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The Lord Bless You and Keep You
A sermon
by Dr. James Flamming,
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Many times as we close
the service, as part of a benediction, I will walk down the center aisle and I
will say, “The Lord bless you and keep you, and make His face shine upon you and
be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you
and give you peace.”
This morning, I’d like
to reverse the order. I want to give you a blessing but I want you to be ready
to receive it at the beginning, not the ending. The Bible has as a major
emphasis and doctrine blessing. It is not an afterthought. There are as many
incidents of the word bless or blessing or blessed as there are of Heaven.
Do you know where that
blessing comes from? “The Lord bless you and keep you…” I want you to find
out. Numbers, fourth book in the Bible, sixth chapter, twenty-fourth verse.
“And 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 upon 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 is the word of the Lord.
Do you know when this
blessing was given? When I say the word blessing, you think about good stuff.
And when somebody says to you, “Have a blessed day,” they are saying “Have a
good one.” Right? This blessing was arguably given to the Israelites, the
Hebrews, in the worst of times. Which means that blessing is not dependent upon
circumstances, is not dependent upon the environment, is not dependent upon
what’s happening. Blessing has to do with God and you. And however you came in
here this morning, my heart of hearts desire is that you leave with a blessing.
That the Lord Christ has come into your life and in some way, with some word,
with some nudge, through some song, through a prayer, through a scripture,
through the sermon, you’ve been blessed.
Let me tell you what
kind of a situation the Hebrews were in. You can turn to the thirteenth chapter
of Numbers, and if you read the thirteenth chapter, you will discover that Moses
has sent twelve men – they are to do some reconnaissance of the Promised Land to
which they are going. Well, the ten men get back – the twelve men get back and
ten of them give a very um downer report. Look in twenty-seven.
They gave Moses this
account, “We went into the land to which you sent us and it does flow with milk
and honey. And here is its fruit.” And they brought back huge clusters of
grapes. “But the people who live there are powerful and the cities are
fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak, that was the legend
of giant giants.” Well Caleb, verse 30, silenced the people before Moses and
said, “We should go up and take possession of the land. We can do this. But
the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people. They are
stronger than we are.” And so forth, and so forth.
“That night, all the
people of the community raised their voices and wept aloud.” And here’s what
they were saying, “If only we had died in Egypt or in this desert. Why is the
Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword,” and so forth.
This is not the positive of positives. If you have to wait for a blessing when
everything is right, it’ll never come. Because the great blessings of the Bible
are given in the midst of often difficult, sometimes even terrifying,
circumstances. As a matter of fact, God’s strategy of blessing is precisely the
opposite of the world’s understanding of blessing. The world’s understanding of
blessing is “You gotta have everything right in place. Everything hunky-dory.”
You what the Bible’s concept of blessing is? In the midst of the worst of times,
God is going to bless you to do the best of things.
The blessing that Jesus
gave is an answer to another incident in the Bible. It’s back in Genesis. We
won’t bother to turn to it because we don’t have much time, but here’s the
story. Isaac had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Now, it was the tradition that the
oldest always got the blessing. If you were 13th, good luck! If you
were oldest son, you got it, baby! All right. Esau by rights had everything.
And all of the family was to serve him. But Rebekah, the mother, and Jacob,
they connived together. Jacob, because Isaac couldn’t see very well, tricked
him. And Isaac laid his hand not on Esau, but on Jacob. And Jacob got the
blessing. How do you think Esau felt? Yeah, he did not exactly get up and say
“Whoopee.”
Let me show you what he
said. “Esau said to his father as he wept, ‘Father, do you only have one
blessing? Bless me, too, my father’ and he wept aloud.” The answer to Esau’s
question, “Do you only have one blessing? Bless me, too, my father.” The
answer is Jesus. What he taught, what he did, who he touched, who included.
Matthew 5. Listen, Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes. Guess who Jesus
blesses? Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are those who mourn, they shall be comforted. The meek, they will
inherit the earth. Those who hunger and thirst, that are hungry for
righteousness, they’ll be filled. The merciful will have mercy shown. The pure
in heart will see God. The peacemakers will be called sons of God. And blessed
are those who are persecuted for My sake. And guess he included? Guess who he
touched? Guess who he blessed? The blind, the deaf, the lepers, even the tax
collectors. Here is where Jesus turns everything upside down.
If you walk in here this
day and you think you are outside the blessing of God, forget it. I don’t care
who you are. I don’t care what your situation in life is. I don’t care what
your name, your nationality, your color, your bank status, there is nobody in
this room outside of the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ, who wishes so to
bless you. And your life.
In Mark, He put a little
child in front. You know, children when they are very, very young, like the
kind we dedicate, for them diamonds and oranges are the same thing. What they
want is the presence of the mama. And the presence of the daddy. And that’s
the great blessing of their lives. And Jesus said, “Be like children. Become
like little ones, for whom the presence and the blessing of the Lord is the most
important thing in your life.” O.K. How can you be a receiver of God’s
blessing? Well, the first thing you … first thing you have to do, I have to do,
everybody has to do is the thing we don’t do. And that is make room for it.
Make room for Him. We don’t have to be the biggest sinners. All we have to do
is be terribly busy. And there’s no time, no space for the Lord. The first
thing you gotta do if you are going to receive the blessing of the Lord is make
room for it. It’s like … it’s like planting a garden. You gotta pull the weeds
before you put in the flowers. It’s like putting in a lawn. You’d better get
rid of the crabgrass first, or it’ll take over.
You gotta make room for
it. A chaplain, World War II, said that in the last days, he had all kinds of
soldiers coming to him, wanting forgiveness. Wanting forgiveness for what they
had stolen from German homes as they advanced. And the Chaplain would say,
“Well, the first thing you gotta do is you have to give up what you stole. Take
it to the Commanding Officer.” They said, “Well, he won’t know where it came
from.” “That’s alright. You are the one who has to get rid of it. You are the
one who stole it.” He said as far as he knows, nobody ever took it to the
Commanding Officer. It was as if they wanted forgiveness, but they didn’t want
to give anything back they had stolen. Sooner or later, in order to make room
for God, we gotta make room for God! We gotta push some things aside. That’s
what forgiveness and repentance is all about.
Second thing. If you’re
going to make room for the blessing of the Lord Jesus, you’re going to have to
put together, well, in my judgment, in the New Testament’s judgment, you are
going to have to put together substitution and blessing. And you don’t know
what that means? I am gonna tell you. See, the … the Scripture says that the
Lord Jesus took our place in a lot of ways. He didn’t destroy our freedom but
he took our place. That he became a curse for us so that we would not be a
curse forever. And in taking that place for us, He substituted. My experience
with people is this: If we will not accept God’s gift through Christ on the
cross to forgive us of our sins, to nail our sins to that cross, we are going to
make a cross for ourselves or somebody else. Substitution. Maybe one reason
you don’t accept the blessings of God is ‘cause you haven’t accepted the number
one blessing of God and that is, He took your place on the cross. He did
something for you you can’t do for yourself. And as He redeems you, as He
becomes the curse for you, as He pays the penalty for you, you have cleared the
way for the blessing. Substitution.
I read the other day
report of a young man who was talking about his coach. And he said, “He was the
father I never had. As a matter of fact, the father I never knew. He was the
one who took his place.” See, substitution is always a part of blessing. And as
you look at substitution with the Lord Jesus, let Him walk into your life and do
some things for you cannot do for yourself.
Third thing is: You
have to learn how to receive it whatever form it comes in. Blessing, you see,
comes in lots of different forms and lots of ways in which we don’t expect it to
happen. I wonder how many times we miss the blessings simply because we don’t
recognize the form in which it has come. Myron Madden, who knew more about
blessing and studied it more in the Old Testament and the New Testament than
anybody I know, was once leading a session on it. And at the end of it, he
asked if there were some questions. And a 72-year old lady stood up and she
said, “Do you think it’s possible for somebody my age to still be trying to gain
the blessing of a mother?” Myron said, “Tell us about it.” She said, “Well, my
mother who is almost … getting close to hundred, needs constant care and I give
it to her. I do virtually everything for her. I have a sister who is much
younger, stronger, able. She never helps out a bit. But my mother loves my
sister more than she loves me. And all of my life, I have been trying to prove
that I was worthy of my mother’s love. But my mother talks about my sister all
the time. Do you think I’m still trying to prove it after all of these years?”
Myron turned to the group, and he said, “Let me put you in a little exercise.
Suppose. Suppose your mother did an abrupt change and said to you, ‘I’m gonna
change. From now on, I’m gonna spend the rest of my days trying to prove to you
that I love you and that I have blessed you and that I cherish you.’ Would you
receive it?” And the 72-year old woman said, “Let me think about that a
minute.”
And after a minute’s
pause came back and said, “In the honesty of my heart, I would say to my mother,
‘It’s too late.’ ” And then she said to the group, “Now, isn’t that strange? I
am spending my life trying to prove to my mother that I am worthy of blessing,
but if she gave it to me, I wouldn’t receive it.” They gathered round her, they
said, “She may not give it to you, but we do.” And they put their hands upon
her and blessed her as she wept. Let me ask you something. Is the thing or the
person you most desire the Lord Christ and his blessing and would you receive
how He gives it to you? Instead of the way in which you would demand it be
given.
The fourth thing. You
have to believe. And this … this I think might be put like this. At least, it
makes sense to me. If you were the only person God on the face of the earth
would bless, could you believe it would be you? The teaching of the New
Testament is this, clearly. God loves you as if you were the only one. But as
Augustine said, “Yet he loves not one more than the other.” Galileo, when he
was in argument with the leaders of the church, when he was speaking of the
heavens and the planets going around the sun including earth, and they were
arguing with him and… and saying he was making God too distant. Said people
would forget that God cared about him if the universe was that big. And Galileo
said, “Don’t you realize that the sun that keeps all of the planets in their
order as they revolve around it is able to ripen a cluster of grapes as if it
had nothing else to do.” Do you realize that the God who keeps everything
working in this vast cosmos loves you and wants to bless you as if He had
nothing else to do? How would he do it? Only you and God know that. But
listen to it. May the Lord bless you and keep you. And make his face shine on
you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of His countenance
upon you and give you peace.
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