July 31, 2011 – Numbers 31 - 31:24

One thing I found very interesting is that they killed Balaam.  If you remember back, he is the person that was brought to place a curse on Israel.  But every time he tried, he actually blessed them instead.  I wrote then that I thought he was a great example of following God’s will or doing what God wanted even if it was going to cause you trouble or pain.  He was promised all sorts of things, yet he did not follow that, he could only say what God told him to say.  Then we read that he was killed by the Israelites.  What gives?

Well, you have to wait until the end of the chapter to see that after he had done all that blessing, he actually caused the seduction of many Israelites to mix with groups they were not suppose to.  What it really teaches us is that just because we do one thing well, that will not cover up for our future mistakes.  We cannot rely on our good acts of the past to save us from our wrongful acts in the future.  We must always be acting in a way that follows God’s will, not just some of the times.