How would you explain the “feasts to the Lord” to someone who asked you why you observe them (1Tim. 3:15)? What is so important about observing Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) for believers in Yeshua as the Messiah?
Author: Richard
This month is referred to as the “ingathering” at the end of the year or the end of the cycle of seven appointments with God, the “feasts to the Lord.” What do these times mean? How do we give an answer to someone when they have questions?
Bilam (Balaam) is not a member of God’s covenant and was a foreigner to them, although he was from the land of Aram, the ancestral homeland of Abraham. Yet, God saw fit to give him His words, His visions and to Bilam and use Bilam as God’s instrument among the people.
Skeptics like to poke fun at this story because of the talking donkey. Yet sometimes, our way is so set upon evil that a talking donkey doesn’t even phase us and give us pause to turn away from our direction.
Balaam wasn’t ignorant of the identity of the Creator God. He knew YHWH by name, and Balak, the king of Moab knew of Him too. If he knew that, then he knew that God had the power to make a donkey talk. Balaam didn’t fully understand the error of his way until one of the most powerful angels in God’s hosts, the Angel of the Lord, confronts him with a sword in his hand.
Israel didn’t credit God with the victory over the Amorites and other blessings, namely the coming of manna each morning to feed the people. God sent death amid the people — and the cure in the image of the instrument of that death. There’s an important prophecy about the work of Messiah Yeshua in this account, something Yeshua didn’t want Nicodemus to miss from his studies of the Torah.
We will look at this chapter carefully. The events of this chapter occur near the end 40 year wilderness exile. After nearly 40 years, the people still complain about being removed from Egypt and “dying in the wilderness.”
Aaron Klein’s 2009 book The Late Great State of Israel details how the modern nation is committing suicide by capitulating to the demands of surrounding nations that have been trying to destroy it since before its rebirth in 1948. When we pray for the “peace of Jerusalem,” we should pray for the safety of Israel.