After
the applause and hugs for Trudy finished, Zeb lead the whole group in
prayer thanking Him for all His good gifts. He secondly asked God to
bless the lesson about to be shared.
Zeb
used a lot of body motion and an almost spooky tone to introduce the
lesson for these troubled hearts. “I want to tell you about a
historic event that happened long long ago, that had never occurred
before or since. It’s so strange many people don’t believe it
ever happened for real. Well, it did and you’re all going to like
it moocho.”
The
man’s name was Balaam. He was supposed to be a preacher or prophet,
but he didn’t always do what God wanted, by a long shot. Down this
narrow lane he went riding his donkey on one of his shameful tasks.
This time an evil king had called Balaam to say super bad things
about the nation of Israel. And we all know that Israel is God’s
chosen favorite nation.”
“All
of a sudden the donkey would go no farther. Balaam whipped him but he
took off down into a field. More whippings and the donkey smashed
Balaam’s foot against a nearby wall, but the donkey would not go
forward. The reason is that one of God’s angels with a sword in
hand was blocking the donkey’s path.” Zeb, who liked the gang to
call him Buddy, paused to see that everyone was still with him. They
were with greater interest.
Benny
blurted out, “Well come on Buddy. What happened next? I love this
story, I mean history event, so far… Tell us what happened next!”
Buddy
asked all the gang to open their Bibles to the book called Numbers.
“That’s the 4th book of the Bible. This is one of the
books that lots of people don’t like to read. They think it has too
much boring repetition in it. I guarantee there won’t be one boring
word in this amazing miraculous event that has ever happened only
once… and WE get to read about it and share it whenever we want.”
“As
we go to chapter 22 verse 28 I want to tell you the word ass in the
Bible is an old time way of talking about a donkey and is not a nasty
way of talking. Trudy, will you read verse 28 for us?” Buddy asked.
She did and gasped as did most of the other gang. “Wowwww” came
from several of the gang too. “Yes, God made the donkey talk human
talk. And it even counted too. But more wonderful is to learn WHY God
made the donkey talk and count like a man.” emphasized Zeb.
He
told the gang, “All of God’s chosen nation were down in the
valley raising their families and never knew about what was going on,
up on the hill above them. Up there were Balaam, his donkey, and
God’s angel guarding the Israelites from Balaam’s attempts to
curse them. Now gang, our wonderful God has angels to protect us from
many evil people that want to say and do things against us. Isn’t
that comforting?” Zeb asked the question again for emphasis.
“Not
only was God’s angel, with sword raised, on guard duty but he even
gave a lowly donkey the ability to warn a human that his actions, if
carried out, might mean Balaam’s death. God has all sorts of ways
to protect us and help us to do things that please Him. Isn’t it
exciting to see that God uses mighty angels but also lowly donkeys to
guard us and help everyone to honor God in heaven?”
“Buddy,
doesn’t that mean that I can pull my cover over me at night and
know that God is watching over little me, even?” asked one of the
boys. Buddy excitedly slapped his knee and said, “…sure does! In
fact there’s even a Bible verse that tells about the angels that
watch over you young people every minute. Now if that doesn’t put
some grit in your gizzard… uh..I mean innards, nothing else will!”
Buddy
then got a real serious look on his face and caressed his beloved
Bible again. He told the gang, “We’ve just seen that God provides
guardian angels with swords and sometimes talking animals to protect
us, but that’s only a small part of His love and care. The greatest
gift of love to us is sending His only Son to the earth to teach us
about love sent from heaven and to be a sacrifice for all our sins.”
Buddy
tapped his forehead saying, “But it’s not enough just to know
about God’s only Son and sacrifice on the cross.” Then tapping
his chest he told the boys and girls, “We need to ask Him to come
into our heart so He can become our Lord and Master. If any of you
would like to know more about becoming saved the Bible way, let me
know soon.”
Zeb
said, “For those of you who don’t have a Bible at home, I suggest
that you take a few minutes after the meeting and read all of chapter
22 of Numbers. Now let’s see… where is the book of Numbers?” A
couple girls said, “It’s the 4th book of the Bible.”
They got a thumbs-up from Buddy.
