Paganism and the Doctrine of Balaam

Numbers 22:2-25:9
Micah 5:6-6:8
I Corinthians 1:20-31

Proverbs 26:2  As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.

There seems a discrepancy between the idea that we are created in God’s image to the extent that our words have creative force, that there is power in our prayers, and the opposing idea that a curse has no power unless it is deserved and that a prophet can speak neither blessing nor curse unless God allows it. However, there is truth on both sides if properly understood.

There's an old joke about scientists claiming to be able to create life from nothing. When God challenged the scientists, they took a handful of dirt with which to demonstrate their new technology. "Huh-uh," God said. "Get your own dirt."

We were created in God’s image, but we are not exact copies. The earthly tabernacle was a corruptible copy of the one in Heaven, the feast days are shadows of the reality that is the Messiah, and mankind is an imperfect, much scaled down replica of God. Unlike him, we cannot create something out of nothing by merely speaking. We need something on which to build. We are unable to get our own dirt, so to speak, so we have to make do with what we can find.

When Balaam tried to curse Israel, he failed because, as a prophet, he could only give what prophecies God gave him. His patron, Balak, understood the principle of Proverbs 26:2, that a curse undeserved has no effect, so he took Balaam to first one place and then another, thinking that a different perspective might give Balaam the hook he needed to make the curse stick. But he misunderstood the nature of a real prophet: true prophecy comes from God and no other.

If a prophet speaks truth, then his words are the words of God, and God can no more curse the righteous than could Balaam. Hence Balaam’s statement that “[YHWH] has not seen iniquity in Jacob, neither has He seen perverseness in Israel.” It was not that Israel had no sin at all, but that God had chosen to forgive them like a husband who chooses to overlook his wife’s flaws. From God’s point of view, Israel had no sin to which a curse could be attached.

Finding no fault in Israel, Balaam showed Balak how he might create a fault that God could not overlook by seducing Israel into idolatry. This is the “doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication.” (Revelation 2:14)

Eating “things sacrificed to idols” does not refer simply to eating meat from sacrificial animals, but to actively participating in the sacrifice. Those who teach God’s people that it is acceptable to engage in pagan rituals and abandon God’s law so long as their “hearts are in the right place” are today’s Balaam. They cause God’s people to commit sins that he cannot overlook, opening them to whatever curse the enemy might choose to throw.

Be careful when someone says to you that "God doesn't care if you do this or that if you're doing it in the right spirit." If it is something that God has commanded us not to do, then there is only one spirit in which you could possibly do it, and it isn't a "right" one.