“A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel…”

The situation was really pretty pathetic.  A pagan king scurries to pay good money to a pagan soothsayer to curse God’s people before he and his people get trounced.  And the outcome is huge.  If the children of Israel get into the Promised Land, then the ‘balance of power’ there will forever be disrupted.  Here comes Israel, so there goes King Balak, seeking to put enough financial incentives out to Balaam to pronounce Israel cursed.  But what chance does a man’s word have against God’s word?  Rational thinking doesn’t hold up for long in a pagan framework.

Enter God, stage right, in our drama.  Not only does he forbid Balaam to curse Israel, he also tells him to speak only what he says to the seer, which is blessing, not cursing.  This naturally enrages Balak, who increasingly sees his opportunities gradually slipping away.  Witness again the power of God: forbidding a false prophet to speak evil as well as issuing true prophecies.  Don’t ever be concerned about who’s ultimately in charge.  One such prophetic utterance is found in Numbers 24:17, where he describes the Messiah as “a star” and a “scepter.”  We focus on the latter description today.

A scepter is one of those royal accoutrements that goes along with a crown, a throne, a robe, a palace, etc.  Among all these symbols, it may be the most important.  A palace represents personal splendor, a robe the dynastic heirloom, a throne the position of authority, a crown the symbol of power.  But the scepter not only captures the essence of all of these, it is the only one that was personally held in the hand of the king as he made important decisions and decrees.

This distinction is important when we trace the word scepter throughout Scripture and connect the dots.  It is first mentioned when Jacob blesses his sons shortly before he dies.  “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,” Genesis 49:10 says.  It was the first prediction of which tribe the Messiah will come from.  Then we come to our text in Numbers, where Balaam’s prophecy falls in line with already revealed messianic disclosures.  His addition of the “star” drives the knowledgeable person to the star of Bethlehem (Matthew 2:2), a clear link to the Messiah.

Later in time we come to another dot, found in Israel’s songbook where in Psalm 45 we have a wedding song of a king.  Since this was an Israeli king who is to enforce justice, keep God’s laws and, as the ultimate earthly political authority, be godlike to the people, the writer says in verse 6, “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.”  In other words, the policies of the kingdom would be a picture of God and obviously what Israel should imitate.  He called them to be “a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6) with holy leaders.  The scepter was the one symbol of God’s righteousness, held by the king as he made decrees and proclamations that were to be righteous and just.  This is totally befitting the Lord Jesus, described as a scepter, held in God’s hand as his symbol, standard and epitome of righteousness.  This is precisely what the writer of Hebrews has in mind when he quotes this verse in chapter one verse eight.  There is only one God and one scepter that represents his majesty, glory, power, authority and righteousness.

Now for the last dot, and for that we go to the book of Esther, the only book in the Bible where God is never mentioned but clearly seen through his providence.  The Jews were looking at a certain death sentence from Haman’s machinations.  Queen Esther, unknown by anyone except her family to be a Jewess, must approach her husband-king and make an appeal for her people.  In 4:11 she describes the power of the scepter: “…for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being summoned the king has but one law: that he be put to death.  The only exception to this is for the king to extend the gold scepter to him and spare his life.”  Now the connection.  God, the king, holds his golden scepter, Jesus, who represents full and complete righteousness, out to the world.  All who embrace this righteous scepter may approach the king in his inner court!  With the scepter there is life and access; without it, death.  For those in his family, God continually and eternally holds his scepter out to us!

God holds his scepter out to you today.  When was the last time you met him in his inner court?