Although Balaam was both a true and a false prophet at the same time, God recorded only his true words in His Word. Balaam constitutes an example of how God can use even a wicked man to speak His true Word. God is Almighty. He can do as He pleases.
Titus 1:2 informs us that God "cannot lie." Numbers 23:19 informs us that God cannot lie in the way men do. Men often lie for sinful reasons. In the context of Titus 1:2, God means that He cannot lie in His promises to His people. God can lie but never for sinful reasons. When God lies, He does it for good and loving reasons. For example, I Kings 18:19-23 records that God sent a lying spirit to King Ahab in order to cause the destruction of this evil king in order to protect His servant, King Jehoshaphat, whom He loved. God holds the power to use even lies to create good and loving systems. Perfect Love always trumps sin. Proverbs 10:12; I Corinthians 13:7-8; Matthew 12:12.
The next phrase of Numbers 23:19 informs us that God never repents like a man does. Men sometimes turn away from sinful practises in order to adopt righteous practises given to them by God. John 3:21. But when God repents, He simply changes His mind. He abandons a particular good system in order to employ a different good system. God may change His methods, but He never changes His eternal purposes. God's eternal project is to destroy all sin and death and to recover and recreate all His goodness in His creations which has been sullied by evil. But God can change His methods of operation in pursuit of His eternal purposes. For example, in Genesis 6:5-7 God simply changed His mind about how He would deal with the wickedness of man that had taken over the earth. God could have stuck with His original good system of being merciful to mankind, but that would have meant that God's project for the total destruction of evil would have taken Him much longer to accomplish and would have entailed a much longer period of suffering for mankind. God intends to make a short work upon the earth to spare mankind from needless suffering. Romans 9:28. Therefore, God changed to another merciful system which entailed the destruction of evil mankind in order to cut short His work and spare future mankind from needless suffering.
A careful reading of Exodus 32:7-14 demonstrates that God thought about using a merciful destructive system against the evil that He found in His people, but He was persuaded by Moses to stick to His original, merciful system of sparing His people. God holds every right to dismantle any of His good systems for the purpose of replacing them with other good systems.
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