3 Lessons From Balaam: What Happens When You Force God’s Hand

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Have you ever whispered to yourself, “If God didn’t want me to have this, He would take away my desire for it?” 

It’s a tempting belief because it leads us to assume that God’s lack of intervention is giving His stamp of approval.

Even in situations we know, deep down, are not necessarily in line with His Word.

Balaam’s story in Numbers 22 shatters that illusion.

Today, we will discover 3 lessons from Balaam about what happens when we force God’s hand.

This greedy prophet pushed relentlessly for forbidden riches, ignoring God’s clear “no,” and got exactly what he craved… only for it to pave his road to destruction.

What if your strongest wants are the deadliest traps?

Nowhere in the Bible do we see our desire for something as an indicator of God’s will. Perhaps we assume it is because of our misunderstanding of the verse, “Delight yourselves also in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart.”

We quote the latter part of that verse while missing the most important part, which is, “Delight yourselves also in the Lord“.

We can only apply this verse to our lives when our desires are no longer based on our own worldly passions but on all that God has for us, so that His desires for us become our desires.

What often happens is we become so consumed by our worldly passions, knowing they do not line up with God’s will for our lives, that we find a way to manipulate God into giving us what we want anyway.

We may assume that God wouldn’t give us anything that’s not in our best interest, but that is partly untrue.

It’s true that God’s gifts are always good, but it is also true that God will not stop us when we’re determined to get what we want.

He may not give us what’s not in our best interest, but He will allow us to follow our own will when we’re stubborn enough.

I discovered this in my mid-twenties.

I had just begun dating a guy far too soon after breaking off a prior relationship with a guy I knew I had no business dating.

This was an area of my life that I kept completely unsurrendered to the Lord.

I remember the exact place I sat when I heard the Lord speak to my heart to run from this new relationship and not look back, but I wanted my own way.

I ignored the voice of the Lord and a year later we were engaged to be married.

The very next day signs of his abusive behavior began to show. This behavior grew more and more disturbing over the following months.

We broke up and got back together multiple times before he proposed.

Sitting at my desk only 3 months before our wedding, I finally realized just how miserable I was. This should have been one of the happiest times of my life, but it wasn’t.

I kept waiting for God to miraculously stop me, if this marriage wasn’t His will.

That evening I had a revelation that changed what I believed about the will of God: He had already told me His will.

He was waiting for me to finally obey Him. It wasn’t up to God to stop me, it was up to me to obey.

If I had been stubborn enough, He would have allowed me to enter into an abusive marriage that would have destroyed me and likely kept me from accomplishing His will for my life.

That wouldn’t have been His fault, it would have been mine.

3 Lessons from Balaam: What Happens When You Force God’s Hand

We have already seen how in Numbers 11 God gave the Israelites what they wanted, even though it wasn’t His will or in their best interest. But they pushed God until He gave them what they wanted.

But we see again in Numbers 22-25 this same scenario repeated, but this time in a much more conniving and manipulative manner.

The King of Moab – Balak – saw how God was giving the Israelites favor over their enemies and was afraid that they would defeat him, too, so we went to a pagan prophet named Balaam to hire him to prophesy a curse on Israel.

I imagine Balaam must have had quite the reputation because Balak was prepared to pay a nice sum for this curse.

We see something very interesting in this story and that is that while Balaam was a pagan prophet, God still speaks to him.

Throughout the story we see that he uses sorcery to connect with God, and God actually speaks to him on a number of occasions, but what is most important is that the first very thing God says to Balaam is “You shall not go with them…”

This is where the story should have ended.

Balaam should have allowed that command to become his conviction. But instead he did what so many of us do.

1. Balaam was petulant.

“So Balaam rose in the morning and said to the princes of Balak, ‘Go back to your land, for the LORD has refused to give me permission to go with you.'” Numbers 22:13

Instead of making God’s command his conviction, he chose to whine about God’s refusal to let him go; saying, “God wont let me go.”

Make no mistake about it, Balaam wanted to curse Israel because Israel would eventually defeat  his people. He was greedy and wanted the money.

But he had just enough of the fear of God in him to keep him from pronouncing a curse on a people whom God had blessed.

Just not enough to keep him from manipulating God.

2. Balaam was persistent.

After the princes of Moab and Midian (with whom Balak  had formed an alliance) returned to Balak unsuccessful in their mission, he sends another delegation to Balaam.

At first Balaam warns them that no amount of money will change his mind, but maybe it will change God’s mind because he once again inquires of God just in case God decides to let him go anyway.

This was a manipulative trick that many of us tried as kids.

“Dad said no the first time, but maybe if I ask again I’ll get a different answer.”

And Balaam did get a different answer.

Lest we think that God sometimes changes His mind, we need to take the whole story in context. This wasn’t God changing His mind, this was God giving Balaam what he wanted…

…but with a price.

3. Balaam was conniving.

Balaam goes with the second delegation of princes and it’s on that journey that we find the familiar story of his donkey actually speaking to him.

God had sent an angel to prevent the journey He never wanted in the first place, because while Balaam had said with his mouth that he wouldn’t curse Israel, he apparently hadn’t ruled out that possibility in his heart.

This exactly what he intended to do. That is until his donkey refused to budged, an angel was revealed to him in the flesh and his donkey started talking like a human.

And just when you think that such an event would have struck a terrible fear of God in his heart…let’s look a little further.

Balaam’s fatal error

Balaam arrives to Balak’s place and Balak takes him to a place where he can see Israel’s camp from afar and asks him to curse Israel.

Now, God had already told him no twice. But apparently to Balaam no really only means maybe, because he has to check again to see if maybe God has changed His mind.

And this happens no less than three times, and all three times Balaam speaks God’s words, and the in the end actually prophesies Christ’s birth.

But don’t misunderstand things.

• The story of Balaam ends with this amazing prophecy
• By a pagan prophet
• Who uses sorcery to connect with God
• Who repeatedly tries to get God’s permission to curse Israel
• So he can get the money he wants

The prophecy of Christ’s birth doesn’t erase the damage Balaam’s manipulation and self-will is about to bring.

In Numbers 25 we see that some of the men of Israel took Moabite wives (The same Moab of whom Balak is king….who wanted to curse Israel), and began mingling the worship of Ba’al with the worship of God.

This angered God and he sent a plague that killed 24,000 people.

But when we turn over a few pages to Numbers 31, we see something very interesting.

Israel goes to war against Midian, with whom King Balak has an alliance, and conquers Midian, but they do not destroy all the women.

The army comes back to camp and instead of cheering their victory, Moses demands, “Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord” Numbers 31:16

In the end, Balaam got his money. How? He convinced the women of Moab to infiltrate the camp and do to Israel what he himself couldn’t do.

His manipulation got him what he wanted.

But the wages of his sin was death: “They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of those who were killed—Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. Balaam the son of Beor they also killed with the sword.“ Numbers 31:8

Dear sister, ou hearts must delight in the Lord first and foremost, because what we delight in becomes our god.

This is a choice we make.

It is a choice to renew our minds so that our worldview is no longer influenced by societies standards and philosophies, but by the Word of God.

We cannot afford to push God’s hand and manipulate Him until He gives us what we want, because the end is always destruction.

May we learn this valuable lesson from Balaam’s life, and learn choose God’s way – it is always better.

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