Third Sunday after Easter, 2002
Numbers 22-24

In Egypt God had promised Canaan to the children of Israel, a land of milk and honey. As we know, it took a while to get there. They wandered forty years staying mostly at three desert locations. First they camped below Mt. Sinai where God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. Next they moved on to Kadesh, a pleasant spot in the Wilderness of Paran. Then they repaired to the Plains of Moab. Each movement was an impressive scene. Take for example the three-day journey from Sinai to Kadesh. The twelve tribes packed up everything and then positioned themselves in battle array (Numbers 10:13 ff), the tribe of Judah forming the vanguard. The Hebrew words are military terms suggesting that they marched in ranks of five (10:28). Each tribe identified itself with bright banners. Behind the armies and raised standards came the women, children and herds. The Ark of the Covenant led the whole procession (10:33). The poles and curtains of the tabernacle were carried further back in the pack along with the table for shew-bread, the lamp-stand, the incense altar and the altar of burnt offering. When everybody was ready to go, the Glory-Cloud of God lifted up. Moses gave the signal, the trumpets blasted (Numbers 10:5), and they were off.

Moses was elated at the sight: the ark at the forefront, the cloud hovering ahead of them, a sea of humanity rolling over the surface of the earth. As the ark set out each morning he called out, "Rise up, O Lord! Let your enemies be scattered, And let those who hate you flee before You." At evening he prayed, "Return, O Lord, To the Many thousands of Israel." Thus Moses instilled in the troops a godly esprit de corps.

The army marched from Sinai to the Wilderness of Paran where a spring of sweet water issued from a mountain spur called Kadesh. This is where they encamped. Some disappointing episodes overcame them at Kadesh. Ten of the twelve spies returned with a gloomy report concerning Canaan. Moses' sister Miriam died. Moses smote the rock with his staff to give water, but did it in his own name, thus sinning. The Israelites murmured here.

Eventually, the time came for the nation to move on. Their next destination would be the Plains of Moab, just next door to Canaan. There is no reason to believe that the pageantry and array was any less splendid during this journey than the previous one from Sinai to Kadesh. Banners blazed, troops lined up, trumpets blared, tribes took their place, and the vast multitude paraded up from Kadesh to the valleys under the mountains of Moab. There they camped on the plains.

How did the king of Moab react? From the summit Balak looked down on the Israelites and became frightened. The throng looked too numerous. He immediately started searching for a strategy to defeat them. Military confrontation seemed hopeless; they were too big. Diplomatic appeasement seemed suicidal. And defensive alliances seemed delinquent. So in desperation, he sent for Balaam, a conjurer and diviner. With Balaam's help, Balak thought he could harness divine power. Balak would hire Balaam to curse Israel. That would stop this horde of intruders. This would be the first of the three strategies Balak would use to destroy the Israelites.

Balak's desire to curse Israel is typical of the way the world reacts to the Church. This theme is what we want to examine today. The world reacts with hostility to God's people. King Balak and the Moabites were worshippers of Moloch. Moloch was a hybrid of Baal worship. What were the distinctives of the Moloch cult? Sacrifices to Moloch consisted of self-mutilations, castration, and human sacrifice. Even toddlers and adolescents were sacrificed by roasting them in fire. What was the purpose of these gruesome burnings? It was an attempt to govern life and the future apart from God. It was believed that by means of these sacrifices the practitioner could transcend humanity. It was the effort of man to command the future, to predestine the world, and to be as God. At bottom, a combination of perverse violence and contempt for God and man were the basis for Moloch worship.

[Works consulted: George Grant's Grand Illusions ; Commentaries by Gordon Wenham, Noordtzu , F.B. Huey, Sakenfeld , R.K. Harrison, and Timothy Ashley. Warning: some of these commentaries are too influenced by JEPD higher criticism.]

King Balak espied the Israelites and immediately sought to obliterate them. He hired Balaam to come from afar and curse God's people. Is such a hatred confined to ancient times? No. God's character and man's sinfulness never change. This same hatred boils up in modern man. There are people today like Balak of old who desire to harm the Church. Why is there conflict between the Church and the world? Because where men attack God's people, there we often have a covert or overt attack on God Himself. Unable to strike directly at God, they strike at God's people. Murderous, crazed, almost incomprehensible evil exists in the world, and we would be very naïve to deny it. Let us never underestimate this impulse in the heart of unregenerate man. What did Balaam do? We see it in Numbers 23:7-10.

Balaam, filled with the Spirit of God, instead of cursing, blesses the Israelites. It is ironic this blessing because Balaam was no saint. He was a pagan magician. During his trip to Moab Balaam viciously beat his donkey three times. Proverbs 12:10 says, "A righteous man regards the life of his animal." So God makes the donkey rebuke him. Then Balaam is offered money for his divination and resorts to omens. These are abominable practices. Just because Balaam spoke the Lord's words does not mean he had a right standing with God. Saul prophesied, and he was no good. Caiaphas prophesied the death of Christ, Jewish exorcists cast out demons in Jesus name without believing in Him. Spectacular gifts mean little. People who utter a word of prophecy or practice ecstatic spiritual gifts are not necessarily true believers. God spoke through Balaam the same way he spoke through the donkey.

What was the next plan of the monarch Balak? We see it recorded in Numbers 23:13. "Then Balak said to him, 'Please come with me to another place from which you may see them; you shall see only the outer part of them, and shall not see them all; curse them for me from there.'" Balak's second ploy for defeating God's people is almost comical. "Balaam, your curse did not work because you were looking down on the entire Israelite camp. Let us stand where we can only see a part of them," he says. "Perhaps you can curse them for me from there." What a vain attempt! The blessing of Balaam came pouring forth more richly than the first time. Balaam responded, "Behold, I have received a command to bless; [God] has blessed, and I cannot reverse it" (Numbers 23:19-20; 24:12-13). Why was Balak thwarted with a blessing on Israel and not a curse? Balak had it all wrong. It was not the quantity but the quality of Israel that drew the blessing. It was not because there were so many of them, but because they were God's chosen people, they had received the covenantal promises, and they alone worshipped God with a worship with which God was pleased. That was why God took care of them and made them strong. It was hopeless of Balak to curse Israel; sheer folly. Again, since man's sin never changes, that folly continues today.

And what is the Balak folly? A person shuts his eyes to anything that contradicts his sinful standing. He refuses to look upon the totality of things. He sees only the portion that will serve his agenda and promote a godless worldview. He ignores the evidence that disproves his position. How else do you explain the hoax of evolution? The killing of unborn babies? The blindness of racism? Or, secular man's denial of a soul? How can one dispute the resurrection, and the claims of Christ's full deity? Balak's second strategy highlights the nature of unbelieving thought. The doctrine of the total depravity of man means that even the use of man's reasoning ability becomes depraved and obstructed. This is due to the noetic effects of sin. Like Balak, unbelieving man sees God in creation and in his conscience but he unrighteously suppresses that truth in order to embrace a lie (Romans 1:18, 32).

Some Christians carry a romanticized notion of the unbeliever. They either regard him as a sincere and earnest seeker after the truth; or a calm, reasoned, analytical person who needs nothing more than rational explanations. In their view, if the non-Christian could only hear the truth, or see the truth lived out in action, then he would convert to Christ. This may be true in a few cases, but it is usually incorrect. In Romans 1:18 the Apostle Paul tells us that the unbeliever already knows the truth, and he unrighteously suppresses that truth every day of his life, and chooses to believe a farce. Why? Because human beings are religious, but their religion has been deformed and falsified. Knowing the truth they either distort it, accept only a part of it, or close their eyes to the whole picture. Thus conversion is not so much a discovery of truth, as it is a surrender to God who is the truth.

Balaam delivered a total of four oracles. Much to Balak's chagrin, each of the oracles predicted that Israel was invincible from without. No army, no king, no nation, and no empire would be able to stand against it. The only way God's chosen people could be defeated was if they defeated themselves from within ­ through disobedience and moral defilement.

That was all Balak needed to know. He didn't need an army. He didn't need diplomats. He didn't need allies. And now, he didn't even need diviners. All he needed was something to tempt Israel away from its fidelity. And he found it. Numbers 25:1 tells the sad story: "Now Israel remained in Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel."

Balak chose sex to defeat Israel. He sent the women of Moab down into Israel's camp at Peor. Enticing the people to play the harlot, sexual immorality was able to do what no warrior or general ever could; tempt and trap Israel. Not a sword was drawn. Not an arrow was unsheathed. Not a spear was hurled.

The people were dragged off into captivity by their own lust. They were defeated by the compromise of their biblical standards. The same holds for the present. The disintegration of the modern Church is more the sad consequence of the Church's disobedience than humanism's competence. According to God's Word, the spiritual state of the Church is the most important factor influencing the course of history (Mt. 28:18-20), and if the Church crumbles, the crumbling of civilization closely follows.

Balak learned that the Church is best undermined from within. The last century has witnessed all too many infiltrations within the Church. Just when Marxism had stagnated, it crept into the Church with Liberation Theology. When it was becoming clear that Freudianism was nothing more than a debauched fairy tale, it slipped into the Church and gained renewed vigor. Darwinism entered the Church early on and gained credibility far beyond what it ever should have attained. At the point when people were beginning to recognize how miserable radical feminism was making women, it rushed in and overwhelmed the Church. Without the support of Church leaders and liberal denominations, homosexuality would remain nothing more than a disgusting perversion. Roman Catholic theologian Leon Podles makes a strong case that the pedophile and sexual scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church are largely due to a homosexual clergy. For decades, Roman Catholic bishops have allowed openly homosexual men to remain priests and now they are reaping the whirlwind for it. The Church is destroyed from within.

On their own, secular ideologies do not have roots. They are parasitic. On their own they wither and die. But once they are baptized by the Church, three things happen. First, these movements receive a boost of moral credibility. Second, the Church is weakened as by a cancer and loses integrity. Third, an emaciated Church causes the world to become course, cruel and joyless. The health and happiness of the earth itself is threatened to the degree that the Church waxes weak.

This last strategy of Balak was the one that did it. The infiltration of Israel with sin, lust, and idolatry caused her moral collapse, and the world fell into a age of darkness and despair. The same dynamic is ever at work.

Conversely, Christianity will make little progress in the culture until God's house is in order. We are destined for blessing. We are destined for civilizational triumph (Is. 65:17 ff.), but not when we turn our back on God. Therefore, if we wish to win the cultural wars in society, we must first fight the spiritual wars in our own hearts. The Seven Deadly Sins are a good start: pride, envy, anger, sloth, covetousness, lust and gluttony. These are perennial enemies. These are the enemies that eviscerate the heart of the Church. If we wish to see a society safe and sane for our children, then we need to put our efforts into building a Church of purity and integrity. Political action and the advancement of family values legislation may help a little. But really they are band-aids. Authentic restoration of society depends upon the restoration of the Church. The lesson for us today should be clear. We begin here with the work and worship of St. Luke's. We do our part to invigorate the outreach of the parish. We get busy with our facility search and the labor that will go into that; the Faith Promise Giving as well. These are steps toward our parish making an impact in Southern California. Empowered by the Holy Spirit we set out to serve God and others with every ounce of our strength. How can I serve God in the parish? You know better than anyone else where your areas of service lie, and what your God-given gifts are. The Lord grants them to you to be used, and the parish would love to have you use them. The story of Balaam bears witness that no enemy, no earthly power can ultimately frustrate God's will to bless His people, the Church. We simply need to believe that promise and act.

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