We've all been hurt.
We all have scars.
And through a relationship with Jesus Christ, we can all overcome and we can all be healed.
Welcome to Healing Scars with Pastor Burton.
Hey everybody and welcome, welcome back to the sanctuary.
So today we're going to dive into the Word pretty quickly and I'm not going to say too
much about what we're studying right out the gate.
It will become very self-evident here fairly quickly.
And there's a reason for that.
We're going to walk down this path together and I don't want anyone to get ahead of themselves
with the assumption that they know where we're headed.
So for those of you who do follow along in your Bible, go ahead and open up to the book
of Numbers and we're going to go to chapter 22 and look at verses 18 through 34.
Those of you who take notes so you can refer to it later, again that's going to be Numbers
chapter 22 and we're looking at verses 18 through 34, a little bit of a large section
of scripture.
So Numbers 22, 18 through 34, picking up in verse 18, the Bible says, but Balaam answered
them, even if Balaam gave me all the silver and gold in his palace, I could not do any
thing great or small to go beyond the command of the Lord my God.
Now spend the night here so that I can figure out or 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.
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 and
a hand, it turned out 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 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.
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 down low and fell face down.
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 certainly would 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.�
So first of all, I know someone sitting out there and going, �Really?
A talking donkey?
Are you serious?
When did we start talking about Shrek?� Let me say yes and yes.
First of all, if you have ever had a pet, you know they can communicate quite well.
You walk in the door and they are excited to see you.
They want their food so they start making a ruckus or they need outsideing.
You don't have a donkey door installed, so they start pawing at the door or whining or
whatever.
It's 3 a.m. and they feel like you have had enough sleep, so they start running back and
forth across the house doing zoomies or meowing or barking or whatever, etc., etc. on and
on.
They have these ways of communicating.
You raise your hand to them and they wince.
You think about it.
You are not even raising it to hurt them.
You are just going to rub them behind the ear or something and they will kind of wince
a little bit.
If I were to walk up to you and I were to raise my hand in a fairly quick motion, you
would flinch too.
I would have flinched.
It's human nature.
We all do it.
Oh, I know, not that tough guy that is sitting out there.
Whatever.
The point is the communication is there.
Animals have a wonderful way of communicating their needs to us.
If they are not feeling well, etc., etc.
So yeah, could the donkey talk?
Absolutely.
Some things are meant to be taken literally in the Bible.
Some things metaphorically.
Beyond that, if the Lord says, hey, this donkey is going to talk, that donkey is going to
talk.
What the Lord wants, the Lord gets point blank.
One thing I want you to notice here, which makes me feel, I could be wrong, but I don't
think that this is something that we necessarily have to take in a literal sense.
It's more of the metaphorical, like our own pets talk to us.
Because I don't know about you, but if a donkey were to suddenly start talking to me, especially
if it sounded like Eddie Murphy, I'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, it's time for an
exorcism.
What's going on?
Demon be gone?
No.
This is not okay.
This is not normal.
But that's not what happened here.
It just turned into a casual conversation.
The point that I'm making here though is that even just in this travel and with what
the donkey was doing, we all set up walls and we all set up barriers in our life.
That's kind of the point of where we're headed today.
We set up walls, we set up barriers to keep people out and more importantly, to try to
protect ourselves.
Veterans, first responders, healthcare workers in particular are probably better at it than
anyone.
Let's face it, some of the things that have to be done, some of the things that have to
be seen and dealt with are just, they're horrifying.
They're horrible.
They're unfortunate, sad, they're depressing.
Those barriers start coming up.
It's human nature.
I'll give you an example just from my own life.
I'm a veteran.
I spent a lot of time overseas.
I deployed for enduring freedom.
I came home and it was not quite what I remember.
My barriers and my walls were up.
I was on alert for a while because I was uncomfortable with where I was and I wasn't quite sure how
to deal with it.
When I went out looking for a home church, I went to a few places and very rarely did
I ever make it to a full service.
I try but I just wasn't comfortable.
I finally found this church and I went in and I could see the comings and the goings.
I know where my entrances are and where my exits are.
I know what's happening around me.
It's very crowded though.
I look up and I realize there's a balcony above us and nobody sits up there ever.
So I take a little stroll.
I go up the stairs.
I go to open the door to go out on this balcony and it's locked.
So I wait.
Matter of fact, I had family there too with me and we waited.
We went and talked to the senior pastor.
Hey, is there a reason why this is locked when people don't go up there?
Is it a safety thing?
What's going on?
Explained my situation and the Lord provided.
They said, hey, yeah, if you want to sit up there, go for it if it's locked.
Go and get up with this person or that person and they'll be more than happy to unlock it
for you.
I'll let them know to expect it.
And so that's what I did.
I sat up there for years in my own little perch before I finally came down and got comfortable
again and truly started serving in the church and following my calling and listening to
what I was being called to do.
So we all set up these walls.
We all set up these barriers.
And unfortunately in the process, we spread a lot of garbage.
We're so prideful and we're so gung-ho with our stories and our tales of who we are and
where we've been, what we've done, when we did it that much like Balaam, we're blinded
by ourselves.
You heard me right.
We put the blinders on ourselves.
And to make matters worse here, when we're looking at Balaam, he had a really bad attitude
and he was greedy.
This is what angered God.
See he said he wouldn't go against God for the money, yet he was already giving into
temptation.
And because he was blinded by his own greed and his own attitudes and everything, he couldn't
see that God was there trying to stop him.
Here he is with his donkey.
The donkey sees the obstacles.
The donkey is trying to protect him.
However, Balaam's here and he's the one who's being a jackass.
Just like Balaam, when we do these things, we're being a jackass.
We know what God wants from us.
We know what God expects from us.
But we get blinded by the walls and the barriers that we build ourselves.
Sometimes, like in my case, and I know in several other people's cases, we're trying
to protect ourselves.
Other times, such as here with the Balaam, it's our own ambition that gets in the way.
We're blinded by our own goals.
Looking back at verse 27, we can see how the donkey was behaving.
And to put some perspective here, donkeys were the all-terrain vehicles of that day.
They were the SUVs.
Unlike a Ford, they were very dependable, which helps us to see why Balaam got so angry
when suddenly it wouldn't move and it's bearing off course and doing all these things.
Old reliable isn't working.
It's acting kind of funny.
What's going on here?
It's kind of like that microwave that you've had for the last 20 years that one day just
up and stops working.
And what do we do?
In the case of a microwave or a computer or a cell phone or TV or whatever, we get frustrated
and we beat on it.
It's like turn it on.
It's like do this, do that, open it, close it, whatever.
Turn it on, turn it off, unplug it, plug it back in, bang on the side, bang on the top,
bang on the front, bang on the back, very much like Balaam was doing with this poor
donkey.
Now it is frustrating.
That donkey saved Balaam's life.
He was looking out for his master.
Yet in the process of doing so, he really made Balaam look like a total idiot, a moron.
So what happened?
Balaam lashed out at the donkey.
And just like him, when we're frustrated and we're struggling with these obstacles in our
life, we tend to lash out at people that we shouldn't.
When we're embarrassed or our pride gets in the way, we allow that hurt to justify our
own actions in hurting others.
Now we may not mean for it to.
We may not mean to be hurting other people, yet when we get embarrassed or our pride gets
bruised and our ego swells, we don't pay attention to the things that we should.
Our tunnel vision gets the best of us.
We lose control of what we should.
Don't let your bruised ego allow you to hurt others.
We need to realize that when we lash out, that's the sign that something is wrong within
us.
Those of you who are parents or in positions where you take care of kids or deal with kids,
especially you'll recognize it, especially with teenagers.
They have that angst and they get quick to anger.
What do they do?
They lash out, especially at home or if it's because something's at home, maybe they're
lashing out at school or somewhere else.
And it's the same thing.
It's because something is wrong and it needs to be healed.
So don't let your hurt turn you into a jackass.
With that said, that actually brings me to my next point.
Remember earlier I said something about spreading a lot of garbage.
So let's take a look at that.
Let's turn to Deuteronomy chapter 23.
We're going to be looking at verses 12 through 14.
So in Deuteronomy 23, verses 12 through 14, the Bible says, oh, you're going to love this,
designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself as part of your
equipment, have something to dig with.
And when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement for the Lord,
your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you.
Your camp must be holy so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away
from you.
Let there be no confusion here.
God does not want to walk in our poo.
All right.
Bet you didn't know that there is a place in the Bible where it actually has instructions
for dealing with your waste.
It's just like camping or in the military where we have our straddle troughs, where we're
out doing certain field exercises or we're working in an area where the CBs or whoever
haven't been able to come out and actually install proper equipment, et cetera, et cetera.
This goes back all the way to here and even beyond that, there's always been a need to
deal with waste.
But like I said, God does not want to walk in our waste.
Just like any parent, he expects us to clean up our mess.
All right, you think about it, what's one of the big things everyone does when they
know they're going to have company over?
They clean.
They're doing dishes, they're taking out the trash, they're cleaning up after animals,
yelling at the kids, pick up your room, get the Legos off the floor.
That includes the garbage that we spread in stroking our own egos, those bits and pieces
and tidbits of pride that we just leave all over the place.
Nobody likes a messy house, not even God.
Not even God.
All right, so in Acts chapter 7 verse 33, the Bible says, then the Lord said to him,
take off your sandals for the place where you are standing is holy ground.
It's just like the study that we just did on the book of Haggai.
We need to make sure that we're taking care of the Lord's house, not just leaving our
stuff all over, just because we give him our troubles and we can take so much to him, our
pain, our weaknesses and everything, and we can leave it at his feet for him to deal with.
It doesn't mean that we have free reign to just go in and do whatever we want when we're
in his presence.
We don't have the right granted to us or the entitlement to go in and just dump all the
rest of our stuff just all over.
Absolutely not.
Where am I going with this?
Think about it.
As Christians, we're supposed to be loving, merciful to show his grace, yet we're also
the ones who can be filled with the most hate and discontent towards our fellow man.
Is that Christianly?
Is that what God wants?
No.
One minute we're out here and we're loving on one neighbor.
We're praising the Lord with them.
Then next, we're using racial slurs and other degrading behavior towards another neighbor.
Easy way to see it.
Politics.
You've got the right versus the left and all that.
That's going to be a whole other sermon for another day.
Another good example here is it's been over a century now since World War I and we're
just shy of a century since World War II, yet the slurs that were used then are still
used to put down people in those countries out of pure ignorance at best.
People that we're not in conflict with, people who are allies just from a purely political
standpoint, but then secondly, our fellow man, but we're still using these terms to
describe people in various countries.
That's the same for every conflict, even coming up to our most recent conflicts.
You think about Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the terms used and
the lenses that are used to look at people in these countries.
They're twisted.
They're poisoned.
They're very much in a bad place.
Instead of sharing God's love and mercy and exuding his light for the people here that
need it the most, these people are being shunned like lepers, unclean, unclean.
Does that sound familiar?
It should, yet the example that Jesus gave was totally different than how people are
acting today and the way people are reaching out today.
What did Jesus do?
He walked among people.
He went out among the lepers, among the sinners.
Put a little perspective here, especially current day, because when it comes to these
things one of the biggest issues that we see out there that you hear in TV and video games
and every other form of entertainment is putting down Muslims.
Muslims and other people, they convert to Christianity every single year.
Imagine how many more people would be brought into a relationship with Jesus if they weren't
continually marginalized, pushed to the side, degraded, and treated poorly by Christians.
In Matthew 18 verses 21 through 22 the Bible says, Then Peter came to Jesus and asked,
Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?
Up to seven times?
And Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Depending on your translation that might even say seventy times seven.
But the point is, oftentimes we make up these excuses to try to villainize these other people,
to take away from their humanity.
It's like World War II, the Japanese attacked us, but we dropped the bomb, we won, ha ha
ha.
Coming all the way through, 9-11, they attacked us and gets used to justify treating everyone
like crud.
Not just the people that we were at conflict with, but as a whole, as an entire country.
And those who have been there, they could tell you there are really good people there
who are victims of where they live.
They're victimized daily.
You can turn on the news or research it and you'll see it very clearly.
We have interpreters there that we worked with and other people with various jobs and
everything.
They're our absolute wonderful people.
They're great people that need to be shown the love of Jesus.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, your action and your inaction can save or
turn away somebody.
A lot of people will see all that they will ever know is what they see in us and how we
treat them and how we treat others.
Just as much as people want to build this stuff up and be like, oh well it's their fault.
Hey, you know what?
You're going to grow an adult.
You're not a toddler anymore.
It's time to put away childish things and just, you know, we need to be just.
We need to forgive unconditionally.
As Jesus said, don't even keep count.
Just forgive.
Excuse me.
Just forgive.
Plain and simple.
No ifs, ands or buts about it.
You know, and part of that in doing so just as we forgive others, we need to forgive ourselves.
That is another huge barrier that many need to overcome is to forgive yourself.
See we want others to forgive us.
We want everyone to forgive us.
We even want God to forgive us.
But we won't even forgive ourselves.
We're our own worst enemy.
We're our own worst critic.
Even worse, we pass judgment on ourselves that we shouldn't and we cling to it like
it's this, you know, biblical truth even though it's not.
We cling to this when we should be letting it go.
You know, if you turn to Romans chapter 8.
We're going to look specifically at verses 1 through 2 here.
Romans 8 verses 1 and 2 the Bible says, Therefore there is now no condemnation for those of you
who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life
has set you free from the law of sin and death.
Free!
Now you know the moment you fully accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, the verdict for your
life it changes from guilty to not guilty.
See and the Holy Spirit is with us and helps us in our daily life and our daily walk as
Christians.
You see we're free.
The Bible tells us we're free.
We're not paroled.
We're not on probation.
We are free.
The chains are broken.
Jesus is the chain breaker.
You know, and the Bible tells us in John 8 verse 36.
So John chapter 8 verse 36 the Bible says, So if the Son sets you free, you will be free
indeed.
When the Father says you're forgiven, you are forgiven.
End of story.
Forgiven!
Not just for your current state.
You're free from all the sins of your past.
We all know that we sin.
We all know that we fall short.
None of us is perfect.
There has only been one perfect person and that was Jesus.
That is Jesus.
We all fall short.
So when we go and we accept Jesus and He sets us free and says you're free, that's the end
of it.
There's no more debate.
It's done.
See, we all need to stop getting hung up on ourselves.
Jesus already told us the way and it's through Him.
We can't reach Him when we're blinded by our own mess.
We need to stop creating barriers and building these walls that we can't see through, we
can't see around, and we can't see over, let alone climb over, walk through, or get around.
Instead we need to listen to that faithful donkey that's trying to save us.
And in our lives that's the Holy Spirit.
It's convicting us and telling us, hey, don't do that.
You're better than this.
We need to stop being the jackass.
Thank you for tuning in to Healing Scars with Pastor Burton.
If you'd like to know more about our ministry, you can find us on Facebook at Be the Light
Sanctuary or you can visit our website at BeTheLightSanctuary.org.
Thank you so much for listening.
We'll catch you next time.
God bless.