Study in the Epistle of Jude # 56: Verse 11

by Chris McCann

EBible Fellowship (http://www.ebiblefellowship.com)

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study. We are currently looking at Numbers 22, as we continue in our study of Jude. We have been learning more about Balaam, and we have seen in verse 11 of Jude that God warns about those who go in the way of Cain and who travel in the way of Balaam for reward, because Balaam was a false prophet. In Numbers 22:28, we have seen that God has opened up the mouth of the ass. The ass was given spiritual eyesight and also a mouth to speak.

This is what God does with His people, with those who are sinners. They start out spiritually blind and spiritually dumb, but as God saves them, He gives them eyes to see the truths that the Bible declares. He puts His Word in their mouths that they might proclaim it to the world and to all whom God would command them to speak.

Numbers 22:30 says:

And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay.

We saw that that this verse revealed the character of the true children of God as they conducted themselves within the framework of the churches and congregations of the world throughout the Church Age. Believers were not rebellious against the authorities of the church. They were not the ones seeking to usurp the authority of the pastor or the elder or the deacon. Believers were those who desired to be under proper Biblical authority as it was found in the churches during the Church Age. This is what God had commanded. He had commanded His people to be in submission to those who ruled within the congregations (Hebrews 13:17). Therefore, the child of God would happily and joyfully submit himself to those who were ruling over him within the churches.

Likewise, this donkey pictures a very humble animal. She was an animal whom Balaam had ridden upon previously, and perhaps they had taken many journeys together. Now this donkey is saying to Balaam, “Have I ever done anything like this before? Have I ever rebelled against the control of the reigns? Have I ever turned aside as I have done these three times? Have I ever run out into a field before when you wanted me to go down a path? Have I ever just lain down under your weight?”

Balaam has to agree with her and say, “No, you have never behaved this way before. I must admit that this is very strange and unusual behavior for you.” Balaam is probably thinking, “You have been a faithful donkey previously, but now something has gotten into you. Something is causing you to act so strangely that we cannot continue to travel together any longer. Something is causing you to rise up against me.” Balaam sees that the donkey is against him. Balaam thinks that the donkey is causing him to become angry and to smite her, and that she is rebelling against his authority.

As we have seen, this spiritual picture is very similar to the time of Great Tribulation. God has now issued forth a command to His people. This command is well seen in Revelation 18:4, where the church is typified by Babylon. God says, “Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” God is commanding His people to come out. They cannot continue in the church any longer.

Previously, the believers would never have come out of the churches. It was not in their minds at all to stop going to church or to forsake the assembling of themselves together (Hebrews 10:25). This was not the character of the believers throughout the Church Age. Up until recently, the believers wanted to meet together. They wanted the churches to be faithful and they wanted to obey proper Biblical authority within the church.

However, now God has changed things; He has made a change in program. He is no longer utilizing the church to send forth the Gospel into the world. The churches’ mission is now finished, the testimony of the church is over and done with, and, therefore, God is calling His people out.

Balaam and his donkey are a picture of this. Balaam is representing the unsaved in the congregation who cannot see the judgment of God. He is typifying the unsaved within the churches who just do not understand the idea that judgment begins at the house of God, even though the Bible plainly declares it (1 Peter 4:17). They cannot see that God is set against them. They only see these true believers, these lowly ones, these individuals who were meek and many of them quiet and submissive to the authorities, but now, who have dared to rise up and say that the Church Age has come to an end. The authorities in the churches have not been saying this to them. The church rulers, the pastors, have not been teaching these things to them. It is the true believers who are declaring these things and believing that they are true based upon what the Bible says.

This is very hard to take for those who have been diligently trained in the Bible, for those who have gone to seminary and received their Masters of Divinity degrees and maybe have even gone on further and received Doctorates in Theology. They have studied and trained for years to teach the Gospel or to minister the Gospel in their particular denomination. Perhaps they are even seminary professors themselves. None of these people have seen these things. None of them have been teaching that God is finished with the church. Rather, these ideas come from the Bible alone, the Bible itself.

Humble believers are saying that the Bible is teaching this, yet those who are typified by Balaam cannot understand it. They cannot see it because God has not given them spiritual eyes to see or to understand these things. All they see is a ragtag group of believers who were previously under their authority, just as the donkey was under the authority of Balaam. They see this ragtag group of believers rising up in rebellion against them, refusing to obey their commands or to follow their directions, and they are furious. Their anger has reached a furious pitch. They have now taken the staff in their hands and they have smitten the believers in our day as they make the declarations that these believers are heretics, members of a cult, followers of a man. All kinds of reviling are going on. This is happening today spiritually, just as Balaam took a staff and brought it down in anger upon the donkey, that humble little animal that dared to insist she had more understanding than the prophet Balaam.

This donkey, this ass, was a humble little animal who was really of no account. She was just another animal in the eyes of the world. She had no position or rank, no status of honor at all; she was a dishonored animal. She was an animal that men looked down upon. It was this animal whose eyes God chose to open so that she could see spiritually. It was this animal, a dumb ass who had never spoken before, whose mouth God chose to open that she might be able to declare to Balaam the error of his ways—that he was going down the wrong road.

The “wise” and “spiritually-minded” Balaam, according to his own understanding, thought highly of his relationship with God. He thought that he was a great spiritual man who always sought the will of God in all things, even though really he was just paying lip service to his relationship with God. Certainly, he would go and pray, but he intended to do things his own way as was evidenced by the fact that he was going to curse Israel contrary to the will of God.

Balaam is reprimanded and admonished by a donkey in God’s magnificent plan of bringing him to the point of recognizing that he is going the wrong way. It is the donkey that God uses to declare the Word of God, the truth of God. She is such a lowly animal, yet God is pleased to use such a creature to speak the truth to the false prophet who does not follow the truth.

So it is today in the time of Great Tribulation. The churches have come under the judgment of God, but God has opened up the eyes of the lowly and humble. God typifies the true believers in the Bible as the poor, the widow, and the child, the little child. He typifies His people as blind beggars, as the offscouring of the earth (1 Corinthians 4:13), and as the weak and the beggarly of this world. We are nothing in the eyes of the world. We are the least esteemed in this world’s eyes, especially in the eyes of them who have learning and knowledge within the churches and congregations.

Those who have gone to the most renowned seminaries and have spent time studying the original languages of Greek and Hebrew, and even Latin for good measure—they are the learned ones. They are the ones who are wise in their own eyes (Isaiah 5:21). They are the ones who are esteemed highly in the eyes of the various denominations and churches. They are the ones, they think and so many would agree, who are to open up the Scriptures and to do the teaching. They are the ones who are to declare what true doctrine is, and to say what is right and what is wrong. They are the masters of Israel, the leaders of the churches and congregations. If they have not seen these things regarding the end of the Church Age, then certainly it is not so. It cannot be because God would have most definitely revealed it to them, would He not? Would He not reveal it to those pastors and elders and deacons first before He would reveal it to the poor and the downtrodden and the meek of the earth?

Of course, the answer is no. That is not how God works. We have ample Biblical evidence to show that God is pleased to use the weak to confound the mighty of the earth (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). This is what He did with the nation of Israel. It is what He did with the Apostles, of whom many were humble fishermen. The Apostles were nothing—they were not theologians or men of renown of their time; many of them were only simple fisherman. They were humble Israelites, humble Jews, whom Christ had chosen and taught in the Scriptures. We see this, for instance, in Acts 5. (This is after Christ has gone to the Cross.) We read in verses 27-29:

And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the high priest asked them, Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us. Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

Earlier, in Acts 4:13, we read of this council in Jerusalem, these Jews:

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.

After this, they commanded them not to speak in the name of Christ. Yet the Apostles continued to bring the Gospel, as the Jews testified, “Ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” They are basically saying, “We are the rulers of Israel; we are the authorities,” and so they were. They were the scribes and Pharisees, the ones who were trained and educated in the Scriptures and in their traditions. They were the ones who were to do the teaching and to instruct the people. Yet now these ignorant and unlearned men dare to rise up and bring further information from the Bible, which was contrary to much of what these scribes and Pharisees were teaching. Therefore, they commanded them not to teach in this Man’s name. However, Peter says, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”

The true child of God will always seek to obey God rather than men, especially in this case since these leaders of Israel had lost the authority of God. Once Christ went to the Cross, the veil of the temple was rent in twain (Matthew 27:51), indicating that Israel was no longer the holy people of God and that God’s blessing had left them. Therefore, they lost all authority, and God began to send forth the disciples to form the New Testament churches and congregations.

It is the same thing today—the church has lost the blessing and the authority of God. Yet the church is where those are who are most highly trained in the Scriptures, at least according to their own studies. Certain denominations and seminaries set up training programs, but they are not training men in the Scriptures because they are not teaching them to compare Scripture with Scripture and to harmonize their conclusions (1 Corinthians 2:13). Instead, they teach them what great theologians of the past have taught about certain Scriptures. They teach them how to argue theology and how to use what they consider a proper hermeneutic in understanding the Bible. Really, though, much of it has to do with men’s ideas and men’s reasoning of the Scriptures—this is what pastors are taught in seminary.

Yet we came to a point in time when we entered into the Great Tribulation where God is opening up His Word. The understanding that God is bringing forth in our day regarding the end of the Church Age will not be found in any confession or creed. No commentary will contain this type of understanding. Therefore, those in the churches are not going to know how to respond to these things or what to do with them except to rise up in fury. It is the ignorant and unlearned from the congregations, they think, who are believing these things and coming out of the churches and congregations. They are just not recognizing that these are the people of God, and that God is pleased to use the humble of the earth.

Continuing on in Numbers, we read in Numbers 22:31-33:

Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face. And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times? behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me: And the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times: unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive.

Here it seems as if we have a bit of a problem as far as our spiritual understanding of these things is concerned. Verse 31 says, “The Lord opened the eyes of Balaam.”

At this point, Balaam was now able to see the Angel of the Lord standing in the way with His sword drawn. Yet, this is exactly what the donkey saw. Does this mean that Balaam became a child of God since he was now given spiritual eyesight? Is God indicating that Balaam is now a true believer? Because he does continue on in his quest to curse Israel, we have to answer no, that cannot be. Furthermore, according to all the other language of the Bible, this is not possible.

How then can we understand that the Lord opened up the eyes of Balaam, an unsaved man, so that he sees the Angel of the Lord with His sword drawn? Is God indicating that some in the churches will begin to recognize that the judgment of God has come and that it is the time of the Great Tribulation? Is He telling us that this is possible because Balaam has his eyes opened up?

Lord willing, we will take a look at this next time.