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[Music] Balaam and his amazing talking ass. A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] Our second scripture reading of the evening is from 2 Peter chapter 2,

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beginning the reading at the verse number 13. This particular passage, the writer of this epistle is trying to describe what will happen to those who deliberately and callously sin against God.

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This is what he writes. "They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blocks and blemishes reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.

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With eyes full of adultery they never stop sinning. They seduce the unstable. They are experts in greed and a cursed brood. They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam,

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son of Baor, who loved the wages of wickedness. But he was rebuked for his wrongdoing by an ass, a beast without speech, who spoke with a man's voice and restrained the prophet's madness.

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These men are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. And the blackest darkness is reserved for them." And may God bless to us this reading from his words. Sometimes funny things appear on church bulletin boards.

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They're not supposed to be funny, but they are. I remember once seeing a bulletin board on which the sermon title emboldened there was "What is Hell?" And underneath it said, "Come and hear our choir."

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I recall preaching once in Ohio. I was preaching from James 3 where it talks about hypocritical speech, and I entitled the sermon "Double Talk" and the church bulletin read "Double Talk" by Bruce Thielman.

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And then I remember on the lawn of a very prominent Pittsburgh church a signboard was read, "A jackass speaks his mind. Dr. Moore." [laughter] Now, I'm sure that Dr. Moore was talking about Balaam and his amazing talking jackass.

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But the way the signboard read, it suggested that Dr. Moore was the ass. And perhaps that's exactly what's going to happen tonight in this place. I may end up being the jackass. Because the story of Balaam is one of the most profound and difficult passages

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in all of the Old Testament. It has within the compass of a very few verses that which is comic, that which is tragic, that which is puzzling, and that which is deeply obscure. The story is about 4,000 years old.

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It's told in Numbers 22, 23, and 24. And it's that story, the story of Balaam and his amazing talking ass, that I would like to think with you about tonight. But before we think together, let us pray together.

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Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Israel had been led out of Egypt and spent 40 years in the wilderness.

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They were now ready to enter the land of promise. But in order to enter that land, they had to win some crucial battle. Battles against the Canaanites and the Midianites and the Moabites. Now the king of the Moabites was a man named Balak.

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And he was an accomplished military leader and recognized very quickly that Israel would easily overrun his country. He said that Israel will lick up Moab like an ox licks up the grass. So he searched about for some secret weapon to use against the Israelites.

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He decided to call to his aid a well-known prophet of the day, whose name was Balaam. Now Balaam was not himself a Moabite. He lived far to the north near the Euphrates River.

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He was probably taught occult lore in Babylon, which was a capital for that kind of education. And he had developed quite a reputation as an individual who could not only foretell the future, but who could also control the future.

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He not only could tell you what would happen tomorrow, but he could directly influence what was going to happen tomorrow. Balak's idea was to get Balaam to curse Israel and to make it impossible for Israel to defeat Moab.

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So Balak sends a caravan with some very important personages aboard and much gold and silver, what they called the fee for divination, up to enlist the services of Balaam. When they ask Balaam if he will come and assist Moab,

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he replies in a very surprising way. He says that he will ask the Lord about it, and then he will let them know. Now what's amazing about that is that the word he uses for "Lord" is the word Yahweh, which was the name applied to the Lord by Israel.

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Here is Balaam, who is not himself an Israelite, and who lives far away from the Israelite people, using a personal name for God, which the Israelites themselves had only been using for a very short period of time.

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Not only is it surprising that Balaam knows God, as it were, on a first-name basis, but it also is quite surprising that it is Yahweh God to whom he prays before he decides whether he will go and assist the Moabites or not. This Balaam is really a very remarkable man.

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John Calvin said of him that he was truly endued with the powers and spirit of a great prophet. And it can, I think, be legitimately said that Balaam is the first wise man from the East to appear in Scripture. So chapter one of the story ends with Balaam saying,

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"I will bring back to you word after Yahweh speaks to me." And he goes aside and spends a night for prayer, and God tells him that he may not go. And so the next morning he comes and tells the Moabites that he will not go with them, and they turn homeward disappointed.

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Now this is, to me, the best part of the whole story, because what we have here is the establishment trying to buy a preacher, and he is not for sale. Here are people with big money coming along,

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trying to get the clergy to say what they want the clergy to say. But this particular clergyman will not play the game. People have, of course, always tried to buy the servants of God. I remember about 15 years ago sitting in the office of the chairman of the board

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of one of America's largest insurance companies. His office looked out over Seventh Avenue and Times Square in New York City. And he told me that he and some other layman from his church were busily engaged trying to reform their church.

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And I asked him if any ministers were engaged in the effort with him. "Oh, no," he said. "Ministers are too easily intimidated by other clergy. We have only laymen, for they are unpressured and free."

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What I said to him then I repeat tonight. In all of my ministry, I have never had another minister try to pressure or coerce me. But on many occasions, I have had pressure groups within my congregation or outside my congregation attempt to pressure me.

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I have been offered cash to preach certain sermons. I have been told that I would get raises if I stayed away from certain subjects in the pulpit. I have had my salary checks held back because members of the board of trustees didn't like what I was saying from the sacred desk.

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And any minister I know will tell you of individuals who will withhold their offerings or threaten to go to another church or who will vote that the minister take a salary cut just because they do not like what he is saying, hopefully under God's guidance from his pulpit.

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There have always been those who have tried to buy off or intimidate or pressure the servants of God. They come with fees for divination. Nations try to buy the servants of God. Races try to make that purchase.

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Economic interests try to buy the pulpit. Political parties try to do it. Labor unions try to do it. And the man and the woman in the pew try to do it.

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But here's a man, Balaam, who says, "I'm not for sale." But when the emissaries get back to Moab and Balak hears the message, Balak doesn't settle for Balaam's response. He's evidently a king who won't take no for an answer.

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He figures that every man has his price. So he organizes a larger caravan with more money and more emissaries of importance and sends them to Balaam with the exactly same request. When they come and Balaam sees them arrive, he says,

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"Even if Balak-Wulf were to fill his palace with silver and gold and offer it to me, I would not come unless I were commanded to do so by the Lord." That's a very noble thing to say. Unfortunately, immediately after he says that, Balaam makes a serious mistake.

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He invites the representatives of Moab to stay overnight while he renegotiates the matter with God. Now the fact of the matter is God is not fickle. God does not vacillate.

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God does not say yes today and no tomorrow. Not a single detail of the story had changed. The children of Israel were still coming against the Moabites. The Moabites were still unable to defeat them.

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Balak's still one of the services of Balaam. Nothing had changed except one thing. Balak was offering a higher figure. And Balaam, evidently attracted by it, said, "Wait here, and I'll talk to God again."

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You know, there's a story that comes out of the Civil War--it's true-- about a northern riverboat captain who was approached by a group of southern sympathizers. They wanted him to betray the north by carrying cotton up and down the river. He told them no. They made him a larger offer. He told them no again.

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They made him a larger offer. He told them no once more. They made him a larger offer, four times the original offer. And with that, he threw them off his ship, and they remonstrated. "Why are you throwing us off? Why are you throwing us off?"

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And he replied, "Because you're getting too near my price." Well, unfortunately, Balaam wasn't wise enough to say that. You know, temptation always comes to us at the moment when we're weakest. You think about Jesus in the wilderness.

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He was not tempted on the first day or the fifth day or the fifteenth day or the thirty-fifth day or the thirty-ninth day. He was tempted at the end of forty days, when he was hungriest and thirstiest and weakest. At that moment, he was tempted, and so are we. Now, somehow, Balak was clever enough to know that the weakness in Balaam was money.

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Maybe it was the expression on Balaam's face when he said, "If Balak were to fill his palace with silver and gold." Or maybe Balak was simply sophisticated enough to know that that which brings most men down is either sex or money. For some reason, we are not given the details, but for some reason, Balak pierces through Balaam's armor, and instead of fleeing that temptation at that moment of wickedness,

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and this is what the scriptures tell us to do with temptation, to flee it. Balaam says, "Wait overnight, and I'll renegotiate the proposition." And the next morning, he comes out and says, "Jahweh has told me that I may go with you." And now we come to the funny part of the story.

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Because Balaam sets off as part of a caravan, riding on a jackass, heading toward Moab. Now, an ass in the Middle East at that period was a royal beast. In other words, he was going in some style. And God, it says in the scriptures, was very angry at him for going.

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This is why I am confident that Balaam manufactured the answer to that prayer, for the narrative says that God was very upset that Balaam decided to go. So he sends an angel with a flaming sword to stop Balaam on board his jackass. The jackass sees the angel, but Balaam does not, and the jackass turns off into a field,

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whereupon Balaam proceeds to beat the ass and force it back onto the road again. Now they're coming along a stretch of highway, where there are vineyards on either side, and they're protected by stone walls, and the road is somewhat narrower, and the angel takes his position there.

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And once again, the jackass sees it. It can't go off into a field because of the walls, so it gets as close to the wall as it can, and in doing so, it crushes the prophet's foot between the side of the jackass and the stone wall, whereupon the prophet gets off and beats the jackass again.

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And they start off a third time. Now they come to a particularly narrow path, where there's nowhere to go aside, no way to pass by. And here the angel takes his stand, and the jackass, seeing the angel there,

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falls flat on his face on the ground, Balaam tumbling rather ignominiously into the dirt beside him. It's really quite a spectacle. This prophet, who's being called down to stop the whole Israelite army, is unable to control his own jackass. This one whose word is to have such power can't get the beast to even giddy up,

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or whatever it is you say to a jackass in the Middle East when you want it to giddy up. In any case, it's at this point in the story when God adds insult to injury because the ass turns and speaks to Balaam. There are only two times in the Bible when an animal is said to be able to speak.

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In Genesis, the serpent is said to be able to speak in here in this story. And the ass turns and he says to Balaam, "Why are you beating me?" And if you think that's ludicrous, Balaam then starts to talk to the jackass. And he says, "Because you are not taking me where I want you to go, and if I had a sword, I would slay you."

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Whereupon the jackass, with great patience and a certain amount of condescension and impeccable logic, proceeds to teach this great wise man from the East. He says, "Have I not always taken you faithfully?" Balaam says, "Yes." "Have I ever led you astray?" "No, not once."

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"And am I not leading you astray now?" "Yes, you certainly are." "Is it not reasonable to assume, therefore," says the jackass, "that something unusual is up ahead?" And when Balaam looks, he sees the angel with the sword. And he falls on his face in the dirt.

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Please turn your cassette to the other side. Now three cheers for that jackass. You know, Balaam should have jumped up and hugged him. Balaam should have taken him home, let him stay in the house while the prophet lived in the stable.

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Should have covered him with silver and gold. Because this beast served him faithfully, took him where he ought to go and stopped him from going where he ought not to go. Three cheers for anything that keeps us away from the things that are not of God. It might be a book. It might be a letter you've forgotten.

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It might be a memento from your childhood. It might be a word of counsel from a friend or a word of warning from an enemy. It might be something a little child says to you. It might be the affection of a pet.

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It might be a prayer that your parents pray. It might be a sermon that you hear or a song that you sing. It might be a tear that you see someone shed. It might be a promise you made when you were a child.

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It might be a merit badge you won when you were a Girl Scout. It might be a verse of Scripture. It might be any example that you can mention, but three cheers for it, if it keeps you from going against the will of God. Three cheers for anything that crushes your conscience, like the prophet's foot was crushed against that wall.

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Three cheers for anything that hurts you enough to call you to attention. Three cheers for anything that makes us think about God, whether it be a talking ass or anything else, it stops us from going against the will of God. Three cheers for such things.

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Unfortunately, Balaam didn't appreciate the wisdom of the jackass, because Balaam proceeded to say to the angel, "If I have sinned, I'll go home again." Now that sounds very good. There is no doubt that Balaam is frightened. I mean, after all, he sees the angel and he is on his face in the dust.

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He realizes that he's been so spiritually blind that he hasn't been able to see what the jackass saw. He probably understands that he's been reckless. But his response to the angel is still a very disappointing one. For notice what he says, "If I have sinned, I will go home again."

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"If I have sinned." There is no honest recognition of the fact that he used his prayer to scream his grief. He is not coming before God and saying, "I have sinned against you and I'm not worthy to be called your servant." Oh no. There is no open admission of guilt here.

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There is no proclamation of the hypocrisy which has been his. Instead he says, "If I have sinned." It's like Pharaoh. You remember when the plagues were being visited on Pharaoh? And he says to Moses, "If I have sinned, then forgive me only this once."

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And he is forgiven by God and he turns around and does the same thing again. And he's forgiven by God again and he turns around and does the same thing again. It's like Saul. The pages of the story of Saul are full of references to his repentance, sometimes with tears. But turn those pages and you find him doing the same thing over and over again.

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These are individuals, you see, who are ignorant of the extent of their own evil. So they come before God not with the admission of guilt, but rather with the question, "If I have sinned." And when the angel hears that, his response is the saddest word in the whole story. He says, "Go on to Moab."

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You see, the angel recognizes that there's no hope for Balaam. He recognizes that Balaam is so caught up in doing what he wants to do that he doesn't even have sufficient honesty in him to admit that he is doing it for himself and not for the glory of God. You know, God will warn us about our misconduct.

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And he will send his messengers to counsel us when we go wrong, but he will never coerce us. In the end, God always lets us follow the desires of our own hearts. And the angel, seeing in Balaam one who has no genuine repentance, says to him, "Go on to Moab." And he goes, and there he dies.

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His problem is, of course, a problem of motive. Water cannot rise higher than its source, and just so, no deed that we do can be any better than our motives were. That's the reason that bad motives cannot produce good things. And it's one of the great anomalies of faith that many things that we do in faith which appear to be good

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can actually be done for very selfish and ugly reasons. Balaam used a pretense at prayer to mask his own greed. "I'll have to ask God about it. Oh yes, he'll let me go. Where's my reward? Where are my fees for divination?" And in doing that, Balaam not only did an evil thing in itself, but he also used God's name in an evil way.

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See, that's what compounds the sin of wrong motivation. It's sinning in the name of the one who is without sin. It's lying in the name of the one who never lies. That's the reason it's so important that we examine our own motives and search our own souls microscopically.

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Bruce, do you preach to the glory of God, or do you preach because you love the sound of your own voice? Singers, do you sing to learn more of music or to gain chapel credits? Or do those words, "He watching over Israel," come as a prayer of praise to the heart of God? That Bible study that you lead, do you lead it because you are anxious for the food that comes from Scripture?

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Or because you gain ego strength from being a leader? That position of prominence that you hold in a Christian organization, is it because your chief end is to serve God? Or because you'd much rather be a chief than an Indian? That church you go to, do you go there because you can there best praise God?

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Or is it to indicate your displeasure with other churches? That competition you enter into with other Christians, does it really advance the kingdom? Or are you collecting scalps like some spiritual Avon lady who's cramming purchase orders into her purse? I remember years ago presenting in California a Christian rock group, and it cost us $150 to present them that night.

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And they went over very well, and I could remember sitting talking to them afterwards. They were just getting started, and listening to their conversation. And it was full of all kinds of God talk. But I could hear through it all that what they were most interested in was not the glory of God, but the glory of themselves.

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And I prayed for them then, and I've prayed for them many times since then. Now for a single evening's performance they get $17,000. And two of the members of the group are indicted for being part of the drug trade. No man, Jesus said, can serve two masters.

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So look to your motives. Are you doing the right thing for the wrong reason? You know, people come to us to sell us things or ideas, and we're always very careful to check their motives. Why does he hold to this theology? Is there some secret agenda of which we do not know?

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Why is she so aggressive with that political philosophy? Is it because it suits her prejudices in some way of which we're not sure? Why does this individual hold to this particular economic perspective? Is it because it fattens his wallet privately to do so?

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We're always very quick to question the motives of others. I'm calling tonight for us to examine our own motives. While the angel's still on the highway for us, and the ass is still speaking, and the conscience still hurts, the greatest peril of the Christian faith may be summed in one word, and that word is contentment.

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The Bible says in whatsoever situation we are, therein we are to be content. But that's referring to the situations of the earth. In so far as our spiritual growth is concerned, we are never to be content. The words of the psalmist are to be ours.

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"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living Lord." Jesus says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness." They are the ones that will be filled. The moment that we feel that we have spiritually arrived, we stop moving forward.

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We must then search out our motives. Are we doing the right thing, but for the wrong reason? When Balaam got to Moab, he did all the right things. They built altars, they prayed prayers, they burned sacrifices.

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Five times they went through the right thing, and five times Moab was defeated. It profited Balaam, and it profited Moab. Nothing. In fact, in the end, Balaam loses everything.

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He loses his money. It says in Numbers 24, "Balak the king says to Balaam, 'Leave at once and go home. I said I would reward you handsomely, but the Lord has kept you from being rewarded.'" So Balaam does not get the money he's after.

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And he not only loses the money, he also loses his life. Because in Numbers 31 we read that when Israel took over in that land, they killed all of the kings, and it also says in the eighth verse, "And they also killed Balaam with the sword."

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And he lost his reputation too. Because 2,500 years later, when the book of Jude was being written in the New Testament, how did Jude speak of Balaam? He says, "Woe to those who make Balaam's error,

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for they are like clouds without rain and trees without fruit. They are wandering stars to whom the blackest darkness is forever reserved." It's a very tragic story, precisely because he started with so much and ended with so little. You know, in Pilgrim's Progress, there's a quick little scene where there's a palace,

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and there are guards at the door, and you have to fight your way past the guards to get in the door. And there are a lot of people milling around the outside, and there's a table there and a man sitting at the table with a book and a pen. And anyone who wants to try to fight their way into the palace signs up there at that desk.

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And a man walks over and he says, "Put me down as struggling to enter the palace." And he writes down the man's name, and the man puts on his helmet and takes up his sword, and he goes over and he battles his way toward the door. And he gives wounds and he receives wounds.

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But finally he makes it inside, and as soon as he enters, a choir is heard singing, "Come, come in, eternal glory thou shalt win." And what Bunyan is saying to us in this picture is that you don't gain the kingdom of heaven just by asking for it.

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You don't just saunter across the line. You don't just drift in. You have to fight every inch of the way. You have to resist those who try to buy you.

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You have to flee the temptations which come to you in your moment of weakness. You have to respond when talking jackasses come into your life and remind you of God's grace. You have to examine your own motives. Never be ignorant of your own evil.

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Understand whether you're doing the right things but for the wrong reasons. And you must never be satisfied, never be satisfied with what you know of God. Oh no, we must always be thirsty, hungry for more of God. And the scriptures say, "It is only he that endures to the end who will be saved."

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That then is how I interpret the story of Balaam. Others disagree. Some say there were two Balaams, not to be confused. And there's some evidence for that.

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Some say that there are many different documents that go together to make up the Old Testament and some of the documents have become confused in the story of Balaam. I myself accept the documentary hypothesis but I don't see any evidence of confusion here. Some say the whole story is just a legend designed to present to us the inscrutable providence of God.

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I find that theologically unacceptable. Some people say that Balaam was a very good man, only confused. But I've studied and prayed my way through the passage many days now. And this is what I have felt led to say of him.

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But remember, just because God once spoke through a jackass doesn't mean that every time a jackass speaks it's the voice of God. Let us pray. Our Father, we are grateful that you weave into the course of our days

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those things, people, and moments that call us away from evil and toward good. We thank thee that in the dark and shadowed corner of this book which comes from thy heart to our heart there is the story of Balaam. Help us search out its truth.

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And whether we understand it or not, grant that we might be always seeking more of thee. Always aware of our own evil. Always so in touch with ourselves and with thee that we might never make the mistake of doing right things for wrong reasons. We pray it in Jesus' name.

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May the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love and to all those whom nobody loves his peace.