[0:00] We are in Numbers chapter 22, going to pick up in verse 36. If you remember, in the first portion of Numbers chapter 22, we are introduced to two key individuals, that is Balaam and Balak.
[0:12] We are introduced to those individuals as they pertain to the history of the nation of Israel. In particular, we understand that by this time, the nation of Israel, as a nation, has already went into the northern portions of the Transjordan, or the other side of the Jordan River, and they have already defeated the two kings, Sihon and Og.
[0:33] And after that defeat, they had went back south, and they had stopped in the plains of Moab. Now, the plains of Moab would be the location, or the holding ground, for the nation as they were preparing to enter into the promised land of Canaan.
[0:48] So this is the place where God has put His people, and they are waiting for the go-ahead, or that is the command, to cross the Jordan River and take possession of Canaan.
[1:00] This would be the place where the events of the book of Deuteronomy take place. But something is already stirring among the inhabitants of that land. Something is already happening, which God said would happen.
[1:12] Namely, the fear of the nation of Israel is already beginning to overcome the inhabitants of that land. One of those inhabitants is the king Balak. Balak is a Moabite king of that region, who is terrified, for no lack of better way of saying it, of the nation of Israel because of what he has already seen them do to Sihon and Og.
[1:36] Unbeknownst to Balak, God had commanded His people not to conquer, or not to enter into Moabite territory. The Moabite land were the descendants of Lot, the people of that region.
[1:50] They were given to the descendants of Lot. Therefore, God had told His people to leave them alone. Balak didn't know that. So when Balak saw this vast camp of God's people who have already reigned victorious over these two powerful kings which were neighboring him, he was rightly concerned.
[2:11] And being concerned, he did what was very common in that day, he sent mercenaries, or he sent dignitaries rather, of his land into another region to call Balaam, who was a sorcerer, slash false prophet, slash soothsayer, to come down and pronounce a curse upon the nation of Israel.
[2:31] Now he did this, I'm trying to set the whole stage so that you can see how we got to where we're at now, because we're going to pick it up kind of mid-story. Balak's thought, which was very familiar to that day, is that if I can get a prophet to curse them before I enter into battle with them, then I am certain to defeat them.
[2:53] So that's his thought. If I can hire Balaam to come down to pronounce a curse upon this people, then I will have the authority on earth and in the heavenlies to defeat them physically.
[3:09] His thought process was this, before I fight them physically, I'm going to do battle with them spiritually. And Balak's intentions was to call Balaam and pay him a large sum of money and let Balaam use his powers in the spiritual realm to curse God's people so that they would not be able to do business in the physical realm.
[3:34] Now that's a battle which we don't think very much of in our time frame, and we don't think very much of in our life, but it is a very real battle which Paul says we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against the powers and principalities of the air and the spiritual forces of darkness.
[3:49] And it is that other world that seems to kind of wig us out a little bit that is the spiritual world. But here's one of the great texts that we have in the Old Testament.
[4:01] As I told you last time we were together in this book, that some of the greatest theological truths that we find in the book of Numbers are found in Numbers 22, 23, and 24.
[4:11] So there's the stage. The Moabite king Balak is seeking to be certain of a victory over God's people though they had no intention of coming to fight him and therefore sends dignitaries from his land and offers a large sum of money to Balaam to come do it.
[4:28] You remember the backstory, Balaam first refused, then Balaam again refused, and then Balaam went with him and then Balaam's donkey talked to him. Remember all that stuff? And we understand, even in the New Testament, it's referred to as the way of Balaam or the error of Balaam and all these things.
[4:43] And we're kind of beginning to flesh that out now. We have to be careful. Okay? And I tell you this on the front end. Because Balaam uses the covenant name of God.
[4:53] He calls him the Lord, Yahweh God. He uses the proper name of God, Elohim. But that does not mean he is a true believer in God.
[5:05] Okay? We have sometimes the mistake of thinking just because somebody uses the right wording, that is a sign of true belief. Scripture tells us that even the demons believe in trouble.
[5:20] But theirs is not a salvific belief, but it is an accurate belief, right? So we pick the story up here, and we're picking it up right after Balaam's donkey has spoke to him. And all of a sudden, his eyes are opened, and he sees the angel of the Lord standing in his way.
[5:33] And the angel of the Lord warns him that he can only say whatever God commands him to say. And we pick it up in Numbers 22, starting in verse 36. I'm going to read a lengthy portion of Scripture to get us all the way through chapter 23, and then we will go from there.
[5:48] When Balak heard that Balaam was coming, he went out to meet him at the city of Moab, which is on the Arnon border, at the extreme end of the border. Then Balak said to Balaam, Did I not urgently send to you to call you?
[6:01] Why did you not come to me? Am I really unable to honor you? So Balaam said to Balak, Behold, I have come now to you. Am I able to speak anything at all? The word that God puts in my mouth, that I shall speak.
[6:13] And Balaam went with Balak, and they came to Kiroth Huzoth. And Balak sacrificed oxen and sheep, and sent some to Balaam, and the leaders who were with him. Then it came about in the morning that Balak took Balaam and brought him up to the high places of Baal.
[6:27] And he saw from there a portion of the people. Then Balaam said to Balak, Build seven altars for me here, and prepare seven bulls and seven rams for me here. And Balak did just as Balaam had spoken.
[6:38] And Balak and Balaam offered up a bull and a ram on each altar. Then Balaam said to Balak, Stand beside your burnt offering, and I will go. Perhaps the Lord will come to meet me. And whatever he shows me, I will tell you.
[6:50] So he went to a bare hill. Now God met Balaam, and he said to him, I have set up the seven altars, and I have offered up a bull and a ram on each altar. Then the Lord put a word in Balaam's mouth, and said, Return to Balak, and you shall speak thus.
[7:08] So he returned to him, and behold, he was standing beside his burnt offering, he and all the leaders of Moab. He took up his discourse and said, From Aram, Balak has brought me, Moab's king from the mountains of the east.
[7:21] Come curse Jacob for me, and come denounce Israel. How shall I curse whom God has not cursed, and how can I denounce whom the Lord has not denounced? As I see him from the tops of the rocks, and I look at him from the hills, behold, a people who dwells apart, and will not be reckoned among the nations.
[7:37] Who can count the dust of Jacob, or number the fourth part 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?
[7:48] I took you to curse my enemies, but behold, you have actually blessed them. He replied, Must I not be careful to speak what the Lord puts in my mouth? Then Balak said to him, Please come with me to another place, from where you may see them, although you will only see the extreme end of them, and will not see all of them, and curse them for me from there.
[8:07] So he took him to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah, and built seven altars, and offered a bull and a ram on each altar. And he said, Balak, stand here beside your burnt offering, while I myself meet the Lord over there.
[8:20] Then the Lord met Balaam, and put a word in his mouth, and said, Return to Balak, and thus you shall speak. He came to him, and behold, he was standing beside his burnt offering, and the leaders of Moab with him.
[8:32] And Balak said to him, What has the Lord spoken? Then he took up his discourse, and said, Arise, O Balak, and hear. Give ear to me, O son of Zipper. God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should repent.
[8:46] Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not make it good? Behold, I have received a command to bless. When he has blessed, then I cannot revoke it.
[8:57] He has not observed misfortune in Jacob, nor has he seen trouble in Israel. The Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them. God brings them out of Egypt.
[9:08] He is for them like the horns of a wild ox. For there is no omen against Jacob, nor is there any divination against Israel. At the proper time, it shall be said to Jacob and to Israel what God has done.
[9:20] Behold, the people rises like a lioness, and as a lion it lifts itself. It will not lie down until it devours the prey and drinks the blood of the slain. Verse 25. Then Balak said to Balaam, Do not curse them at all, nor bless them at all.
[9:34] But Balaam replied to Balak, Did I not tell you? Whatever the Lord speaks, that I must do. Then Balak said to Balaam, Please come. I will take you to another place. Perhaps it will be agreeable with God that you curse them for me from there.
[9:48] So Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, which overlooks the wasteland. Balaam said to Balaam, Build seven altars for me here, and prepare seven bulls and seven rams for me here.
[9:58] Balak did just as Balaam had said, and offered up a bull and a ram on each altar. We're going to stop right there. Chapter 24 gets into the third discourse, probably the greatest discourse of Balaam, and really actually runs throughout the entire chapter of chapter 24, but I do not think we would have time to include it in tonight's message.
[10:18] But I want you to see this evening. The encouragement of divine security. The encouragement of divine security. Last time we were looking, last Wednesday night, we were looking at the book of Numbers.
[10:31] We have seen how the Lord was fighting battles which the people knew nothing of. Because if we were to put ourselves in this right context, the people are waiting. They are riding the high of being victorious over two kings greater than them, apparently, and the God that they served being greater than the God that those nations served.
[10:49] They were not only riding the high of conquering land, they were riding the high of taking possession of some of the land which had been promised to them. If you remember when we look at Genesis 17, the land of Sihon and Og was a land that was also included in the portion of the promised land that was promised to Abraham.
[11:05] So they were finally taking possession of what God had commanded them to do. They had divided it up among two and a half of the tribes of the nation of Israel, and yet the people were still gathered together and preparing to go into the promised land.
[11:18] And they were preparing to move forward, and very soon would march around the walls of Jericho. It was not in their thoughts, nor was it in their plans to attack the Moabites. So they would not have even been concerned about what was going on.
[11:32] As a matter of fact, my opinion is that they probably had nothing in their mind or had no thought that these things were happening until after the fact. Now we do know that they were divinely given, that they are recorded for us in Scripture to show us how God was fighting a battle which they knew nothing of.
[11:49] But we see here tonight the encouragement of living in that divine security, that while they were here waiting, God was actively securing and actively guarding His people.
[12:00] And He was guarding them with words that they would hear that would be a great encouragement to them. I think, and we're going to jump ahead a little bit here, a couple of chapters in the book of Numbers, and even getting into what we have recorded for us in the book of Deuteronomy, the nation ends up entering into sin with the Moabite women, okay, at the council of Balaam.
[12:22] I know I'm running ahead. And a great vast majority of the nation of Israel dies because of this sin. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people. And I'm sure at the depth of that sin, understanding the judgment that they had entered into, because not only had they entered into sin with those women, they had entered into sin, the sin with the women were directly connected to false worship of a false God.
[12:46] That was the sin, right? And so God judges them for that sin. And it was probably at that time that God revealed to them these events we are reading now.
[12:58] These would have been greatly encouraging. When they heard the news of what God had done through Balaam, the blessings pronounced through Balaam, when they had heard the news how God had thwarted the plans of Balak, the powerful king with all the world's resources and money, then they would have been more encouraged as they went into the promised land and began to encircle Jericho.
[13:19] God was using his divine protection here for encouragement as they moved forward. Sometimes in our own lives, we put this in application, we realize after the fact the security God had provided us in the past.
[13:34] And that realization is always an encouragement for a future event. And what we see here is the encouragement of divine security. Number one, we see this encouragement as an overruled prophet.
[13:49] We see this divine security in an overruled prophet. Balak hears that Balaam is finally coming and Balak goes to the extreme edge of his land and meets Balaam and says, in essence, what took you so long?
[14:03] He said, am I not able to provide for you financially? Am I not able to enrich you greater than anyone else who would put you for hire? Remember this, Balaam is not like Isaiah or Jeremiah or Hosea or any of the prophets we have recorded in scripture.
[14:17] He is literally a mercenary prophet. He is a prophet for hire. You pay me enough money, I will do whatever you want me to do. I will consult the heavenlies and I will say what it is you want me to say.
[14:30] I'll have sway with the lowercase g gods over whoever these people serve and I will be able to pronounce either a blessing or a curse. So what Balak is saying is did you doubt that I could enrich you?
[14:43] And Balaam in essence says, hey, I'm here, right? I made it here. Let's not talk about that. And then Balaam makes this very clear declaration which seems to completely go against his practice because his practice was built upon his reputation of being able to do whatever it was he was paid to do.
[15:03] And the declaration he makes, he says, am I able to speak anything at all? He said, I can't just say whatever I want. only whatever the Lord tells me to speak.
[15:19] Now all of a sudden this prophet for hire, this soothsayer, sorcerer, is realizing because of his encounter with the donkey and the angel of the Lord, he no longer has the freedom he has built his reputation upon.
[15:33] His reputation was built upon the fact do you need someone cursed or do you want your family blessed? Bring Balaam in, pay him enough money and he will ensure that it happens.
[15:44] From the very beginning he tells Balak, the man with the money, I'm not free to do whatever I want to do. That doesn't mean he's not going to try. Okay? Let's not paint Balaam better than we should.
[15:56] That doesn't mean he's not willing to try because he tries to the best of his ability. But every attempt that he puts forth, God overrules. It begins as soon as they meet because it says that Balak offered the animals and he brought a portion to Balaam.
[16:12] More than likely, the portion he would have brought to Balaam would have been the livers. Okay? Because they used livers in their divination practices. They would read the liver. Right? This is the whole make your liver quiver.
[16:23] That's where that comes from. Right? They would actually poke pins in the liver as it moved and they would actually read the liver and use this in their magic arts and they would use this in their fortune telling and all these things and he would have probably brought that to them.
[16:37] So even though he said, I'm not free to say what I want to, he was also saying by his actions, but I'm going to try. Because that which we declare with our mouth often is not met in our practice. Because even though he knew he wasn't free, he still went with Balak to the high places of Baal.
[16:53] Baal was the god of Moab. One of the gods that the Lord God had pronounced judgment upon and told the nation of Israel not to intermingle with. That's the sin they enter into with Baal.
[17:05] Right? So this is the god of Moab. So Balak says, well let's go to the high place of my god and we'll consult my god to try to overrule Israel's god.
[17:18] And Balaam went with him. And they built the seven altars and they offered the seven rams and they offered the seven bulls. And Balaam says, stand beside your altar, I'll go see if I can talk to the Lord.
[17:29] And then we have this great phraseology that's repeated each time. It says, and God met Balaam. Now the reason that's important, Balaam didn't go to God.
[17:43] God came to Balaam. Because in his power and in his strength, Balaam did not have the ability to go to God. His reputation was built upon the fact he could reach the heavenlies or gods and overrule the gods.
[18:01] now all of a sudden he is confronted with one that must come to him because he can't go that high. Because the thought of that day and even in today's time, gods were confined to lands.
[18:17] And as long as the nation of Israel was in the land of Moab, if they offered an acceptable sacrifice to the god of Moab, that is, Baal, then he would have authority over the god of Israel because gods were confined to lands.
[18:33] And if you appease the god of this land, all of a sudden you have authority over the god of whoever's in this land. I know it seems kind of strange to us, but not really because even that's what Hinduism is built upon.
[18:47] Hinduism, when the people who practice Hinduism move into new lands, they don't annihilate their gods, they absorb their god. They want the god of that land, right? And as they move forward, they want the god of this land. This is why you literally have millions of gods in Hinduism because as the people spread, they just absorbed the gods of that land and they wanted to make sure whatever land they were in, they were pleasing the god of that land.
[19:11] And this is essentially where the roots come from. So we see here that Balaam is trying to please Baal so that he could overrule Yahweh. But even though he is offering an acceptable sacrifice to Baal, he cannot reach Yahweh, Yahweh comes to him.
[19:28] And then it says this, and God put a word in his mouth. See, all I want you to see, I know it says it twice, God put a word in his mouth and God says, go tell Balak what I have told you.
[19:42] And I know it's a lot of information. But Balaam represents the most powerful of the dark forces of that time. But what we see in his interactions with the Lord God is that God overrules the false prophet.
[20:00] He can't just say whatever he wants to say, he's only going to declare what God tells him to say. And that's a good word.
[20:12] And the reason that's a good word is because each of us have an enemy, right? And that enemy, this isn't just Old Testament theology, by the way, this is biblical theology. This is biblical theology.
[20:24] The same dark forces that Balaam is trying to consult to overcome the people of God are the same dark forces that are prevalent today. And what we need to know, the one thing we need to know is that God overrules every false prophet.
[20:47] God overrules every other power. And they have no ability or no power or no authority, but that which God allows them to have.
[21:00] Now to me, this is important because I like this concept that God can speak through the false prophet just as much as he speaks to the true prophets. God's not limited in who he speaks through, right?
[21:13] God can speak through a donkey, God can use a rooster to bring conviction upon Peter's life, God can use Balaam, a false prophet, magician, who dies the death of the unrighteous to declare some of the greatest blessings upon his people.
[21:27] God is not limited in who he can use. It means we need to be careful who we discount. We want to hold on to the truth, right?
[21:41] Hold on to the truth. The other part of that is we don't need to believe everybody just because they claim certain things. God can use the unbelievers and the wicked just as much as he can use the faithful because he is God.
[21:54] Does he? No, it's not normally his practice, but can he? Yeah, absolutely. And we see this here, that God overrules the prophet. The second thing we see is that there is the overlooked effort.
[22:07] There is the overlooked effort, and by effort I mean the effort that Balak puts forth in all of his actions. The effort of, I mean think about this, he offers and sacrifices as soon as Balaam gets there, he builds seven altars, not once, not twice, but three times.
[22:20] He offers seven bulls and seven rams three times. All of this effort, all of this action, everything he is doing, and what he is doing is he is trying by the work of man to appease the God of heaven.
[22:34] And God overlooks every bit of that. God's not going to respond favorably to the effort put forth by Balak. Because God is not moved by the work of man.
[22:49] It's not like Balak could never do enough. He could never do enough to sway or motivate or change what God was declaring.
[23:01] He couldn't work hard enough. He couldn't slay enough animals. He couldn't build enough altars. He couldn't stand in a place good enough because he sought to do it where he looked at the fourth part of it and he said, well, let's just go see a small part of it.
[23:14] And then the third place is, well, let's go to another place. I mean, think of all the mountaintops they climbed, right? Of all the effort put forth there. Let's go to a place where you can't even see it. You're just looking out into the wasteland. And it didn't matter how much he did, God's purposes and plans were not going to change.
[23:31] And that's encouraging. Because there are a lot of people who have put forth a lot of effort to try to stop what God is doing. And God overlooks and moves beyond that effort.
[23:47] Man's effort will never, ever, ever stop God's purposes. And we see this. Balak was going to stop at nothing.
[23:59] He wanted to go defeat the nation of Israel physically, but he was not going to move his army until he had defeated them spiritually. And no matter what he did, no matter how much he worked, no matter how hard he labored, he could not overcome God's purposes.
[24:15] That's great. And the reason that's great is because so many times believers act as if God is defeated by man's actions. God is never defeated, which means we are never defeated by man's actions because God moves in spite of the activities and the actions and the work of men.
[24:36] God overlooks that and moves through that for his glory. He used these sacrifices that Balak offered to Baal and God used them to be a declaration of some of the greatest theological promises issued to his people, which leads us to the third thing, the outstanding blessings which God pronounces upon him through a prophet and through the sacrifices of a pagan king.
[24:58] These outstanding blessings that he pronounces. The first blessing is a blessing of secure promise. It is a blessing of secure promise. Look at the first oracle of Balaam.
[25:09] It says, from Aram, Balak has brought me Moab's king from the mountains of the east. Come curse Jacob for me and come denounce Israel. So here's, this is why you brought me here. Let me see what I can do. He says, this is my purpose for being here, but I cannot do it because of the secure promises which God has extended to his people.
[25:26] He says this, how shall I curse whom God has not cursed and how can I denounce whom the Lord has not denounced? Why? He could not pronounce a cursing upon them because God had already pronounced a blessing over them.
[25:40] We call that the Abrahamic blessing. Those who bless you shall be blessed and those who curse you shall be cursed. Right? Abrahamic blessing. And what he is declaring here, he says, I do not have the authority to overrule what God has already promised them sovereignly.
[25:58] God has already pronounced them a blessed people. Therefore, I cannot pronounce them a cursed people. God has promised them blessing. I cannot declare over them cursings.
[26:09] God has promised them security. I cannot come over and pronounce them denouncements and I cannot come over and pronounce over them failings. God has said that they will exist and God has said that they will grow.
[26:21] I cannot stop what God has already promised. He says, I see him from the tops of the rocks and I look at him from the hills. Behold, a people who dwells apart and will not be reckoned among the nations.
[26:33] This again is a promise that God extended to Abraham. He called him out of the land of the earth, the Chaldeans, and told him that he would make him a distinct people group. Right? A people who dwells apart.
[26:45] God's people always get in trouble when they're afraid to dwell apart and they begin to try to dwell with. The nation of Israel entered into sin when they tried to become like the inhabitants of the land rather than being apart from the inhabitants of the land.
[27:01] He declares here the blessing of dwelling apart. G. Campbell Morgan used to say, the church has always done its greatest work when it was least like the world.
[27:14] When it is a people set apart because God's promise has declared, I will set you apart for my glory.
[27:25] And the security of that promise. And here's what Balaam says. These are people who dwell apart. Think about it. Think of this promise has existed. Okay? I mean, I know we can move throughout history and we can see this and Warren Wearsby does a great job with this in his commentaries on this.
[27:39] But just think about this. Think how many times people have tried to stamp out and curse the nation of Israel. Just the nation of Israel. Historically. And think how many people have tried to assimilate the nation of Israel among them or within their own nation.
[27:55] And yet they are very distinct separate people all around the world living in various places all around the world. Yet they are very distinct people. Right? Still unique.
[28:06] Still growing. Because this is what it says. Who can count the dust of Jacob? That wording there would have been a reminder of God's promise to Abraham. I will make your descendants as the dust or as the sand.
[28:18] Right? Who can count? He's only looking at a fourth portion of them. He says I can't even count a fourth of them. We know how many soldiers there were because we have that in the reckoning of the book of numbers. We know how many soldiers.
[28:29] But we don't know how big the multitude was. None of us is in the millions more than likely. And he says I can't do it. And it would be a reminder. It says and it will be reckoned and he will not be reckoned among the nations who can count the dust of Jacob or number the fourth part of Israel.
[28:42] Let me die the death of the upright and let my end be like his. His first blessing was a blessing of secure promise. What God had promised them had come about. God promised Abraham he would make him a people set apart with a multitude of individuals and here they were.
[28:59] God had also promised them the land and they were about to take it. First outstanding blessing is a blessing of secure promise. The second outstanding blessing in the second oracle of Balaam is one of God's manifest presence.
[29:11] And it's one that we've talked of over and over again. It is one of God's presence. And we need to understand this. This wording by the way is used again in the Old Testament. Samuel uses it when he was speaking to Saul and it is used over and over and over again in scripture and even throughout church history.
[29:28] It is one of these great theological truths. After the second offering, after Balaam goes and gets another word from the Lord, he says, Arise, O Balak, and here. Give ear to me, O son of Zippor.
[29:39] Here's what we need to know. God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should repent. Has he said and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not make it good?
[29:51] The security of the nation of Israel did not depend upon their proudness in military battle. It did not depend upon their numerical standing. The security of the nation of Israel depended upon God had said it and therefore it would happen.
[30:05] He says, God is not a man. He's not going to change his mind. He's not going to repent. He's not going to fail to bring about exactly what he said he was going to do. Because look, he begins to lay this out. He says, Behold, I have received a command to bless.
[30:17] And when he has blessed and I cannot revoke, he has not observed misfortune in Jacob, nor has he seen trouble in Israel. And the Lord his God is with him and the shadow of the king is among them. God brings them out of Egypt.
[30:29] Think about this. This is the security or the outstanding blessing of God's presence. God had said he would do these things and he was doing them. God had told Abraham that they would dwell in a land that was not their own.
[30:43] And after 400 years, he would bring them out. Guess what? That's what God did. Over and over and over again in scripture, we see where God says it and then God does it. And it's an astounding thing.
[30:53] And this is what Balaam says. He is here. He is among them. Probably one of the most outstanding blessings is, says that God has not seen trouble in Israel. Wait a minute.
[31:04] Was God not there the rest of the book of Numbers? You know, 38 years prior to this when they failed to go into the land or when they were murmuring or complaining or griping or moaning about the food or the lack of water and all the servants came.
[31:18] But what is he saying? God's looking beyond the sins of the people because these are his people under his covenant. And God had stated his name on these people.
[31:30] For his name's sake, he was going to bring them into Canaan. Because of who he was, he was going to bring them into Canaan. Therefore, his presence was among them. And he is, God is the king.
[31:43] That the shout of a king is among them. That God was leading them. And he had brought them out of Egypt. Therefore, he would bring them into the land. Balak had said that he thought Israel would be like an ox licking up the grass.
[31:56] Balaam says he's not like an ox licking up a grass. He is in the strength of an ox with its horns. He's not just eating the grass. He's destroying everything. Not only like that, but he's like a lioness or a lion which rises up to seek its prey.
[32:10] And it will not stop. It is the blessing of God's presence among them. You say, what difference does this matter in my life? I'll bring the application here and I'll stop. Because I know it's a lot of biblical truth. The same theological concepts that we find in the nation of Israel in the book of Numbers are the same theological truths that we see today.
[32:30] The blessing upon God's people are the things he has promised us and the fact that he dwells among us. And the reason that we know the powers and principalities and spiritual forces of the air will never overcome God's people is because God stakes his very name on us.
[32:53] He has called us to himself. He redeemed us through his blood. We are secure in his presence and we are his people. He will. The reason I believe in the security of the saints, eternal security, is because once Christ has promised it, therefore that promise secures it.
[33:14] And if there is anything that can bring that promise or cause that promise to fail, then there is something greater than him. His promise and his presence secures the blessing on God's people.
[33:32] And even to one more extent, under that covenant, how awesome is the grace that looks at us and does not see bad.
[33:45] And does not see famous. Rather sees the blood which covers all of our shortcomings.
[33:56] It says, even though the dark forces of the air want to pronounce a curse upon you, you are blessed for you are my people.
[34:07] And I am your God. And here he uses a false prophet to pronounce it. Quite often in this world, that's good enough as long as we hear what God is saying to us.
[34:21] It is the encouragement of divine security that comes not based upon our works and efforts because the nation is resting and waiting and the whole time God is securing. What a blessing it is.
[34:34] Numbers chapter 22 verse 36, chapter 23 verse 30. Thank you, brothers. Thank you, brothers.
[34:44] Thank you.
[35:14] Thank you.
[35:44] Thank you.
[36:14] Thank you.