So it's Numbers chapter 23 that
we're going to be reading. In a moment or two, we'll probably
read from verses 1 through to 12. But we're speaking about
this man called Balaam. And we learned last week that
Balaam was a soothsayer, and he was an enemy of God's people. We learned that there was a rather
strange situation arose where a man called Balak wanted to
put a curse upon the children of Israel and he tried to employ
Balaam, a man with a reputation as being a soothsayer, to come
and place a curse on the children of Israel. And we learned that
God intervened in that situation and that as this man travelled,
Balaam travelled, his ass saved him from being slain by the Lord. when it three times moved out
of the way of the angel of the Lord that had his sword drawn
to do Balaam harm. And in the final occasion, we
discover that the ass literally fell onto the ground. But then
this donkey spoke to Balaam, which was itself an amazing miracle. And then the Lord spoke to Balaam,
which was another amazing miracle. And in the end, the Lord told
Balaam to go to Balak, the king of the Moabites. And when it
came time to speak, at Ballach's insistence that Balaam was to
speak only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt
speak. Now Balak was the king of the
Moabites and he knew that the children of Israel were in the
wilderness close to his border and that they would soon be entering
into his land in their quest to possess the promised land. And Balak was concerned about
this. fearful. Balak wished Balaam to place
a curse on Israel and he promised to pay Balaam handsomely if he
would do this. The Moabite nation in its entirety,
along with the other Canaanitish peoples, they feared this numerous
people of Israel that were on their borders. and they knew
that the land of Canaan belonged to the Jews and that it had been
promised to them and if Balaam cursed the children of Israel
maybe they'd be too afraid to go to war with Moab. But what Balak did not know was
that God had already met Balaam on the road and though Balaam
desired Balak's riches and the honour that he could give to
him, the fear of God was greater for Balaam than his love of money. Balaam decided that he would
go as far as he could with the pretense of pleasing Balak and
then the next chapters 23 and 24 Balak takes Balaam to three
different high places where he can see the camps of the children
of Israel and Balaam goes through an elaborate ritual of altar
building and animal sacrifices, but the outcome is always the
same. God tells Balaam what to say
and instead of cursing Israel, To Balak's distress and his confusion,
Balaam repeatedly blesses Israel with some amazing statements
and some wonderful revelations. So let's turn to Numbers chapter
23, verse one, and we're going to read today Balaam's first
oracle or first statement from the Lord. And Balaam said unto Balak, Build
me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven oxen and seven
rams. And Balak did as Balaam had spoken,
and Balak and Balaam offered on every altar a bullock and
a ram. And Balaam said unto Balak, Stand
by the burnt offering, and I will go. Peradventure the Lord will
come to meet me, and whatsoever he showeth me I will tell thee. And he went to an high place.
And God met Balaam, and he said unto him, I have prepared seven
altars, and I have offered upon every altar a bullock and a ram.
And the Lord put a word in Balaam's mouth, and said, Return unto
Balak, and thus thou shalt speak. And he returned unto him, and
lo, he stood by his burnt sacrifice, he and all the princes of Moab. And he took up his parable and
said, Balak the king of Moab hath brought me from Aram out
of the mountains of the east, saying, Come, curse me Jacob,
and come, defy Israel. How shall I curse whom the Lord
hath not cursed? Or how shall I defy whom the
Lord hath not defied? For from the top of the rocks
I see him, and from the hills I behold him. Lo, the people
shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob,
and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the
death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his. And Balak said unto Balaam, What
hast thou done unto me? I took thee to curse mine enemies,
and behold, thou hast blessed them altogether. And he answered
and said, Must I not take heed to speak that which the Lord
hath put in my mouth? Amen. May the Lord bless this
reading. Today I want to look at the first
of these statements that were made by Balaam. There were three
statements and we'll look at the others on other occasions
as the Lord allows us. But these statements were given
to this soothsayer by the Lord and They were given to Balaam
to give to Balak, who was, of course, an idol worshipper. And
by these statements, Balak learned that the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, the covenant God, the God who loved his people
and the God who cared and protected them, was powerful and faithful
to his promises and that he would bless his people as he said he
would. Balaam told Balak, God has blessed
these people, how can I curse them? And here are some lessons
I think that we can draw from this Balaam's first parable. It's called a parable in the
scriptures and we can take some of the comments that he makes
and just draw perhaps a couple of little lessons. The first
one is this. Balaam said that the people shall
dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Now this was speaking particularly,
of course, of the children of Israel that Balaam and Balak
were looking at together. And it was true for the children
of Israel. When they entered the land of
Canaan, they were told that they were to slay or they were to
expel all the other nations and they were to keep separate from
them. They must not marry them, they
must not worship their gods, they must not follow their practices. Now, we are going to learn in
the coming weeks again, God willing, that the children of Israel did
not do as they were told and Balaam had much to do with that. However, This reference to dwelling
alone, like all of these revelations from God, don't just have an
immediate application. They also have an application
which transcends the time that they were given and speaks of
the spiritual dealings of the Lord with his people and the
spiritual calling of God's people in this world. And that is true
about these words from the Lord as well. They weren't just for
Israel, or indeed for Balak at that particular time, therefore
the whole church for the whole of its experience. And this reference
to dwelling alone was a picture of spiritual Israel, which is
the church of Jesus Christ. Christ's church in this world,
God's people in this world, dwell alone before God and they are
not reckoned among the nations. That is a reference to the fact
that the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a chosen out and set
apart people. Things that we've been learning
about in recent weeks are a chosen out and a set apart people, a
people who dwell alone. So what does that mean? Well,
it means that we are separated to the Lord. Now, of course,
we live in the world and we live amongst our families and we live
amongst our nations. But the people of God are not
of this world. They're a spiritual people. The
Lord has set his people apart. He has distinguished his elect
by choosing them to salvation. He has sanctified them in Christ
and he has called them to faith in the gospel and by the gospel. He makes his church differ from
all other nations and peoples by filling them with the Holy
Spirit. And he reveals the gospel to
them and he brings them to understand the gospel by giving them spiritual
life and spiritual understanding. They have ears to hear and eyes
to see the gospel of Jesus Christ in the ways that other people
cannot. They believe the gospel. Now,
yes, we live in nations and families, but Christ's church has been
purchased out of the world. We are a purchased possession,
Paul tells the Ephesians. We are a peculiar people. We
are a holy nation. That's what Peter says. We are
separated out of this world, and we are joined to him who
is our head, and we have become his body. So that the Lord does
not look at his church as part of the nations of this world,
but rather he sees us separately. Our first allegiance is to God
and to God's people. And when the Lord says to his
church, come out from among them and be ye separate, it's not
so much an instruction about how to live, but a reference
to the transformation that he has made in the way we live. Believers have different passions,
different allegiances, different values. It isn't that we are
to try to be a holy nation. It is rather that it is what
we are because it is what Christ has made us. And another thing
that Balaam was told to say to Balak was, who can count the
dust of Jacob? Who can count the dust of Jacob?
So what he's talking about here is the number of the people. Calling them the dust is often
a reference to counting or the vast number that were there. Israel pitched their tents in
four camps, and Balaam was now looking at one camp. But even
here, he says that their numbers can't be counted. God had promised
that he would make Abraham a great nation, and that was true, even
in the days of Israel in the wilderness. Though so many had
died, yet so many had been born. And now after 40 years in the
wilderness, as the people prepared to enter into Canaan, their numbers
were without counting. And the message to Balak and
to his people was that the children of Israel were numerous and they
were mighty. But again, there's a spiritual
dimension to this. And we probably feel that believers
are few. And I agree that they are. Sometimes I think that we are
fewer than perhaps we even hope. And yet God will not allow his
people to be defeatist because God's elect cannot be numbered. In every generation, God preserves
himself a people. He maintains a witness to saving
grace. So let us not be discouraged
because we are few. The children of Israel there
in the wilderness, they thought, how are we going to be able to
possess all this country? But the people of Canaan were
terrified because the children of Israel appeared to be so numerous. Here's a verse that the Apostle
Paul gives us that just reminds us of the way in which God works
with his church in this world. Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter
1, the foolish things of the world
to confound the wise. And God, he's speaking about
the church here, he's speaking about you and me who are believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ, who trust in him and who have been
separated and called out to be his people. He says, God hath
chosen the foolish things of the world, which is what the
world thinks we are, to confound the wise. God hath chosen the
weak things of the world, which is what the world thinks we are,
to confound the things which are mighty. Base things of the
world, the things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, the things
which are not, to bring to naught the things that are." So here
Paul is speaking about the church and Christ's church must never
draw its honour, draw its importance, its prestige from being numerous
or mighty or powerful in itself. The Lord will not have us glory
in our big numbers or our mighty speaking or our great finances
and resources or our powerful abilities. That's not how the
Lord works. The Lord works by keeping his
people meek and humble. The Lord even keeps us isolated. so that we will trust him, so
that we will feel dependent upon him. He causes us thereby to
lean on him and not ourselves. But all this said, Christ's people
are numerous as the stars in the sky. No one can count us
other than God himself and he knows exactly who we are and
where we are in time and in space in this world. Before the Lord
we are his mighty nation. We are a great congregation and
we are a great cloud of witnesses, though we might live alone and
we might feel to be very few and small. here's the third thing
that Balaam was told to say to Balak. Balaam said, let me die
the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his. So Balaam here was speaking about
dying and probably making a reference to his own death and what he
saw amongst the children of Israel. He saw a righteous people, he
saw a spiritual people, not that they all were, but there was
a number who were righteous in Christ, a number who were spiritual
in Christ and Balaam saw that God had made
these people spiritual, eternal promises. And Balaam said, oh
how I wish I possessed what those people possess. Let me die the
death of the righteous. And this final statement by Balaam
is a reference to the righteous among the people of Israel. those
who truly were elect of God, spiritual believers in God and
the promised Messiah. These are not righteous in themselves,
but because they are in Christ, they possess the righteousness
of God and they are acceptable to God. But what a death the
righteous have, says Balaam. I wish my end. Balaam knew that
everyone must die and he knew that then must come the judgment. I wish my death were like the
end of those who are saved by grace, who are redeemed by blood,
who are heirs of God, who possess everlasting life. That is what
Balaam is saying. He admires, he envies those who
have such spiritual blessings and gifts. To die in the Lord
is to die in union with Him. It is to die with faith in Him,
in hope of eternal life by Him, and knowing our death is precious
to Him. It is to be carried by angels
into glory when we die. And it is to be at once in heaven
with Christ, to dwell with Him for all eternity. and nothing
could be more desirable, nor more blessed for a mortal man,
woman, boy or girl, than that the Lord give us faith in Christ
and confidence in death, that the sacrifice of Christ might
be the means by which we live eternally. Most people are sad
about dying, but the Lord's people have a hope beyond death that
sweetens and softens the prospect of us leaving this world and
entering heaven. There is joy in believing. The
Lord gave Balaam a little glimpse of this blessed condition, and
he left him longing to have the blessings for himself. May the
Lord give us faith that we might be righteous in Christ and possessors
of that life which is eternal. Amen.