Chapter 24

Indulge me for a moment. I promise I’ll tell you why when we’ve done this! Simply tell me whether you think “good guy” or “Bad guy” for each of the following. Ready?

Adolf Hitler
Indiana Jones
Aragorn (from Lord of the Rings)
Darth Vader
Yosemite Sam
Mother Theresa

Whilst many people of history are hard to categorise, there are some people who get universally put into the same categories. I’d be surprised if anyone had any arrangement other than Indy, Aragorn and Mother Theresa on the “good guys” side, vs Adolf, Darth and Yosemite on the “bad guys” side.

The reason I mention this is that in Hebrew culture Balaam is universally on the “bad guys” side. If you ever notice him being mentioned in the New Testament, he’s always being used as an example of an evil person.

This makes it all the more remarkable when we look at Balaam’s bad day, part 3.

King Balak has moved him to a third place, asking him to curse the people of Israel (this should really have been part of yesterday’s chapter, but the chapter breaks are weird). But Balaam has promised that he’s only going to say what God gives him to say, and he’s going to follow through. So once again he clears his throat.

This time what he says is basically a comment of the beauty of Israel’s tents (really! I’ve personally never quite seen tents that way, but there’s all types in this amazing world), followed by a stern warning that “whoever blesses you is blessed, and whoever curses you is cursed.”

Well, the King is furious. He’s paying this guy to curse, and three times he’s not followed through on the deal! Needless to say, he’s not planning on paying Balaam one red cent. But it turns out that Balaam isn’t finished.

He looks at the leaders arranged around him in turn. First he looks at Balak, telling him that Moab is to be crushed. Then in verse 20, he reports the bad news to the Amalekites, followed by the Kenites in verses 21 and 22. Finally he gives a general prediction that Israel will arise, and that anyone who sets themselves up against Israel will lose.

Balak is presumably not terribly impressed, but when someone gives such a strident prophecy against you, there’s little you can say that would be sufficiently Chuck Norris-like to stop you looking a goose, so the best thing to do is what Balak does, which is to hightail it out of there really quickly.

It’s all very interesting, but what does it matter to us?

What I’d like to point out here is something you may not have noticed. Remember I said at the beginning of this that Balaam is a universal bad guy to Jews? He’s enough of a bad guy that if he were a character at a pantomime, the audience would be yelling “boo” every time he comes onto the stage, and his musical theme would be something like this. But here we have him not only failing to curse properly (like you’d expect any proper bad guy to do, along with a twirl of the moustache and a “mwahahahahaHAHAHAHA!”) – he then goes and lays three BLESSINGS on the people of Israel! What gives? Why is this evildoer speaking God’s words?

We have been seeing as a running theme throughout Numbers (and the rest of the Bible!) that God works by grace. This is part of the answer – if God works by grace, then it doesn’t matter whether you are a faithful follower or not, He can still use you. And more than that, if God works by grace, even the most evil people could realistically have God commandeer their voices. It’s like in the movies, the Army usually have the right to commandeer any vehicle they like; in comedy movies, the heroes invariably wind up commandeering a clown car or a wedding limo. And hilarity ensues. Sure, God usually chooses to use people who are faithful to Him, but that’s a convention and not a rule. You may feel that you’re too much of a sinner for God to speak through you, but that’s not actually right. God can and will use anyone who makes themselves available – even if that’s someone like Balaam, whose availability is reluctant!

More than that, though, as well as working by Grace, God is SOVEREIGN. Because God grants us so much freedom, this can sometimes be forgotten. But this is the God who made the heavens and the Earth. Even that phrase, so easily and glibly said, can shatter our illusions if we really think it through. The God who created us also created the Sun, the planets, the Moon, the black holes, the galaxies, the clusters of galaxies . . you name it, He made it. Who are we to say that God must or must not do something? He has the authority to do as He wishes, and we would do well to remember that. Just like Balaam, we may want to do something else – but God is in charge, and in the end what He says goes.