Dennis Tuuri

which made silver shrines for Diana brought no small gain unto the craftsmen whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation and said, “Sirs, you know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover, ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods which are made with hands. So that not only this our craft is in danger to be despised, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth.”

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we come before you as you’ve commanded us to do this Lord’s day to worship you. And we come before you gratefully and thankfully acknowledging the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ which Paul preached and which brought other false gods to destruction and to naught. We thank you Lord God that we worship you who alone is God and who alone exercises control and dominion over all created order.

We pray Lord God you would help us this day continue to root out the false idols in our minds, the false Diana, as it were, the false gods that we worship by serving and that draw us away from true and wholehearted worship and service to you. We pray Lord God as we come before you now that we recognize that these idols are plaguing us and causing us to sin from time to time. And that we come before you, Lord God, acceptable in your presence, not by our own righteousness, but through the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

And we come before you having those sins been made atonement for through the blood of Jesus Christ, our savior. We come before you gratefully and thankfully that you have brought us to destroy our idols and continue to do that throughout our lives. And we thank you also, Lord God, that you call us forward to worship you this day and to be built up in the faith that we may go forward preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and its implications to all the created order and so continue to bring idols that men’s hands have made to naught. We worship you this day Lord God, we rejoice before you. Now bless this service, may it redound to our edification and to your glory in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Ascribe ye strength unto God. His excellency is over Israel and his strength is in the clouds. Oh God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places. The God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people.

Blessed be God. In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. Deliver me in thy righteousness. Incline thine ear unto me. Be thou my strong habitation. Thou hast given commandments to save me. Deliver me, oh my God, out of the hand of the wicked. For thou art my hope, oh Lord God. By thee I have been holden up from the womb. My praise shall be continually of thee. I am as a wonder unto many. Let my mouth be filled with thy praise.

Cast me not off in the time of old age. For mine enemies speak against me, saying, God hath forsaken him. Persecute and take him. Oh God, be not far from me. Let them be confounded and consumed that are adversaries to my soul. But I will hope continually. My mouth shall show forth thy righteousness and thy salvation all the day. I will go in the strength of the Lord God. Oh God, thou hast known me from my youth.

Now also when I am old and gray-headed, oh God, until I have showed thy strength unto this generation, thy righteousness also, oh God, is very high, who has done great things. Thou which hast showed me great and sore troubles shall quicken me again. Thou shalt increase my greatness. I will also praise thee with the psaltery. Unto thee will I sing with the harp. My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing unto thee. My tongue also shall talk of thy righteousness all the day long, for they are confounded.

Micah 6:3-5

O my people, what have I done unto thee? Wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants. And I sent before thee, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what Balak, king of Moab, consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal, that ye may know the righteousness of the Lord.

We continue this morning going through the book of Micah. And as we said last week, we’re now beginning the opening verses of the third section of the book of Micah. And once again, like the first section began with a court scene, so we have a court scene here. And the way we’re going to deal with this text this morning is first I’m going to have an overview of the context of Balaam’s witness. The title of this morning’s talk is “Balaam’s Witness.”

So the context these three verses, and we want to zero in specifically on the portion of the verses that speak about Balaam and what that incident was all about, and then we’ll talk about the implications of that for Israel then and now. So first we have an overview of the context of Balaam’s witness, Micah 6:3-5. And I’ve broken this up with each verse separated out from the other verses. So let’s look first at verse three, which is God’s opening statement.

“Oh my people, what have I done unto thee? And wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.”

Now as I said, the court scene is the context of all this. Last week we talked about God convening that court scene and calling the mountains and the foundations of the earth—all of creation, in other words, in essence—there to be a witness to the covenant lawsuit that was going to take place here. And so what we have in verse three is the opening statements of God’s to the assembled court.

He said, “My case is against Israel. I have a controversy with my people. Mountains are there to hear the case.”

God then begins to present the case with verse three. And it is interesting, fascinating, encouraging I guess, that what God does here is he begins pleading with the people to demonstrate any unrighteousness on his part. His opening words to the nation of Israel is not “thou art judged, thou art condemned,” not “your sins are terrible,” but instead, “oh my people,” he addresses them with this tender statement: “My people, what have I done? What fault can you find in me? What’s the problem? How come you haven’t obeyed? Is there some unrighteousness on my part?” And so God really marks this third concluding section of the book of Micah with this approach.

And we talked about that a little bit last week. And it’s important to see that’s a repeated theme throughout this last section. It’s God’s condescension to examine his own deeds in light of the covenant breach that’s occurred between him and his people. He doesn’t just start hammering away on their sins. He begins by saying, “Look, let’s look at my performance here.” And then, as we’ll see in the next couple of verses, he goes on to give evidence of his performance in terms of the covenant.

Now, this is interesting and it should be informative to us. It’s a different approach from the first section. As we said before, in the first section in chapter 1, he went right at it. He said, “The earth is going to be judged. The mountains will melt. You know, fire will come down. There’ll be this tremendous destruction because you’ve broken the covenant.” And I guess there are a variety of approaches that are here spoken of when God addresses his people. And I guess I just want us to recognize that one approach when we address a sinning congregation, a sinning church, sinning members of our family, etc.—this is one approach that God uses: “Look, let’s talk about this. Come, let us reason together. Have I done something wrong in this arrangement?”

Now, God obviously was not going to be found guilty here. So we have here a tremendous and gracious condescension on God’s part to examine himself instead of launching into a full-blown attack.

Now, the term “wearied,” “wherein have I wearied thee?” is very interesting, too, because in fact, of course, it was the people that had wearied God. And we see these references. I don’t remember if I put them on your outline or not, but in any event, Malachi 2:17 is a reference that the people have wearied God with their words. Ahaz was rebuked by Isaiah in the book of Isaiah for wearying God as well as wearying men. Isaiah 43:24 talks about Israel wearying God with their sins. One other interesting thing about that word there is not only should the people begin to realize that it isn’t God who has been at fault—it’s them who have wearied God—and that’s what’s being said here in essence—but beyond that, there’s a play on words from verse 3 to verse 4. “Wearied” to “brought up”—those words sound very much alike in the Hebrew. There’s very little difference. So there’s a play on words: God hasn’t wearied the people, he hasn’t been unfaithful in this covenant, in this covenant arrangement. But rather, they’re the ones who’ve been unfaithful, and his conduct in the covenant is one of deliverance and bringing them up.

So they’re wearying, but he’s delivering. But he’s consenting here to approach them to look at his own participation in the covenant in terms of this covenant lawsuit.

Verse four goes on then to examine his own deeds. God’s gracious past provisions are recounted for the people here.

Verse four: “For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” That word “brought up” is the one that sounds like “wearied” in the Hebrew and looks a lot like it. “I didn’t wear you,” he says. “I brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” He repeats that and gives them a little more detail in terms of why they should be grateful for that bringing them up. It wasn’t just relocation from one town to another. He says, “I redeemed thee. I redeemed thee out of the house of servants.” And that term “house of servants” is the same term that’s used in the introduction to the Ten Commandments—how “I brought you up out of the house of bondage.”

And so the idea here is that it isn’t just a relocation. Rather, he’s reminding them of the great Exodus, which was the focal point, of course, of his gracious dealings with his people from the old covenant. And he’s reminding them that he delivered them out of servitude into freedom in him and he brought them into the land. “And I sent before thee, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.”

So God now moves graciously into an account of what the great blessings were that he had lavished upon his people, and those blessings begin with deliverance—bringing them out from Egypt.

Most covenant lawsuits, many times throughout the scriptures, when God is addressing his people and reprimanding them for sin, he begins with the same point: that he is the God who brought them out of Egypt. That’s the central event of deliverance of the Old Testament. And God uses that theme repeatedly to remind his people. Now, of course, one other reason for that is that this is a covenant lawsuit. He’s going to accuse them of covenant violations. And so bringing them out of Egypt, of course, was in essence where the covenant really was formalized and took place. He delivered the vassal state from another ruler. He took them and saved them. And so that’s really the beginning of the formalized covenant arrangement and the giving of the Ten Commandments, etc. But in any event, he begins with the deliverance.

The Exodus, of course, was the great unifying event that made a Jew a Jew, so to speak, that made an Israelite an Israelite. That was so much a part of his identity and it was so bred into them and taught to them that this is who we are. We’re a redeemed people. We were brought out of the house of bondage. We were delivered from Egypt by God. It was the sign of God’s great love and of the nation’s great obligation then to love him—that deliverance by obeying him in terms of the covenant restrictions that he put upon them.

If we read that account of the Exodus—we won’t take time now to read that account—in your appreciation for the wonder, the might, the power, and the jealousy of God is certainly portrayed there in a heightened fashion, and that should lead us to worship him and him alone as our deliverer. Our worship of him will be reinforced as we examine that account of the Exodus and of the great miracles that God wrought for his people. And those miracles directed against the gods of Egypt and the gods of all the world. The great deliverance effected thereby at his love and his wonder and his might and his jealousy. All those things should be amplified for us and we should respond with worship as we read the Exodus account.

But remember that Exodus account was simply a shadowy event, as it were, of deliverance compared to what it pointed forward to, which was the coming of Jesus Christ and his deliverance from sin and bondage and from death and curses into blessings. And so the Exodus was the central thing that unified the people of Israel under the old covenant. And our greater Exodus, Jesus Christ, should be the thing that unifies us, that makes us Christians. We recognize we’ve been redeemed and brought out of bondage by Jesus Christ. And as we look at the Exodus, we should remember that is just a brief, meagerly shadow of what Christ has accomplished in his death on the cross and his resurrection.

Charles Wesley’s song has a verse that can apply either to the Exodus or the greater Exodus, the redemption in Jesus Christ. He said, “My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee.” And you see the response there is what Wesley was getting at. God delivers us from chains. He opens our eyes and we’re to rise and then follow God in obedience. And so God begins recounting his gracious acts of provision for his people with the Exodus. He goes on then to talk about leadership.

The second great blessing that God has given to his people is leadership. Here is what he says: He gave them Moses and Aaron and Miriam. Just as in Ephesians 4 speaks of the great gifts to the church of gifted men for the church for the edification of them, so here Micah speaks of the gifted men and women that God had provided for his covenant people.

There’s a parallel passage. We mentioned this last week: Joshua 24. Joshua 24 is another situation where there’s a covenant being entered into by the people. It’s kind of a parallel arrangement to this arrangement here. Although it’s the establishment of one, in Joshua 24—remember we talked about that last week? At the end of it Joshua has them affirm that it’s the famous verse, of course, from Joshua 24: “As for me and my household will serve the Lord.” And he has the people then choose who they’ll serve, and they decide to serve God.

We talked about this last week. They’re sitting there at Shechem between the two mountains of blessing and cursing. The tabernacle is there. They affirm the covenant, that they want the blessings and cursings of that law put upon themselves, and they affirm obedience to God and recognizing the cursings and blessings that the mountains witness to them. And then Joshua, remember, sets up another kind of, like, model mountain, as it were—a stone—and he says this stone has heard the words that you’ve spoken today and it’s a witness against you should you break this covenant.

And so it’s a parallel passage to what we spoke of last week. And in that same passage in Joshua 24, it also speaks of the Exodus.

Let’s just turn there for a couple of minutes. Joshua 24. He begins, in verse one of Joshua 24, by gathering the leaders of the people. We talked about that when we went through the offices of the Old Testament, their heads, their judges, and their officers. And then Joshua says to the people: “From ancient times you used to live across the river. And then in verse three, I took your father Abraham, led him to Canaan, and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac. Verse four: To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau, and to Esau I gave Mount Seir to possess it, but Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt. Verse 5: Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in its midst, and afterwards I brought you out. And I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea, and Egypt pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea.”

They cried out to the Lord and God delivers them.

So Joshua 24 also, describing the covenant arrangement that God has established with his people, begins with essentially the establishment of that people by deliverance out of Egypt in the Exodus. And he says the same thing in terms—he mentions the two leaders that God had used, in the secondary means to affect that: Moses and Aaron. And so the same formula is used here with the Exodus mentioned along with Moses and Aaron.

Now, this is also repeated in 1 Samuel 12:6. Samuel says to the people, and again, this is a covenant description here going on—where Samuel was calling them into covenant obedience. Samuel says, “It’s the Lord that advanced Moses and Aaron and that brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt.” Verse 8: “When Jacob was come into Egypt, and your fathers cried unto the Lord, then the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, which brought forth your fathers out of Egypt, and made you dwell in this place.”

Psalm 77:20—another verse: “Thou leadest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

And so frequently throughout the Old Testament, when the Exodus is referred to and the people are called to remember it and remember it to the end that they might obey God’s requirements, they’re reminded of the leaders that God had provided.

Now, the difference in the passage before us is the addition of the third leader, which is Miriam. And the question automatically comes—at least it did to me when I was going through the text: Why is Miriam added here?

The text doesn’t give us a lot of reasons for the addition of Miriam, but it certainly at least wants us to think a little bit about who she was. She is listed here as one of the provisions of God’s giving of gifted people to the church. And so we ought to at least think about her a little bit.

And I think that, first of all, of course, Miriam was the sister of Moses and Aaron. You find that in Numbers 26:59. And essentially, there are only two accounts of Miriam that say much about her at all in the scriptures. One is negative and the other is positive. The negative one is found in Numbers 12, where Miriam was struck because of her sins—struck leprous—and she was later healed of that. But by her sin of really wanting the authority that Moses had, she was struck leprous by God.

So that’s a negative account. There’s a positive account, however, in Exodus 15:20 and 21. Let’s turn to that. This is the only account that we have to explain why she would be counted one of the leaders of the people and a blessing that God had provided for his covenant people.

And in Exodus 15:20 and 21, we read about her. It says: The rest of chapter 15 is the song of Moses that talks about the deliverance of God. He taught them this song to sing. And then in verse 20 it says: “And Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took the timbrel in her hand. And all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dancing. And Miriam answered them, ‘Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted, the horse and his rider he has hurled into the sea.’”

So Miriam is noted here for a couple of things. One, she is specifically designated in the text as a prophetess. And two, she is specifically designated as one who led the women in singing the jubilant song that Moses had sung just prior to that in the account.

Now, I don’t know. Maybe this indicates that if we ever do move to dancing at some point in our services, we should have separate men and women groups of dancers. I don’t know. But in any event, I think it’s important to recognize here that one thing that God is doing with reciting his gracious acts here is to cause the people to rejoice in the covenant instead of to reject the covenant. And Miriam is given as an example of a woman who led the other women and was a leader in that sense who led them in rejoicing before God and dancing before him and the song of deliverance.

But secondly, I think the fact that it’s pointed out here that she is a prophetess is also very important for us to note. Miriam was a prophetess. Aaron was also a prophet—for Moses. It tells us that in Exodus 7:1. And of course, Moses was the preeminent prophet of the Old Testament. And so all three of these people that are mentioned by God here, by Micah—but God through Micah—are given as examples of prophets.

Now, I think that’s important because you got to remember that what they are receiving here from God is by the mouth of a prophet, Micah. And Micah was not particularly—people were not enamored of Micah and his ministry at the time he gave it. He was despised pretty much. Occasionally they would listen to him, but mostly the prophets were rejected by the people.

And so God is, the purpose of this litany of God’s righteous acts of course is to bring the people to repentance. Their unrighteous acts. He’s delivered them. They’ve through their sin brought themselves into bondage to ungodly rulers and into even pagan countries, and they’ve gone into these alliances with Egypt and whatnot. So he’s rebuking them by way of telling them how much grace he’s lavished on them. And he says, “I gave you great leaders. Look at these prophets that I provided for you—Miriam, Moses, Aaron—and the deliverance that they affected for you.”

And by implication, of course, behind this is the fact that the people at the time of Micah had rejected the prophet. You see, the people tend to take the leaders of God and they look back at the past leaders and they say, “Well, that’s kind of a nice thing.” But they look at the leaders that God has in the land today and they take those leaders for granted or they even despise them because often times their message is not a positive one, but it’s a rebuking of sin.

And so I think that God specifically mentions Miriam for both the rejoicing aspect and the prophecy aspect. And God recounts the gifting of men and women to the church to teach his word, essentially, to bring people into rejoicing in the context of that word, to repeat back to God and to sing before him what he has accomplished through his mighty acts.

Israel is reminded in this list, of course, not to take the leaders that God’s provided—and at this time Micah and Hezekiah—for granted but rather to see them as a gracious gift of God.

Okay. Verse 5. God, in verse 5, gives evidence of his righteousness. He says in verse 5: “Oh my people, remember now what Balak, king of Moab, consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal, that ye may know the righteousness of the Lord.”

So God now gives a couple of more evidences, and these evidences are specifically given to the fact that they might know the righteousness of the Lord—the last clause of the sentence.

First, there’s the gracious reversal of attempted curses. And specifically here, the people are called to remember two things: what Balak consulted (what he wanted, in other words) and what Balaam the son of Beor answered. And then, remember that Balak, of course, wanted Balaam to curse them, and Balaam answered with blessing. And we’re going to talk about that more in a couple of minutes. But for now, just notice that one of the first evidences of God’s righteousness is the gracious reversal of attempted curses, and that clearly pointed out by both clauses there, emphasizing Balak’s consultation and Balaam’s answer.

Secondly, the people are brought into the promised land. And this is not obvious from the text, depending on what version you’re using. It may be totally obscured in the text. In the King James version, it reads: “What Balaam the son of Beor answered from Shittim unto Gilgal.” Well, Balaam didn’t answer from Shittim unto Gilgal. And in fact, this is a separate clause from “Shittim unto Gilgal” that has no further explanation given to it. It doesn’t say “remember what God did in these particular actions from Shittim to Gilgal.” It just says “remember Shittim to Gilgal.”

Now, there’s a connection to Balaam because if you realize what Shittim and Gilgal are, you’ll begin to understand what’s going on here. Shittim, in Joshua 3:1, is the first place of encampment—or the last place of encampment, rather—before the crossing of the Jordan. And after the people of God cross the Jordan into the promised land, Gilgal is the first encampment after the crossing. And it’s at Gilgal, for instance, that Joshua set up the 12 stones of remembrance for the crossing of the Jordan.

And so basically, when God is saying that “I blessed you and here’s an evidence of my righteousness in terms of covenant righteousness before you—Shittim to Gilgal”—he’s saying, “From outside of the land into the land, from your encampment on the other side of the land, brought into the land now at Gilgal, and I brought you through the Jordan.” That’s what he’s referring to here. And of course, you can see references to the Jordan and many of these other covenant lawsuits as well.

One other thing about Shittim, however, is that—and we’ll talk about this more in a couple of minutes—Shittim also was the occasion of great sin on the part of the people of God. Having been given victories and triumphs by God and this blessing of Balaam, they then enter into sin at Shittim. And so Shittim is also a reminder, not just of being outside of the land and outside of the promises, the promised land of God, but also a reminder to the people of the sin that they entered into there, as Balaam is as well, as we’ll see in a couple of minutes.

So God’s people are brought into the promised land, and it’s another evidence of God’s righteousness. “I brought you out of the place where you’re excluded from the land and where you’re in sin into a place, Gilgal, where you’re in the land and rejoicing before God.” And we’ll see more about that in a couple of minutes as well.

And then the end of all these evidences of God’s righteousness is given—that you might know the righteousness of God. Actually, verse 5 has beginning and end, the purpose of all this. He says to remember all these things and at the end of it “that ye may know the righteousness of God.” Remember, that you might know the righteousness. And this is not an intellectual exercise he’s involved here. He’s not going to give them a history test.

What he’s going to give them is a test of obedience. In the Hebrew specifically, the words used for “remember” and “know” and the “righteousness of God” are words that imply action. You don’t remember something if you don’t walk on the basis of that memory. If it’s just an intellectual memory to you, you haven’t really remembered what the thing’s all about. And if you know something in the Old Testament and you don’t act on the basis of that knowledge, you don’t really know it.

Okay? So what God is calling the people to do here is to act on the basis of these acts and of his revelation of himself. You know, we come to church on Sunday, we read the Bible to get a revelation of who God is—not to satisfy our intellectual curiosity about him, but to go out then into obedience, into the rest of the week in obedience to what he’s instructed us to do on the basis of who he is. And so God is doing the same thing here at the people.

He tells them to remember, know the righteousness of God, act on it. In other words, he’s calling the people to repent. He’s calling them to turn from their violations of the covenant into obedience to the covenant.

That’s the context of Balaam’s witness. And now we move specifically then to what I want to focus on for a couple of minutes this morning, and that is Balaam’s witness itself. And why is that placed in here?

We have the Exodus references, Miriam and Aaron and Moses in terms of the Exodus. We have the Shittim to Gilgal, obviously talking about the Exodus and the promised land. But he throws in Balaam and Balak here, and I think it’s important for us to spend a couple of minutes there—that we don’t normally spend—thinking about Balaam and who he was.

First of all, Balaam’s witness is a witness that God turns God’s cursing into blessing.

One other just brief point: I don’t want to turn to it now, but in Joshua 24, the parallel covenant arrangement that is called for there by Joshua, we talked about the parallels in terms of the witness of the inanimate objects (the mountain, the rock, that kind of stuff), we talked about the Exodus and we talked about Moses and Aaron. Another parallel with Joshua 24 in this passage is the reference to Balaam. Joshua 24 also brings up Balaam and what happened there. So that’s another parallel passage.

But in any event, what we want to do now is spend a couple of minutes looking at what actually happened with Balaam. Who was he? Many of you may know the story well and some of you may not. And we’ll go over it just briefly now to think through what God wants us to remember as we read Micah 6:5. He wants people to remember—well, he doesn’t just want to remember the names. He wants to remember what actually happened as recorded in Holy Writ here.

So turn to Numbers 22-24. We won’t read the whole thing, but we’ll just glance through portions of it, and I will read the prophecies that Balaam issued.

Numbers 22 begins with the people of God being victorious just before Numbers 22—over Sihon and Og. They were being victorious in battle. And in verse three of Numbers 22, it says: “Moab was in great fear because of the people. So they were numerous and Moab was in dread of the sons of Israel. Verse 4: ‘Moab said to the elders of Midian, “Now this horde will look up—will lick up—all that has surrounded us.” And so what they’re trying to do is—they’re coming up, they’re trying to come up with a strategy here to stop Israel. They’ve been successful.

Moab and the elders of Midian get together and say, “What are we going to do?” And then it says simply in verse 4—we have the reference to Balak, which we were trying to find out where Micah 6 is referencing—to go back here and we find this reference to Balak.

Balak at that time, in verse 4, was the son of Zippor. He was the king of Moab at that time.

For you who are interested in details of parallelism: one of the things about Joshua 24 is that Balak’s official title as king is used both in the text in Micah 6 that we read and also in Joshua 24. It isn’t always used that way in the scriptures. Additionally, Balaam, his patronymic—who he was descended from—is given in Micah 6 and also in Joshua 24. So they’re like official titles being used. It’s representing something very important.

In any event, okay, Numbers 22 tells us the Balak was the king of Moab at that time. And verse 5 tells us what the strategy was. They sent messengers to Balaam, the son of Beor. Okay? And they want him to come. They want Balaam to come and they want him to curse the people of God.

You see, they had given up on trying to defeat these people militarily. They said, “What can we do? Maybe if this magician, this prophet, this fellow who seems to have a link to God somehow and who seems to be able to say things that come to pass—if we can get him to come and curse these people, then we’ll be able to defeat them militarily.” That was the thinking behind it. So they go to see Balaam, and they send actually messengers to go see Balaam, and Balaam, in verse 12, consults God and God answers Balaam.

And he tells the messengers: Come to Balaam from Balak. And God tells Balaam in verse 12: “Don’t go with them. You shall not curse the people, for they’re blessed.”

Well, now Balaam should have known that already. But in any event, God makes it crystal clear here to Balaam that the people can’t be cursed. They are blessed by God.

Now, it’s interesting what Balaam does with that. In verse 13, it says: “So Balaam arose in the morning and said to Balak’s leaders, ‘Go back to your land, for the Lord has refused to let me go with you.’” You know, it may not seem like it. You read through this story—these three chapters—at first, and you don’t stop and realize the details of what’s going on. And Balaam can look like a pretty good fella. He can look like he’s being earnest here and trying to do what God wants him to do. But there are indications throughout the text that is not the case. And this is the first indication.

God has told Balaam that Balaam can’t curse the people of God because they’re blessed. Balaam, if he’s going to be a good prophet of God having received this knowledge, should pass it on. But instead of passing that on to Balak, saying, “Hey, forget it. These people are blessed,” he says, “God says I can’t go with you.” And that’s all he tells them, right? And so they think, “Well, gee, okay, he can’t go with us. Maybe he’ll change his mind at some later point in time.” They go back then to Balak.

Balak sends back another group in verse 17, saying that “I will indeed honor you richly.” And now he begins to give him all kinds of promises of blessings to Balaam if he’ll come back and curse the people. And Balaam answered and says, well, in verse 19, “Now please you also stay here tonight and I shall find out what the Lord will speak to me.”

Well, now he really doesn’t need to do that, does he? I mean, God has already told him—he’s going to go back to the Lord again and say, “Can I go with these guys and curse the people of Israel?” And God has already told him, “Look, you can’t curse those people. I’m blessing those people.” And so Balaam’s desire for the loot, his covetousness, is just shown in kind of a shadowy fashion here. And we’ll look at other scriptures later on that confirm this.

But in any event, second time they come to him, God says, and he goes back to God. And God says, “Well, you can go, but don’t curse the people.” Balaam then takes off with the fellas to go back to Balak and to curse—to do—actually tells them explicitly, “I can only do what God will let me do.”

And an interesting thing happens. An angel of the Lord appears to Balaam’s donkey. Now, Balaam is coming back. God says, “You can go, but don’t curse the people.” And then the very next verse in the text says, in verse 22, “God was angry because he was going, and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the way as an adversary against him.”

So this is the famous story where the donkey ends up speaking. Three times the donkey is riding along with Balaam. Angel of the Lord appears and the donkey first goes off the side of the road. Balaam beats him, gets him back on the road. Second time, the donkey sees the angel of the Lord with the sword in his hand, going to kill him. The angel moves against a wall, a stone wall, and Balaam’s foot gets crushed against the wall. He hits on the donkey some more. Third time, angel of the Lord appears, donkey can’t get out of the way.

Donkey falls to his knees underneath Balaam, and he will not go forward against this angel of the Lord and this flaming sword. So Balaam hits his donkey again. And God gives the donkey the power of speech. And that’s kind of interesting because we’ve been talking in these covenant arrangements about how the mountains will witness and Jesus said the stones will cry out. Well, here the inanimate—or not the inanimate—but the animals that don’t have the gift of speech are given the gift of speech here to speak against Balaam.

And to say, “What is the problem with you? Quit hitting me. I’m trying to save you from this angel of the Lord who’s going to kill you if you go ahead here.” And so then Balaam’s eyes are open by God graciously, and he could see the angel of the Lord. And the important thing to recognize here is that God is not capricious. He doesn’t one night say, “Go ahead and go,” and then Balaam goes, then he says, “Oh, I didn’t want you to go.”

Balaam, apparently here, what the angel of the Lord instructs Balaam is not to curse the people of Israel because they’re blessed. He tells him that again, like he’d already told him before. And so apparently what Balaam needed to hear here was not to curse the people. And so the apparent inference from that is that Balaam was going to curse the people. Not only was he going to go, he was going to end up cursing the people somehow. And God warned him, “Don’t do that.”

Okay? And then Balaam proceeds on his way. He goes to Balak and on three different occasions then Balak calls on Balaam to curse the people.

An interesting detail here in the text is that the prophecies—the three there are four prophecies, but the three prophecies we’re going to deal with—are seeded by Balaam offering seven oxen or bullocks and seven rams on seven altars. And then he enters into the prophecy that he’s going to speak of. And I only mentioned that—well, I guess I won’t slow myself down by giving you the references. If you want to know why there were seven rams and seven bulls and seven altars here, let me know and I’ll give you the verses that you can look for parallels between the burnt offerings and the peace offerings that were described that way.

But in any event, okay, God then speaks to Balaam and Balaam speaks to Balak, and Balak wants Balaam to curse the people. And the first prophecy comes forward and it is this, in Numbers 23:7-10:

“And he took up his discourse and said, ‘From Aram, Balak has brought me, Moab’s king, from the mountains of the east. Come and curse Jacob for me and come denounce Israel. How shall I curse whom God has not cursed? And how can I denounce whom the Lord has not denounced? As I see him from the top of his rocks and I look at him from the hills, behold a people who dwells apart and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the upright and let my soul, let my end be like his.’”

That is a statement that will not, by the way, be carried out in Balaam’s life. He will die the death of the unrighteous, killed by God’s people here in a few chapters.

So the first prophecy—he doesn’t curse Israel, and in fact he gives evidence of blessing Israel in that last verse when he talks about “when one counts the dust of Jacob, who can count him or who can number the fourth part of Israel? They’re going to be really blessed. I’d like to die that way myself,” Balaam says.

But it’s interesting because he doesn’t say here that Israel is going to be blessed explicitly. He actually says, “How shall I curse whom God has not cursed?” Okay?

Balak gets upset. “I want you to curse those guys and here you are blessing them. Let’s try again.” And he takes Balaam to a different place so he can see the people of God from a different perspective. Trying to get a different perspective on the prophecy here. And it sounds sort of ridiculous, but you know, Balaam sort of did that same thing when he went back to God and said, “Can I go with these guys and curse Israel for the second time?” He sort of tried it from another angle.

But in any event, they call Balaam here and Balak wants him to curse him again. And the second prophecy comes forth in verse 18 of Numbers 23:

“Arise, O Balak, and hear. Give ear to me, oh son of Zippor. God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should repent. Has he said and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not make it good? Behold, I received a command to bless when he is blessed that I cannot revoke it. He has not observed iniquity in Jacob nor has he seen trouble in Israel. The Lord—that word ‘iniquity’ there, by the way, is probably better translated as iniquity. He’s not seen iniquity in Jacob. The Lord his God is with him and the house and the shout of a king is among them. God brings them out of Egypt. He is for them like the horns of the wild ox. For there is no omen against Jacob, nor is there any divination against Israel. At the proper time it shall be said to Jacob and to Israel what God has done. Behold, a people rises like a lioness and as a lion it lifts itself. It shall not lie down until it devours the prey and drink the blood of the slain.”

So there’s an intensification here in the second prophecy. Now he doesn’t just say, “I can’t curse these guys because God hasn’t cursed them.” Instead, he says specifically there in verse 20: “Behold, I have received a command to bless.” And so now tells Balak, “You wanted me to ask again, and I’m asking again. And you’re getting a stronger message this time. Not only can I not curse them, I have been given a command to bless them.”

Not only will they be numerous and you won’t be able to count them—he then says in the last verse that “it won’t lie down until it devours its prey.” And of course, Balak is its prey. And so he’s telling Balak, “You’re going to be devoured by these people.”

Well, Balak stiffens his neck one more time. Then he says, “Give me another prophecy. I’ll take you to another place here. See it from a different perspective. Hopefully we’ll get a different word from you.”

Balaam, in chapter 24, gives his third prophecy. And again, there’s an intensification here. Verse 3 of chapter 24:

“The oracle of Balaam, the son of Beor, and the oracle of the man whose eye is opened. The oracle of him who hears the words of God, who sees the vision of the Almighty, falling down, yet having his eyes uncovered. How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel, like valleys that stretch out like gardens beside the river, like aloes planted by the Lord, like cedars beside the waters. Water shall flow from his buckets and his seed shall be as many, many waters and his king shall be higher than Agag and his kingdom shall be exalted. God brings him out of Egypt. He is for him like the horns of the wild ox. He shall devour the nations who are his adversaries and shall crush their bones in pieces and shatter his arrows. He couches. He lies down as a lion. And as a lion, who dares rouse him? Blessed is everyone who blesses you and cursed is everyone who curses you.”

And so there we’ve moved from them not being cursed. Second prophecy: people of Israel are actually blessed. Third prophecy: those who bless them will be blessed, but those who curse Israel will be cursed. And what’s that? That’s a direct message to Balak that in attempting to curse the people of God, you are reaping upon your head the curses of God yourself, and you will be cursed.

Now, those are the three prophecies. One verse that I wanted to point out here once more—the second prophecy in chapter 23:21: “He has not observed iniquity in Jacob, nor has he seen trouble in Israel.” I want you to remember that for a couple of minutes.

Okay. Now, what is the point of all this? The point of all this—and God bringing them up and having them remember that Balak not once but three times tried to get Balaam to curse them. And Balaam is not a particularly good guy. We’ll see here in a couple of minutes that God deals with him as a grievous sinner. He’s slaughtered, and plus he is said to be covetous.

So we’ve got a country that wants to use him to curse the people. We’ve got a man who really wants to curse the people so he can get all this loot that Balak has promised him if he’ll curse them. And yet God sovereignly delivers a blessing for his people from the mouths of those who would attempt to curse him.

Balaam represented Balak in his prophecies. He was hired by Balak. He represented him. So the cursing Balak and Balaam who wanted to curse the nation—both their words, as it were, turned into blessings for Israel. God says that I am the God who’s not only delivered you, brought you into the land, etc. I am the God who turns curses against you into blessings for you. I’m the sovereign God of all creation. I can make donkeys speak blessings to you. And certainly I can make an ass like Balaam speak blessings to you as well.

Proverbs 16:1 says, “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. The Lord weighs the motives.”