Pastor Tim Patoka
God’s Zoo: A Talking Donkey God Protects Through a Talking Donkey Numbers 22:22-35
July 11, 2021
1) God Always Protects His Children 2) God Completely Protects His Children Animals that talk in a rational, intelligent way so that you can have a conversation with them. For such an impossible thing, we sure are familiar with the concept. From little on, children see animated cartoons like Bugs Bunny or Looney Tunes or watch Disney movies from my childhood that entirely consist of talking animals. We have live action shows of old like Mr. Ed the talking horse or the recent remakes of The Lion King or The Jungle Book that help imagine what it’d be like if animals could really talk. We even have the performing arts where people have been dressing up like animals for thousands of years in plays, musicals, and other theater productions. Because of all these things, we are quite used to the idea of talking animals. But could you imagine what it would actually be like to talk with an animal? To have a rational, intelligent conversation with one? That would be something else! Especially because we know that it’s impossible to do this. Yet it has happened a couple of times in human history. In today’s verses from Numbers chapter 22, we have one of those few times where the pagan soothsayer Balaam talks with his trusty donkey about why it acted in such a weird way. As amazing as a talking donkey is though, what is more important is why it speaks. Because it is through a talking donkey that God shows us his protection of his children in a constant and complete way. And as God always and completely protected his Israelite children, even if it was through a talking donkey, so he always and completely protects us in ways that don’t involve talking animals anymore. 1) God Always Protects His Children I realize that the Old Testament account of Balaam and his talking donkey may not be the most familiar. So allow me to catch us up on what’s happening so we better understand how Balaam’s talking donkey shows us God’s protection. We’re getting to the end of Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and God has recently blessed them with military successes against 3 different kings. The next king in line to fall is Balak, king of Moab. King Balak knows that he has no chance to defeat the Israelites in open battle. So he decides to use a different tactic – hire Balaam, a proven and experienced soothsayer, to curse the Israelites in hopes of defeating them. At first, Balaam turns the job offer down because of what the Lord told him about the Israelites being blessed and unable to be cursed. But King Balak won’t take no for an answer. So he doubles the promised paycheck and asks Balaam again. Balaam, wanting to cash in, goes back to God to see if there might be some middle ground for him between King Balak and the Lord. So the Lord says to Balaam, “Fine, go ahead and ride with King Balak’s men. Only be 1
Pastor Tim Patoka God’s Zoo: A Talking Donkey July 11, 2021 sure to say what I tell you, and nothing more.” So the next day, Balaam, happy to have found the wealthy middle ground, saddles up his trusty donkey and heads out to King Balak. It’s here that our verses pick it up with Balaam’s journey on his trusty donkey. We know that Balaam is setting out with suspect motives (Numbers 22:22, 32; 2 Peter 2:15) that are tempting him to do whatever King Balak wants to get a big paycheck. Yet God is determined to keep Balaam in line so he says only what God gives him to say. And he ensures that through his trusty donkey. You got to feel sorry for Balaam’s donkey and what all it suffered to keep Balaam safe from the Angel of the LORD. You first have the donkey who sees the Angel of the LORD standing in the middle of the road and armed with a sword. Needing to go around the armed Angel, the donkey takes Balaam off-roading into the open field. Balaam doesn’t yet see the armed Angel of the LORD; he doesn’t know why his trusty donkey went off-roading. So he reacts as you would with any wayward animal – you strike it to get it back on the path. A little ways down the donkey sees the armed Angel of the LORD again! Except this time, he’s in a narrow path between two vineyard walls. So what does Balaam’s donkey do? It shimmies up against the wall and crushes Balaam’s foot in the process. Balaam again strikes his donkey in painful anger. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the donkey sees the armed Angel of the LORD a third time. This time he’s blocking the entire path. The donkey, unable to go around, simply lies down in the middle of the road and stops Balaam’s journey. And Balaam again strikes his donkey a third time filled with intense anger and frustration. Balaam didn’t know why his trusty donkey was acting in this unusual way. That is until the Lord had his donkey speak and opened his eyes. It was then that Balaam saw what his donkey had – the Angel of the LORD, armed with a sword, and standing in the path. Rather than being a source of frustration, Balaam’s donkey was in fact his source of salvation. As the Angel told Balaam, “Look, I myself have come out to oppose you, because your way is reckless before me. 33The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times. If it had not turned away from me, I would have surely killed you by now and let the donkey live.” (Numbers 22:32b-33 EHV) Despite Balaam’s reckless path and greedy heart, God had protected him through his talking donkey so that he could later bless the Israelites. (We’ll talk more about those blessings in a bit.) You know what I think is interesting about this whole encounter? God’s Israelite children likely had no idea any of this was happening! At least not at the time. They were encamped far away and had more than enough to keep them busy. And yet even without the Israelites knowing it, God was there protecting them, even if it was through a pagan soothsayer’s talking donkey.
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Pastor Tim Patoka God’s Zoo: A Talking Donkey July 11, 2021 God has also promised to always protect us as he did with his Israelite children, even when we don’t realize it. But do you believe that to be true? Because it can sometimes be hard to trust in God’s promise to always protect us. Consider the dangers out there we know about. This past year of the coronavirus and the danger it still poses. The struggles our country has recently gone through like that of the 60s and 70s. The never-ending natural disasters that stretch our electrical grid and drain our water reserves. And then you add in the dangers we don’t know about. Physical threats to our national security that we’ll never hear about. Spiritual threats to our soul from false teachers like Balaam who promote ways of thinking that aren’t in line with God’s Word. Supernatural threats from the Devil and his fallen coworkers who certainly exist and enjoy causing us harm. To say that God is always protecting us without a break or mistake? Well, that’s quite a claim to make! A claim that God certainly follows through on, even if we don’t see how he does it. Let’s look back to Balaam’s talking donkey. Not only did God work through it to protect Balaam’s life from the Angel of the LORD, but to also protect the Israel’s blessed future. And those Israelites likely didn’t have a clue about it at the time. In the same way, God is always protecting us. When it comes to our known dangers, God is certainly protecting us. Our Lord has placed us in a 1st world country that enjoys prosperity and safety in far more measure than many places of the world. Most of the hardships we suffer are honestly no worse than 1st world problems. When it comes to our unknown dangers, God is again always protecting us. How many doomsday scenarios do we hear about remain nothing but hypothetical because of God’s protective hand? How much worse would life be if God did not hold back Satan and his fellow demons from doing whatever they wanted? Thankfully we will never know those answers because God is always protecting us, even when we don’t know it. And we can be sure that God will always do this because he is a man of his word. Because of his integrity, he will do what he has said and that includes his promise to always protect his children no matter what or when. 2) God Completely Protects His Children But not only has God promised to always protect us, he will do so completely. We look back to Balaam’s talking donkey to see how God did that for his Israelite children through that same donkey. Once Balaam got back on his donkey and met with King Balak, he would speak 7 prophetic statements as directed by the Lord. In those statements, he would bless the Israelites with a population beyond count, the Lord’s continued faithfulness to his Old Testament people, future prosperity and success, and a ruler who would eventually rise from within Israel and subdue all her enemies. (Interestingly enough, there are some similarities between this future ruler and the Promised Messiah that point to Jesus Christ.) But thinking back to the historical context, it is through these blessings that God ensured Israel’s future protection. Not just in the upcoming physical battles, but also in the spiritual battles they would face. Not just against the 3
Pastor Tim Patoka God’s Zoo: A Talking Donkey July 11, 2021 forces of King Balak, but for the generations to come. It was through Balaam’s blessings that God had his Israelite children’s future completely protected. So God has also promised us, his children today, completely protection. God’s protection for us covers more than just physical, spiritual, or supernatural threats, but also the eternal threat that sin poses to us. We heard about this in our Gospel reading where God protected Jesus’ life in Nazareth so that he could die at the appointed time on the cross. It is this death that rids us of our sins and pays the price that we incurred, the death that protects us from the eternal danger that sin poses to every sinner. A protection that is offered to us today in the same way that the Apostle Paul offered to his Jewish hearers in our 2nd Lesson, “So, gentlemen, brothers, let it be known to you that through this Jesus forgiveness of sins is being proclaimed to you, also forgiveness from everything from which you could not be justified through the law of Moses. 39In this Jesus, everyone who believes is justified.” (Acts 13:38-39 EHV) We don’t have a talking donkey that God has used to protect us. Instead we have someone much better – Jesus Christ, God’s own Son. He completely protects us from every danger that sin throws our way. Guilt? Blame? Fear? That’s all done away with once and for all. Peace? Forgiveness? Heaven? That’s yours through faith and in full. With this constant and complete protection from our Lord, we look upon life with eyes wide open. Our Lord hasn’t promised us a trouble-free life. In fact, he has promised the opposite: the effects of sin that we have to put up with; the crosses we bear as we put God first in our lives; the persecutions we endure as strangers in this sinful and sin-filled world. Yet we can trust in God’s promise to always and completely protect us, his children, no matter what the danger or when it comes. Because God is always on the clock, he never takes a day off, when it comes to his promise to protect. And because God is a man of his word, he will always do what he has said. As he ensured Balaam’s life and Israel’s blessed future through a talking donkey, so he also ensures our safety from danger today whether it be physical, spiritual, or supernatural. What can do to repay God for his promise to always and completely protect us, his children? Nothing more than to thank him. When we pray to God, let us say more than the usual “give me, could you, would that please.” Let us instead start and end our prayers with words of thanksgiving and praise. When something happens to us that could have been much worse, let us remember God’s protective hand keeping sin in check and holding Satan back. When we hear impossible doomsday scenarios, let us be mindful that our Lord is always doing more behind the scenes than we’ll ever know for our eternal benefit. When we look at the cross and remember the one who died there, let us remember what God promises us through faith in Jesus. A constant and complete protection from all our dangers just as God protected his Israelite children through Balaam’s talking donkey. Amen.
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