Prayer of Blessing

Biblical Concept of Blessing

What does blessing mean?

Is blessing prosperity?

Beattitudes: “blessed are those…” (humility not prosperity)

Aaron’s Priestly Blessing | Numbers 6

Walk through scripture

The first truth of the passage is where blessing comes from: it comes from the Lord. It doesn’t come from having hardwood floors—speaking from experience I can tell you that they can be a mixed blessing, unless like Martina you have a maid to keep them spotless! It doesn’t even come from having happy children. Blessing comes from the Lord. That notion is central to the passage. Three times the Lord reiterates it: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” The Lord, Jehovah, the personal name of God, is identified three times as the one from whom blessing comes. Then, at the very end of the passage, just in case you somehow missed it earlier, the Lord sums it up by saying to Moses “I myself”—literal translation, the Hebrew is emphatic here—“I myself will bless them” (v. 27).

“The LORD bless you and keep you.” In other words, may the Lord provide us with what we need and protect us from harm. The Lord knows that we need food and drink to sustain our body. He knows that we need clothes to wear and a house to live in. He knows what our future holds, and he has crafted it to fit the work he is doing in our hearts and through us in the lives of others. The Lord’s blessing includes and encompasses all of those things, given to us in exactly the right measure with fatherly wisdom. There is nothing wrong with desiring all of these things and asking him to give them to us. The Lord’s protection and keeping of his people is a wonderful and reassuring truth.

The LORD make his face to shine upon you”—“the LORD lift up his countenance upon you.” True blessing is knowing God face-to-face. The idea of having God’s face shine when he looks at us is a wonderful image. Have you ever seen anyone’s face shine? Perhaps you have watched children on Christmas morning as they open their presents. Or you watch young lovers as they walk together in the park and look at each other: they glow with the delight of being together. This is the heart of blessing: to have the Lord delight in us so much that it is as if his face shines whenever he sees us. Blessing is not just that our faces shine when we look at the beauties of God, but that he delights to turn his face toward us and look at us. Blessing is our heavenly Father’s face beaming as he looks upon us. Can you imagine God delighting in you in this way?

God thus wants our relationship with him to be one where we not only know his protection and his keeping, but also where we know his presence. This is blessing indeed, to know that the Lord’s face is turned toward us and that we know his favor. We have no claim on that favor, as if it were ours by rights. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a matter of grace. But the Lord commanded the priests to remind the people daily that by his grace they could know that he delighted in them. Do we know the blessing of that kind of relationship with our heavenly Father?

Iain M. Duguid and R. Kent Hughes, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 90.

Iain M. Duguid and R. Kent Hughes, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 90.

Iain M. Duguid and R. Kent Hughes, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 89.

Iain M. Duguid and R. Kent Hughes, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 87–88.

We are priests | 1 Peter 2

Blessing our Enemies

Matthew 5