The teaching of Balaam flourished in the church in Pergamum because the elder there had become a slave of men.

A servant of God must always remain free. "You have been bought with a price. Do not become the servants of men." (1 Corinthians 7:23).

Balaam's teaching has two parts to it. Peter mentions both of them in 2 Peter 2:14, 15 - covetousness and adultery.

Jesus said that the one who loves money HATES GOD, and the one who clings on to money DESPISES GOD (Read Luke 16:13 carefully).

If we don't teach that clearly, the teaching of Balaam will flourish in our church, and the brothers and sisters will be lovers of money.

But if we are to teach what Jesus taught, we must first be freed from the grip of money ourselves. It is easier to be freed from anger and from lusting with the eyes, than to be freed from the grip of money? Only through constant battle can we overcome this evil.

Have we seen the love of money as "a root of all sorts of evil" (1 Timothy 6:10)? While anger and lusting with the eyes are recognised as evils, the love of money is not. And thus many are enslaved to money, little realising that thereby they hate and despise God.

The vast majority of so-called "full-time workers" are enslaved to the love of money, like Balaam. They visit the homes of rich believers, because they know that they will get gifts from them. And thus their mouths are shut when these rich and influential people have to be rebuked for their sins. They travel to preach in churches where they know they will receive handsome offerings. How can such preachers ever serve God? That is impossible. They are serving Mammon. Jesus said that no one could serve two masters.

There are three essential qualifications for anyone who wants to be a servant of God, under the new covenant:

He must be freed from sin in his personal life (Romans 6:22).

He must not seek to please men (Galatians 1:10).

He must hate and despise money (Luke 16:13).

We must check our lives constantly in these three areas to see whether we qualify to be servants of the new covenant or not.

Money and material things must have NO hold on our lives, if we are to be effective for God.

We must also hate to receive gifts, for Jesus said that "there is more blessing in GIVING than in RECEIVING" (Acts 20:35).

If we don't break free from the grip of money in our lives, we will never be able to love God or to serve Him, as we should. And we won't be able to lead others to love God. And we won't be able to deliver them from the teaching of Balaam.

The second aspect of the teaching of Balaam is immorality. This teaching encourages brothers and sisters to mingle freely with each other, without any restraint. We read in Revelation 2:14, that it was Balaam who encouraged the Moabite girls to mingle freely with the Israeli young men. This led to such immorality among the Israelites, that God slew 24,000 in a single day (Numbers 25:1-9).

Only when Phinehas lifted up a spear and put a stop to it, did God's anger against Israel cease. When God saw Phinehas's action, He was so pleased that he gave him the covenant of an everlasting priesthood (Numbers 25:11-13). God always honours those who are radical against the loose mingling of brothers and sisters in the church.

Here again, as elders, we must be examples, by our personal conduct. We must be serious in our behaviour with sisters and avoid all flippant and unnecessary conversation with them. We must be especially wary of those sisters who always want to speak to us. If we love to talk to the sisters, we are unfit to lead God's church. We must NEVER speak to women alone in a closed room. It is always best to counsel sisters along with one's wife, or with another elder brother.

When the disciples saw Jesus speaking to a woman at the well in Samaria, it is written that "they marvelled that He had been speaking with a woman" (John 4:27) - because Jesus usually never spoke to a woman alone. He was careful not to do anything that had even the appearance of evil. Here is the example for all of us to follow.