Balak – The Lowedown

Numbers 22

¹Then the people of Israel traveled to the plains of Moab and camped east of the Jordan River, across from Jericho. ²Balak son of Zippor, the Moabite king, knew what the Israelites had done to the Amorites. ³And when they saw how many Israelites there were, he and his people were terrified. ⁴The king of Moab said to the leaders of Midian, “This mob will devour everything in sight, like an ox devours grass!”

So Balak, king of Moab, ⁵sent messengers to Balaam son of Beor, who was living in his native land of Pethor*[Or who was at Pethor in the land of the Amavites.] near the Euphrates River.*[Hebrew the river.] He sent this message to request that Balaam come to help him:

“A vast horde of people has arrived from Egypt. They cover the face of the earth and are threatening me. ⁶Please come and curse them for me because they are so numerous. Then perhaps I will be able to conquer them and drive them from the land. I know that blessings fall on the people you bless. I also know that the people you curse are doomed.”

⁷Balak’s messengers, officials of both Moab and Midian, set out and took money with them to pay Balaam to curse Israel. They went to Balaam and urgently explained to him what Balak wanted. ⁸“Stay here overnight,” Balaam said. “In the morning I will tell you whatever the LORD directs me to say.” So the officials from Moab stayed there with Balaam.

⁹That night God came to Balaam and asked him, “Who are these men with you?”

¹⁰So Balaam said to God, “Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab, has sent me this message: ¹¹‘A vast horde of people has come from Egypt and has spread out over the whole land. Come at once to curse them. Perhaps then I will be able to conquer them and drive them from the land.’”

¹²“Do not go with them,” God told Balaam. “You are not to curse these people, for I have blessed them!”

¹³The next morning Balaam got up and told Balak’s officials, “Go on home! The LORD will not let me go with you.”

¹⁴So the Moabite officials returned to King Balak and reported, “Balaam refused to come with us.” ¹⁵Then Balak tried again. This time he sent a larger number of even more distinguished officials than those he had sent the first time. ¹⁶They went to Balaam and gave him this message:

“This is what Balak son of Zippor says: Please don’t let anything stop you from coming. ¹⁷I will pay you well and do anything you ask of me. Just come and curse these people for me!”

¹⁸But Balaam answered them, “Even if Balak were to give me a palace filled with silver and gold, I would be powerless to do anything against the will of the LORD my God. ¹⁹But stay here one more night to see if the LORD has anything else to say to me.”

²⁰That night God came to Balaam and told him, “Since these men have come for you, get up and go with them. But be sure to do only what I tell you to do.”

²¹So the next morning Balaam saddled his donkey and started off with the Moabite officials. ²²But God was furious that Balaam was going, so he sent the angel of the LORD to stand in the road to block his way. As Balaam and two servants were riding along,

²³Balaam’s donkey suddenly saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand. The donkey bolted off the road into a field, but Balaam beat it and turned it back onto the road. ²⁴Then the angel of the LORD stood at a place where the road narrowed between two vineyard walls. ²⁵When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD standing there, it tried to squeeze by and crushed Balaam’s foot against the wall. So Balaam beat the donkey again. ²⁶Then the angel of the LORD moved farther down the road and stood in a place so narrow that the donkey could not get by at all. ²⁷This time when the donkey saw the angel, it lay down under Balaam. In a fit of rage Balaam beat it again with his staff.

²⁸Then the LORD caused the donkey to speak. “What have I done to you that deserves your beating me these three times?” it asked Balaam.

²⁹“Because you have made me look like a fool!” Balaam shouted. “If I had a sword with me, I would kill you!”

³⁰“But I am the same donkey you always ride on,” the donkey answered. “Have I ever done anything like this before?”

“No,” he admitted.

³¹Then the LORD opened Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the roadway with a drawn sword in his hand. Balaam fell face down on the ground before him.

³²“Why did you beat your donkey those three times?” the angel of the LORD demanded. “I have come to block your way because you are stubbornly resisting me. ³³Three times the donkey saw me and shied away; otherwise, I would certainly have killed you by now and spared the donkey.”

(Numbers 22:1-33, NLT)

The Daily DAVEotional

Have you ever heard someone accuse the God of the Old Testament of being petty? Or genocidal? Or narcissistic?

It’s a common argument that people make, particularly if you want to discard portions of the Biblical text that don’t suit your moral preferences. After all, if we can discredit the God who is portrayed in the Bible, why should we be required to adhere to any of his commands or statutes?

This passage from Numbers may be cited by some as an example of the “pettiness” or fickle nature of the Old Testament God.

The argument may go something like this:

1. Some men come and ask Balaam to go and curse the Israelites. He will be rewarded if he does.
2. Balaam tells the men that he must inquire of the Lord and can only do what God tells him to do.
3. God tells Balaam not to go.
4. Balaam tells the people that he cannot go and sends them home.
5. A bigger delegation comes a second time offering more riches
6. Balaam tells them he is powerless to do anything against the will of the the Lord but he invites them to wait and see if God might have more to say on the matter.
7. This second time, God tells Balaam to go, which he does.
8. God is then mad at Balaam for going.

On the surface, this story seems to show God as being a fickle, petty whiner. Balaam does EXACTLY what God asks him to do. He goes. So why in the world would God be mad? How in the world COULD God be mad? It doesn’t seem to make any sense.

But as ESPN College Football Analyst Lee Corso says, “Not so fast, my friend.”

There’s more going on than what we might notice on the surface. First of all, while it appears that Balaam is doing EXACTLY what God has asked, we cannot see what is going on under the surface, that is, in his heart.

For example, if Balaam is so committed to following the Lord’s command, why does he invite the delegation to stay another night so that he may inquire of the Lord further? He has already heard the Lord’s directive on the issue.

Verse 32 confirms this suspicion as the angel of the Lord says that Balaam is “stubbornly resisting me.” Balaam confesses his sin and agrees to “go back home if you are against my going.”

This indicates that while Balaam said the right things, in his heart, he really wanted to go, as indicated by his decision to inquire of the Lord AGAIN. God allows him to go but He realizes that Balaam is resisting Him internally.

God uses Balaam’s donkey to teach him a lesson, which is that we don’t always see what is happening around us. We see the obvious, surface level stuff, but we have no idea what is happening under the surface. But God does.

There is more to the story surrounding Balaam but the main idea here is that God is not petty, nor is He fickle. He judges our motives as well as our actions because He sees and is aware of EVERYTHING.

By contrast, we tend to evaluate God and judge His motives with limited information and understanding. We are like Balaam in the story. We are mad at the donkey, or the circumstances that we wrongly interpret as being unjust, unfair or immoral, all the while we’re completely oblivious to the unseen world and forces around us.

God’s message to us is “Open your eyes!”

Reflection

What has been your opinion or understanding of the God of the Old Testament?

What would you say to someone who claims that the God of the Old Testament is petty?

What is a situation when you rushed to judgment or jumped to a conclusion, only to realize later that you didn’t have all the information?

Balaam said the right things but internally he was resisting God. What does it look like for you when you are resisting God? What steps can you take to ensure your inner heart toward God matches your outer actions?

Photo by Alfredo Mora on Unsplash

Revelation 2

¹²“Write this letter to the angel of the church in Pergamum. This is the message from the one who has a sharp two-edged sword:

¹³“I know that you live in the city where that great throne of Satan is located, and yet you have remained loyal to me. And you refused to deny me even when Antipas, my faithful witness, was martyred among you by Satan’s followers. ¹⁴And yet I have a few complaints against you. You tolerate some among you who are like Balaam, who showed Balak how to trip up the people of Israel. He taught them to worship idols by eating food offered to idols and by committing sexual sin. ¹⁵In the same way, you have some Nicolaitans among you—people who follow the same teaching and commit the same sins. ¹⁶Repent, or I will come to you suddenly and fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

¹⁷“Anyone who is willing to hear should listen to the Spirit and understand what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Everyone who is victorious will eat of the manna that has been hidden away in heaven. And I will give to each one a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it. (Revelation 2:12-17, NLT)

The Daily DAVEotional

Though the book of Revelation is filled with figurative language describing apocalyptic events that will occur in the future, the first couple of chapters describe real events that were happening at the time the author penned his words.

In chapters 2 and 3, John is instructed to write down messages that were to be delivered to 7 different churches. These were real churches and the messages were a combination of praise for the things they were doing well and rebuke for those things they were failing to do as true followers of Jesus.

In this passage of Revelation, John is writing to the church at Pergamum. The people in that church had done some things that were worthy of praise, most notably, they had remained loyal to Jesus despite cultural pressures that existed in their city.

But there were some things that were not pleasing to the Lord. The text calls them complaints. The biggest issue in this church was that they were compromising on their moral values, particularly in the area of sexual purity.

The Lord references two obscure biblical characters to lodge His complaint. He mentions Balaam as well as a group referred to as the “Nicolaitans”.

Balaam was a prophet whose story is found in Numbers 22-25. Balak, the king of Aram had seen the vast people of Israel encamped near him and he sought the help of Balaam in bringing a curse upon the Israelites. The short story is that even though the king of Aram offered up an incredible amount of riches in exchange for Balaam’s curse, Balaam only blesses the Israelites instead.

A quick reading of the story might lead one to conclude that Balaam was a good guy who followed the Lord’s leading. However, we find out in subsequent chapters that even though Balaam did obey the Lord by not cursing the Israelites but blessing them instead, he also conspired against the Israelites by suggesting to Balak a way to do an end around God’s blessing of his people.

It was Balaam who suggested to king Balak that Israel would easily defile themselves if their men were encouraged to pursue foreign women as wives. Balaam knew that these men, in their physical lust, would forsake the Lord and worship the gods of these foreigners. Though Israelite men were forbidden to sleep with foreign women or take them as wives. Balaam urged Balak to take this course anyway, knowing that it would be the first step to leading the whole nation away from the Lord.

The other group also referenced in this passage is the Nicolaitans. This group was not praised and there are at least two passages that reference this group and warns about them.

So who are the Nicolaitans and what was wrong with their doctrine?

Most of what we know about the Nicolaitans is from early church fathers who wrote that the Nicolaitans were followers of Nicolas, who taught a doctrine of compromise.

One view is that because it was mentioned in Acts 6:5 that Nicolas was a proselyte from Antioch then he must’ve had a background in the occult and pagan religions. It’s speculated that he taught that one did not need to relinquish all ties to former religions when coming to Christ. He, and his followers, had one foot in Christianity and another foot in the world.

In other words, pagan practices were not discouraged or spoken against and therefore, there was a compromise of character and conduct that didn’t match Jesus’ teachings and the expectations of the early church.

One thing we know for sure, the church at Pergamum was rebuked because of their compromise in the sexual area. The Lord cites the example of Balaam, who showed Balak how to trip up the Israelites by enticing them to fall into sexual sin, as well as the example of the Nicolaitans, who according to this passage, committed the same sexual sins.

Many commentators believe that the 7 churches in these chapters, though real churches, are also representative of all churches throughout the ages. In other words, every church will generally resemble one of these churches in terms of the issues it struggles with.

We live in a culture that is very progressive in its views of sexuality and sex. Just about nothing is off limits any more. And some of these sexual views have crept into the church so that many Christians are no longer holding fast to traditional biblical views on sex and sexual immorality. In short, we are seeing quite a bit of compromise.

I recently wrote about “The Recipe for Salad Bar Religion”, in which I looked at a passage from 2 Kings 17 that showed that the people who had been transplanted in Jerusalem were taught how to worship the Lord but they never forsook their old worship practices. Hence, their understanding of God was simply added to the pantheon of religious views and practices they already held.

In a way, this is the problem for the church at Pergamum and for us today. We have some doctrinal views about God and Jesus and particularly salvation that we hold to but when it comes to our daily practices, we often adopt the practices of the world. We therefore end up with a faith in which we appear loyal to God intellectually and doctrinally but in our daily practices our lives often are more reflective of the culture around us.

The message Jesus has for us today is the same message He had 2000 years ago to the church at Pergamum. The Lord may well tell us the same thing He vocalized to His people then – that He is glad we are remaining loyal in the midst of a wicked culture but He is upset with how easily we compromise our moral standards, particularly when it comes to the area of sexual fidelity.

Reflection

What are some moral areas in which you see Christians compromising today?

What are some of the ways you see the culture influencing Christians to compromise regarding their views and understanding of sexual immorality?

How would you summarize the biblical view of sex and sexual immorality to a new believer? What scriptural references would you use to support your views?

What steps can you take to ensure that you are not rebuked by Jesus for compromising your moral values?

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