Guest Speaker.

Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you that you have beaten me these three times?” And Balaam said to the donkey, “You have made me look stupid; I wish there were a sword in my hand, for I would kill you right now.” The donkey said to Balaam, “Am not I your donkey that you have ridden ever since I was yours until this day? Have I ever attempted to treat you this way?” And he said, “No.” Then the Lord opened Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with his sword drawn in his hand; so he bowed his head and threw himself down with his face to the ground. The angel of the Lord said to him, “Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? Look, I came out to oppose you because what you are doing is perverse before me. The donkey saw me and turned from me these three times. If she had not turned from me, I would have killed you but saved her alive.” (Numbers 22:28-33)

People who are bent on sinning say, and do, odd things. In Numbers 22 we have a peculiar case study: Balaam (the prophetic man who makes his living appealing to God) is blind to the presence of God, while Balaam’s lowly donkey is able to both see God and speak prophetically.

The donkey, who in this passage is beaten several times and ridiculed, remains steadfast in her determination to not cross the path of the angel of the LORD. She endures the beatings and chooses to disobey direct orders from Balaam because she is conscious of a higher authority.

Balaam has a sad defense for his actions. When the donkey, empowered by God to speak, asks Balaam why he has beaten her, Balaam replies: “You made me look stupid.” Balaam seems to be more concerned with his appearance before his servants than his obedience to God.

When our Lord opens Balaam’s eyes, two things occur: the Lord commends the donkey, and the Lord says something incredible to Balaam. “The donkey saw me and turned from me these three times. If she had not turned from me, I would have killed you but saved her alive.” In other words, the prophetic man of God owes his life to a lowly donkey.

There are three good lessons for us in today's reflection. First, there are plenty of modern-day Balaams who doggedly pursue disobedience, and who chase after wrongdoing. The Lord Himself stands in opposition to those who seek to act against the will of God. God has no problem defending Himself.

Second, though, the Lord did not prevent Balaam’s donkey from being beaten and yelled at. The donkey’s steadfast obedience in the face of suffering is also a good lesson for us today. We, like her, can say: I see my caretaker pursuing the wrong thing, and I see that the hand of God is against him. So I will not participate in nor support his attempts to cross against the hand of the Lord. If it means I am ridiculed, or even beaten, then so be it.

Third, the mercy of God in this passage is another good lesson. Even though Balaam held the position and the authority, God spared him because of the obedience of the donkey. What an encouragement for those of us who have no authority, but are praying earnestly for the men and women who do. We can ask God to step in, to open blind eyes, to speak words of correction, and to turn modern-day Balaams back to the path of righteousness and obedience.

“Look, I came out to oppose you because what you are doing is perverse before me. The donkey saw me and turned from me these three times.” Oh Lord, thank You for using lowly donkeys to rescue lofty souls.

" Per Mission" Slip.

In yesterday’s sermon, Pastor Sam spoke on the story of Balaam (found primarily in Numbers chapters 22 through 25). Balaam was a curious figure in Scripture. He was a prophetic man who knew how to offer sacrifices and how to petition the LORD, but Balaam was also a man who considered the voice of man above the voice of God. Further, Balaam’s “worship” of God was actually a form of sorcery, a means of attempting to bribe God into executing the desire of man.

Sadly, the spirit of Balaam is alive and well to this day. Are we personally indicted in this matter? Are our petitions to God actually attempts to move God into doing our will?

 

There is a sentence we say in the Lord’s Prayer: “May Your kingdom come; may Your will be done on earth at it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) If our worship is not filled with adoration of our Christ and a longing for the evidences of the desires of God being manifested in the earth, then we are actually operating against Him. Self-serving worship is an action no Christian should be found engaging.

 

Balaam, instead of seeking to execute the will of God, sought to use many sacrifices and offerings in an attempt to “get permission” to curse Israel, even though he knew such action was against the will of God. If you are doing, or seeking to do, things that you know go against the will of God, now is the time to repent and stop fighting against God.

 

For today, let us reflect on a few questions:

 

• The kingdom of God is described as “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Is my life submitted to the Holy Spirit?
• When people see me, do they see a life of holiness, a life of peace, and a life of joy?
• When God looks at my heart, what motives does He see behind my external acts of worship?

Whose mission are you busily executing?

An Open Letter To An Open Letter From An Open Letter.

"It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them" (Second Peter 2:21).

My friend, I wish you would have chosen the way of righteousness. Your life is an open letter being read by all who interact with you. And they are seeing you. They know you as one who engages in a form of worship, but like Ezekiel they see you worshiping idols in the dark corners and the back rooms. They know you serve God and mammon; they know you pretend to serve God but you really are just serving yourself. That's why they aren't taking you seriously- it's because you aren't serious about serving God.

Guess what? I'm wide awake. And I am not giving in to sexual immorality, I am not giving in to idolatry, I am not engaging in indulgences. You will never corrupt me because I have completely given myself over to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. He teaches me to say no, and to keep saying no, to ungodliness and worldly passions. I am living soberly and righteously and godly- today, tomorrow, always. Guess what? People are seeing me too- yes, my life is an open letter. They know me as one who engages in true worship, walking in the light of Christ Jesus. And I am not leaving Him. I love Him too much.

Your heart is hard and you have refused to listen... so, as God told Balaam, as the angel of the LORD told Balaam, "Go". Go ahead, stand on every high place and open your mouth to try to curse the plan and program of God. Your idol sacrifices are of no avail. Your thievery is of no avail. The One True God has spoken blessing: your incantations over images and your slaughtering of animals are a waste of time. Your attempts at curses will fail, and blessings will be poured out on the faithful. Every time you open your mouth you will cause blessings to flood the households of the servants of God. That is what God does for His sons.

I have nothing in my hands: no status, no legacy, nothing upon which to stake a claim. But I do have something in my ears: the glorious word of God. I hear Him speaking and I say Yes; Yes, God, I will do as You say. And He says SOON- soon it will be over.

You do have hope, because the LORD is still sending warnings. But God help you when the prophetic warnings stop. Repent while you still have the chance. You detest me, but I love you. Don't stay in the error of Balaam.

24,001... 24,002...

God really does not like it when we worship anything or anyone other than Him. He likens it to the act of having sexual relations with someone who is not your spouse. The prophet Ezekiel had a vision of idolatry occuring within the temple of God, where His Spirit left the sanctuary because of the elders who worshipped false idols in dark areas of the temple (see Ezekiel 8). The opening chapters of Jeremiah use the analogy of the LORD as a husband to Israel, the bride who forsakes God and is described as "laying down like a prostitute" on every hill and under every tree (see Jeremiah chapters 2 through 5).

This allusion to sex is not just metaphorical, because the Scripture shows us that sex was in fact part of the system of idol worship. The worship of Baal in Peor was characterized by three things: the eating of foods that were sacrificed to idols, the worship of those idols, and sexual intercourse with the women of Moab who invited the men of Israel to participate in idol worship (Numbers 25:1-3).

Though we are not given Balaam's name in the early verses of Numbers 25, there are other Scriptures that reveal Balaam's role in causing Israel to commit sexual immorality and spiritual adultery.

Balaam's error is exposed in the words of the resurrected Christ as He addresses the church in Pergamum: "Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality" (Revelation 2:14, italics mine). The risen Christ, our Lord and King, has faulted Balaam. The way of Balaam is the way that leads to death. It is the way that will place you in the position of being fought against by the One who has the sword (Revelation 2:12, 2:16).

In Numbers 31 we read Moses' testimony: "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people" (Numbers 31:16). The response to this idolatry and immorality was to immediately remove it from the community. That removal, as recorded in Numbers 25, came in two forms:

Death by the sword.
Death by plague.

"So Moses said to Israel's judges, 'Each of you must put to death those of your men who have joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor.' Then an Israelite man brought to his family a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping... When Phineas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand and followed the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear through both of them- through the Israelite and into the woman's body. Then the plague against Israel was stopped; but those who died in the plague numbered 24,000... the LORD said to Moses, 'Treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them, because they treated you as enemies when they deceived you in the affair of Peor..." (see Numbers 25:5-18).

Well, that was then. This is now. And God still hates idolatry and immorality.

If a modern-day Eleazar were to follow you home, who would he find you embracing?

Prophets and Profits

The story of Balaam, as we see in Scripture and as we heard in Sunday's sermon, is not confined to the book of Numbers. It is referenced in Second Peter chapter 2, and in the letter to the church in Pergamum found in Revelation chapter 2. And there is a warning to be heeded. So, let's consider this question: if a man has been made aware of God's desire, why would he speak a word that is in opposition to the desire of God?

In Balaam's case, it appears that he was offered temporal incentives that were enticing enough to cause him to oppose a series of spiritual directives and warnings.

If you have a Bible that has maps in the back, check out the distance from the region of Moab, Balak's kingdom, to the region of Mesopotamia along the Euphrates River, where Balaam was. It's about 250-300 miles. Balaam must have had quite a reputation for Balak to send two sets of messengers, and money, to petition Balaam to travel from Mesopotamia to Moab.

And Balaam made the journey. He made the journey in spite of having received a direct warning from the mouth of God (Numbers 22:12). Made the journey in spite of what I like to call the "glossolalic" protest from his own donkey (Numbers 22:28-30). Made the journey in spite of having a direct encounter with 'the angel of the LORD' holding a drawn sword (Numbers 22:31-35... and, I hope you see the connection to Revelation 2:12-16!).

As Pastor Benji noted, there are some that are so bound in the grip of sin that they will remain on the reckless path in opposition to God (see Numbers 22:32). And Balaam lost on several fronts. He lost the ability to curse: when he opened his mouth, God filled it with words of blessing upon Israel. He lost the wealth of Balak, who refused to pay him after the pronouncements of blessing spoken over the children of God. And, for his part in opposing the mandate of God, Balaam was killed- not on the road by the angel of the LORD, but in a war later conducted between the Israelites and the Midianites.

Now, this is interesting, because Scripture tells us that after the failure to curse Israel, Balaam went back home- that 250-300 mile journey north to Mesopotamia, if the biblical scholars are on target. But the war was conducted in the areas of Moab and Midian (which is even further south than Moab)... Why was Balaam there? I think his return to Moab is connected to his success in creating a sexually immoral and spiritually adulterous environment that led to the deaths of 24,000 Israelites. We'll explore that a little bit more tomorrow.

In A Word, thanatos.

Balaam answered the donkey, "You have made a fool of me! If I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now." (Numbers 22:29, italics mine)

Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba- the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. (Numbers 31:8, italics mine)

There was a song I learned in Sunday school when I was three or four years old:

"Oh be careful, little mouth, what you say..."

Balaam, in his zeal to pursue sinful behavior, spoke a word of 'death by the sword' to the donkey he was riding. And I believe it was not simply ironic that Balaam died the way he did: I believe it was a divine response to Balaam's error- the error of wrong thoughts, murderous thoughts, thoughts of prospering at the expense of the suffering of an entire nation, wrong thoughts of endeavoring to curse what God has blessed.

The promise of God to Abram still speaks: "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse" (see Genesis 12:1-3).

How is it that a man, aware of the program and plan of God, still chose to seek to curse the nation that held God's favor? We'll reflect on this question tomorrow.

Balaam, Balak, and Bronx Bethany.

This past Sunday we were blessed to experience a powerful prophetic sermon from Pastor Benji, which was underlined by an equally powerful prophetic prayer from Pastor Sam during the second service. I am so grateful to God for these two men of faith and integrity who walk in obedience to Him, who weep over the waywardness of the sheep in their care, and who long to see the will of God manifested in Bronx Bethany. My brothers, He loves you so!

"The error of Balaam"- it's a term we've heard before, and the sermon dug deep into the specific behaviors and motives behind Balaam's error. For the remainder of this week we'll hold a magnifying glass to the sermon and reflect on a few of the insights that were shared by Pastor Benji.

As a reminder for some, and as a starting point for those readers who missed the sermon, here is a rough outline:

"Come Under The Covering Of God's Blessings"

-Blessings promised to individuals: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob
-Blessings promised to the nation of Israel (conditional, based on their obedience to God)
-The proposal to curse what God had blessed (Balak and Balaam)
-The plan to corrupt the people of God

I'd recommend that you read (or re-read) Numbers chapters 22 through 24, and Second Peter chapter 2, which are critical to the unpacking of this sermon. Tomorrow we'll take a closer look at one point that got a tiny mention in the sermon: the death of Balaam.