NUMBERS 23
The seven altars which Balaam asked Balak to build, and upon each of which he offered up a bullock and a ram, were probably suggested by some knowledge which Balaam had acquired of the sacrifices which [p. 293] God had appointed to be offered by His people. He said to God, “I have disposed seven altars, and have offered up a bullock and a ram upon each altar” (verse 4). Ungodly men may take up what is in the Scriptures, and even speak of Christ and His death, when they have no true appreciation of the import of these things, nor any desire for the good of the people whom God has blessed. But, however corrupt the motives that governed Balaam and Balak, it was no doubt, ordered by God that they should offer what spoke to Him of Christ. It was like the prophecy of Caiaphas in John 11:50 - 52, uttered to his own condemnation, but declaring on God’s part most wondrous and precious truth. If Balaam had light enough to think that a burnt-offering would be acceptable to God, he should have known that it could not be the ground of curse but of blessing. It should have suggested to him that it was on the ground of the burnt-offering that Jehovah had said, “they are blessed”! But neither Balaam nor Caiaphas knew anything spiritually of what was bound up, by the wisdom of God, in what they said and did.
“And Jehovah put a word in Balaam’s mouth, and said, Return to Balak, and thus shalt thou speak” (verse 5). The perfection of Christ, and of His offering, has come before God; it has glorified God about all that in which man in the flesh was offensive to Him. And, on that ground, His elect become the subjects of divine working, and are taken out of the world for blessing. God works in His sovereign love to bring this about. Balaam’s parables are of great importance as bringing out what God is doing in His great love and power. He will have a people for Himself in spite of the enemy, and in spite of what the flesh is. He brings about that there are those who are “born of water and of Spirit”. Such persons are morally separated [p. 294] from the world of evil. They cannot be cursed, whatever devices of darkness are set in motion against them. “How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I denounce whom Jehovah doth not denounce?” (verse 8).
“For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations” (verse 9). One of the most elementary thoughts as to the assembly is that God has “visited to take out of the nations a people for his name”; His Name is invoked on them. This is a sovereign operation of God, “who does these things known from eternity” (Acts 15:14 - 17). The word “assembly” (ecclesia) means a “called out” company, separated from the world by the call of God. God’s people are saints by calling; they are the called ones of Jesus Christ. Redemption, new birth, faith in Christ, the gift of the Spirit, and all the divine working in men, go to secure “a people that shall dwell alone” — God’s elect. The ones who would be called were all in the divine view long before they were called. Indeed, they were chosen in Christ before the world’s foundation, and “written from the founding of the world in the book of life of the slain Lamb”. So the Shepherd could say, “And I have other sheep which are not of this fold: those also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). Every Gentile sheep that the Shepherd would bring was known to Him as His, many of us long centuries before we were born. Soon after the commencement of Paul’s labours in Corinth the Lord said to him, “I have much people in this city” (Acts 18:10). Many of them were not yet called, but they would be. We can understand how Paul would look at them as “those that are called” — persons appropriated [p. 295] by the Lord, and ever to be regarded in this light, notwithstanding much that was a grief to him. It is important that we should understand that we are not saints merely because at a certain time we decided for Christ, or believed on Him, but because God has called us in sovereign love. From the moment of our natural birth we were regarded by God in the light of the fact that He had marked us out for calling by grace (see Galatians 1:15).
Then from the time that new birth took place there began to be a distinct moral separation from the world. Persons born anew are different from the world; they are repentant, and have exercises which mark them off from others. Perhaps most believers can look back to exercises in unconverted days which they recognise now as divine movements tending to separate them from the course of this world. “But we ought to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, that God has chosen you from the beginning to salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereto he has called you by our glad tidings, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 2:13,14). Paul mentions ten lepers in 1 Corinthians 6:9,10, and he adds, “And these things were some of you; but ye have been washed, but ye have been sanctified, but ye have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God”. “Ye have been washed” speaks of moral cleansing from the filthiness of the heathen world, and “ye have been sanctified” shows that they were set apart for God. They were a people dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the nations! All had been really brought about in the power of the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
How could a people so set apart by a sovereign work of God come under His curse? It is impossible.
[p. 296] He who has begun in them a good work will complete it unto Jesus Christ’s day (Philippians 1:6). If we think of what man can do, or of how he can endure, there is no stability or security at all, but if we think of the work of God, all is ordered and sure. The line of His working is as a golden chain stretching across time, but fixed at both ends in eternity. The saints are called according to purpose; they are foreknown, predestinated, called, justified, glorified, every link in the chain is absolutely unbreakable; its strength lies in God, and in His purpose of sovereign love.
How blessed to see that God calls attention to His elect as an innumerable company! “Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel?” (verse 10). People think of God’s election as narrowing up blessing, but it is usually presented in Scripture as securing a vast number for blessing who otherwise would have none. God will not be content with a few; He will have His house full.
Even Balaam was, for the moment, affected by what he saw: “Let my soul die the death of the righteous, and let my end be like his” (verse 10). I suppose most people would like to die the death of the righteous, but they have no desire to live the life of the righteous, for that is a life of separation from the world and from the flesh.
Though so definitely rebuffed, Balak did not abandon the desire to have the people cursed, for Jehovah was minded to make known still more of His design to bless them. Balak thought that if they could not all be cursed perhaps some of them could, so he would bring Balaam to a spot from whence he could “see only the extremity of them” (verse 13). It will be remembered that the beginning of murmuring in this book (chapter 11:1) was followed by the fire of Jehovah burning among the people, which “consumed some in the extremity of the camp”. This suggests that it was amongst those farthest from the tabernacle that murmuring was most pronounced. Some tidings of this might have reached Balak’s ears, but, whether or not, “the extremity of them” would be those who were most remote from Jehovah’s sanctuary. Balak’s thought was that those in such a position were more likely to come under curse than all the people. This was the subtlety of the serpent. How the enemy would take advantage of the want of spirituality, the low state, the actual failures and sins, of God’s people, to bring them, if possible, under a curse! He is the accuser of the brethren before God day and night, and no doubt there is often that which gives him ground to accuse so that the brethren can only “overcome him by reason of the blood of the Lamb” (see Revelation 12:10,11).
But Balak had to learn, and we by the same parable, that not even “the extremity” of God’s people can be cursed. Not even those who might seem to the enemy to have given good cause for cursing! They are God’s elect, and none can bring an accusation against them that will be heard; they are justified from all things. And this stands connected with the unchangeable truth of God, and with the fact that His gifts and calling are not subject to repentance (Romans 11:29). “God is not a man that he should lie; neither a son of man, that he should repent” (verse 19). How good it is to see that all depends on the truth and faithfulness of God! He had said long before, “And I will take you to me for a people, and will be your God; and ye shall know that I, Jehovah your God, am he who bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you into the land concerning which I swore to give it unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob; and I will give [p. 298] it you for a possession: I am Jehovah” (Exodus 6:7,8). Nothing can invalidate this; it is God who speaks, not man. “Shall he say and not do? and shall he speak and not make it good?” (verse 19). God will have a people, and He will bless them, in spite of every evil power in the universe. Hence Balaam is made to say, “Behold, I have received mission to bless; and he hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it” (verse 20).
But how could God have a people for Himself, secured for blessing, if He was not able to justify them from all things connected with their former sinful history? Justification is a necessity from the side of man’s responsibility, if he is to be freed from every charge that might be brought against him, but it is also a necessity from the side of God’s purpose. How could He have a people to whom righteousness required Him to impute sin? How could such be consciously in His favour and blessing? The marvellous truth is that God Himself justifies, so that it can be said, “In Jehovah shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory” (Isaiah 45:25). He is perfectly just in justifying those who believe in Jesus, for He does it on the ground that their sins have been borne, as typified in the scape-goat of the day of atonement, and the sin in their flesh has been condemned, as typified in the serpent lifted up. So that in divine righteousness it can be said, “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen wrong in Israel” (verse 21).
There is no human illustration of justification. A man proved innocent of the charge brought against him may leave a court of justice without any imputation resting upon him. But for a man guilty of many offences to be held righteously freed from all imputation is a thing unknown save in the divine ways of infinite grace.
But the “one righteousness” which Christ accomplished on the cross, in virtue of which God justifies, had in view what Scripture calls “justification of life” (Romans 5:18). Men are justified in view of God henceforth having His place with them. The justified man of Psalm 32:1,2 is henceforth the godly man of verse 6. A man is justified that he may have the Spirit, and thus have God with him as power to overcome the flesh and all that is evil here. This is set forth in the words, “Jehovah his God is with him, and the shout of a king is in his midst. God brought him out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of a buffalo” (verses 21,22). God is with His justified people, and His Spirit indwells them; His kingdom is there, not merely in word but in power.
This being the case, “there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel” (verse 23). It will be noticed that in each of the four parables Balaam uses the two names. “Jacob” speaks of the saints in their responsible life of exercise and discipline, but “Israel” suggests their princely place with God according to His calling. But in neither aspect can the power of evil prevail against them, for they are the work of God. “At this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!” (verse 23). It is not here what God has thought — what He has in mind and purpose — but what He has wrought. It brings before us the permanent stability of the work of God in His saints. Whether viewed as in responsibility here, as in Romans, or abstractly in Christ, as in 2 Corinthians 5:17; 2 Corinthians 12:2, the saints are wrought of God. He has wrought us for that condition of glory which He has purposed for us (2 Corinthians 5:5), but in the meantime we are in the wilderness as a people of whom it can be said, “What hath God wrought!”
[p. 300] These parables view the people of God, not as in the flesh, but as the product of the work of God. As identified in mind and affection with the Spirit as the Well of chapter 21:16 - 18 we become spiritually competent to entertain these precious thoughts, and to know them as divine realities. Overcoming is secured on this line, which I understand to be conveyed in the closing words of this parable. “Lo, the people will rise up as a lioness, and lift himself up as a lion. He shall not lie down until he hath eaten the prey and drunk the blood of the slain”.
No wonder that Balak said, “Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all” (verse 25). It grieved him to hear of Jacob and Israel as the wondrous product of the grace and work of God. But there was yet more to be brought out of what the saints are, viewed in this light. So Balak was permitted to make one more attempt to get them cursed, in order that the Spirit of God might delineate for us the beauty and attractiveness which mark the saints in the wilderness, viewed as God’s workmanship.
“And Balak brought Balaam to the top of Peor, which looks over the surface of the waste” (verse 28). Balak could see nothing there but a “waste”, and that seemed to favour cursing. He could see nothing of that “vision of the Almighty” which was just about to be seen and described by Balaam. May we have eyes to see it, so that we may henceforth have clear perception of the beauty which the work of God produces in His saints, Not merely seeing it as Balaam saw it — a beautiful vision of something in which he would never have any part — but seeing it as that which will be produced in us if we walk in the Spirit. For what Balaam saw is the portrayal, in a figurative way, of the spiritual beauty which the work of God in His people produces, even in wilderness conditions.