SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
04/19/2004
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 Their
Revolting
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Peter
2:14b-16
Message of the
verses: “They captivate the unstable
ones, and their technique of getting what they want is, through long practice,
highly developed. They are born under a curse, 15 for they have abandoned the
right road and wandered off to follow the old trail of Balaam, son of Beor, the
man who had no objection to wickedness as long as he was paid for it. 16 But
he, you remember, was sharply reprimanded for his wickedness—by a donkey, of
all things, speaking with a human voice to check the prophet’s wicked
infatuation! (Phillips).”
Well we finally get to the part of this section that has
great meaning to me, and that is a brief review of a man named Balaam, and the
full story of him comes from Numbers chapters 22-25. The reason that I like the story of Balaam
has really nothing to do with him, for he was not a godly man at all, and he
fits right into the topic that Peter is talking about, but his donkey has
always been a character that I have liked as Balaam’s donkey, a female donkey,
is, to me, a picture of something that I have a desire to follow. I know that this may sound strange, but
Balaam’s donkey to me, is a picture of total obedience to the Lord, and total
yielding to the Lord also. Animals, and occasions
and lakes and other objects of nature obey the Lord without resolution; however
people and even some angels do not. Paul
writes in Romans eight about the curse and how the curse has caused a problem
even in nature. In our study of Acts
chapter three, and the sermon that Peter preached after the healing of the man
who could not walk, Peter talks about the coming millennial kingdom and in that
study I quoted a couple of section from the book of Isaiah which spoke of how
the earth will be like when the curse is gone.
It speaks of children playing around a cobra’s nest, and things like
this to show how this earth was really planed to operate before sin came into
it. I am not sure that donkey’s will
talk then, but this one did and it did exactly what the Lord wanted her to do,
and say exactly what He wanted her to say.
I have written about the story of Balaam when I studied
the book of Numbers, but briefly he was a Gentile prophet who was using his “gift”
to earn money, and was paid by Balak who was the king of the Moabites to curse
Israel, but God would not allow him to do so.
He later on caused Israel to inter-marry with the Moabites which was
probably a worse curse on them than he could have done when he tried to curse
them, and in the end he is killed in a battle against Israel. Balaam really wanted to curse Israel, and all
he was looking out for was the money, but in the end this apostate got what all
of them will get, and that is death and eternity in hell.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes his writing on Balaam with the
following: “he [Balaam] was a rebel
against the will of God. Like the false
teachers that Peter described, Balaam knew the right way, but deliberately
chose the wrong way because he wanted to make money. He kept ‘playing with the will of God’ by
trying to get ‘a different viewpoint (Num. 22:41; 23:13, 27). He no doubt had a true gift from God because
he uttered some beautiful prophecies about Jesus Christ, but he prostituted
that gift to base uses just to gain honor and wealth.
“A bank officer approached a junior
clerk and secretly asked, ‘If I gave you $50,000, would you help me alter the
books?’
“Yes, I guess I would” the man
replied.
“Would you do it for $100?”
“Of course not” the man said, “What
do you think I am, a common thief?’
We’ve already determined that, “said the officer, “Now we’re
talking about the price.”
We will try and conclude what Dr. Wiersbe has to say
about what Peter is teaching about these apostates in our next SD.
9/16/2017 9:54 AM
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