that, you're opposing God's will. And there is no white magic in the sense of positive when it comes to magic. It's all forbidden to attempt, and it's all useless to attempt. When I lived in Champaign, Urbana, they have this, I can't remember the name of it, but this really cool costume shop there. Big, huge place, has every kind of costume you can imagine, and they would rent them out for student parties and activities and Halloween and so forth, or you could buy things there, and they had the magic corner there. But you know what you could buy at the magic corner? Stuff to give the illusion of doing something. Cards that would allow you to do a trick of the eye or trick of the mind so that people would think you were doing something with superpower, but really they were just an illusion. There was really no magic in the sense of controlling the future. For the same reason, superstition is silliness when you come right down to it. Your future doesn't depend on whether a black cat goes in front of your car or not, or whether you break a mirror or not, unless you cut yourself on the mirror when you're breaking it, maybe, or what words you say, or what things that you do, it's all silliness because God is in control. And God doesn't bless or curse people because they break mirrors or don't say the right words or so forth. I mean, that whole idea of superstition is based upon an idea of spirits controlling things in the world, spirits that did stuff like spoiling milk and causing babies to cry and so forth that we know does not even really exist. God is the one who has the say, who has the plan, and is in control. If you want to know the future, if you want to deal with things, then you have to go to God in prayer, not in manipulation. You know, it'd be like if I went into Congress when I was out in Washington and went to the person that's at the door and said, I need you to change these laws for me, and I'll pay you some money to go and do that. And, you know, this person might have taken my money, but they have no power to change the laws because they're not even a single congressperson. And yet we tend to try to believe that there's other powers beside God that can do that. The power to predict the future also comes from God. Balaam starts with these elaborate rituals to divine things, and then by the end of the story, God is just telling him directly what to say. The ancient world had all kinds of ways that you could try to figure out what's happening in the future. Augury, which the word even comes from the idea of the direction that birds fly. So they would watch birds, they would read the tea leaves, they would do sacrificial animals and see what their liver looked like and look for signs of the future there. They would cast lots, sometimes they would even consult the dead, what's known as necromancy, which is also condemned in the scripture. But the Bible says the future can be predicted. But you got to go to God to find out what's going to happen. You have to turn to the Lord of the universe in order to understand what can come next. And you know, knowing the future is vital information, right? It probably solves the mystery of how somebody can go to Congress with a few hundred thousand dollars and within eight years have millions of dollars getting paid $120,000 a year, right? Because that whole idea of inside trading, they know what the law is going to be ahead of time, and so they know what stocks to sell beforehand and what stocks to buy beforehand that's gonna do well, but that's not quite the same as really being able to predict what the future holds. God shows us the important things about the future. The important things is this will be your fate unless you repent and make peace with God. And this will be your fate if you trust in God. Now you can make a decision today based upon what God has said will happen in your future. And God has the power to deliver that future. So it's important to listen to his word. He tells people what he has planned, what he has promised, in order for us to make changes today. Balaam thinks that if he keeps asking again and again, God is going to change things. God is going to do what he wants him to do. God is going to curse people in order to please him. He also assumes that God is fickle or flighty or can be manipulated, but it's not true. He keeps asking and hoping for a different answer. When my kids were little, they liked Bart Simpson and the Simpsons. The cartoon characters, you know, Bart's the son and Homer's the dad, and Bart would say, Can we do something? And Homer would say, No. And Bart would say, Cammy, can we, can we, can we, can it, can we, can we? Until finally Homer would give in and say, Yes. It's Balaam's approach to God. Let me ask again. No. Let me ask again. No. Let me ask one more time. No. And he doesn't seem to get the fact that he doesn't control God in the sense of understanding God as fickle, as playing favorites, as not listening. Balak wants military victory for his people. He wants Balaam to help provide that through a curse. Balaam shows that God has power, but it's not to provide what he thinks it will. Balak thinks he can pay Balaam to get him to provide this. Balaam says from the start he's not able to do that, but he can only do what God says, but then he keeps asking again and again and again to try to get God to change his mind. They both misunderstand God's very nature and how God relates to other people. God's nature is to be forgiving and loving. God is constant and caring. In fact, let's look at that description of God, Exodus 34, 6 through 7. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generations. The constancy of God is based upon the response of people to him. And Ezekiel will later say that God will no longer carry that over even to another generation. He will deal with each generation on the basis of their own actions and responses to God. That's where cursing goes completely wrong. Cursing is the belief that I can decide the fate for somebody else in a negative way rather than them deciding their own faith or fate in response to God. Cursing and blessing tries to control God's relationship to somebody else. But God relates directly to everyone, He gives everyone the chance to know Him. He responds to everyone's faith. He hopes and desires that everyone come to faith. Not to pray that he hurts or destroys or has negative effects on others. Listen to what it says in 2 Peter 3, verse 9. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. God wants to save all people. God sent Christ to die for all people. God wants you and I, as his people, to have that same mindset. A mindset of blessing, of reaching out, of caring. Our role by faith in the Holy Spirit is to take God's view and to reach out, to pull in, to help people to understand. We're not in the business of trying to get God to get people as much as they might upset us. We're in the business of getting God to keep people as a part of His family. But sometimes we get mad. And sometimes we get so focused on something that's happened to us or something bad that somebody's done to us. And sometimes we reach for whatever weapon that we can to get back or deal with that person. And of course, there's no more powerful weapon than the power of God. And so that temptation is there to try to pull God into our arguments, our disputes, our fights, to curse people in the name of God. The role that we have, though, is to leave the cursing aside. Even when we're cursed, Jesus tells us to return a blessing instead. To leave aside that desire for personal vengeance and take God's view of we're not at war against flesh and blood. Humans are really not our enemy. The forces of evil are. We're on a rescue mission to save people, sometimes even from themselves, by connecting them to God. The God who has the power to forgive them, the God that desires to forgive them, the God who loves them and wants to show mercy to them. You and I, when you get right down to it, aren't in the judgment committee. We're not in the condemning committee. We're in the invitation committee. We're the ones that say, come to know God, come to experience his blessing. Make that direct connection that you need to make, that you might be connected to God eternally. And we've got one more week of looking at Balak, and Balaam even plays a little role in that as well. And we find out that like many people, when he can't get God on his side, he still tries to do what he wants by more direct, nefarious action. But that's for next week. For now, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your incredible love. We thank you that you're a God who, even though you had the right to judge us, even though we failed and have fallen short of all that you've called us to, yet you sent your son to die for us. You chose to bless us instead. You chose to reach out to us and to continue to reach out. We thank you that you're a God who loves us enough to send Christ to die for us. Help us to be open to all that you have with us, Lord, or have for us, Lord, that we might be willing to receive that blessing and receive it in Jesus' name. Amen.