Numbers 24:2-5

The idea here is something finally went through this thick skull of Balaam and he decided he was not going to resist God like he had before, and he was going to allow God to use him, if you will. And so when it says that he set his face toward the wilderness, what it means is he turned toward Israel, because Israel was in the wilderness. So he turned to address them, if you will, rather than turning his back on them like Balak wanted him to do. He was, in a sense, cooperating, starting to cooperate with God here in a minor way.

God is doing something really strange here by giving His Spirit to this pagan sorcerer to give a prophecy. Now, what did the Holy Spirit do in him? Well, he mentions it actually twice or three times here, at least in two different ways. But what it did, what he says here: It opened his eyes. He says that twice. It also says that he hears the word of the Lord. So it also opened his ears. But what did it open his ears to? What did it open his eyes to? Well, we would say, the truth. It opened his eyes to the truth. I like to look at a little bit differently. It opened his eyes to reality, which is slightly different, along the same lines, but slightly different.

We need to see this in context here. See, his idea of Israel was what Balak had told him. Balak had told him that Israel was this terrible nation that was coming to kill all the Moabites, and he needed Balaam to curse Israel so they would not be able to do this. Israel was the enemy. Israel was terrible. Israel was ugly. Israel was doing all these things that were against the Canaanite peoples (and here, the Moabite people), and he turned toward Israel. God gave him the Spirit and what did he see? He saw Israel as beautiful.

Now, who saw Israel as beautiful? God did, they were His children. It says here, "How lovely are your tents and your dwellings, O Israel!" He, by the Spirit of God, looked through God's eyes at these terrible Israelites and realized that they were a blessed and wonderful people. He saw reality by the Spirit of God.

So, we can understand that what the Holy Spirit does is it reveals the truth to a person. It gives them a vision of reality. It helps them to see things as God sees them rather than as we, as enemies of God, would normally see them. If you want to use another metaphor, the Holy Spirit removes the blinders that Satan's deceptions, his influence has clamped on the whole world. In another place the metaphor is in Paul's conversion—it took the scales off his eyes and he was able to see. That is what the Holy Spirit does. It opens our eyes, opens our minds to things beyond what we were able to see before.