Israel's Trespass

In the last post, we saw Balaam make four different prophecies concerning the nation of Israel, and in each of them, there was a blessing pronounced on the Jewish people, much to Balaam’s dismay. In the fourth prophecy, we even saw  a prediction of the coming Messiah that would smite the enemies of Israel in the latter days. We left off with both Balaam and the king of Moab going back to their own places. This seems like the end of the story, but something happens in the next chapter that is relevant. In chapter 25 of Numbers, it states that the Israelites committed harlotry with the women of Moab. They made sacrifice to their gods, ate at their feasts, and bowed down to their idols. In many of the pagan religions, the sex acts were part of the worship of their idols. So, Israel got involved in the worship of Baal, the great Canaanite fertility god. This sin would be a continual stumbling block for them in years to come, and would eventually lead to their going into captivity. As a result, the Lord became angry with the people, and a plague broke out among them, killing 24,000 of them. What the king of Moab could not accomplish by paying Balaam, Israel brought on themselves with their own sin. Satan cannot take a believer’s salvation from them, but he can side-line them and make them ineffective or even harmful to the cause of Christ due to their own choice to walk in sin. As we learn later in Numbers, this was all due to the counsel of Balaam. This is how he ended up getting his money, by counseling the Moabite and Midianite women to entice Israel into idolatry and fornication. Well, the Lord told Israel to go to war with the Midianites for this, and among those killed was Balaam, the son of Beor.

So, Balaam was a man used by the Lord to speak the word of God powerfully, but he was not right with the Lord. One commentator stated the following: “Balaam is not a good prophet who went bad or a bad prophet trying to be good. He is altogether outside Israel’s prophetic tradition. He is a pagan, foreign national whose mantic acts center on animal divination, including the dissection of animal livers, the movement of animals, and the flight of birds. He believed that he had a way with the gods, a hold on them. To him Yahweh was not the Lord of heaven but just another deity whom he might manipulate.” This goes to show that the Lord can use whoever He wants to accomplish His will, but it is not necessarily His stamp of approval on that person. Balaam was a pagan man motivated by his own greed, to the point of wanting to curse the Lord’s people to enrich himself. He goes down in the Scriptures as a false prophet, as seen In 2 Peter 2, Jude, and Revelation 2.

In application, how are we like the characters in this account? Maybe you are like Balak who feels threatened by the Lord’s people. If so, the answer is not to result to worldly or pagan solutions to the problem, but to join the people of God. The old adage, “if you can’t, beat’m, join’m,” holds true here. You cannot curse whom God has blessed, and to do so will only end up in you being cursed for all eternity in the fires of Hell. Place your faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, and become a child of God who is truly blessed with the riches of the kingdom of Heaven.

In what ways are we like Balaam? Greed does not necessarily have to be our primary driver to be like him. It’s really about wanting something so bad, that we are willing to do anything it takes to get it, no  matter if the thing we want is sinful, or if we cause others to sin in the process. Remember, God is not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent. He means what He says, and says what He means. No amount of looking for a different answer will change what He has already plainly taught in His word. If this is you or me, we should not expect our end to be any less than Balaam’s. Especially when we step into the arena of deliberately trying to lead others into sin, this is when the Lord may intervene to stop us (see Acts 13:6-12 and Revelation 2:12-17). The good news is, that as long as we are alive, we have an opportunity to repent and get right with the Lord, something that Balaam failed to do. If we choose not to, then our day of reckoning will eventually come.

Hopefully we are like the children of Israel who are trusting in the Lord by faith and submitted to the word of God. If we are believers, we are truly blessed, for we have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God that has taken away our sins.  Because of the blood of Jesus, God does not observe iniquity or sin in us. Oh, what God has done for us! However, we do have an adversary like the children of Israel, , the devil, who goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He will try to allure us into sin, since that is his only avenue to get us out of fellowship with the Lord and into his arena, but the Scriptures state, “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7) If we have sinned as Christians, even if it is as bad as the children of Israel, we simply need to repent and confess our sins before Him. He is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. There is no sin too big for the Lord’s grace. Then it can be said of us who are in Jesus, “How lovely are your tents, O Jacob! Your dwellings, O Israel! Like valleys that stretch out, like gardens by the riverside, like aloes planted by the Lord, like cedars beside the waters. He shall pour water from his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters.”