Not Going Beyond what
God Has Spoken:
What Guides Policy in the General Church?
Adapted from a Sermon by the Rev. Jeremy F. Simons
And Balaam said to Balak, “Look, I have come to you! Now,
have I any power at all to say anything? The word that God
puts in my mouth, that I must speak.” (Numbers 22:38)
I
n the story of Balaam and Balak in Numbers 22-24, Balaam repeatedly tells
the Moabite king that he can say nothing more or less than what the Lord
tells him to say. Balak’s desire to have Balaam curse the Israelites, and Balaam’s
desire to receive the rich rewards that Balak has promised him for doing so, are
frustrated by this inconvenient situation.
The point is that a true prophet can speak only from the Lord, not from his
own heart. So even a wicked prophet like Balaam could accurately deliver the
Lord’s message. The words were not from Balaam but from God.
Our own intelligence
Balaam is an extreme example of a tendency that is common to all of us, and
which has bedeviled the Church from the very beginning. We want to “bless”
or “curse,” to approve or disapprove, or to encourage or discourage, the ideas
and practices going on around us, according to our own thoughts and feelings
about them. Yet the Lord strictly warns us that when it comes to religious
doctrine it is not what we think that matters, but what He teaches in His Word.
This concept was brought home to me when I was a college student writing
papers for a topics course. Our teacher emphasized that he did not care what
our opinions were on these topics. All he cared about was how well we could
substantiate our statements by accurate and current quotes, and references
from reliable sources.
Carrying this idea into the realm of religion, the teachers in the Theological
School make it similarly clear that what a minister teaches must be accurately
based on a well-informed understanding of the Word, not on his own opinions.
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