29 June 2010
Psalm 120, 121, 122, 123; Num. 22:21-38; Rom. 7:1-12; Matt. 21:23-32

The internationally known prophet was not able to see and understand as well as his donkey. This is clearly a very strange story and yet we see still the sovereignty of God who opens the mouth of the donkey and the eyes of the famous prophet. The story of Balaam and the donkey is an evisceration of paganism in pointing to the impotence of its chief prophet and that a donkey, long used as an object of ridicule as a particularly dumb animal, even in this culture, has more sense, both spiritual and otherwise, than Balaam. In fact, the donkey receives credit for saving Balaam’s life. The prophet had not seen the angel of the Lord standing clearly in his path when the donkey had clearly seen it. Spiritual blindness is one symptom of following after false gods.

All the chief priests and elders know is that none of them gave Jesus permission or authority to do what he was doing so they demand to know who did. Is Jesus simply being difficult in His answer? I don’t think so, He is asking them to come to faith, to believe the evidence of their eyes. It would have done no good to tell them in plain terms, they would not have believed Him and the time had not yet come for them to take Him in hand, that was later in the week. His response was to ask what they made of John and his ministry and they would not answer. There are none so blind as those who will not see, and that best describes these leaders, they are unwilling to see what is so clearly evident. Like Balaam, they are professionally religious and yet the children know the truth these do not.

Paul argues that we are morally inept without the law, but that the law’s function was to awaken in us a moral sense. We had no idea what coveting was until the law said not to covet and like Adam and Eve, once we were told not to do something we immediately became a slave to it. The law did not produce sin but instead it defined it and once defined we are, as unregenerate humanity, drawn like moths to a flame to sin. We are in rebellion to our own creator, as though my computer suddenly decided on its own to send pornography to all my email contacts. We have the freedom to act independently and our choices, without the Holy Spirit, will tend towards that which is opposed to God’s will. In baptism we have died to all those things, in our service we ask that the person to be baptized renounce all those things and turn to Christ. It is in dying to sin that we choose then to live unto Christ who died for us and set us free through the power of the Holy Spirit both to choose God’s way and to walk in it. He has restored our spiritual sight.

To you I lift up my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
As the eyes of servants
look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid
to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
until he has mercy upon us.