DOES GOD PROPHESY THROUGH COMPROMISED VESSELS?

WRITTEN BY NATHAN GRIFFITH

Let me first be clear about a couple of things:
I am an advocate for holiness
I believe that every Holy Spirit filled son and daughter of God can and should be walking free from sin (1 John 3:6-9).
Especially those in places of leadership. God is looking for leaders who walk in purity before Him to trust with His heart and His power.
I believe this.

But do believers still sin? Do leaders drift into compromise at times? Unfortunately, yes they do.
And does God still use them to do good, and at times, miraculous things, knowing they are currently in sin?
Does God prophesy through compromised vessels?

As more sin comes to the surface in church leaders all the time, I’ve recently started to ask myself these questions.
I see many of my friends wrestling with these ideas as well. Obviously, God hates sin and calls His people to walk in freedom from it.
But is the gift of prophecy limited to the most holy? Will God only speak through people walking in unblemished integrity and righteousness?

Let’s broaden the question for a moment in order to help us answer it: does God only use the pure to preach the Word?
What about to heal the sick? Or to feed the poor? The answer to these questions is clearly “no.”

There are many examples in the Scriptures of men in active compromise doing mighty acts by the Spirit of God.
I’ll give you three quick examples:

ONE:

David, spent sixteen months fighting off the enemies of Israel
while actively disobeying God’s command to not leave Israel’s premises (1 Sam. 27-30).

TWO:

Samson, supernaturally strengthened by the Spirit of God to fight off Israel’s enemies
while continually living in sexual sin and a variety of other forms of compromise.

THREE:

And Judas Iscariot - he was obviously a compromised vessel. He was dishonest, stole from Jesus’ ministry,
and eventually sold out the Son of God for a few pieces of silver.
And yet, God still used Judas to heal the sick, cast out demons, and advance the Kingdom of God on many occasions.

Okay, we get all that. As confusing as it may be, God uses compromised vessels to do mighty acts and miracles at times.
That’s why our prayer should never be, “Lord, use me!” by the way. As scary as it is, He’ll “use” even those living in sin.

But let’s come back to the original question:
Does He speak through them?
Will He use someone in sin to prophesy His word?

I think some want the answer to these questions to be “no.”
I will admit, in some ways it would make things much easier to discern who is walking in integrity and who is not.
However, there may be the same amount of Christians happy that the answer is “yes.”

The clearest example I can think of from the scriptures of a man in compromise prophesying the word of God is the prophet Balaam.
Perhaps you’re not super familiar. The scriptures actually have more to say about him than you might realize.
He’s mentioned in five different Old Testament books, Peter’s second letter, the book of Jude, and by Jesus Himself in Revelation 2.
So what’s his story?

Balaam comes onto the scene in Numbers chapter 22-24 in the days of Moses. I encourage you to go read it. It’s a fascinating story.
And if we’re honest, it’s very difficult to tell from the text if Balaam is a good guy or if he’s a bad guy.
It seems as if Balaam obeys God and prophesies the Word of the Lord the entire time we see him.
We read verses over and over throughout the story like,
“God came to Balaam in the night” (Num. 22:20) and
“the Lord put a word in Balaam’s mouth” (Num 23:5) and
“the Spirit of God came upon Him” (Num. 24:2).

And every time the evil King of Moab tries to bribe Balaam into cursing Israel,
He blesses Israel instead and speaks forth an oracle of God. Balaam is the one we get this famous verse from:

“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man,
that he should change his mind.”

Numbers 23:19

Balaam even prophesies of the First and Second Coming of Jesus the Messiah in Numbers 24:16-17:

“the oracle of him [Balaam] who hears the words of God, and knows the knowledge of the Most High,
who sees the vision of the Almighty...I see him [Jesus], but not now; I behold him [Jesus],
but not near: a star [Jesus] shall come out of Jacob [FIRST coming],
and a scepter [Jesus] shall rise out of Israel [SECOND coming]...”

What a profound prophetic word!
Balaam, the obedient and accurate prophet of God seeing the First and Second Coming of the Messiah! Wow! Amazing! Hooray!
... Well… that’s not the whole story.

If you look back at Numbers chapter 22 verse 32 the Lord says to Balaam,

“I have come to oppose you because your way is perverse to me.”

If you read the context then you know this is directly after God tells Balaam to go a certain direction
and Balaam sets out in obedience on a journey to do what was asked of him.
Go and read the story for yourself and ask yourself this question:
How and why was Balaam’s way “perverse” to God?

I’d like to suggest that God saw Balaam’s compromised heart
even before the rest of us could see his compromised actions.

Directly after Balaam’s last recorded oracle from God, Numbers chapter 25 tells us that the people of Israel began to

“whore with the daughters of Moab...
so Israel yoked himself to Baal (the God of Moab)...”

What does this have to do with Balaam you might ask?
Well, Jesus provides for us more details to the story.
In Revelation 2 verse 14 He says:

“You have some there that hold to the teaching of Balaam,
who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel,
so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.”

Even though we don’t see it in Numbers 22-25, Jesus makes it very clear:
Balaam strategized and helped the wicked king of Moab lure Israel into sexual immorality and the worship of foreign gods.
And in the book of Joshua it says that Balaam also practiced divination (Joshua 13:20).

What’s my point? Balaam both lived in compromise and prophesied the word of the Lord accurately.

This should be excruciating and disturbing to us.
We could spend a good amount of time exploring biblically how this could be,
but for the sake of time, allow me to move on to the point of this article:

Now that we know of Balaam’s grievous sin,
what do we do with his prophetic utterances? Do we throw them out?
Are they now nullified because we know how bad of a guy he is?
Or did God already know of Balaam’s sin and lack of character and choose to speak mightily through him anyway?

As confusing and potentially offensive as it may be, we do not get to despise the prophetic utterances of compromised prophetic vessels
if the words they spoke have proven to be true (1 Thes. 5:20).
It doesn’t matter that Balaam was a bad guy. It doesn’t matter that he led many into sin.
The Lord used him to declare great and marvelous truths.
And those “truths” stay true no matter how bad of a guy he is later revealed to be.

Now does our sin matter to God in the grand scheme of things? Of course it does! Do not hear what I’m not saying.
The Bible is clear and I will try to be too: you will be held accountable by God for your sin if you choose it over the ways of Jesus.
Repent today if that is the case.

But don’t lose sight of what I am saying:
As painful as it may be when sin is revealed in a prophet or a leader in the body of Christ (and it is excruciatingly painful),
the truth they spoke is still true. So hate the sin. God Himself abhors it (Romans 12:3).
Set your heart to live otherwise, by the grace of God. But do not despise prophecy and do not reject the Biblical teaching of broken men.
Embrace the truth of the Word, no matter who it comes from.