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Balaam, Balak, Elijah the prophet, God's Word, gospel in power, hearing, how God blesses, Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, keeping covenant, regeneration, righteousness, word meanings
Numbers 23 And the LORD met Balaam, and put a word in his mouth, and said, Go, and say thus.. . .God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent; hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
Righteousness in the Hebrew language and culture comes down to keeping covenant. God alone is righteous in the perfect sense, wholly righteous because He always keeps His Word. He keeps His Word even when it costs Him great pain and tears, even when it means His own Son must suffer and die on a cross of shame and dishonor. Don’t get the idea that this covenant-keeping righteousness standard is some arbitrary measuring stick in the universe that God must then rise to meet. No, God is righteous and faithful because that is Who He is and He is the standard. His Son struck a tent of human flesh and displayed here in time and space the manifestation of this kind of righteousness. And every other example of humanity in the history of Adam’s race falls short of that standard and therefore must die. Sinning flesh cannot live in the presence of His glory.
That was the negative side of the covenant: fail at any line at any time and death is your portion. Keep it perfectly, perpetually, and personally, and you live forever. This makes Christ’s sacrifice all the more meaningful to you and I. Having earned eternal life by His perfect fulfillment of the law laid down on Sinai, not only in letter, but in the perfect spirit and relationship that God was looking for before the law was given, having done all that, He chose to stay and have His own body, the Law Incarnate, nailed to a tree so that the Law could die and the covenant could pass away. This is also the picture of the perfect servant who is pierced at the doorpost of the Master’s house to signify his allegiance and lifetime union with His house so that he could stay with the wife and children that he gained while he served there.
He keeps His Word. His Son kept His word, in fact, He was the Word. He has always been the speaking voice, in creation, in lawgiving, in prophecy, all of it. This seems to me a great deal of importance on words, how about you? Don’t you think that is a lot more importance than we place on them? Why does He care so much about words and speaking and hearing and obeying and keeping our word and His Word? What was so devastating about the choice Adam and Eve made to follow the word of the serpent and not follow His?
I can’t put it into a simple phrase that explains it all. But I can lay out some principles that can help us know God’s ways better than we did yesterday. And line upon line, precept upon precept, a little here and a little there, with stammering lips, I can speak to His people.
God is a speaking God. He spoke and, in the absence of raw materials, everything we see became. Light, heavens, earth, sun, moon, stars, clay, sand, sea, insects, mammals, birds, fish, fruits, grains, air, rain, lightning, wind, tides . . . all of these He spoke into existence. Some He spoke directly into existence, which is immediate creation, nothing between. Sometimes He spoke to something and told it to bring forth something else, which is mediate creation, with a middleman. Either way, it came to be BY HIS WORD. Because He is a God Who speaks. And He chose words to be His medium and our ears to be the receiver. Essentially, the answer to our question begins with “because He says so.”
Ephesians starts with a beautiful string of words that provide a clue to the answer to our question: starting in verse 3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:”
Now the translators chose to translate Eulogeetos as ‘Blessed be’, as if we were doing the blessing. We bring a similar word over directly as eulogy, the good words we say about someone who has passed away. But the grammar indicates something else going on here. Yes, the word is used a praise. And yes, we find this kind of praise in the Psalms when the translators often use the word bless (although it is probably more correct to say ‘praise’ – It is the superior that blesses the inferior) This word is actually describing God’s intrinsic character. Look at it from the way it is written in the Greek “The Good-Word God, who by nature blesses, who actively blessed us (in past action and the benefits of that action are continuing on till now) in the heavenlies IN CHRIST.” And He blesses the same way He does everything. With words. EU-LOG-EETOS. Log – the root of all the logos words, it is with words that He blesses.
And not just words in some vague sense. Log and leg are two roots out of which grow one tree. The roots split very early in the formation of the language: log – going the way of “that which is said” – and leg or lex – going the way of “to choose “ and “that which is laid down”. Leg is then the LEGal root, legislation, legitimate. Log is the ‘saying’ root, a verbal expression, formed as words to be spoken. He blesses with words and those words are SPOKEN words. After the speaking, they might be written, but they are always spoken words which are meant to be heard by ears.
We could spend a year unpacking these first few verses, but one other note on this passage in Ephesians before we leave it. These blessings with which the Blesser blesses us are IN CHRIST, the Word, the speaking voice of God. And the blessings come via the Spirit from heaven, but they are located in Christ and they are not something outside of Him or in addition to Him. Okay, moving on.
The truth is that if you let someone talk long enough, they will betray their own attempts to cover who they are. When someone says something embarrassing or self-incriminating, we can play a little trick in our minds that separates the words from the speaker. “He’s just having a bad day. He didn’t mean what he said. That’s not how she really is or how she really feels.” Well, you can play that game with people, but you cannot with God. When God says something, He means it, and in eternity, it is done. All that’s left is to wait for it to manifest itself in time and space, sometimes immediately, sometimes after what seems to you and me like a very long time. But He does not exist inside time, He just intrudes His hand into time. When He says it, it is. You cannot separate God from His Word. Listen to His voice when He speaks in Scripture, when He speaks to Moses, when He speaks to the prophets, when Jesus speaks.
He does not qualify His statements or make compromises with anyone. “you have heard it said unto you . . . but I say unto you . . .” He talks like all authority has been ceded unto Him or something. When you start talking like He holds all authority, watch how things change. Your whole language set will change. You will stop presenting the Gospel to people based on a need they have or telling people they have a God-shaped void in their otherwise perfect existence. That is humanist, ego-centric evangelism. The true Gospel is Christo-centric.
Even the likes of disobedient gainsayer Balaam can be used by God to be His mouthpiece of blessing unto His people. God utters through Balaam one of the most important passages in all of Scripture: “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent; hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” This passage also speaks of God’s nature and character, like the one in Ephesians, and again it is speaking of blessing.
This is take two of three times Balak, King of Moab, tries to get Balaam, from the line of Esau, to curse Israel while they are in the wilderness. All of Moab is scared to death that Israel is going to do to them what they just did to the Amorites. So they try gainsaying, paying a prophet to say what you want them to say so that you will get what you want. This, by the way, was not just a sin of the Old Testament. Look at the warnings and rebukes in the NT that bring up Balaam’s name. Yes, people are still doing it today.
So, on the first try, God puts the words in Balaam’s mouth and he speaks a blessing on Israel, even though he’s being paid handsomely to curse them. So God has spoken His blessing, it is a done deal. Take two, what does God say of Himself? “Shall I not make good on what I have spoken? Shall I not fulfill what I have promised? Did you not hear me? Do you think I am a man to lie or go back on my word?”
Why does God put so much importance on this concept of hearing? The answer lies in the importance of His Word that He speaks. The words are the medium and the ears are the receiver that God has chosen to get His message through to us. His Word comes in power, not in word only. Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica “For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance;” God is not playing word games. Spiritual life is not some ethereal mystical stuff. There is a war on for souls, including yours and mine. And the true gospel of Christ has within it the power of God unto salvation.
Jesus said some things that were strange to hear sometimes. “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger. . . I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” This sounds weird until you realize Jesus is the Living Word. Unless you receive the Word into you, it cannot save you from death. If you do hear His voice and obey in faith, you will live forever. If you neglect to hear or refuse to hear, then you do not partake of the bread of life or partake of His blood spilled to cover your sin and your sins. Hear and obey and you are a guest at the King’s table and you will never hunger or thirst again for that fulfillment for which you were created. We were created for His glory, to worship Him with our lives, to offer ourselves to Him as living sacrifices that bring Him glory. He insures that the only boasting is in the completed work of Christ by confounding the wisdom of men and annihilating human pride in the way that He works.
By the spoken word of the Gospel, His power impacts our ear and strikes the heart and creates a fire in us that purifies and begins to form His own image in us. And it is His own image in us that brings Him glory and brings the light to everyone around us. And He not only takes us as righteous when we trust His Word, He begins to displace the old smelly self-righteous self with His own righteous nature which others will encounter as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, just to name a few. All of which are implanted, not as extras, but as Christ IN US.
Romans 8 answers the question of “how do I know if I am IN CHRIST?” You will know you are IN CHRIST when HE is IN YOU. And there will be no mistake here. Christ’s Spirit has never filled anybody and they remained unaware of the fact. You will no longer be the same person. Instantly, and bit by bit, as we maintain our grip of faith on His Word, Christ is formed in us. I don’t care how “good” of a person you are, if God regenerates you, you will be cataclysmically changed into something that has never yet walked the face of the earth.
God is a speaking God. He didn’t choose whalesong or squirrel chatter or even birdsong. He chose words to communicate. When He speaks, it is done. He does not lie or go back on His Word, He is faithful to do what He has promised. He keeps His Word to His own hurt. He has searched the earth to find hearers of faith who will take Him at His Word and hang their entire life on His faithfulness to His Word. Hearers who will trust His Word more than what they see.
He is looking for Elijahs who, just because God had said it when He laid down the law, will walk out of nowhere, right into Ahab’s court and say, “it’s not gonna rain again until I say so.” He is looking for Josephs who will say “how can I sin against God? And “what you meant for evil, God meant for good.” He is looking for Jobs who will say “though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” He is looking for Stephens who will look right into the eyes of the Sanhedrin and say “Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.” He is looking for men like Paul who was not disobedient to His call, who fought the good fight, who finished the race, who found God’s grace to be sufficient, who loved not his life unto death.
Stand firm. God’s Word is on the line and He will not fail. The Lord hath spoken it. He puts His amen to it as it leaves His mouth. When it hits your ear, will you add your amen to it? Your response determines your destiny. Ears to hear, or uncircumcised in ear and heart. The seed, His Gospel, is the same. The soil proves itself by its reception or lack of it.
Hear, O Israel. Christ alone will have the glory.