As a final treatise on an Old Testament Prophet, let’s review the life of Balaam. Balaam’s ministry is one in which we do not have much detail of, though we have enough to learn a few things from. In fact we do not have the writings of Balaam though we have both the Old and New Testaments speaking about him. There is a debate in Christian circles as to whether Balaam was actually a Prophet of God or not. I don’t want to get into that debate. However, I am persuaded that he was because the account in Numbers 22-24 shows him as communicating with the LORD and especially as the LORD speaking to him.
I have earlier mentioned how the New Testament speaks of Prophets. Peter warns against false Prophets in 2 Peter 2 and tells us that these “have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”—v. 20. Ironically, Jesus in the Olivet Discourse about His second coming speaks repeatedly about “False Prophets”. His first response to the disciples in Matthew 24 about His return was “See to it that no one misleads you”—v. 3. In v. 11, He again cautions of false prophets and repeats such caution in v. 24. Paul speaking of the end times, writes continually that there will be false prophets—1 Timothy 4: 1-4; 2 Timothy 3: 13—and to the Thessalonian church he wrote against the false prophecy that Christ had returned in 2 Thessalonians 2: 2. Caution against false prophets is the single most poignant revelation about imminence of Christ’s return both from Jesus Himself and the early Church. Peter, John and Jude use Balaam as a prime example of false prophets. Yet, like Balaam, I sense that we can fall into apostasy if we fail to be cautious of what God wants of us in ministry and now I present three points of caution that Balaam’s ministry teaches us.
Caution #1: Be Cautious of the Enemy
The story of Balaam as recorded in Numbers 22-24 is seemingly innocuous. Balaam apparently seeks God in all he does [like your typical Evangelical Christian] before the Moabites and God clearly speaks to him but Balaam failed to draw the line of interaction with the enemy of Israel and thus the enemy of God. It was the Apostle James, the half-brother of Jesus, who said “do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?…whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God”—James 4: 4. This was Balaam’s first mistake and our first caution. Balaam failed to recognize the world for what it was in the Moabites. We as the Christian church can fail to recognize that our world is strongly anti-God. It was G.K. Chesterton, that great 21st century English journalist who died in 1936, who wrote in his day
“You are free in our time to say that God does not exist; you are free to say that He exists and is evil; you are free to say … that He would like to exist if He could. You may talk of God as a metaphor or mystification; you may water Him down with gallons of long words, or boil Him to the rags of metaphysics; and it is not merely that nobody punishes, but nobody protests. But if you speak of God as a fact, as a thing like a tiger, as a reason for changing one’s conduct, then the modern world will stop you somehow if it can. We are long past talking about whether an unbeliever should be punished for being irreverent. It is now thought irreverent to be a believer”. Balaam’s error was that he failed to realize that friendship, even in minute ways, with the world leads to irreverence for God. Caution #1: Be Cautious of the Enemy.
Caution #2: Be Cautious of the Word of God
Yet, failing to recognize the enemy isn’t all that plagued Balaam. You see, the leap to apostasy is never a leap at all but more of a gradual slide. Satan never seduces us to go all the way from the beginning. He is too crafty to do that. He begins with something small and only increases it with time. And in Balaam’s ministry, that slide began when he began to disregard the word of God. The scary thing about Balaam was that He proclaimed the Word of God yet seemed to act out of accord with it.
I see the slide brewing in the Christian world. You have churches electing and ordaining practicing homosexuals and immoral people in disregard to the warnings of the Apostle Paul; you have churches “forbidding to marry” in disregard to the New Testament; you have churches forbidding certain foods in opposition to the Word of God and you have churches denying the very Lord who bought them. We have become a people that do not listen to the Word of God. Which of us is not guilty of it? First be preach the word without heeding it and gradually slide into not even preaching it at all but the scariest passage in scripture may be when Jesus said “Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven” and you and me have said to Christ: “Lord, Lord”. Balaam’s life cautions us not to ignore the Word of God.
Caution #3: Be Cautious of the Intent of the Heart
The final caution of Balaam’s ministry is found in expositions on his life not recorded in Numbers 22-24 but elsewhere. Numbers 31: 16 reads “Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD”. The New Testament carries the thought further, indicating that Balaam’s error was in enticing the people of God to sin. You see, Balaam knew God could not curse Israel unless Israel first abandons God. So he tells the Moabites, “I can’t curse Israel because God doesn’t curse them. But if you want Israel to be cursed, go ahead and marry into Israel and they will displease God and God Himself will curse them” and so Numbers 25: 1 reads “While Israel remained at Shittim, the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab”. This is the third caution to be observed—the intent of the heart
We can know the enemy of God, be in strict adherence to the Word of God outwardly, but I have to be honest with you that sometimes I see Balaam in my own heart when God is displaced from the throne and I go my own way. As I pen these words, I am pricked by the selfish intentions of my own heart and life that at times deliberately ignores God and my prayer is that you and me may be so filled with the Spirit of God that we can not only draw the enemy lines and know the Word of God but yield our very hearts and intents to Him. So as I end this series, I hope we can say a prayer beginning with the words: “Father, forgive me for I have sinned”! Be blessed as you consider these words.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Prophet Isaiah: The Humility Prophet
A Prophet that we cannot ignore as we look at lessons from the lives of the Prophets of the Old Testament by which to guide our lives is the Prophet Isaiah. The Book of Isaiah is a lengthy book that I cannot do justice to in a few words. Indeed the book has sections to it. Yet, I think it is worthwhile to select a specific passage to focus on. I have selected the 6th chapter of Isaiah verses 1-9 to elucidate three truths of experiencing God that we should be aware of.
Only a few men in history have been able to see God even in some limited sense since the Garden of Eden when Adam apparently walked with God. Thirty chapters after the burning bush experience [Exodus 3] Moses, in audacious boldness, asked to see God’s glory and God granted him His “back” but not His “face” [Exodus 33]; Gideon shivered when He saw the face of the angel of the LORD [Judges 6]; Samson’s parents were terrified by the visit of the angel of the LORD calling it “awesome” [Judges 13]; Daniel’s face became pale and troubled when he saw the vision of the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man [Daniel 7]; Stephen after his martyrdom speech see the Lord Jesus and the Father in a heavenly vision and braces himself for death [Acts 7] and John on the Island of Patmos crowns it all telling us that upon seeing the glorified Lord Jesus, he “fell at his feet as though dead” [Revelations 1: 17]. Yet there is the witness of Isaiah that I think is unique from all of these visions and glimpses of the Almighty and Isaiah takes us through three steps that an encounter with the Divine entails.
Step 1: Recognition of His Holiness.
I have to be honest with you, I don’t know what Isaiah is talking about. Is this a vision of “the Lord” or is it a literally real experience? I really don’t know. A friend of mine frequently brings this up. I tend to not imagine Seraphims as physical beings with literal wings and faces but that might be my limited judgment. And what is this talk of a Temple and “robe” of “the Lord" about? I am pretty sure this is the only place where the Seraphims appear in Scripture, both the Old and New Testaments, and we are told that they surrounded the throne of “the Lord”. What an amazing privilege? Not Isaiah but these Seraphims—to be next to the Creator and Sustainer of Life itself! What an earnest longing of my own heart—this poverty stricken heart. Do you long for that encounter?
But what are these creatures doing? In the splendor and excellence of their being, we are not told that they are smiling [as I tend to imagine angels] but rather that they are chanting…Chanting, not that God is “Holy” or that God is “Holy, Holy” but that God is “Holy, Holy, Holy”! The first step in an encounter with God [and Christ] is an inevitable recognition of His Holiness.
Step 2: Recognition of our Wretchedness
I have to place Isaiah’s encounter in the proper religio-historical context. Isaiah begins relating his encounter in chapter 6 with the words “I saw the Lord seated on a throne”. What is interesting to note is that in the first five chapters, Isaiah condemns the Israelites in a seemingly pious disregard for his audience making himself seem utterly righteous. Yet he comes before the “Holy, Holy, Holy” One and, as he would word it later, his righteousness becomes as “fitly rags”. The terrible thing about meeting a Holy God is that the evil and ugliness of your heart and my heart is laid bare before Him. Isaiah may have been righteous before his companions but before God, his only response was “Woe to me…I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips”. The only warning I can give of seeking God is that it can be terrible—terribly awesome, terribly humbling. But such humbleness is necessary for our Prophetic mission. Have you been broken by God? Have you recognized your wretchedness. Paul did and he gives us the account in Romans 7. This Pharesee who was "according to the Law, blameless" exclaimed: "Oh, wretched man that I am"...Less #2? A Recognition of our Wretchedness.
Step 3: Recognition of our Commission
A fascinating thing happens to Isaiah after His encounter with God and His response to that encounter. We are told that one of the Seraphims flies towards the broken Prophet with a burning coal, touches the Prophet's lips with that burning coal and then proclaims the Prophet cleansed by that fiery act. Lesson? The brokenness we experience upon meeting God leads to a cleansing in our hearts that we become the mouthpiece of God and there is only one question left for us to answer thereafter and it was the question Isaiah was asked: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”. It is the same statement left by our Lord in the now famous “Great Commission”. Once you get sucked into [and please pardon my language] an experience with the Divine, the only thing left to answer once that Divine meets with us is, “Will we Go”? Isaiah was willing to go. Am I? Are you?
Through Isaiah, we learn the spirit of humility in ministry. First we recognize the “Lo”! where we see God; that “Lo” evokes the “Woe”, when we recognize ourselves and finally, there’s the “Go” where we accept His mandate and recognize His commission. May we grow in the humility of Prophethood
Only a few men in history have been able to see God even in some limited sense since the Garden of Eden when Adam apparently walked with God. Thirty chapters after the burning bush experience [Exodus 3] Moses, in audacious boldness, asked to see God’s glory and God granted him His “back” but not His “face” [Exodus 33]; Gideon shivered when He saw the face of the angel of the LORD [Judges 6]; Samson’s parents were terrified by the visit of the angel of the LORD calling it “awesome” [Judges 13]; Daniel’s face became pale and troubled when he saw the vision of the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man [Daniel 7]; Stephen after his martyrdom speech see the Lord Jesus and the Father in a heavenly vision and braces himself for death [Acts 7] and John on the Island of Patmos crowns it all telling us that upon seeing the glorified Lord Jesus, he “fell at his feet as though dead” [Revelations 1: 17]. Yet there is the witness of Isaiah that I think is unique from all of these visions and glimpses of the Almighty and Isaiah takes us through three steps that an encounter with the Divine entails.
Step 1: Recognition of His Holiness.
I have to be honest with you, I don’t know what Isaiah is talking about. Is this a vision of “the Lord” or is it a literally real experience? I really don’t know. A friend of mine frequently brings this up. I tend to not imagine Seraphims as physical beings with literal wings and faces but that might be my limited judgment. And what is this talk of a Temple and “robe” of “the Lord" about? I am pretty sure this is the only place where the Seraphims appear in Scripture, both the Old and New Testaments, and we are told that they surrounded the throne of “the Lord”. What an amazing privilege? Not Isaiah but these Seraphims—to be next to the Creator and Sustainer of Life itself! What an earnest longing of my own heart—this poverty stricken heart. Do you long for that encounter?
But what are these creatures doing? In the splendor and excellence of their being, we are not told that they are smiling [as I tend to imagine angels] but rather that they are chanting…Chanting, not that God is “Holy” or that God is “Holy, Holy” but that God is “Holy, Holy, Holy”! The first step in an encounter with God [and Christ] is an inevitable recognition of His Holiness.
Step 2: Recognition of our Wretchedness
I have to place Isaiah’s encounter in the proper religio-historical context. Isaiah begins relating his encounter in chapter 6 with the words “I saw the Lord seated on a throne”. What is interesting to note is that in the first five chapters, Isaiah condemns the Israelites in a seemingly pious disregard for his audience making himself seem utterly righteous. Yet he comes before the “Holy, Holy, Holy” One and, as he would word it later, his righteousness becomes as “fitly rags”. The terrible thing about meeting a Holy God is that the evil and ugliness of your heart and my heart is laid bare before Him. Isaiah may have been righteous before his companions but before God, his only response was “Woe to me…I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips”. The only warning I can give of seeking God is that it can be terrible—terribly awesome, terribly humbling. But such humbleness is necessary for our Prophetic mission. Have you been broken by God? Have you recognized your wretchedness. Paul did and he gives us the account in Romans 7. This Pharesee who was "according to the Law, blameless" exclaimed: "Oh, wretched man that I am"...Less #2? A Recognition of our Wretchedness.
Step 3: Recognition of our Commission
A fascinating thing happens to Isaiah after His encounter with God and His response to that encounter. We are told that one of the Seraphims flies towards the broken Prophet with a burning coal, touches the Prophet's lips with that burning coal and then proclaims the Prophet cleansed by that fiery act. Lesson? The brokenness we experience upon meeting God leads to a cleansing in our hearts that we become the mouthpiece of God and there is only one question left for us to answer thereafter and it was the question Isaiah was asked: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”. It is the same statement left by our Lord in the now famous “Great Commission”. Once you get sucked into [and please pardon my language] an experience with the Divine, the only thing left to answer once that Divine meets with us is, “Will we Go”? Isaiah was willing to go. Am I? Are you?
Through Isaiah, we learn the spirit of humility in ministry. First we recognize the “Lo”! where we see God; that “Lo” evokes the “Woe”, when we recognize ourselves and finally, there’s the “Go” where we accept His mandate and recognize His commission. May we grow in the humility of Prophethood
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Prophet Hosea: The Living Prophet
This week we consider another Prophet frequently overlooked from the Old Testament—Hosea. Admittedly, Hosea seems to be a book of Judgment that we frequently like to ignore in the midst of world of “peace” and so it might seem to have less of an appeal to us today than it had to those to whom Hosea preached. However, I think this is deeply mistaken especially when one considers the context in which Hosea lived and preached. He lived and preached during the times just before the destruction of Israel in the 8th century B.C when Israel had forgotten God. Can we, as a nation, as a Church, and as individuals relate to that today? Absolutely! Fortunately, Hosea has three things we do well to consider!
The Book of Hosea may be divided into three parts: Chapters 1-3 where Hosea is commanded by God to marry a prostitute; Chapters 4-13 where there is a repeated message of the cycle of sin, discipline and restoration and Chapter 14 that summarizes and emphasizes that last point—restoration. I consider these three features in that order and reproduce why I think Hosea may rightly be called the Living Prophet for he lived out his message.
Feature #1: Living the Message
The opening verses of this Book are almost repugnant as God commands Hosea to take a harlot for a wife. Scholars debate as to whether Hosea writes in retrospect i.e. God told him to marry Gomer and then she turned out to be a harlot or in prospect i.e. God told him to marry the local prostitute. I am not going to enter that debate but I sense that the latter is true for it was important for Hosea to be in tune entirely to the message he was going to bring to Israel. You see, Israel had deserted the God who delivered them—the God whom they covenant with as a wife to her husband—and were now playing the harlot by worshipping other “so called” gods and trampling on the commandments of God.
Someone has rightly said “you will never lighten any burden, unless you feel the burden in your own soul”. Think about those words for a moment! It was important for Hosea to feel the message he was going to bring forth to the people of God—that a Holy and Faithful God has been the recipient of the effects of harlotry of a faithless people. Have you been mistreated by someone you love? Please permit my candor: I was almost utterly broken when my girlfriend told me that no one has yelled at her the way I did once when I was very upset. Yet, if I was that broken, how broken do you think she was at the time? And what’s more? I can’t take back that act. And what the God of the Universe communicates to His messenger is “I, a Holy and Sovereign God, need you to feel a little bit of the burden of Israel’s apostasy”.
But let me bring it home lest we live in the illusion of the distance geographically and historically between us and Hosea. Hosea wrote and preached, not to an unbelieving people but to a believing people, a chosen people, a covenanted people. You and me have covenanted with the Holy God and do we think that He is not utterly distraught by our unfaithfulness to Him either when we sin ignoring His covenant or else when we replace Him as sovereign in our lives? You know what Hosea realized? He realized that as we depart from God whether as a nation, or as a Church or as individuals, we can only feel the heart of God in the names of the children of Hosea—“Jezreel” meaning “punishment”; “Lo-ruhamah” meaning “no more love” and “Lo-Ammi” meaning “not my people”? It was important that the message of unfaithfulness to God be passed through Hosea to Israel by Hosea living out the Message. Have you been burdened by the message of unfaithfulness?
Feature #2: Living in Repentance
Yet, the message of Hosea and the message from God is not merely one of judgment is it? Because in the end Hosea takes back his wife of harlotry as God commanded “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel”—Hosea 3: 1. Isn’t that the magnificence of God’s message? It isn’t about *our* faithfulness but about His love. Hosea had to buy back his wife. What a tremendous illustration of the Cross of Jesus!!! Jesus buys us back in His blood to dwell with Him but there is a requirement, namely “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you”—Hosea 3: 3. We must live in constant repentance from our sin. I do not speak about the repentance that we express upon conversion but the repentance we need to express subsequent to it. We don’t become immune from sin upon conversely and need to, like the Apostle John indicates “confess our sins” to Him. Do you live in repentance? I know I struggle with it but such is inevitable when abiding with a Holy and Faithful God. Gomer had to live in repentance
Feature #3: Living in Hope of the Promise
We are not left without hope, though. Hosea’s message to Israel had a recurring theme of unfaithfulness, repentance and restoration. I find this to be true in my walk [and I suspect in yours too]. But the message is not only about now. It also includes the future hope of the resurrection when “we shall see him as He is for we will be like Him”—1 John 3: 2. If that thought doesn’t encourage you through the harlotry we constantly fall into, I do not know what will but I sure hope it does. Hosea in Chapter 14 speaks of the ultimate restoration of Israel—a blessed hope in my walk of the ultimate restoration of this corrupt frame when, as Paul says, we shall be raised incorruptible.
Hosea is a living prophet that speaks to us today in living truly the message of grace, living in repentance and living in the hope of the promised restoration. Be blessed as you do so!
The Book of Hosea may be divided into three parts: Chapters 1-3 where Hosea is commanded by God to marry a prostitute; Chapters 4-13 where there is a repeated message of the cycle of sin, discipline and restoration and Chapter 14 that summarizes and emphasizes that last point—restoration. I consider these three features in that order and reproduce why I think Hosea may rightly be called the Living Prophet for he lived out his message.
Feature #1: Living the Message
The opening verses of this Book are almost repugnant as God commands Hosea to take a harlot for a wife. Scholars debate as to whether Hosea writes in retrospect i.e. God told him to marry Gomer and then she turned out to be a harlot or in prospect i.e. God told him to marry the local prostitute. I am not going to enter that debate but I sense that the latter is true for it was important for Hosea to be in tune entirely to the message he was going to bring to Israel. You see, Israel had deserted the God who delivered them—the God whom they covenant with as a wife to her husband—and were now playing the harlot by worshipping other “so called” gods and trampling on the commandments of God.
Someone has rightly said “you will never lighten any burden, unless you feel the burden in your own soul”. Think about those words for a moment! It was important for Hosea to feel the message he was going to bring forth to the people of God—that a Holy and Faithful God has been the recipient of the effects of harlotry of a faithless people. Have you been mistreated by someone you love? Please permit my candor: I was almost utterly broken when my girlfriend told me that no one has yelled at her the way I did once when I was very upset. Yet, if I was that broken, how broken do you think she was at the time? And what’s more? I can’t take back that act. And what the God of the Universe communicates to His messenger is “I, a Holy and Sovereign God, need you to feel a little bit of the burden of Israel’s apostasy”.
But let me bring it home lest we live in the illusion of the distance geographically and historically between us and Hosea. Hosea wrote and preached, not to an unbelieving people but to a believing people, a chosen people, a covenanted people. You and me have covenanted with the Holy God and do we think that He is not utterly distraught by our unfaithfulness to Him either when we sin ignoring His covenant or else when we replace Him as sovereign in our lives? You know what Hosea realized? He realized that as we depart from God whether as a nation, or as a Church or as individuals, we can only feel the heart of God in the names of the children of Hosea—“Jezreel” meaning “punishment”; “Lo-ruhamah” meaning “no more love” and “Lo-Ammi” meaning “not my people”? It was important that the message of unfaithfulness to God be passed through Hosea to Israel by Hosea living out the Message. Have you been burdened by the message of unfaithfulness?
Feature #2: Living in Repentance
Yet, the message of Hosea and the message from God is not merely one of judgment is it? Because in the end Hosea takes back his wife of harlotry as God commanded “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel”—Hosea 3: 1. Isn’t that the magnificence of God’s message? It isn’t about *our* faithfulness but about His love. Hosea had to buy back his wife. What a tremendous illustration of the Cross of Jesus!!! Jesus buys us back in His blood to dwell with Him but there is a requirement, namely “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you”—Hosea 3: 3. We must live in constant repentance from our sin. I do not speak about the repentance that we express upon conversion but the repentance we need to express subsequent to it. We don’t become immune from sin upon conversely and need to, like the Apostle John indicates “confess our sins” to Him. Do you live in repentance? I know I struggle with it but such is inevitable when abiding with a Holy and Faithful God. Gomer had to live in repentance
Feature #3: Living in Hope of the Promise
We are not left without hope, though. Hosea’s message to Israel had a recurring theme of unfaithfulness, repentance and restoration. I find this to be true in my walk [and I suspect in yours too]. But the message is not only about now. It also includes the future hope of the resurrection when “we shall see him as He is for we will be like Him”—1 John 3: 2. If that thought doesn’t encourage you through the harlotry we constantly fall into, I do not know what will but I sure hope it does. Hosea in Chapter 14 speaks of the ultimate restoration of Israel—a blessed hope in my walk of the ultimate restoration of this corrupt frame when, as Paul says, we shall be raised incorruptible.
Hosea is a living prophet that speaks to us today in living truly the message of grace, living in repentance and living in the hope of the promised restoration. Be blessed as you do so!
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