Alright, Numbers chapter 22 verses 13 through 40. These are God's words. So Balaam rose in the morning and said to the princes of Balak, Go back to your land. Freole has refused to give me permission to go with you. And the princes of Moab rose and went to Balak and said, Balaam refuses to come with us. Then Balak again sent princes more numerous and more honorable than they. And they came to Balaam and said to him, Thus says Balak, son of Zippor. Please let nothing hinder you from coming to me, for I will certainly honor you greatly, and whatever, I will do whatever you say to me. Therefore, please come, cursedest people, for me." Then Balaam answered and said to the servants of Balak, though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the word of Yahweh my God to do less or more. Now therefore, please, you also stay here tonight, that I may know what more Yahweh will say to me. And God came to Balaam at night and said to him, if the men come to call you, rise and go with them, but only the word which I speak to you that you shall do. So Balaam rose in the morning, settled his donkey and went with the princes of Moab. Then God's anger was aroused because he went. And the angel of Yahweh took his stand in the way as an adversary against him. And he was riding on his donkey and his two servants were with him. Now the donkey saw the angel of Yahweh standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand. And the donkey turned aside out of the way and went into the field. So Balaam struck the donkey to turn her back onto the road. And the angel of Yahweh stood in a narrow path between the vineyards with a wall on this side and a wall on that side. And when the donkey saw the angel of Yahweh, she pushed herself against the wall and crushed Balaam's foot against the wall. So he struck her again. And the angel of YHWH went further and stood in a narrow place where there was no way to turn, either to the right hand or to the left. And when the donkey saw the angel of YHWH, she lay down under Balaam. So Balaam's anger was aroused, and he struck the donkey with his staff. Then YHWH 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? And Balaam said to the donkey, Because you have abused me, I wish there were a sword in my hand. For now I would kill you." So the donkey said to Balaam, Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden ever since I became yours to this day? Was I ever disposed to do this to you? And he said, No. Then YHWH opened Balaam's eyes. And he saw the angel of YHWH standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand, and he bowed his head and fell flat on his face. And the angel of YHWH said to him, Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out to stand against you, because your way is perverse before me. The donkey saw me and turned aside from me these three times. If she had not turned aside from me, surely I would also have killed you by now. and let her live. And Balaam said to the angel of Yahweh, I have sinned, for I did not know you stood in the way against me. Now, therefore, if it displeases you, I will turn back. Then the angel of Yahweh said to Balaam, go with the men, but only the word that I speak to you, that you shall speak. So Balaam went with the princes of Balak. Now when Balak heard that Balaam was coming, he went out to meet him at the city of Moab which is on the border at the Arnon, the boundary of the territory. Then Balaam said to Balaam, did I not earnestly send to you, calling for you? Why did you not come to me? Am I not able to honor you? And Balaam said to Balaam, look, I have come to you. Now have I any power at all to say anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that I must speak. So Balaam went with Balaam and they came to Kirtiath Hazot, Then Balak offered oxen and sheep, and he sent some to Balaam and to the princes who were with him. So far the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. Well, there are at least three themes here in this passage. And these are the three that we're going to consider now and most likely will still be the three that we consider when we come to the evening sermon on the Lord's Day. The first is that it is the Lord who opens the mouth. It's the Lord who opens the mouth. He's the one who made us speaking creatures to begin with. If the Lord didn't give us to be rational creatures and speaking creatures, then there would be no difference between us and donkeys as far as our ability to speak. so the Lord has opened our mouths and this is this gives us a responsibility to him, which is one of the Repeated ideas both in last week's passage in this week's passage in the next couple weeks passages Is that we really ought only to say that which serves the Lord not necessarily as a prophet in which you need special revelation for every particular word that comes out of your mouth and What the scripture does command us, it gives two commandments that are very specific to speech, bearing the Lord's name, which must not be done emptily in verse 3, the third commandment, and then the way we speak about our neighbor in the ninth commandment, and of course our speech must obey the Fifth Commandment honoring those who are over us or speak to them or about them. There's requirements in that way of speaking. Sixth Commandment that we not speak hatefully or attacking, despising others. Seventh Commandment that we be careful with how we speak, that a certain way of speaking about or to someone would be reserved for our spouse, that particular marital way of speaking and so forth. More comprehensively, the scripture tells us, let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt. We should always speak from our new nature in Christ and never speak from our flesh. The Lord Jesus teaches us that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And therefore, we need to be careful that we are speaking always with grace. And in that context, he says that men will give answer for every idle word that they speak. So every word we speak should be intentionally serving the Lord. And even when we talk to others, serve the Lord in the way we talk to and the way we engage with others. It is the Lord who opens the mouth. This, of course, comes to a head in the passage when he opens the donkey's mouth. And she reasons, makes an argument based on not the fact that she can see the angel and he doesn't, When she opens her mouth, she doesn't say, you idiot, don't you see there's an angel who's about to kill us? but she makes a good argument based on her faithfulness, her belonging to him. The emphasis on his obtaining her and his riding on her and her faithfulness to him, et cetera, focuses on their relationship and her track record. And amazingly, he doesn't say, hey, wait a minute, you can talk. No, he argues with her. This all must have been very astounding to the two servants who were with them, according to verse 22. He argues with her and he has to concede her argument and admit that she has a point, end of verse 30, when he just says, no, no, you never did this, never acted like this to me. So it is the Lord who opens the mouth. And when we open our mouths with idle words or self-serving words, we are worse than Balaam's donkey. And so the first thing is that the Lord opens the mouth. The second thing is that the Lord opens the eyes. The donkey was able to see the angel of Yahweh standing with the sword, and apparently the two servants could not see the angel of Yahweh standing with the sword, or they would have pointed out to Balaam that the donkey was saving his life. In fact, we don't ever have indication here that the two servants' eyes were opened at any point in this passage. It must have been astonishing to them when the lamb's eyes were opened and he suddenly falls on his face in the middle of this narrow path on the way. And the two servants can't see the angel, and now they just heard the donkey talk. They just heard the master argue with the donkey, and now the master's on his face in the path. They must have thought that everything was going insane. But there are unseen realities, unseen realities. that although the Lord does not open our physical eyes to see them, he does tell us about them in his word. He tells us that we are always before his face and that he is always with us, that his eyes go to and fro throughout the earth, that his eyelids are always focused upon and testing the children of men. We have no excuse because we cannot see the spiritual world with our physical eyeballs. The Lord has told us about it and we must draw proper conclusions. We don't need like the Elisha parade for Gehazi to be able to see the legions of angels that may or may not be active around us. We know that they are ministering spirits sent forth to serve those who inherit salvation. We know that we're inheriting salvation. We know not just of the labor of angels on our behalf, but we know of the Lord's working all things according to the counsel of His will and His supreme power. But most of all, we know Jesus. And it is He especially who stands in the path before Balaam. for not only is he called the angel of Yahweh, the messenger of Yahweh, or we might say the word if we use the language of John chapter one, but he also accepts Balaam's worship when Balaam falls down in front of him. When he does finally give, Balaam leave to continue with the men on the way to Balak, he gives the same instruction before, as he had before, that he may not speak anything except what he tells him to speak. As he says in verse 35, it's quite evident that this isn't merely an angel, that where it says, when it says angel of Yahweh here, it is the angel who is Yahweh. And so we continue to see, as we see throughout the entire Old Testament, that the true and living God, who is triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, from everlasting to everlasting, from all eternity, that He is presented to us in His triune being, in His triune nature, triune character, even in the Old Testament. And this reminds us how desperately we need the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ for us, how desperately we need for him to become man, to be our righteousness, to suffer God's wrath in our place as the federal head of a new humanity, of a new race in the covenant of grace. Because although there is a cute contemporary worship song that goes, Open my eyes, Lord, I want to see Jesus, to reach out and touch him and say that I love him. If you could see Jesus apart from the righteousness and sacrifice of Jesus, you would not be trying to reach out and touch him. You would be destroyed by your fear and undone and on your face and knowing that he is a righteously and justly wrathful God with his sword drawn to slay you. Balaam says he wishes he had a sword in his hand so he could kill the donkey. Well, Balaam was wrong to do that. And when he said that, there was a literal theophany, appearance of God, Christophany, in front of him with a sword in his hand to kill him, which he was right to do. And this is how Jesus is towards us, apart from his grace, apart from his righteousness, apart from his sacrifice. But he has, as it were, pierced himself, executed the judgment on himself, poured out his wrath on himself. for us, and this is what we need our eyes opened to see the most, to see Jesus as he is and as he is presented to us, who has not appeared to us now as an angel of Yahweh standing in front of us with a sword, but who is the Son of Man into whose hands all kingdom and glory and judgment have been given, and who will who will cast sinners who are found apart from Him in the last day, body and soul, into hell. And so we must, by the Spirit, have our eyes opened to see Jesus as He is and to see Him as Savior. indeed to come to him and receive his forgiveness to come to him that we might be received and no longer be our own and Be found in ourselves and be found in our sin and be found in the first Adam but to be his and to be found in him and to be found in his righteousness and to be in him as the last Adam of the new humanity the redeemed humanity and The last theme we see here the first was that it is the Lord who opens the eyes Sorry is the Lord who opens the mouth the second was that the Lord who opens the eyes and the third Is the Lord who looks on the heart and what we're getting at here is the difference. Why was it bad? when Balaam went the first time, didn't God say, if the men come to call you, rise, go with them, but only the word which I speak that you shall do. And then he goes in verse 21, and then it says, God's anger was aroused because he went. What's the difference between that and verse 35, where the angel tells him, the angel of Yahweh, or Yahweh, tells him to go, but only the word that the Lord speaks to him shall he speak, and Balaam went. Why is that okay when previously the Lord was angry? And the difference is the heart. Balaam had already told them that he couldn't come. He'd already sent refusal. As soon as they appeared, he should have said, I already told you that I have been forbidden to come, not wait a night and I'll see if I can get a second opinion from God. His desire in the first going was not to do what God wanted, but to do what Balaam wanted, hoping that he might still be able to get the silver and the gold. In fact, this ultimately becomes the way by which Israel falls into great sin with the Moabite women on the Council of Balaam, who does eventually figure out a way to earn his gold, and becomes, in 2 Peter 2 and in the Book of Jude, the part of which we'll get to, Lord willing, next week, becomes an example and a warning in the whole of Scripture for the danger of greed to those who profess the Lord as their Lord. And so he was going because he wanted to. He should have known that the Lord was against him. He should not have needed his eyes opened to see an angel with a sword in front of him, even if he just understood it as a strange providence. that this donkey that he has had for many years and had been perfectly faithful that entire time suddenly became the most abusive, obstinate donkey in the world as he was taking this trip that the Lord had forbidden him to go on in the first place with his heart full of desire that somehow he could overturn the Lord's declaration that he's already made that the people are blessed in order to get the money. We need to have tender consciences before God so that when we do strike out set forth in our lives after something that we know in our heart of hearts God has already refused us in his word, that when his providence comes to us in the way and does unusual things to block up the way or make it painful that we would have a tender enough conscience to say, I knew that the Lord was against this from his word. And here I was trying to do it anyway. And in his mercy, he has hindered me from it. And we turn back and repent and stop going off in our way willfully. And you can see that He answers in verse 34, now he's not operating according to what pleases him. He says, if continuing displeases you, I will turn back in verse 34. So the difference between verse 21 and verse 35 is that now Balaam is not going because it pleases himself. Now Balaam is going because it pleases the Lord. And he's going with a mind to be submissive to the Lord. Although, of course, he's still a sinner like we are. And in the end, his greed is going to get the best of him. And the matter of prophesying over Israel, he's going to be obedient. But it turns out that he was the one who gave Balak the advice to get the Moabite women to allure the Israelite men. We'll come to that. later, but the Lord looks on the heart, and he expects us to take stock of, to consider as we do things, not just, is it permitted, but am I doing it to please the Lord? Those who treat God's commandments as rule boundaries within which we can do what we please, so long as we don't cross the technical line. have the Lord standing before them against them with His sword drawn. Instead, we must maintain a heart before the Lord that seeks to be doing whatever pleases Him and immediately to stop from whatever might displease Him, taking His commandments as a reminder. That we are to live for his pleasure, not ours. That ideally, by his grace, it would become our pleasure to please him. And those two things would not be in contradiction to one another. And so those are the three great themes, things for us to be. thinking about and applying to our life already, but especially preparing to sit under and hear in the worship, Lord's Day afternoon, or in the family worship, in the sermon, Lord's Day afternoon, that it's the Lord who opens the mouth, it's the Lord who opens the eyes, and that the Lord sees and tests the heart. May he help us to respond well to him and to those truths about our engagement with him or his engagement with us. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this passage. We thank you for your mercy, even to this greedy, willful prophet Balaam, because we, O Lord, have been greedy. Our hearts go after the comforts and pleasures of this world, rather than finding our comfort and pleasure in you and what pleases you. And so we thank you for how patient you have been with us, and we pray that you'd forgive us and keep helping us. In particular, we pray that your Holy Spirit would make this portion of your word to take root in our hearts, that we would remember that you have opened our mouths, and so we would use our mouths in a way that always honors you, that you would make us to search the scriptures and meditate upon them, desiring that we would know Christ rightly and that we would know the danger of our sin before him and yet the wonderful offer and reality of himself in the gospel. Indeed, grant to our faith to see Christ as our Redeemer. And to serve him, and we do pray that you would help us to maintain a tender heart. That we would not try to live for ourselves, but that we would love to please you. Grant it, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.