In college I had the opportunity to go to a concert of one of my favorite Contemporary Christian singers, Rich Mullins. This was only a couple years before his death in 1997 in a car accident. At the concert, between songs, he would take time to talk about different things. His message was definitely one that had Christians in mind, but he also didn’t want us to take ourselves too seriously. One of the things that he said that really stuck with me was that the Bible is full of weirdoes.
He liked to point out all the weird characters and events that we find in the Bible. Sometimes we just skip over the weird or disturbing things we find in there, other times we allow our familiarity with the Bible to keep us from realizing how weird some things we find in there are. The Christmas story seems normal to us because we hear it every year in December. But it was not a normal, ordinary story when it was first told. The name Samaritan has exactly the opposite meaning in our world that it had in Jesus’ day. It is too much linked nowadays with the word “good.”
Well, today and next week I want to spend some time looking at one of those weirdoes from the Bible, one of those strange stories that make you scratch your head and wonder why God works the way he does. I think we can learn something from those ordinary, messed up, somewhat kooky people that we find in scripture because then we realize that even though we are ordinary, messed up and somewhat kooky, God can work in our lives the same way he worked in theirs. So, welcome to the world of Balaam and his donkey.
Let us open in prayer.
I. Balak’s Reqest
Now, to properly understand the story of Balaam and his donkey and see it as more than just a tall tale or a strange Old Testament story, we need to see what was happening and what led to it. Basically, you have the people of Israel, they have been wandering through the wilderness, through the desert for forty years and now they are starting to move towards the Promised Land. Their wandering is beginning to come to an end and they are making their way to the land that God has prepared for them. But to get there they need to travel through some other countries like Edom, Ammon and Moab. They actually tried to make peace with a couple of these peoples in order to cross through their land on the way to their destination, but the nations were scared of them and made war on them. And the book of Numbers tells us that God was with them and they defeated these nations, and conquered their lands. Well, one of these countries was Moab, which was right on the other side of the Jordan from the Promised Land. And the king of Moab was a guy named Balak. And Balak was a bit wiser than the other kings around him. He knew that Israel’s victories weren’t just about their strength, and he knew that he needed something more than strength to defeat them. So he sent for a prophet, a guy named Balaam, who lived over in Iraq.
Now Balaam is an interesting guy. He wasn’t an Israelite. And yet he was a prophet of the Lord. We see a few of these pop up before Israel is founded as a nation. It is amazing to realize that God spoke to people in the midst of their pagan settings and would bring the truth to them. This is hope for us today, as we realize that God can speak truth in the pagan settings we see around the world.
But Balaam received these messengers from Balak and told them that he’d need to check with God about whether to come with them. He then prayed and received an answer from God not to go. So he sent the messengers home and that should be the end of the story. But it isn’t.
You see, Balak sends for him again, this time offering a great reward to Balaam if he comes. And at first it seems like Balaam is still on the right page. He says he will not disobey God. But then he says he’ll ask God again. You see, this is where everything goes wrong for him. He had asked God to speak to him, God had, he knew his answer. But he didn’t like the answer and went back to God again asking again.
How many times do we find ourselves doing this same thing? How many times do we find ourselves bargaining with God or trying to get our way? How many times do we find ourselves ignoring God’s answer to us because it’s not the answer we want.
God doesn’t want Balaam to go, but he lets him. And he makes it clear that Balaam has to do exactly what he tells him.
II. Balaam’s Donkey
And now we finally get to the story as we read it this morning. Balaam was traveling along the path on his donkey and the donkey saw that there was an angel on the path in front of him. And this was not cute little cuddly angel… they never are. This angel was fierce and was about to strike Balaam down. But the donkey pulled off the road to avoid the angel, to save Balaam. Balaam didn’t see the angel and therefore found himself angry at the donkey, and he beat the donkey because it kept going off the road.
Here again, we can find ourselves in the story. How often have you punished someone for doing something that was actually good for you? How often have you in your own stubbornness refused to see what those around you see and been unfair or judging of them in the midst of that? We can learn from Balaam and his donkey that perhaps we need to listen to those around us. Sometimes they can see more clearly than we can. Sometimes they might know something that we don’t know. Sometimes they might not have their emotions clouding their judgment like ours are.
Here is where the story gets fun. The donkey opens its mouth and begins to speak to Balaam. That’s right. His donkey begins to speak to him. The donkey calls him out on his meanness. “Why have you beat me?” it asks. And Balaam’s response is even worse now that he has someone to yell at. Here we have the first recorded incident of road rage. “I’d kill you right now if I had a sword.” “You’ve made me look foolish.”
Balaam was more worried about what the messengers with him thought of him than his donkey. Again, back to our lives. Have you ever found yourself treating a stranger better than your own family? Have you ever found yourself worrying so much about what someone you barely know thinks of you that you treat those who know you the best in a horrible way? There’s something messed up about us, it’s a part of that sin nature inside us, where we worry about our image, we worry about what people will think, and then those who we are closest to, those who care for us the most get what’s left over. Not good.
And now back to Balaam and his donkey. He’s just screamed at it and told it that he wishes he could kill it because it made him look like a fool. All of a sudden Balaam’s eyes are opened and he now sees the whole picture. He now sees what the donkey had already seen. He sees that what he thought was making him look foolish was actually saving his life. And Balaam here realizes the error of his ways, the danger of his path, and repents.
We too can do what Balaam did. We can repent, acknowledge our own crooked, foolish path, and realize that we don’t need to stay on it. God desires to be our path. Jesus tells us that he is the path, the way. We don’t need to be following our wants or our hopes, but instead can be following that path that God has put us on. And to do this, all we need to do is join Balaam in acknowledging our pride, our willful way. And we too can submit to God as Balaam did. “I will go where you lead me.”
III. One More Lesson
Back to Rich Mullins. He used to say that we can learn something from Balaam’s donkey. He used to say that God used a donkey to speak. And God speaks through donkeys (except he used another word for it) today. So when we feel that God is speaking through us to the world around us, we don’t want to get too full of ourselves. And when we meet someone and realize that they aren’t what we hope, what we expect… they’re actually a bit like donkeys themselves, we shouldn’t dismiss them too quickly… for God spoke to Balaam through a donkey, and he just may speak through a donkey today.
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