Before You Pray for Something, Do Your Homework to See if God Has Already Ruled on the Matter

Numbers Chapter 23: The Oracles of Balaam

Numbers 23:1-30

Day 76. Violent rioting continuing in the U.S. and the President calls for more force to be used. Lockdowns continue in many parts of the world. Curfews are in place in many parts of the U.S. America is more divided than ever before and regrettably, it seems that some kind of civil war may be the outcome. God forbid. We keep studied our Bible, looking for gems as to how we should live. Thank you for the encouraging notes people are leaving me.  Read on. 

The Passage

23 Then Balaam said to Balak, “Build seven altars for me here, and prepare seven bulls and seven rams for me here.” ² Balak did just as Balaam had spoken, and Balak and Balaam offered up a bull and a ram on each altar. ³ Then Balaam said to Balak, “Stand beside your burnt offering, and I will go; perhaps the Lord will come to meet me, and whatever He shows me I will tell you.” So he went to a bare hill.

⁴ Now God met Balaam, and he said to Him, “I have set up the seven altars, and I have offered up a bull and a ram on each altar.” ⁵ Then the Lord put a word in Balaam’s mouth and said, “Return to Balak, and you shall speak thus.” ⁶ So he returned to him, and behold, he was standing beside his burnt offering, he and all the leaders of Moab. ⁷ He took up his ^[a]discourse and said,

“From Aram Balak has brought me,
Moab’s king from the mountains of the East,
‘Come curse Jacob for me,
And come, denounce Israel!’
⁸ “How shall I curse whom God has not cursed?
And how can I denounce whom the Lord has not denounced?
⁹ “As I see him from the top of the rocks,
And I look at him from the hills;
Behold, a people who dwells apart,
And will not be reckoned among the nations.
¹⁰ “Who can count the dust of Jacob,
Or number the fourth part of Israel?
Let ^[b]me die the death of the upright,
And let my end be like his!”

¹¹ Then Balak said to Balaam, “What have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies, but behold, you have actually blessed them!” ¹² He replied, “Must I not be careful to speak what the Lord puts in my mouth?”

¹³ Then Balak said to him, “Please come with me to another place from where you may see them, although you will only see the extreme end of them and will not see all of them; and curse them for me from there.” ¹⁴ So he took him to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah, and built seven altars and offered a bull and a ram on each altar. ¹⁵ And he said to Balak, “Stand here beside your burnt offering while I myself meet the Lord over there.” ¹⁶ Then the Lord met Balaam and put a word in his mouth and said, “Return to Balak, and thus you shall speak.” ¹⁷ He came to him, and behold, he was standing beside his burnt offering, and the leaders of Moab with him. And Balak said to him, “What has the Lord spoken?” ¹⁸ Then he took up his ^[c]discourse and said,

“Arise, O Balak, and hear;
Give ear to me, O son of Zippor!
¹⁹ “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?
²⁰ “Behold, I have received a command to bless;
When He has blessed, then I cannot revoke it.
²¹ “He has not observed ^[d]misfortune in Jacob;
Nor has He seen trouble in Israel;
The Lord his God is with him,
And the shout of a king is among them.
²² “God brings them out of Egypt,
He is for them like the horns of the wild ox.
²³ “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!
²⁴ “Behold, a people rises like a lioness,
And as a lion it lifts itself;
It will not lie down until it devours the prey,
And drinks the blood of the slain.”

²⁵ Then Balak said to Balaam, “Do not curse them at all nor bless them at all!” ²⁶ But Balaam replied to Balak, “Did I not tell you, ‘^[e]Whatever the Lord speaks, that I must do’?”

²⁷ Then Balak said to Balaam, “Please come, I will take you to another place; perhaps it will be ^[f]agreeable with God that you curse them for me from there.” ²⁸ So Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor which overlooks the ^[g]wasteland. ²⁹ Balaam said to Balak, “Build seven altars for me here and prepare seven bulls and seven rams for me here.”³⁰ Balak did just as Balaam had said, and offered up a bull and a ram on each altar.

Footnotes

a.     Numbers 23:7 Lit parable

b.     Numbers 23:10 Lit my soul

c.     Numbers 23:18 Lit parable

d.     Numbers 23:21 Or iniquity

e.     Numbers 23:26 Lit saying, Whatever

f.      Numbers 23:27 Lit right in the sight of God

g.     Numbers 23:28 Or Jeshimon

Thoughts on the Passage

We observe that Balaam had Balak build altars and arrange for sacrifices to be made. And after that, Balaam went to a “bare hill” and God met him there to tell him what to say to Balak.

In verse 10, we hear Balaam saying to Balak, “I want to die the death of the righteous; and I want my end to be like that of the righteous.”  One commentator says, “anyone who wants to die the death of the righteous must first live the life of the righteous”.  Good point. We all want to die well and be treated well in death. We just aren’t so ready to live righteously. Robert Jamieson says, in so wishing but not living, Balaam is representative of a large class in the world – they “express a wish for the blessedness which Christ has promised to His people but are averse to imitate the mind that was in Him.”

We need to remember that in these attempts of Balak to get Balaam to curse Israel, he is going directly against something that God has already settled – God has blessed Israel to be a blessing, and woe to him who curses Israel.

Matthew Henry has us remember that Balak “pretended to honor the Lord with his sacrifices, and to wait for the answer God would send him; and yet, when it did not prove according to his mind, he forgot God, and flew into a great passion against Balaam.”

In the second message from God to Balak through Balaam (verses 18-24), God rebukes Balak and teaches him about the Divine nature of God – that unlike man, He does not lie or change His mind, that He always performs His word, and that He has all the strength. Furthermore, that He has not observed iniquity or wickedness in His people to warrant a curse. And in verse 22, God says He is like a wild ox on behalf of His people. David Guzik say, “wild ox is translated ‘unicorn’ in the KJV. The Hebrew word here (reem) occurs nine times in the O.T. The idea behind the Hebrew word is either of one horn or a mighty horn. Some think it refers to a rhinoceros, others to a wild ox, or a strong goat. It is not out of the question that a unicorn may be in mind.”

Not being happy with what Balaam tells him, Balak accuses him of actually blessing the Israelites rather than cursing them as he had asked for, and takes him to a second place, hoping things would turn out differently, but they didn’t. Balak now would even settle for Balaam to be neutral rather than bless or curse Israel.  And Balaam replies, “I will tell you whatever the Lord tells me to tell you as I had said.” And Balak takes him to yet a third place and the altars are built, and the offerings made.

Bottom line for me is this: If I am going to ask something of God, I better have done my homework [including studying my Bible] and made sure that I am not asking for something that God has already made a decision about. That’s why perhaps it is always better to attach to each of our petitions to God, the phrase, “nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done”. And then to real be able to accept happily (knowing it was the best option) whatever God’s will was for that matter. As a young lad, I lost many a potential spouse that way. As a young man, I lost many an opportunity to study something different that way. And then, I lost many a promotion or new job opportunities that way. As disappointed as I was, I knew that God’s choice for me – in my work, in my fields of study, and most importantly in my life’s partner – God’s choice for me was always superior.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

God’s Blueprints For Worship -- Exodus 20:24-26

--> “‘You shall make an altar of earth for Me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen; in every place where I cause My name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you. And if you make an altar of stone for Me, you shall not build it of cut stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you will profane it.  And you shall not go up by steps to My altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.’” 
 

They are building new houses all around ours.  At various times, I see the foreperson pouring over a set of blueprints that need to be followed.  The construction team takes its directions via the person in charge from the blueprints drawn up by the architect.  Any variation requires architect agreement and then city council approval or the whole project could be shut down.

From this passage, we clearly see that God wants to be worshipped.  But that worship is to be undertaken in a prescribed way.  He gives us the parameters under which we are to worship.  To the Children of Israel in the Old Testament, God gave specific instructions of how to build an altar and what to do with it.

Most of us would agree that today we no longer have to make sacrifices on altars to worship God because His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, was the ultimate sacrifice, and it was made on our behalf.  Fair enough.  However, sometimes in our rush to throw out sacrifices, altars, burnt offerings, and peace offerings, we discard some of the principles God attached to Old Testament worship – principles that were, I believe, intended to transcend the ages.  Let’s look at some of those.

First, there is the principle of parameters themselves.  All behavior may be called worship by the worshipper, but God does not view all behavior as worship.  We need look no further than Genesis 4 where God accepted Abel’s sacrifice, but not Cain’s, to support this thinking.  Here in Exodus 20, God tells the Israelites what kind of an altar He prefers and what they are to offer on it.  Today, under the guise of what we call ‘freedom in Christ’ we tend to worship Him in whatever way we feel like.  I am not speaking of modern music as compared to century old hymns.  That is not the point.  The point is that we need to consider how we worship God for while God is a God for all of time, He does not change.  There are things that He will not accept as He did not accept Cain’s worship.  And the Holy Spirit can and does speak to us as to what those things are, if we care to listen and obey.  Having said that, it is then also possible to accept the fact that what we all may not have arrived at the same point of hearing God on this matter, or some of us may well have misunderstood what He has told us when we hear Him with the filters of our own experiences and upbringings.  All that is possible and thus we should be careful not to criticize what others call ‘worship’ for them.  And I think that’s the secret – worship has to be ‘for us’ and it has to be truly perceived as, and believed to be acceptable to God, by the worshipper – no one else.

Second, we need to realize that God causes His “name to be remembered” in some very physical spots.  It may be a chapel pew for you.  It may be a gravesite of a loved one for me.  It may be someone else’s closet for them.  We would do well to keep an eye out for such places.  We would do well to listen to the rhythm of our heartbeats when we approach these special places in our lives.  Try visiting Israel and walk where Jesus walked or suffered, or performed miracles, and take your pulse.  I guarantee you it will be higher than normal.  We need to remember that one of God’s principles in our act of worship is that He causes His name to be remembered.  We may often call on the name of God and remember it, but we need to understand that it is He who brings it to our mind.  Even that we do not do ourselves.

Third, whenever we come across a place where God (not man) causes His name to be remembered, God says about that place, that He will come to us there and bless us.  That’s our God; we can count on that.  Want God to meet with you and bless you?  Make sure you are aware of where He causes you to remember His name; and visit there often.  When I think of what God is saying, promising, and doing here, I am reminded of the classic fast-food commercial that came out in 1978 that goes something like this – “at _________, we do it all for you!”  I’m sure you know the fast-food chain I’m talking about.  You may know them as the ones that build these large golden arches near their stores.  And if you’re still wondering who I’m talking about, check the commercial out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOMJ5nAaS08 .   Yes, God does it all for us – He reminds us of His name at various junctions in our lives; He visits us there; and He blesses us from there.  What more can we really ask for in response to our worship?

Fourth, while God has the right to be a “my way or the highway” God, there are aspects of our relationship with Him in which we are given choices.  Before I personally studied this passage, I would have been the first one to say, “Oh yeah, show me!”.  Well, Exodus 20:24-26 is one such example.  Here God clearly states His preference for an altar made of earth.  But then He goes on to say, “but if you make an altar of stone for Me, here are the specific directions for that.”  Our God is not the no-choice autocrat many of us have made Him out to be.  And of course, the fact that we do have acceptable choices in our positive relationship with Him (and not just with the negative choice to reject Him altogether) is complementary to the notion that we have been created with free will.

But no matter what our choice may be in some things, we still have to implement that choice within God’s parameters for that aspect of the relationship.  In the case of the Children of Israel, God did not want the Israelites to use cut stones that their implements had been applied to, if they were to build altars out of stone.  He wanted them, in that case, to use uncut natural stones.

Bible commentator Chuck Smith has much to say on this verse.  For starters he believes God did not want carved stones because He wanted nothing to distract the worshippers from worshipping Him.  He did not want anyone including those that built the altar to say or think, “my, isn’t that a great masonry job!”   Think for a moment of all the famous cathedrals or synagogues or temples you have visited.  What comes to mind first?  How awesomely you can worship God there or what a marvelous job the architect did?  Be honest.

Smith goes on to say we can glorify man’s handiwork any time we want, since he is using the abilities God Himself gave him, but we are never to regard it at all when we are in the process of worshipping God.  Many unbelievers hear a great preacher and marvel at his or her ability as an orator but they totally miss the point of what God has sent that individual to say to the world and to them.  Eloquent oratory can sometimes be a hindrance to the spreading of the Gospel.  Smith says “God help that man who seeks to bring glory and attention to himself while doing the service of God.”

Robert Jamieson suggests that they were not to carve the stones because that may lead to carving images on them and those images may in turn lead to superstitious thinking and behavior.  Perhaps.

But what we do know for sure is that God said if they do use carved stone, they would “profane” the altar.  That is, the altar would become irreverent, disrespectful, wicked, and even sacrilegious.   Our failure to worship God in His way ruins the entire exercise of worship for us.

Finally principle number five from this passage is this: God is concerned about our own showiness or flashiness.  One could argue that He is concerned about that at the best of times, but He certainly does not want any of it during our worship of Him.  Matthew Henry suggests that the Israelites were to make their altars low to the ground so that they would not think that the higher up the altar was built and the closer to the heavens they were, the more acceptable any sacrifice made on it would be to God.  Chuck Smith, however, I believe has a much more relevant explanation for this verse.  He writes:

In other words, don't go up steps and high where people can look up and see your bare legs or something. God just doesn't want attention drawn to anything but Him when we are worshiping God. He wants your heart and your mind to be centered upon Him, not to be distracted.

Then Smith goes on to explain why at his church they try to keep distractions to a minimum and even when dealing with musicians, they discourage “little antics that draw attention to themselves, even a special movement as you're playing the bass, you know. It draws attention to you, and takes the attention of the people off of what you're saying, what you're singing.”  Need we say more about how we dress or how we stand or how we move?  Smith goes on, “But the minute I draw attention to me, then the person's attention is taken off of God, and I am robbing God of that which is His. God will hold me accountable for it.”

So there we have it.  Keep the five simple principles for worship in mind, especially when you are leading it.  If you and I do that, then God readily accepts our worship.  And if He does, He will also bless it.  That’s all the success we need. 

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