Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of
Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there
was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore kill every male
among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with
him (Numbers 31: 16, 17)
It is interesting how possible it
is for someone of high moral integrity to fall for some slight bending of what
truth they stood for all their lives. I know that I can’t throw any epithets at
anyone because I have also fallen short a number of times especially in the
face of either embarrassment or ‘danger’. Then we tend to justify a partial
answer or partial truth since we know the actual truth has a capacity of
putting us in the path of ‘untold suffering’.
But is a partial answer an
answer? Is a half truth the truth? That is what we are dealing with here. I
write this because in the few times I have fallen to the justification of a
partial truth answer I have felt utterly defiled by the same, completely
ashamed of myself. I have felt such a coward for falling to such levels when
many times I can comfortably face a lion of an opponent without caring for the
outcome because I know God is with me when I am following His truth. And you
will realize that the things we will fall for are normally trite, with little
capacity of endangering our lives or fortunes.
Look at Peter. He could face the
army that had come to arrest Jesus and even use a sword against them. What
happened later in the night that he could deny Christ with an oath when faced
by a girl? Which was riskier? In the first instance he was standing for what he
knew to be right. Like he had confessed he was ready to die for Jesus. Had he
forgotten that when he was asked by a maiden whether he knew Christ? I can’t
say that. What I know is that the circumstances had changed making the
situation quite different. At the first he was fighting for his master. In the
next it was for his ‘comfort’. You see he had to continue warming himself with
the others with all the conversation that goes with that and of course we know
those characters were not sympathetic to his cause. He simply had to blend.
That question was totally unrelated with his relationship to Christ because it
was part of the conversation of a hostile crowd. He simply couldn’t say he knew
Christ because he was not ready to become the focus of the crowd. Simply said
his desire to be close to his master had led him to a situation that made it
impossible to acknowledge their relationship. No wonder he wept bitterly when
the truth dawned on him.
Balaam was offered great wealth
to curse Israel. God said no. But God added something else. He said that He had
blessed Israel meaning that it was futile for anyone to attempt cursing them.
When he took the answer to the emissaries of the king, he became politically
correct and refused to give the complete answer God had given. Why? I think he
realized that a complete answer could have locked out other opportunities to
meet the king. I think he may have tried to meet the king earlier
unsuccessfully. He may even have tried to take God’s message to him but failed
again and again. Of course we know that the main recipients of prophesies are
kings because they hold the spiritual reins of their people. The fact that he
had sought Balaam was probably an opportunity of a lifetime for the prophet. He
just could not lock out such an opportunity by giving the complete answer. Like
we will say in our justifying of it, there is always time to complete the
statement. So of course the prophet left the options open by his partial
answer.
And that is where the problem
lies. That is the genesis of rebellion. We are responsible for leaving our
options open. What we don’t have is the direction the options will take. The
king sees an opening and takes it by the horns. He thinks the prophet is simply
upping the stakes and therefore does exactly that. He gives him a simply
irresistible offer.
The prophet is now in a fix. He
can not complete the answer God gave and he has been given an offer that has
completely changed his game plan. He is the one now on the receiving end. What
to do now?
He realizes that he needed to go
back to God to bail him out of the mess he had gotten himself into. But God is
not our errand boy. He does not play by our rules. Since He is not the one who
got us into the mess we created, we do not expect him to panic because we got
stuck.
God moves the direction the
prophet had chosen. He allows him to go but demonstrates that it was because
Balaam was bent on going anyway by the donkey situation. The prophet is caught
but we do not see him repenting. It seems like he was surprised, more like he
was exclaiming, ‘you mean you were serious you did not want me to go?’
Therefore God allows him to go as he had wanted, but places a guard on his
mouth. He could not say just what he wanted. That was tough enough because he
already knew what God wanted.
I will also call it the fear to
offend since we know that truth at times can be the most offensive thing on
earth, no wonder true prophets were always in danger and many died for the
truth they continued to proclaim. I am even now smarting from the hurt from
something similar to that from a business relationship. We gave a friend a book
to print according to the terms he gave expecting him to get us the books after
five days as he had indicated. We then got into a very difficult situation
because he was always promising to give us the books first one day then
another. When we probed deeper we realized that he had not even started the
initial steps yet he continued to be very convincing. Since he is a ‘brother’ I
trusted his explanations until the time got to two and half weeks and the work
was nowhere nearing completion and the author had already announced the launch
and it was due. That was when we realized what had happened. The fellow used
the deposit we had given him elsewhere and was now scraping around for the
money to do the books. He confessed the same when we confronted him. We now
have to dig deeper to get the work done in time, all because of a person who
fears to offend. He has wasted over two weeks of several people’s lives because
he feared to say that he did wrong yet the situation could have been rescued
had he said that from the beginning.
Balaam now gets to get the great
moment with the king. The only difference is that he now has no opportunity to
disclose to the king the complete message from God. You see the reception is
even better than red carpet. How does one slap such a reception with the
unsavory second part of God’s message? That was simply impractical. Another
opportunity had to be sought. He therefore resorts to trying to squeeze God’s
message through, but then realizes that the expectation of the king is such
that there is no allowance for the same. He is now boxed.
He then gets to play cat and
mouse game with God, hoping against hope that God will save him from
embarrassment, even danger by allowing him just a slight chance of cursing the
uncursable even only to spare the prophet embarrassment from the king and his
court. What appeared like a slight detour from God’s direction has now become a
very big issue. But like I had said earlier God is not bound to our
expectations. He therefore does not play the prophet’s ball.
The prophet now enrages the king
almost to the point of being killed for doing the opposite of what he had been
called to do. He may have been expelled from the kingdom, maybe even threatened
with jail for refusing to curse the enemy. This makes the opportunity he had
compromised so much to access become even more impossible than before. He not
only has failed to impress the king but he had done the unimaginable, closed
any door that could have opened at a later time. The opportunity he had sought
for God to make a difference in Moab had achieved worse than the opposite, it
had completely alienated the messenger.
A person who was brought by an
escort is being ordered to flee, probably for his life. That was not something
he even remotely considered. As a liability to the king, you can be sure that
his life was in danger not only because he had no escort but even more because
he had become an enemy of the state. It was therefore unimaginable that he
attempts to take the journey home alone. Again compare this with Peter being
confronted by a maiden. But he simply can’t stay in Moab. Talk about being
between a rock and a hard place. He simply ran out of options. Of course he
can’t go to Israel because they knew what he had come to do. Now if that is not
a difficult position we might just have to define what a difficult position is.
Another thing we have to consider
is that one can not be able to conceal royal escort. Everybody all around knew
that Balaam had not only been summoned by the king but the king had desperately
sought his assistance. Were it today we would have almost all the media houses
fixated by the news. ‘Obscure prophet on a special assignment with the king’,
would run most papers. ‘The king in secret meeting with the renowned prophet’,
would scream another. ‘Balaam hits it big with the king desperately seeking his
assistance’, would be another headline.
With such publicity, there would
definitely be the expectation that Balaam had really hit it big. Or who leaves
a king’s presence empty handed? Leaving the kings presence without escort would
make him open to all manner of attacks for the booty he was expected to have
acquired. Robbers would certainly have started plotting how to access the
riches he must have had gotten. Enemies of the king would also have schemed to
punish him for going to assist the king. No explanation could have convinced
people that he had not hit the jackpot, not with the king seeking personal
audience with the prophet. Leaving Moab unescorted was therefore out of the
question.
I believe it is under such pressure
that he puts his experience as a prophet in good stead. Since God is a God with
very high standards, any breach of the same automatically will open them to the
judgment of God. I think this is what he must have explained the guys who were
charged with ridding Moab of his presence. Of course this makes sense and they
must have taken advantage of the information to bring the prophet in the
presence of the king with the new revelation.
To cut the long story short he
was able to gain prominence because of the counsel to the point that he became
quite popular in Moab.
What about his initial vision of
sharing God’s message to the king? Of course he was still looking for the
opportunity to share it though it was becoming a greater impossibility with
each passing day.
He died without sharing the
gospel with the king, just because he feared to offend him with God’s complete
message. Worse still he died the death of the ungodly from the judgment of God.
The delay he thought will open a better opportunity to minister to Moab turned
out to be his grave.
That is what fear to offend
normally results in. Trying to be obtain favor using your own designs is the
same thing. I have over the years wondered at the departure of ministers from
the straight and narrow not through sinful lifestyles but comfortable sermons.
It has disturbed me over the years that ministers who in the past were
recognized for their spot on rebuking of sin in the camp seem most comfortable
with abominations because they finally evolved into motivational speakers who
must keep people thoroughly entertained and feeling good despite their
spiritual or moral condition.
This reminds me of a story
repeated over and over about an Arab and his camel. This guy had a small tent
and owned a camel. One day the weather was very bad and the camel pleaded with
the boss that due to the unfavorable weather could he at least allow him to get
his head into the tent? The good man agreed. A short while later he pleaded for
his neck and was allowed. Then the front legs and he succeeded. Finally he
said, ‘it appears the tent is too small for both of us’, kicking the good guy
out of his tent.
That is what will happen with
compromise, which is what happened to Balaam.
No comments:
Post a Comment