The Mystery of Balaam

Tuesday 2-28-17, Modesto, California

Today we read Num 24 – 27 and 1 Cor 13

S = Scripture,  O = Observation,  A = Application,  P = Prayer,  SOAP for the soul.

S. Num 24:9 Like a lion, Israel crouches and lies down; like a lioness, who dares to arouse her?  Blessed is everyone who blesses you, O Israel, and cursed is everyone who curses you."

Vs 17 I see him, but not in the present time. I perceive him, but far in the distant future. A star will rise from Jacob; a scepter will emerge from Israel.

O. As I study the life of this man, Balaam, I am perplexed. He is a heathen involved in divinations (apparently like the cults of Spiritism) and actually has contact with Jehovah God Who speaks to him. He initially resists the temptation to get rich by cursing the Israelites for Balak king of Moab. Later three times he goes out to curse Israel and each time God uses him to bless them with beautiful prophecy in poetry.  So why does he go down in history as an enemy of God’s people?

A. The secret is revealed in the words of Jesus through John to the church in Pergamum Rev 2:14 You tolerate some among you who are like Balaam, who showed Balak how to trip up the people of Israel. He taught them to worship idols by eating food offered to idols and by committing sexual sin. NLT  Balaam was a servant of Satan in disguise. His public message was true and beautiful, but in secret he taught King Balak how to destroy Israel’s effectiveness by sending sensual foreign women into the Israelite camp.  Soon many young men had sex with these women who then taught them to worship their heathen god, Baal. And since they had no free access to “Planned Parenthood”, they took their little newborn babies and sacrificed them to Molech (also spelled Moloch). I will never forget an artist’s picture of the god Molech that I saw when I was a little child. It was a hollow iron furnace shaped like a huge beast with arms stretched out to cradle a baby and once fried would slide into a hole in his belly. Apparently they would take their unwanted babies, the result of sex with these sensual women, and lay them in these red hot outstretched arms to hear them scream and die.

Dear friends, our wonderful Christian America has been tricked by Satan, who is promoting Balaam’s sex game among our children and teens… and mercilessly killing the resulting babies before they can be heard to scream… resulting in teens who sometimes contemplate suicide as they cannot escape from condemning themselves as murderers. In the case of Israel many thousands died of a plague.

P. Lord, today I am praying for America and for Argentina. Our once Christian United States of America has become leaders in sensual movies and the addictive cult of pornography that has now polluted the entire world. I pray for our youth, yes, our Christian youth, who cannot escape the deluge of sensual temptation, the religion of Baal, surrounding them. Why, Oh Lord? Why are millions of our babies being sacrificed into the arms of Molech, in an attempt to cover up secret sin?  Lord Jesus, I cry for mercy. I cry for grace!  I cry for your great salvation to push back this heathen religion of lust and sex… and reveal its resulting devastation. Amen.

Ralph