Living in God's Blessing

Hey, my name is René and I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. It is just really great to have you here and I want to invite you to take these message notes out of your bulletins that says "still" on the top because that is our February series all about biblical meditation. While you're taking those out, I just want to update you about a couple of things that are happening here at Twin Lakes Church.

Many of you were with us last November when on Thanksgiving we took a pledge offering for our 2020 vision, and a part of that is building a new children's ministry center right here on campus. I just kind of want to give you a quick update if you don't know already. We are in the midst of the approval process, getting all the permits and everything for that. Of course, here it's a time-consuming process, so please pray about that.

What we'd like you specifically to pray for is that we'd be able to break ground on those buildings this summer. It would practically take a miracle for that to happen, but would you just pray that God would move in the hearts of everybody who needs to approve this and that we can break ground this summer? How many of you raise your hand if you will pray for that? Would you pray for that for us? We will keep you updated and we'll see how the Lord unfolds all of this.

One more thing I wanted to mention. A few weeks ago during our world outreach week, we had an acapella concert with a group called Rescue. How many of you were at the Rescue concert? That was a great concert, and all the proceeds went to an AIDS orphanage in Africa. We just got a thank-you note from them, and since this is addressed to you, let me read some of it.

Please accept our deep thanks and appreciation for the generosity of the church. The amount of over $5,000 will go a long way toward feeding kids and paying school fees for those orphan kids to which Afton AIDS has committed themselves. Thank you so much, so God bless you. Keep that African orphanage in prayer. It's a very, very cool thing that you guys did.

Well, let me ask one more question. Show of hands, how many of you love buried treasure movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark and National Treasure? I love those kinds of movies, and if you love those, I have a story for you. But it's a true story. This happened in 1979 and it's a true story of archaeological treasure that was discovered near Jerusalem. What makes it cool is that it's been documented with photographs as it was happening.

This man, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University named Gabriel Barquet, was digging just outside the ancient walls of Jerusalem near this old church, St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Jerusalem. He basically had zero budget, so who is he gonna get to help him dig? He talks to a local Boys and Girls Club and he says, as part of your summer camp, can I get the junior hires from the Boys and Girls Club to come and help me with this dig? They say okay, and so all of his assistants are 12 and 13 years old.

He starts digging with his army of junior hires, and their job is to clean centuries of dirt and grime from these ancient Jewish burial chambers. In fact, in this picture, which he took, his middle schoolers are lying down in the burial labs. This is where the dead bodies went, and this is a picture he took so that his students at Tel Aviv University could know how this burial ground was laid out.

Then Gabriel asks one of the junior hires, this kid, a boy named Nathan, to carefully clean out one of the burial nooks. This is a little nook about this wide where bones would go, and it was just full of dirt. The rest of it is solid stone, and so he says to Nathan, look, I want you to clean that nook. Why did he ask Nathan to do that? Let me quote Gabriel, the archaeologist. He said, among these junior high diggers, there was one extremely annoying kid named Nathan. He was always bugging me, always tugging at my shirt, asking me more stuff to do, and so I thought this would be an ideal place to put him to keep him out of my sight.

So I told Nathan this nook has to be as clean as your mother's kitchen. It has to be clean for the photographs. Well, Nathan cleans out the nook meticulously, and then he gets bored. He finds a hammer, and this junior hire with a hammer starts banging the hammer on the solid rock sides of this burial nook and the bottom of this nook. Then truth becomes stranger than fiction when what they thought was the solid rock side of this burial nook breaks because it turns out that it was hollow.

Nathan had found the secret entryway to an ancient chamber filled with clay vessels that contained about a thousand artifacts, including ancient gold, silver, and precious jewelry. It is the largest hoard of treasure ever found in Jerusalem to this day. You can see the square hole that Nathan found in this picture that was disguised by the people who originally built this so that it looked solid. If a junior hire had been playing with a hammer, that treasure would still be undiscovered to this day.

The contents of this chamber dated to the seventh century BC—that's Old Testament Bible times, that's the time of Jeremiah the prophet during the first temple period. This is very, very ancient. Well, as they're excavating this chamber, a girl named Judy walks up to Gabriel with a tiny little thing in her hand that looks like a cigarette. But this was it—it was a tiny silver scroll rolled up tight. Then they found a second one just like it, and just like everything else in that tomb, they dated it to the first temple period.

So the question then became, what is on these scrolls? These are rolled up tight; they've got something on them. We want to know what's on these scrolls, but how can we unroll them without them crumbling into dust? Nobody knew how to do it. Years went by until scientists in Israel figured out a way to unroll these silver scrolls, and so they did. What was on them? What did they say?

Well, to everyone's astonishment, both of the scrolls contained the exact same piece of the Bible, and these are the oldest copies of any scripture yet discovered. To put this into perspective, the Dead Sea Scrolls rocked the world because they had scriptures written at the oldest about 200 BC. These scrolls are more than four centuries older than the oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Now, the words that were on these scrolls originally went back even further than that. They went back a long time ago. They are known as the Aaronic benediction—not the ironic benediction. That would be something like, may the Lord be as much of a blessing to you as I'm sure you are to him. That would be the ironic benediction. This is the Aaronic benediction. Why is it called that? Well, it goes back 3,400 years ago to the time of Aaron, after the people of Israel escaped their slavery in Egypt.

Moses gets the Ten Commandments, and God gives Moses and his brother Aaron instructions on how to build the tabernacle, which was also called the tent of meeting. This was like a portable temple where they would make sacrifices to cover the sins of the people and have worship services. One of the things God tells them to do is this: he says when the service at the tent of meeting is over, have Aaron the priest raise his hands and say these words. Those words are what was on those ancient silver scrolls that were found in that archaeological dig in your Bibles there at the very end of Numbers 6:23–27.

Here they are: so cool! This is the most ancient piece of the Bible that we have yet discovered, a manuscript. For the Lord said to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons, this is how you are to bless the Israelites: say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.

This blows me away because these ancient words are just as relevant and just as meaningful and just as pertaining to whatever you are going through today as they were thousands of years ago. For thousands of years, believers have flocked to these words to find comfort and hope when the storm was rising in their lives. So this morning, I want to examine these in detail and see what the blessing is all about.

Again, look at those message notes. Grab a pencil or a pen so you can keep up with this. "Still" is the name of our February series on meditation. Today, living in God's blessing is the topic we want to look at as we go through these verses. Two weeks ago, I talked about what biblical meditation is—how it's ruminating on a verse of the Bible, just kind of like a cow chewing its cud. Well, today, that's what we want to do with these verses—the verses that were on those ancient scrolls, the verses that are in your Bible. If there's any verses in the Bible that people have been ruminating on for centuries, it's those words.

So what do they mean? What I want to look at today is what this blessing is, how do I get it, and how it changes me when I get it. I really think your world is gonna be rocked, your confidence is gonna zoom, and your relationship with God will be changed if you get this. It was so important to God he said, say this to the people after every worship service at the tabernacle. Again, what it is, how to get it, and what it does to me.

First of all, what is it? It says, the Lord bless you. What does that even mean? "Lord bless you"—is that what God says to you when you sneeze? What is this all about? Well, I mentioned this was called the Aaronic benediction. What does benediction even mean? Well, "ben" means good and "diction" means word, and so benediction literally means good word. It's God giving you a good word.

Now, where does the idea of a benediction, a good word from God, even originally come from? Well, six times in Genesis 1, a day of creation ends, and then the phrase, the Lord saw what he had made, and it was good. Now, when we finish something and say that's good, it's kind of like this turned out a lot better than I thought it would. You know, that's pretty good if I say so myself. Do you think that's what God meant? No, of course not, because everything God does is absolutely perfect. So when he says, oh, that is good, it means he is delighting in it.

He's taking delight in it, and so that's part of what it means for God to bless you. God is saying, I delight in you, and that's huge. Do you know that God delights in you? You know, on Thursday night, I was stunned by the sunset. Anybody here remember the sunset on Thursday night? It was incredible, wasn't it? I walked around behind this building and took this picture just on my camera phone. My little phone camera—I mean, this wasn't even zoomed in. This is what the whole sky looked like. It was awe-inspiring.

But I thought to myself, probably the ancient Israelites around the time of this blessing saw something like this every night because the presence of God was a pillar of cloud to them by day and a pillar of fire by night. Maybe at dusk when it switched, it was something like this, right, as the cloud turned to fire. Now, that is impressive. That is awe-inspiring. That's even a little intimidating, but you can't have a relationship with that. You can't hug that; you can't become intimate with that.

This is why God says in the final words of the worship service, remind them I not only shine like fire, I'm shining my face toward them. I love them; I delight in them. Then there's another dimension to a blessing. In Bible days, when a man was about to die and he was literally on his deathbed, he would call his children toward him. He would take his hands and put them on the heads of his sons, and starting with his oldest son, he would pronounce a blessing on his sons. To the oldest son, he would give him the most of his inheritance.

What he would do when he pronounced a blessing on his sons is he would not only wish them well; he would not only pray for their prosperity, but he would bestow property on that child in his blessing. He would give them their inheritance. So a blessing isn't just somebody saying, God bless you, you know, you're wonderful. A blessing is also somebody equipping you to do what they see in you. When God says, I bless you, he's not only saying I delight in you, he's saying I equip you. I grant you the resources; I lavish on you the inheritance that it takes for you to achieve the plan that I have for you.

That's why it says, and keep you, because that means provide for you, right? God not only affirms you; he equips you. He not only delights in you; he gives you an inheritance. Now, this is huge. This is what the people of the time heard, what they thought of when they heard somebody say, the Lord give you a blessing. He's not only wishing you well; he's equipping you.

Now let's also think of what they thought back in those contexts. How important was it for people back then to get this blessing from their fathers? It was huge. It was sort of seen as the key to success in life. Just one case study from the Bible: Jacob. You remember the story? Jacob and his brother Esau were fraternal twins. They were born at the same time, but Esau was like two seconds older, and this became a huge problem for Jacob because back in those days, the firstborn would get the majority of the estate from the father.

Esau is two seconds older, but he's gonna get most of the inheritance. To make matters worse, their father Isaac clearly delights in Esau and loves Esau the most. Jacob grows up bitter and resentful, and he schemes with his own mother to disguise himself as his brother. When his father's very old and his father's eyesight and hearing isn't very good, and his father's clearly about to die, Jacob and his mother conspire. He puts on his brother's clothes and gets hair and puts it on his arms because his brother was very hairy. He goes up in disguise to his father and steals his father's blessing.

He says, Father, you're going to die, and I am Esau, so put your hands on my head and give me your blessing. Now he steals the blessing from his own brother. Why would Jacob do that? Tim Keller does such a good job when he tells Jacob's story. He says Jacob was clearly so needy for his father's blessing that he was willing to do anything to hear his father say one time, you are my beloved child, and everything I have is yours. He wants to just hear his dad say it once, even though he knew it was all a lie.

Of course, Jacob is caught. Jacob has to leave. Jacob goes on the land; he gets nothing of his father's estate after all, all because he wanted so desperately to be approved and blessed by dad. I got a question for you: why has that story resonated with us for thousands of years so much? This is a story that's over 3,000 years old. It's because we all, everyone in this room, all of us wants, some of us desperately, for someone important outside of us to bless us, to approve of us, to say, you know what? You're doing a good job; you're a good person. Somebody that we put in a position of authority to say that, to say to us, I delight in you—an authority figure that approves of us.

Some of you, it might be your dad. Some of you don't have your dad anymore; it might be somebody else that you sort of put into that position of a father figure. Getting your father's blessing is such a resonant theme that this comes up again and again in human literature. You see it in classic novels; you even see it in kids' cartoons. I was thinking about this just this morning, actually. I was sitting in a movie theater the first time Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs came out, and this is a cartoon about a guy who makes an invention that makes meat and veggies fall from the sky. I mean, there could not be anything less profound, right?

Well, I look down the aisle, and there's a guy here about 10 years older than me, and he's bawling. He's sobbing. You know why? Because that's not what that movie is about. What that movie is about is wanting your dad to approve of you and love you so much that you will do anything—even crazy things—to get his attention. That's what that movie is about, like in this little scene where the young boy tries so desperately to impress his father. Look at what he gets in return. Watch the screen.

So, no room? Yep, you just hold out your plate. I even made it rain your favorite meat. Okay, so you know how the grand reopening of the town is tomorrow? Well, the mayor has asked me to cut the ribbon. He said my invention saved the town. Aren't you proud of me? Well, listen, this steak looks a little big to you? Yeah, it's a big steak. I mean, every steak is not exactly the same size. Did you even hear what I just said? So look around. I'm not sure this is good for people. Maybe you should think about turning this thing. It's making everybody happy—everybody except you.

We desperately want the approval of an authority figure, and sometimes we do crazy things to get it, like him, because you think then at last I'll have confidence, then I'll be satisfied, then I'll have, you know, peace and poison and purpose because that person has blessed me. But you know what you really need? You need this blessing to know that God not only blesses you but keeps you, lavishes his inheritance on you. This right here, this is the image of a dad so proud of his son or of his daughter. When I really know, really know deep down that I have this from God, then I have that inner poise, then I have that confidence.

Then I'm not needy for approval. What I get from other people is nice, but it's not essential. It's a blessing, but it's frosting on the cake. If you don't know that you have this, you're gonna be driven to get it, and you're gonna go around desperately trying to get blessing from people of worth in your life. You know what'll happen? You'll either exploit other people to try to get it, like Jacob exploits his dad and his brother, or you'll be exploited by other people, like Jacob is exploited by Laban. But if you get this, you have peace. That's why it says, and grant you peace. That word used for peace, of course, is the Hebrew word shalom, which means total, absolute deep peace.

For the Lord to bless you and keep you is the way to get that sense of total fulfillment, the absolute fulfillment of your innermost desires—total serenity, equilibrium, confidence. That doesn't sound great? We all want that. So how do I get it? How do I get that blessing? You know, how do I earn it? Well, you can't earn it. As you see on the top of page two in your notes, it says, the Lord make his face shine upon you. It doesn't say make the Lord's face shine upon you. The acting person here is the Lord. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you.

By the way, what does that phrase mean, the Lord turn his face toward you? God's face means his relational presence. Of course, God is present everywhere, but his face shining on you means you're in a special relationship with him. Now think of what Moses must have been thinking when he hears God say, I want you to tell the people that the Lord is gonna have his face shine on the people, that the face of God is gonna radiate on the whole crowd. In Moses's recent experience, what happened when he asked to see God's face? God said, uh, you can't see my face and live. If you see my face, you'll die. Why? It's not because God's, you know, in a grumpy mood sometimes; it's because God is holy and we're sinful, and pure holiness cannot exist with any kind of sin.

So we can't see the face of God; we're separated from that kind of a relationship. When Moses hears the Lord make his face shine upon you, he must have been thinking, how in the world is that possible for us to survive the encounter? Well, there's a hint: and be gracious to you. Even here, you see it's all by grace. Remember, this is at the end of what the tabernacle service, and what's happened at the tabernacle service? There have been blood sacrifices for sin, and so you have this hint that somehow God's gonna deal with our sin so that we can have that relationship back, so that we can feel his face shining upon us.

But the tabernacle service was only a hint of what God is going to do. It was only sort of an object lesson about the reality, and the reality is in Hebrews 10 in the New Testament. It says day after day every priest stands again and again. He offers the same sacrifices, which can never really take away sins. But when, watch this, this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Let me ask you a question. Shout it out. What priest? Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ was the one who paid the ultimate price, was the sacrifice, the last of the sacrifices so that God's face can shine on us. He put himself in my place.

Let this kind of, I don't know, be a head trip for you. Go back to the story of Jacob for just a second. When Jacob is getting into his disguise, he's putting on his brother's clothes to trick his dad, right? He stops and he says to his co-conspirator, his mother Rebecca, he says, what if dad's onto me, and I not only don't get the blessing but I get his curse? Rebecca goes rashly, she says, upon me be your curse. Now get into your brother's garments and let's do this thing. Upon me be your curse. Well, what his mother says rashly, in the most awesome reversal of all, Jesus says, upon me be your curse. He says that to all of us, to the Father. He says, upon me be their curse, even though he knew the full extent of what that would involve.

In many ways, Jesus put on our garments so that the blessing that was rightfully Jesus's as the firstborn son of God might be given to us. He wore our garments of sin so that we could wear his garments of righteousness. He took our place as sort of the anti-Jacob. That's huge! So that when the Father blesses him and says, you are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, that blessing of the Father to his son becomes ours. I mean, that's huge! But how does that actually change your life? That's trippy, but how does it change the way I live my life? What difference does this actually make?

Let me shift gears here just a little bit and put it this way. One very fun little subgenre of video that's on YouTube these days—there's a whole collection of videos—is video of little babies reacting to daddy coming home from work. Kind of like this one. Watch the screen. I love how this stats not exactly overwhelmed. It's all the stuff on the first—that's it, that's enough. Don't want to get carried away. But there's a whole bunch of these. I love these. Check out this one. This is double the fun because this is identical twins all getting excited about their dad. Look at the screen.

Oh, it's funny because you can hear the dog sort of barking in the background. Well, can I show you just one more? I could go on for like an hour, but in this one, you get them. It's so fun because it's like the dog and the little baby are twins because they're about the same height and they have about the same vocabulary, and they're both excited about daddy coming home from work, as you see in this video. Daddy, who's home? You see him? Is daddy? Is that awesome? I love those. Love them!

Now you might say, what does that have to do with my relationship with God? Everything! Everything! Because my guess is one of the reasons that we don't do more meditating, don't have more quiet time with God, don't look forward to worship any more than we do is because we see God as a negative, judgmental, unpleasable parent. But if you hear the words that God said, tell them this every day, every day tell them that the Lord blesses them, delights in them, keeps them, equips them, that his face shines on them, that he's gracious toward them, and that he keeps his face beaming in their direction, if that's how you think of God, then what are you gonna do?

You're gonna rush into his presence. You're gonna say, I get to spend more time with him. I get to read more about him. I get to pray more. I get to worship him. Yay, daddy! And I get to spend some time together. It's not just about warm, fuzzy feelings. This says you will put my name on them. Did you notice this? The priests will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them. What does that mean?

Well, think about what it means when a child gets a family name. Imagine a kid is an orphan, completely alone in the world, and some great family adopts him. He gets the family name. What does he get from that? What does an orphan receive from a family name? Very quickly, identity. He knows who he is now. He's not an orphan; he's got a name. Solidarity—he's in a family now; he's not alone anymore. He's got brothers and sisters. If he's got a problem, they got his back. Accountability—because the family names on you, you represent. You can't just live your old way anymore. Security—to be a son or a daughter isn't to have a boss and get fired if you misbehave. When you misbehave, even when you misbehave, you get loved, and all of that is part of your blessing.

It changes you because of your identity. It changes how you respond to problems because of the solidarity of your family. It changes the way you behave because of the accountability that you bear now. It changes the way you feel about the future, and it changes your anxiety level because of your security. It changes everything about your relationship with everybody and your relationship with God.

I got this email the other day, a great email. A woman says, Pastor René, I've struggled for years with an image of God that I would never be able to please. You know what? I was thinking was that she's gonna probably say, and then I started coming to Twin Lakes Church and it all got better, right? Well, that's not what she says. In fact, she says, I've even attended Twin Lakes for several years now but have still struggled with am I good enough for God? Not a good foundation for peace. I struggled with perfectionism for years and would often just give up in sin because it was easier than always feeling like a failure.

Now finally, I'm able to leave church not feeling like I'm full of festering sores of sin. For the first time in my Christian walk, I get it. She was talking about a study we did in January on Romans 8. She says, I will always struggle with sin while I'm alive, but now I get it. Jesus has conquered it by his blood, and I can live in grace by his power and his power alone, not mine. It's all because of God's amazing grace. She says, I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to that song again without tears of joy. I'm so thankful to him, and that is awesome! But that's somebody who has learned to live in God's blessing.

So what do I do now? Well, let's wrap it up. Two things very quickly. First, I give it. I give this blessing to others. I have to tell you, when we were starting the 2020 vision last summer, I was at a low ebb for some reason or another. But a guy here in this church named Pete Shipper, every single week, started sending me emails, and the subject line was always, don't quit, don't quit. In the email, he always reminded me of who I am in Christ, that it's all by God's grace and that God has a plan for me. What was he doing? He was reminding me of my identity, my solidarity, my accountability, my security. He was blessing me.

Look around for people not to criticize but to actively bless. The Bible says bless and do not curse; it'll change your life. And there's two: receive it. Here's what I mean by that. You keep reminding yourself that this is true every day, that no matter how you feel right now, if you're in Christ, the Lord's face is shining on you. Everything in Christ is yours, and that's gonna make you feel at times like those little kids when you think of your father.

Now, you won't always feel all giggly. I'm not saying you gotta chase after an emotional high, but I want to ask you, do you know anything of that at all? Do you feel at times in your soul God delights in me? He lavishes everything on me. It's not about my performance. Receive it. Live in it. Seek it daily, every day, because we live in a culture that every day shouts a different message at you. Every day through commercials, every day at work, every day perhaps even in your family, every day what you hear is you're not quite good enough.

You need to buy our product; you need to go for that promotion; you need to get that raise; you need to have a better career; you should be owning a house; you should be owning a better house. Why aren't you better looking? Every day you get this message constantly. What you got, it's not that getting promotions or getting raises or having houses is a bad thing, of course not. But so often, our motivation for getting those things is to try to prove that I'm somebody.

Your soul has a list of a hundred things that it wants. Rather, your ego—I would say your ego has a list of a hundred things that it wants. My ego wants this; my ego wants that; my ego wants that. But your soul really only wants one thing, and you know what your soul wants? Your soul wants this: just to know, ah, I'm just blessed in the Lord, and he delights in me. Just relax and receive that today and every day.

Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me? With our heads bowed, I just want to do a couple of things. I'm gonna ask Trent to come back and just come to the piano and sing over you that lesson, and I want you to just receive that. But first, maybe you need to receive the sacrifice of Christ for the first time in your life. Say, Lord, I receive what you did for me. I don't understand how it all cosmically works, but I receive it. I choose it. I want to live in the blessing made possible by Christ's sacrifice. Just receive him.

And Lord, now in these moments, we seek your face. Thank you so much that you've been gracious to us and that you've made your face shine upon us and that you give us peace through Jesus Christ. I pray especially that those who find themselves in a storm today, oh, those who struggle with despair and shame and feeling like they're never good enough, would truly receive this in this moment. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.