Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Well, welcome if you're. If you're new or visiting here today.
[00:00:08] And also if I haven't met you yet, I'm going to be down in front. I'd love to meet you afterwards.
[00:00:13] My name is Dean Annan. I am the discipleship pastor here.
[00:00:17] And I would look forward again just to seeing you or meeting you maybe for the first time. I'm going to start with a slide that might be a little obvious, but call me Captain Obvious, I'll do it anyways. It says this. Not all spiritual people are the good guys. Amen.
[00:00:33] Have you ever seen that? Okay, good. Because not everybody who claims to be spiritual and boasts about it or always wants an audience or whatever that looks like or promises you something if you give them something. These aren't the spiritual good guys.
[00:00:50] Today we're going to see a story about a man named Balaam.
[00:00:55] And Balaam wasn't one of these spiritual good guys at all.
[00:00:59] Balaam represents religious leaders who serve their self interest instead of God and who cause others to stumble.
[00:01:10] If you've been with us, you know that we're in the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament and we're going through the stories there, the true stories in there, so that we can yet again be instructed. Because that's why they're here, for our instruction, to understand, to self examine, for us, to confess our sins and repent before the Lord. Because that's when God does his best work in our lives.
[00:01:34] We can make changes, we can move forward for his glory.
[00:01:40] You know, in the Bible there's no biblical construct at all that says once a Christian becomes a Christian, yet you get to coast. That's just not something God entertains at all. Faith in Christ always involves movement.
[00:01:54] Movement.
[00:01:56] Well, our story Today in numbers 22 is where it starts. I'm going to give you, I'm going to read for you something an author said about this story. We're not there yet, but just a little preview, a little setup. And this author said this. This story of Balaam presents a remarkable picture of God working on behalf of his people. In spite of their almost complete failure to follow him faithfully, God will continue to reveal himself to and pronounce blessing upon his people, even if the instrument, instrument of the blessing is a pagan divination expert of international reputation.
[00:02:34] And that pagan divination expert of international reputation today is this person named Balaam. We're going to run into him today. All right, let me give you some characters so you kind of understand who these people are and who we're going to see here in just a moment. The first is Balaam. So he's not an Israelite, he's greedy person. He's a pagan prophet. Think of him as a hired gun. A hired gun, spiritually, a divination person who would. You could hire him. He would curse people or nations, or he would bless people or nation. Again, not a good guy. Balak. Balak's interesting. Doesn't that sound like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Kind of. Have you ever seen that series?
[00:03:12] Kind of sounds like a name from one of those movies. But Balak was a king, the King of Moab. We mentioned him, I think it was a few weeks ago. Who wanted Balaam to curse the Israelites, to stop the Israelites in their tracks, because he feared the Israelites. And so King Balak sent for Balaam. It was of common way and practice in the ancient near east that if there was a battle, perhaps, or you feared another nation, you would either fight them or you would call on someone to curse them, to use incantations or curses to try to gain victory. So very common.
[00:03:49] Another character is a donkey. And yes, it's just what it says, just a donkey.
[00:03:56] Angel of the Lord. This is theologically when it says the angel of the Lord here in our story today, this is Christ himself showing himself. In the Old Testament, it's called a christophany.
[00:04:08] Pretty cool. We run into that.
[00:04:10] Numbers, chapter 22 is where we're going to start. We're going to skip all the way down to verse six.
[00:04:16] Now we start with King Balak's messengers going to Balaam. And these are King Balak's words to Balaam, verse 6.
[00:04:29] Come now, curse this people for me, the Israelites, he's saying, since they are too mighty for me, perhaps I should be able to defeat them and drive them from the land. For I know that he whom you, meaning Balaam, who you bless, is blessed and whom you curse is cursed. I hope you see the fear here, the fear that Balak has. But also in verse seven, I'm not gonna put it on the screen, but in verse seven, you're gonna see that the messengers are bringing what called fees of divination. In other words, a big payment for Balaam's services if he will indeed curse the Israelites, God's people. But God tells Balaam directly. No. Verse 12, God said to Balaam, you shall not go with them, and you shall not curse the people of Israel, for they are blessed. So Balaam is not to go on this trip. Balaam is not to curse.
[00:05:25] And there's this old adage, right? If at first you don't succeed, what, try, try again, right? And that's what we see here. Second time. So Balak's gonna send messengers again. He tries to get Balaam a second time to curse God's people, but this time he sends more money and more people to Balaam.
[00:05:44] Verse 17.
[00:05:47] The messenger say from Balak, for I will surely do you great honor, and whatever you say to me, I will do. And here he says again, come, curse this people, the Israelites, for me. Verse 18. But Balaam answered and said to the servants of Balak, though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the Lord my God, to do less or more. But make no mistake here, this is just clever Balaam here, he's not following God here, even though it sounds like it. What is he really doing? He's really naming his price.
[00:06:23] Let me read that for you. He says his house full of silver and gold, that's what he's asking for here. This is what he's doing. He's naming the price he really wants. So Balaam was told not to go to Moab, right?
[00:06:35] Yeah, he was told not to go to Moab. So what should he have done? Balaam should have said to Balak's messengers, no, and sent them home immediately. But look at verse 19.
[00:06:47] So he didn't tell him to go away. Verse 19. So you too, he's talking to those messengers, stay here tonight, that I may know what more the Lord will say to me.
[00:06:58] And we should be saying at this point, really, Balaam, you know the answer is no. You know you're not supposed to go. But again, his motivation is a man who's about the money. Show me the money. Verse 20.
[00:07:10] God comes to Balaam. And God came to Balaam at night and said to him, balaam, if the men have come to call you, rise and go with them, but only do what I tell you to. Now that sounds a little contradictory, sounds a little weird, but this is just simply an example of God allowing someone to follow their desire, even when it is not God's perfect will. This is not a good example, of course, because Balaam's motivation is greed. So Balaam wants to take this trip, right? He wants to kind of go around what God has said, not obeying initially at all. And sometimes we do that, don't we? Sometimes we kind of go try to find another way, or maybe press back on God a little bit. That's called sin.
[00:07:59] So theologically, we have this. We have what's called sometimes God's perfect will. And God's perfect will is this idea of what God's specific intentional plans are. But then there's also something theologians call God's permissive will.
[00:08:12] It's this idea where God will permit and he will allow at times something other than his perfect will. But it always brings consequences, doesn't it? Maybe you've seen that even in your own life. But God's perfect plan will always triumph, even over these things we do when we don't follow Him. God's perfect will is this for sure? We know from Scripture that God's perfect will applies to everyone. Let me give you some specifics that I pulled straight out of Scripture where it talks about God's will. One is this. We love God completely.
[00:08:48] We love others as well.
[00:08:51] We spread the gospel. We tell people about Jesus and what he has done.
[00:08:56] We become sanctified. In other words, we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives as we obey Christ and become more like Him. That's what being sanctified means, to become more like Jesus, to do good works and of course, to give thanks. The list could go on, but this is God's perfect will. That is true for everyone.
[00:09:15] All right, let me keep moving forward in the story. We have three chapters. So now Balaam goes to Moab, verse 21. So Balaam rose in the morning and saddled his donkey and went with the princes of Moab.
[00:09:29] But God's anger was kindled because he went and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the way as his adversary. Wait, why would God be angry? He said he could go. Well, because again, this is not God's perfect will, and Balaam's intentions were not righteous. And we're going to see this more as the story plays out. That's why God's angry. So Balaam is riding on his donkey, clearly still hoping that there's a payday at the end of this journey.
[00:09:59] Verse 23.
[00:10:00] And the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand. And the donkey turned aside out of the road and went into a field.
[00:10:11] And Balaam struck the donkey to turn her into the road.
[00:10:16] So at this point, only the donkey sees the angel of the Lord, not Balaam. Isn't it interesting that the seer or the divination expert cannot see what's right in front of him? The angel of the Lord, even a donkey, was a dumb beast, was able Actually to see the angel of the Lord. But some man who is spiritually blind could not see the Lord.
[00:10:36] Well, next in our story, there's more that happens. And the donkey has to avoid the angel of the Lord a few times. And eventually Balaam's foot, because of the donkey, gets hurt. And in total, Balaam strikes the donkey three times out of anger because he's mad at the donkey. But again, Balaam is still not seeing the angel of the Lord. In verse 28.
[00:10:58] Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey and she said to Balaam, what have I done to you that you have struck me these three times? And Balaam said to the donkey, because you've made a fool of me, I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would kill you.
[00:11:14] And the donkey said to Balaam, am I not your donkey on which you have ridden all your life long to this day? Is it my habit to treat you this way? And Balaam said, no.
[00:11:25] Verse 31. Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand. And he, Balaam, bowed down and fell on his face.
[00:11:40] All right, questions. There should be a thousand questions. And by the way, I encourage that because one of the things we want to do when we try, we want to try to understand scripture, interpret scripture as we understand, so we can understand and move forward in our lives with it, what we learn. But we should be asking questions along the way. And I have three, you might have 10, I have three. Did Balaam's donkey really speak? Yes, he really spoke. The text says from the mouth of the donkey.
[00:12:09] This is not, this is not a metaphor. Some interpreters love to think this is just a metaphor, that the donkey is somehow Balaam's inner conscious. That's the text doesn't even allow for that. The style of writing doesn't even allow for that.
[00:12:23] The donkey spoke.
[00:12:26] The second question I have anyways is, well, how did the donkey speak?
[00:12:30] Well, I'll give you a three word answer. God's miraculous powers.
[00:12:34] He spoke through the donkey.
[00:12:37] Verse 28. Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey. Now I don't think that the donkey suddenly gained the power to speak because that would give the donkey reasoning ability. And so I don't think that the reasoning went along with the speaking. And therefore he moved forward in his life. And you know, you're feeding green apples to your donkey and she says, I want red. It's like, no, no, no, no, that's Annoying. So the third question I have is why didn't Balaam freak out? Right? He just went along with this, like, how's the weather?
[00:13:12] No, it's a little weird for us maybe, but we don't.
[00:13:17] One idea is maybe Moses to put every detail in here. We don't know for sure. I think maybe a better reason why he didn't freak out is we do know from the text that he was spiritually blind, that he was angry, he was a greedy man, so maybe he's distracted by that.
[00:13:34] Another option is that why he didn't freak out, is we don't really know Balaam's background. We know enough about his reputation and what we learn about him, what he had done, but we don't know.
[00:13:44] Working in the occult world and the divination and magic, you know, he clearly called on demonic powers in the past. And who's not to say that an object or a beast hadn't spoken before through demonic powers? We don't know what's going on here. So there's a lot we don't know, but not that important. But what's the point? Ask the text questions, because God's word can stand on its own.
[00:14:07] Verse 32, the angel of the Lord, this is Jesus, said to him, balaam, why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out to oppose you because your way is perverse before me.
[00:14:21] Verse 34. Then Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, I have sinned, for I did not know that you stood in the road against me. Now, therefore, if it is evil in your sight, I will turn back.
[00:14:34] What's happening here is he's being rebuked. Balaam is being rebuked by Jesus because of his impure motives. In verse 31, it says that Balaam bowed down and fell on his face. Verse 34 says he confessed his sin. I think one of the. One of the points here that Moses, who's a great writer, is helping his people see is this interaction here, this humbling encounter between arrogance and humility. Balaam and the donkey because it takes real humility to be spiritually perceptive. True spiritual maturity is always born out of humility. There's no other way around it. If you want to understand God, it's by humility. That's the first step. Always. There's no other path to real spirituality except through humility before the Lord.
[00:15:28] Well, there's more to the story, and it goes on, and Balaam continues in his journey. But. But God says this to Balaam, you're only to speak what I tell you to speak.
[00:15:38] And maybe in Balaam's mind, he's thinking, okay, so God, quote, unquote, changed his mind. Which God does not change his mind the way we change our minds. He's thinking, well, maybe God changed his mind about me going to Moab. Maybe he'll change his mind and let me curse the Israelites. And then there's a payday at the end of this. And that's not completely crazy thinking, because remember, with Israel's history, they had sinned so many times and fell into rebellion so many times that God had judged them so many times that maybe he's thinking, hmm, maybe there is a payday at the end of this to curse his people.
[00:16:11] Now, they're in Moab.
[00:16:13] And this is verse 23, or, excuse me, chapters 23 and 24. We get there now, and what you're going to see in these two chapters 23 and 24 is three different scenes and three different locations because there's so many Israelites, they're spread far and far apart. And Balaam and Balak couldn't see them. So they had to go to a high place of baal, it's called a mountaintop, to overlook some of the encampments. And then they go to a second place, a high place to look over the plains of Moab where there's many more Israelites camping. Then they go finally to another high place to overlook a desert where many more Israelites. And each time they get to those places and they move throughout the story, they build seven altars to sacrifice bulls and rams.
[00:17:02] Chapter 23, verse 1 says this.
[00:17:05] And Balaam said to Balak, build for me here seven altars and prepare for me here seven bulls and seven rams. Balak did as Balaam had said, and Balak and Balaam offered on each altar they sacrificed a bull and a ram. Now, these weren't Levitical sacrifices before Yahweh go is also a sacred number in the near east, pagan rituals. What they were doing is simply preparing these sacrifices so that they could curse Israel. You know, this renowned pagan prophet Balaam here was trying to pronounce a curse on Israel.
[00:17:44] But what's the result of all this?
[00:17:46] In these two chapters, chapters 23 and 24, you have what are called four oracles or four messages. So God gives Balaam four messages to speak, also called, like I said, oracles.
[00:18:01] The first one I want to take you to is in verse 8. So chapter 23, verse 8 says this, and this is God's Words given to Balaam to pronounce out loud before all, to hear.
[00:18:17] How can I curse whom God has not cursed? How can I denounce whom the Lord has not denounced? Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the fourth part of Israel?
[00:18:30] So the first oracle, this is kind of a failure, right? No curse, no curse on Israel, from Balaam's point of view only. Instead, what is the Lord doing here?
[00:18:40] The Lord God has given Balaam words to brag on his people, Israel. He's bragging on the huge number of Israel or Jacob's people. That's what it means when it says dust and number. This large dust and number, that's referring to the large number of Israel. It's an even a fourth of Israel is so large it's hard to number. And so King Balak, of course, is mad, but Balaam is like, well, I told you so. I can only say back from verse 12, I can only say what the Lord put in my mouth.
[00:19:10] So we get to the second oracle. Now they're looking over the plains of Moab. So just to go on with the story, the second oracle that God gives Balaam to speak again, they built the seven altars, right? And they did their sacrifices, and here they are overlooking the plains of Moab. Verse 19, the first part says this as God gives to Balaam, God is not man that he should lie, or a son of man, meaning man, that he should change his mind.
[00:19:38] Verse 20. Behold, I received a command to bless. He has blessed, I cannot revoke it.
[00:19:46] Verse 19.
[00:19:47] In other words, God is immutable. He does not change his minds the way that you and I change our minds at all.
[00:19:54] It's a clear Command in verse 20 to bless the Lord or to bless God's people. So King Balak is furious at this point, and he tries to bargain with Balaam and he says, listen, if you're not gonna curse him, at least stop blessing him. You can almost hear him yelling at him. But we get to the third place, and as they move into the third place, the third different places, it says, so Balak took Balaam. I'm reading from verse 28, to the top of Peor, which overlooks the desert. This is an attempt at the third place, yet a different place. Why are they changing all these places? It's not just so they could see, but we have to realize that they don't know Yahweh God, they don't know the one God of the Bible. They don't understand all powerful God that can do anything. Instead in their system, in their faith system. It's this idea of using occultic demonic practice, try to manipulate powers to get your way. So they move here again to another place. They're trying another place to curse, to curse the Israelites. But there's this other old adage that I try to live by.
[00:21:00] More stupid isn't going to help.
[00:21:03] What I mean by that is if you're doing something stupid, more stupid on top of it is not going to help. Psalm 92. See, these aren't just my words. Psalm 92 says, the stupid man cannot know, the fool cannot understand.
[00:21:18] The word that they use in the Hebrew that we translate into English here simply means lacking sense or judgment or understanding. This defines Balaam and Balak. And so children. I'm thinking of children here. No, you don't call your brothers and sisters stupid. Okay, that's. I'm trying to get off the hook. I'm trying to backpedal here a little bit.
[00:21:38] There's two more oracles. Let's get to those two more oracles starting in chapter 24.
[00:21:45] Now they are overlooking the desert.
[00:21:49] 24, verses 1 and 2 says this. When Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, he did not go as other times to look for omens, but he set his face toward the wilderness. And Balaam lifted up his eyes and saw Israel camping tribe by tribe. And the Spirit, this is the Holy Spirit of God came upon him. And what happens next are two beautiful, long, many verses worth of oracles that come to him.
[00:22:18] And he pronounces God's love over Israel, God's plans for Israel, God's blessings for Israel.
[00:22:25] Israel. And multiple, multiple prophecies for the future as well, many of which have already come true. But I want to just take you to two of them. At the very end of the third article, we'll put it on the screen. This is in Numbers, chapter 24, verse 9. The second part of verse 9 says this.
[00:22:45] Blessed are those who bless you, Israel, and cursed are those who curse you. Yeah, this language to the people, when they heard this recorded from Moses, they would have understood 100% what was happening here.
[00:23:01] This is part of the Abrahamic covenant from Genesis, chapter 12.
[00:23:08] Moses wanted this recorded so that the Israelites could hear these words again. Why?
[00:23:13] So that despite their sin, despite the rebellion, despite their grumbling, and despite the judgments that they had been under, God wants his people, Israel, to know that the Abrahamic covenant is still intact.
[00:23:29] God's promise of land and a great nation, and that everyone would be Blessed through the nation of Israel, through the line of Abraham is still intact.
[00:23:38] That's the Abrahamic covenant, the fourth oracle. This is the last oracle. You know, God reaffirms here in this fourth oracle, something interesting, something that was promised in Genesis, something that was promised in Isaiah and other books in the Old Testament that a deliverer would come to them.
[00:23:56] Messiah we call the Christ. Jesus would come. You remember last week? And we'll get to that oracle in a second. Last week Pastor Michael said God has always had a master plan and nothing can stop it.
[00:24:09] No Balaam, no evil, no chaos, not the devil, nothing, nothing can stop God's master plan. So look at verse 17. This is chapter 24, the fourth and last oracle.
[00:24:21] Verse 17 says, I see him, this is someone, but not now, so he's not there yet. Whoever this was at that time, I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob. A scepter shall rise out of Israel.
[00:24:38] This person, this star represents royalty. The scepter is power and authority that will come from the Israelites. This is not just King David, but it's foreshadowing Christ. The substance, the ultimate substance of this prophecy. Jesus Christ, the Messiah.
[00:24:57] Good news, good news for Israel, more good news. And for us, this is great. God pronounces all these blessings and reaffirms so many wonderful things. The promise of Messiah, the promise of the Abrahamic covenant, all of these things to them. But what we see in Israel's history, and we've seen it in the numbers narratives, we've seen these great victories they have, and then these great failures, don't we? Kind of like great failure or great victory or great thing that happens and then a great failure like the Mosaic covenant on Mount Sinai and they get the ten Commandments and then the golden calf or maybe the Abraham, the, the consecration of Aaron. I mean, Aaron, sorry, Aaron is the high priest. And then his sons fail and don't do what they're to do as priests. It continues right here. So God had pronounced this great blessing. We just saw it on Israel. But then chapter 25 happens, you know, where many of God's people fall away in chapter 25 into idolatry and they fall to the Baal cult at peor, which is actually more about next week's sermon. They fall into this idol worship and disgusting practices. And after our events today, we saw Balaam, who again was trying to curse the people of Israel. It is actually Balaam who somehow manages to corrupt the people and orchestrate the Israelites to begin this BAAL worship and cult worship at Peor.
[00:26:32] So Balaam's first and initial assault, trying to curse the people of Israel. Okay, that failed. Then he tries another way.
[00:26:42] Balaam took a backdoor approach and it did. It worked. But we're going to hear more about that next week. So we locked the back door, locked the back door to evil, because evil will knock at the front door and if you don't answer it, he's going to try the back door for sure. This is what Balaam did.
[00:27:00] And we'll see that again next week. But up to now, we've seen Moses talking to the people of Israel, writing, recording for them. We are instructed from it as well. But the New Testament writers talk about this. They talk quite a bit about Balaam. So let's see the warnings, because that's really why they talk about Balaam, for warnings. Balaam's story and the New Testament warnings. There's three of them I'm gonna put up on the screen. There's three of them to guard against these three things, and that is greed, spiritual compromise, but also leading others to evil.
[00:27:36] So the Apostle Peter writes about this in the book of second Peter. He's writing to the church. He's writing about spiritual growth, he's writing about spiritual maturity, but he also is warning them about evil people, evil prophets, evil leaders, evil teachers. And he talks about these people in verse 12 of 2 Peter chapter 2, as irrational beasts or irrational animals.
[00:27:58] And here's what he says.
[00:28:01] Verse 15. Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed what's called the way of Balaam, the son of Beor. And what's the way of Balaam, who loved gain from wrongdoing? Did he love God? No. He loved gain. He loved greed, he loved money. He did. This is important. Remember, he did devious things, kind of couched or kind of hidden this spiritual idea, but he did devious things for gain. And that's the way of Balaam.
[00:28:34] Greed is a gateway to selling your soul.
[00:28:39] Balaam, one author said this Edwin Blum Balaam was the prototype of all greedy religionists. In other words, all greedy spiritual, like people who lead God's people into false religion and immorality.
[00:28:53] Balaam was one of these first people we run into. There's others, but we run into in the Bible where we realize that not all spiritual people are good guys.
[00:29:03] Jude picks up on this. That's very late in the New Testament, but Jude writes about this verse 11. We'll put it on the screen. He writes about Balaam also. But he writes about something called Balaam's Error, he calls it. And Balaam's error is this idea that we can accommodate pagan belief systems and somehow still follow God, or we can compromise our spirituality, or we can spiritually compromise. He talks about selling your own soul for the sake of gain. Says this woe to him, those who would do that, for they walked in the way. And here's some other people. He mentions the way of Cain and abandoned themselves, gave over themselves for the sake of what?
[00:29:42] Balaam's heir and perished in Korah's rebellion.
[00:29:46] It's this. Balaam's heir is this attitude. And it's an attitude that you can have that I can have sometimes where we're willing to cooperate with the world and still somehow think we can fully serve God.
[00:29:58] His error. Let me put a few on the screen here. The error for Christians here would simply be that we forget that we're called to be holy.
[00:30:05] We're forgetting that we've trusted in Jesus for salvation, we've asked him to forgive our sins, and we believe in his life, death and the resurrection. We're actually called to live separate from the world.
[00:30:15] We live in the world, but we're not of the world. And so we might look different, we might act different. Not rude, not judgmental, not too weird. But maybe we look weird to others. That's okay. We're called to be holy. And this other idea of Balaam's error is this idea that thinking a little sin hurt. And of course, what's its cousin?
[00:30:37] That sinning is no big deal or treating sin is no big deal.
[00:30:43] Christians, what could this look like in our lives? Maybe you know what this looks like in your life. For some of us, it's popularity, wanting to gain popularity the wrong way. Maybe it's self gratification, it's sexual gratification. It's personal gain. Whatever it is, whatever we people pleasing that leads you the wrong way. There are all kinds of things this could be for us, for you. And do we have. Do you have an area in your life right now where you're thinking sin is no big deal, it matters to God.
[00:31:15] People like Balaam, they tap into that. They tap into those wants and those desires. I'm not talking about good wants and desires. I'm talking about the ones that are ungodly desires.
[00:31:27] So what can we do about this?
[00:31:29] I'll give three. So what's. They'll be pretty brief. The first is just spot the Balaams.
[00:31:35] Put some intellectual real estate into spotting Balaams Try to figure out who these balaams are. Watch out for people that are balaams, and usually what it is they're about profit, prestige and platform. Profit, prestige and platform. If it smells like it, it probably is. It's probably a person of greed trying to lead you astray.
[00:31:57] Now, some of the indicators here is their motivation is gain or greedy. That's not too hard to determine. Usually they disobey God's word and his authority. So we want to know God's word so we can understand what these leaders are doing. And this can be a person, too. It doesn't be a leader. They reject any aspect, any aspect of the gospel and they give ungodly counsel.
[00:32:23] Psalm 1 says this. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and his law. He meditates day and night.
[00:32:38] These are indicators of a balaam. But maybe if we need some help in spotting a balaam.
[00:32:45] So what? Number two.
[00:32:47] Get truth tellers. Get two in your life. Get two.
[00:32:52] Someone who's spiritually mature, who knows the Bible well, who's been down that road. But you know that they have a humble heart and you know that they love you.
[00:33:04] Maybe they're willing to. And maybe they have. Maybe they've told you something that you didn't want to hear. And how do you react to that?
[00:33:11] My wife is certainly one of these truth tellers to me, and she's so great at that. I love that. But I also have younger men, and I have older men in my life, too, who have been truth tellers. I remember an older man once who was a truth teller in my life, one of my mentors. He was so gentle and kind. Sometimes he would say something like. And I remember specifically he said this said, dean, can I tell you something without it impacting our relationship? Whoa. When somebody says that, I said, you know, humble Dean, of course. Sure. Of course you can. And he said, because most men say they do, and they really don't.
[00:33:44] Now, I'll spare you the details, Ralph, like, well, what was this going to be about? No, it'll spare you.
[00:33:49] But the point is that we're willing to pursue and receive feedback from those who love us, from those who are mature in Christ, and that we listen with humility.
[00:34:04] So we get truth tellers, by the way, one of many. And one of the greatest reasons we do church together is so we get truth tellers in our lives.
[00:34:13] Third, so what?
[00:34:15] Remove the influence of soul killing people. Podcasts and programs that tell you what you want to hear. This is such a temptation, isn't it? Be careful, be careful. We want to get good input. We also want to remove the bad influence. I'm not saying remove all people. Please don't hear me say something like that. Not at all. But remove the influence to your soul.
[00:34:35] So we look at the first two. So what's up there? Okay, we progress, we move, but we don't want to be influenced. And you can have a longer list if you want. But here's what we don't want to be influenced today. I'll put these up here. Prosperity preachers. I say, I will give you, you will get from God if you give me. And that's. That's kind of the way that works. A lot of them on tv, you've seen this. But let me go to another one. Progressive pastors. This is not a political statement. This is theologically progressive pastors. What I mean is the ones who do not believe that the Word of God is God's revelation, but instead is our idea of who God is. In other words, they do not believe in the inspiration of the Word of God, they do not believe in the inerrancy of the Word of God, and they don't believe in the authority of the Word of God. Be careful, be careful. The Bible does not change over time.
[00:35:24] Spiritual gurus be careful because they do not know Jesus, generally speaking.
[00:35:30] How about psychics and diviners?
[00:35:33] They do whatever they can either to fool you or to tap into demonic dark powers. Spiritually weak people, not get rid of spiritually weak people. I'm saying don't be influenced by their walk. If they are not loving the Word of God, moving forward and making bad. If they're making bad choices, don't let that influence you. Instead, how about we love others? If you know the Word of God and are walking in his ways, disciple others then. I'm not saying get rid of these relationships. I'm saying be careful. Remember God's plan for you to grow, to love him, to know him more, to worship him. That will not be thwarted for a Christian. Even if people use their gift for gain over you, or if they're selfish gain, or if they try to lead you astray, remember this, that God's plans will not be thwarted because our God is a good and powerful God.
[00:36:26] Let's pray.
[00:36:28] God, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you have given this to us today. God, would you help us to open our eyes spiritually to see what is good, right, and holy in your eyes and what is not. God, would you help us to shut that down?
[00:36:44] God, you are good. God, would you teach us today what it is we need to break free from, to repent of, to come back to God. We know we can do this based on Jesus, life, death and resurrection, who has sacrificed himself for us on the cross. There is no greater act of love and sacrifice.
[00:37:09] There is no greater hope that is in all of the universe because we know the tomb is empty. And so, Jesus, we come to you and we give you our lives, we give you our minds, we give you our body, we give you it all. God, as we follow you. Thank you God for the work you are doing and we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
