Balaam, Who Took God’s Name in Vain (2)
22The children of Israel also killed Balaam the son of Beor, the soothsayer, with the sword, among the rest of their slain.
Numbers 22:28-35
28Yahweh opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?” 29Balaam said to the donkey, “Because you have mocked me, I wish there were a sword in my hand, for now I would have killed you.” 30The donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your donkey, on which you have ridden all your life long until today? Was I ever in the habit of doing so to you?” He said, “No.” 31Then Yahweh opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw Yahweh’s angel standing in the way, with his sword drawn in his hand; and he bowed his head, and fell on his face. 32Yahweh’s angel said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out as an adversary, because your way is perverse before me. 33The donkey saw me, and turned away before me these three times. Unless she had turned away from me, surely now I would have killed you, and saved her alive.” 34Balaam said to Yahweh’s angel, “I have sinned; for I didn’t know that you stood in the way against me. Now therefore, if it displeases you, I will go back again.” 35Yahweh’s angel said to Balaam, “Go with the men; but only the word that I shall speak to you, that you shall speak.” So Balaam went with the princes of Balak.
This is the second sermon on Balaam. In Proverbs 9 we find a warning to beware, because a scoffer who is corrected will hate the one who corrects them. It is also written there that the wise will love the one who rebukes them. Instruct a wise person, and they will take the instruction to heart and grow wiser still; teach a righteous person, and knowledge will be added to their righteousness and they will become wiser yet.
Because the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding, a person who is spiritually dark and proud cannot accept instruction but grows angry instead, and the relationship cools. Counsel given to a fellow believer is meant only to help them live well with wisdom and understanding, but it sounds to them as if someone were pointing out that they are wrong, and so they take offense.
Yet refusing counsel does a person great harm, because those who cannot see themselves objectively make mistakes. If we can gain wisdom and understanding through the counsel of our brothers and sisters in faith and walk the right path, there could be no greater benefit. Someone who wisely accepts counsel even when it is hard to hear, and makes that wisdom their own, can live a far broader life and receive great grace from God. Those who will not let go of their own ideas and resent spiritual counsel are small-minded and foolish, and they will find it hard to grow.
If you open your heart and your ears when you are counseled, and seek God’s will, God will answer with wondrous grace. People can only find out whether their own thinking is right or wrong by trying what they have been counseled to do, and yet they close their hearts at once. The one who gives counsel speaks with a heart that fears the other may take it wrongly and stumble, and longs for them to receive it well and be blessed, and that is what makes counseling so hard. If you accept counsel and mature in faith, every blessing that comes from God belongs to you who accepted it. Material blessing, blessing on your children, good health, a blessed future — all of it is enjoyed by the one who received the counsel, not claimed by the one who gave it.
When your pastor visits you, it may look as though they have simply dropped by your home, but they have prepared with all their heart in prayer over what word to bring so that you will open your heart and be blessed. It is their earnest longing for that household to serve God well and be blessed that makes them take a close interest and pray deeply. Every household, of course, will be trying to live according to God’s will. But preaching the word is never easy, since the pastor must preach not so much to praise as to point out the shortcomings people are unaware of. In the end, it is the heart that hears words of counsel with thanksgiving and turns back that will be blessed.
God blocked Balaam’s wrong choice and urged him again and again to turn back. Yet Balaam, though he had heard God’s voice directly and knew what God wanted, did not obey, and for that he was killed by Israel. Had Balaam listened to God’s word and turned back, God would have given him boundless blessing, and later generations would have remembered him as a man who judged wisely and acted with resolve. Our future changes according to what we decide when we are counseled.
But although God commanded Balaam not to go to the place where he would curse Israel, he refused to bend his will, and judgment followed. In the end, when God told Balaam to go — Balaam, who kept on praying after God had refused — it was not permission but a rebuke: God was removing the fence that had protected him. When he first prayed and God told him not to go, Balaam should have obeyed that word. But when Balaam would not bend and kept praying the same prayer, God’s telling him to go was not an answer but God leaving his evil nature as it was. It is like the heart of a parent who has prepared something good for their child, only to have the child throw a tantrum demanding something worthless. Reluctantly, the parent gives the child what they want, grieving that they cannot give the good thing they had prepared.
From the time the people of Israel left Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and came into the wilderness, they complained constantly, yet God, even in his anger, preserved their lives. The Israelites kept on sinning, but because they always had the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire protecting them, they did not realize how great their sin was. When they complained that there was no water, God gave them water; when they complained that there was no food, he gave them manna. So they assumed God would take them into Canaan. This was because they believed they were heading for Canaan not by their own wish but because God wanted it. God did not abandon them in their grumbling but brought them all the way to the plains of Moab because he was giving them every chance, to the very end, to be saved.
But when they persisted in complaining, God did not allow them to enter Canaan. So those who actually entered Canaan were not the ones who had seen the miracles of the exodus and the Red Sea, but the new generation, their children twenty and under. Yet seeing Joshua and Caleb among those who entered Canaan, we know that those who believed God’s promise without doubting were blessed to enter Canaan regardless of their age.
Today believers do not rely on God. They complain every day that life is hard, and they rage, asking why they should suffer more than others. Yet God has been solving their problems and blessing them all along so that they can come to church, worship, and serve. They simply have not sensed how much greater God’s grace is, because they are looking only at themselves. God knows the hearts of people who complain and try to use him, and still he answers them, so that they may taste the joy of answered prayer and turn back.
If, after being blessed, someone still refuses to turn back to the end, God uses the fruit of their service to build up the church, but that person has no fruit to receive. I hope you will think carefully about whether the way you give yourself now springs from faith or from worldly greed. If you obey with humility and honesty, God will help you in every way so that you can serve him even more faithfully.
To human eyes, what Balaam says and does will look good. But to go to King Balak, who wants Israel cursed, while declaring that he will speak only the word God gives him, is nothing less than using God to satisfy his own greed. When Balaam asks again whether he may go to King Balak and God tells him to go, what is in God’s heart is this: Balaam is going because he cannot resist the riches Balak offers, but God will use that very heart of his to proclaim to all nations who Israel is, and what kind of God protects them. God works even through people’s wickedness, greed, and folly. So however wisely Balaam may think he has acted, God will protect Israel through his wickedness.
Numbers 22:23
23The donkey saw Yahweh’s angel standing in the way, with his sword drawn in his hand; and the donkey turned out of the path, and went into the field. Balaam struck the donkey, to turn her into the path.
Balaam saddled his donkey and set out with the princes of Moab. Suddenly the donkey, as if startled, turned off the road and went into a field. Flustered, Balaam beat the donkey to bring her back, but she went into a narrow lane with a wall on either side and could go no farther. Balaam, gripped by greed, could not see Yahweh’s angel standing with a drawn sword, but the donkey could see him. Not knowing that the donkey had gone into the field because she could not go on toward the angel, Balaam kept beating her, until in her pain she crushed his foot against the wall. Balaam is going confidently to King Balak with God’s permission, so he is furious that the donkey is holding him up.
Yahweh opened the mouth of the donkey, trapped in the narrow path with nowhere to go. Speaking like a person, she asked Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you strike me like this three times?” and “I have carried you all your life; when have I ever done such a thing?” Balaam shouted at the donkey, “You have defied me; if I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now.”
What a comical scene is unfolding here! If a donkey spoke to Balaam, he ought to have fainted in astonishment. But Balaam, his heart stolen by riches, is in such a hurry that he does not even notice that his donkey is talking. Just as Balaam does not understand even when his donkey opens her mouth and mocks him, so when believers go the way of the world, they have no ears to hear however much worldly people mock them, and they do not even realize it is mockery. Since King Balak sought out Balaam, Balaam’s wisdom must have been remarkable. Yet with all that wisdom, even as his donkey speaks, he does not take it as a chance to turn back, but carries on a conversation with her. God is now opening the mouth of an animal to give Balaam one more chance to repent, but because of his greed Balaam’s conscience has been seared, and he cannot even recognize that grace.
The donkey saw Yahweh’s angel with her own eyes. Even the donkey, a mere animal, sees that God, who loves his people, is blocking Balaam’s way, while Balaam, the self-proclaimed prophet, is spiritually blind. Seeing nothing, he beats the very donkey that is trying to keep him from going. The donkey could see Yahweh’s angel standing before them with his sword because she carried on her back Balaam, a man on whom God’s attention rested.
In the same way, the world in which God’s people live, people on whom his attention rests, has been given the chance to meet Christ because of them. So when believers fail to walk the right path of truth and become spiritually blind, the people of the world not only lose even the chance to meet Jesus, but turn on them and mock them instead.
The world jeers at a Christian who stands in the place of sin, asking whether someone who flies into a rage like that really believes in Christ, whether a churchgoer who behaves this way has any business telling others to believe in God, whether someone who believes in God should be in a place like this with them. So those who are judged will instead end up sitting in judgment. We must not defy the truth, but neither must we do anything that troubles our conscience. If our conscience has pricked us, that was the first chance God gives to save our souls, and if we have heard the world mocking us, that was the second.
Since our bodies cannot be separated from the world, we must strive without ceasing to live by faith. Will we live like Balaam, dragged about wherever an animal leads, or will we lead the animal by our faith? That will be revealed according to the measure of our faith. When we, who are meant to rule over the world, go against God’s will, the world will open its mouth against us without mercy. In that moment a child of God becomes less than an animal. We must never be mocked by the very animals God gave us to rule.
2 Peter 2:15-16
15forsaking the right way, they went astray, having followed the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of wrongdoing; 16but he was rebuked for his own disobedience. A mute donkey spoke with a man’s voice and stopped the madness of the prophet.
Peter says that the false teachers, who sin with eyes full of greed and entice unsettled souls until they are steeped in covetousness, are all children of a curse. And he says that Balaam is the one who committed the same sin as those false teachers. Sunk in lustful thoughts and living in debauchery, these false teachers are never satisfied however much wealth they gain, and with their false teaching they were leading Christians whose faith had no deep roots into a life of license.
Seeing this wicked Balaam set out so confidently, claiming he has God’s permission, we can tell how glad and eager he is to go to King Balak. A pastor who stresses worldly blessing to the congregation is also a Balaam, for though they preach with confidence, as if their study of theology had given them God’s permission, their heart is full of the world. Someone who goes to church to be blessed in the world is also a Balaam, since they use God to dream of wealth and glory, and believe in him only for worldly success. We must not forget that this Balaam was in the end killed by the people of Israel, and we must turn back while we still have the chance.
The book of Joshua records an encounter like Balaam’s. Yahweh’s angel appeared both to Balaam, setting out with God’s permission, and to Joshua, on his way to conquer Jericho. God, who always works for good, appeared before both men in order to help them.
But while it is always good from God’s side, from the human side it can turn out to be judgment, or it can become strength and power. Both men appear to be setting out on God’s work, yet Joshua saw Yahweh’s angel with his own eyes, whereas it was Balaam’s donkey that saw him. Yahweh’s angel went before Joshua and helped him conquer Jericho, while Balaam, even after hearing his donkey’s mockery and seeing Yahweh’s angel, would not give up his own sense of being right, like a man whose conscience has been seared.
May you keep in mind that we too can be a Joshua who sees Yahweh’s angel with our own eyes when we are spiritually full, and a Balaam who cannot see him when our hearts are hardened, because blessing and calamity are not far off but hang on the state of our own hearts.
Numbers 22:34
34Balaam said to Yahweh’s angel, “I have sinned; for I didn’t know that you stood in the way against me. Now therefore, if it displeases you, I will go back again.”
Each time he met God, Balaam behaved as though he were turning back on the spot. Confessing that he had not known Yahweh’s angel was standing in the road to stop him, he said that if it displeased God, he would go back. But though he pretends to turn back now, if King Balak sends more riches, he will once again make a show of praying to God and then set off for Moab. He knew he was sinning, yet he had no intention whatever of turning back.
Here we may think, “Couldn’t God simply stop him by force?” It is true that there are people whom God refines through trials and, when they repent, stops in their tracks. But Balaam, as we know from his end, had no intention of turning back at all, and so God did not stand in his way. Knowing that once God abandons someone, no human strength can escape death, we must always take care.
Once Balaam meets Balak, he will have no more chance to turn back. It is just as Judas Iscariot lost his chance the moment he took the thirty pieces of silver. That is because even if Balaam speaks words of blessing over Israel before Balak, it will be God protecting his people and will have nothing to do with Balaam’s faith. It is like Judas, who returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests when he saw Jesus suffering, yet was not saved because every chance had passed.
If you hear the mockery of the world, or are going through hardship and the refining fire, I hope you will take it as an opportunity and turn back. If you listen to the counsel of your brothers and sisters in faith, open your hearts, and strive to turn back, God will give you more chances and greater blessing. May you never take your seat beside Balaam, who took the name of God in vain. Balaam will have no excuse when he meets God, because God blocked his path even to the point of opening the eyes and mouth of a donkey.
Even now, if you whom he loves are going the wrong way, God will be blocking your path by whatever means. Rather than complaining, asking why you alone must be put through the fire, why you alone are not healthy, why you alone must live in poverty, I would ask you to consider what faith you can show him right here, right now. Then God will see that faith and give you greater grace and blessing.
Like Joshua, who saw Yahweh’s angel with his own eyes and received his help, may you always live a life that is spiritually full. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.