Starting a new series this week on Balaam’s prophecies. I think they are interesting and enlightening to explore.
Most of us know the story of the donkey who talked to Balaam. It makes for a great Sunday School story when you’re a kid, but most people never really teach past that one illustration.
The basic setup here is that the nation of Israel is fighting her way through other nations to get to the Promised Land after forty years in the wilderness. They’ve completely wiped out a people or two, and a king, Balak, decides he needs to do something about this. Namely, he wants to spiritually curse them.
So he sends for Balaam, a known sorcerer/prophet whom you could hire for such things. Balaam tells Balak’s envoys that he cannot go with them after God forbids it. Balak sends for Balaam again and promises great honor.
Balaam’s response is interesting. He says, “Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the word of the Lord my God, to do less or more.”
This brings up a little confusion. Throughout the whole of the scripture, Balaam is seen as a villain. He is labeled a diviner by Joshua, and Peter describes him as someone who “loved the wages of wickedness.”
But here we have Balaam calling the Lord his God and having some understanding of where the power of curses and blessings come from. He almost seems a hero more than a villain.
God allows him to go this time, and yet an angel meets them on the road to kill Balaam. This is where we get the famous story of how the donkey saw the angel and stopped. Balaam ultimately beats the poor animal, and God gives the donkey the power of speech (which Balaam doesn’t seem that shocked by because he argues with the animal instead of messing his pants since a donkey just started talking – oh, and thanks to Shrek the donkey now sounds like Eddie Murphy in my head … even though it was a female).
After God opened Balaam’s eyes to see the angel, God again allows Balaam to proceed to meet up with Balak to “curse” Israel.
This is one of the things I love about the Old Testament. It just tells things how they happened, and yet our modernist need to put things in black and white end up confusing us instead of helping us make sense of things.
It helps to understand that the area the Israelites were returning to had been the home of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Esau and Ishmael and Lot’s line also had whole nations come from their progeny. The idea of the God of Abraham would be very familiar to them. But obviously, over time, a mixture of idolatry and sorcery had been intermixed within them as well.
I’ll give a scriptural example. Jacob goes to Laban, his mother’s close relative, and marries Rachel and Leah and all that. When they finally leave after twenty years or so, Rachel steals Laban’s idol and cleverly hides it. Even years later, after Jacob’s sons killed a whole town for what was done to their sister Dinah, Jacob was going to make an altar at Bethel and had to tell his family “Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments.”
Even the nation of Israel, since Moses was taking too long to come down off the mountain, their first thought was to make an idol and call it “the god that brought us out of Egypt”, all this after Moses specifically gave them a commandment from God NOT to make any idols before he went UP the mountain.
I’m saying all of this to point out that many could obviously see no disconnect between their “devotion” to the one God and notions of idolatry or witchcraft. Balaam was obviously such a man.
But just because you give lip service to God while also dabbling in idolatry and witchcraft doesn’t make it any less abominable to God. You’re still an enemy of the truth if and when you do.
I remember telling a group of pastors in India that I was somewhat jealous of the fact that they lived in a country where people actually did worship idols, so the line between worshipping God and a physical image was clear. In America, I told them, few people worship physical images, but idolatry is just as common but more deceptive because it is subtle.
Did you know the New Testament calls covetousness and greed idolatry? Just because you don’t put up a statue in your house and bow down to it doesn’t mean you’re not guilty of idolatry.
Idolatry is the worship of the “work of your own hands” in any sense. It is still possible to give lip service to God and yet be mixed up in idolatry.
The purpose here for me is not to judge or condemn you or anyone, but to encourage us all to dedicate ourselves to the House of God (Bethel) as Jacob did, and “put away the foreign gods” among you. You can’t have them both.
First “oracle of Balaam” coming up.
Peace.