God Said

2/28/2016

Numbers 24.5 How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your encampments, O Israel! – Balaam of Beor

When an ancient king named, Balak of Moab, was threatened by the Israelites, he sought the counsel of a sorcerer named Balaam. Balaam was supposed to be someone special with lots of ‘power’ and Balak wanted him to come and put a curse of ruin God’s people. So, Balaam, always ready for the next job, saddled up his donkey and headed to Moab.

What Balak and Balaam didn’t factor in was God’s love for, and protection of, His people. They thought they could just conjure something up and cause the Israelites to stumble as a people. Then, like now, one does not get to do that.

Balaam was told by God, don’t say anything about My people that I haven’t’ told you; only say what I tell you to say. And Balaam did. Not because he wanted to, but because he realized he was dealing with Someone far greater than he imagined. Balaam found out there really was a God; and he wasn’t Him.

In his Third Oracle, (Numbers 24) Balaam said this of the people of Israel: How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your encampments, O Israel! A pagan got a bird’s eye view of what God thought about His people. As I read this, I wondered how the Israelites saw themselves. Sometimes it’s good to push the Pause Button and remember what God thinks of us – He sees us vastly different than we see ourselves.

Of course, when Balaam spoke these words Balak was PO’d. Remember, he’d hired Balaam to put a hex on Israel and ol’ Balaam wasn’t delivering the goods. So when all the hexing was for naught, Balaam decided, let’s just Israel them hex themselves. In Numbers 25 you can read how the hex on Israel was of their own making: they began to get friendly with the Moabites and party with them.

Hexes, often, are more subtle than someone’s blustering up an evil word over us. Words are words, but actions, oh man, actions’ll getcha every time. The problem with Israel was they decided to hang around those people and in short order, those people rubbed off on them. Funny it wasn’t the other way around. When in Rome, eventually (if one isn’t careful) one’ll do what the Romans do. Moab was no different.

Jesus said in Mark 7.15: “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” We want to blame our sins on externals; Jesus said we better pay more attention to the internals. It wasn’t proximity that caused Israel all those problems all those years ago: it was a decision to act that got them in such hot water.

You’d think our beliefs were enough, but sometimes even they aren't enough to stop what's brewing up in our own hearts.

Father, may I be governed by what I know You think of me. May I be alert to my thought process and may I take responsibility for my actions that result from my thoughts. Help me in the everyday battle to fight the inward fight against the things that come up inside me and to remember what You say about me: How lovely are your tents, O son, your way of life, O child! Amen