Alright brethren, Numbers 22. We come to our next question
in our question series. And this is where God asked Balaam
a question. In verse 9. God came unto Balaam
and he said, What men are these with thee? Balaam was a false
prophet. He's an example of those who
once professed to believe Christ, who even preached in Christ's
name, but yet they were not born of the Spirit of God. They were
not kept by the power of God. And so as Peter says, they have
forsaken the right way and gone astray following the way of Balaam,
the son of Basser, who loved the wages, the pay. of unrighteousness. Now, at this time, on each side
of Balaam, there was a company of men. On the left side were
God's enemies. There was Balak, the Moabites,
and the Midianites. And then on the right were God's
people. There was the children of Israel. Christ, our mediator,
leading them. He's the cloud. He's the rock
that was leading them in the wilderness. And when God's enemies
came, they came to hire Balaam. They came to pay him. To curse
God. To curse their enemies. And Balaam,
hearing this is what they wanted him to do, he told them to spend
the night. Spend the night. Come in here
and I'll make you a nice bed and we'll have something good
to eat. Let me seek God's will on this. And God came to him
and said, what men are these with thee? That's a good question
for us to ask. What men are these with thee?
This is what I want us to get from this message. Keep the company
of Christ and his people, not the company of God's enemies.
Keep the company of Christ and his people, not the company of
God's enemies. First of all, we see here God
knows the company we keep in this world. God said to Balaam,
what men are these with thee? Was God, did He not know who
these men were? God is the all-knowing, all-present,
all-seeing God. In Job 34.21 it says, His eyes
are upon the ways of man and He seeth all his goings. In Psalm
138.6 it says, Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect
unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off. God's high. He's the highest. He's high in
wisdom. He's high in knowledge. He's
high in excellency and glory. There's none high as God. And
God has respect to the lowly. The lowly are those that God,
the Holy Spirit, has given a new heart, given them a heart that's
broken and contrite to submit to the Lord, to submit to Christ,
to follow Christ, to believe Him, cast their care upon Him.
And God looks after them. He looks after them because He's
everlastingly loved them. He looks after them because Christ
has purchased them with His blood. They belong to Him. He looks
over them because the Holy Spirit abides in them. He looks over
them with care and with diligence and protects His people. But
it also says, the proud He knoweth afar off. Men in this world want
to boast about their will and they want to boast about how
they're going to do what they will. Nobody's going to stop
them. They're going to have their way. They're going to do what
they want to do. And they scoff at God and they curse God. And
men preach up free will and preach up things that they're speaking,
exalting man and speaking lowly of God. Proud men. And yet, the Scripture says,
he knows the proud are far off. And God allows the proud men,
even causes proud men, to do only that which glorifies God
and which is going to be a blessing to His people. That's what God
does. The scripture says, The afflicted
people thou wilt save, but thine eyes are upon the haughty that
thou best bring them down. So be sure to understand God
knew who these men were that were with Balaam. He knew exactly
who they were. And He knew that Balaam knew
who these men were. In fact, he knew the hearts of
everybody involved in this. He knows our hearts. He knows
our hearts. God knew what was in all their
hearts. But God is going to have Balaam
to answer this question with his own mouth. So God came to Balaam and he
said, who are these men with you? You know, it doesn't matter
where we're at. It doesn't matter what situation
we're in. This is a good question for us
to keep ready all the time. You find yourself in a situation.
You find yourself with this. You have to make a decision.
Am I going to go with these folks and get myself in a situation
that might not be a good situation? Or, you know, you end up with
a group of folks. Good question to ask. Who are
these men I'm with? Am I in the company of God's
chosen, redeemed, sanctified people or I'm in the company
of God's enemy? You go to a place where the gospel
is supposed to be preached and you listen to that message that's
being preached. And the good question to ask
is, who are these men I'm with? Are they exalting my Redeemer?
Are they exalting God and giving Him all the glory and the salvation
of His people? Or are they exalting man? If
one of the two, we're either going to be in the company of
God's people or in the company of God's enemies. Now if God
took notice of the company of this false prophet, he takes
notice of us, of his people. That's for certain. Alright,
here's the second thing. Does it matter? Does it matter
before God what company a believer keeps? It does. It really does. Believers are
instructed throughout the scriptures concerning the company that we
keep. Listen to Proverbs 2.20. It says, walk in the way of good
men and keep the paths of the righteous. Well, the Lord told
that rich young ruler there's none good but one, that's God.
That's true, by nature there is none good. By nature there's
none righteous, there's none that understands, there's none
that seeks God, there's none that doeth good. No, not one.
Whenever the Spirit of God creates us, He creates a new man. Christ is formed in us. And whenever
Christ is formed in us, we're made holy by God. by God the
Father in electing grace, by God the Son in redeeming grace,
by God the Holy Spirit in regenerating grace. And look at 1 Peter 1.13. This is what the scripture says. Wherefore, gird up the loins
of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that
is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
And he tells us how to do that. As obedient children, not fashioning
yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but
as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner
of conversation. The believer's holiness is Christ
with whom we've been made one in the new birth. And our righteousness
is Christ through faith in Christ. So the way of good men is Christ
the way. That scripture said the wise
men are going to keep the way of good men. The way of good
men is Christ the way. And we're going to keep the paths
of the righteous. And the paths of those made righteous
by Christ are the old paths of the gospel whereby we hear God
speak and Christ speak and Christ instructs us in the way to go,
in the way that we ought to go. Proverbs says, Whoso keepeth
the law You mean I keep Moses' law? Or greater than Moses? He says, Christ said, whoever
keeps my words. They're different words. We saw
that Sunday. Altogether different words than
what the law said. The law said thou shalt not commit
fornication. We saw a whole lot more to that
in Ephesians 5, didn't we? We're saints. How did we get
to be saints? Christ teaches us the motive. You're made righteous and holy.
And it's Christ we obey, it's His words we obey. And whoso
keepeth Christ's words is a wise son, Proverbs said. But he that
is a companion of righteous men shameth his father. He that walketh
with the wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall
be destroyed. And the reason, look at 1 Peter
4. Here's the reason the company
we keep is so important. It's because of what Christ has
accomplished for us. Look at 1 Peter 4. You'll find
this in the New Testament. Whenever the Lord moved somebody
to write in the scriptures, about something concerning how we are
to conduct ourselves in this world. It's always connected
with what Christ has done for us and what he's done in us.
Look here, 1 Peter 4 and look at verse 1. For as much then
as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves
likewise with the same mind. For he that hath suffered in
the flesh hath ceased from sin, that he no longer should live
the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the
will of God. The chapter just before this
is saying, if you're persecuted for Christ's sake, if you're
persecuted for righteousness sake, be happy about that, because
they persecuted Christ for the same reason. And so he's saying
here, but Christ suffered for us. You know, when from the day
Christ entered this earth until the day that he was made sin
for his people and went to that cross and bore the wrath of God
on that cross for his people, Christ suffered for his people,
for the people God gave him from the foundation of the world.
He suffered the whole time he walked this earth. from having
to flee whenever he was being born because Herod was wanting
to kill him, from the moment he walked into the temple and
began to speak and teach, from the moment his ministry began.
He suffered the whole time he walked this earth and he did
that for his people. But he did it because he's holy.
He did it because he's righteous. He suffered because men are not
holy, men are not righteous, and he is righteous and holy.
And men hated him for that. That's why he suffered. And that's
what he means in that chapter 4. If you suffer for Christ's
sake, if you suffer for conducting yourself in a holy manner, for
loving righteousness and seeking after righteousness, Don't be
ashamed of that. Don't be ashamed of that. But
he said, but let it be done for that reason. Make sure it is
for that reason. Because now he shows us the motive.
He suffered for us. He suffered rejection from two
kinds of people. From God hating sinners. From
God hating sinners. Outward disrebellious sinners.
And he suffered rejection from self-righteous religionists.
And that's who we're going to suffer from, those two. And he suffered that cruel death
on the cross. That's where it ended up. It
got, it raised and it got more intense and more intense until
they took him to a cross. And he did that for his people.
He did that for us. But now, he ceased from his suffering. And the man who follows Christ,
and the man who is not afraid to be persecuted for Christ's
sake, he's not afraid to be rejected because he won't fall in with
companions that want to do evil, the man who don't mind walking
his own path, he don't mind that he's not conformed to the world.
He's saying here, that man has ceased from sin. That don't mean
he's not a sinner. He's still a sinner. But it means
God's done a work in his heart. And he's brought him, he's delivered
him from the power of darkness and translated him into the kingdom
of Christ. And that man's a new creature.
That man is a new creature. Now look here. And he says, He
says, verse 3, for the time past of our life may suffice to have
wrought the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lasciviousness
and lust and excess of wine and revelings and banqueting and
abominable idolatry. You see, this thing is just out
now, sin and its religion, both of them, self-righteous idolatrous
religion, wherein they think it strange that you still don't
run with them. You see that? He said, you've
ceased from that. You've been turned from that.
And the reason we turn from that is because Christ suffered for
us. So he said, we ought to live
the rest of our time in the flesh, not to the lusts of men, but
to the will of God. To the will of God. Now, believers,
we see here, we're well instructed in the Scriptures. Well instructed
throughout the Scriptures that the company we keep certainly
does matter. It matters. Now, we have to go
to work. We have to go to school and we
have to live with sinners. We have to work with them. We
have to go to school with them. We have to live by them. We have
to be around sinners and we ought to always be ready to teach sinners
the gospel and to receive sinners. Christ
receiveth sinners. That's a great thing. That's
a wonderful thing. We rejoice in that and we should
do that. But to be yoked with sinners,
unbelievers who hate God or to give them the impression we approve
of their sin and they reprove of their rebellion, the Scriptures
never tell us to do that. Not once. Not once. So the question
to ask, who are these men I'm with? God said, who are these
men that are with you? All right, look at this next
thing. Let's see the dangers of being yoked with unbelievers
by seeing what took place between these men and Balaam. Go back
there to our text in Numbers 22. First of all, brethren, it
doesn't matter who they are. Unbelievers, it doesn't matter
who they are, whether they're outside of religion or they are
in religion. Unbelievers, the world, sin,
false religion, they're going to offer you tempting rewards. They're going to offer you tempting
rewards. They came with a reward for Balaam. Verse 7 says, The elders of Moab
and the elders of Midian departed with the rewards of divination
in their hand. And they came unto Balaam and
spake unto him the words of Balak. Now first see, these men were
the elders. These men were the elders. Now
what's the reward going to be for Balaam if he goes with these
old men who are wise and everybody knows how wise these men are
and these men pick Balaam? Everybody's going to look at
Balaam and say, whew, he's a wise man. He's a wise man. That's a reward. That's a gift. That's a reward. There'll be
times when it might make you look wise and be considered wise
by this world to go with men who are against God or whatever. That's a reward of unrighteousness. Now look here, and the flesh
likes that, don't it? Let's look at the next thing.
These men were from two different companies of men. They were elders
of Moab and elders of Midian. What I read about these two men
is that normally they hated each other. But right now they had
a common enemy. God and his people. Just like,
who was it? Pilate and Herod. Just like Pilate
and Herod. But you know what this is going
to look like? When the world looks at this and they see these
two men who can't get along. They've come together with each
other and Balaam is leading these people. That's going to make
Balaam look like he is of utmost importance. You think that attracted
Balaam. You think he looked at that and
thought, I want that. That's a reward of unrighteousness.
Look here, these men were the princes of Moab. That's going
to make Balaam look dignified. These men are princes. And then
look down here at verse 15. They came the second time, it
says, and Balak sent yet again princes more and more honorable
than they. More honorable than they. He
sent more princes and he sent them who were more honorable
than the first. And it says, And they came to Balaam and said
unto him, Thus saith Balak the son of Zipporah, Let nothing,
I pray thee, hinder thee from coming unto me, for I'll promote
thee unto very great honor, and I'll do whatsoever thou sayest
unto me. Come, therefore, I pray thee,
curse me, this people. You see how appealing this is
to the flesh? You see how This was the most
honorable men in Moab and Midian. And they come with this news
from the king saying, I'm going to promote you to very great
honor. And not only that, I'm going
to do whatever you tell me to do. That's practically going
to make Balaam be the king. There's a bunch of men in this
country who are preachers. And I guarantee you if the President
of the United States even acted like he wanted them in the White
House, they'd all be kowtowing, whatever you want me to do. changing
their message, altering it however it needs to be altered to get
that position. Do you know what's sad about this country? We don't
even have a Billy Graham in this country now. We don't even have a man standing
up for the United States saying, Christ, Christ, nobody, even
if he's a false prophet, we don't even have one, period. What's
that say about us? That's pretty bad, isn't it? The danger of this world, the
danger of sin, the danger of false religion is they offer
rewards, wages to tempt you. Not only that, they brought gifts.
They brought monetary gifts. They brought some sort of gifts
for you to have in addition to that. All of these things, brethren,
are wages. They're paid. That's dangerous. That's the
first thing. It's tempting. The world's tempting. Here's
the second thing. The danger is that the only way
you can serve the world and serve sin and serve false religion
is to forsake Christ. If you know Him, if you believe
Him, you claim you believe Him, you claim you trust Him, you
claim you know Him, the only way you can serve these others
is to forsake Him altogether. He said you can't serve both.
We can't serve both. Now look, verse 7. They spake
unto him the words of Balak. You know what that means? That
means when they came there, they told Balaam, the reason we want
to give you all this is we want you to curse God and curse his
people. That's what they wanted. And
Balaam knew that. Balaam knew that. See, the only
way he could have these rewards is to curse God's people. And
if you curse God's people, you're cursing God. Because His people,
Christ and His people are one. They're one. And yet, knowing
this, what would be the best thing for Balaam to do? Best
thing for Balaam to do? If God was working in him, the
Spirit of God was keeping him, the power of God was working
in this man, in truth, in grace, in mercy, in love, what would
this man do? What would God move this? He
would have told him right then. Leave this place. Do not come
back. No, I'm not cursing God's people ever. Period. That's it. End of story. But what did he do? Look at verse
eight. He said unto them, Lodge here this night and I'll bring
you word again as the Lord shall speak unto me and the princes
of Moab abode with Balaam. What happened? What happened?
See, he lusted after the reward in his heart. He lusted after
that reward in his heart. Now that was bad enough. But
now he went further and put himself into a position to try to get
that in his hand. Try to get it in his hand. Why? Why did he do that? Because Balaam
valued the reward of unrighteousness over the reward of the Lord himself. Scripture says, Balaam loved
the wages of unrighteousness. Brethren, our unregenerate friends,
or those that are in false religion, either one, they may try to get
us to join them. And in doing so, they might not
be as malicious as these people are. They may only be the messengers
of the devil, like these men were the messengers of Balak.
And our unregenerate friends certainly won't tell us, come
on, let's go do this such and such a thing. It's going to seem
innocent enough. They won't say, let's go do this
such and such a thing. And you know, it's not something
you ought to get into, but they're not going to say, let's do this
so you can curse God and curse his people. They're not going
to say that. But if we choose the friendship of this world
and choose to sin against our God rather than standing steadfast
with Christ, we're essentially saying we value the reward of
unrighteousness over the reward that Christ himself is unto us. And that's what we're essentially
doing is cursing God and his people. That's right. Who's our
righteousness? Who's our reward? Who's the believer's
righteousness? Balaam loved the wages of unrighteousness. Who is our righteousness and
who's our reward? Who's giving the gifts unto us
and who is the gift? Christ our righteousness. These
men came and this would have made Balaam look wise. Who's
our wisdom? Christ is our wisdom. Can there
be any wisdom that can trump the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ being your wisdom? I'm serious now. I'm saying to
you, this is what is going to keep a believer from going off
into the world because he's tempted in his flesh to want to be wise
before the men. Because in our hearts, we're
taught by the Spirit of God, we have Christ our wisdom. And having Christ our wisdom,
we have the greatest wisdom a man could have in this world. Any
in the world to come. And then Christ is our dignity
and our honor. Look over there again at 1 Peter.
Look at 1 Peter 2. Look, some man wants to offer
you a position, or they want to offer you a raise, or they
want to offer you some position in this world and all of these
different things, and it's going to bring you great honor and
great dignity and all that. But you're going to have to forsake
Christ? You're going to have to forsake His people? In essence,
you're going to have to curse God and His people? What's going to move a believer
to know, I don't need that. I don't need this office of dignity
and position and all that. Why? Look here. Here's what a
believer is. Look at 1 Peter 2, 9. You're
a chosen generation. You're a royal priesthood. You're kings and you're priests. In Christ our king and our high
priest. You're a royal priesthood. You're a holy nation. You're
a peculiar people, loved of God, chosen of God, redeemed by God,
kept by God, never to be forsaken by God. That's a peculiar people.
Look here, that you should show forth the praises of Him, of
Him. Show forth the praises. What
does that mean? Show how much you love Him. Show how much you're
thankful for Him. Show how much you praise Him
for what He's done for you. That's what it means. That you
should show forth the praises of Him who's called you out of
darkness into His marvelous light. called you out of stinking darkness,
called you out of dead darkness, called you out of God-hating
darkness, and made you a child of light. Can you express your
praise for Christ more enough for what He's done for you? Look
here. In time past, you weren't a people,
but now you're a people of God. You have not obtained mercy,
but now you've attained mercy. So He says, Dearly beloved, See
how dearly beloved we are? Because of God dearly beloved,
I beseech you. You're a stranger and a pilgrim.
You know what Israel was as they were? They'd just come out of
Egypt. They were going through the wilderness. You know what
they were in that land? They were strangers and pilgrims.
They just wanted to... We just need to pass by y'all.
That's all. We don't want to dwell with you. We don't want
to stay here with you. We just need to get past you. We're going
on somewhere that God's carrying us. That's what we are, brethren,
in this world right now. We're strangers and pilgrims. Look at this. abstain from fleshly
lusts because they war against the soul. Man, I hear these words
and get all mad and upset. You know, you just want arrows
shot into your soul? We're not even talking about
the flesh. We're talking about the soul.
You want somebody to just stand by and watch you perish? You want somebody to stand by
and watch you Run to hell with your soul that's going to live
forever in hell? He said these things are war
against your soul. That's why He's saying these
things. You see, we're children of Israel. We're children of
Israel, brethren. These men were afraid of Israel.
That's how this got started. These men that came to Baal,
they were afraid. These men saw how Christ conquered the enemies
of His people. Back up there in verse 1 it says
the children of Israel set forward and they pitched in the plains
of Moab on this side of Jordan by Jericho and Balak the son
of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites. You
know why this world, you know why the world gets uncomfortable
and aggravated and agitated and distressed and afraid when they
hear a believer speaking? Because what we talk about is
we talk about how Christ has conquered all our enemies. We
talk about how Christ conquered sin for us and in us. How He conquered the devil for
us, how He conquered death in us, how He conquered all our enemies. And then they
look at us and they see we've set forward. He's brought us
forward and he's made us to pitch. He's made us to come right forth
in the middle of our enemies just like we're just right at
home and not even worried about all the enemies around us and
just camp out for a little while before we move on. Not worried,
not troubled when we hear all the politics and all that's going
on and the world's fussing and arguing and there's some people
you get with and you can't be with them five minutes and they're
running down everybody. You know, if they're Republicans,
they're running down Democrats, if they're Democrats, they're
running down a Republican and here's what's wrong with this group
and here's what's wrong with that group and here's what's wrong
with the other one and on down the line and it's just, look
at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, I'm better, I'm better,
I'm better, I'm better. That's what they might as well
be saying the whole time. That's exactly right. But the
believer, you don't hear them talking that way. And they hear
you talking. The world hears you talking.
And they hear you resting in Christ, knowing Christ has got
this whole world under control. Whatever the king's doing, he's
doing whatever Christ would have him do. Whatever the devil's
doing, he's doing whatever Christ would have him do. The wrath
of man shall praise God, and the remainder thereof shall He
restrain. If it don't praise Him, it ain't coming to pass.
And if it came to pass, He's getting glory to Himself and
doing good for His people. And we rest in that. And we know
that's true. And so we just pitch right here.
We got these enemies right here around us. We're not worried
about what's going to happen. And you know what? This is where
Paul put this. We're outwardly, we bear some
of the same trouble that they bear. And our flesh is wearied
and we get low and we get depressed and we get all these things.
But inwardly, we have peace with God. And look, here's how Paul
put it. We're troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We're perplexed. That's outwardly. But inwardly, we're not in despair.
Outwardly, we're persecuted. Inwardly, we're not forsaken.
Outwardly, we're cast down. Inwardly, we're not destroyed.
Outwardly, we're bearing about in the body the dying of the
Lord Jesus. Inwardly, that the life also of Jesus Christ may
be made manifest in our body. And we have this great reward,
this great treasure, all of this. But you know what a believer
does when they hear that? If you read there, it says when
they look, in verse 3 says, or verse I lost my place. Oh, yeah. Here
we go. When they when they looked and saw that look what happened
in verse three. Moab was sore afraid of the people because
they were many and Moab was distressed because the children of Israel.
You see, we're not distressed. We're just come with me when
all these people are enemies and the enemy see that and they
see what Christ has conquered our enemies. It's like he conquered
the Amorite and that makes them distressed. We got a great reward. Let's, let's learn from our master. Let's learn from our master.
You remember when our savior was tempted of the devil? Remember
when he was tempted of the devil? The first time the devil waited
till he was very, very hungry. He had fasted 40 days and 49.
The devil didn't come to him till he got to the end of that. He was very hungry. And, and
the Lord came, the devil came to him and he said, he said to
him, why don't you fill your belly? with these earthly stone. You can do that. You can make
bread out of these stones. Won't you fill your belly with
these earthly stones? The reward would have been he
would have satisfied his fleshly hunger. That would have been
the reward. You see, everything's got a reward in it. Everything
we do has got a reward in it. Either Christ is our reward or
our flesh is our reward. Everything's got a reward in
it. When we're weakest spiritually, that's when we're tempted to
feed our flesh with some earthly, sinful food to take up companions
where we're not supposed to. When we're weakest spiritually,
Christ said this. This is what he answered. Man
doesn't live on bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of God. You know what that tells me?
Live more on Christ and his word and less on the pleasures of
this world. That's right. You want to be
ready when the temptation comes? You want to be ready when the
prince of Balak comes knocking on your door with all his princes,
the king of Balak comes and knocks with all his princes and starts
offering you something? Or when you're tempted by something
else, you want to be ready? Be more right now while it's
the season to do so. Be more in feeding upon Christ
and his word. Christ is the bread. and less
upon the flesh. All right, the second time the
devil urged Christ to presume upon God. Remember that? He took
him up into a high place. He said, now just, it's written
in scriptures, God will send his angels, they'll protect you,
you just jump off. And the Lord said, it's also
written not, you should not tempt the Lord. Now you know what Balaam
did? When Balaam got this word, about
these princes, about this reward and all this stuff they wanted
him to do. Latham said, y'all spend the night. He opened his
door. He said, come on in. Even the
second time, even when God said, you tell them you cannot curse
my people, they are blessed people. He went back to them and he didn't
tell them that. He said, God said, I can't go
with you. But if you wanted Balaam to come with you, what are you
going to hear about that? Fellas, if we give him something better,
he'll come with us. That's what I hear. And that's what Balaam
meant by it, too. And so that's what they did.
They came back with something better. And again, the Lord said,
if they come to you, this is what the Lord said, if they come
begging you, that's what that means. If they come begging you,
you can go with them. Elam didn't wait for them to
come begging him. He got up the next morning, sat on his ass,
said, boys, what y'all waiting on? Let's go. He wanted to go. But you know what the Lord did
when he was tempted? Immediately, he would quote what God said.
He would tell the devil what God said. Immediately, he'd slam
the door shut. That's what he'd do. Immediately,
he slammed the door shut. You shall not tempt the Lord
your God. What that teaches us, brethren,
is this. Slam the door shut on temptation right then. Just slam it shut. Slam it shut. I was with some boys one night
when I was 15 years old. They did something and I had
the option of not doing it. And I did it. I'm paying for that today. I should have just slammed that
door shut. Slam it shut. Slam it shut. And the third time, the devil
showed Christ all the kingdoms of this world in their glory.
And the devil said, I'll give you all this if you'll just fall
down and worship me. And Christ said, Get thee hence,
Satan, for it's written thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
and him only shalt thou serve. Our Lord valued He put more value
upon glorifying God, his father, and saving his people from his
sins. And he didn't put any value on
anything this world, sin, the devil, or any of his kingdom
could give to him. Nothing. Believer, value our
Redeemer. Value his blood and don't put
any value on the rewards of unrighteousness. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Scripture
says, Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered
to him. concerning believers, concerning
temptations, concerning the devil, concerning sin, concerning worldly
companions or false religion or any other company. Paul said
there's no temptation taken you but such as is common to man
but God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted
above that you are able that means brethren we're not going
to do what Balaam did because God's not going to allow it for
his people he's not going to allow it he said but we will
with the temptation he will also make a way to escape that you
may be able to bear it and Christ is that way flee to Christ, go
to Christ, call out to Christ. He's the way of escape. He said,
Your adversary, the devil, is a roaring lion, walking about,
seeking whom he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith. You know what that means? The
way we resist steadfast in the faith? A verse or two before
that, he said, cast all your care on him. He cares for you. That's how we're going to resist
in the faith. Cast all our care on Christ. All our care on Christ.
Oh, Balaam, he didn't flee to Christ. He didn't flee to Christ. And the Lord raised him up, same
reason he raised up Pharaoh. He raised him up to show me and
you his power toward how he keeps me and you. How he does things
for us, because we see what we do. You look at Pharaoh, you
look at Balaam, you see what we'd do if God didn't keep us.
And if a man don't think he'd do that, he's probably already
tangled up. But he's not going to allow that
to happen to his people. He's not going to do it. He made
his company to be the enemies of God. Balaam did. But believer,
what men are these with thee? By God's grace, what men are
these that are with you? We're with a company of men that
have been loved for everlasting. We're with a company loved with
an infinite, unchanging, unchangeable love. We're with a company that's
bought with a price, Christ's precious blood. You can't unbuy redemption. When you buy redemption, it's
purchased. You can't take it back and trade it in. It's done. He's done it. We're with a company
delivered from this present evil world, saved by the Lord. We're
with a company sustained by Jehovah himself. We're with a company
of pilgrims on our way to Heavenly Canaan. We're with a company
who's going to pass over into that Heavenly Canaan. That's
the company we're with. Which one would you rather be
with? The company Balaam chose or that company down there in
the valley? You read on over chapter 2 and you read where
Balaam finally walked up and looked over and looked down at
Israel and the words God put in his mouth to speak about Israel.
You read those. Oh, what a pleasant company.
A kept company. He said they're like gardens
where they're at. Well watered, well kept, well
fed. Amen.