#BLESSED
This is not a series about financial prosperity or wealth, but it is about the promise of blessing which we receive in Christ, because of Christ.
The Priestly Blessing
22 The Lord said to Moses, 23 “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:
24 “‘“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”’
27 “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”
This blessing was first given to a group of ex-slaves in a Middle Eastern wilderness somewhat three thousand years ago and is still being prayed over communities and households today.
The setting of the BLESSING
Moses setting out from being at Mount Sinai for 1 year.
- Been set free from their slavery and oppression
- First chapters of Numbers: God is bringing order and arranging the different tribes. Everything arranged and organised around HIS PRESENCE – (the Tabernacle)
- Numbers 5 & 6: all about the purity of the people in the camp. God was a jealous God who always wants the affections of His people.
God knew the Israelites were about to begin the long 40-year journey which included many years in the wilderness and ultimately the tough journey into the Promised Land which a whole generation of Israelites would miss out on.
God knew the tough journey ahead and told Moses to instruct Aaron and all his sons, the priests, to pray this blessing over the people every day!
But for over 3000 years Jesus, our high priest, has been declaring this blessing over his people every day.
HOW DOES GOD REVEAL HIMSELF
For centuries in Hebrew culture, people have UNDERSTOOD BLESSING much more than in modern-day Western Christianity.
- Christian Priests and Pastors have declared this blessing over the people at the end of services and benedictions but Jewish people believe that blessings are a portal to the infinite.
In the Torah, blessings are seen as a conduit for spiritual and physical potential. God blesses Adam and Eve to fill the world, Abraham is called a blessing for all his descendants, Jacob steals the first-born blessing and alters his future, the high priests bless the nation with an ever-expanding relationship with peace. The list goes on and on.
The Talmud states that each person is obligated to recite 100 blessings each day, suggesting that the way to live connected to the Divine is through living a life immersed in blessings, in gratitude. This is so important to the Jewish tradition that the sages wrote that it is forbidden to benefit from the world without making a blessing. It could be said that the value placed on blessings is central to all of Jewish life.
THE PRIESTLY BLESSING
Traditionally, the priests would bless the people every morning after the sacrifice at the temple. Today many do it as a part of the service.
The Torah prescribes that only descendants of Aaron could give the blessing with Orthodox Jews still practicing that.
Each priest, after a ritual washing of hands, would raise his hands with his palm down and hands touching. They would then chant with words of the BLESSING called the “Nessiat Kapayam” the lifting of hands.
Their belief was that the Divine Presence would shine through the fingers of the Priest and bless the people and no one was allowed to look out of respect for God!
WHAT IS BLESSING?
Blessing is the projection of good into the life of another.
It isn’t just words but it’s the actual putting forth of your will for the good of another person. It always involves God, because when you will the good of another person, you realize only God is capable of bringing that to reality. So we naturally say, “God bless you.”
Through the priestly blessing God was showing us three things:
1: ALL BLESSING HAS A SOURCE
It is a river that flows and has a source that is pure and perfect.
God’s people in the wilderness would learn first-hand that their God was the one who would bring water from a stone and He was the source!
Every believer needs to know to receive fully!
From the first chapter to the last, the Bible’s story is one of blessing — blessing pronounced, the blessing promised, blessing anticipated, and blessing experienced. We begin to get a sense of what it really means to be blessed in Numbers 6:22–27:
God took the initiative to assure his people of his settled intention to bless them. He seemed to want to make it clear that he intended to be personally involved in their lives as the source of all the goodness they would enjoy.
So the first thing we learn from this blessing is that God is the source of every blessing in our lives. He blesses us by keeping us secure, extending his grace, and flooding our lives with his healing and wholeness. He is fully engaged, fully determined, and fully able to fill our lives with the security, grace, and peace we all long for.
2: BLESSING HAS A SUBSTANCE
A blessing without SUBSTANCE is just fluffy words that mean and change nothing!
Experiencing God’s blessing is not merely getting good things from God. The essence of blessing is getting more of God. It is looking up to see affection and approval radiating from his face. To be blessed is to be confident that God has not and will never ignore or abandon us.
Revelation of blessing in our lives has to be a revelation that “anything and everything good that emerges from our lives will be a result of God’s sovereign presence in it.”
Since more of God himself is the substance of blessing, whenever we ask him to bless us, we’re essentially inviting him to pervade all of the ordinary aspects of our lives.
When we ask him to bless our plans we’re not saying, “Come, God, rubber stamp our story and pour down the goodness of Heaven on everything in our heads and hearts.” No, we’re inviting him into them, inviting him to even disrupt or change them, believing that His plans are always better than ours.
We need to trust in the promises of scripture, His good and pleasing will in our lives (Romans 12:2)
In asking for his blessing we’re confessing that the outcome of our lives will not be the sum of our grand efforts or accomplishments. Instead, anything and everything good that emerges from our lives will be a result of his sovereign presence in it.
We are blessed even in the worst times
Blessing was given to God’s people as they entered their wilderness journey, not as they left it!
If we really believe that God is the substance of blessing, we won’t confess that we’re blessed only in the circumstances that seem good. Instead, when times are hard, and even when the worst things we can imagine are happening to us, we’ll be able to say that we are blessed.
We’ll call ourselves “#blessed” and mean it because we’re experiencing the presence of God with us and in us. In our desperation for him during difficult times, we’ll find ourselves incredibly blessed by an increased sense of his companionship and comfort.
The Art of Receiving
One of the problems in blessing is to get the other person to hold still long enough to receive it. There is great art, and spirit to receiving a blessing. When we receive a blessing, we should not be thinking about blessing that person back. It is really a challenge to come to the place where you can just receive, and it’s a part of the grace of life with others to be able to receive their blessing. Blessing is an act of grace. It isn’t an act of indebtedness. We just receive it, but we have to have time to do that. We have to be able to be calm in our souls to receive the blessing. One of the sad effects of how we give benedictions in our church services is that people are thinking, “when are we going to get out of here?” This isn’t always true, of course, but they are apt not to receive the blessing that is given to them.
3: EVERY BLESSING HAS A REASON
We enjoy God’s blessing only because Jesus experienced the full measure of God’s curse in our place.
We can be sure that the Lord will keep and protect us because Christ was not protected. We can revel in having the Lord’s face turned toward us only because he turned his face away from his own Son as he hung on the cross. We can be sure that the Lord will lift up his countenance upon us only because when he looks at us, he sees us robed in the righteousness of Christ. He is able to grant us his peace only because his anger was exhausted on another.
To be blessed is to be joined to Christ so securely that we have an ever-increasing sense that we are being kept by and for God. Because we are recipients of lavish grace, we can be honest with God and other people about our sin. Because the Lord is giving us peace, we can face the future confident that there is therefore now no condemnation for us because we are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). We can shout it for the world to hear, post it for the social media world to read, and nail it to every wall in our home: we are truly, deeply, eternally blessed in Christ.
Hebrews 10
10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again, he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
We are not #BLESSED because of our holiness. We are #BLESSED because of His holiness.