“YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE!” NUMBERS 22.21–35, Epiphany 7, Feb ‘19

1.                Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer.  Amen.  The message from God’s Word is taken from Numbers 22:21-35 (READ TEXT).  It’s entitled, “You Shouldn’t Have,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                 “You shouldn’t have.” What a nice thing to hear! Maybe you heard these words recently, after you gave a Valentine’s Day gift.  Of course, the expression can also be quite literal. Then it means that we really shouldn’t have. You and I have done things we shouldn’t have done. We know what we’re to do, but we end up doing something different. We’re perfectly capable of doing the exact opposite of what we were supposed to have done, even though we know shouldn’t have.

3.                The story of Balaam reminds us of such incidents. It occurred when Israel’s forty years of wilderness wandering were almost over. Soon God’s people would enter the Promised Land. Kings in the region viewed Israel and its movements with horror. After all, this was a large population that could hardly be missed. Word had spread about how mighty these people could be with the Lord on their side. King Balak of Moab realized that against such supernatural help, it would be pointless to deploy his army to attack God’s people. So Balak wanted to cripple them supernaturally. He sent messengers to enlist the aid of a famous sorcerer named Balaam. If the great Balaam would curse the Israelites, Balak seems to have thought, maybe that curse could counteract the blessings they enjoyed. Then the Moabite army might have a chance against them.

4.                This threat was nothing to take lightly. These days we may find more to worry about at the hands of soldiers than sorcerers, but the powers of evil remain quite real. They’re real now, and they were real then. Balaam actually stood out as the greatest threat Israel had faced since leaving Egypt. He knew about the Lord, but he really didn’t know the Lord. God’s Word was on Balaam’s lips, but not in his heart. Would he do what Balak was prepared to pay him great sums of money to do, namely, curse Israel? Balaam knew he shouldn’t do it. The Lord had instructed him to say only what he was told. Was Balaam hoping to do what he shouldn’t have and so get his big payoff from Balak?

5.                When people get caught in the midst of an evil scheme, they can try to act ever-so- innocent. They might say things like this: “We haven’t done anything yet. All we did was talk about it. We took a drive and saw what it might look like. We haven’t done anything.” People talk as if sin in the heart or on the lips really isn’t sin. But it is. Even if we don’t recognize it, God certainly does.

6.                God himself caught Balaam. The incident of the talking donkey on the road stands out as the most famous part of Balaam’s story. Prior to the three times when Balak would tell Balaam to try cursing Israel came three times when the angel of the Lord, with drawn sword in hand, blocked the path that Balaam and his donkey were traveling. Balaam couldn’t see this at first. He grew impatient and hit his donkey. Then the donkey spoke to Balaam. So did the Lord.  If God could make a donkey talk, then he could certainly make Balaam say what he was supposed to say. Sure enough, on Balaam’s first attempt to curse Israel, he ended up asking: “How can I curse whom God has not cursed?” (Numbers 23:8). Balaam couldn’t curse those whom the Lord had blessed. King Balak complained, of course. In effect, he told Balaam that he shouldn’t have said what he said. But Balaam answered, “Must I not take care to speak what the LORD puts in my mouth?” (Numbers 23:12).

7.                Balak wanted Balaam to try again. This time he positioned Balaam on a mountain where he could see all of the Israelites. From this new position, Balaam could see a lot, but of course the Lord could see still more. What would Balaam say? He would say only what the Lord put in his mouth, but what would that be? The previous forty years had hardly been a distinguished time for Israel as God’s people. They complained about the steady diet of manna. Moses’ brother Aaron and sister Miriam rebelled against the leadership that God was providing through Moses. Some of the Levites rebelled too. Most recently, when the people had spoken against God and Moses, the Lord sent fiery serpents that killed them with a bite. As a psalm says, summarizing this period: “How often they rebelled against [God] in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert! They tested God again and again and provoked the Holy One of Israel” (Psalm 78:40–41). So when Balaam made his second try at cursing, would God go ahead and curse this rebellious people? 

8.                In many situations you and I have done things we shouldn’t have. Like Israel, we knew better than to do such things, but we did them all the same. We also sin by omission, when we should do something, but do not. Like St. Paul, we can get sick and tired of our own sinfulness, including the condition of sin that underlies all our sins in thought, word, and deed. But our real trouble doesn’t amount to weariness or frustration. Our trouble is with the Lord. We have given him no good reason to be on our side, and lots of reasons to be against us. 

9.                What Balaam said on his second try strikes us as even more remarkable than what he said previously. Looking at the entire people of Israel, he declared: “I received a command to bless: he has blessed, and I cannot revoke it.” Balaam added that the Lord didn’t behold iniquity in Jacob, and didn’t see mischief in Israel (Numbers 23:20–21). Oh, come on now! God saw no wickedness in them? For the last forty years they had shown him nothing else! How was it possible for God to see no iniquity in them? Did he need to have his eyes checked? 

10.             No, he did not. The question to ask is exactly who was the Lord looking at? Obviously, he was looking at Someone else. Israel was guilty as sin, and richly deserved God’s condemnation. Yet the Lord wasn’t looking at them. He was looking at Christ.  Thus, with people like you and me, people whose guilt is undeniable, the Lord does not see sin. For he is looking at his perfect Son, Jesus Christ. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Christ did the things we should have done, and he took the punishment for the things we did even though we shouldn’t have. Incredibly enough, God sees no iniquity, perverseness, or sin in us, despite all the evidence of it in your life and mine. He calls us like he sees us, and he sees us in Christ. God is looking at him, and his righteousness covers us. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). God sees Christ when he does not behold iniquity or wickedness in you or me. 

11.             By inspiration, St. John wrote: “Whenever our heart condemns us”—literally, “knows against” us—then “God is greater than our heart” (1 John 3:20). The evidence of our sin piles up in our hearts and our consciences. But God isn’t looking at any of that. He sees us in Christ.  Further, John continued, “if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God” (1 John 3:21). Remember, the whole episode with Balaam and Balak was going on without Israel even being aware of it. You and I can rest comfortably, too, even with all the demonic forces loose in the world, because we are in Christ and Christ has taken away their power to hurt us or accuse us. How can they harm the people in whom the Lord sees no iniquity? 

12.             As you might imagine, Balak hit the ceiling after Balaam’s second unsuccessful attempt to curse Israel. Still, he wanted to give it one more try, at yet another place. He said to Balaam, “Perhaps it will please God that you may curse them for me from there” (Numbers 23:27). But these were the people in whom the Lord saw no iniquity. If he was for them, who could be against them? God had justified; who was going to condemn? 

13.             On Balaam’s third try, even more than the first two, he said what—from Balak’s point of view—he shouldn’t have. Balaam spoke of Israel settled in the Promised Land! Still more, he quoted previous passages from the Old Testament. He said that Israel crouched like a lion, recalling the blessing Jacob gave to his son Judah (Numbers 24:9; see Genesis 49:9). Balaam added, speaking to Israel: “Blessed are those who bless you, and cursed are those who curse you,” which had been God’s promise to Abraham (Numbers 24:9; see Genesis 12:3). God was now repeating his promises of old through someone as unlikely as Balaam. Israel was indeed his people, and they stood secure under his blessing and protection. 

14.             As far as King Balak was concerned, three tries and you’re out. Balaam had tried three times to curse Israel, all to no avail. So the king fired Balaam. But Balaam made one last speech after he was fired. This turned out to be his greatest blessing speech of them all. Balaam said: “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Numbers 24:17). These words foretold the Messiah, the Christ, whose birth was announced by the appearance of a star. He himself is the “bright morning star” of the Book of Revelation (Revelation 22:16), the Victor who will vanquish his enemies, those close at hand and those far off. Whoever they are, Christ defeats them all. Only those who are related to him stay safe. Look how safe the Israelites were. They didn’t even know that there was a threat from Balaam at the time. 

15.             With that kind of safety coming from that kind of protection from this Lord and his Christ, we can be at least a little bit like Balaam, who didn’t curse Israel but rather blessed them. He shouldn’t have, according to Balak. But a powerful Word from our powerful Lord, even when spoken in an unlikely place by an unlikely person, has great effect.  So also, we can be a countercultural people. We can say and do what people around us think we should not. Most of all, we can point our neighbors to Christ, the One who died and rose for us and for them. You never know when a powerful Word from our powerful Lord, even when spoken in an unlikely place by an unlikely person, will have great effect. If God could speak his Word through Balaam, he can use you or me to speak it to family and friends. 

16.             This powerful Word continues to have its effect in our lives. It is like a lamp shining in the darkness, to which we give attention until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. (See 2 Peter 1:19.) God calls us like he sees us, and he sees us in Christ. Now you and I are in a position to transmit God’s blessing through his Word, just as we have received it through Word and Sacrament. People around us may say, “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” Is that so?  Amen.  Now the peace that passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.  Amen.

“TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE?” NUMBERS 14:17–24, Epiphany 6, Feb ‘19

1.                Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.  The message from God’s Word is taken from Numbers 14:17-24 (READ TEXT).  It’s entitled, “Too Good to be True?”  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                Do you know someone who is still trying to keep New Years’ resolutions? Has anyone been staying at them since last month? People make such resolutions because they want to improve their lives. They want something good, something better than they have. They want to lose weight or have more money in the bank. So, they resolve to go on a diet or save more money. But after a while it occurs to them that these resolutions carry their own kinds of costs. Losing weight means eating less pie, and saving money means buying fewer toys and trinkets. Even though a resolution may have been for the good, it often goes by the wayside. 

3.                Occasionally you encounter a person who combines a number of major resolutions and tries to keep them all at the same time. Others smile and wink, for they know that the costs will mount up for this person faster than for others. He is more likely to abandon his resolutions, maybe all of them. You might say that the improvements he was seeking were simply too good to be true. 

4.                In the text, God was about to give his people something good: the land he had promised them when he brought them out of Egypt. It was going to be a gift. Moses had sent out spies to look it over, one from each tribe of Israel. The twelve of them came back and reported that the land of Canaan was indeed good, better in fact than they either expected or imagined. But ten of the spies added that this land was well-defended by big, strong people. It was a good land, all right, but to think it could be theirs was too good to be true. The remaining spies, Joshua and Caleb, insisted that with God’s help Israel could overcome the defenders and take the land. 

5.                Most of the Israelites listened to the report of the majority. Their basic sin was unbelief. They didn’t believe that the Lord would keep his promise. It just seemed too good to be true, they reasoned. Hand in hand with their unbelief went selfishness. They figured they had to take care of themselves, so they started planning to forsake Moses, choose a new leader, and return to Egypt. 

6.                Then the Lord said NO! They were not going back to Egypt, but except for Joshua and Caleb no one over the age of twenty was going to enter the Promised Land, either. The Lord announced that Israel was to wander in the wilderness for forty years, during which time all the adults who rebelled against him—everyone of that age except the faithful spies Joshua and Caleb—would die off. Unbelief robbed them of the blessing of the Promised Land. When some of them tried the next day to go to the Promised Land after all, they found out how serious the Lord had been when he said no to them. They had thought it was too good to be true that they could live in the Promised Land. So they did not. Through their unbelief, they lost it. 

7.                The Israelites had no excuse, especially after everything the Lord had done for them. He had done one thing after another that they would have thought too good to be true. It would certainly not do for the people to claim that they were only following the majority. Then, as now, the majority can be wrong.  The Lord was talking about disinheriting Israel and starting over to make a nation from Moses. Then Moses interceded for the people, as he had done in the past. He first told the Lord that it would give him a black eye before the other nations to have taken Israel out of Egypt only to kill them all suddenly in the wilderness. It would look like he could not give this people the land he had promised. God would get a bad name, not at all the name by which he wanted to be known. 

8.                How did Moses know so much about the Lord’s name? The Lord had proclaimed it to him. Earlier, when Israel was camped at Mount Sinai and Moses was on the mountain receiving the Law from God, the people rebelled and made a golden calf to worship. After that incident, too, Moses interceded for the people. Then the Lord himself gave Moses what has been called the “Sermon on God’s Name.” Now, when the people rebelled after the mission of the spies, Moses was doing nothing other than repeating these words back to the Lord. This was the second and stronger point in Moses’ intercession. To this day, the strongest thing we can do in prayer remains repeating God’s promises back to him. 

9.                The Lord had said, so Moses repeated back: “The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression” (Numbers 14:18). The Lord forgives by bearing iniquity and transgression. Despite God’s anger at the recent rebellion, and even though he ordered forty years of wandering in the wilderness because of it, the Lord forgave his people. He forgave even those who died out in the wilderness. 

10.             So “if you would hold to God and call Him by His right name . . . it is recorded here that He is a Forgiver of sin, that He is gracious and merciful.”1 For the Israelites, forgiveness could hardly have been due to anything within them. They had rebelled horribly. Rather, as this text makes clear, their forgiveness was rooted in the character of God.  Here you and I can encounter a problem. The Lord has not promised to lead us onto a piece of real estate in Palestine. But he has promised to forgive our sins, and where there is forgiveness of sins there is also life and salvation. Whether we think our rebellions against him are as bad as those of Israel in the text or even worse, he promises to forgive them. That’s his character. The question arises, though: is this too good to be true? Our problem resembles Israel’s trouble believing that the Lord would take them into the Promised Land safe and sound, except that God’s character is not nearly as tangible as the Promised Land was. Can we count on God’s character? Or do we take it upon ourselves to try and take care of ourselves? Watch out for losing God’s blessing through unbelief! 

11.             God goes on the attack against our unbelief. He attacks it, for example, in the “Sermon on God’s Name”: “The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” He bears iniquity and transgression. “Bearing iniquity” means that someone will take upon himself the penalty of God’s punishment. In this passage, the Lord vowed to do exactly that. Yes, this was indeed a matter of God’s character, his loving character that issued in loving action. He loved the world “so,” which means “in just this way”: that he gave his only Son. God’s love translated into giving. He gave his very best. His only Son became Man for us men and for our salvation. John the Baptizer announced him as the Lamb of God who carries away the sin of the world (John 1:29). When he was placed on the cross, he nailed our sins there (see Colossians 2:14). And he left those sins there when he rose from the dead. 

12.             In his Word, God powerfully holds our Lord Jesus Christ before us. He does this in the Old Testament as well as the New. Think of the second goat on the Day of Atonement. All the sins of the community were laid on this scapegoat before it was taken out into the wilderness and lost there. Through the power of the Good News, we believe that our sins really have been sent away in Christ. This is good, of course, but not too good to be true.

13.             A number of Old Testament passages echo the “Sermon on God’s Name” from Exodus and Numbers. For example, Psalm 103 says:  [The Lord] made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.  The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.  He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:7–12).

14.             In this passage and others, the Lord takes the offensive against our unbelief. The advice of Luther is apropos:  Whenever we are stung and vexed in our conscience because of sins, let us simply turn our attention from sin and wrap ourselves in the bosom of the God who is called Grace and Mercy, not doubting at all that He wants to show grace and mercy to miserable and afflicted sinners, just as He wants to show wrath and judgment to hardened sinners. This is true theology . . . we might add, even though it may seem too good to be true. Don’t listen to the voices of the majority. Listen to the risen Lord who gave himself for you. 

15.             Israel wandered for forty years before finally reaching the Promised Land under Joshua, the successor to Moses. But reaching this land did not constitute the final rest God has in mind for his people. The Book of Hebrews insists that “if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then,” it assures us, “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:8–9). The Lord promises to bring us to that rest, where we will have the full enjoyment of our forgiveness:  They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat.  For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes (Revelation 7:16–17).

16.             Is all of this too good to be true? The world says it is. The majority tells us that this hope is a drag. It is costing us right here and now. The claim is that this hope costs us too much in enjoyment, self-importance, or freedom. So, the majority says, we might as well give up on it—not unlike a New Year’s resolution.  The majority is wrong. Incidents like the rebellion in our text give a stern warning to our old Adam, and more than a warning. Through his Law, God kills. Yet he kills in order to make alive. Good News like the “Sermon on God’s Name” provides encouragement to the new man created in us through Baptism. It gives more than encouragement, however. Beyond describing God as forgiving, it brings us his forgiveness. Because of Christ, he forgives you right now. God’s Good News also creates faith in which we believe that the Lord has pardoned our iniquities, even ours. On account of Christ, none of God’s promises are too good to be true. Jesus is the “Yes” to all of them. In him, God says “Yes” to you.  Amen.  Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.  Amen.