Experiencing God's Blessing

Take out a piece of paper - just a scrap - and answer this question with the first thing that comes into your mind. Take no more than 10 seconds. Ready?

What is one activity you enjoy?

COUNT OFF 10 seconds

Don’t show me your answers, but let me guess:

some of you could write nothing down...

some of you felt guilty for that activity - you thought the answer should be ‘church’ or ‘Jesus’ or some such thing.

some of you may have been embarrassed by the first activity that came in your mind...

Maybe a few of you are confident enough to be comfortable with your answer.

Before we turn to Numbers 6, listen to Jesus’ promise:

“A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” (John 10:10, The Message)

Think of that. ‘better life than they ever dreamed of....’

As God’s people prepared for their journey to the land God had given Abraham the words of this blessing were given as a seal of God’s protection, promise, and presence:

Numbers 6:22–27 HCSB

The Lord spoke to Moses: “Tell Aaron and his sons how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: May Yahweh bless you and protect you; may Yahweh make His face shine on you and be gracious to you; may Yahweh look with favor on you and give you peace. In this way they will pronounce My name over the Israelites, and I will bless them.”

Last week I tried to show you how that generation - moving into the desert with no provision except daily manna, with no extra clothing, with no trained soldiers, could count on God’s presence to keep, to defend and to preserve His own people.

This week look at Numbers 6:25

Numbers 6:25 HCSB

may Yahweh make His face shine on you and be gracious to you;

The Favor of God

I used to tease my children: to my son, Josh - you are my favorite son. To Meg: Meg you are my favorite daughter. They caught on quickly - Josh is my only son, Meg is my only daughter!

The promise and power of this part of the blessing is simple:

God favors His own

Obviously since God is not a physical being in the way you and I are, the blessing is using a word picture to help us understand an important truth.

Here is an earlier word picture that draws a similar picture:

Exodus 19:4 HCSB

‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me.

Through mighty plagues, through a miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea, God proved His favor on His people.

God has chosen His people

Abraham did not choose God. Rather, God chose Abraham. Many people stumble on the question, ‘Why?’ The fact is there is no ‘why.’ God chose Abraham.

God chose he and his family and his descendants for His own people.

When Jesus Christ came He extended God’s invitation to all who would confess Him and believe Him.

A close study of those whom Jesus called aside a ‘apostles’ reveals several things.

First, they were called while living ordinary lives. Peter, Andrew, James, John were called while mending their nets after a night of fishing.

Matthew was called as he hosted a dinner party for Jesus in his home.

Later we read how Paul was called while on the road to silence believers and shut down gatherings where Jesus was proclaimed.

These people who heard this blessing had been born into slavery. Previous had known nothing but slavery.

As slaves their value had been calculated only in terms of the work they could accomplish.

God saw beyond the bonds of their slavery. God did more than state His favor, He acted from His favor, He shined His face toward them.

Literally the blessing is a promise of God’s continuing favor on His people for no other reason than He chose them!

God’s favor is an expression of grace and grace alone

By and large we live in a utilitarian world. If it works, don’t fix it. If a product works better than by all means purchase the new product.

We are all about what works and what doesn’t.

We see this reflected in diet fads - so and so lost 25 lbs by eating only [fill in the blank] - so it must work!

We often transfer this pattern of thinking into our walk with God.

So and so gets up at 5am and reads these chapters, prays using this pattern, and is well known as a powerful person. God has certainly ‘favored’ them because of their patterns.

The blessing the priests spoke over these slaves, would-be-warriors, unlikely campers, easily persuaded to sin, was intended to remind them that the favor of God rested on them - not because of their value to the world or even to God.

The favor of God rested upon these recently freed slaves not because of their value but because of God’s grace.

We use the word ‘grace’ often in Christian circles. I’m not convinced we always fully grasp what we are saying.

Some weeks or months after arriving at Mt Sinai Moses had ascended to the summit to receive the Ten Commandments.

In his absence Aaron, Moses’ brother’ had allowed God’s people to abandon Moses and their commitment to obedience.

While Moses was with God the people assumed he was lost to them forever. They insisted - with Aaron’s assistance - on creating an idol that could replace God.

Moses, upon seeing the spectacle angrily threw down the two tablets on which God had written.

As God threatened to destroy the nation and start again with Moses and his family Moses pled with God to not do that.

God invited Moses to return to the summit and in that experience, God gave Moses a significant revelation of His nature and character.

Listen to God’s self-definition:

Exodus 34:6–7 HCSB

Then the Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: Yahweh—Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving wrongdoing, rebellion, and sin. But He will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ wrongdoing on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.

Let’s dwell on the first two adjectives God uses to describe Himself:

‘compassionate and gracious’

One writer explains:

The bold thread of grace in the Bible is a distinctive marker of Christianity, one that sets it apart from other religions.

J. Gresham Machen noted, “The very center and core of the whole Bible is the doctrine of the grace of God.”

The works of God in creation as well as his covenants, his promises, his word, and his work of redemption all spring from his grace.

All we have is due to grace, but, as Michael Horton says, grace itself is “not a third thing or substance,” for “in grace, God gives nothing less than Himself.”

Mark Olivero, “God’s Grace,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).

The grace of God is nothing less than the promise of His presence, the assurance that He will not abandon us - even should we abandon Him!

The Grace of God’s Favor

Pulling the threads together in this part of God’s blessing allows us to see the following:

God-OwnedPeople

After arriving at Mt Sinai God described all He had done for Israel -

Exodus 19:5 HCSB

Now if you will listen to Me and carefully keep My covenant, you will be My own possession out of all the peoples, although all the earth is Mine,

Pay attention to the word translated ‘possession.’ In the Hebrew language this word “designates property in a qualified sense: personally gained, carefully tended, private property.”

Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 792.

Jesus once shared a parable, perhaps based on an incident with which He was familiar. A shepherd was caring for one hundred sheep. As the shepherd carefully did his job he noticed that there were now 99! Should he leave the 99 - risking some predator coming among their midst?

Should he go after the one - regardless of the cost in time and energy?

Of course in the parable the shepherd goes after the one - even one stray is significant.

As God brought His people to Himself He would leave none behind. When the priests offered this blessing God’s people were assured that God would not leave them behind. He had invested Himself in bringing them to Himself.

God-cared for people

God provided every need those families needed. They took jewelry and other items from their masters, the Egyptians, but those were to provide the material for the tabernacle which with Moses direction they built.

Centuries later a man named Paul - one whom God had sought - making Himself known through His Son - found himself in prison for his boldness in proclaiming the good news of Jesus. In that prison Paul wrote several letters. One of those was to believers in Philippi - believers he had much personal experience with!

He could have asked for sympathy, for care packages. He could have written a scathing letter holding the officials who had imprisoned him responsible.

Listen to just a piece of that letter:

Philippians 1:18–26 HCSB

What does it matter? Just that in every way, whether out of false motives or true, Christ is proclaimed. And in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice because I know this will lead to my deliverance through your prayers and help from the Spirit of Jesus Christ. My eager expectation and hope is that I will not be ashamed about anything, but that now as always, with all boldness, Christ will be highly honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For me, living is Christ and dying is gain. Now if I live on in the flesh, this means fruitful work for me; and I don’t know which one I should choose. I am pressured by both. I have the desire to depart and be with Christ —which is far better — but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. Since I am persuaded of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that, because of me, your confidence may grow in Christ Jesus when I come to you again.

Confident of God’s ability to keep him, assured of God’s diligence in leading him to Rome Paul expressed joy!

God-graced people

As God’s people prepared to set out for the long awaited promised land this blessing was to remind them that all God had provided for them, all that God had done in preparing them had absolutely nothing to do with their ability, their strength, their wealth, their connections.

Every item they touched had come through the grace of God. He graced them food, water, shelter, guidance and direction.

Most importantly He provided Himself!

In this blessing God not only reveals His nature and character, He invites us to experience His presence, He invites us to enter into a life better than we can dream.

We know that soon after these blessed people left Mt Sinai they began to grumble. They directly disobeyed God on more than one occasion. The entire generation of adults who heard this blessing died just short of the Promised Land.

We are tempted to limit our thoughts of the Promised Land - and yes, there are a great many things waiting for us there. But don’t miss this:

God intends for us to experience His favor because in His grace He has sought us, He chose us, He carefully tends us. We will experience hardship and difficulty. But every experience that comes our way is an opportunity to more fully discover the power and presence of God - to more fully immerse ourselves in His grace and to know His favor.

It may seem to others like you are in the midst of some massive storm. You may be tempted to look at the circumstances and quake in fear.

Instead let the words of God’s blessing fill you with confidence and assurance:

Numbers 6:25 HCSB

may Yahweh make His face shine on you and be gracious to you;