Cost of Revelation
6 min read
3 Then Balaam said to Balak, “Stay here beside your offering while I go aside. Perhaps the LORD will come to meet with me. Whatever he reveals to me I will tell you.” Then he went off to a barren height.
4 God met with him, and Balaam said, “I have prepared seven altars, and on each altar I have offered a bull and a ram.”
5 The LORD put a word in Balaam’s mouth and said, “Go back to Balak and give him this word.”
Numbers 23:3-5
In the ancient days, the people of God had to climb great heights (metaphorically) to attain a revelation from the LORD. First of all, only prophets (seers) were trained to receive a direct revelation from God. Second, the prophets had to seek the presence of God by consecrating themselves through a sin offering. And even then, there was no guarantee that God would give the prophet a revelation. But if the word of God came, then the prophet would deliver it to the people.
All of that effort to attain a revelation from the LORD is necessary because the word of God is holy. The word of God is pure and righteous. Once the word of God enters into this world, the darkness and evil of this world is revealed. That is why Jewish rabbis use a pointer to read God’s word; they say that holy Scripture “defiles the hands.”
Christians are way too casual with the word of God. We so easily take it for granted. Instead, we ought to consider the great sacrifice that God had made by sending His Son to the cross so that the veil to the most holy place of the temple would be torn once for all and forever. When that twenty-foot curtain was torn top to bottom (Mark 15:38), it signified that all people could have access to the presence of God.
Because Jesus suffered the full wrath of God on our behalf, we are consecrated through faith in Christ. And being consecrated through the washing of our sins by the blood of Christ, we are deemed worthy to receive a direct revelation from the LORD. Because of Jesus’s sacrifice, a direct revelation from God is always readily available at our fingertips.
We don’t have to build an altar. Jesus stands before the altar of God in heaven. We don’t have to offer rams and goats as sin offerings. The Lamb of God has been offered at the altar of God once for all. We don’t have to climb to barren heights and mortify our flesh. Jesus Christ climbed Calvary and died and suffered and went to barren depths in our place.
And because of all that, we can have Bibles and Bible apps resting on our coffee tables and night stands.
16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate-reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
— 2 Corinthians 3:16-18
Father, Your word is holy and righteous, and You sent the Living Word who became flesh so that Your Word would reside in our hearts. Thank You for coming down from Your heights to give us Your word. Illuminate our hearts so that we might contemplate and reflect Your glory in Your Word. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
