Word of Salvation – September 2013

 

Numbers 23 – WHEN A BAD PREACHER PREACHES A GOOD SERMON

By Rev. John Westendorp

(Sermon 23 in a series on Numbers)

Scripture Reading: Numbers 23.

Singing: Book of Worship 406 / 426 / 136a / 447

 

Introd: Every church-goer is well aware that there are such things as bad sermons.

You’ve heard some lousy ones over the years… and I confess that I’ve preached some.
I know they were bad because someone had the courage to gently tell me so.
Other sermons came across okay but further study convinced me they were bad sermons.
I have some in my collection I wouldn’t touch again with a three-metre barge pole.

I’m sure that you are also aware that there are bad preachers.

You’ve probably come across some bad preachers over the years.
They were bad preachers because they were false preachers.
Television evangelists who only had one goal – to get rich at the expense of their viewers.
Preachers from the cults who promote a Christ other than the one revealed in Scripture.
False preachers can come across as very nice people… but they subtly undermine the gospel.

Of course a bad preacher can preach a good sermon.
I once woke up very early and decided to watch an early morning religious TV program.
The preacher was a typical televangelist who flies his own aeroplane and lives in a palace.
But his message that morning was good. Bad preachers can preach good sermons.
And that is precisely what happens here in Numbers 23.

Balaam is a false prophet. He is everywhere denounced in Scripture.
He’s not an obviously evil man… he comes across as quite a nice guy.
But like a televangelist he’s in it for the money… like a cult leader he’s happy to lead you astray.
But surprisingly… in this chapter Balaam preaches a good sermon.

Nothing that Balaam says in either this chapter or the next is wrong.
In fact the words of Balaam are some of the most beautiful words found in Numbers.
So here is a false prophet and a bad preacher whom God uses to preach a good sermon.

A] THIS GOOD SERMON HONOURS GOD AND BLESSES HIS PEOPLE.

1. So what is it that makes Balaam’s message a good sermon?

Well, it’s got to be a good sermon when God puts the words in the mouth of the preacher.
The delivery of it may not be the most exciting or the most captivating.
But you cannot argue with the content when it comes straight from God.

King Balak of Moab has sent for Balaam to curse Israel but Balaam can’t bring just any message.
After seven altars have been built and seven bulls and rams offered Balaam consults with God.
And then in vs.5 we read:
The Lord put a message in Balaam’s mouth and said, ‘Go back to Balak and give him this message.
When the message turns out not to be to king Balak’s liking, Balaam replies in vs.12:
Must I not speak what the Lord puts in my mouth? Balaam’s message is God’s Word.

And is this not the very heart of all good Biblical preaching?
Prophet after prophet walks across the pages of history saying: “Thus says the Lord…!”
And if the message that is preached is not God’s message then it’s not good preaching.

Today we have the Word of God written for us in the Bible.
And good preaching today is expounding that Word of God.
And if it is not the Word of God that is being expounded then you ought not to be there.
All of Balak’s efforts to get Balaam to bring a different message are wasted.
Because this bad preacher may only preach a good sermon… the Word God gives him to speak.

2. In the second place good preaching is about God and glorifies God.

That means that thousands of sermons preached today will not be good sermons.
Many sermons preached today will focus on us and our needs.
Sure! The Lord will get an honourable mention but it won’t be about him… it will about us.

I have listened to sermons that were not words from God… the Bible wasn’t even opened.
But even worse than that was that in very subtle ways they gave the glory to man.
‘Want some examples? Listen to some of Joel Osteen’s ‘feel good’ sermons on the Internet.
His theme is that you can succeed because God always blesses human effort and virtue.
Does Osteen say some good things? Absolutely! But the focus is not God and His glory.

Okay… Balaam has a lot to say about Israel… after all that’s what it’s all about for Balak king of Moab.
But notice how Balaam begins… he begins with the sovereignty of God in vs.8.
How can I curse those whom God has not cursed?
How can I denounce those whom the Lord has not denounced?

What Balaam is saying is that whether certain people are blessed or cursed is in God’s court.
Balaam confesses his own powerlessness over against this sovereign God.
God calls the shots… not Balaam…! The fate of the nations is in God’s hands.

That comes out even more clearly in Balaam’s second oracle.
God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should change His mind.
Does He speak and then not act? Does He promise and then not fulfil?

What Balaam is saying is that God is not only totally in control… God is also utterly reliable.
This God can be counted on. And so Balaam draws His own conclusion:
He has blessed and I cannot change it…!

Do you see how Balaam is forced to give God the glory and the honour?
And Balaam especially honours him as the saving… redeeming God.
In vs.22 he glorifies God as the One who brings His people out of Egypt.
A good sermon today glorifies God and it honours Him especially for salvation in Jesus.

3. In the third place a good preaching recognises that there are only two kinds of people in the world.

Maybe that seems like an odd thing to say in today’s multicultural society.

Walk down the main street at lunch time tomorrow and look the huge variety of people.
Not only will you see there people there from all walks of life.
You’ll also see people from many different nations and different continents.
Our city has a mix of Asians and Europeans, Africans and Islanders.

Yet from God’s perspective there are only two kinds of people.
There are those whom God blesses in a very special way.
And there are those who miss out on that blessing.
I’m talking about those who are God’s special people and those who are not.

The point is that after Judgement day, when the dust settles that will be the only important difference.
In the NT Jesus taught that with a variety of different images.
He represented the two kinds of people by five wise maidens and five foolish maidens.
He spoke of them in terms of a separation between the sheep and the goats.
Or between the wheat and the weeds.

Here Balaam shows that Israel belongs to that special group of people whom God wonderfully blesses.
And that blessing is spelled out clearly a number of times in Balaam’s oracles.
So good preaching will hold out to you the blessing of belonging to God’s special people.

B] THIS GOOD SERMON FACES UP TO THE NEED FOR A GOOD DEATH.

1. I particularly want to single out two things that Balaam says in this good sermon.

Two things that are not only helpful and practical for us…

They will also help us understand further why this is a good sermon and why this is a bad preacher.

I want to take the first lesson from Balaam’s first oracle.
(By the way, an oracle is just another way of speaking about a prophecy.)
Notice how Balaam concludes his first oracle in vs.10.
Let me die the death of the righteous, and may my end be like theirs.

I guess that’s again part of good preaching isn’t it?
Good preaching prepares people for dying while they are still living.
And that’s particularly relevant in our society that is in denial about death.
In our culture people don’t want to face death until it happens.
But good preaching will not be silent about it. Jesus was not silent about it.

Balaam seems to imply that you have a choice about the way you die.
It’s certainly not a choice about whether we die… that’s not an option.
Everyone dies. All the people in this story are now dead.

Nor is it a choice about when we die… except for suicide that’s not in our hands.
Balaam actually dies before the book of Numbers is finished.
No! The option seems to be a choice of how we die.
That would be nice wouldn’t it. In bed while asleep? Or in car on the highway?

Not quite! We saw already from God’s perspective there are only two kinds of people.
We now add to that, that there are also two ways of dying.
And those two ways of dying depend on which of those two kinds of people you belong to.

2. Balaam’s wish is to die the death of righteous – that’s clearly expressed in vs.10.

And that’s everyone’s preferred option.
The general attitude is that regardless of how we live we all want to go to heaven when we die.
And today most people even believe that this will be the case.
At funerals of unbeliever in this city most people will talk as if the departed is in heaven.

Most people want to die the death of the righteous.
And many people talk today as if that is precisely how most people will die.

I once counselled an elderly man in a nursing home who was dying. He asked me to take his funeral.
I said: “Yes. But on one condition.” He said, “What’s the condition?”
I answered, “That I will not talk as if you are in heaven… because you reject Jesus as Lord.”
He said, “That’s okay, just tell them I was a good bloke!”
What was he saying? He was, in effect, claiming that he would die as a righteous man.

That is an illusion. And sometimes we see very clearly that it is an illusion that all die well.
That came home very clearly to me once in that same nursing home.
I arrived one morning while the staff were involved in a very lively discussion.
Two elderly ladies had died during the night. And the contrast was stark.
One died with her family singing hymns around her bedside.
The other died screaming obscenities at heaven.
Let me die the death of the righteous, and may my end be like theirs.

It was Israel… the people of God who would die the death of the righteous.

For us that way to die is beautifully pictured Rev.14:13 “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.”

3. Sadly, it seems that Balaam’s wish was not fulfilled.

There are indications in chapter 31 that he died in rebellion against God.

So what we have here is a good sermon… but we have a bad preacher.

The sermon is good… also because it squarely faces the reality of death.
And it is honest about the fact that there are two ways to die.
One way is as the people of God… as righteous people.
The other way is to die as an unbeliever.

It’s a good sermon because this is what God wants this pagan king Balak to hear.
He needs to be faced with the message that there is a death that is a good death.

But this good sermon comes from a bad preacher.
Because this preacher does not practice what he preaches.
How sad is that? To admit that to knowing that there is a good way to die.
Balaam piously stresses that in no uncertain terms.
But when it comes to the crunch he chooses the way of unrighteousness and dies that way.

By the way: did you know that ‘euthanasia’ literally means “a good death”.
But it’s not good death to suicide… or to have a doctor send you off into eternity.
A good death is dying as one of the people of God.
For us today it is dying in the knowledge that we belong to the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the sad reality is that this false prophet says one things and does something else.

Because one can’t have the death of the righteous without also living the life of the righteous.

C] THIS GOOD SERMON SHOWS THE BLESSING OF A RIGHTEOUS LIFE.

1. That brings us to a second practical lesson from this chapter.

Good preaching ought to realistically face death but it should also stress right living.

Or maybe I could put it another way.
The reason why there are two kinds of people…
and why there are two kinds of death is because there are two different lifestyles.

That the difference is not because some people are better than others.
Okay, the issue is righteousness. And righteousness has to do with what is right.
The way Balaam deals with that in verse 21 is rather surprising.

I need to get a little technical and explain to you that verse 21 is about a lifestyle.

Your NIV reads it this way: No misfortune is seen in Jacob… no misery is observed in Israel?
But that leaves questions.
No misfortune is seen in Jacob? Really? That doesn’t fit with reality?
What about the misfortune of having to wander in the wilderness for forty years?
And what does he mean: No misery is seen in Israel?
What about the misery of all those people who died of snakebite or of the plague?

A big question is whether the NIV is the best translation of the Hebrew text.
The word for ‘misfortune’ is a word that is usually translated as ‘iniquity’.
The idea of the word originally was to exert oneself for nothing… wasted effort.
And so it came to mean a very general way of speaking about sin.
God has seen no iniquity… no sin in Jacob.

And the word that the NIV translates as misery originally meant labour… toil.
But it became another ‘sin’ word… that was often translated as ‘mischief’.
God has observed no mischief in Israel.

2. But if we take it this way as many translations do, then doesn’t that still conflict with reality?

In fact it makes the problem worse.

Look at it again: “God has seen no iniquity in Jacob.”
Iniquity… meaning the very slightest of shortcoming. That isn’t seen in Jacob…?
And then please notice that God doesn’t even call them Israel.
He actually uses the name of their ancestor – Jacob – a name that means deceiver.
And God doesn’t see any hint of sin in that conniving patriarch of theirs?

And as for mischief not being observed in Israel…?
We’re temped to call out: Lord, what about the golden calf?
And what about Korah, Dathan and Abiram?
Or the endless episodes of grumbling against the Lord and against Moses?
What does God mean when he sees not the slightest sin in His people?

This is not the only place in the Bible where we see this problem. Turn to the Psalms.
I once had a teenager come up to me after church with a question.
She was reading through the Psalms at the time and then she got to Psalm 18.
Listen to what David says about himself in vss.20-24 of Psalm 18.
The LORD has dealt with me according to my righteousness;
according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me.
For I have kept the ways of the LORD; I have not done evil by turning from my God.
All his laws are before me; I have not turned away from his decrees.
I have been blameless before him and have kept myself from sin.
The LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness,
according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.
This lass wanted to ask: David, what about your adultery with Bathsheba, your murder of Uriah?

3. There are two possible answers.

One is that God was looking at the true Israel within the nation.
Paul once said that a true Israelite is one who is an Israelite inwardly.
So there is a true spiritual Israel within the nation. They were the righteous ones.

But that still leaves us with questions. They weren’t perfect either.
And what about David’s claims to be innocent in Psalm 18?

No! There is another answer… an answer that lies in God.

God chooses not to hold against His people any of their sins.
Numbers 23:21 doesn’t mean God is ignorant of Israel’s sin.
God knows our slightest slip ups… even the sins of our thoughts.
Numbers 23:21 doesn’t mean God couldn’t care less about our sins.
We’re told that God was displeased with David over what he did with Bathsheba.

No! The answer is that when God’s people put their faith in Him, He no longer remembers their sin.
They are declared to be righteous in His sight.
We as Christians speak of this as being right with God by faith in Jesus.
And when that happens then it is true. Gloriously true.
God no longer sees in us the slightest hint of sin… not the least bit of mischief.

Today we belong to that special group of people who are blessed by God.
And we are those who will be privileged… when we die… to die the death of the righteous.
But that’s not because we’re better than other people… or because we go to the Lord’s Supper.
It’s because we live by faith in the Son of God who gave Himself for us.

Balaam wanted to die the death of the righteous but he refused the life of the righteous.
He stuck with Balak instead of casting in his lot with the people of God.
And the result was that he died the death of the ungodly. What’s it going to be for you?

Amen.

Written by Rev. John Westendorp