Prayers of Blessing (Hebrews 13:20-21)

Intro

Good morning Church Family! It’s an honor to be here with you this morning and bring the message. I’ve loved this summer series on prayer. It’s been so edifying to hear and focus on the many different ways we can and should pray. This morning I’ve been tasked with preaching from Hebrews 13:20-21 and the topic of prayers of blessing. So let’s begin by reading our passage.

20 Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, 21 equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

A little bit of self disclosure, I struggled a bit in the preparation of this passage. It is so packed with deep theological truths that condensing it into one message was a struggle for me. If you haven’t read Hebrews or maybe you haven’t read it in a long time, or never deeply studied it, you really should. I’ve heard several people call it the Key to the Old Testament, and I think that is totally accurate. The author is writing this letter to explain how Jesus ties in to the Old Testament. And as you read through the letter you’ll see how some of the weird passages that don’t fully make sense in the Old Testament are revealed in Jesus. He is showing how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. And in Chapter 13 the author is finishing this incredible letter by writing a prayer for the reader. I’ve tried to sum it up into 4 points AND I took a piece of advice from my old college campus minister so they all start with the same letter. Peace, Promise, Power, and Praise.

Peace

Now may the God of Peace

For those of you that don’t know, I’m from Mena. And on April 9th 2009 I was in the 4th grade. It was a Thursday, and I remember that because I had gone to soccer practice that evening while there we noticed the weather was eery. The sky was a strange yellow green but we continued practice and afterwards my family went out and in family tradition, we picked up pizza and went home to watch an episode of Survivor. Just when we were about to find out who was going to be voted off the island, our TV went out my sister and I began to complain pretty loudly. Then all of a sudden my dad told us to be quiet and said “Do you hear that?” Everyone held their breath and listened and sure enough the Tornado sirens were wailing away. We all knew what to do. I mean I’ve lived in Arkansas all my life. We went into the most internal hallway of our small house put a mattress down to sit on and waited playing some board games. We weren’t that concerned about what would happen, tornado sirens go off fairly regularly. But as the storm got closer, we realized that this was not just a false alarm it was real. The wind picked up and suddenly there was a loud crash. One of the oak trees in our yard had been uprooted and landed on my sisters room, whose door I was leaning against. We could immediately see that door begin to bow as the wind pulled against it. My parents began frantically emptying our small coat closet and threw us in there. Thankfully aside from that tree, and our outside storage building being completely crushed, our house was mostly spared. You can see a picture of me here the next day sitting on top of where that storage building used to be. There was a lot of damage to the town. Here is a picture of the street running perpendicular to where I lived.

Out of all of that, there is one thing that I remember clearly. Despite all of the chaos that happened in the blink of an eye, there was still peace.

I can’t speak for everyone in the town, but the vast majority of people that I know, I think would second this. There was an incredible peace after the storm. A peace that came over the people in the wake of that disaster. People weren’t panicking or screaming, they were just taking it in and then they got to work. You could hear chainsaws ripping all night long. I can’t identify any other thing than the peace of God working in that moment, comforting and reassuring. There was an inner peace that did not make sense.

Our God is the God of Peace. As I was studying this week, I realized that each member of the Godhead is given the attribute of Peace in scripture. The father in this passage is called the God of peace but he is called this title in other places as well. Philippians 4:9,

Psychologists say there are 2 basic forms of Chaos. External and Internal. External is the chaos of all the things surrounding us. Natural disasters like the flooding in Texas are easily identifiable as chaotic. We also see chaos when accidents happen, or when sin enters the news like the