Monday, 21 March 2011

The One Year Bible - Day 75

Balaam is an interesting character. In some ways he represents what happens when the spiritual becomes too familiar with the worldly. If he was truly spiritual then he would have known that Israel would be protected by God and would never have entertained Balak in the first place. As it was, even after the first time God told him to refrain from cursing them, he is again telling Balak that he will "see what he can do".
It is hard to tell what motivated him but the most obvious suggestion is money, the downfall of many a human.
We sometimes think that if someone does bad things, their gifting gets disabled by God because we often believe in a direct link between holiness and gifting but the reality is that the gifting is not revocable (because it is a gift - Romans 11:29) we therefore have a responsibility to use gifts in a righteous way and not be like Balaam.

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