Numbers 23:27-24:11 “Blessings or Curses”

This church building was built in the mid 50s. And it is the style that most churches were built in the 50s. It’s the upside-down ark architecture. Churches that have been built or remodeled in the last decade or two look very differently. They look like meeting rooms or even theaters. There’s not as much obvious religious architecture in them. The narthex is much more like a lobby than a narthex… there’s often a coffee shop and a fountain… making the church look more like a mall than a place of worship.

I don’t want to get down on the modern architecture of churches here. There’s a reason for it. These churches are being built to appeal to young people who did not grow up in the church, and therefore these churches take their cues from the kind of spaces that young people might be comfortable in. And, unfortunately, the mall is perhaps the holiest place our society has to offer. Here’s a weird fact. God to a mall, go near the food court. Guess what you’ll find there. Probably some sort of tree or some sort of fountain. It’s almost universal in malls. And it’s actually religious. The fountain represents living water, the tree represents the tree of life. Go into modern church buildings, especially the huge ones, and you won’t find a cross, but you’ll find a fountain, you’ll find a tree. They are buying into this same religious imagery.

But not that I’ve attacked modern church architecture, I want to attack the architecture of our church. And, again, don’t get me wrong. I love this sanctuary. But it also says something about us. Like I said, it’s the upside down ark motif. When this church was built, the common understanding of what church was was that we were a place of safety. The world around us was falling apart, turning away from God. But the true believers could find a safe home. They could come in to the ark and be protected from all the craziness outside. They could find safety here. This feels pretty good, doesn’t it? It is nice to have a place where we’re protected, where we’re safe from the sins of the world around us. But there are dangers here as well. When we see the church as a place to protect us from the world, we no longer see ourselves as having a place in that world. We no longer connect with the people outside the ark, and we become irrelevant to them. Today, as we look again at Balaam, we’re going to see that we need to move outside the ark to reach the world with God’s love once again.

Let us open in prayer.

I. Context

Last week we started to look at one of those weirdoes of the Bible, one of those kooky characters that we often skip over because his story is so weird.

Did you know that Balaam is actually mentioned outside the Bible? There are actually writings from the 8th century BC that come from east of the Jordan River that contain prophecies that Balaam made.

If you read Numbers 22-24 just by themselves you might end up with a somewhat positive reading of Balaam. He obviously knows the One True God. He seems to be a prophet or a seer who is clearly in communication with God. It is interesting that when Balak comes to him and asks him to curse the people of Israel, he never tells him who they are. Rather it’s “a people wandering out of Egypt”, almost as if he’s trying to trick Balaam into cursing a people who should really be on his side. Yes, the whole event with the donkey that we talked about last week puts Balaam in a somewhat bad light, but overall, this story tells of a prophet of God who proclaims God’s blessing over the people of Israel.

But when you read the story in the context of the rest of the Bible, you see a slightly different story emerge. Later in Numbers 31 we are told that Balaam was giving advice to the Midianites on how to lure the Israelites away from God. In Deuteronomy 23 we are told that the sacrifices that Balaam had put up were there to try to curse Israel… that Balaam had every intent to curse Israel, but God wouldn’t allow him to. And in the New Testament as well we see Balaam mentioned and reviled as someone who let his greed get the best of him, who put financial gain above following God.

And so it’s important to see the story of Balaam in context of the rest of the Bible. It’s important to see that Balaam is not a saint, and perhaps can be put alongside Jonah as an unwilling prophet. Or even worse, can be described as a pagan diviner or seer who God chose to use.

II. Curses

Despite all this, I want us to put ourselves in Balaam’s shoes for a minute. Let’s get past the question of whether he was an unwilling prophet or a pagan diviner. Rather, let us see him as someone who wanted to curse a group of people who God instead wanted to bless. Think about that for a moment. Think of the people we might want to curse.

As someone once said, “Vengeance is mine, sayith the Lord, but I just want to be about the Lord’s business.” We often find ourselves wanting to be about vengeance. We often find ourselves wanting to watch people or society fail. And maybe, even have a part in that. When we look at the world around us, the “non-Christian” world that is turned so obviously away from God, we might find ourselves wanting to speak prophetically against them. Our kids go off to college and they come back liberal. Hollywood presents a view of life on our TVs each night that makes it seem like the most important thing in the world is to make yourself feel good, which is just not a Christian virtue any way you try to make it one. When we see this, we may find ourselves wanting to be that prophetic voice as a church telling them that they are wrong and evil and going to hell.

It may be easy to see all the problems in our culture, all the things pulling people away from God, and get all prophetic and declare that this world is going to end badly. But being prophetic isn’t always about complaining and cursing. What Balaam needed to learn was that being prophetic can also be about blessing. Balaam went out and began to proclaim a curse upon the people of Israel. People who had turned from God again and again and probably deserved it. But what came out of his mouth wasn’t a curse but a blessing. And he tried again and again he blessed. We are told that the first two times he was actually trying to curse the people. He was using divination and magic and doing all he could to give Balak exactly what he wanted. But to no avail. Out of his mouth came blessings. By the third time, by the time we get to the scripture we read this morning Balaam is no longer trying to curse. He gives in to God’s message and he becomes it.

You see, when we set ourselves as Christians against a society that we live in, when we live our lives trying to curse the society around us, we aren’t able to share God’s love with them. When we do this we aren’t able to have a redemptive presence among them. And yet that has often been the relationship between the church and society.

Last month I encouraged you to make friends who aren’t Christians. To spend time getting to know them, finding out what is important to them, learning to love them. You may not approve of everything they do. You may find yourself very uncomfortable with some of the choices they make, some of the sins they commit so very openly. But don’t automatically speak curses upon them because of their sins. Don’t be another judgmental Christian who comes across as holier than thou. Instead, find a way to be a blessing to them. Find a way to share with them God’s great love for them.

So often we picture God as trying to keep as many people out of heaven as possible. He’s up there, just looking for an excuse to exclude people from heaven. We may feel this way. Those who haven’t accepted Jesus, but who believe in God probably do feel this way. If that were the case, God wouldn’t have sent his son to die on the cross for us. If that were the case, Jesus wouldn’t make any sense at all. Let me be clear. I’m not talking about easy grace here. I’m not talking about everyone getting to heaven no matter what they believe. What I am talking about is the idea that God loves this world he created. God wants what is best for the world. And he wants to be able to bless the world and share eternal life with everyone he can.

And here’s where things get a little crazy. God chose a messed up prophet/seer named Balaam to bless the people of Israel. God chose a messed up nation named Israel, that never seemed to get the concept of what it meant to be faithful to God, to bless the world. God chose a messed up Pharisee named Saul, who was persecuting Christians to be his greatest evangelist. God chose a messed up fugitive from Egypt who was living life on the lamb as a shepherd named Moses to lead the people of Israel to the Promised Land. And God has chosen to use us, a messed up group of Christians, a messed up church, to be a blessing to the world around us. Let’s be that blessing.

Numbers 22:21-25 "Balaam's Donkey"

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.