Lures of Apostates in the Church

Transcript

GR 2297
07/26/2020
Lures of Apostates in the Church
Jude 11; Genesis 4; Numbers 22-25
Gil Rugh


We're going to the book of Jude in your Bibles, that little one chapter book, all the way at the back of your Bible, just before the book of Revelation we have the little one chapter book of Jude. Small, sometimes overlooked and ignored, although recently, relatively recently, there have been a number of commentaries that have written on the book of Jude so it is getting more attention. It in some ways is like the prophets of the Old Testament, it is sometimes considered a harsh book because he deals very firmly, directly, with apostates, false teachers, who have infiltrated among believers and are spreading error and the danger is real.

Jude started out identifying himself as a slave of Jesus Christ and a brother of James. And Jude is fond of triads, statements using three things. You know the first verse he identified himself as Jude, a slave, a brother, so by name and then his position, a slave of Jesus Christ, a brother of James. At the last part of verse 1 he writes to those who are called, beloved and kept, so these three statements appear a number of times. You may be familiar with those if you have read some on James. He has used three examples in verses 5-7, he used Israel, he used angels, and he used Sodom and Gomorrah, examples from the past of those who sinned and were severely judged by God for their sin, and that is to be an example of those who turn against God. Israel, we noted, was rescued out of Egypt, then God destroyed those He rescued, all the men that came out of Egypt that were 20 years of age or older died in the wilderness, a judgment of God. The angels who sinned, they started out all right but they ended up under judgment. Sodom and Gomorrah persisted in sin and they came under judgment. So these examples, he is trying to drive home the importance of faithfulness to God's truth so that God's people will, as he exhorted them and I keep reminding you, in verse 3, to “contend earnestly,” to agonize intensely, “for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.” The danger that has increased with the passing of time is we get comfortable with the truth and comfortable to the point we don't really want to have to do battle for the truth. So we try to broaden ourselves, be more accepting of more things, not so narrow, not so critical. Now there is an unbiblical way to be narrow, an unbiblical way to be critical. But we cannot sacrifice the truth, we have to hold to the truth, it is God's truth. When we develop reasons or thinking for loosening our hold on it we are really deciding to become less obedient to God. There is something more important than His truth, which is another way of saying something more important than He is: our comfort, our fitting in, our being accepted, our having more people, those kinds of things are dangers.

After using the examples that he did in verses 5-7, verse 8 he says, “Yet in the same way these men also,” and he showed they come up with their own ideas, their own thinking by dreaming. They may have claimed to have direct revelation, they may be just be saying this is their own thinking but sometimes you get into the discussion with someone and they are reasoning and you say, something is not quite right, I don't know if it's wrong. And remember we looked into 2 Corinthians 11, Satan masquerades as an angel of light. He doesn't always come full force as someone opposed to truth. One of his most effective ways when dealing with God's people is to lure them in by looking good. I was watching a program, I forgot it was available but it's a religious broadcasting and there was a heretic on there, claims to be a believer but he is obviously a heretic, I'm well familiar with his writings and so on. And he had a PhD professor trained man who was there with him because he was an expert in Bible and Bible languages and that. And this man is going on and on and that professor is saying that's right, that's right, yes. And I think they masquerade as angels of light. And he is using a lot of the Bible but he is not using it correctly and he is saying things in passages that really aren't there that quite frankly you would like them to be there because what he is saying appeals to the flesh. We all want to be healthy and you can just show from the scripture that God doesn't intend you, His people, not to be healthy. And he is proud to say he has an airplane and flies it because God doesn't intend His people to be poor either. I remember hearing one of them who was a friend of this man saying, God has prepared mansions for us in glory, He doesn't want you to live in a chicken coop on earth.

Well, I like that, yah, good. To validate what? Pursuit of things. And then these ways, they sometimes more subtly, sometimes less subtly. The more you know the Word, the more subtle he has to be to lure you in. That's why he likes churches to get weaker in the Word, then they will be less discerning or more easily entangled, then he doesn't have to produce such good counterfeits. These men are examples. Don't think these examples drawn from past history were just history stories, but it's not the kind of situations we face. The very thing Jude is saying, we're coming into more of this in our study today, things haven't changed. The devil is the same devil, he is working the same way in opposition to God who is the unchanging God.

Michael showed, verse 9, respect to angels. These men in contrast, they don't have respect for anything. We come to the Word and we show respect because of what God has revealed in the Word, and the order He has established for us. And we sometimes forget that. “They revile things,” verse 10, “which they do not understand.” Now we're talking about unbelievers here. Now they are disguised as believers, but you measure them according to the truth We all know how this is, when you've talked to a maybe new believer or a relatively untrained believer and they are talking to you about . . . I remember a person, we were having lunch, he's a well-trained professional man, and as we talked at lunch he said I have a book I'd like you to read, I just think it is great. But it was not great. And I'm thinking, why? What have you been taught over these many years? You are an intelligent man but the knowledge of the Scripture is shallow, you should have seen this very quickly.

They “revile the things which they do not understand, and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals.” Now keep that in mind because he is going to use an illustration that will fit that. They don't go any further in their thinking than the animals do, in that sense. They don't discern spiritual things, they are spiritually dead, they are spiritually blind, they are spiritually deaf, this is their condition. When we lose sight of that, we become confused. “And by these things they are destroyed.” They have gone their own way, and that's where we picked up in verse 11, this is where we left off in these examples from the Old Testament.

“They have gone the way of Cain.” So you see these apostates, they never did believe the truth. The danger is how they might influence true believers and thus lead believers away from the truth. And now we've created confusion because now believers are caught up in a mixture of truth and error and that progressively gets worse and worse. We've allowed the disease of sin, to use that analogy, to infiltrate among us and it won't go away, it spreads, and over time it takes over. It just amazes me to look and see in my lifetime, the seminary I attended was infiltrated in a way that some of the professors thought wasn't worth the battle and it just destroyed the whole thing. I say, how could this be? I remember the president was there as he was in his closing days, sharing with a professor I knew who was saying, look what they have done to our school. He could see it, he had been president for years, was president during the years I was there. And now, he'd been retired for a number of years, he just said, can you believe what they have done to our school. How did that happen? These are men that taught me the Word, they were in the Word. Somehow let one person in, that influence, if you don't deal with it, it spreads. This is Jude's concern, he keeps hammering away at it, I keep emphasizing it because it is still a danger.

“Woe to them,” he's talking about these false teachers, recognize their character. Like you tell your children, they are young, certain things you avoid. You don't talk to certain people, you don't get in a car with certain people. Why? You repeat it, you repeat it. They'll say, I know. They do know what you told them, your concern is that knowledge will so be part of them that they will recognize it and run from it when it confronts them. “Woe to them,” these false teachers, “for they have gone the way of Cain.” And again he assumes that you know these characters. And Cain, we talked a little bit about him, but Cain the son of Adam and Eve and we noted what happened with him.

We'll go back there again, why don't you turn back to Genesis 4. We're getting back to the beginning of the beginning from the standpoint you have creation in the first two chapters, and then you have the fall into sin, and then we come to Genesis 4. And it opened up with Adam and Eve had relations, Eve bore a son and named him Cain, then she bore his brother Abel and then here they come to bring their sacrifice. This is using him as an example as he has used a couple of times in the New Testament. Cain was a tiller of the ground, Abel kept the flocks. Cain brought of the fruit of the ground, it didn't say he didn't bring the best of his fruit. The fruit of the ground is that which is produced by the ground, it grows out of the ground—the bushes, the trees, whatever. “Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of the flock and their fat portions.” Now there is specificity here, the firstlings of the flock, the fatlings. And a reminder, there had been revelation from God, and we know that from later scripture that Abel is responding in faith to God. We had a preparation for this, as we have talked about, because when Adam and Eve clothed themselves with leaves, when God came to confront them He replaced the leaves with animal skins because without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. So the sacrifice and the instruction on sacrifice would have begun early.

Now you can see something is wrong here. “the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard.” Now if God came to us and said, I accept your worship, I do not accept your worship, and I'm sitting there and He says I do not accept what you offer as worship of me, what would my right attitude be? To bow before Him, to make the correction. Cain is angry with his brother because he is angry with God. God shouldn't tell me how to worship Him, He ought to be happy I came to worship Him. This is the attitude of people today. If you point out from scripture that their worship is not acceptable to God, they are angry, they vent their anger on you, but they are really angry with God because you are just telling them what God said. Jesus said no one can come to the Father but by Me; God said there is one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus. You tell somebody that and they are angry, they may express their anger to you but they are really angry with God. That's where Cain is.

“Cain became very angry.” Why? What did his brother do? He just did what God told him to do because he believed God. What did Cain do? He did what he wanted to do. I did it my way, God should be happy with that. Wait a minute, who decides? You see the way of Cain here, these men have made up their own way, they have a corrupted worship. The devil is happy with worship, he wants worship. Paul had to remind the Corinthians to be careful about getting involved in false worship because false worship is the worship of demons. The devil loves worship, he just is opposed to truth in worship and worship in truth.

So it ends up, God reminds Cain, you do the right thing, you'll be accepted; you do the wrong thing, sin will control you since Cain chooses his way. And my solution is I'll kill my brother. God will take my worship or He'll get nothing. I don't know what he was thinking. It wasn't Abel who wouldn't accept his worship, his offering; it was God who said I don't accept it and Cain's solution is to be angry and kill his brother. I sometimes say, sin makes you stupid. Does this make any sense? God told him you have to do the right thing for your worship to be accepted, for you to be acceptable to Me do the right thing. No, and I'll kill the one who does the right thing. And this is a reminder, all apostates, all unbelievers are at root our enemies, we cannot think we will invite them in. We had this movement, seeker services, because you get as many unbelievers into your congregation as you can and you don't offend them and make them comfortable, and over time they will become believers. And over time, really, what happens is the believers get corrupted and weakened and eventually destroyed. So that's Cain.

Come over to the New Testament, Hebrews 11, we're in the context “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God,” and so on. Talking about faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. We believe God, our life is founded upon our belief and faith in God and what He has said and what He has promised. I haven't seen it, I've seen the results; I've never seen forgiveness of sins, I've seen the result of sins forgiven. But I believe sins are forgiven because God says they are when you believe Him and His provision.

“By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts,” his offering, it was offered in faith. God wants those who worship Him in spirit and truth Jesus said. Comes out of a heart of faith which will be in accord with the truth. The Samaritan woman had to change her way of thinking. “Through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.” These are lessons we are to learn, you only worship God by faith and faith means you come His way, not your way. He is still speaking because it is faith, it is an ongoing testimony as it has always been. We always go to Genesis 15:6 because it says Abraham believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness. But that's not the first time a person was saved by faith. We're all the way back to the beginning, Adam and Eve being clothed with animal skins, then Abel being declared righteous by God, offering a sacrifice that was acceptable, because he believed God.

Come over to 1 John 3:11. What he is drawing out here is a contrast, note verse 10, “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious.” Now in a way they are not obvious because they masquerade as angels of light, sometimes the children of the devil, but they ought to be obvious as we carefully examine. “Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God (truth), nor the one who does not love his brother.” So the righteousness we are credited with when we believe in Christ is to become characteristic of our practice, and if it's not, then we are not righteous. That doesn't mean we never make a mistake, we never stumble, we never sin, but the pattern of our life is different. Up in verse 7 he said, “Little children, make sure no on deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil.” It's with the coming of Christ that the work of the devil and our own sin was dealt with so we can be set free to live righteously. And you have to love other believers. Sometimes the church gets infiltrated by unbelievers and it will create factions. That's where Jude will go, we won't get there in this study, but factions are an evidence of unbelievers infiltrating among. That doesn't mean two believers can't have disagreements, but we need to be careful that we stand for the truth. Sometimes we presuppose that we are dealing with a believer so we don't want to stand against them when we think they are not functioning according to truth, they are not teaching truth. People come about a certain teacher or a book that they've read and I point what I see as error. Well, I don't think we have to be that particular, I think they are good men, I think he does good. Wait a minute, am I replacing my thinking with God's instruction? That doesn't mean my opinion, but we have to bring everything under the searchlight of the Word. The one who does not love his brother. “This is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” What John is basically saying, what don't you understand, here is what God said. Now those who are in rebellion against God, should they be accepted as believers? Because someone stumbles we're not going to be all over them, you are not a believer. But we are looking for a pattern, something is wrong… People go from church to church to church to church and they are never settled, maybe because they don't fit when they get mixed in with believers. And that's where the pressure is for the believer to compromise.

And who is the example? “This is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain,” now note what he says about Cain, “who was of the evil one.” He didn't have the same faith as his brother. Think about that. There is one couple, Adam and Eve, they have sinned but their sin has been cared for by God's mercy and grace and they have been clothed with the animal skins provided by God as He provided the sacrifice for them. They have two children, two parents who walked with God in the Garden and had to be excluded from the Garden because of sin. Now they have two sons, one is a child of God and one is a child of the devil because one believed God and one did not. I wonder what Adam and Eve did differently. What could they have done? The scripture doesn't indicate any problem here except if Adam and Eve had never sinned they would have never had sinful kids, we would all agree with that. But they did, and we do. “Cain was of the evil one and he slew his brother.” Now note this, “For what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother's were righteous.” So what's the application of that? “Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.” We're all the way back to Cain, yet we have Christians that say, I'm troubled, I don't know why the world… Are we doing something wrong? Why do people say bad things about our church?

Someone was talking with me in the last week and they were witnessing and made the point the person goes to a liberal church in town and when he mentioned he went to Indian Hills, ah, yah (said with distain). That's what it ought to be, I don't expect the unbeliever should like us. Do you think the devil likes us, loves us? We are God's people. If we are loved by the devil and his demons and his people, then we are of them. The reason Cain hated Abel was because he was evil and his brother was righteous. It is a war of the unrighteous against the righteous, the devil against God, the children of the devil against the children of God. I'm not saying we want to be mean to unbelievers, we are to treat them respectfully and show mercy and thoughtfulness to them, but we never want to pretend that we are the same. We don't want the unbeliever to come here and us to embarrass them, use them. We want them to be comfortable in their seats, we want them to be greeted, we want to be friendly toward them, but no, you're not one of us. We don't want to offend them. They can come week after week, that's why we don't want people in positions that haven't been tested and tried, because over time the character… Do they fit? They don't. Why don't they fit?

I talked to someone from out of town, been through several different churches and I said, have you ever stopped to question why you keep having a problem? I'm sure there are immature people in these different churches, and maybe they didn't do always the right thing, but why are you always the one in trouble? Why are you always the one causing trouble? Let's start there. That's what John is saying, and then we want to recognize here is Cain's problem, he is the example, he didn't love his brother. Don't think the world is going to love you. When Satan infiltrates among us, he has one goal, to destroy us. We see this going on in a secular world around us when an opposing philosophy, whatever you want to call it, takes hold. But first you have to destroy what is there to take it over, that's the way it works, that's the way it works spiritually. The devil infiltrates, gets accepted, but we are here to destroy. Pretend we are part of them, we then progressively destroy them. That's what Cain did, killed his brother.

Don't be surprised if the world hates you. It's not because we should do more social programs, we should get involved in racial justice so that the world will see we are good people, and they will like us. No, that's not the problem, the problem is truth. And that's part of what the devil does, we'll replace truth with this. Then you replace the truth with that, you have moved off track. Believers begin to not hold fast to the truth, so don't be surprised. Cain is an example to us, don't be surprised if the world hates you, so when you wonder why they have that attitude towards you. We've tried to be good neighbors. Well, if they know you are a believer, you practice what you believe, there will be conflict.

Come back to Jude. First example, Cain. Next example, “they have gone the way of Cain,” so they are traveling that road as these apostates, and you don't want to get on and go that road with them, not the road believers travel. “They have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam,” now another Old Testament person. And these apostates, because as we've made clear we are distinguishing between believer and unbeliever. He's describing unbelievers here, he doesn't want the influence of unbelievers to corrupt believers, they have gone all-in, that's the meaning of ‘headlong,’ they're full bore “into the error of Balaam.”

We have to go back to Balaam in Numbers 22, and you are familiar with the account of Balaam. Israel is coming out, moving through the land God is going to give them and the nations are afraid, the Ammonites, the Moabites particularly in view. So Numbers 22, “The sons of Israel journeyed, and camped in the plains of Moab beyond the Jordan opposite Jericho.” And then Balak who is king, and they are afraid and he is seeing what the Israelites have done and the victory God has given them so they want to get someone who has spiritual power to come help them. So the end of verse 4 tells you this Balak is king of Moab at that time. “He sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor,” and tells where he was. And he says there are these people who have come out from Egypt and they are covering the land, there are hordes of them. Come please curse them for me. So here is a prophet who has a reputation, he can go to God and get answers, so he'll come and curse these people and I'll be able to destroy them.

So the elders of Moab go to Balaam the prophet and they bring gifts, because you have to pay for his services. So verse 7, they “departed with the fees for divination in his hands.” Balaam tells them, spend the night with me, I'll pray about it, and evidently God would speak to him in a dream probably. Verse 12, “God said to Balaam, ‘Do not go with them; you shall not curse the people, for they are blessed.’ ” I want you to note something here, as one commentator noted, we sometimes say God cannot use an impure instrument. He does, He often does. We'll see Balaam is not in any way a godly prophet, he's not in any way a believer. He's mentioned in about a dozen different chapters in the Bible, Old and New Testament, always as an example of an unbeliever. But God spoke to him and he is going to get some tremendous prophecies regarding Israel that are true because they come from God, but they come through an unclean prophet.

God says, don't go back, don't go with them, they are blessed. So in verse 13, Balaam gets up in the morning and says to Balak, the king's servants that came to him with their gifts, “Go back to your land, for the Lord has refused to let me go with you.” Sounds good, in fact when you get working through here it's hard to think that Balaam is not a genuine prophet. But he says no, I can't go, God said no, so they go back, tell the king he couldn't come, and God told him not to come. Balak, the king of the Moabites says, here, take these better gifts, more expensive gifts, his view is we probably didn't pay him enough. And he sent more important men to go, and he not only sent the gift, he sent people of high position in the government and that sort of intimidates you and makes you feel important. He has a message, “thus says Balak,” don't let anything hinder you. Look at verse 17, “For I will indeed honor you richly, and I will do whatever you say to me.” Come and curse this people, the Israelites. Verse 18, listen to Balaam, godless man, “Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not do anything either small or great, contrary to the command of the Lord my God.” That sounds pretty good, devil counterfeits can be good.

Balaam gives his answer, he tells these servants, I'll go before the Lord again. So “God came to Balaam,” verse 20, “at night and said to him, ‘If the men have come to call you, rise up and go with them; but only the word which I speak to you shall you do.’ ” But God is angry with him, verse 22, because he was going, because God had already told Balaam. Balaam didn't like what God told him. Now we can come to God more than once, but we ought to be careful, when God tells us yes or tells us no, we better pay attention. Balaam's heart is not with God. He's back and God knows, because he really wants to go, his heart has not changed. He feels boxed in by God because he recognizes I'm getting supernatural information here but it's not what I want so I don't want to submit to it. So he's going through what he feels he has to do, but we would say his heart is not in it, he doesn't really believe it.

So he goes, “But God,” verse 22, “was angry because he was going, and the angel of the Lord,” which I think in the Old Testament is the pre-incarnate Christ, “took His stand in the way as an adversary against him. Now he was riding on his donkey and his two servants were with him.” The donkey sees the angel of the Lord, Balaam doesn't. Remember we were told that these apostates in Jude were like unreasoning animals, well, here is a picture. The donkey has more spiritual sight than Balaam does, he sees the angel of the Lord but Balaam the prophet does not. The donkey doesn't want to keep going, there is no future in going forward, so he wants to turn back. So Balaam starts to hit the donkey. What's wrong with you? Verse 24, “Then the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow path of the vineyards, a wall on this side and a wall on that side.” So they have these stone walls where the vineyard is and you're going down this narrow path. Here is the angel of the Lord standing here with a sword and the donkey sees it again, so he keeps trying to turn but he can't turn so he keeps banging against the wall and he's banging Balaam's legs against the wall because there is no room to turn.

Verse 25, “The donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she pressed herself to the wall and pressed Balaam's foot against the wall, so he struck her again. The angel of the Lord went further, and stood in a narrow place where there was no way to turn.” “When the donkey,” verse 27, “saw the angel of the Lord, she lay down under Balaam.” She just stopped, lay down, now Balaam is really angry and struck the donkey with his stick, he is beating on this poor donkey. “And the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, ‘What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?’ ” It is funny. You talk about an unbeliever being like a unreasoning animal. The donkey has to tell Balaam. Now you note the donkey doesn't get prophecies, he's an unreasoning animal, but he knows what he sees, it would be foolish for me to go forward. Balaam talks back to the donkey. You stop and think, this is strange, the donkey is talking to me. No, he just answers him back. Why am I striking you? Verse 29, “ ‘Because you have made a mockery of me! If there had been a sword in my hand, I would have killed you by now.’ The donkey said to Balaam, ‘Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I ever been accustomed to do so to you?’ ” Have I ever not done what you wanted me to do? Balaam said no, you have always been a good donkey.

Now the Lord opens the eyes of Balaam and he has the eyes of a donkey. “He saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with His drawn sword in His hand; and he bowed all the way to the ground. The angel of the Lord said to him, ‘Why have you struck your donkey these three times? I have come out as an adversary, because your way was contrary to me. The donkey saw Me and turned aside these three times. If she had not turned aside, I would surely have killed you, and let her live.” That pretty well puts Balaam in his place. And you can appreciate when Jude says “they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam,” I mean, they've gone full force into going the way Balaam did. If you know anything about the story of Balaam, what does this say about them? They were like unreasoning animals, they just go by instinct. Balaam is acting like the donkey and the donkey is acting like the man, the donkey sees the angel of the Lord and Balaam is clueless.

Balaam says I'll go back if you tell me to go back. Now you can see here there can be a conversation just like there is a conversation between the devil and God in heaven in the opening chapters of the book of Job. So be careful, we're learning about an apostate here. The angel of the Lord said no, you go ahead and go, but you only say what I tell you to say. So Balaam arrives, Barak the king wants him to curse the Israelites. And the end of verse 38, Balaam, “The word that God puts in my mouth, that I shall speak.” So then chapter 23 he goes and makes offerings. And evidently the reason he is making these offerings… He prepares seven bulls and seven rams. And the diviners, remember they sent gifts for divination, they would take the organs out, as you are familiar in those days, and then with the liver and the heart and the kidneys and that they could supposedly discern the will of God. I don't know if that's what is involved here, but he is making sacrifices, but he's not really sacrificing to the true and living God to honor Him but God still answers and speaks. So you have what he says beginning in verse 7, Balaam stands up and speaks. Verse 8, “How shall I curse whom God has not cursed? How shall I denounce whom God has not denounced?” And he goes down through verse 10, so verses 7-10 end up being a blessing on Israel because God has taken control of him and he can only say what God told him to say. Balak, verse 11, the king, says to Balaam, “What have you done to me? I told you to curse my enemies, you have actually blessed them!” And Balaam replied, “Must I not be careful to speak what the Lord puts in my mouth?”

So they decide let's change locations, the king says let's go to another location, maybe this is a bad spot, you'll get better information from another location. So they go through all of this again and then in verse 18, Balaam takes up his discourse, O Balak, hear, give ear, O son of Zippor. “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” Go on down to verse 23, “There is no omen against Jacob, nor is there any divination against Israel.” Look at verse 24, you can't win, Israel wins because God has promised and God can't go back on His promises. Finally Balak gives up and says stop, don't do anything, don't curse them, don't bless them, just shut up and go home. No, they go on but they go through chapter 24, same procedure, let's try another spot. You see Balaam should have learned what God said in Numbers 23:19, He “is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent.” He keeps trying to get God to change His mind. That's one thing that guides our prayer, that's why we want to pray according to God's Word. We don't come in prayer to tell God what to do, we can bring our requests to God but we do it humbly, we don't change places and tell God what to do. And one of the guidelines for our prayer is we pray according to God's will, we pray according to His Word because that reveals His will. In areas where I don't have clear guidance from the Word, as much as I can and accord with the Word, that's what I'm praying. But I realize God makes the decisions and I am ready to submit to that decision.

So you come down through, finally the chapter ends and you can read through, you ought to read these prophecies, they are amazing. Keep in mind they are coming from a man who never had a relationship with the living God, who was an apostate doomed to hell from day one and yet he is giving great prophecies that are absolutely true. But his character is revealed when you get to Numbers 24:25, “Balaam arose and departed and returned to his place, and Balak also went his way.” Remember we didn't have chapter divisions but the connection is clear here. You come to Numbers 25, “While Israel remained at Shittim, the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. For they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods,” the daughters of Moab, the women of Moab, perhaps the priestesses involved. They invited the Israelites, come join us in the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate, bowed down to their gods. So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor and the Lord was angry.” Wait a minute, you just had this false prophet doing great prophecies of Israel and now you have . . . Do you know what the Bible says happened? Numbers 24:25 says “Balaam arose and departed and returned to his place and Balak also went his way.” Do you know what Balaam did before he left to earn money? He says I can't curse Israel but I can tell you, get the beautiful women of Moab, maybe the priestesses that are used to temple prostitutes. You get out there, invite the men of Israel to come on over. Party with us, it's a difficult life out here, come over, join with us in worshiping our gods and have some good times, sex with us will be fun. And do you know why Balaam told them that? Let God destroy His people. This false prophet knows a lot, if Israel is unfaithful to the God of Israel, the God of Israel will destroy them. So Balak, here is how you can get what you want, do that. How corrupt is this man! You see his real heart. God has spoken through him, he knows it is God, he knows I won't be open to open my mouth because every time I open my mouth God takes control of it and out come blessings, but I can tell you what to do so God will destroy His people.

Come over to Numbers 31:8, when Israel taking control here, “they killed the kings of Midian along with the rest of their evil (slain),” they tell who they kill, but note the last line of verse 8, “They also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword.” But do you know what they did? The spared the women. The congregation meets together, “Moses,” verse 14, “was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands, and the captains of hundreds… Moses said to them, ‘Have you spared all the women? Behold, these caused the sons of Israel,” now note this, “through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation.’ ” Balaam was so committed in his opposition to God and His plan, even when God used him as a spokesman contrary to his own desire he still figured out a way around that. I can't curse them, but do what I tell you, lure Israel into false worship, into ungodly immorality, all mixed together and it goes together, the disobedience, the lack of faith, the immorality, and God will have to bring judgment on them. So He does. You know what we are doing? We're going to clean up the final remaining men who have to die before you go into the land, thousands are going to die under the judgment of God for the sin.

Come to the New Testament and we will end reading these verses. 2 Peter 2:15, very similar to Jude. These are the godless apostates, Jude is writing about the same thing Peter is writing about, verse 14, “having eyes full of adultery, that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children; forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam… who loved the wages of righteousness,” he was in it for the money, “he received a rebuke for his own transgression, for a mute donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet.” How do these kinds of people… we don't want them becoming part of the congregation spreading their corruption. Look how effective Balaam was in bringing corruption into Israel that thousands are going to die under the judgment of God for the sin.

Come over to Revelation 2, we're not done with Balaam. And the letter to the church at Pergamum, He gives them some commendations but then He has some things against them, verse 14, “I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam.” What did he do? He “kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit immorality.” You have some in your church that are doing good things, they even have a member of their congregation who was martyred for his faith. But what are you doing with those who hold the teaching of Balaam? This is the danger, here we are, 1600 years, 1500 years after Balaam, the lesson is the same. Why did God put it in His Word? To remind us of the danger and the disaster that apostates, those that come and get in among us, they corrupt us. Television and internet and mass producing things only spreads the corruption, enables it to infiltrate among believers. That's why when we studied Titus chapter 1 God said you have to appoint elders, godly men, because what? There are teachers who have come in among you and they are upsetting whole families, they have to be silenced. And once people get influenced by this false teaching, it gets hard. People may leave because, well, we don't follow the elders because I follow this teacher now. We want to be careful, we want to be discerning. We'll have to leave it there, we will pick up with Jude when we get back together again.

Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for the riches of your Word, it is a wealth, it is a treasure. Lord, it is not enough to study it, even to know it, Lord, we must be committed to it with a passion, it must grip our hearts. We must stand firm, we must hold the Word fast, we must be a faithful congregation of believers who appreciate the treasure that has been entrusted to us, the responsibility given to us to be faithful with the truth, to be faithful to the truth. Bless the truth in our lives even today. We pray in Christ's name, amen.