Settled Blessings

Predicting the future is a tricky business at best, as history demonstrates. In 1929 Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, carved out a niche for himself in history when he said, “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau,” mere months before Wall Street crashed. Decca Records turned down the opportunity to sign the Beatles in 1962 with the words, “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” Ken Olson, founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation, declared in 1977, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” Trying to track the trends of the future gives you a wonderful opportunity to fall flat on your face. The things that seem certain bets often backfire, while the most unlikely prospects may end up as runaway successes.

If predicting the future is hard, then how about controlling the future? What if you don’t like the apparently inevitable prospect that your future holds for you—is there anything you can do about it? How do you face and defeat problems that are far beyond your ability to control? Perhaps you have received a diagnosis of an incurable disease, either for yourself or for a loved one. Or perhaps you find yourself in a situation where life seems to have locked you in a box and thrown away the key. You see no way out through your own resources. Is it possible to find help and hope outside yourself when the only light that you see at the end of the tunnel is an onrushing express train that seems certain to crush you?


THE FOLLY OF SPIRITUAL COUNTERFEITS

That was the situation in which Balak, King of Moab, found himself. An enormous threatening force, the Israelites, was massing on his border. They had already defeated and destroyed Og, King of Bashan, and Sihon, King of the Amorites. He thought his territory might very well be next on their list (22:2, 3). Conventional warfare held out little prospect of success. So where was he to turn? His solution was to summon the internationally renowned prophet and diviner Balaam, in the hopes that through him he could acquire a weapon of mass destruction, a curse from the gods that would change Israel’s future and thereby also his own.

At first sight that solution to Balak’s problem may not seem very relevant to our modern situation. Even if the root of the problems in our lives can be identified as a person, we are not normally greatly tempted to call down a literal curse on him. In contemporary society when there is an archrival outperforming us at work or at school, we don’t typically pull out a voodoo doll and stick pins in it, hoping through sympathetic magic to debilitate him or her. Yet the broader temptation to pursue spiritual counterfeits as a means to relieve our pain and pursue increased success remains tremendously attractive to our culture as the rising levels of interest in psychics and horoscopes demonstrates. What is more, even if we don’t seek out the modern equivalent of pagan divination to seek the solution to our problems, we may still look to created things and people as the ones from whom our blessings will come. Yet this passage demonstrates clearly that the Lord alone has power to bless and curse.

Pursuing this theme, the passage underlines for us the folly of all spiritual counterfeits. Balak’s assertion when he first sent envoys to hire Balaam (“I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed,” 22:6) is shown to be mere wishful thinking. Far from Balaam being able to exert a measure of control over the deity, as a pagan prophet was paid to do, extracting whatever outcome he sought from his encounter, the Lord controlled Balaam. The Lord told him where and when to go and required him to say only what the Lord instructed him to say, reducing Balaam to a mere messenger boy. If the Lord could do that to an internationally acclaimed prophet like Balaam, no one would ever be able to stand against him. Balak’s plan to curse Israel was doomed from the outset.


COSTLY AND UNCERTAIN RITUALS

One aspect of the folly of pursuing spiritual counterfeits that emerges is the vast expense that they require. Three times, in three different locations, Balaam made Balak go through costly rituals. Each time he had to build seven altars, and on each one he had to sacrifice a bull and a ram, the most expensive of the various sacrificial animals (23:1, 14, 29). That was in addition to the cost of sending the envoys (twice) to persuade Balaam to come (22:7, 15), the cost of the feast on his arrival (22:40), and the promised payment of a handsome reward on completion of the contract (22:17). Balaam’s services were certainly far from cheap, a fact that is equally true of his modern counterparts.

We also see clearly here the uncertainty of spiritual counterfeits. Even after all this expense, there was no guarantee of Balak receiving any message from beyond, let alone one that would be favorable to him. Whereas in Israel only one altar was ever necessary for sacrifice, since Israel served only the one true God, here seven altars were required for each attempt to contact the deity. Presumably this was an attempt to cover all of the spiritual bases.1 Yet even with all of that effort, Balaam said to Balak after the first set of offerings, “Perhaps the LORD will come to meet me” (23:3). Balaam could not guarantee results from the process. The second time Balaam expressed similar uncertainty when he said, “Stay here beside your offerings, while I seek a manifestation yonder” (23:15, NJPS). There was no sure access to the Lord through this procedure: it was filled with “perhaps” and “maybe.” This uncertainty of approach for Balaam forms a striking contrast with the access that the Lord had promised to Moses. Whereas prophets—even true prophets—were dependent on dreams and visions, Moses had been granted the constant and assured right to meet with the Lord and speak to him face to face (12:7).

Balak might still have thought that all of his money had been well spent if it had finally accomplished his goals of cursing Israel. However, in the end all of his expense went for nothing. Balaam first tried to curse the whole camp of Israel from Bamoth-baal (22:41). From there he could see the whole camp of Israel spread out before him.2 Yet the only words he found he could utter were words of blessing (23:7–10). His second attempt was more limited in scope, seeking only to curse part of Israel. If he couldn’t manage to curse the whole people, perhaps he could at least manage to curse a small part of them. This attempt too was an abject failure: once again, he could only bless Israel (23:18–24). Nor was a third attempt from a different location any more successful (24:3–9). In each place, Balaam’s best efforts to curse Israel accomplished nothing.

In fact, as a weapon of mass destruction, Balaam proved to be not only impotent but actually counterproductive. Not only was Balaam not able to curse Israel, he repeatedly blessed them at Balak’s expense! What is more, when Balak finally ran out of patience with Balaam after three failed attempts and tried to send him packing, Balaam proceeded to deliver yet another oracle free of charge, which contained yet another blessing on Israel (24:15–24)!

That is always the way it is with spiritual counterfeits: they make grandiose claims for themselves and promise to give us substantial rewards, yet in the end they turn out to be expensive, uncertain, and ultimately impotent. There is neither blessing nor curse to be found in psychics or mediums, in astrology or horoscopes, or in any other source than the one true living God. These spiritual counterfeits have no power to affect either the present or the future.

In fact, the same is true of all of the many created things to which we offer allegiance as our idols. They are all ultimately equally impotent to bless or to curse. Some seek their value in money and possessions, but wealth cannot make us genuinely worthwhile as persons, and its absence cannot rob us of our dignity. Others look to power for their validation, but power cannot fulfill us, and its loss cannot make our lives meaningless. Still others invest the approval of people with ultimate significance, but gaining the love of a particular person is not where our value lies, nor will we be destroyed if they are taken from us, however painful that loss may be. None of these created things can make or break us, even though we continually act as if they can.

The power that we ascribe to these idols that we have set up for ourselves is evident in the way we pour ourselves so devotedly into pursuing their demands and are so wrapped up in fears of their loss. We would willingly go to the ends of the earth to do their bidding, and we regularly sacrifice on their altars whatever they demand. They fill our dreams and our nightmares, and they shape our expenditures and our relationships. They are profoundly expensive masters, both in financial terms and in terms of the turmoil that they create in our souls. Yet in the end, like all idols, they are impotent to deliver what they promise or threaten.


THE CERTAINTY OF BLESSING

In dramatic contrast to the expensive, uncertain, and ultimately impotent search for blessing and curse through spiritual counterfeits and the idols of our hearts, there is the free, certain, and effective way to blessing through Israel’s God. Israel did not have to pay Balaam or offer special sacrifices to receive a word of blessing from the Lord through him. On the contrary, the Lord had already freely committed himself in advance to bless Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 12:2, 3). The Lord had already told the Aaronic priests to pronounce his blessing regularly on the people, without any fee changing hands (Numbers 6:24–27). Balaam’s words of blessing were simply a reflection of the Lord’s settled attitude toward his people. As Balaam himself put it, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Behold, I received a command to bless: he has blessed, and I cannot revoke it” (23:19, 20). Human beings are fickle and changeable creatures, but when the Lord declared a people blessed, they were indeed blessed.

The oracles of Balaam not only declared that the Lord’s blessing rested on Israel, however. They also unfold for us different aspects of that settled blessing—past, present, and future.
First, Balaam declared that the Lord has blessed Israel in the past. The Lord had multiplied their numbers to uncountable proportions, like the dust of the earth, just as he had promised Abraham: “Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the fourth part of Israel?” (23:10; see Genesis 13:16). He had brought them out of Egypt (23:22; 24:8), and he gave them the strength to defeat hostile nations resembling a wild ox (23:22; 24:8) or a lion (23:24; 24:9). The Lord made them a people distinct from all other nations, separated for a relationship with him (23:9). All of these predictions must have seemed far-fetched when originally given; yet the Lord had fulfilled each one.

Second, Balaam declared the Lord’s blessing upon Israel in the present. The Lord protected them from natural disasters: “He has not beheld misfortune in Jacob, nor has he seen trouble in Israel” (23:21). He guarded them from supernatural dangers: “For there is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel” (23:23). What made them distinct from every other nation was the unique fact that God dwelt in their midst: “The LORD their God is with them, and the shout of a king is among them” (23:21). They alone out of all the nations of the earth had a special relationship with the Lord, acclaiming him as their King and belonging to him as his people.


FUTURE BLESSINGS

What is more, the Lord would continue to be with Israel in the future, promising them fruitfulness and abundant water (24:6, 7) and victory for their king over Agag, the king of the Amalekites (24:7). This last promise is particularly striking since at this point in their history Israel did not yet have a king, even though God had already promised them that they would have one at some point in the future (Genesis 17:6). This promised monarch of the future would experience the Lord’s blessing, resulting in triumph over all of his enemies, who were personified as the king of their primary enemy, Amalek (see 24:20). Ultimately, all of Israel’s enemies would be destroyed: Moab would be defeated, Edom conquered, and even the great empire of Assyria4 would be brought low in the end (24:17, 18, 24).

These oracles of Balaam, which declare not merely positive present realities but a glorious future yet to come, are most certainly true because the Lord’s sovereign power extends beyond the present into the future. What man cannot predict—what the future holds—the Lord is able to declare, because he himself holds the future in his hands. Even sickness, disease, and the schemes of evil men are not exempt from his sovereign will to bless his people. For that reason, when Jesus and his disciples encountered a man who had been born blind, Jesus explained that this personal tragedy had happened precisely so that the work of God might be displayed in his life (John 9:3). That man’s disability was not an accident of fate: it was part of God’s plan to display his glory. In fact, even the most wicked act of history, the crucifixion of Jesus, was the result of God’s set purpose and foreknowledge (Acts 2:23). God’s sovereignty does not free human beings from their responsibility for their acts, but it does assure us of the certainty that his purposes of blessing and curse will assuredly come about. Who but the Lord has the power to foretell what the distant future holds? Who but the Lord holds that future in his hands?

This truth is a great comfort when life seems out of control, whether outwardly or inwardly. Outwardly life seems out of control whenever our circumstances threaten to swamp us through one calamity or another. Inwardly life seems out of control whenever our emotions threaten to drown us in a morass of anxiety or sorrow, of fear or depression. Precisely in those times of unsettled circumstances and tumultuous emotions, the Lord’s settled purpose to bless his people is a wonderful assurance. As the hymn-writer put it:

  Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
  Let this blest assurance control,
  That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
  And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

If God is for us, who can be against us? The settled assurance of the Lord’s purpose to bless us in Christ enables us in the midst of life’s chaos to sing,

  Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
  “It is well, it is well with my soul.”


A STAR FROM JACOB

The greatest declaration of Israel’s future blessing, though, was left for the distant future. In Balaam’s final oracle he announced that a star would come out of Jacob and a scepter out of Israel, a great king who would definitively crush all of her enemies (24:17–19). In that day, pride of place would not be sufficient to keep Israel’s adversaries safe: the Amalekites, who were “first among the nations,” would come to ruin (24:20). A secure location would be no defense either: the Kenites would be flushed out of their rocky lair (24:21). Even those whom God used to destroy those nations would themselves ultimately go down in defeat at the hands of others—the Assyrians who would overcome and enslave the Kenites would themselves be subdued in due time by a warlike power from across the sea (24:24).6 Meanwhile, those who brought low the Assyrians would themselves come to ruin in the end (24:24). Who can endure this great day of the Lord’s wrath (24:23)?

This final oracle thus spans the entire sweep of human history. Nation after nation will rise to world domination and then fall to defeat. But when the messianic King arrives on the scene, no people other than Israel, the nation set apart, will survive the final day of destruction. At the end of all things, when all of human history has played out its course of changing fortunes, the Lord’s people will be the only ones left standing.

If it is true that Israel as God’s people has a unique relationship with the Lord that means both their present blessing and final security, then they are indeed to be envied. If the Lord has chosen Israel to be his own and has promised to be with them in the past, the present, and the future, then Balaam’s wish is understandable: “Let me die the death of the upright, and let my end be like his!” (23:10). When you even out the merely temporary fluctuations in the fortunes of people and nations, there are ultimately only two fates offered in this world. There is the Lord’s blessing leading to a flourishing life and an enviable death or the Lord’s curse leading to defeat and ultimate destruction.

Yet the coming of the star that Balaam foresaw wasn’t entirely what you might have predicted. At the birth of Jesus, a heavenly star indeed rose over Israel to mark where the infant King lay. Yet the baby King lay in a manger, not in a palace, and those drawn by the star were not Israelites but foreign Magi, students of signs and portents as was Balaam, who came from the east, Balaam’s former home (Matthew 2:1–12) King Herod, an Edomite by descent, was not instantly crushed by the coming of this new King but continued his rule, slaughtering scores of innocent children in Bethlehem. The rising of this star in Christ’s first coming did not yet bring about the total destruction of the nations, for Jesus had come first to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to … Israel” (Luke 2:32). Yet in another way, his coming was exactly what Balaam anticipated: those who, like the Magi, blessed the new Israel, Jesus, and submitted to him found a blessing for themselves. Meanwhile, those who cursed this new Israel found themselves under a curse, just as the Lord had promised Abraham (24:9; see Genesis 12:3). What is more, the day is yet coming when God’s final judgment will be delivered on Herod and on all those who stand against him and his anointed.


ISRAEL’S BLESSINGS FULFILLED IN CHRIST

What that means, then, is that these oracles for Israel are precious promises for us. Some Christians believe that Old Testament promises that speak of “Israel” are only intended for ethnic Israel and not for the church. For them, Balaam’s prophecies speak of a glorious future for the physical descendants of Israel, but they would call any attempt to apply these promises to the church “replacement theology.” I would suggest that this is a misunderstanding of what the Scriptures teach about Israel. It is not that the church has replaced Israel in the New Testament so much as that Old Testament Israel—ethnic Israel—finds its true goal and fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is himself the star of Jacob, the Israel of God.

In the person of Jesus, therefore, the true Israel has arrived, and all those who come to God by faith in him—Jews and Gentiles alike—become God’s children and are thereby incorporated into this new people of God (John 1:11, 12). In Christ, Jews and Gentiles together become the true heirs of the promise given to Abraham, his spiritual descendants (Galatians 3:29). Outside of Christ, on the other hand, there is no longer any true Israel. It is those who are in Christ who are the true chosen people: a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God (1 Peter 2:9). We have been chosen by God for exactly the same special relationship that he had with his Old Testament people. In his incredible grace and mercy, God chose us before the foundation of the world, so that we might be blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3, 4). He has rescued us from the final judgment that awaits all those who remain outside his people and has given us the glorious inheritance of a relationship with himself. In Jesus, the star of Jacob has risen for us and for our salvation.

If this is so, then we may have the assurance of the Lord’s settled purpose to bless us in Jesus Christ. No one can rob us of that blessing, and nothing can prevent us from inheriting its promises. All those who trust in Christ and are united to him by faith will die the death of the righteous, for Christ’s righteousness is credited to them, exactly as if it were their own. Whatever life throws at each of us, it must therefore always be “well with my soul,” for Christ has died in our place and is now risen from the dead. If we keep our eyes on that reality, then none of the traumatic rises and falls in our temporal fortunes that are an inevitable part of life in this fallen world can ever completely shake us. We will be settled on a solid rock, established on a firm foundation. People may come and go: some will let us down and hurt us, while others, no matter how faithful, will ultimately die and leave us on our own. But God will still be there. Fortunes may be made and lost, houses may burn, stock markets may crash, and cars will inevitably rust. Yet in Christ, we have an inheritance that no misfortune can touch. At the end of the day, only God remains, and those upon whom his blessing rests.


BALAAM’S CURSE

Ironically, though, Balaam never found that blessing. Even though he declared that he wanted to “die the death of the righteous” (23:10, NIV), once again his life didn’t match up to his words. If Balaam truly wanted to die the death of the righteous, the way to do so was to join the righteous during his lifetime. The Magi of Jesus’ day showed the way: he should have come to Israel’s God and laid his treasures at his feet. Had Balaam been willing to say good-bye to Balak and (more pertinently) to abandon his passion for Balak’s silver and gold, he could have received what he desired. The doors in Israel were open to aliens and strangers who wanted to abandon their old religions and join themselves to Israel and to her God. Sadly, though, money was more important to Balaam than achieving the death of the righteous. As a result, he stayed among the Midianites who opposed Israel and Israel’s God, and he died by the sword in their midst (31:8).

It is a sobering reality to think that many people say they want to die at peace with God but are not willing to pursue peace with God while they live. Being reconciled to the Lord is not something we can put off until a more convenient time, for in all probability such a time will never come and we will die still in our sins, rebels against the Lord of Heaven and earth. A day is coming when the Star of Jacob will come to crush all such rebels and enemies. When Jesus returns to this earth, it will be as a warrior riding out for the final battle in which he will crush all of his enemies (Revelation 19:11). If we want to spend eternity under God’s blessing as part of his people, today is the day to enter into his favor. Come to Christ now, as the Magi did at his incarnation, and submit your life to his lordship. Ask for his forgiveness to cover your sins; receive his righteousness to clothe your spiritual nakedness. The door is open today for everyone who will come in and bow the knee willingly to the Lord to receive his blessing. So come, enter into his people. As you do so, you will receive his blessing, find peace in the midst of a tumultuous world, and be able look forward with joy to the day when his final victory will be accomplished.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 281–290). Crossway Books.