Balaam & Balaak

INTRO (10 Min) Hey Guys. How cool to be able to share. At least it is for me, we’ll see how you feel afterwards ; ) Preview – Quick view of the whole but then focus on a cool/interesting story and get an interesting point from it. Ice Breaker - Who are you? Where do you come from? Where does your family come from? One cool thing about your family background - can be someone famous you’re related to, or something about the area your family came from (i.e. famous for bull-fighting), etc…whatever you want to share. (If we have time, will hopefully come back to this at the end…we’ll see how time goes) Great to be able to get to know some of you more. A lot to cover! Going to dive DEEP into an amazing story… Pray BACKGROUND (10 min) What are we studying? And Why? CASKET EMPTY Torah = foundations for everything else.  Audience – (don’t know if we’ll come back to this, but….) Who was the Torah originally written to? First recipients? (Israelites) Review – Genesis. What has happened up to this point? Moving Along - What happened after this point? Cool Stories - To Read if you haven’t yet. BIBLE - BALAK & BALAAM (20 min) Context Map 1 - Exodus Map 2 – Moab Pic 3 - Plains of Moab (let circulate for a bit and imagine) Read Bible Numbers 22:1-6   Stop them along way to imagine it in their mind. Introduce people. Real people. Real space and time. Big deals. Balak – real king, power, prestige, authority…big deal Balaam – seer, from Syria 400 miles away or Babylon area. Numbers 22:7-14 Numbers 22:15-22a Let others read from this point on Numbers 22:22b Numbers 22:36 - 23:6 Numbers 23:7-8 Numbers 23:11-17 Numbers 23:18-23 Numbers 23:24-24:3a Numbers 24:3b-9 Numbers 24:10-14 - Heating up. Balaam says what will happen in latter days. Numbers 24:15-25 WHY FOCUS ON/WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ALL THIS? (10 min) A lot of points we can get from this. Before I give you my reasons - did anything special stand out to you? Again, many things….such as the faithfulness of God to Israel Want to focus on possibly obscure and missed by most…was by me until pointed out. Before I point it out, let me ask potentially weird question: OPEN BIBLES TO MATTHEW 2:1-12…Let’s read. Where are these wise men from? • EAST – synonymous Babylon region Who are they? • NOT JEWISH • Come to Herod as if don’t know who he is fully, don’t say hail king herod • Ask where is the king of the Jews? Not where is our king? • Don’t know scripture of where he is to be born, later on they have to ask scribes for where.) Why are pagan Gentiles going through one of the longest hardest treks to find the Jewish King? Arnold Fruchtenbaum points out… “Suddenly, astrologers arrive in Jerusalem asking the question, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” Did they gain this knowledge through astrology? This incident raises a number of questions. First of all, how did these men know anything about the birth of a Jewish king? Second, even knowing about the birth of a Jewish king, why would Babylonian astrologers want to come and worship him? After all, Babylonian astrologers did not worship other Jewish kings; why would they want to worship this particular king? These are important questions, and it will be necessary to study the account, together with other passages of Scripture, in order to understand and explain the events1 PAUSE – WHO IS BALAAM? Know about him because of the Bible….plus Archaeology! SHOW ARCHAEOLOGY PICTURES We don’t know where he was from, but we think either 400 miles away in Syria or from far east as well…where exactly doesn’t matter as much as next. 1967, Dutch Archaeologist uncovered ancient city of Deir Alla (now called Tel Deir Alla) close to modern day Israel. "Deir Alla in the eighth-century B.C. was a large city, perhaps even a center of religious instruction. On the walls of a room in one building that may have stood near a temple, a professional scribe copied the text of an important religious manuscript. First he drew four red frames. Then he filled the frames with text, adding a drawing here and there for adornment. See artist’s reconstruction of how this inscribed wall may have looked. Sometime in the eighth century B.C. Deir Alla was leveled by an earthquake, perhaps the very earthquake mentioned in the Book of Amos, and also spoken of by Zechariah as “the earthquake that stopped up the valley in the days of King Uzziah of Judah.” In the Deir Alla disaster, the inscribed wall fell, crumbling into a myriad of fragments that scattered over an area of more than 20 square feet. The author observes that most of one section of the wall seems to have fallen in a pit, while another section fell at the corner of the original wall (see plan)." What was on this text? "Balaam, son of Beor" is found three times in the first four lines. Seems to have been a whole school (similar to school of prophets) of people studying his prophecies "The contents of Combination I may be summarized as follows: Balaam is visited at night by gods sent to communicate to him a message….It is a message of doom…A council of inimical gods...has commanded the goddess Shagar-and-Ishtar, a Venus figure of light and fertility, to sew up the heavens producing darkness, and never to speak again. Celestial darkness will cause frenzy on earth, with birds of prey shrieking. Balaam interprets the vision to refer to an impending disaster in the land. Grazing land will be lost to wild beasts, and the flocks will be scattered…." (Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World, Context of Scripture, William W. Hallo, volume II, 2.27, 2000 AD) The point: Balaam was a well-known seer and often known for being able to see what the gods were planning, and to be able to call down destruction and/or prevent it. Plus he had a school of followers. These words of his are preserved 800 years after he lived in what also appeared like it could be a school of his. We can’t prove it 100%, but with the pieces of the puzzle that exist, it would seem that…they knew of Balaam’s prophecy in Numbers 24:15-17 READ NUMBERS 24:15-17 IN CASE YOU WANT HELP BELIEVING BALAAM’S PROPHECY MESSIANIC Targum Onkelos (Aramaic paraphrase of Bible) interpreted Numbers 24:17 as… “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but he is not near; when a king shall arise out of Jacob and be anointed the Messiah out of Israel.  He shall slay the princes of Moab and reign over all mankind.” The Qumran sectarians (before Jesus) also interpreted this passage as having Messianic import, as did other Jewish sources of the period between the mid-second century b.c. and the first century a.d. (New American Commentary, NAC) Around 100 b.c., Hasmonean king Alexander Janneus had the star imprinted upon some of the royal coins…implicating him as the conquering star of Num 24:17. (NAC) 100 years after Jesus, Rabbi Akiba understood the Messianic significance of this passage when he proclaimed Simon bar Kosiba to be “Bar Kochba” (“Son of the Star”), thereby consecrating him as the messiah. (NAC) Church historian Eusebius, from the 300’s, wrote of this passage: We are told that Balaam’s successors moved by this (for the prediction was preserved most likely among them) when they noticed in the heavens a strange star besides the usual ones, fixed above the head, so to say, and vertically above Judea, hastened to arrive at Palestine, to inquire about the king announced by the star’s appearance. ROAD TO EMMAUS Reminiscent of Road to Emma’s when it says Disciples hearts were burning when he explained where He was in Torah. THE POINT? And so for me - this was a very long explanation and Bible study - to simply say I hope you are encouraged to know the amount of details God has under control. How a prophecy from a pagan profit could announce the birth of the messiah and how almost 1500 years later, non-Jews would still seek the King Messiah as a result of it. Thoughts? APPLICATION Ok, let’s move on to actual moment of application. I have some ideas, but any thoughts from you first…why does this matter to us today and/or how can we apply it? FIRST – GOD HAS EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL • Prophecies are one of greatest proofs of who Jesus is ◦ We see this based on how NT writers constantly refer back to the writings ◦ More important than signs and wonders actually…they are important…but they only validate he is the one scriptures have pointed to all along…if others performed signs and wonders but were not the promised messiah, it wouldn’t matter. • And, for me, these are proofs that God and Jesus know what they are doing. ◦ Nothing is outside of their realm of awareness/understanding. ◦ No detail too small. • Now, obviously, these prophecies relate to the Messiah and not my life specifically. ◦ But it is the same God. • And for me, I think I need reminders that God can take care of me too. ◦ Because sometimes I can be/feel disillusioned. God where are you? What’s going on? Why is life turning out this way? Do you care? How do I keep moving forward? Etc. • And so, I don’t think it’s the “point” of this text is to make you feel like God can/will take care of your life too…but as an application to extrapolate from it…I think it may be possible. • So, if nothing else, tonight I hope you fill the excitement of seeing prophecy fulfilled…and I think I will be praying for hope and reminders that He is really there and can and will guide my life too. APP – maybe we can pray and confess any unbelief if there has been any and ask for hope, recommitment, strength, etc…maybe even listen to Psalm 139 peacefully before we pray? ­­SECOND - God’s Torah is a Gift for Identity - knowing who you are, where you are going, why you matter, where you fit in timeline of history. Think back on where you all said you’re from - How far back? How much can you tell me about your family’s life back then? Their cultural practices? Beliefs? Heroes? Politics of the time? etc. Some, for sure, but point is…400 years is a long time not to be connected to your homeland! Think of the significance of this for a second! Imagine if you were to be moved back to _______ right now, how well do you think you would do? There is a good chance, Israelites don’t know who they are anymore (at least in much details)! God reminding them of …… Who they are. Where they came from….Their individual and national identity….Who He is, was, and will forever continue to be to them. They need this for the sake of their identity. Deuteronomy 26:1-11 TORAH IS A GIFT FROM GOD - Know who they are, where they came from, where they are going, their God-given identity, their history, the trajectory and commands they are to be following, etc. For me personally, I think this is huge! Don’t want to go into too many details because not trying to make this a sob story - but I have a niece who grew up without her mom or dad, abandoned by both, and struggles with who she is as a person, where her self-worth comes from or doesn’t etc. If she could have only had someone building her up her whole life saying you are loved, known, wanted, cared for, here’s why you matter, here’s what the purpose of your life is, etc…she would be so different. I think we all need this. We all need a “story” that is true to fit in to, to be an integral part of. Don’t know if you guys want to talk about this anymore, but if……Have you placed yourself in the larger narrative of what God is doing in this world? See where you are on God’s timeline of the world? Kind of like finding yourself, the blue dot, on the map of God…seeing where you have come from biblically, historically, personally, and where you are going in terms of His big picture? If not, I think it is extremely helpful. Gives you sense of identity, purpose, & direction (to some extent at least). How could we do that? What would be needed to do that effectively? What is needed to be able to do that? A certain amount of Bible knowledge? What would help it sink in/knowing where we are? etc. What would/do you need to do specifically to help that grow/sink in your life?