Balaam

The world before the institution of the Law of Moses was like the Wild West.  God had spoken to Abraham and given him Promises but by in large the Revelation of who He is was hidden.  And as such confusion abounded.  People who sought to know God were often entangled in the malaise of their sinfulness and the deception of their age.  Balaam grew up in this world and while certainly having a place in his heart to know the Creator of the Universe also possessed in his heart a desire for fame and money.

We see in Numbers 22 that Balaam was a man with the reputation as a powerful forthtelling prophet in that whatever he prophesied came to pass.  Because of this Balak the King of Moab came to Balaam and asked him to put a curse on Israel.  Balaam consulted God about this and He responded with a resounding "No."  But the King of Moab came back with a second offer - this time with more money and prestige - and even though Balaam had already heard the answer, he asked again.  This time "God"¹ said it was alright to go.  But the fact that Balaam was going actually angered the Lord and it caused Him to have an angel scare Balaam and ensure that since he was going that he was only to bless Israel.

Balaam does indeed bless Israel in Numbers 23.  God ended up using Balaam's momentary disobedience as a means to accomplish His Purpose but even though God was able to use Balaam's "perverse way" and set him back on the right course we are still able to see that something ugly happened in Balaam's heart.

Balaam had an issue with greed and it caused him to "hear from God" that it was ok to curse Israel.  In other words his greed blinded him.  It is a very sobering truth that purity of heart is connected to hearing rightly from God.  As a consequence, sin will blind and deceive us - so that what we think was direction from the Lord is really just us wanting to do what we want.

 

The authors of the New Testament applied this truth - that the heart is the filter by which you hear from God - to Theology.  Both Peter (2 Peter 2:15-16) and Jude (Jude 1:11) understood the heart issues in Balaam to be the same issue behind the errors of the false teachers of their day.  This is certainly true in a direct sense because many of the cults of history have been (among other things) departures from Biblical morality.

The false teachers of more recent times have had a different type of issue in their hearts.  The major issue of today's false teachers is that they don't have the stomach embrace something that is unpopular.  As such their theology becomes more of a reflection of the culture they live in than an understanding of how God has revealed Himself.

This was prevalent in the days of the Early Church when the docetic (docetic means to see the physical body and the natural world as evil) philosophy of Greek culture largely influenced by Plato caused certain individuals to attempt to infuse all number of strange doctrines into the Christian faith.  This was a big part of the Gnostic heresy that the Church battled against in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.  It manifested again in the days of the Enlightenment - which was a cultural movement in the West that disputed the supernatural in the 1700s and 1800s - when theologians re-interpreted the miracles of the Bible as symbols that speak of general truths rather than supernatural events.  And it is manifesting in our day since the 1960's sexual revolution as an attempt by theologians to mold the sexual practice of the Church to being like that of the world.

The Bible presents a very distinct and unique approach to sex.  It doesn't isolate sex as a just a physically gratifying act like we see is taught to us in the world.  Rather the Bible teaches an integration between sex and human relationships that understands that sex is a powerful act that bonds people together.  Resulting in pieces of your soul becoming tied to pieces of the soul of your sexual partner.

Because this is the case the Bible declares that sex is meant for the context of the marriage between one man and one woman².  God has designed sex this way and has given us the covenant of marriage as the container by which this powerful and pleasant act can be safely performed.

The Church in our day needs a healthy dose of Hebrews 11:24-26 which reads

By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.

It is in being willing to embrace the reproach of Christ that our hearts become free of the influence of the world and are able to see the Truth of God in a deeper way.  We need to get outside of the need for the constant victory and growth of the Church and be willing to embrace reproach.  We leave growth in God's hands and contend for it in prayer but we can't become so addicted to it that we change the substance of the Christian faith from being a distinct, other-worldly vision to instead being a reflection of society.

My prayer for myself and the Church as a whole is that we wouldn't be afraid of embracing unpopularity as we endeavor to be a people who are loyal to His Word.

¹I go into my reasoning as to why I believe Balaam deceived himself in a post I did called Purity of Heart and Hearing from God - see point 6 at the bottom of the blog for an explanation of this.

²See the post The Christian Vision of Sex and Family for a deeper dive into this issue.

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