Balaam and the Talking Donkey - (Numbers 22-24)

Transcription

1 August 11/12, 2018 Sermon Transcription Abbotsford Balaam and the Talking Donkey - (Numbers 22-24) Pastor Greg Harris [Please Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for ease of reading. Also, some headings have been added in square brackets to aid the reader in locating portions of the sermon.] One of our strategies as church for discipleship - for making students of Jesus - is our Bible studies. We have a men s and women s Bible study - and the format of those Bible studies is basically that you - you gather around a table of other people and you learn the Scriptures together by doing three things: first you look at the text to try and see what s actually in there and what s going on, and then we learn from it, then we try to live in light of it. And we do this because there s a tendency that we as Christians can have - if we feel familiar with the Bible - that we just kind of assume we know what passages are about before we actually look at the text and see what it s actually communicating. So the reason I tell you that is because I totally came into this weekend with an assumption about what a text meant that was just dead wrong. So the Stranger Things in the Bible sermon series that we re in is basically code for saying, preachers can pick what they want to preach on as long as it s weird. And so when we decided to do that one of the first stories that came into my mind that is kind of a weird story, is the story of Balaam and the talking donkey. Cause it s like full-on Shriek, right, you know where the dust falls on him and he s starting to talk and he s talking back - it s a weird story, it s a strange part of the Bible for sure. And if you ve heard people talk about this story of Balaam and the talking donkey, it s very common that you hear someone say something like - the point of the story is that if God can talk through Balaam s donkey then he can talk through me and through you. So I thought that d be a great sermon - easy to write, evangelism, ah multiplying churches - easy, no problem - summer sermon. I thought, well I should probably actually look at the text of where it is, so I googled Balaam and the talking donkey - I m like where is that even? I go to Numbers 22 where the story is and I start reading the passage and I start seeing ahhh this might actually be different than what I thought it was about, so I read before and I keep reading the whole context and I realize this is nowhere near what I thought this passage was about, but I ve already committed to it, so we re just going to preach this text anyway. So, even though this wasn t the sermon I thought I would preach, here s the sermon that we re going to walk through here this morning. We re going to look at what the point is of the talking donkey scene, but we re also going to look what the point is of what this scene falls into in a broader story, okay? So we ll look at the scene itself and then we ll also look at how that scene fits in the broader story under two points: the first point is that God is not in our hands, and secondly, God has us in his hands. So God is not in our hands, and God has us in his hands.

2 Page 2 [God is Not in Our Hands] So first, let s look at the point of the talking donkey scene - which is that God is not in our hands. We re in the book of Numbers 22. Numbers is early in the Bible - in our van we have CD that s stuck in the CD player and it plays Bible songs: <singing>genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers - so fourth book. If you have a Bible open it up, Numbers 22:1-4, here s how the story goes, Then the Israelites traveled to the plains of Moab and camped along the Jordan across from Jericho. Now Balak son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites, and Moab was terrified because there were so many people. Indeed, Moab was filled with dread because of the Israelites. The Moabites said to the elders of Midian, This horde is going to lick up everything around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field. So a little bit of context for us. The book of Numbers - it sounds like it s going to be a book full of numbers. But it s actually a book that has story after story of - how did God s people, Israel, go from Egypt, when they were slaves, and eventually start going towards the Promised Land - this book of Numbers tells the story of part of that journey from out of Egypt, heading towards the Promised Land. And that story includes accounts of really Israel rebelling against God along this path. One of the big rebellions that they did as a people of God was - God said to them, okay here s the land, the Promised Land I m going to give you, it s great; milk, honey, the whole deal - it s yours just go in, take it, done deal. The Israelites say, okay what we re going to do is we re going to send in some spies and go scout out the land, see what it looks like - the spies go in, a bunch of the spies come back and they re like, I don t know man, their big, so I say let s not... let s not take the land. There was two spies who were like, Let s do it, God told us we can take, let s do it. But the people of Israel were like - wisdom is in the numbers, let s go with the ten, the ten say no - it s a no. And God punishes them for that rebellion - there s a few stories of Israel s rebellion and that s setting them back in the story of them entering the Promised Land, but the book of Numbers also includes some stories of their victory - of God on behalf of his people bringing victory to the people of Israel. One of those stories of victory was actually the people of Israel conquering - the coming over the people of the Amorites. The reason why that s a big deal for the story we re looking at, is that the first character we re introduced to Balak - who is the king of the Moabites - he and his land was just conquered by the Amorites. So imagine you re the king of this nation and the people who just beat you, just got beat. And you re probably thinking to yourself...ah we got a problem on our hands - we got to solve it. So the story continues, Numbers 22:4-7, So Balak son of Zippor, who was king of Moab at that time, sent messengers to summon Balaam son of Beor, who was at Pethor, near the Euphrates River, in his native land. Balak said: A people has come out of Egypt; they cover the face of the land and have settled next to me. Now come and put a curse on these people, because they are too powerful for me. Perhaps then I will be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land. For I know that whoever you [Balaam] bless is blessed, and whoever you curse is cursed. The elders of Moab

3 Page 3 and Midian left, taking with them the fee for divination. When they came to Balaam, they told him what Balak had said. So this whole scene that we re looking at in the book of Numbers 22 and then Numbers 23 and Numbers 24 are all kind of part of the same story. What this whole scene is, it s like a cut away scene in the movie right? You know when you re watching a movie, let s say you re watching a Romantic Comedy, and there s the boyfriend and the girlfriend on the beach, and the boyfriend is about ready to meet the dad, and he is a little bit nervous about this because he s small and weak and he s built like me. And so he s talking to the girlfriend, saying, So like is your dad intimidating? And it cuts away to a scene of this massive dude lifting weights, tank top that says, Don t date my daughter. And guns in the background. Right? And then it comes back to the beach scene, and she responds to the question by saying, Ah, kind of. That scene of the father is the cutaway scene. So what we have in the book of Numbers is the story of Israel and God working through the people of Israel, and then it cuts away to this scene of a different nation, seeing what's taking place in Israel and actually trying to figure out now what to do we do in light of what s happening. So Balak, the king of Moab, talks with his neighbours, the Chilliwackians, and he says here s the deal. We need to sort out this problem, so let s send out a group of people to talk to Balaam, you know Balaam? Ah, let s get Balaam on board, here s why we need to get Balaam on board, Numbers 22:6, that whoever you bless [Balaam] is blessed, and whoever you curse is cursed. See Balaam in the ancient world, was like the deal sealer - he s the guy you call when you needed things to get done; when you have a problem and you need to engage with the gods to try to move things in your favour you call up Balaam, he s the guy who has the massive office in the big tower, you know, he has the windows and he s looking out onto the downtown core, and everything s mahogany, even his chair - it s uncomfortable - but it s mahogany cause he can afford it. This Balaam, he s the most successful guy around, and Balaam makes his living by being a diviner. He s a pagan priest, or a diviner of some sort and basically his job is to engage with the gods. The way he would do that is you would take the organs of dead animals and you would evaluate how the organs looked and there was a whole process involved but basically he had the ability that through this process, he could see what was going to happen because the gods would tell him and the reason Balaam was really great was he could actually kind of influence the gods. That if Balaam said someone was going to be cursed, it s because they were going to be cursed. And he s trying to - you know - work with his clients. So these people come to him and they say here s the deal - we need your help, we got an Israel problem, we re calling the best and baddest dude on the block to help us solve it. So, the story continues in Numbers 22:8-13, Spend the night here, Balaam said to them, and I will report back to you with the answer the Lord gives me. So the Moabite officials stayed with him. God came to Balaam and asked, Who are these men with you? Balaam said to God, Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab, sent me this message: A people that has come out of Egypt covers the face of the land. Now come and put a curse on them for me. Perhaps then I will be able to fight them and drive them away. But God said to Balaam, Do not go with them. You must not put a curse on those

4 Page 4 people, because they are blessed. The next morning Balaam got up and said to Balak s officials, Go back to your own country, for the Lord has refused to let me go with you. So the request comes to Balaam, they say here s the deal, we need you to curse the Israelites for us so that we can actually defeat them in battle. Balaam says, Okay, let me see what I can do. And he heads off to his office. His assistant asks, Do you want some coffee? He says, No thank you. He closes the door and he gets to work, doing what Balaam does which is engaging with the gods. This is actually kind of funny scene, because what you have - is you have Balaam presuming to know something that God doesn t know and this scene - you think Balaam has like the ego of an elephant, basically. Cause here s the God who created everything coming to Balaam, being like, So what s the news? And Balaam says, Well, let me fill you in Lord. Basically the story is - is that I m needed because I m Balaam. And so they re asking me to curse these people, so that these people don t actually defeat them and so like what do you think? And the Lord responds to him by saying, Don t go. Don t curse them, don t go, because those people can t be cursed, they re blessed. Now Balaam is seeing the money slip away out of his hands - right? It s a bad day at the office, he s a little bit stressed, talks it through with his wife, decides he has to have a conversation with the people who approached him in the first place, and he comes to them and says, Look, I d love to take on your business but I don t know - it s a rough day at the office. I don t know if I m going to be able to pull it off. But the story continues, Numbers 22:14-20, So the Moabite officials returned to Balak and said, Balaam refused to come with us. Then Balak sent other officials, more numerous and more distinguished than the first. [He saved the good ones for now, right.] They came to Balaam and said: This is what Balak son of Zippor says: Do not let anything keep you from coming to me, because I will reward you handsomely and do whatever you say. Come and put a curse on these people for me. But Balaam answered them, Even if Balak gave me all the silver and gold in his palace, I could not do anything great or small to go beyond the command of the Lord my God. Now spend the night here so that I can find out what else the Lord will tell me. That night God came to Balaam and said, Since these men have come to summon you, go with them, but do only what I tell you. Okay now the story gets a little confusing. Right - because the first time the people come and Balaam s this pagan diviner. He s this guy in a distant land who s not associated with Israel - who s paid to divine and whoever he curses is cursed, whoever he blesses they re blessed - the whole deal. And now Balaam sayings stuff like, the Lord my God told me. This is part of the story where it gets a little bit confusing of how are we supposed to treat Balaam? Is he a good guy or not? Is he for Israel or is he not? Is he for the God of Israel or is he not? See if you google Balaam and the talking donkey and you look at some of the kids youtube videos about it, you ll see in some of them, Balaam is like this hero of the people of Israel. Part of the reason why they portray him as a hero is he uses the language, the Lord my God. So the question is, is do the rest of Scripture describe Balaam as like a good guy on God s side? And the surprising twist is actually no, the rest of Scriptures talk about him as, as not a good guy - actually later on in the story we find out that, that Balaam actually gave some intel to the Moabites and the Midianites - that look if you want to take the Israelites down, just seduce them into worshipping false gods. So Balaam s actively working against the people of Israel. We re told later in Numbers 31 that actually Balaam was killed by the people of Israel when God was bringing judgement

5 Page 5 on those who opposed them and in the New Testament, Balaam is described this way, he s kind of lumped in with the other false teachers and 2 Peter 2:15, where Peter writes, They [the false teachers] have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Bezer, who loved the wages of wickedness. See Peter says that the reason why Balaam eventually went with people is because the stakes were raised, they were offering him more cash in the deal. So tempted by the funds, he decided, Ahh maybe I should end up actually going anyways, I mean if he s going to pay me handsomely - why not? See what I can work out. And if he s actively working against God s people and inciting them to rebellion and he s eventually killed for being a part of leading God s people away, this is not a good guy. So now that kind of colours the way that we read him saying, the Lord my God - because this isn t a saying, the Lord my God, out of sincerity, it s saying, the Lord my God, out of arrogance, like he s just another one of the gods that he can interact with and whatever his name is, Yahweh - doesn t matter - he told me not to. It s a hard day at the office, he s not a good guy. But look the second question this part of the passage raises is - did God change his mind about commanding Balaam not to go? Right, Balaam comes to the Lord, says, What do I do? The Lord says, You shall not go. Commandment. Now the stakes are raised, Balaam says, Well I m not supposed to go, but let me see what I can work out. Talks to the Lord again, and the Lord says, Okay if they want you to go and you want to go, then you can go, but you re only saying what I tell you to say. So is the Lord on board with this plan now? Well the story continues, Number 22: 21-27, Balaam got up in the morning, saddled his donkey and went with the Moabite officials. But God was very angry when he went, and the angel of the Lord stood in the road to oppose him. Balaam was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand, it turned off the road into a field. Balaam beat it to get it back on the road. Then the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow path through the vineyards, with walls on both sides. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam s foot against it. So he beat the donkey again.then the angel of the Lord moved on ahead and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn, either to the right or to the left. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it lay down under Balaam, and he was angry and beat it with his staff. See the story of Balaam getting on the donkey afterwards - remember you re picturing the guy, who s ego the size of the elephant, who is like the deal sealer, he never loses, he gets what he wants for his clients, and the Lord gave him permission to go and so he heads off on his way - he saddles on the donkey and he starts down the road. But it s really clear that the Lord isn t actually happy that Balaam went, we know that because when he starts on the journey, the text tells us that the Lord was very angry that he went. And the whole scene is of God actively opposing Balaam s going to Balak, by sending the angel of the Lord and the funny part of the scene, is that the, the great seer, Balaam, doesn t actually see that he s sinning against God. See, we should probably take a quick aside here from the main point. Because this is a really interesting point that this passage raises, right? The Lord gives a clear commandment to Balaam:

6 Page 6 You shall not go. And then Balaam comes back and is like, K, but what.. I don t know, what do you think? They offered me more money. And then the Lord permits him to go. See I think it s reasonable to think that Balaam in this situation, probably felt quite at peace about going right? Probably thought this was a good thing to do, not a big deal. In other words, I think it s entirely possible to be deliberately going against God s commandments and still feel at peace about it. Right - we know what the Lord says about pick your topic. We know what the Lord says about sexual immorality; that you shouldn t actually be in relations with anyone unless you married between one man and one woman for life. That s the context where sex should be appropriately used, and yet we think to ourselves - I don t know, let s ask him again. Cause like maybe in my situation it would be different. Like I know he said, no; but like me...and then you actually kind of feel like at peace about breaking that commandment - like it s not a big deal. There s a peace that comes upon you even though you have the very clear: thou shalt not. See just because God permitted Balaam to sin against him, it didn t mean that God approved of it. Balaam can do what he wants, but God is still actively opposing him in his sinfulness. There s an angel with a sword drawn and this Balaam who s supposed to be able to see everything, can t actually see that he s sinning against the Lord. He just keeps hitting the donkey cause he s like why are you stopping - there s no point to stop. Now the scene continues and it goes full Shriek, okay. Numbers 22:28-35, Then the Lord opened the donkey s mouth, and it said to Balaam, What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times? Balaam answered the donkey, You have made a fool of me! If only I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now. The donkey said to Balaam, Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you? No, he said. Then the Lord opened Balaam s eyes, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with his sword drawn. So he bowed low and fell facedown. The angel of the Lord asked him, Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I have come here to oppose you because your path is a reckless one before me. The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times. If it had not turned away, I would certainly have killed you by now, but I would have spared it. Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, I have sinned. I did not realize you were standing in the road to oppose me. Now if you are displeased, I will go back. The angel of the Lord said to Balaam, Go with the men, but speak only what I tell you. So Balaam went with Balak s officials. It s a really interesting scene right? The Lord opens the mouth of the donkey to speak. But the way this story gets talked about alot of the time, is that the Lord spoke through the donkey to Balaam. Right - if the Lord can speak through a donkey, surely he can speak through you and me. But the story doesn t actually read like that, the Lord s not speaking through the donkey, the Lord let s the donkey s mouth open up so he can say something like, Why you mad bro? Why are you hitting me? There s a dude with a sword - I m protecting you! Why are you mad at me? Balaam starts talking back to the donkey, I m mad because you making me look dumb. Look if there was a sword anywhere near me I d kill you. And this is the moment in the story like in The Office, the tv show, where Jim looks at the camera - the angel looks at the camera like. If there s a sword near you - I have one right here. See Balaam is completely unaware of the situation around him. This great controller of the gods, the one who Balak hired so he could control and manipulate the situation is completely left out of the loop.

7 Page 7 That s what the story is all about. God enabled the donkey, to speak, to prove to Balaam that he isn t actually the kind of god, the kind of guy that he thinks he is, who can engage with the gods. Or in other words, Balaam; this great speaker to the gods, who can influence them, and whoever he curses is cursed and whoever he blesses is blessed, who can do whatever he wants, is now nothing more than a puppet. Sure he ll go to Balak, but he s only saying the words that the Lord puts in his mouth. Oh great Balaam, my puppet. But the scene is supposed to read like - Balak comes and he tries to get Balaam on board and Balak and Balaam work together and they manipulate the situation so that the Moabites are protected, but what we learn from this scene - what we learn from the talking donkey is that we can t control God. Or in other words - God s not in our hands. See Balak thought God was in his hands, Balam thought that the gods were in his hands but the one who is hired to be a master over everything became the puppet. You can t control God. But look this is a real challenge for us; I think in our contemporary day this idea that we can t control God - that God s not in our hands, is actually - its a challenge, it s confronting what the contemporary Christian scene kind of offers. Sure - we re not like Balak where we re hiring a diviner who opens up animals and takes the organs to engage with the gods. We re like, That s crazy. But what we do is we treat God like a vending machine. Right - we buy into the idea that look if I just give God what I need to that I m going to get what I want out of the vending machine. B14 - it s amazing; B14 - I want that. So what do I do? I just put in the money and then I get the B14 - this is what the prosperity gospel s built upon, is the idea that you can control what God does. That s why there s show after show; public speaker after public speaker, who gives you a pitch basically like this - look if you have a problem in your life, if you have a financial crises in your life, just sow a seed of like $100 or $200 and a miracle will come and your financial problems will be taken care of - no big deal because if you just give a little bit, God is going to be in your control, he ll bless you. He will bless you. He is a vending machine. It s what he does. See we treat God like he s in our hands, like if we just do this thing, he s going to give me that. This is how the Christian world is understanding and engaging God now, especially in North America and parts of Africa where the prosperity gospel is just blossoming, they re promising people - look if you give a little bit, God is the cosmic vending machine in your hands who s going to give you what you want. Look the talking donkey scene actually proves to us that actually God s not in our control. He s not in our hands. But the other way we treat God like a vending machine - maybe we haven t bought into the full prosperity stuff, we re like, that s crazy, that s not how God is; but you know you and me we function with this idea of God being a vending machine because maybe we don t expect all of the prosperity, but surely we expect the absence of certain difficulties in our life. Like Lord I ve served you all these days of my life; I ve gone to church every week, I ve served in the Sunday School all the time, I volunteer in the community. I try to raise my kids well, I try to be a good husband, I try to be a good father, I try to do all these things and yet you still give me the problem? Then we start hitting the vending machine. Because that s not what the vending machine is supposed to do, that s not what God is supposed to do - I did all the things I m supposed to where s my treasure? Where s that thing I want - or another words - when the difficulty comes, are we not just sorrowful over the difficulty but are we actually mad at God the vending machine who ought not do that. Because we act like actually we re the one who s in control. Yeah we don t call the pagan diviner who cuts open the organs to try and figure out what s going on, but we think: look if I just act a certain way then God has to give me a certain kind of life in response. The cancer diagnosis can t come,

8 Page 8 that s not part of the deal. The relationship can t fall apart; that s not part of the deal, that s not what I paid for. But look God s not in our hands, he s not in our control. He s not our butler who can do whatever we ask him to do. He s not our genie who comes out when we want him to say, Your wish is my command. God s not a vending machine. The God of Israel is actually not in our control, that s what the talking donkey tells us. God s not in our hands. [God Has Us In His Hands] Secondly, and much shorter, I promise. What s the point of the story, of this whole scene - of Balak and Balaam and a donkey, like what s going on? In this cut away away scene of Numbers 22-24, what s trying to be communicated here, what s the big point. Well the big point of this whole section of Numbers is that God has us in his hands. So back to Numbers 22:36-40, When Balak heard that Balaam was coming, he went out to meet him at the Moabite town on the Arnon border, at the edge of his territory. Balak said to Balaam, Did I not send you an urgent summons? Why didn t you come to me? Am I really not able to reward you? Well, I have come to you now, Balaam replied. But I can t say whatever I please. I must speak only what God puts in my mouth. Then Balaam went with Balak to Kiriath Huzoth. Balak sacrificed cattle and sheep, and gave some to Balaam and the officials who were with him. So Balaam finally shows up on the scene - so basically doing a bit of the math of how long of the journey would have taken from where Balak was to where Balaam was, that journey - the back and forth that we read about was probably a four month time span. So four months between when Balak said, What are we going to do, let s call Balaam, - until Balaam actually arrives at his doorstep. And he s like, Where you been all this time man? I called you right aways, what could possibly have taken place? And Balaam s like, It s a whole donkey thing, k, it s crazy, I ll tell you later, but here s the point: I m here now, I m here now to do what you want to do, but here s the thing, I don t know if I m going to actually be able to accomplish what you want because I can only say what the Lord tells me so. But Balak still moves forward with the deal and they do what was customary at that time, of kind of - celebrate a meal together, right, they prepare the animals, they get some wine, they get the big feast going on and the officials who are with Balaam and Balak and they have a big party and celebrate the fact this is going to now take place. That what Balak was waiting for, which is is Balaam showing up to do his thing, be the diviner of the gods, influence them to get Balak the way that he wants things to go - this is all going to take place. And then what ends up happening is Balaam basically instructs Balak - Here s the deal, here s how I need my mobile office to look. I need you to sacrifice animals in different locations, I need to be up on a mountain, and then I ll do my thing, I ll engage with the Lord, I ll see what s going on, and then I ll report back to you what I hear. And then in Numbers 23 what we have in starting in verse 7 is Balaam responding with the first time he heard back from the Lord. Here s what he said, Numbers 23:7-12, Then Balaam [after coming back from doing his thing on the mountain] spoke his message: [Here s what he said.] Balak brought me from Aram, the king of Moab from the eastern mountains. Come, he said, curse Jacob for me; come, denounce Israel. How can I curse those whom God has not cursed? How can I denounce those whom the Lord has not denounced? From the rocky peaks I see them, from the heights I view them. I see a people

9 Page 9 who live apart and do not consider themselves one of the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob or number even a fourth of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and may my final end be like theirs! Balak said to Balaam, What have you done to me? I brought you to curse my enemies, but you have done nothing but bless them! He answered, Must I not speak what the Lord puts in my mouth? See they set up the whole scene so that Balaam the great can do his thing, engage with the gods, try to turn everything in the favour of his clients so he can get his big pay day - Balaam goes up there, he receives a word from the Lord - he brings it down and what he says is basically, Yeah this is not going to go well for you Balak. Like Israel s blessed - you can t count there s so many of them. The next few verses actually the next chapter and a half in Numbers is basically speech after speech after speech from Balaam where he says the same kind of thing - Look Israel s blessed, you can t curse them, they re gonna win, if you oppose them you re going to be crushed, time after time after time, he gives this message to Balak and Balak s thinking, This is not what I paid for - I paid for cursing so I could defeat these people and you come here after all this time with your story of a talking donkey, and you arrive and you just bless them? What are you doing? See the whole point of this scene - of Balaam just being the puppet to describe how Israel s going to be successful and how no one is going to be able to defeat them - what we learn from this whole scene is that God has his people in his hands. Here s why I say that. Remember that this whole scene, it s a cutaway scene, it s not actually taking place among the Israelites, its happening away from them. They don t even know this is going on at this point. They re just doing their thing, they re just being Israelites and off on a distant land, elsewhere in the story there s this foreign king, in this foreign nation who s trying to oppose, he s trying to defeat God s people. And the Israelites are totally unaware and yet God has it completely under control. They re trying to destroy his people, but God has his people in his hands - nothing will strip them away from his mighty grip. Not some foreign king, not some divining of the gods - Balaam, nothing will separate him from his people. The point of this story is to give encouragement and comfort to God s people. That it doesn t matter what outside things are taking place, if you are in God s hand you are in his grip and nothing will take you away from it. You can almost imagine the apostle Paul thinking of this story when he wrote Romans 8:38-39, where he said, For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The comfort from this passage is that God has us tightly in his hands - and he will not let us go. There s two images that we can operate when it comes to our understanding of salvation. Because the way salvation works in Christianity is that you are saved because God has acted towards you in grace by sending his son Jesus who lived a perfect life, who died on the cross for your sins, who rose victoriously from the grave, who s returning again to make all things new. If you want to be saved, you say I want to put my trust in that Jesus, I put my faith in him, and he will save me - and once you ve made that decision, you can have in your mind two images for what it looks like to be someone who s saved. The first image is that of someone clinging so tightly to the edge of a cliff. You believe the

10 Page 10 gospel and now you are holding onto the edge of the cliff and it s up to you to hold tightly. The second image, you re still holding tightly to something, but what you re holding onto is the hand of Jesus, which is stretched out over the cliff to hold onto you. He s gripping you tightly and no wind, no animal, no bird, no situation is going to be able to remove you from his tight grip. You are holding on in faith to the arm of Jesus, but it s his strong arm that actually holds you. The point of this story is that God has his people tightly in his grip. There is nothing that will come against God s people that can remove us from his tight grip - yes we hold tightly unto God but it s his grip that saves. As I was thinking of this imagery as I was thinking of this passage, I was thinking about how we tend to focus a little bit more on our own efforts to hold tightly right? And yet, the power of the one who holds us - being that much more powerful - I was thinking of the image of - I have a little daughter now, she s five months old, her name is Emily - and we play this game every night together now. And we play it when she s supposed to be sleeping but she s not because babies are jerks. [Laughter] And so she s lying there lovely and I put out my fingers and she clasps on with all her might because all she wants to do is sit up because sitting up is the best. And she is pulling with every inch of her hands, she s pulling with every little bit of strength that she has, but eventually I m the one who cups my hand behind hers and lifts her up into a sitting position, but man is she holding tight. But I m the one who has her in my hand. And now she s learning - look I don t just want to sit up, like if I stand - like do you know how much you can see when you stand up - it s amazing. So now she just starts like arching her back like crazy cause she wants to be in the standing position. So I start, she uses every little ounce of strength that she has - she s holding on as tight as she can, she s working as hard as she can, but I m the one who pulls her up into the standing position - she is working, she is holding, but I am holding. Look we have to have faith in Jesus to be saved, but the point of this passage is if you have faith in Jesus - he has you in his grip and he is not letting go. God holds his people in his hands. Let me pray for us. Father you re good and we love you and we don t deserve to have a relationship with you because we just rebel and we act like we re the boss and like you re the vending machine and yet you save rebels like us; and you call us your kids and you remind us through stories like talking donkeys and kings that don t have their plans work out the way they want it to, that you are actually the one who s in control. We can t control you but you hold us tight. Lord would you comfort us with that truth today? Would you remind us that you re a big God who loves us who s never going to let us go. It s amazing grace. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. God bless you guys.