Waking Up Balaam

Waking Up Balaam

Join us for men’s ministry tomorrow at 8:00a. I’d like to talk about the phenomenon of Univ. of Toronto prof. Jordan Peterson and his connection to young men. You can go to YouTube and search “Jordan Peterson young men” and watch whatever catches your eye. Plenty of 5-10 min. clips. I’ll tell a story from my motorcycle trip last May that fits Peterson’s viewpoint. So 8-10:00a, breakfast included.

Reminder: Next Sunday (February 11) during the Sunday School hour will be our annual meeting, from 9:00-10:00. There will be no Sunday School; we will meet as families in the sanctuary (nursery is still provided). There will be a longer fellowship with refreshments following the annual meeting, and worship will begin at 11:00.

The account of Balaam in Nu. 22 is fascinating and, oddly enough, a completely relevant narrative. In the opening (vv.1-21), Balaam interacts with God as most believers do. He has what you could call a necessary relationship with God; he deals with God when he has to, or when he should. He’s sincere and reverent. But the rest of the time he’s on auto-pilot, dealing with the material world in a material way, with no working sense of God actually being everywhere-present.

Once his donkey begins to behave like, well, an ass, his working assumptions reveal themselves. He has no inkling that God could be present in the strange behavior of his animal. In fact, you can see God chiding Balaam for this in the question the donkey asks: “Is it my habit to treat you this way?” Balaam is humbled, always the precursor to wisdom, and admits: “no” (v.30).

This is a pretty transparent morality tale on the Lord’s part. Balaam could be anyone having car trouble on the way to work, completely clueless that the car is actually a wake-up call. I suppose it’s emotionally less complicated to imagine we can keep God behind certain barriers. And I would certainly agree that I have no idea what he might be saying in your broken-down car (although I think it’s the listening and praying that are the point). Whatever. It’s unavoidable. God is in everything. It’s not just that he “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11) but even more to the point: “he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:26). The circumstances of your life—all of them—are meant to point you to him.

Once Balaam sees behind the curtain, things change. When Balak again tries to force him to take action against Israel, he blurts out “have I now any power of my own?” That line says so much about how he now sees his place in the world or, rather, how he sees God’s place in the world. Originally it was force, power, that Balaam applied to his donkey to change circumstances that weren’t working for him. In the end he realized it was God’s power working on him. “My Father is working until now, and I am working,” Jesus said (Jn 5:17). I am praying for eyes to see. Pray with me.

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