Read Numbers 23-25 & Mark 8:1-21
To discover:
As you read note how God’s continued grace to Israel
is seen.
To ponder:
(C23-24) God cannot be bought. Balaam seeks to curse Israel
by “divination” (22v7) or “sorcery,” (24v1) gaining insight from whatever gods
through ritual. The idea is to offer sacrifices on high places to gain the
god’s favour so they reveal whatever is sought, and are perhaps bribed to act
in a certain way (22v40, 23v1-4, 14-16, 28-30). We shouldn’t read God’s
response as a justification for the practice. He responds only to state again
and again that he is committed to his covenant with the patriarchs.
The first oracle stresses God
will not curse Israel,
and that they are the promised great nation, set-apart from all others. The
second, that God will not change his mind as to his promise to bless them, and
that because he is with them, no sorcery or people can come against them.
Realising God cannot be persuaded to curse, Balaam then stops resorting to
sorcery. Instead, the Spirit comes on him and, like the prophets, he subsequently
receives the words of God through visions. In the third oracle he then declares
how Israel will
be blessed in the land, become great, and conquer hostile nations. God’s
promise to Abraham is then reiterated (24v9, Gen 12v3), and in the remaining
four oracles Balaam predicts the destruction of Moab and the nearby nations at
the hands of a glorious king (“star” and “sceptre”) from Israel.
Once again
we are encouraged that God’s cannot be turned from his commitments to those in
Christ. Even demons submitted to him. So the most powerful rulers and
authorities cannot hinder his purposes. And whereas Balaam prophecy may have
spoken initially of King David, it ultimately looks to Christ destroying all
evil so that his people can dwell forever in the wonder of his coming kingdom.
(C25) Whereas
God affirms his commitment to his covenant, Israel
fail at theirs, having sex with Moabite women who lead them to worship their
gods. It’s a reminder why Christians are urged to marry “in the Lord” (1 Cor
7v39). Not doing so, too easily softens or even shipwrecks faith.
Once
more God’s holy anger is provoked, and here breaks out in plague. Such idolatry
carries the death penalty in Israel.
So the leaders are called to kill the guilty and expose them before God as a
way of showing this is his justice, and turning his anger away. It is for this
reason that Phinehas’ act is one of commendable zeal for God’s honour, halting
the plague. As a priest, it’s as if he is making a sacrifice to make “atonement”
(granting at-one-ment with God). God rewards Phinehas by covenanting that the
line of priests would continue from his family. He then instructs Moses that
the Midianites are to forever be enemies Israel
should kill.
We can be
tempted to consider everything different for Christians. However, Ananias and
Sapphira bear testimony that God’s anger can break out at sin within the church
(Acts 5v1-11). Indeed, it did so even at those being disrespectful at the
Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11v29-33). Moreover, looking to the final judgement, Hebrews
10v26-31 notes the death penalty in Israel, before saying “how much more
severely” the Christian that “deliberately keeps on sinning…deserves to be
punished” for “trampling the Son of God underfoot,” for “treating as unholy the
blood of the covenant” and “insulting the Spirit of grace.” So Paul rightly uses
this event to warn us off sexual immorality (1 Cor 10v8).
Praying it home:
Thank God that he will never go back on his promises to us.
Pray that he would keep us from deliberate and persistent sin that displays
false faith and makes us liable to his anger.
Thinking further:
By this point in our readings you may be feeling rather
shell-shocked at what we are learning of God. Sadly Christians can go for years
with a somewhat distorted and even sentimentalized view of the Lord because
they have not been taught what Paul called “the whole counsel of God.” As we
face these instances of his holy anger we must first recall all we know of him
in Christ. Christ displayed that same anger in driving out the money lenders
with a whip. Moreover, he readily spoke of how he would execute terrible final
judgement (Matt 25v41-46). However he also showed the compassion, love, grace
and patience that patterns that of the LORD tolerating so much in the likes of
the patriarchs, and indeed, in the history of Israel.
There is therefore no ground for
suggesting a difference between God as portrayed in our two testaments. Rather,
the difference we notice is to do with his people and purposes. Within the Old
Testament he is actually present amongst a people that have not benefited from
the cleansing power of the cross, not moved to obedience by the fuller work of
his Spirit, and amongst whom there are evidently many who don’t truly believe. This
explains why his anger is more readily provoked. Moreover, in order to fulfil
his promises through that people, he chooses to display his power and justice
to the surrounding nations, by establishing Israel
in Canaan. This explains the wars by which he brings
judgement on those nations.
Yet the events are instructive.
They show only too clearly that sin is much more serious than we assume. And it
is no surprise that we struggle with this, as we live in a particularly
permissive culture. We also see that God is far more holy than we realise. His
extreme goodness and purity cannot tolerate evil. He cannot just overlook it.
That would make him unjust, and so evil himself. No, we’ve already seen that
absolutely every evil act must be punished, whether in the sinner themselves or
in a substitute. And this is why we see God acting as he does. It all brings
home how much we need Christ, how awful the penalty he endured actually was,
and how loving God must therefore be to go to such ends to save us from
himself. In other words, it is only as we understand how terrible God’s anger
actually is by reading these sort of Old Testament passages, that we can grasp
how immense his love must therefore be, displayed most clearly in the New. For
“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.” (Rom 5v8)
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