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It’s apt that the double Torah reading חֻקַּת Chukat and בָּלָק Balak (Numbers 19:1–25:9) this year includes Shabbat on July 4, when we here in the United States celebrate the Declaration of Independence and what it states about the intent for where this nation was going to go.
Ancient Israel was at a spiritual and literal crossroads. Would it embrace its destiny as the people beyond number (Genesis 15 and 22) and as a nation of priests (Exodus 19), taking the nations closer to the Creator?
Similarly, we in the U.S. can ask ourselves if we’re going to follow the God-led legacy of freedom started at Plymouth in 1620 or the greed-led legacy of bondage started in Jamestown in 1619? The Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights point to the Spirit-led legacy of Abraham through Sinai and Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ) to Plymouth, rather than flesh-led legacy of Jamestown.
And we’ll see in this study that we can ask ourselves which kind of legacy are we pursuing in how we walk out our lives today and in the days to come.
It’s often said that if you want to start a revolution, you’d better know where it’s going. Otherwise, it often can come back around to get you.
That’s what set the American Revolution apart from the French Revolution that happened around the same time and the Bolshevik Revolution. The founders of the U.S. knew that man’s inclinations trended toward evil unless restrained, while the founders of the other two revolutions had few restrictions on power other than to use it to dethrone tyrants. Yet the outcomes of latter two movements were predictably tyranny, ensnaring many well-meaning participants.
In a sense, we see a similar thing at play in the Bible account of the beating by Bilam (Balaam) of his donkey. You could imagine it like a movie, with a split screen of Israel asking for passage through Abrahamic relatives in Edom and Moab but then having to skirt the borders, then the other split view of Bilam beating the donkey for
taking him in a direction he didn’t think he was wanting to go.