Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

ing to Zion. That’s where we’re headed individually and corporately, manifesting the presence of God and his people as history unfolds. Doing so, enjoying the blessings of the land that God takes us through. Every piece of earth is Immanuel’s ground as well as heaven.

Sermon text today is found both in Revelation chapter 2 as well as the book of Numbers. So turn first to Revelation 2. I’ll read verses 12 through 17 and then we’ll turn to Numbers 24 beginning at verse 15.

So first Revelation 2, then Numbers 24 beginning at verse 15. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Revelation 2, beginning in verse 12:

“To the angel of the church in Pergamum, write these things, saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges: I know thy works and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is. And thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.

But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”

And now if you could turn to Numbers chapter 24 beginning at verse 15.

“Who is this Balaam and this Balak? We’ll look at Numbers chapter 24 beginning at verse 15.

And he took up his parable and said: Balaam the son of Beor hath said. The man whose eyes are open hath said, he hath said, which heard the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the most high, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open. I shall see him, but not now. I shall behold him, but not nigh. There shall come a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Seth, and Edom shall be a possession.

Seir also shall be a possession for his enemies, and Israel shall do valiantly. Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion, and shall destroy him that remaineth of the city. And when he looked on Amalek, he took up his parable, and said, Amalek was the first of the nations, but his latter end shall be that he perish forever. And he looked on the Kenites, and took up his parable, and said, Strong is thy dwelling place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock.

Nevertheless, the Kenite shall be wasted until Asher shall carry thee away captive. And he took up his parable and said, Alas, who shall live when God doeth this? And ships shall come from the coast of Chittim, and shall afflict Asher, and shall afflict Eber, and he also shall perish forever. And Balaam rose up, and went and returned to his place and Balak also went his way.”

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is unlike any other word or book or writing. It must be spiritually understood. We thank you, Father, for the clarity of it. But we also thank you that there are truths in this word that your Holy Spirit must indeed teach us. We pray that our hearts might be malleable hearts, not stony today, that you might take this word and write it upon our hearts that we might have open ears, big ears to hear what you have to say to the end that we might have open hands to do your will throughout the rest of our lives. We pray this in Christ’s name and for the sake of his kingdom, not ours. Amen.

Please be. Went to bed last night probably later than I should and we sleep in our basement in our home. And as I went to bed I thought somebody left the light on somewhere because there’s these small windows there and there was this brightness out there. Dan knows what I’m talking about. Last night it was bright. Got up, looked around. It looked like lights ran everywhere. The moon was bright last night. Big shadows cast by the moon. And I thought as I thought about that and went to sleep that’s what we’re supposed to be. We’re supposed to be bright shining reflections, image-bearers of the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of a dark world, enlightening that world and moving it from night to daytime simply through the brightness of our countenance as we shine bright in the context of a darkened land.

We’re going through the letters to the seven churches because we want the instruction to those churches which was given to all churches. Hear what you know—listen to all churches what the Spirit has to say to the churches, not just the particular churches. We want to hear those messages and try to see what application to our own lives personally and corporately we can make, that we would shine like a full moon, the fullness of the moon in the midst of a darkened world and bring light to it.

We’re going to be talking next week about the third letter to Pergamum. But these letters assume quite a bit of knowledge about biblical history and many things. And so I’ve decided to intersperse some of these letters with teaching from the Old Testament history that’s referred to in the letter rather than try to just address that in the context of everything else in the letter. And specifically at Pergamum, they had those that held to the doctrine of Balaam and Balak.

And Christ says, “Unless you clean this up, unless you discipline these fellas and either repent or get them out of the church, I’m coming and I will war against them with this two-edged sword that I have in my hand.” So we want to know what that is all about. What is this stumbling block? The word stumbling block, by the way, in the King James version in Revelation 2, actually the word is the snare. It’s like the stick that would prop open a snare.

And you know how you get a bird walking in there and you pull the stick and the bird is caught. So really it’s not so much a stumbling block as it is a snare to the children of Israel. It’s a snare to the church. What is that snare? We want to talk today about Balaam, Balak, and the snare of Israel.

And what I want to do is first of all go over some historic and literary settings for the narrative, for the story of Balaam. The historical account that’s given to us, the specific prophecies, and then what happens as a result. So we want to look at the context in the Old Testament. And then we want to look specifically at the Balaam narrative and what it instructs us as. Then we want to draw out some lessons from those two things together.

It’s very important in the scriptures to see the context. I’m going to give you a lot of big broad brushstroke stuff in this first Roman numeral of the outline, the first of three, but I think it’s important to see what’s going on to help us interpret what actually occurs in the Balaam narrative.

Okay? And so, first of all, what we see in the scriptures, we could put it in the entire context. We could say that, for instance, in Genesis Adam falls and sins and then is brought in the context of God’s grace into Egypt and protected there. But he’s formed up as a nation so that in Exodus he comes out of Egypt as a kingdom. And then Leviticus gives the people of God laws for how to conduct themselves as a kingly priestly nation to the world.

And then in the book of Numbers is really the numbering of the people for conquest of Canaan. And so overall what’s going on in the book of Numbers is the people of God having been delivered are marching to Zion. And the benediction that we receive every Lord’s day, almost every Lord’s day in the first portion of the service we use, Numbers 6, that is a benediction upon the army of God that’s supposed to be going out to conquer the land.

Okay? And there’s correlations between this, of course, and the seven churches and the seven letters which we’ll see. So the big context, but more minutely let’s look at Numbers 19. We don’t have to turn there, but let me just give you a summary of what’s happening in Numbers 19. This is the famous ashes of the red heifer that, you know, some dispensationalists get all worked up about. But basically, what’s going on in Numbers 19 is the procedure for how you cleanse your garments, how you cleanse yourself from sinful defilement is given. One particular type: you have this red heifer and you put—the ashes of the red heifer—you mix it up with some cedarwood, some red wood, and then you take hyssop and scarlet red and you put those things together and you produce this water of purification. And when somebody gets defiled and their garments need to be cleansed, as it were, they are washed with this red water.

Well, that’s going to be an important reference to us. This is one reason I pointed out in the fifth letter in Revelation to the fifth church: he tells them to wash their garments, and later in the book of Revelation they wash their garments in the blood of the Lamb. So the red heifer, the red wood, the cedarwood, the red scarlet with the hyssop, it all pictures the blood of Christ. So the people of God in marching to Zion in the context of the book of Numbers are moving toward conquest and they’re moving as a cleansed people—cleansed through the blood of the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ—that we’ve spoken about several times already in our worship service.

So that’s the immediate context of Numbers 19.

Numbers 20, in chapter 20 verse one of Numbers 20. Turn now to Numbers 20:1 if you would. “Numbers 20:1: Then came the children of Israel, leaving the whole congregation, to the desert of Zin in the first month, and the people abode in Kadesh, and Miriam died there and was buried there.”

What is this the first month of? What it’s the first month of is the first month of the 40th year. Remember, they’re going to wander in the wilderness 40 years and then come the conquest of Canaan. So here we’re given a time reference as a context for the Balaam narrative. Not only are God’s people cleansed, they’re cleansed so they can move out in the first month of the 40th year here to move towards Zion as a cleansed and redeemed people to take the kingdom they should have taken many years before.

So the immediate context is a time reference to the conquest of the land. In the scriptures, 40 years is the period of time frequently that is followed then by the redemption of God’s people in their victory and conquest over their enemies. You know, Samson comes along at the end of 40 years. The ark goes along for 40 days, symbolic of the 40-year period. The 40-year period in the wilderness. And it’s real relevant to the book of Revelation because we’ve said that what’s going on is that 40-year period between AD 30 and AD 70. And God is going to affect the deliverance of his people. The first missionary journey of Paul and the first sermon, a long sermon recorded for us, references these 40-year periods of testing and trial and tribulation and then conquest.

So we’re now getting ready to exit the wilderness and enter Canaan in the first month of the 40th year for conquest.

Now, chapter 20 also contains the presence of a rebellious generation. Right away after that’s talked about, they start murmuring again about their situation. And so in the context of chapter 20, the people are seen again murmuring. And that’s kind of an odd thing. These people are getting ready to conquer the next land. But remember what we’ve got in the wilderness is one generation dying off and the new generation replacing them. And just to show you where we’re going with all these little interspercements in Numbers 20-2 of problems and sin in the camp, I believe that what’s going on is God is killing off the remainder of the old generation.

Remember, they all had to die in the wilderness and the new generation was going to go in. And so what’s going on here is they continue to manifest the rebellion of the old generation even as the new generation manifests its love and thanksgiving to God. In the context of these few chapters, you get the old generation grumbling, saying, “Give us water,” and you know, “Why were you brought us out here to, you know, not have any water and we’re going to die out here?” And later on in chapter 21 or 22, I believe, the people of God have provided water—not in response to grumbling but just in God’s provision for them—and they thank God and they sing a little song about how he digs these wells and he’s a great God who provides this water.

What’s going on? Are the people of God so fickle they’re moving back and forth? No. Two groups of people in the wilderness. It’s the old generation dying off and the new generation that’s going to conquer. So in chapter 20, this first month of the 40th year conquest, we also have the presence of a rebellious generation. We also have the opposition of the Edomites. The Edomites come along and say you can’t pass our land. So they got to go around the Edomite land. And then we have the death of Aaron. Not just Miriam in verse one, but later in chapter 20, Aaron dies.

Now when the high priest dies according to the law, those that were held in the city of refuge are released. When the high priest dies, release comes from those who were held in the city of refuge for their particular circumstance. Don’t want to get into the details of that, but again, the point here is—another picture like the 40 years, like the cleansing waters—that things are changing. Aaron dies and now we’re getting ready to move out of that wilderness city of refuge back home to where we’re going to be to manifest God’s kingdom in the context of Canaan.

This is our history. You know, I like to read about my wife’s history of her relatives in England, but this is our real history right here because we’re of Abraham. We’re of the people of faith. And this is what our family history is. We want to know it. Our family history says that God brings us out of the wilderness. And he does this through the death, ultimately, of the Lord Jesus Christ that Aaron is a picture of. So we have this pictured in chapter 20.

In Numbers 21, we see some more things going on. The Canaanites attacked the people of Israel. They’re utterly destroyed at Hormah, which means destruction. So see, the little picture that’s going on here is a cleansed, delivered people, based on the work of Jesus—the true redness of his blood, the true high priest. They’re going to go out to conquer. And some of the people are going to be still grumbling and disputing and going to get killed off before they completely move into Canaan. But those that aren’t killed off are fully conquerors. They conquer here a little mini battle against the Canaanites at Hormah. They utterly destroy them.

Fiery serpents, though—again, the old generation begins to grumble. More of them are killed by the fiery serpents that God raises up, and the brass serpent story occurs here. And then there’s provision of water for the new generation in chapter 21. Let’s look at that.

So, turn a couple of pages in your Bible to chapter 21, verse 16. “There they went to Beer. That is, that’s the well wherefore the Lord spake unto Moses, Gather the people together, and I will give them water. Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it. The princes dig the well. The nobles of the people digged it by the direction of the lawgiver with their staves and from the wilderness they went into Mattanah.”

So the point here is that see—this is the new generation praising God. Look what God does. He gives us water. They weren’t grumbling for water. They were waiting for God’s provision. And if we wait and don’t grumble, God provides it. And then our response is praise to God and thanksgiving for what he’s provided, instead of just feeling stupid because we were so grumbling and disputing like that old generation.

So the picture here is enemies opposing him. They’re going to conquer. And in the context of the camp, you got an old generation dying off and the new generation is going to go into Canaan conquering. And then right after this, we have the defeat of Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and their particular troops. So we have this tremendous picture of God’s victory to his generation that praise him and thank him for his deliverance.

And then we have specific—that’s the context then for the particular Balaam narrative itself.

And now we’ll move into that particular portion of the outline. So now we’ll talk about the narrative itself, Roman numeral 2. And we begin this in Numbers 22:1-6. We won’t read all these verses. It would take far too much time. But Balak is a king. Balak knows about the problems with Israel conquering these groups around. And he doesn’t want to be conquered. So he figures he’d go down and send for that Balaam guy who was kind of like a soothsayer. You know, he’d do horoscopes and that sort of stuff. And he would bring him up and he would have him curse Israel so that Israel wouldn’t triumph over him—it would stop this progression that they were on going to Canaan.

So Balaam is hired by Balak and specifically the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian. Now the Midianites were a nation of people. Some of them were good. Remember Jethro was a Midianite. He was a God-fearer, and other Midianites were bad. And at this particular time of the history as they’re coming out of the wilderness wanderings 40 years after deliverance from Egypt, most of Midian here is represented by elders who aren’t good, who are no longer God-fearers because they’re going to try to hire Balaam also to curse Israel.

So the context of Balaam’s prophecies is Balak wanting him to curse God’s people. Balak, this king. Now the word “Balak” means devastate or devastation. And the word “Balaam,” as I explained last week, really comes from “bal”—to swallow or to eat—destroy, and then a nation or people, in the Hebrew. So Balaam is a destroyer of the nation, a destroyer, an eater of God’s people. And Balak, who wants to hire him and works with him to curse God’s people—to try to—Balak is devastation, and Balaam is specifically addressed as the son of Beor. And “Beor” means to destroy by fire, to burn.

So we’ve got burning, devastation, and the nation being destroyed, eaten up in the picture of these names in the Balaam narrative. So their attempt is to destroy, burn up, incinerate the people of God. But God’s entire thing that’s going on here is these are the ones who will be destroyed, incinerated, and eaten up. Balaam will end up at the sword with the rest of the Midianites. And in the meantime, the old generation will continue its rebellion against God, and they will also be destroyed in the wilderness before they go to conquer.

So that’s the big picture: God is using these events to both destroy his enemies and his people—both within and without the camp. The old generation were an enemy to God and an enemy to God’s people even though they lived alongside of them and were the same physical lineage. And that’s real important for understanding what’s going on in the book of Revelation.

Okay? And then we get to Balaam’s struggles with God. And there’s three of them here. You can look at this story—this Balaam story. Balak goes to send for Balaam. Balaam, he doesn’t—he wants to go, he wants money. We’ll look at those texts in a little bit, but Scripture says he was a lover of money and he wants to go and curse Israel, but he wrestles with God before he leaves. God says don’t go. So there’s this wrestling.

And then secondly, Balaam wrestles or struggles with God. When he finally does go, remember the story of Balaam on his donkey, or his ass, and the ass, you know, sees the angel and won’t proceed forward. And three times Balaam gets mad at the donkey. And things are going like he’s struggling not with the donkey but with God. Because God now tells him, “Yeah, you go. But the donkey stops. The angel says he’s going to be there to kill Balaam,” etc., etc. So there’s this struggle, an odd way it’s described at first whether Balaam should go or not. And secondly, when he’s going with the donkey, shall the donkey convey him to curse God’s people or not? And then third, shall he bless the people of Israel once he gets there or curse them? He goes there to curse them because that’s what he’s being paid to do. But God has something else in mind.

So you have this threeness of Balaam—not a good guy, a bad guy, a horoscope reader, etc., a member of the psychic hotline of the time, I suppose we could call him, who was doing stuff for money. He struggles, but he’s used by God first to go and get there and then eventually bless God’s people. So there’s this struggle between Balaam and God. And the whole point of that struggle is that over and over again in very pointed terms, God shows his sovereignty over all peoples of the earth.

Okay? It’s not that Balaam is struggling with his own goodness or badness. He’s a rebel. He doesn’t like God. Doesn’t worship God. Wants to curse God’s people. But God controls. God uses the wrath of man to praise him. He uses everyone to manifest his purposes. He uses sin sinlessly to affect the blessing of his people. So Balaam struggles.

And then—C Balaam. I hope this doesn’t offend anybody. Balaam, Balak’s ass, blesses Israel. The end result is he ends up going, the donkey takes him there and he ends up blessing Israel. Now I call him Balak’s ass because there is this correlation. The way the story reads, between Balaam struggling with his donkey to get to where Balak is and Balak trying to use Balaam and struggling with him to get him to curse God’s people. Three times on the road to where he’s going to meet Balak, Balaam struggles with his donkey, not wanting to proceed. Three times and three times Balak wants Balaam to curse God’s people and he tries thrice and can’t do it.

So the struggle—the donkey gets more and more exasperated throughout the thing and Balaam gets madder and madder as he’s moving over to see Balak. And once he gets there and tries to curse Israel but ends up blessing him, he gets more and more exasperated and Balak gets madder and madder at him. “I’m paying you to curse him and three times now you’ve blessed them.” So there’s this correlation.

You know, I think the point of this is that God puts his word in the mouth of a donkey, a mouth of a dumb beast. He speaks verbal words that people can understand if they were there listening to it. And Balaam’s no better than the donkey. He’s rejected his image by rejecting God, actively suppressing or holding down the truth of God in unrighteousness. He loves money, not God. And as a result, he’s become an ass as it were for Balak.

You know, in the colonial period, if you were drunk publicly, they’d put you in the stocks. And the reasoning was, you’ve denied—while you’re drunk—your image as a god-bearer, and you become like a dumb animal, so we’ll treat you like a dumb animal. We’ll put you in these stocks and whip you like a donkey. They understood these correlations in Scripture.

And Scripture gives us this narrative to show us that those who rebel against God really are just as dumb brute beasts. And that’s what Balaam was. He was Balak’s kind of donkey that he wanted to use for his purposes. But just like Balaam’s donkey, Balaam can only speak the word that God gives him to speak.

Okay, let’s look at these prophecies of Balaam and actually read these texts. They are wonderful, beautiful pictures of the blessedness of God’s people as they’re marching to Zion.

So in prelude to talking about what this snare was that Balaam set, first let’s look at the prophecies themselves. And there are three that are asked for or bidden by Balak. And then there’s a prophecy that Balaam just gives on his own that is a summation of the three. Now before we look at them specifically, keep in mind that when God calls Abraham to him, he promises Abraham three things. He promises Abraham children, a seed. “You’re going to have seed that cannot be numbered.” He promises Abraham land. “You’re gonna dwell in a particular piece of real estate.” And he promises Abraham that God will bless him and he’ll be a blessing to the nations. So it’s blessing, seed, and land is what God promises to Abraham.

And what happens here in these first three blessings, by Balak of Balaam rather, asked for by Balak, is that Israel is seen as the recipients of God’s land, God’s multiplying him in number, and also God’s blessing upon him. So these same three elements are the three basic content of the three blessings.

Specifically in the first blessing that Balaam will pronounce in chapter 23:7-10, the first blessing is he mentions God’s relationship to Israel and Israel’s great population. So this multiple seed that Abraham was going to have is seen in the first blessing that Balaam pronounces upon Israel. The second blessing can be seen as focusing on God’s faithfulness to his people, giving them blessings. So the second one emphasizes the blessing aspect of the three-fold blessing to Abraham. And the third one describes the land conquest by Israel. So it’s seed, blessing, and land. And the fourth prophecy will kind of extend all of those out to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Okay. So let’s look at the first blessing first of all in Numbers chapter 23, verses 7-10, and he takes Balak. This false prophet, this false king Balak, has this false prophet Balaam go up to this particular place where he can see the people of God. That’s in verse 41 of chapter 22, just before we get to 23. And then in chapter 23 here’s what Balaam says:

“He says, ‘From Aram hath Balak brought me, the king of Moab, from the mountains of the east. Come curse me, Jacob. Come curse me, Jacob. And come defy Israel. How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed? And how shall I defy whom Jehovah hath not defied?’”

So that’s kind of an introduction to what he’s going to say. It’s part of his prophecy that God is sovereign. He begins with that assertion. Then he says:

“‘For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him.’ And he was literally up on a hill looking over into this plane where Israel was gathered. And he says, ‘I see Israel. And what I see is, Lo, it is a people that dwelleth alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations.’ That’s the first thing he says. He says that God’s people are blessed. And I’ve given you three points here from Matthew Henry’s commentary on your outline. He says, first of all, God’s people are blessed in peculiarity. They’re distinct from the nations. And later on when they get into trouble is when they act like the nations round about them. God’s people are to be a peculiar people who are not conformed to this world but rather transformed through God’s word and the renewing of our mind and soul. We’re to be a peculiar people.

And when Balaam sets the snare later in chapter 25, he’s going to get them to act like the world round about them. So God’s people are blessed as a peculiar people. Secondly, he says, ‘Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the fourth part of Israel?’ They’re blessed because of their great numbers from God. Again, this is the emphasis of the promise to Abraham of the numberless seed. And third, he says, ‘Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like this.’

Now, don’t think highly of Balaam here thinking a good thing. He wants to be a Christian. That’s not what’s going on. But he is saying under the sovereignty of God that God’s people are blessed in their peculiarity, being a peculiar people for God’s possession. And they’re blessed in their numbers and they’re also blessed in their death. The death of the righteous are a beautiful thing to behold because it’s a culmination of their life lived in the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So in this first prophecy, in this first attempt to curse Israel, Balaam blesses Israel for their peculiarity, for being a separate people, for their numbers, and even for the way they die. What more can be said about the blessedness of a people?

And we go on to the next attempt by Balaam to curse God’s people in chapter 23:18-24. He says:

“Rise up, Balak, and hear. Hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor.”

So he gets Balak. By the way, Balak here, this second time he says, “Well, you know, maybe it’s because you’re seeing too much of these folks. Let’s move to a different hilltop here where you only see a little bit of these guys. Maybe that’ll give you a better perspective so you can curse them.” He’s trying to manipulate God by moving his prophet around. It’s ridiculous in its attempt, but that’s what he’s trying to do. “Maybe it’s a god of the hills and not of the valley,” etc., etc., all that stuff where the god-haters are just foolish in their attempt to manipulate God.

So he takes him to another place and Balaam looks down on him and goes into his prophetic trance and he says:

“Rise up, Balak, and hear. Hearken unto me now, son of Zippor. Listen up. I got more words for you, but it ain’t going to be good for you. God is not a man that he should die, neither the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said, and will he not do it? Hath he spoken and will not he make it good? Behold, I received commandment to bless, and he hath blessed. I can’t reverse it.”

He says, “Balak, you’re doomed because God is immutable. Remember this attribute of God: if you’ve been in a Sunday school class, God doesn’t change. He changes not. God isn’t going to change about Israel. He says his is immutable, unchangeable. And so, Balak, forget it. You’re a dead man. You’re doomed. You’re not going to be able to turn this around because God doesn’t change.”

He goes on to say:

“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen a perverseness in Israel. Jehovah his God is with him. And the shout of his king is among them. These people are holy and happy.”

In what condition did God make Adam and Eve? The catechism says made them holy and happy. Well, here are God’s people and they are holy. There’s no sin found in them and they’re happy. The shout of a king is among them. And those things will always go together. If you lose your holiness, you lose the joy of the shout of the king.

And so God tells Balak to tell him, “I don’t change. And furthermore, Balak, you’re doomed because my people are holy and happy. And third, he goes on to say, ‘God brings them forth out of Egypt. He hath as it were the strength of the wild ox. Surely there is no enchantment with Jacob, neither is there any divination with Israel. Now shall it be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought? Behold, the people rise up as a lioness, and as a lion doth he lift himself up. He shall not lie down until he eat of the prey and drink the blood of the slain.’”

Balak, you’re doomed. Because Israel, serving a sovereign and immutable God, Israel serving in holiness and happiness, is going to conquer. They’re going to have invincible strength to conquer the entire world if that’s where God takes them.

Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is our history. These are the promises to us. We are not a loser people. We are not a people who wait around till we’re raptured out of this world. We’re a people who have the strength of the immutable God who declares that we’re to go into all the world preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and discipling the nations.

“What hath God wrought?” What a beautiful truth—that the first telegraphic message of the modern age, this was what was sent on that telegraph: “What hath God wrought?” And what a picture of the change in the world! That the first, as I understand it, global satellite television transmission was the Beatles singing “All We Need Is Love”—whatever that love may be to you is what it’s defined as. We just need smiley faces, you know, the two dots and the grin. That’s all we need.

What a transition the world has made. But the world moves in terms of God, ring, rotting, creating in his people a powerful, holy, and happy devouring force in the context of the world. And that’s what Balaam tells Balak: “You’re doomed.” Maybe things going on in the meantime, but what the long-term project here is that God’s people will be holy, they will be joyous, and they will be a conquering people. No hope for you, Balak.

And then we go to the third prophecy that Balaam—Balak says, “Well, let’s try another. Let’s go to this other place,” and maybe see here, you know, and he gets madder and madder just like Balaam got mad at the donkey. He gets mad at the sovereign God here. What he should have been doing is repenting of his sin. “You’re right. God’s immutable. I got to worship him.” But no, in chapter 24, verses 1-9, we have the last of the three prophecies that Balaam requests—or Balak requests of Balaam. And so we read. This is the third prophecy, verse 4 of chapter 24:

“He saith, ‘Who heareth the words of God, who seeth the vision of the Almighty falling down and having his eyes open?

How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, thy tabernacles, O Israel!’”

As Matthew Henry said, Israel is blessed in beauty. “How goodly are thy tents.” You know, they were arranged there in the plain and they were arranged in an orderly, beautiful fashion, clothed as God put together as the planting of the Lord, as it were. And there is a beauty to their symmetry. There’s a beauty to the way they were encamped. There’s a beauty to the order that God puts into his people. And you may not see it manifest in your life or may not think you see it today, but God is ordering his people with his Holy Spirit as a beautiful organized group from him to go forth into all the world.

“How beautiful and goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, thy tabernacles, O Israel, as valleys, as alleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the riverside, as willows that’s perfume trees which Jehovah hath planted, as cedar trees besides the water. Israel is blessed in fruitfulness and increase. We are given the fruitfulness of the Holy Spirit and we increase in the blessings that God give us.

Water shall flow from his buckets and his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. Israel, the church, is blessed in honor and in advancement by God. As Matthew Henry said, God bringeth him forth out of Egypt. He hath as it were the strength of the wild ox. He shall eat up the nations, his adversaries. He shall break their bones in pieces and smite him, smite him through with his arrows.

Israel is blessed with power and with victory. In spite of what so much of the church says today, and what I’m sure that old dying-off generation said as they’d said 40 years earlier, “There’s giants in there. You’re going to lose.” No. God sovereignly moves even the reprobate Balaam to declare that God’s people are a powerful, victorious, and conquering people.

Verse 9:

“He croucheth. He lay down as a lion and as a lioness. Who shall rouse him up? He is blessed in courage and security. Like the lion, he is courageous. And like the lion, he is secure. As the lion is, who shall rouse him up? Blessed be everyone that blesseth thee, and cursed be everyone that curseth thee.”

As Matthew Henry says, Israel is blessed with interest and influence upon her neighbors. She goes in the context of the world to see who in the world are the elect of God who will bless her and be blessed as a result of blessing the priestly nation of Israel, and who will curse Israel—as Balaam and Balak were attempting to do—and they shall be cursed by God. She has influence and interest in the context of the whole world and the nations of the world.

So this third prophecy that Balaam gives forth, Balaam says, “You want me to curse these folks? You’re doomed. They are invincible. They have the election of God whose choices do not change. They are blessed by him in many, many ways.” And Balak, it just isn’t going to work. You can’t curse whom God has blessed.

God over and over again in the Scriptures is portrayed as the one who turns curses into blessings for his people. And here is the big picture of that entire example.

Now there’s a fourth prophecy. Then, in addition to these promises of seed, land, and the blessings, the external blessings of God, the fourth prophecy—unbidden as it were by Balak, but coming forth from the mouth of Balaam by the direction of God—is a prophecy of the universal reign of Jesus Christ and the new humanity in him. There is a crescendo as these blessings pour forth from Balaam. They build one upon the other until they hit this fourth blessing that isn’t even asked for, but God puts it in his mouth to bless Israel in this way. And it speaks of the universal reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And this is the fourth then prophecy. And we read of that prophecy in chapter 24. So let’s turn to verses 15-24 and consider this last of the four prophecies.

Okay. Okay. Verse 16:

“He saith, ‘Who heareth the words of God, and knoweth the knowledge of the most high, who seeth the vision of the Almighty, falling down, and having his eyes open?

Verse 17:

I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not nigh. There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite through the corners of Moab.’”

This is a passage that is frequently read in the context of the celebration of the Christmas season and has been throughout the history of the church. It is this prophecy that may well have been the one that the three wise men in the gospel accounts knew. As a result of this prophecy of the star rising out of Jacob and a scepter rising out of Israel, they knew that the star indicated the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, the universal king of all mankind.

Balaam has just given a series of three very blessed events or prophecies of the events that are going to happen to the people of God in the wilderness as they go forth to conquer Canaan. But he now says that as great as these blessings are, they pale in comparison to what’s going to come in the future. First in the coming of David, but then the greater David, the Lord Jesus Christ, the great morning star that rises.

“I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not nigh. There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite through the corners of Moab, and break down all the sons of Seth.”

Well, who else is there? It’s everybody. All peoples of the world, all descendants shall either be broken into pieces or converted to the service of this star that rises out of Jacob, the scepter that comes from Israel.

“Edom shall be his possession. Seir also shall be a possession, who were his enemies, while Israel doeth valiantly. And out of Jacob shall one have dominion, and shall destroy the remnant from the city. And he looked on Amalek, and took up his parable, and said, Amalek was the first of the nations, first in strength and preeminence, but his latter end shall come to destruction.

And He looked on the Kenite and took up his parable and said, ‘Strong is thy dwelling place and thine nest is set in the rocks. You’re defensible.’ He says, ‘You’re the pre—you’re preeminent in defense. Nevertheless, Cain shall also be wasted until Asher shall carry thee away captive.’ And he took up his parable and said, ‘Alas, who shall live when God doeth this? But ships shall come from the coast of Kittim, and they shall afflict Asher, and shall afflict Eber, and he also shall come to destruction.’”

Balaam prophesies of the worldwide reign of the coming Lord Jesus Christ. Balaam’s fourth and penultimate prophecy of blessedness to God’s people is a direct reference to the days in which we live. The star has risen. The rod has risen up. The Lord Jesus Christ, and he now rules the nations. So this ultimate, this fourth and climactic blessing, is the blessing that the church of Jesus Christ now experiences through the providence of God. All these others find their culmination and fulfillment in the work of the universal rule, authority, and power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He says that Christ’s kingdom shall be universal and victorious over all opposition, which was typified by David’s victories later on over Moab and Edom. But the Messiah shall destroy, or as some read it shall rule over, all the children of Seth. That is, all the children of men who descend from Seth, the son of Adam, the descendants of the rest of Adam’s sons being cut off by the delusion flood. Christ shall be king, not only of Jacob and Israel, but of all the world. So that all the children of Seth shall be either governed by his golden scepter or dashed in pieces by his iron rod. He shall set up a universal rule, authority, and power of his own, and shall put down all opposing rule.

That’s the fourth prophecy of Balaam of the blessedness of God’s people.

Now, we see then these prophecies of Balaam in the Balaam narrative, but the story doesn’t end there. The story moves on to chapter 25. We read Psalm 106, responsively, the first 12 verses or so, that spoke of this great blessing of victory of God’s people. But Psalm 106 goes on to speak of the need for Phinehas to arise in the context of Balaam.

Verse 28 of Psalm 106 says this:

“They join themselves also unto Baal Peor. They ate the sacrifices of the dead. Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions, and the plague break in upon them. Then stood up Phinehas and executed judgment, and so the plague was stayed, and that was counted unto him for righteousness until all generations forevermore.”

What happens? Balaam has attempted to curse Israel. He has not succeeded in plan A. In fact, he has been so overwhelmed and conquered as to be a dumb ass being used to speak the words of blessings of God’s people then and on into the future. The blessedness of those who are called to holiness and joy in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, Balaam goes to plan two.

We don’t know how he did this. There’s indications in the text a couple of places where he might have given counsel to Balak. But what he did very clearly, the scriptures tell us, is to counsel Balak the way that Israel might be deterred for