The Sin of Balaam - Talk 6

Well, this final message is on the sin of Balaam.

And Jonathan, do you want me to wait for these lights to come on or anything like that? Are we really going to leave them off? Okay, we're going to leave them off.

All right. Okay, so Balaam. Why are we doing a message on Balaam?

Well, as I thought about what kinds of biblical passages are about selling the

Word of God, Balaam is a perfect example of that, someone who is willing to sell the Word of God.

Though he is a relatively obscure Old Testament character, the New Testament makes a number of references to Balaam.

Peter, Jude, John all mention him explicitly. Paul alludes to him multiple times.

Consider these verses. 2 Peter 2 .15, they have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam, son of Bezor, who loved the wages of wickedness.

Jude 11. Woe to them! They have traveled the path of Cain. They have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam.

They have perished in Korah's rebellion. When the New Testament authors describe

Balaam this way, they are presenting him as a prototypical false teacher.

There are really just two things that I want you to gather from this. He is a prototypical false teacher.

That means he's the exemplar. He's the example by which we are to understand what false teachers are and how we are to be discerning them.

And so that means that our discernment of false teaching and false teachers needs to be calibrated around the example that Scripture gives.

Now, consider just shortly what that entails, because usually when you think about discerning false teachers, you think about discerning false teaching.

You think about taking the propositions, weighing them against the truth of Scripture, and coming to conclusions.

Now, certainly, this is an important thing to do if you're discerning heresy, if you're discerning false teaching, but is that the primary way that we are supposed to be discerning false teachers?

Is that the primary way that we are supposed to be discerning false prophets? When Jesus says, you should know them by their fruits.

The example of Balaam tells us that's not the primary or the initial way that we're supposed to be evaluating false teachers.

It's not so much by their false teaching, but rather by their motives and the way they appeal to the motives of others.

In Balaam, you have the motive of greed and how he appeals to the sensuality of others.

Balaam is not one who gave false teaching, not in the sense of being false propositions.

In fact, one of the defining features of the narrative of Balaam is that he only spoke what was true.

And so this has profound implications for the way that we would discern false teachers in our world.

You'll often hear people say something when it comes to dreams and prophecies, well, as long as it doesn't contradict the word of God.

There are so many things that someone can say that doesn't contradict the word of God. You need to take this job instead of that job.

You need to marry this person instead of that person. I know a number of women who were told during college, God told me that you need to marry me.

So there are many ideas that do not directly contradict the word of God.

That doesn't mean that we should, you know, we are not limited to just discerning the teaching itself, the propositions, but we are instructed in the, especially in the example of Balaam, to discern false teachers likewise by their motives and the way they motivate others, appealing to greed in their own heart, appealing to sensuality in others.

Before we begin all this, a justification of the approach that I'm going to take is warranted here.

When I want to demonstrate to you that Balaam is a prototypical false teacher, is the prototypical, the exemplar false teacher in the

New Testament, this is corroborated substantially by consideration of tradition.

The nature of the New Testament allusions to Balaam are not all explicit so that you would see it upon a first reading, being unaware of Jewish traditions, being unaware of legends.

To offer just a simple example, consider the words of Paul to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3, 8, just as Janice and Jambers opposed

Moses, so also these men opposed the truth. Now, I believe in Sola Scriptura.

You can read those words and understand them sufficiently. There were some men,

Janice and Jambers, who opposed Moses, and so we shouldn't be like them. We shouldn't oppose the truth. False teachers are like Janice and Jambers opposing the truth, but the weight of this analogy is reinforced.

If you know who Janice and Jambers are, they are not mentioned in Scripture elsewhere. Rather, you have to look to Old Testament legend.

Once again, I believe Sola Scriptura, but there is a coloring that is helpful to know these things.

So who are Janice and Jambers? Janice and Jambers are the sons of Balaam. Janice and Jambers are the sons in a prophetic sense, right?

The sons of a prophet are like the students of a prophet, right? They are the sons of Balaam. They are the ones who were the magicians who turned their staffs into serpents in order to demonstrate that they could do exactly the kind of miracles that Moses could do, and the

Moses serpent swallows their serpents, etc. Paul, when he's writing this about Janice and Jambers, he's counting on his original audience.

He's counting on Timothy, knowing who Janice and Jambers are, to be able to make connections and to be able to know something about the character of Janice and Jambers in light of the fact that they are the sons of Balaam.

So when he makes this reference, he's not just talking about Janice and Jambers. He's pulling to mind all the things that Timothy should know about Balaam.

Greed, the fact that they work in Pharaoh's household, likewise indicates a kind of greed.

In Hebrews 11, Moses spurns the greed of Pharaoh's household, spurns the wealth of Pharaoh's household.

If Janice and Jambers are holding on to that, what does that say about them? It says that they are greedy. You wouldn't get all that color.

You would get sufficient information, but you wouldn't get all that color apart from additionally consulting

Jewish tradition. And so to that end, I believe a brief survey of Balaam is necessary before we begin.

So looking at Balaam from both scripture and tradition, what they say of him before we consider the

New Testament words. Numbers 22 introduces Balaam, the son of Baor, as one who is capable of blessing and cursing.

While he's not explicitly called a prophet, he's one who speaks with the Spirit of God on him.

What is this? This is a prophet. He speaks of Yahweh by name as his own

God, says Yahweh. He says, my own God. This is in Numbers 22, 18.

He identifies his God as being Yahweh. Details about Balaam are not merely recorded in the

Bible. There was some manuscript named the Dear Allah manuscript discovered in 1967 that gives

Mesopotamian evidence of Balaam, son of Baor. It writes about him. It even talks about him speaking for in the

Semitic dialect in which it's written Elohim or Shaddai, the

Almighty God. Now, a lot of scholarship will look at this and say, he's speaking for some council of gods, but there's no reason from a believing perspective not to just say that, no, this is the same guy, and he actually is a prophet of the true

God, and he is one who lived in that transjordan area in Mesopotamia.

By the way, Elohim and Shaddai, those are the same terms that are used by Balaam in that Numbers narrative to describe his relationship to God.

This is not just other terms that one might use for God. It is the specific terms that are used in that narrative as well in Numbers 22 to 24.

So here's the words of God, and he sees the vision of the Almighty in Numbers 24, 4, and 16.

All right, so Jewish legend offers all sorts of details that precede his appearance in Numbers.

A lot of these details are fanciful. Some are more possible.

Some are even probable. But these include him being the shield bearer for Zepho, the king of Ketem. Some of them consider him

Laban, like he is actually Laban. Some of them consider him a descendant of Laban.

He is the one who counsels Pharaoh to drown the Hebrew children. He's also the one who counsels

Pharaoh to make the Hebrews produce bricks. While those may be scant assertions, there are more common ones across various legends, which is that he is blind in one eye and lame in one leg, which is interesting.

As you look at some of the details where it talks about him, you can see kind of where they're getting that from.

So Moab and Midian are overcome with fear because of the growing number of Israelite people. Balak, the king of Moab, summons

Balaam to curse the people of Israel. Consulting with Yahweh, Balaam finds that God will not permit him to curse the people.

So he hesitates, but then obliges when the Lord says he may go, so long as he does not take any further action.

The New Testament very explicitly talks about Balaam's motives of greed. Numbers 22 .7

speaks of the messengers coming with divination in their hands. This is typically rendered as fees for divination.

You know, it's understood that they're going to pay him. That's the idea. But Balaam, of course, responds that he couldn't pronounce this malediction.

He couldn't curse the Israelites, even if Balak were to offer him his house full of silver and gold.

This is a statement that he makes multiple times. To a reader of this, just looking at the

Hebrew Bible, it might be easy to say, okay, he's saying he couldn't. It doesn't matter how much money he's given.

He couldn't. But the way that legend interprets this is universally the same as the

New Testament, that he is greedy. He wants all that. He wants all the silver and gold. He's described in legend repeatedly as one with an evil eye, a haughty spirit, and a limitless appetite.

His donkey, one of the more memorable parts of the narrative. The Lord is angry that Balaam has taken his permission to go, and so he sends the angel of the

Lord to block Balaam's path. Only the donkey can see this and refuses to move forward.

After Balaam strikes the donkey three times, she speaks to him in rebuke. Balaam confesses his sin, but then continues when the

Lord gives him permission once again. Once again, a substantial inundation on this from Jewish legend.

There's a lot of really kind of wild things like the mouth of the donkey was created on the twilight of the sixth day of creation, and that it was a gift from Jacob, or that Balaam would involve in inappropriate acts with the donkey in order to stir up the spirit of divination.

There's a lot of ideas like that. Now, Balaam's temptation.

You might be familiar with Revelation, how it talks about how Balaam had tempted people.

It even says that in Numbers. So while he is only able to bless the people, and he pronounces this in four different oracles, four different blessings, these blessings are not just true.

They include some pretty important revelations. They include revelation of the Messiah. The star will come from Jacob in a scepter from Israel.

That's Numbers 24, 17, speaking of the Messiah, expressing his own pious desires.

He talks about desiring the death of the righteous. So after repeatedly failing to curse

Israel, Balaam and Balak part ways. However, we find out later that he has instructed Balak on how they may tempt the

Israelites into sin. And so this is the only way they can get the curse of God on the people is by tempting them into sin, not just by pronouncing a curse.

The details of this, once again, more details in Jewish legend, he instructs the

Moabite women to set up tents to sell their wares. Older women would stand outside the tents.

Younger women inside the tents, immodestly dressed, would tempt men into sexual immorality once they come inside the tent to see the wares.

And they would offer them love if they would commit acts of idolatry.

And these acts of idolatry were minimal enough, either eating food or just burying oneself, et cetera, that the

Israelites decided that these weren't substantially acts of idolatry. And so they were tempted in and did not consider it something as bad as making a sacrifice or bowing down to a

God. In Numbers 31, 16, it says, look, these women calls the sons of Israel through the council of Balaam to turn unfaithfully against the

Lord of Peor so that the plague struck the congregation of the Lord. So in his zeal for the

Lord, Phinehas runs a spear through an Israelite and his Midian consort at which the

Lord withdraws the plague. As you read Numbers, it can be hard to piece together that small mention of Balaam, but that's what happened essentially is that Balaam fails to curse the people.

And so he teaches Balak how to tempt the people so that they can be cursed. And indeed they are cursed.

The plague comes on them. In Numbers 31, the Israelites attack in vengeance for this thing and they kill the five kings of Midian and Balaam also.

And this is also recorded in Joshua 13. An interesting elaboration on this in Jewish legend is

Balaam as a sorcerer has the power to fly and he is flying with the five kings away from the attack.

Yet Phinehas, who is the chief enemy of Balaam, prays to God, Balaam falls to the ground, is injured, and then

Phinehas kills him with his own sword. There are some other details about this.

It's frequently said that he only lived to be 33 or 34 years old, which is, of course, it doesn't fit with many of the other legends, right?

But these aren't necessarily all true. Many of them are not. So he only lived to 33 or 34 years old because the

Psalms say that the life of a man is 70 years and that the wicked do not live out half their days in Psalm 55, 23.

So Balaam being a wicked person lives only to either 33 or 34 years, but less than half of his life.

An interesting detail here, if you look at Jesus' life, if he begins his ministry at 30, depending on how you count it, he is either 33 or 34 when he dies.

Very interesting parallel. In other words, Jesus is dying in the place of a wicked man.

So all three of these sources that I'm speaking of here, Old Testament sources, Jewish legends, and the

New Testament, all of them present him as a prototypical or exemplar false prophet or false teacher.

He is the example that is to be considered. So in the

Old Testament, beyond this sizable consideration in the Pentateuch in Joshua, he's later recalled by Nehemiah, by Micah.

In Jewish legend, he's considered a prophet as great as Moses and sometimes greater than Moses.

So it's very explicitly made a comparison that Moses is the greatest prophet, the greatest true prophet.

Balaam is the greatest false prophet. But he's just opposite and equal a lot of times considered.

But of course, the inspired interpretation of the Old Testament is the New Testament. And so we ought to consider what it says.

Balaam is explicitly mentioned in 2 Peter 2 .15, Jude 1 .11, Revelation 2 .14,

and then by association in 2 Timothy 3 .8, and possibly a few others that we'll get to in a moment.

With 2 Timothy 2 .8 was the one that mentioned Janice and Jambers. So note that this is not just the fascination of one apostle.

This is Paul, Peter, Jude, John, all talking about Balaam.

That's pretty significant. Sum up the New Testament authors and which of them talk about a single topic or how many of them have common topics or illustrations like this across all of them.

The fact that so many of these four different New Testament authors find it necessary to make illustrations from Balaam lets you know you're supposed to think about him fairly significantly.

So to go into some of these more specifically, Paul makes a reference to Peor. That's the place where the

Israelites were tempted by the Midianite women or by the Moabite women and they fall into temptation.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul implores them to be reconciled to God. He says in 1

Corinthians 5 .21, do not be, excuse me, in 2 Corinthians 6 .14

-16, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership can righteousness have with wickedness? What fellowship does light have with darkness?

What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?

What agreement can exist between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living

God. The reason I read that is there's some problem that has existed in 1

Corinthians that is brought into 2 Corinthians and still exists that Paul is addressing.

The traditional and I believe fairly obvious interpretation of this passage is that it is talking about continued idolatry, specifically 1

Corinthians talking about food sacrificed to idols. They have continued to disobey Paul's instruction.

Many people hear that phrase unequally yoked with unbelievers and they immediately think of the application we often make about marriage.

I believe that's the right application of this, but it is explicitly talking about idolatry. Who is it that is leading them to idolatry in 2

Corinthians? It is the super apostles. And so by implication, who are they compared to when

Paul speaks of them? Paul speaks of that temptation to idolatry as being like Balaam with Peor.

So 1 Corinthians 10 .8, same issue, idolatry. We should not commit sexual immorality.

This is interesting. They said sexual immorality. He's just talking about food sacrificed to idols here. We should not commit sexual immorality as some of them did.

And one day 23 ,000 of them died. That's talking about what happened at Peor. And so in addressing the super apostles, though they're not mentioned by name in 1

Corinthians like they are in 2 Corinthians, they're the ones who are encouraging this kind of sensual behavior. How does he address it?

That temptation is like the temptation that happened at Peor that Balaam led the people into. Super apostles make the kind of appeal to the flesh that Balaam does.

We should not fall into sexual immorality. So Peter also makes allusions to Balaam.

2 Peter 2 .15 -16 says, They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam, son of Peor, who loved the wages of wickedness.

But he was rebuked for his transgression by a donkey, otherwise without speech, that spoke with a man's voice and restrained the prophet's madness.

If you would go ahead and turn to 2 Peter 2, it might help you to look at this because this passage is substantial describing false teachers.

And I will grab one of these Bibles here too. So in 2

Peter 2, if you look there, he opens up the beginning of 2 Peter 2 talking about false prophets, and then he continues on to begin describing them, describing what they are like in verse 4.

And he goes all the way on to continue describing what they are like all the way through verse 10 of chapter 3.

And then he switches to transition from that.

Now, because there are these transition paragraphs on either side, you might not see that section as being a unit, but I really think you should.

2, 4 all the way to 3, 10. Okay, 2, 4 to 3, 10.

And so you have in the middle of this explicit reference to Balaam. They're in 2, 15.

They are like Balaam, the son of Beor. So when he speaks of scoffers earlier on, or excuse me, not scoffers, when he speaks of them, what false teachers are like at the beginning of the section in 2, 10, excuse me,

I believe it's, I misspoke, not 2, 4. 2, 10 is when he more directly starts to describe the false teacher.

So 2, 10 all the way down to 3, 10. Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones.

Whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the

Lord. But these like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blasphemous about matters which they are ignorant will also be destroyed in their destruction.

So he describes about ones who are blaspheming the glorious ones. In other words, blaspheming angelic beings.

What is one of the most notable things that Balaam did? He opposed the angel of the Lord. And then he says that he is like an irrational animal.

Another very notable thing about Balaam, he is literally dumber than a donkey. The donkey can see the angel.

He cannot. He is like an irrational animal. And Jude, likewise, puts these notions together.

Jude says in Jude 10 through 11. But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

Woe to them for they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and have perished in Korah's rebellion.

Now there's three allusions made there, three analogies. Cain, Balaam, Korah. Yet at the same time, you see that those thoughts that Peter had a little bit further apart are right next to each other in Jude.

The idea of someone blaspheming things that they don't understand, specifically angels, being like an unreasonable animal, and then a mention of a comparison to Balaam.

Those are together. A number of commentators have concluded that Peter at 2

Peter 2 10 and 12 is alluding to Balaam when he begins here.

So he alludes to Balaam. He mentions Balaam explicitly later on. But then at the very end of this section, he once again makes an allusion to Balaam.

Okay, so allusion to Balaam, explicit mention of Balaam in the middle, allusion to Balaam at the end. What is that last allusion to Balaam?

2 Peter 3 5 through 7. But they deliberately overlook the fact that long ago, by God's word, the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water through which the world of that time perished in the flood.

And by that same word, the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for that day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

You're probably familiar with these words that false prophets overlook the fact that God destroyed the world once by water and he will do so again by fire.

What does this have to do with Balaam? Let me read to you a summary of what

Jewish legend says about Balaam at the time of Moses going to Mount Sinai. When Moses goes to Mount Sinai, not only did it shake for the

Israelites, but according to legend, it shook for more people than that. It shook for the whole region.

And so the different kings are concerned about what is happening and they have

Balaam come, they go to Balaam and they ask him for advice on what's happening.

Let me just read a summary. This is from Lewis Ginsberg's Legends of the Jews. By the way, if you ever want to look at this stuff, you don't have to read through Talmudic sources or anything.

You can just go to Ginsberg's Legends and look at the summary that exists in chapter or volume three there.

It says this, the kings of the earth trembled in their palaces and they all came to the villain Balaam and asked him if God intended the same fate for them as for the generation of the flood.

But Balaam said to them, O ye fools, the holy one, blessed be he, has long since promised

Noah never again to punish the world with a flood. The kings of the heathen, however, were not quieted and furthermore said,

God has indeed promised never again to bring a flood upon the world, but perhaps now he means to destroy it by means of fire.

Balaam said, nay, God will not destroy the world either through fire or through water. This is what

Peter is alluding to in second Peter chapter three. He's alluding to Balaam. Balaam is the one.

He is the exemplar who explicitly said, yes, God may have destroyed the world with water, but I'm going to deliberately overlook the fact that he could destroy it with fire.

So what is, when Peter is instructing us for a whole chapter and a half on false prophets, who is he telling us to look to as the example?

It's Balaam. Now, did early Christians understand that that is what they were supposed to do, that they were supposed to see

Balaam as the example? I believe the answer is yes. It might take me a lot more work to substantiate that in full, but just to give you one example, do you know how

Simon Magus, Simon the sorcerer, ends up dying in Christian legend?

Seem by now. Raise your hand if you know. Some people in here know because I told them, but you know how

Peter dies, right? He's crucified upside down, right? This kind of thing. The same work that talks about that, the apocryphal

Acts of Peter. Now, I know there's some mention of it in the gospels, but it's not explicit that he's hung upside down.

Where that comes from is the apocryphal Acts of Peter. There are also the Acts of Peter and Paul that also talks about the death of Simon the sorcerer.

So what ends up happening in these? What ends up happening is Peter and Simon are enemies of one another.

They have stood before Nero, who is going to evaluate who is the real prophet of God in order to prove that he's a powerful prophet of God.

Simon the sorcerer, having the power to fly, has demons carry him overhead.

Peter, his chief enemy, prays to God. Simon falls to the ground and his leg is broken.

His body is kept. By the way, that had happened for Balaam too. His body was left open to rot, no burial.

And then his bones turned to snakes, but that's a different issue. Nero thought that he might arise on the third day.

Simon had said this to Nero in this legend, and then he is finally put to death by a knife, not a sword, but surgeons working on him.

He ends up not surviving the operation. So hopefully you saw what just happened.

Christian legend, Jewish legend. Balaam has the power to fly. Simon has the power to fly.

Balaam falls after his chief enemy, Phinehas, prays him down. Simon falls after his chief enemy,

Peter, prays him down. Falls to his injury, falls to his injury. Becomes lame in one leg from the incident with the donkey.

Well, sometimes he was lame before that. But then he is lame in one leg from his fall for Simon.

He dies after being cut by Phinehas, Balaam. Simon dies after being cut by physicians.

Neither of them are interred immediately. So what is going on there?

Don't hear me as claiming necessarily that any of this stuff is true. The point is that Christians, as they were thinking about these things, saw the similarities between Balaam and Simon.

Saw that they were supposed to have their mind thinking about Balaam when they were considering those who would be motivated by greed, when they were considering false prophets.

And they describe Simon as having the death of Balaam. And so are all who would treat the

Word and Spirit as salable. All right. So what does this tell you about the character of a false teacher?

If Balaam is the example false teacher, we are supposed to think about what this looks like for evaluating one.

Balaam only spoke true words. You know, you go read Josephus on this and Josephus' translator, at least in the volume

I was looking at, felt the need to point out. Josephus never calls Balaam anything other than a prophet who speaks truly.

He's a prophet of the true God who speaks truly of the true God. Right? He never pronounces any false words.

Rather, the thing that distinguishes him is that he is greedy and he appeals to sensuality and others.

Scripture doesn't point to Hananiah, who contended with Jeremiah. It doesn't point to Zedekiah, who contended with Micaiah.

It points us to Balaam as the exemplar that we're supposed to be discerning false teaching by.

So he is characterized by his internal motivations of greed and his external appeal to sensuality.

He is one who loved the wages of wickedness, that's 2 Peter 2 .15. Those who follow him do so for payment, that's

Jude 11. Concerning his temptations to sensuality, he is encouraging.

So Revelation 2 .14 says, those who encouraged sexual immorality are holding to the teaching of Balaam, who encouraged the

Moabites to tempt the Israelites. And then you also get a flavor of this in 2

Timothy 3 .6 where it talks about Janice and Jambers being those who would captivate vulnerable women who are weighed down with sins and led astray by various passions.

This is how Janice and Jambers are characterized as those who would appeal to sensuality. Janice and Jambers being, once again, the sons of Balaam.

Peter even labels him a son of the flesh. Your typical translation doesn't show this to you.

It just says, Balaam's son of Baor, which is his title in the Old Testament. He's Balaam's son of Baor.

And the New Testament actually says, Balaam's son of Bosor, which most have concluded as a play on words for the

Hebrew word for flesh. He's Balaam's son of the flesh. This is how the

New Testament characterizes false teachers. I'll read a bunch of passages now about false teachers and how they are characterized.

This is not just wing compared to Balaam. This is just in general. Romans 16 .18, for such people are not serving our

Lord Christ, but their own appetites. 1 Timothy 6 .5, these men regard godliness as a means of gain.

1 Timothy 6 .10, for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. By craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.

Titus 11. I don't know what the chapter was supposed to be on that. I need to fix that. For three, for the sake of dishonorable gain, they undermine entire households and teach things they should not.

2 Peter 2 .3, in their greed, these false teachers will exploit you. 2

Peter 2 .14, their eyes are full of adultery. Their desire for sin is never satisfied. They seduce the unstable.

They are cursed children with hearts trained in greed. 2 Peter 2 .10, such punishment is specially reserved for those who indulge in the corrupt desires of the flesh and despise authority.

2 Peter 2 .18, with lofty but empty words, they appeal to the sensual passions of the flesh.

And notice, I've been characterizing this as internally greed, externally sensuality.

But these two come together in the 10th commandment to make the merism of the 10th commandment. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.

Your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. Greed, sensuality. And so even beyond Balaam, false teachers are characterized frequently by discontentment, by covetousness.

Jude 16 summarizes all his description of false teachers with, they are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires.

If you let me replace those phrases with synonyms, I could say they are covetous, covetous, covetous.

So none of this is to deny that Scripture warns against heresy and that false doctrine, that we should see false doctrine as a sign that this person is a false teacher.

But even apart from false doctrine, it gives us a way of discerning false teachers.

False doctrine is, compared to the way we would emphasize it, what I am trying to, what

I'm arguing for, what I would like you to believe, is that false doctrine compared to typical modern evangelical standards is de -emphasized as the means by which you would discern these things.

It's de -emphasized as a derivative feature of false teachers that's coming out of a heart, that it's telling you that you could discern in other ways even before that false teaching is given.

More verses, 1 Timothy 6, 3, 5, and 10 put together say, If anyone teaches another doctrine, etc.,

these men regard godliness as a means of gain, etc., for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

So if anyone teaches another doctrine, what's going on with him? Well, he's motivated by greed and thinks that money is the root of all kinds of evil.

You might say, well, that's just some false teachers. No, Paul is telling Timothy this is all of them. This is all of them. You might say, well, some of them are ascetics.

You know, some of them aren't trying to get a lot of wealth. Colossians makes it clear that asceticism is not effective in dealing with the desires of the flesh.

So when he says this, he's not saying they're always going to manifest greed in the same way, but they will truly always have wrong desires or wrong motivations.

Romans 16, 17 through 18, Watch out for those who create divisions and obstacles that are contrary to the teaching you have learned.

For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites.

Once again, he makes it conclusive. If you hear someone teaching something different than what you've learned, what's going on with them?

They are not serving Lord Christ. Who are they serving? Their own appetites. This is all of them.

This is all of them. Second Peter 2, 3, and then skipping to 14, Now there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.

They will secretly introduce destructive heresies. Then he goes on to describe them. They are accursed children with their hearts trained by greed.

Once again, the New Testament is telling us that this is always at the heart of false teaching. Greed is always at the heart.

So considering that we have the description of the exemplar

Balaam, the false prophet, this is how we are supposed to think about false prophets.

And so we should discern false prophets, not just by waiting for some false doctrine to come out of their mouth, but by discerning their motivations and the way they motivate others.

Now there are a few verses that I haven't really handled that you might be wondering about. Jesus says, you shall know them by their fruits.

If you look at each one of those, we're not going to go into that right now, but if you look into each one of those passages where that is spoken of, it's very clear that that's talking about actions and not the doctrines of the false prophets.

Likewise, 1 John 4 says, test the spirits to see whether they confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

That's one that sounds like that's just about discerning false doctrine. Oh, if they say Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, then they're true.

Well, I think we all know that that's not supposed to be taken so directly. We know that there are many kinds of heretical groups that would be willing to say something like that.

And so what John has in mind is some much greater idea of what that confession entails.

In fact, he tells us in the rest of the chapter, and it has to do with how they love one another.

So I believe even if, as you look at that passage, it ends up coming out in either the motivation, the heart of greed, or the appeal to sensuality.

So maybe that is something for another time to see how those passages corroborate and do not conflict with what

I'm presenting to you as Balaam being the exemplar of the New Testament for false prophets. But regardless, we are not given a doctrine -based assessment of false teachers as being the primary means of discerning false teachers.

We are given a motivation -based assessment as being our primary means of assessing false teachers.

And that demands our attention. We need to recalibrate. You will often hear people,

I don't know how often this analogy has come up, and I think there's a good heart behind it.

And they're trying to encourage the right things, but it can be taken the wrong way. They say when it comes to false teaching, what you need to do is you need to study true teaching because then you'll know false teaching when it comes.

The person who learns to detect counterfeit money, they go and they study a real bill, and then they'll know when something is off with the false bill.

But this isn't exactly the approach the New Testament gives us when it comes to false teaching. It sticks in our face

Balaam over and over and over and tells us to learn the characteristics of Balaam in order that we could discern false teaching.

So let's not take that analogy about counterfeit money to the bank and only look at doctrine thinking that we're not supposed to also be discerning motivations.

Because that is what someone might do. They'd say, okay, all I have to do is know true doctrine. And then, well, and then you're not as wise as serpents.

You're only gentle as doves. You're setting yourself up for failure. You're setting yourself up for disappointment. We're supposed to be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.

To be wise as serpents is to see the example of Balaam and to know what kind of things like Balaam would be up to.

Motivations of greed and appeals to sensuality. And these features may coexist with someone who is very pious, who only speaks words of truth.

Remember Balaam desired to die the death of the righteous. That was in his oracles. He longed to die the death of the righteous.

And this might exist also with outward asceticism, as I mentioned before as well.

Colossians 2 .23 explains that it may exist with outward asceticism. But the primary way this heart of covetousness is discerned is in Balaam's transgression.

The sale of the word of God. This is the thing that he has done primarily. This is his greed.

He would give the true word, the pure unadulterated word of God, perfectly orthodox.

But he would sell it. He wouldn't change it. He is a prophet of God. He would only say the things that God would have him to say, but he sells it.

In our day, there are countless among the outwardly orthodox who engage in this very same error. They offer teaching at a price, selling conference tickets, charging tuition in their seminaries, etc.

The evangelical landscape is awash with doctrinally sound grift. And like Balaam, they charge for a perfectly pristine word.

So for some, for some of these, this is just a lack of clarity in our own time. A unique patience and sympathy is warranted that would not be in other eras.

For these brothers who are in error in selling the word of God, we should be patient with them.

At the same time, we need to call them to repentance and in increasing levels, hold them accountable, refusing to financially support them until they agree to more biblical methods, maybe even refusing to consume their media until they agree to more biblical methods, and may they quickly turn from their error.

So I acknowledge that there are many that are adopting the practices of a false teacher while themselves not just, while themselves not being false because there's so much confusion in our own time.

Uh, yet many of these others outwardly orthodox are demonstrating by their sale of the word of God that they are false teachers, regardless of how much true doctrine they're giving.

They're trafficking holy things and it is indicating something more sinister. They would never promote outright heresy, but their greed often leads them to take a soft approach to the sins of our generation.

Condoning, even encouraging sensuality as need be in order to remain in the good graces of the audience that they would seek to maintain appealing to the desires of the flesh.

Presently, they go unchallenged, but though they soar like birds in flight, like Balaam, like Simon, may the prayers of the saints bring them crashing to their end.