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Free PowerPoint: Lesson #12 – God’s Timetable, pt. 6

“Stars Shine at Night”

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We recommend the following music to go with your lesson time together:

We recommend the following music to go with your lesson time together:

1) “Our God”

2) “Rejoice with Exceeding Great Joy”

3) “How Great is Our God“

4) “Here I Am Lord” (perfect for the altar call to service & ministry.)

God bless your time together.

See the rest of this series…

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Lesson 12 Transcript:

Hi everybody, remember this picture? God is looking at His timetable.

Remember that time itself is entirely in God’s control.

God’s Timetable Pt. 5

We learned that “In the beginning” means not only the beginning of time, but also the beginning of God’s plan to save mankind.

It as also the beginning of God’s plan to glorify God’s Son Jesus

Today, as we continue to talk about God’s Timetable…

This is part 5, entitled “Wise Men Still Fear Him”

But first… Seamas, tell the folks how “Just Five More Questions works.”

We learned that Jesus was born late in history, but right on time.

The Heavenly Timetable is carefully planned :

While Daniel was in prayer, the angel Gabriel came to tell Him exactly when the Messiah King Jesus would come.

It all happened exactly as the angel said it would.

After the king of Persia gave the order to restore the Temple of the Lord, the work took 49 years to complete… just as the angel told Daniel.

Then (as the angel had said) 434 years later, Jesus (The Messiah King) rode into Jerusalem on His way to be crucified.

Is it any wonder that people (who studied the scriptures) were expecting Him to come at the time he did?

As the Angel said, the promised One would be killed, and Jerusalem would fall shortly afterà And in 70 AD it did!

The angel prophesied 483 years from the Medo-Persian king’s decree to commence rebuilding the temple until Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem.

So, we see Jesus was born exactly on time.

An amazing event in the night sky would mark the exact moment à that the second-hand on God’s clock would tick and begin the life of Christ as a man.

At that second, a special star would appear that would either be a blessing to the wise at heart or a warning to a world full of arrogant, rebellious souls.

This star appeared over Bethlehem in Israel and signaled to the whole world that The Great King of the Universe has been born.

It appeared over Israel the very moment Jesus was born and was a heavenly sign of both His birth and His great importance.

The Star of Bethlehem would be a signal to Israel and to the world that the promised “Lion of Judah” was finally born.

This would be a powerful King that would rule the whole world.

Let’s Review Jacob’s prophecy over his son Judah.

This Lion that comes from the tribe of Judah will be worshipped by His brothers (the Israelites).

AND (very importantly) He will stand on the necks of all His enemies.

We talked about the lion, today we are going to talk about the Star.

It speaks of a King who is coming and who is to be greatly feared and revered.

The Old Testament Prophets have been speaking of His coming for centuries:

The prophet Isaiah of the Old Testament calls Jesus a Great Light who Will come:

Then, as if to say, “And now, here He is…,” Matthew repeats Isaiah’s prophecy, but with one big difference.

Isaiah spoke in future tense (He will come) and Matthew speaks in the past tense (it has come) because it has already happened at the birth of Jesus Christ.

Then, around 450 years later, a man named Balaam also prophesied about a coming king.

Then, in another 1300 years, Magi from the  East, believing these old prophecies, traveled to Israel to see and pay homage as well as tribute to this King. 

Let’s look at who Balaam was.

He was not a righteous man

He was a very famous magician, seer, clairvoyant, astrologer, psychic, mystic (whatever you want to call it). 

He is believed to be an ancient father of all such practices.

These are demonic practices which we refer to today as Eastern religion.

It is the concept of wielding spiritual power without the Holy Spirit.

The false religions of this area of the world produced their own version of “prophets” or “wise men” (anyone they thought had psychic or fortune-telling powers). These people (which they called Magi) were held in very high esteem

They had the ear of the King and were very famous.

They were part of the king’s court as his advisors and were considered second only to him in power.

We’re going to look at some prophecies about the promised Messiah King—Jesus.

But first, we need to understand a little history.

Balaam was a man from Mesopotamia.

This area was later known as Assyria.

It was far from Israel.

To the Israelites, it was “The East”

After Israel was established in their land, the Assyrians came and attacked the Northern part of Israel and whoever they didn’t kill, they took back to Assyria as their captives.

Then the Babylonians conquered the Assyrians and went down and captured the Southern half of Israel.

At this time, one of their captives was a boy named Daniel.

Then the Medes & Persians conquered the Babylonians.

When this happened, Daniel then became the captive of the Medo-Persians.

Today this area is divided again into the countries of Syria, Iraq & Iran.

From the beginning of history, this area has been inhabited by nations that hate Israel and have tried to destroy it.

Near the beginning of human history, this is the general area where the Tower of Babel was built, and people tried to substitute God with their own religion.

It is also the area from which God called out Abraham and sent him on a quest to find the promised land.

Balaam is thought to be an early magi, or a forefather of the magi group that later came to see the Christ.

Magi is the word from which we get the modern word, “magician.”

Balaam was the most famous and respected soothsayer, of his time.

Even King Balak, in far away Moab heard of Balaam’s so-called “psychic,” “fortune-telling” abilities.

Balak had heard that the children of Israel, who had been wandering through the wilderness, were about to wander over his way.

He was afraid because he knew God was with them in battle.

So, he sent a group of representatives to travel North-East to Balaam’s town and persuade him to come and put a curse on Israel.

Balak (king of Moab) sent his ambassadors to bring Balaam to Moab (approx.

500 miles).

So, they went all the way back to tell King Balak that Balaam won’t come.

So, King Balak told them to go all the way back and offer to make Balaam a very rich man.

This is a case of an unlikely prophet helping an ungodly country.

How can an ungodly man be the voice of God…?

No problem, God showed us, even in this story that even a tired, stick-beaten, road-weary donkey can speak for God (if God wills it).

The donkey warned Balaam of the fierce angel blocking their path.

The angel reminded Balaam to only speak the Lord’s words.

Balaam went three times to curse Israel, but God would only let him bless them.

Sadly, later, after not being permitted by God to curse the Israelites, Balaam gave Balak an alternative way to defeat them.

He told the king of Moab to simply tempt the Israelite men with Moabite women and food offered to idols.

They were not allowed to do either and soon fell into sin.

He told Balak that this would make them vulnerable.

We read in the book of Revelation, even churches today are played with this.

The third time God used Balaam to bless Israel and to prophecy a continuation of Jacob’s earlier blessing over Judah.

He spoke of a special star and continued the theme of the Lion of Judah.

It is a prophecy about a coming King who is to be greatly feared by the enemies of Israel, by all nations, and by every man…

We see that the bible clearly tells us Balaam did not use any of his usual magic, clairvoyant, psychic garbage.

Now, we will see that when God sets His face to look upon Israel, it always in love!

He speaks of them (whether judging of blessing) with such loving tenderness.

We see will see this in both in Jesus and wicked Balaam (because the Holy Ghost came over him.)

First, listen to Jesus as He looks upon Israel in this next verse.

Now, let’s listen to Balaam as he looks upon Israel and prophesies over it.

You can hear that same tender-hearted love in his voice.

This is an ancient prophecy, yet it endured time and influenced the world for centuries.

In 1967, on an archeological dig in what now is called Jordan (but used to be called Moab), they found fragments of a letter written in plaster.

In bold letters it, (very specially) read, “The prophet, Balaam, son of Beor.” 

Could this have been the header on a letter the ambassadors of Balak carried to Balaam?

In 1946 and 1956 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a cave in what is now known as The West Bank.

In them, Balaam’s prophecies are discussed repeatedly with varying views of how to interpret them.

Surely, Balaam taught his peers that a great King would be born to a tribe of the Jews.

He told them to look to the heavens to find that “new star” that would lead them to where the Christ would be born.

This understanding remained with the Magi community for 1300 years until the wonderous star actually did appear.

Remember, Balaam lived in Assyria, which was conquered by Babylon.

The Babylonians conquered Southern Israel and took a boy named Daniel captive.

Later, when the Medes & Persians defeated Babylon, Daniel ended up in their custody.

Now God has a righteous boy living in the midst of Israel’s enemy.

With this boy in this key position, God was preparing the world outside of Israel to expect this Great coming King.

The king of Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar) was so impressed with Daniel, he made him a ruler under him and put him in charge of all the magi in the Babylonian Empire!

Daniel would have taught them that their occult practices were evil.

He would also have re-enforced the truths in Balaam’s prophecy about the Jewish King.

And he would have told them about his own visit with the angel Gabriel who told him there were to be only 434 years from the time work started on rebuilding the Temple to the birth of this fearsome king.

They could easily count the days while they kept watch for the signal star.

It was a star that would announce that from the Jewish tribe of Judah, a Lion of a king would be born who will destroy alls the enemies of Israel and rule the world.

We can imagine…

How these important men of the Kings court, these practitioners of the occult, these historic enemies of God’s chosen people must have felt as they counted the years, months and days till the birth of this prophesied Lion King…

The lion of Judah…

This destroyer of the Lord’s enemies!

Yes, and we can imagine…

How they felt as they watched the sky for that, tick of the clock, that would say ‘it has begun… He is born.’

The appearing of His star said it all.

Yet, as fearful as the lion is, as surely as He is the Lord who is worthy to righteously judge all sin, let’s go back to the book of Revelation when the judgement seals needed to be opened.

Notice who steps up when the call goes out for the worthy Lion of Judah…

Lion of Judah is called for, the one who is worthy to open the seven judgement seals.

But notice who is the one who actually steps up:

So, we see, the Lion of Judah and the slain Lamb of God are both actually Jesus.

He is the only one worthy to judge sin, but He chose to take our sin upon Himself and let all of the judgement for our sins fall on Him.

For this He will be eternally praised by all creatures in Heaven and Earth.

In our next lesson we will look at the Scepter and the imposter.