14. We're So Fashionable

Of the myriad of characters in the Bible, there’s one guy who gets farrrr more attention than you might say, "is due him."  But the lesson to be learned from him is critical for us individually and for the church as a whole, so I'd like to unearth it together.

As we treasure the teaching of Jesus in the gospels, I love to remember that we get even more of what he says in John’s Revelation.  Like, bonus round.  We've talked about the most important things on his mind after his resurrection; the first things he said to Mary and the disciples.  "Don't cling to me," and "Tell my brothers," and "Just as the Father sent me… forgive the sins of any."  In Revelation, we get to hear the first things on his mind after his ascension – and the stuff he's talking about isn't what you might expect.

There are seven angels responsible for seven churches.  Right off the bat, he has a message to each of the angels.  It's the third one, to the angel of Pergamum, with which we're concerned today.

In Chapter 2 verse 14 Jesus says, "But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality."

Of all the possible topics in the world, and alllll the guys in history... Jesus is talking about Balaam.  And if you know anything about Balaam, you scratch your head here and think, "What on earth is he talking about? Balaam blessed Israel instead of cursing them."

So why is Balaam one of the first things on Jesus' mind after ascending?

Quick refresher course on Balaam:

Numbers chapter 21; Israel has been coming up out of the wilderness, taking pink slips from every nation by the command and favor of the Lord.  They've taken out the Canaanites and come up to the land of Moab, where they ask the king of the Amorites if they can cross his country in peace.  King Sihon of the Amorites says, “mmmm, how ‘bout, No?” and comes out to fight Israel – and of course gets all his people pounded out of existence.  Israel starts living in the cities that the Amorites had built, and this is a big deal to Moab because Sihon and the Amorites had defeated the former king of Moab to take those same lands and cities.  Sihon trumped Moab, and Israel trumped Sihon.  So Moab is legitimately concerned.  Then, last of all, this other king Og shows up to take a shot and gets his entire nation killed, and Israel takes that land, too.

So in chapter 22, here is Israel camped out in vast stretches of the land of Moab, across the valley from the Moabite king Balak, and he's terrified.  He tells the elders of Midian that he's gonna get “licked up like an ox licks up grass,” because here come the people that beat the guy who beat him.  (why’s he talking to the Midianites, a foreign enemy nation?)  Then suddenly... for reasons that are unclear... he's on the horn to Balaam son of Beor, asking him to curse Israel for a pile of fabulous cash & prizes.  You probably know the gist of that story.

Balak sends his envoy to Balaam with mad bank;

Balaam says, "I can only go if the Lord tells me I should;"

Lord tells him not to go and he’s gucci with that;

Sends the entourage back home;

Larger entourage shows up with even more cash plus a pair of Air Jordans; 

Balaam asks the Lord again and the Lord says, "Go, but only say what I tell you to say;" 

Balaam heads out;

Donkey talks to him about the angel of the Lord who's trying to kill him; 

Balaam’s confused and repentant, and tells the angel, "Look dude, I'll go right back home if you don't want me doing this;”

Angel says, "No, keep going but only say what I tell you to;”

Balaam arrives in Moab and tells Balak, "Am I really able to speak anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that only shall I speak;”

Balak takes Balaam up to the high places of Baal where they can see a portion of Israel camped in the valley;

Balaam makes Balak & Co. build seven altars and sacrifice seven bulls and seven rams on them;

(please consider how much effort that requires – that’s like an all-day thing involving tons of people and tools and animals and chopped trees on top of a mountain);

Balaam says, "Stand beside your burnt offering, and I will go; perhaps the LORD will come to meet me, and whatever He shows me I will tell you;"

The LORD does show up, and tells him what to say, and Balaam blesses Israel;

Balak is frustrated and moves to two different locations just to get the same outcome, with Balaam speaking greater blessings over Israel each time;

Numbers 24 starts off with, "When Balaam saw that it pleased the LORD to bless Israel, he did not go as at other times to seek omens, rather he turned his attention toward the wilderness. And Balaam raised his eyes and saw Israel campling tribe by tribe; and the Spirit of God came upon him."  Then he makes a declaration that's pretty awesome, and also accurate, about how Israel will wipe out the inhabitants of the land by the will of the Lord.

Balak gets pissed and tells Balaam he’s not gonna get paid.  Balaam reminds him that he told the entourage, “If Balak should give me his house full of silver and gold, I would not be able to go beyond the word of the LORD, to do either good or bad of my own will. What the LORD speaks, that will I speak.”  Then he utters a prophecy to Balak about how he’s gonna meet his end against Israel.

The last sentence of Numbers 24 says, "Then Balaam arose, and he departed and returned to his place, and Balak also went on his way."  Surprisingly uneventful for a guy who just defied a king that spent days building altars and sacrificing dozens of animals in the hot sun.

Very next sentence, Numbers 25:1, "While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods."

WHERE THE CRAP DID THAT COME FROM??

Israel has been following the Lord, asking Him what to do at every step and dominating, and suddenly they're with the Moabite women, eating sacrifices to idols and bowing down to worship them?

Wha'd I miss?

Then there's one more strange little appendix to this - in Numbers 31:8.  Chapter 31 starts off with the Lord telling Moses to wipe out the Midianites; they kill every male.  Verse 8: "They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain, Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. And they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword."

Why that last bit, out of the blue?  Why does the Holy Ghost want us to know that?  Out of thousands of men, women, children, kings, animals, whatever – he wants us to know that Balaam got taken out, too.

This guy's getting so much attention from the Holy Spirit.

Am I wrong in saying that by his actions and his speech, it sure sounds like Balaam is more on point with his relationship with the Lord than most of us?  He cared more about the Lord than the money; he cared to speak accurately what the Lord was saying; it even says "The Spirit of the Lord came upon him," and he proclaims multiple accurate prophetic oracles...  This is the exact same kind of stuff we wish our lives looked like!  He does the will of the Lord after hearing from the Lord, and then he goes home.  Suddenly chapter 31 makes sure we know that Israel killed him.  He's named right alongside five wicked kings.  It doesn’t make sense.

And then to top it all off: JESUS IS TALKING ABOUT HIM, TOO!  "I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel…"  Furthermore, he’s referring to stuff that never happened in the story!

Wha'd we miss??  This guy’s getting waaayyy too much attention for having blessed Israel instead of cursing them.

I’ve heard people say – lemme put on my snotty brat voice – “It’s because it says he used divination.”  I’m like, yeah, and you use divination every Sunday to try to conjure up emotions about Jesus and then tell people, “I got wrecked!”

The definition of ‘divination’ is “the attempt to discover spiritual understanding through ritual.”  See if this sounds familiar:

Four worship songs over a droning open-fifth pad;

Repeat 1 & 4 chords over a tonic pedal for 5 minutes while a guy sings some scripture over it in three pitches; 

Fire up video announcements;

Have a sermon where at the end you make everyone stand;

“Invite the worship team” to soundtrack your prayer where you call out various maladies of mind & body so people come to the front;

Have a “soft close” but let people keep laying on the floor if they want to;

Same thing Every Single Sunday.

Oh, and it’s always in a prerequisite building with a concert stage.  Just like the apostles had.

At least in Balaam’s case, the Lord literally spoke to him and used him to do powerful things for the nation of Israel, which is way more than we can say for our Sunday divination formula.

“The attempt to discover spiritual understanding through ritual.”  Anyone here go to every “Prophetic Conference” they can find online and in person?

Now what am I saying, that we should stop going to church?  No way!  I’m saying, “Don’t get hung up on the word ‘divination’ as if it’s evil on its own.”  Look at it this way:  Balaam was doing the exact same ritual that the Lord told the Hebrews to use to get in alignment with him.  The Lord tells Job’s friend Eliphaz to sacrifice seven bulls and rams as a sin offering – for having spoken things that weren’t from the Lord – in Job 42:8.  Coincidence that seven bulls and seven rams is all about accurately speaking the word of the Lord?  David does it in 1 Chronicles 15:26 when bringing the ark of the covenant from Obed-edom to Jerusalem (bringing its location into alignment with heaven) and Hezekiah does it as a sin offering in 2 Chronicles 29:21.

And the big shocker: IT WORKS!  If the Lord told men to do it, and Balaam did it, and we do our version of it, and it works – we all get to hear the voice of the Lord – “divination” is literally the Lord’s idea to begin with.

Even the verb, “to divine”, like when you “divine the truth about something,” just means “to discover something”.  So don’t be afraid of that word, and don’t hold it against Balaam that Num 22:7 says, “the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian departed with the fees for divination in their hand.”  “Divination” does not equal “witchcraft”.  The Lord invented this process.

As if you need any more convincing: The only reason there’s a story to tell in Numbers is because Balaam performed the Hebrew ritual and it worked.  If it was witchcraft, the Lord wouldn’t have answered.  Then we have a couple guys on a mountain trying to conjure up a curse, and nothing happens, and there’s no story, and we never hear of Balaam.

The part where divination goes off the rails is “which spiritual voice are you trying to hear?”  Because the demons also want to talk to you, and they have their own bone-tossing blood-sacrificing rituals that they’ve set up as 800 numbers – and those work, too.  As with all things, “Where is your heart?”  You gonna use a ritual to try to talk to dead Samuel (relive your spiritual highs)?  You gonna ask a medium when everyone in your family will die?  You gonna try to get in touch with your dead grandma?  You gonna ask a demon to put a spell on somebody?  Here’s the ritual, here’s the result.  If there were never a result, we wouldn’t be talking about it because the whole process would’ve become extinct thousands of years ago.

So if this whole matter of “Balaam’s evil” hinges on divination, I can diss us harder than I can diss Balaam based on what’s written in Numbers.

But Jesus is dissing both us and Balaam in Revelation 2, so… there’s that.

Well I hope you read article 13 because the answer to “what is Jesus talking about, and why does he care so much?” is sitting in Jashar.  Once we understand his comment in Rev 2:14, we understand why Jesus has Balaam on the forefront of his post-ascension thoughts… and it’s an array of things we must all vigilantly guard against – and not easy to overcome!

I’ll color Jashar quotes a little differently to help us see them.  As with scripture, there are no emphasis fonts in Jashar, so when you see me italicize something, it’s to bring out the details we’re digging for.

Reading from Jashar chapter 85, verse 10:

And the children of Israel sent to Moab, saying, Let us pass now through thy land into our place, but the children of Moab would not suffer the children of Israel to pass through their land, for the children of Moab were greatly afraid lest the children of Israel should do unto them as Sihon king of the Amorites had done to them, who had taken their land and had slain many of them.

Here we learn that Israel asks Moab for passage first, and they were afraid of Israel because they remembered having lost to Sihon and were afraid of the same from Israel.

Next, Jashar 85:13 says what Numbers says, where Sihon is also asked for passage and he won’t grant it, and tries to fight Israel and is decimated.  Moab gets even more afraid because now these Israelites that they already feared had just killed the people who had killed them.

Starting in verse 35, we see how they feared Israel, and decided to set Balak as king over themselves. I’ll skip a few lines here & there that either repeat stuff or aren’t needed to get the story across.

[35] And the elders of Moab said, Behold the two kings of the Amorites, Sihon and Og, who were more powerful than all the kings of the earth, could not stand against the children of Israel, how then can we stand before them?

[37] And the elders of Moab resolved and took one of their men, Balak the son of Zippor the Moabite, and made him king over them at that time, and Balak was a very wise man. [38] And the elders of Moab rose up and sent to the children of Midian to make peace with them, for a great battle and enmity had been in those days between Moab and Midian, from the days of Hadad the son of Bedad king of Edom, who smote Midian in the field of Moab, unto these days.

[40] And the elders of Moab counselled with the elders of Midian what to do in order to save their lives from Israel.

[42] And the elders of Midian said to Moab, We have heard that at the time when Sihon king of the Amorites fought against you, when he prevailed over you and took your land, he had sent to Beor the son of Janeas and to Balaam his son from Mesopotamia, and they came and cursed you; therefore did the hand of Sihon prevail over you, that he took your land. [43] Now therefore send you also to Balaam his son, for he still remains in his land, and give him his hire, that he may come and curse all the people of whom you are afraid; so the elders of Moab heard this thing, and it pleased them to send to Balaam the son of Beor.

So here’s one of those blanks filled in for us.  Moab starts making alliances with their enemies, the Midianites, so they can muster a united defense force.  In the process they learn how Sihon had used Balaam’s cursing to beat them, so Midian is like, “Balak – it worked when it was used against you; this is what you should do to beat Israel.”  That explains why Numbers 22 moves right from, “Moab is terrified,” to, “they’re talking to the elders of Midian,” to, “so they hire Balaam.”

Fun fact: Balaam also happens to be one of the magicians in the court of Pharaoh who comes against Moses & Aaron when the staves turn into snakes, and Balaam’s snake-staff gets eaten by Aaron’s.  Somehow this guy continually finds himself hired to challenge Moses and Israel.

Next, Jashar confirms what Numbers had said, that Balaam wouldn’t curse Israel because he obeyed the voice of the Lord:

[49] And Balak urged Balaam day by day to curse Israel, but Balaam hearkened not to Balak on account of the word of the Lord which he had spoken to Balaam.

To flesh out the story we need to go to Revelation 2:14 again, and insert what Jesus says: “the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat of food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.”  Watch what Moab does next in Jashar, 85:53:

[53] And the children of Israel approached Moab, and the children of Moab pitched their tents opposite to the camp of the children of Israel. [54] And the children of Moab were afraid of the children of Israel, and the children of Moab took all their daughters and their wives of beautiful aspect and comely appearance, and dressed them in gold and silver and costly garments. [55] And the children of Moab seated those women at the door of their tents, in order that the children of Israel might see them and turn to them, and not fight against Moab. [56] And all the children of Moab did this thing to the children of Israel, and every man placed his wife and daughter at the door of his tent, and all the children of Israel saw the act of the children of Moab, and the children of Israel turned to the daughters of Moab and coveted them, and they went to them. [57] And it came to pass that when a Hebrew came to the door of the tent of Moab, and saw a daughter of Moab and desired her in his heart, and spoke with her at the door of the tent that which he desired, whilst they were speaking together the men of the tent would come out and speak to the Hebrew like unto these words: [58] Surely you know that we are brethren, we are all the descendants of Lot and the descendants of Abraham his brother, wherefore then will you not remain with us, and wherefore will you not eat our bread and our sacrifice? [59] And when the children of Moab had thus overwhelmed him with their speeches, and enticed him by their flattering words, they seated him in the tent and cooked and sacrificed for him, and he ate of their sacrifice and of their bread. [60] They then gave him wine and he drank and became intoxicated, and they placed before him a beautiful damsel, and he did with her as he liked, for he knew not what he was doing, as he had drunk plentifully of wine. [61] Thus did the children of Moab to Israel in that place, in the plain of Shittim, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel on account of this matter, and he sent a pestilence amongst them, and there died of the Israelites twenty-four thousand men.

Numbers 25:3-8 describe details of the pestilence, and Jashar’s last statement is also what Numbers 25:9 says, “Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.”

Okay so putting it all together: We learn from ascended Jesus that even though the Balaam of Numbers looks like an obedient prophet of the Lord, after all the failed attempts to curse Israel he takes Balak aside and basically says, “Look, if you wanna get this thing done, you need to trick Israel into cursing themselves.  Take your hot girls and set them as lures in front of your tents; you’ll be able to get Israel to come over.  Tell them, ‘Hey, we’re all really on the same team, we come from the same family,’ feed them sacrificed food, get them drunk and convince them to worship your idols. Then they’ll be disobeying the Lord, get out of alignment and lose his favor, and you’ll be able to take them out.”

Again: This is so important to Jesus that when he’s ascended and begins addressing the church, he’s not talking about Adam or Enoch or Abraham or Moses or David or Elijah or Peter or any other specific person but Balaam.  When you know what the Lord has said, and then you figure you can circumvent it with some kind of round-the-back manipulative trick, Jesus is against you.

I bet you have a few examples in mind, without me having to call them out.  This behavior is ubiquitous in the church, and in our daily lives.  It’s the, “Well, I know the scripture teaches this thing, but I can still do this other version of that thing cuz it’s not specifically talking about the other version.”  A manipulation; a rebellion: witchcraft.

O man: the Lord expects your tithe, and you decide that spending money to take the family skiing for the weekend is your tithe, because you all got to see the beautiful creation God made and glorify him for it – by commenting that to each other in the lodge bar.

O Church: the Lord Jesus preached repentance for the forgiveness of sins, but your insecurity wants everyone to like you and can’t handle rejection.  So you only preach about Jesus’ love and his “finished work” such that nobody has to change anything in order to receive the salvation and friendship of God.  You have pastors saying that certain scriptures are no longer applicable because not all of them come from “a loving, Christ-centric mindset.”

Apparently, Jesus saying, “But I have this against you,” is a part of him you can disqualify with some excuse about dispensations because, “It doesn’t sound very loving.”  Lemme go get you a binky.

Pay attention to the key ingredients of Balaam’s instruction to Balak, too!  Here’s the recipe:

One part, “Lure.”  This is, “Moab took all their daughters and their wives of beautiful aspect and comely appearance, and dressed them in gold and silver and costly garments.”  Remember, in this scenario, we are the ones doing the luring; Jesus says we’re following in the teaching of Balaam when he taught Moab to lure.  Do we put the beautiful people on a shiny rock concert stage under the self-assurance that we’re “bringing people to Christ”?  With no demonstration of the power of the Holy Sprit, we’re actually bringing people to our curated image of what we think they’ll find cool, which is equivalent to fashioning idols.

One part, “We convince ourselves that we’re on the same side as our enemy or come from the same heritage.”  I know of a believer who learned astral projection, “to be able to see in the spirit.”  One school says that Elisha knew how to astral project so it’s also safe for followers of Jesus.  This person became hospitalized with insanity, because it worked.  They could see every demon with their waking eyes and couldn’t turn it off.

Another version of this is applying modern psychology & modern medicine to the scriptures, to explain away the spiritual influences behind peoples’ afflictions.  We try to “treat them” apart from the power of the Holy Spirit – all the while talking about the Holy Spirit.  When your first stop is the doctor and then you pray to Jesus to help the doctor be wise… I dunno, man, that always feels sketch to me when I hear it.  “We’ll just rely on the men who worship themselves and their minds and their learning, and pray that the Lord helps them along.  Hey, we’re really both on the same team.”  And you get a ton of this same thing in “Christian” psychological circles.

Are we against modern medicine and psychology?  Heck no!  Having understanding of the creation is far more beneficial than ignorance!  Jesus understood literally every aspect of the creation.  It was created through the Christ!  It’s the priority between spirit and flesh that we must keep in order.

One part, “Serve food sacrificed to idols.”  Again, we’re the ones preparing the food, not the ones eating.  The concept of how we fashion idols is key to understanding this, so I’m gonna take a minute to flesh it out.

Let’s say you see someone you think is cool, and you want them to like you.  You try to discern what they like, and then try to emulate those characteristics to attract them while hiding the ones you think would repel them.  Social media is the most fertile soil for this behavior, but it’s also done at church or school or work or anywhere.

So over and over you’re attracting them to this version of you that you think they will love.  If you “succeed”, they love something that’s not actually you.  It’s the idol that you’ve fashioned for them to love, and they are deceived.

If we can become self-confident enough to show people our authentic selves with all the real gifts & flaws, we have a shot at finding people who actually love us and not an idol.  We need to become very comfortable with the thought of rejection.  If we show ourselves and are rejected, we’ve saved ourselves and this other person a ton of time and trouble.  Saved from learning to love an idol, and then slowly learning the truth, and then needing to break away from all that investment of time & heart and move on.  And if we show ourselves and are accepted, we know we’ve found truth and life from a real relationship.

What has this got to do with Moab serving food to the Hebrews?

This is the food that Jesus offered us when he said in John 6:53, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” and in 55, “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”  Jesus equates “the version of himself that he is feeding you” to life and truth.  Then in 60, “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’” and in 66, “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”  Have you also found that when people are shown authenticity, they tend to reject it?  They literally love and prefer the fashioned idols.  They don't wanna deal with the work of a relationship based in reality.

Jesus was well-acquainted with this level of rejection because he would not fashion an idol of himself “to bring people to Christ.”  And then we go ahead and rob him of his authenticity by doing that very thing to him ourselves.  This flows right into my statement above, about churches picking and choosing the parts of Jesus they think are enjoyable versus the parts they think people won’t find “cool” and “comforting”.  They’re presenting their Jesus Idol rather than feeding them authentic Jesus.  O Church: You are fashioning idols of both yourselves and of the Lamb!

So the rebuke of Jesus in Revelation 2 is asking us, “Are you going to feed people your idol?”

One part, “Get them drunk.”  The reference is of the lured and fed Hebrew, “They then gave him wine and he drank and became intoxicated, and they placed before him a beautiful damsel, he did with her as he liked, for he knew not what he was doing, as he had drunk plentifully of wine.”  This is about accepting and proliferating demonic teaching.  Read in 2 Timothy 4:3, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded…”  See here that the opposite of a sober mind is pursuing teaching that suits our own passions?  The Hebrew would get drunk and exercise their passions with the adorned woman.

As when John says in his gospel’s final sentence, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written,” the same might be said of the demonic teachings that have enticed people to follow their own passions and wander off into myths.  I literally hear myths being put forth as truth, week after week, from conversations and sermons in my California church.  “Christian” film and radio is loaded with the same.

You may recall the principality “Escape My Life” that we addressed for some time in earlier articles.  I’ll call out “The Finished Work” and “Original Intent” as two principal demons that we’ll hit in upcoming articles, to help free some who have been accumulating teachers to suit their own passions.

Every one of these four ingredients takes something that our Father has instructed and cleverly sidesteps what he’s said to do, to make our flesh more comfortable.  Giving the illusion of life to the flesh, while killing the soul.  Our American culture has endowed us with insecurity that finds comfort in idolatry.  We can so easily become the children of Moab, following the instruction of Balaam to avoid the word of the Lord, avoiding what we fear and clinging to the comfort of acceptance.

The story in Numbers and Jashar and Revelation proves that this teaching works.  The Israelites actually fell for it, and they suffered punishment of death for it.  That means it works when we do it, too.  These behaviors lead our Father’s little children to stumble and sin.  When we allow this culture of ours to influence the true instruction of the Lord, Jesus has a word for us in Mat 18:6.  “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Remember:  Jesus does all the excruciating work on earth for the end game of ascension, and after that’s been done the first thing he’s saying is, “Okay now, let’s get down to business.  Balaam.  Some of you teach people to worship your idols and walk away from the Father.”  Not just “any idols.”  Your idols, that you have made, of your false gods, that make you comfortable.  It’s serious.

The good news is, Jesus affirms that we can overcome this.  If we do – big fat “if” – he will give us “some of the hidden manna” showing that the flesh we fed people is of God and wasn’t sacrificed to false gods – and “a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it,” – a representation of purity of identity, because we didn’t fashion idols of ourselves.

All I’m doing is praying for myself and for all of us.  I’m not teaching this because I’ve got it nailed.  I’m teaching it because it’s what he’s talking about.  As I’ve exhorted us to do in the past, ask our Father for discernment of spirits.  We can’t see any of these very subtle dangers without that gift.

Much love to you,

Garrison