Men's Luncheon - Pastor Greg Addison - March 10, 2026

We're going to talk about Balaam.

And if you guys have been reading through the Bible recap, the chronological reading of scripture with us, you ran across a story, or if you've been in church any number of time, you probably have heard this story about the guy whose donkey talks to him.

And so an incredible lesson.

And as I'm trying to unpack all the things, you know, you're reading three or four chapters a day, and I get Tuesday once a week and Sunday once a week.

So I get two shots at, you know, 20-something chapters a week.

There's just too much in there.

It's incredible.

But the Balaam story is like four chapters long.

And I thought, well, I just can't ignore all of that.

And this is just too fun to do this.

So let's read if you have your uh sheet there in front of you.

God came to Balaam.

So what's happening is the children of Israel are moving through these places, and every time they get close, some king, some pagan king in some city kingdom there has heard about all the ways that God has defeated all their enemies, and they get uptight, and Israel, for the most part, is trying to be gracious, and they'll send an envoy and say, We need to travel through your territory, we'll stay on the road, we won't eat all your food, we won't tear up your fields, you know, we'll behave and all that.

And these guys all hate the Israelites and they're afraid of God, their God, and so they say, No, you're not allowed to come through.

And sometimes they'll even send somebody to attack them.

Well, one particular enterprising king decides, well, that attacking them is not working.

They're killing everybody.

So let's try this.

I'm gonna hire a guy to curse them.

Let's try this strategy.

And so they reach out to this guy, Balaam, and uh and they ask him to curse them.

So they send, he sends his people to go ask him, hey, we'll pay you to come curse the Israelites.

And he goes, Nah, I'm not gonna do that.

And then they said, No, we we mean it.

We'll we'll pay you, like we want you to come do this.

And uh and so then he begins to kind of process whether he's doing that or not.

And that's where we pick up the story.

So God came to Balaam at night and he said to him, Since these men have come to summon you, get up and go with them, but you must only do what I tell you to do.

I'm gonna let you go, but you are on a mission for me.

That's all you're allowed to do.

When he got up in the morning, Balaam saddled his donkey and went with the officials of Moab.

But God was incensed that Balaam was going.

Now wait a minute, God just told him to go.

Why is he now mad he's going?

Well, we'll talk about in that in a second.

And the angel of the Lord, most scholars believe, and I would agree, that when you see this phrase, angel of the Lord, it's all capitals, it's a specific reference to a specific person.

This is what we'd call a Christology.

This is an Old Testament uh Jesus showing up in the Old Testament.

He's personally intervening in this moment.

And there are several times where we believe Jesus showed up.

For example, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are thrown in the fire, and they look in the fire, and not only are they burned up, but there's a fourth person in the fire.

It's an Old Testament appearance of Jesus.

And so this is a significant enough story that he shows up here in this Old Testament moment.

So God was incensed that Balaam was going, and the angel of the Lord took a stand on the path opposite to him.

In other words, Jesus is standing there and he's blocking the way.

Balaam was riding his donkey, and his two servants were with him.

When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing on the path with a drawn sword in his hand.

Now wait a minute.

The donkey sees it, but Balaam doesn't.

Like, okay, now we know there's a problem in what Balaam's doing and how he's approaching this.

So the donkey turns off the path and went into field.

So Balaam hit the donkey, beats on her to get back on the path.

Then the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow passage between the vineyards.

Now he's like, I'm really going to block your way now.

Like, this is a narrow, it's a bottleneck, gonna stand right there with a stone wall on either side.

There's no way to get past this without going through the angel.

The donkey saw the angel of the Lord and pressed herself against the wall, squeezing Balaam's foot against it.

So now she's crushed him up against that.

She's trying to get his attention.

She's not going forward.

It makes him mad and he hits her again.

Sounds like an arcan, an Arkansan in traffic on I-40, right?

That's what we're doing here.

So the angel of the Lord went ahead and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn to the right or the left.

When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she crouched down under Balaam.

Now, running off the field didn't work.

She tries to get his attention, pushing him up, like she just kneels down now.

And so he became furious and beat the donkey with his stick.

Then the Lord opened the donkey's mouth and she asked Balaam, What have I done to you that you've beaten me these three times?

Now, of all the ways that this story could go, right?

A donkey is talking to him.

Like you would think that's pretty shocking.

So what does Balaam do?

He answers the donkey and argues with it.

And you're thinking, who's the donkey in this story, right?

Like, seriously, you're gonna argue?

Like, what happened to how are you talking?

I've never heard you talk before.

He's gonna argue with the donkey, right?

So now you're getting an idea of Balaam's character in this thing.

You made me look like a fool.

Not only is he arguing, it's all about the donkey embarrassed him or whatever.

So if I had a sword in my hand, I'd kill you now.

But the donkey said to him, Am I not the donkey you've ridden all your life until today?

Have I ever treated you this way before?

Now, this is also a point where you think, why has the Lord put this story in here?

Well, like we're reading a story where a donkey is talking to a dude.

What's God doing in this deal?

She says, Have I ever treated you this way before?

And he says, No.

At that moment, like realization should be dawning.

At that moment, then the Lord opened Balaam's eyes and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the path with a drawn sword in his hand, and Balaam went, Uh-oh, I get it now.

He knelt and bowed with his face to the ground.

The angel of the Lord asked him, Why have you beaten your donkey three times?

Look, I came out to oppose you because what you are doing is evil in my sight.

The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times.

If she had not turned away, I would have killed you by now and let her live.

In other words, the donkey is smarter than you are.

Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, I have sinned, for I did not know that you were standing in the path to confront me, and now if it is evil in your sight, I will go back.

And so what you get here is God has arrested this guy and stopped him in the middle of this journey.

So here's the first truth I want you to see in this deal.

What's happening that God lets him go or tells him to go, and then Jesus is standing there with a sword, going to cut his head off for going, and says, It is evil what you're doing.

Well, you learn in this deal as it goes forward, this was an attitude heart issue from Balaam.

And so what I want to tell you is this obedience is a matter of the heart as much as it is a matter of the hands.

And we have a lot of folks that they go to church and they do the things and they check the boxes, but that obedience is in their hands and their feet and not in their hearts.

And so what we're learning first from this lesson is God told him to go, but he gave him clear instructions.

You are only going to do what I tell you to do.

You are going as my emissary, not with some other message or some other motive.

And as you read this and he's mad and all this kind of stuff, clearly he's not in a spiritual state.

This is not a guy on a mission from God.

And most likely he's going because they've offered him this much and they've offered him this much, and then God let him go, and he's just going to let this play out and kind of have one foot in doing what God told him.

And one foot, I'm going to leave the door open and kind of see what happens, and maybe they'll pay me more than they offered or whatever.

This is a mixed motive, bad motive.

He is not on a mission from God.

He has not gotten that message.

He has not surrendered to the Lord yet.

And that's why God stops him.

It's not because he's going, but because he's going with the wrong attitude and the wrong motive.

You know more about that when you get to the backside of the story because you find out when he gets there now, after all this has happened, he gets there and he tells the king, I need you to make a bunch of altars, and I'm going to pray over this, and I'm going to find out what God told me to say before I come talk to you.

So he gets there, and it's a very different conversation than it probably would have been.

He gets there now and he says, Yeah, I'm here to talk to you, and I'll talk to you about what you want me to do, but I'm not going to do that until we've gotten and we've built altars to the Lord and we've worshipped him and I've heard from him and I've heard what he wants me to tell you.

And so, in that setting, then Balaam does what God told him to do and says what God told him to say in these moments.

So, what you're learning here is there is so much more about our heart in what we're doing.

And there's a whole lot of going on in church that is not in the heart, following the instructions, worshiping the Lord, surrender to Him, serving and proving what He says.

One of the reasons of that is we live as people with mixed motives.

I mean, we do that.

We're sinners saved by grace, and we're in the process of being transformed.

And so there's some stuff that we get, and there's some stuff that God's trying to take out of our life or put in and transform us.

And in this transformation process, we often get stuck.

You know, I agreed to do all this, but now Jesus wants me to do that.

I didn't sign up for that.

That's why the first answer that I always get almost every time when I ask somebody to teach a Sunday school class is no, I can't do that.

Like, why can't you do that?

And then you get various answers.

Well, I don't know the Bible enough.

Okay, well then you need to repent of that and start studying it.

I mean, it cracks me up when senior adult Sunday school classes come to me and go, you need to find us a teacher.

And I'm going, how long have you been in church?

60 years.

How long have you been in church?

70 years.

When you get saved, when I was eight.

And you're how old?

Are you have you hit 90 yet?

And you're in your 80s?

You know, you do this thing, and like there's a point where you graduate from Sunday school.

You've been in Sunday school 70 years, you need to get your diploma, and you need to go teach in children's ministry or students.

Right?

Older women teach younger women.

Like, they hate that verse more than any other verse in scripture.

Because how many older women do you know that are actually discipling younger women in the average Baptist church?

Right?

I mean, it's just, I mean, we just we do this thing and we go about this game, and we don't have a sense of how serious these matters are to God.

And so we get these stories right here, and it's kind of arresting to us because you realize, listen, it's not just doing what you're supposed to do, but you have to have the heart and obedience to God, why you're doing it and how you're doing it and where it's going to lead, and are we following what he wants to do?

I actually had breakfast with a guy this morning in our church, and I'd gotten there a little bit early, and I was sitting there drinking some coffee and I was going through this, and I'm listening.

Uh the Muzak is playing in the restaurant or whatever, and a Clint Black song comes on, which I have enough Tennessee redneck in me.

I appreciate some Clint Black.

I enjoy that.

And so the line comes on.

It's amazing what a heart can tell a mind to do.

Now that's pretty insightful, isn't it?

I mean, that's, you know, Jeremiah says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

And so our hearts lie to us, our emotions tell us to do this, tell us to do that.

How many times in our lives do we have that, what James calls double-mindedness in our, I'm gonna do this, I'll go this far, I'm not gonna obey beyond that, I'm not gonna serve beyond that, I'm not gonna go beyond that.

We leave an out.

Well, I can't do that because I am too busy, I'm too old, I'm too untrained, I'm too whatever, I'm too, and we got all these excuses for not doing the mission that God puts in front of us.

And the big thing here is you see a guy that God steps into and gives him a mission and says, I want you to do this, you're gonna do what I tell you to do, how I tell you to do it.

And when he is not fully on board in a surrendered fashion with what God's telling him to do, it is a serious matter to God.

The person of Jesus appears in the Old Testament with a sword telling him it's evil, right?

And so I think as I have been reading through this again, through uh number Leviticus and Numbers, and I'm telling you what, everything is sacrifice and blood to cover every sin and how many times they kill people over stuff and put that guy to death and put them to death and put all that to death.

And I mean, you're like, God is serious about holiness and serving him and sin and all of that.

And yet we live in a modern culture where Jesus gets the leftovers out of everybody's life.

I saw a graphic a couple of weeks ago.

George Barner, one of these people that track these things, they evaluated current attendance, attendance in the world we live in now, by generation.

There literally was not a generation that reached an average of twice a month.

Like, not a generation that reached twice a month.

I mean, that's stunning when you think about it, is it not?

I mean, it's incredible how much everything we do, and God gets the leftovers after we've done all the things on our list, despite all the instructions in Scripture, how we're supposed to do.

Now, we're in, I mean, we're blessed.

First Baptist is a good church.

Churches that are represented here, you guys are going to good churches.

So we're that's why you're here, because you have that heritage.

So ours are better than the average bear, but still ask yourself, pay attention to the patterns of what goes in your church.

We're not that far above, right?

We're talking to one of the, I told one of the guys before, we have we've just read 30 chapters of offerings that the Jews had to bring.

I mean, they had to bring an offering for every stinking thing that they did, right?

I mean, it was always offerings all the time, you know.

And uh and and the average, the last time I looked at the stat, it went like this.

The average person who the the number of people that tithe on average in church is like 20%.

The number of people when polled claim that they tithe is 36%.

We just let that soak in.

I mean, we're describing modern church.

I mean, it's just what it is, and we have this, we have lost this sense of obedience is a matter of the heart.

If you think about how many times in Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, God pronounces judgment on his people, and it goes something like this I don't want your offerings because your heart is not in it.

Right?

I mean, that's how often that happens.

I mean, he's always talking about that.

And so it is so important.

And so you run across a story like this, and it's kind of fun to look at it, but you think, man, think about how serious this is.

God is that serious about what this guy's doing and about the mission that he put this guy on, that he is going to these links to challenge this guy and to either end him being God's emissary or fix him so he is only the emissary as God has commanded him to do that.

And so this is one of those deals that's just sobering for us to think through.

Now, here's the next truth I want you kind of think through.

We're to see with spiritual eyes and not with our human design or human perspective or whatever.

So get this story.

I mean, you're reading through this, and Pastor Rodgrup used to say all the time if it's in there, God put it in there for a reason.

So you think about this discussion that's going on.

The donkey says, I've been your donkey for all these years, and I have never bowed up against you, and I've just bowed up on you three times.

Did it not dawn on you that something different is going on here?

Right?

And so you think about our spiritual eyesight, and you think about this.

Sometimes in life, God is interrupting us.

He is wading into our life, he is challenging us on things, and we're just blindly pushing through whatever's going on.

When God has placed things in our path to get us to stop and think, now wait a minute, this is not going like I thought it should go.

Maybe I better stop and ask the Lord, or I better check my heart or what's going on.

I mean, you think about it, this is not just circumstance reading tea leaves.

We're not supposed to make decisions based on circumstances or whatever.

But there are times, lots of times in life, when something is not going the way it was designed to go or the way it should go, and the Holy Spirit taps on us and says, Why don't you stop and ask a question before you go any further?

Does that make sense?

And we all could give stories in our lives of that kind of thing.

But I think we've got to understand that God is involved in our lives.

I mean, he is deeply and intimately involved in the moments in our lives.

And so if he is involved in the moment of our lives and he sees us beginning to get off track, doesn't it make sense that God would tap you and go, hey, pay attention.

What's going on?

Hey, Greg.

Like, really?

Don't say that to your wife.

I told you not to say that.

Now you really better not say the next thing.

Put the shovel down and quit digging, son.

Okay, Dad, I get it.

I mean, there's a lot of times in church life, there's a lot of times.

We're I'm working through something and I have a particular mindset how this ought to go, and I'm thinking it ought to be this way.

And it's just not, it's just not, we're wrestling, it's just not happening.

And that doesn't mean it's the wrong thing, but it does mean maybe I better stop here and get on my knees and ask the Lord what's going on.

Did I miss your direction?

Or did I miss a right turn I was supposed to take?

Or am I going too fast and you've got something you want to do in this journey, and I'm not getting that piece of it?

Well, I need to understand what's happening here, right?

And so there are plenty of times in our life where I think God is trying to get our attention, He's involved in those details, and just like this, we're just plowing through because it's what we thought we ought to do, and we're just not attuned to God working.

I think there's an awful lot of it in our lives where if you think about this as a relationship with Jesus, like you think about it, I know what my wife means.

How you doing, sweetheart?

Fine.

Okay, I know what that means.

I may not know why it means that yet, but I know I better find out, right?

It doesn't take a lot to understand something is going on here I haven't tapped into.

I better stop and figure this out.

Your relationship with your buddies, you know that.

What's going on?

You you you guys you drink coffee with or go fishing with or whatever, and they're not like they're normally like, and there's something going on, and hey bro, what's happening in your life?

What's going on?

I mean, there's so many relational understandings we have about this, but we don't apply it to our relationship with the Lord.

And we ought to understand that the Lord is up there involved in these details.

And I think this is a beautiful example of we're not reading tea leaves.

That's not what I'm talking about.

Sometimes circumstances is Satan in the way or whatever.

But there are plenty of times that there's something in the way that we ought to stop and ask, what's going on?

Lord, why is this here?

Lord, what's happening?

Did I miss something?

Should I have turned left instead of right?

Am I running past something that I missed?

What's going on here?

And we stop and ask.

I mean, you know, the first time you can kind of get it, give Balaam a little grace.

But when the donkey, who's never done this before, pins him up against the wall and his foot's caught, and you think, now wait a minute, this is not like something's wrong here.

This is not the normal progression of things, and I better pay attention.

And then the next thing is he just flat out doesn't see Jesus there.

I mean, he just doesn't see him.

He's just not there.

And you think about how many times in Scripture we see examples of that.

For example, you know, Paul is standing there as Saul, holding the coats of those guys, and they're stoning them, and Stephen is going, like, okay, Jesus, there you are, and you know, here we go.

And like he misses it.

You know, God has to blind him on the road of Damascus to get his attention.

Um, the guy, the priest that God tells to go and disciple Paul, who is still Saul at that point, he's been saved.

I want you to go.

And the guy's like, do you know he kills people?

Like he sends them to prison.

I'm not gonna do that.

And God gets a hold of him and says, No, you're gonna do this.

And he begins to unveil why he needs to go because of the things that he shared in Paul's life and that kind of thing.

How many times do we just miss Jesus in that?

And it doesn't, you don't have to be a lost person to miss Jesus.

You just have to not be paying attention.

That's why Paul grabs us and says, you're supposed to live by faith, not by sight.

We should always be looking for Jesus in these moments.

We should always be looking for what is God directing in this.

How does God want to work in this?

Where is Jesus in the midst of this?

I mean, I was reminded again, I was in uh I went to a conference yesterday.

Arkansas Baptists had our evangelism conference, what we do every year, and it was in Little Rock yesterday.

And uh and I just have a habit I've developed where I'm praying through and I'm saying, okay, Lord, I'm here.

I want to surrender to this, you know, I want to I want to hear what you're saying.

And these guys are giving these deals and they're doing a good job, but I'm thinking, I could have, I could have taught that seminar, you know, I could have taught, you know, I'm thinking, and I'm and then I'm convicted of that.

I'm like, that's not why I'm here.

And that guy was called of God, and this is a thing.

Shut up, Greg, and listen.

Right?

Listen.

Now, how many times, Sydney in church, do we let our minds wander and we're not looking for Jesus in that moment?

Or I've heard this sermon.

Or Pastor Greg should have studied more this week, or whatever it is, and you're probably right.

I probably should have, but that have anything to do with it.

In every sermon we have here, and in your churches here, I know your pastors, we all read enough scripture and have prayed over it and say the name of Jesus enough that God can speak to you through whatever's happening, right?

Am I right?

And so in those moments, are we hearing from Jesus?

And sure enough, from the Lord yesterday, he said a thing, and God went, okay, that's why you're sitting here, Greg.

And I, okay, I got it.

And I start writing it down.

Well, what if I'd have missed it?

How easy it would have been for me to miss it, especially me.

How many times we miss Jesus and the things we're doing?

How many times we get busy and we're pursuing this, we're doing all this, and there was a person that God had put in our life for us to share Jesus with, and we just missed it.

We blew past it, just like he does here.

And so I think it's important that we think through this and we see moments like this and we learn from it, and we go, how many times have I done the same thing?

How many times have I blown right past a warning that God had put in my life?

And how many times have I missed that Jesus was there trying to get my attention to change my heart or make sure I was obedient or in line with what he wanted me to do?

Clarity is not God's problem.

A donkey saw Jesus standing there.

Clarity is not God's problem.

He has no trouble being clear to us.

The wax in our spiritual eyes and ears is a problem.

And so, in this deal, think about it's my heart.

And if if my heart is being obedient, and if when I step out on that, teaching that lesson or sharing Jesus with that person or investing in that person's life in my church or whatever it is, if if my heart is right and I am being obedient with my heart, my spiritual eyesight will be attuned when God speaks.

When he speaks.

Let me pray for you today.

Lord, we thank you for today.

It's just awesome, your word.

You tell us a story like this, which you know guys will enjoy.

And so you give us a moment like this as a teaching moment because it grabs our attention and then you have the chance to speak to us.

And it doesn't require a donkey in our lives, it just requires paying attention to Scripture as you teach us.

And so I pray, Father, just as you fed us physically, I pray you'll feed us spiritually.

Help us to line our hearts up with you as we go about the things that we're doing, as we're serving in church, all those things, singing in choir, being door greeters, teaching Sunday school, working with children, uh, what whatever all those things are that we're doing, help us understand and line our hearts up with you as we serve.

Help us to move past our hands and feet to our hearts.

And then help us to grow in our attentiveness, to have a spiritual eyesight, to hear when you speak, to stop and ask and seek you in the journey when something doesn't feel right.

To not ignore those moments or let life and the tyranny of urgent push us past those, but draw us to see you, to hear you, and to serve you with our hearts in addition to our hands and feet.

Lord, I pray you bless these guys, feed them, encourage them, give them a great rest of the day, great rest of the week.

Thank you for the chance that we have to be together.

But we thank you most of all for Jesus and salvation and what that relationship means to us when we know Jesus as our Savior.

It's in his name we pray, and everybody said.

Amen.