Echoes of Blessing #7: A Blessed People

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,

To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ

Ephesians 1:1-3

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

2 Corinthians 13:14

It’s highly likely that an echo of the priestly blessing from Numbers 6:24-26 is to be heard at the start of Paul’s letters – where the ‘grace and peace to you’ of the greeting is reminiscent of the final sentence of the priestly prayer: ‘and be gracious to you... and give you peace’.

If this is the case, Paul’s frequently-added words ‘from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’ in his openings reinforce the source of the blessing. ‘Grace and peace’ provide more than just a convenient greeting, but summarise the blessings of the gospel – which come through Christ.

The link between God’s blessing and Jesus is beautifully expressed in Ephesians 1:3: ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.’

The word ‘spiritual’ here means ‘of the Spirit’ – the blessing that comes by the Spirit. In which case, this blessing is triune-shaped: the Father blesses us through the Spirit in Christ – the three-in-one God working to bring about our salvation. Paul goes on to catalogue God’s amazing blessings – which come to us only because of the death of Christ, which brings about redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Ephesians 1:7).

Then, at the other end of the New Testament letters, the benedictions or doxologies function as blessings. 2 Corinthians 13:14 is perhaps the most well known of these: ‘May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.’

Once again, like Ephesians 1:3, the blessing comes from the three-in-one God: grace is available only through Jesus Christ, is grounded in the love of God, and is mediated to us by the Holy Spirit.

The God who blesses us in creation and the God who blesses us through his special covenant relationship is the God who brings those blessings about through his son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Only through him can we know God’s favour on us and his delight in us.

‘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.’

Echoes of Blessing #6: A Protected People

The LORD watches over you –

the LORD is your shade at your right hand;

the sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all harm –

he will watch over your life;

the LORD will watch over your coming and going

both now and for evermore.

Psalm 121:5-8

Psalms 120-134 come grouped together, each carrying the same heading: ‘A song of ascents’. We don’t know for certain, but it’s most likely they were sung by those making their way to Jerusalem for one of the great festivals.

Of course, like other psalms, they have a reach beyond their original setting, down through the ages, even to us who journey not to the temple but to God himself. Indeed, with its final promise that ‘the LORD will watch over your coming and going

both now and for evermore’, something of those extended implications are already being worked out in the psalm itself.

That word ‘watch’ or ‘keep’ – which appears six times in the psalm – echoes the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24: ‘the LORD bless you and keep you’. The promise originally given to those on a journey through the wilderness is here reapplied to God’s pilgrim people in subsequent generations.

With some exceptions, the relative comfort and ease with which we undertake journeys today – in air-conditioned cars, high-speed trains, and planes which cross continents and oceans – means that some of the force of the psalm might be lost on us. Here’s a prayer which anticipates a long journey over difficult terrain where ankles can easily get twisted, where bandits might lie in wait, not to mention the heat of the day and the anxieties which come with the night.

For them, the promise of help comes from the Lord, ‘the maker of heaven and earth’, the keeper of Israel who doesn’t slumber or sleep. As they make their way to Jerusalem – and as they walk the path of life – he will not let their feet slip.

And that priestly blessing which reached across the ages to those making their way to worship in Jerusalem reaches yet further across the ages to those of us, like Abraham, looking for a city ‘whose architect and builder is God’ (Hebrews 11:10). For us, too, the journey will involve challenges, even ominous or scary moments. But we, too, travel with others. (You do travel with others, don’t you?) And we claim the same promise, so amazingly comprehensive in its scope, which reaches into the whole of life.

God watches over your everyday comings and goings, day and night. Today. Tomorrow. Next year and the year after that. You and your family. You and your work. You and your life, ‘both now and for evermore’.

Echoes of Blessing #5: A Confident People

The LORD remembers us and will bless us:

he will bless his people Israel,

he will bless the house of Aaron,

he will bless those who fear the LORD –

small and great alike.

May the LORD cause you to flourish,

both you and your children.

May you be blessed by the LORD,

the Maker of heaven and earth.

Psalm 115:12-15

Offering an elegant reminder of what faithful prayer looks like, Psalm 115 holds together words about God and words addressed to God. In doing so, it echoes the priestly blessing of Numbers 6, but takes us on a journey to hear the full force of those reverberations.

‘Not to us, LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory’, the psalm begins. And the grounds for this resolute refusal to receive any of the glory which rightly belongs to the Lord flow out of his covenant commitment to us – ‘because of your love and faithfulness’ (115:1). The honour goes to the one who loves us deeply, who stays faithful to his people through history.

Not that we’re always fully aware of this. Or that we don’t feel the pinch when others ask, ‘Where is their God?’ (115:2). Where, indeed?

The psalm tells us: ‘Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him’ (115:3). Unlike idols ‘made by human hands’, God is not a mere object of worship, but the living Lord, sovereign over all creation. Idols, complete with all their body parts, look like they have the capacity to deliver on their promises. But they can’t. It’s the Lord who has a mouth, eyes, ears, nose, hands, feet, and vocal chords that work. He’s the real God who can speak and act in the world.

So, we can trust in him, the psalm says, because he is our ‘help and shield’ (115:9-11). He fights for us. He protects us.

Then, hearing those echoes at last, comes a threefold assurance for all of God’s people – ‘small and great’ – that blessing rests upon the person who trusts in the Lord. We can be confident, the psalm says, that ‘the LORD remembers us and will bless us’, that his blessing extends beyond the present to future generations, that ‘the Maker of heaven and earth’ has unlimited resources with which to bless us.

Our journey through the psalm brings us to a place where we can be bold, right where we are, even today. How? In our resolve to put God’s glory above our own. In our commitment to trust him in spite of the bemusement and even belligerence of others. And in daring to believe that he will bless us as we do so. In this is our confidence.

Echoes of Blessing #4: A Broken People

How long, LORD God Almighty,

will your anger smoulder

against the prayers of your people?

You have fed them with the bread of tears;

you have made them drink tears by the bowlful.

You have made us an object of derision to our neighbours,

and our enemies mock us.

Restore us, God Almighty;

make your face shine on us,

that we may be saved.

Psalm 80:4-7

The Psalms are a lifesaver for those of us who struggle with knowing what to pray – because they give us a voice. Where we don’t always have the words, they give us the words.

The words in this particular psalm come from a place of brokenness. In case we’re in any doubt, the central prayer comes not once, not twice, but three times: ‘Restore us... make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved’ (80:3, 7, 19).

That refrain is deliberately reminiscent of the priestly blessing in Numbers 6, where Aaron and the priests affirm the sheer delight God takes in his own: ‘the LORD make his face shine on you.’ Except, the people felt they were no longer experiencing that promised blessing of the Lord.

They’d perhaps been feeling it for some time. ‘How long?’, they ask. That question is found in a number of psalms. Sometimes it’s because devastation has come at the hands of others and it’s a plea for God to step in. In this case, though, the people are painfully – and tearfully – aware of their own culpability, of God’s anger smouldering against them, of being mocked by others. Is it possible for God’s people to be derided by unbelievers because God himself brings it about? Apparently so.

Here is a cry of anguish from God’s people who are grieved by their own failure and distraught that God seems distant or even absent from them.

What do they pray? What do we pray? We return to the one we know to be faithful even when we’re not, to what we know to be utterly true about his promises to us, and to plead with him to step in and show his face: ‘Restore to us your special presence – your shining, smiling face that brings deliverance and blessing.’

So, what is it today that you would want to cry out to God for? For yourself? For people in our congregation? For the church in our land? For your friends and neighbours? For your place of work? For our world? Take the words of the psalm and make them your own: ‘Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.’

And as you do so, remember that some broken things are restored because they’re precious, because they’re loved. God remains, to this day, in the restoration business.

Echoes of Blessing #3: A Missional People

May God be gracious to us and bless us

and make his face shine on us –

so that your ways may be known on earth,

your salvation among all nations.

May the peoples praise you, God;

may all the peoples praise you.

Psalm 67:1-3

The glorious benediction of Numbers 6:24-26 impresses upon us that God is the source of every blessing: ‘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.’ In this case, the blessing is mediated through the priests – bringing with it the guarantee that the sacrifice for sin has been successful, confirming God’s love for his people, reminding them that his presence is with them.

That the blessing shaped the faith of subsequent generations is clear from the number of times we hear its echoes elsewhere in Scripture, not least in the opening line of Psalm 67: ‘May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us.’ However, here the blessing is sought not for its own sake or even for the sake of Israel, but for all peoples, as seen in the next line – ‘so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations’ – expressing the hope that God’s blessing will become a global reality.

Far from an isolated reference, the Psalms are packed with exhortations to Israel to sing of God’s mighty deeds among the nations, summons to the nations to praise God, and promises of a future in which the nations will join Israel in worship. In line with God’s original promise to Abraham, the blessings for Israel were always the precursor of a still greater blessing – for all nations – ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.

Psalm 67 is of a piece with the rest of Scripture not only in providing a vision of God’s salvation embracing all nations, but in seeing the people of God as those chosen to be instruments of his blessing to others. Through his grace, God brings together a people who exist so that others might be blessed. God’s desire to bless hasn’t changed, and nor has his means of doing so. The Psalm thus enables us to see the arenas of our everyday life as places where God blesses us, calls us to be living proofs of that blessing, and invites us to share it with those around us – in our families, neighbourhoods, and workplaces.

And then, beyond even this amazing privilege, the Psalm reminds us of the ultimate goal of mission – nothing less than the worship of the Lord among ‘all the peoples’. To God be all the glory.

Echoes of Blessing #2: A Secure People

Answer me when I call to you,

my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

have mercy on me and hear my prayer...

Let the light of your face shine on us...

In peace I will lie down and sleep,

for you alone, LORD,

make me dwell in safety.

Psalm 4:1, 6, 8

In 1967, psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe conducted a study with over 5,000 patients on the connection between significant life events and illness. The resulting chart – known as the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale – which contained 43 causes of stress in 1967, was updated to 55 causes in 2006. It appears we are finding more ways of feeling stressed! Not far from the top of the list are finances, work, family, personal concerns, relationships, and death – issues that many people face, regardless of how secure they may appear.

Stress spans the ages too, as this Psalm makes clear. Although the cause in this case is not immediately apparent, David’s prayer has a very human and contemporary feel to it – ‘Give me relief from my distress’. How recently have you prayed that for yourself?

But note how he addresses God – ‘Righteous God’, or ‘God of my right’. Here, as elsewhere in Scripture, God’s righteousness is bound up with his covenant love and faithfulness to his people. It’s because he is the God who does what is right, who makes things right, that we can pray, ‘Give me relief from my distress’. It’s this God alone who can provide the compassion we seek. We pray on the basis that God is a righteous God, and has mercy on his people. Ultimately, we have no other source of hope, no other means of deliverance.

It’s completely of a piece with God’s covenant faithfulness that towards the end of the Psalm, David can use words from the priestly blessing of Numbers 6, to ask God to shine on the people, and expresses the confidence that he will enjoy peace, shalom, the wellbeing that the priestly blessing goes on to pray for. It’s the Lord alone who does this, he says; only the Lord counts.

And so he lies down to sleep. It’s not apparent that the situation has changed by the end of the Psalm, or that the cause of the stress has been removed. But praying it through has somehow put it in perspective. Prayer to the covenant-keeping God has a way of doing that. The Psalms are unrelenting in pointing us back to the one who stands at the heart of our faith – the one who still promises that his peace, which passes all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Echoes of Blessing #1: A Favoured People

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 towards you

and give you peace.’”

‘So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.’

Numbers 6:22-27

How would it feel to go into the rest of this week joyfully confident of God’s favour resting on you? What difference might it make to how you’d approach the things you’ll do, the conversations you’ll have, the decisions you’ll make?

Confidence comes in knowing that God is the source of every blessing.

We see something of his intent on the first page of the Bible when God blesses the creatures he has made – to be fruitful, to multiply, and flourish. And he blesses human beings too – as made in his image and called to steward the earth, to exercise loving rule over other creatures. God’s plan to bless creation is reinforced with the call of Abraham in Genesis 12 when God promises to form a people through whom he will extend blessing to all nations.

The Lord reinforces his larger purpose in the ongoing blessing of the Israelites mediated through the priests. Somehow he knew they’d need a regular reminder.

For them as for us comes the reassurance that the Lord and the Lord alone is the one who blesses his people. For them as for us the blessing declares that God cares for us and keeps us, delights in us and forgives us, watches us and restores us. That’s how God marks out those who belong to him. No wonder that these words of blessing shaped the worship of Israel through the centuries as, in different contexts, the people of God echoed the promises made and occasionally glimpsed how it would spill over to others.

And the words speak to us and shape us in the process of doing so. It’s somehow too easy to look for blessing in all the wrong places, to be uncertain of the father’s love for us, unaware of his enfolding grace, unsure of his gift of peace. It’s too easy to forget that every day his face lights up as he sees us, because his favour rests on us.

Because of the God he is, we’re not only encouraged to live under the reality of being treasured by him, but emboldened by the conviction that there is nothing worth having that he withholds from us. This God who, as Paul says in Ephesians 1:3, has ‘blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ’, is the same God today.

Echoes of Blessing #6: A Protected People

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

The LORD watches over you –

the LORD is your shade at your right hand;

the sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all harm –

he will watch over your life;

the LORD will watch over your coming and going

both now and for evermore.

Psalm 121:5-8

Psalms 120-134 come grouped together, each carrying the same heading: ‘A song of ascents’. We don’t know for certain, but it’s most likely they were sung by those making their way to Jerusalem for one of the great festivals.

Of course, like other psalms, they have a reach beyond their original setting, down through the ages, even to us who journey not to the temple but to God himself. Indeed, with its final promise that ‘the LORD will watch over your coming and going

both now and for evermore’, something of those extended implications are already being worked out in the psalm itself.

That word ‘watch’ or ‘keep’ – which appears six times in the psalm – echoes the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24: ‘the LORD bless you and keep you’. The promise originally given to those on a journey through the wilderness is here reapplied to God’s pilgrim people in subsequent generations.

With some exceptions, the relative comfort and ease with which we undertake journeys today – in air-conditioned cars, high-speed trains, and planes which cross continents and oceans – means that some of the force of the psalm might be lost on us. Here’s a prayer which anticipates a long journey over difficult terrain where ankles can easily get twisted, where bandits might lie in wait, not to mention the heat of the day and the anxieties which come with the night.

For them, the promise of help comes from the Lord, ‘the maker of heaven and earth’, the keeper of Israel who doesn’t slumber or sleep. As they make their way to Jerusalem – and as they walk the path of life – he will not let their feet slip.

And that priestly blessing which reached across the ages to those making their way to worship in Jerusalem reaches yet further across the ages to those of us, like Abraham, looking for a city ‘whose architect and builder is God’ (Hebrews 11:10). For us, too, the journey will involve challenges, even ominous or scary moments. But we, too, travel with others. (You do travel with others, don’t you?) And we claim the same promise, so amazingly comprehensive in its scope, which reaches into the whole of life.

God watches over your everyday comings and goings, day and night. Today. Tomorrow. Next year and the year after that. You and your family. You and your work. You and your life, ‘both now and for evermore’.

Echoes of Blessing #5: A Confident People

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

The LORD remembers us and will bless us:

he will bless his people Israel,

he will bless the house of Aaron,

he will bless those who fear the LORD –

small and great alike.

May the LORD cause you to flourish,

both you and your children.

May you be blessed by the LORD,

the Maker of heaven and earth.

Psalm 115:12-15

Offering an elegant reminder of what faithful prayer looks like, Psalm 115 holds together words about God and words addressed to God. In doing so, it echoes the priestly blessing of Numbers 6, but takes us on a journey to hear the full force of those reverberations.

‘Not to us, LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory’, the psalm begins. And the grounds for this resolute refusal to receive any of the glory which rightly belongs to the Lord flow out of his covenant commitment to us – ‘because of your love and faithfulness’ (115:1). The honour goes to the one who loves us deeply, who stays faithful to his people through history.

Not that we’re always fully aware of this. Or that we don’t feel the pinch when others ask, ‘Where is their God?’ (115:2). Where, indeed?

The psalm tells us: ‘Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him’ (115:3). Unlike idols ‘made by human hands’, God is not a mere object of worship, but the living Lord, sovereign over all creation. Idols, complete with all their body parts, look like they have the capacity to deliver on their promises. But they can’t. It’s the Lord who has a mouth, eyes, ears, nose, hands, feet, and vocal chords that work. He’s the real God who can speak and act in the world.

So, we can trust in him, the psalm says, because he is our ‘help and shield’ (115:9-11). He fights for us. He protects us.

Then, hearing those echoes at last, comes a threefold assurance for all of God’s people – ‘small and great’ – that blessing rests upon the person who trusts in the Lord. We can be confident, the psalm says, that ‘the LORD remembers us and will bless us’, that his blessing extends beyond the present to future generations, that ‘the Maker of heaven and earth’ has unlimited resources with which to bless us.

Our journey through the psalm brings us to a place where we can be emboldened, right where we are, even today. How? In our resolve to put God’s glory above our own. In our commitment to trust him in spite of the bemusement and even belligerence of others. And in daring to believe that he will bless us as we do so. In this is our confidence.

Echoes of Blessing #4: A Broken People

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

How long, LORD God Almighty,

will your anger smoulder

against the prayers of your people?

You have fed them with the bread of tears;

you have made them drink tears by the bowlful.

You have made us an object of derision to our neighbours,

and our enemies mock us.

Restore us, God Almighty;

make your face shine on us,

that we may be saved.

Psalm 80:4-7

The Psalms are a lifesaver for those of us who struggle with knowing what to pray. Because they give us a voice. Where we don’t always have the words, they give us the words.

The words in this particular psalm come from a place of brokenness. In case we’re in any doubt, the central prayer comes not once, not twice, but three times: ‘Restore us... make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved’ (80:3, 7, 19).

That refrain is deliberately reminiscent of the priestly blessing in Numbers 6, where Aaron and the priests affirm the sheer delight God takes in his own: ‘the LORD make his face shine on you.’ Except, the people felt they were no longer experiencing that promised blessing of the Lord.

They’d perhaps been feeling it for some time. ‘How long?’, they ask. That question is found in a number of psalms. Sometimes it’s because devastation has come at the hands of others and it’s a plea for God to step in. In this case, though, the people are painfully – and tearfully – aware of their own culpability, of God’s anger smouldering against them, of being mocked by others. Is it possible for God’s people to be derided by unbelievers because God himself brings it about? Apparently so.

Here is a cry of anguish from God’s people who are grieved by their own failure and distraught that God seems distant or even absent from them.

What do they pray? What do we pray? We return to the one we know to be faithful even when we’re not, to what we know to be fundamentally true about his promises to us, and to plead with him to step in and show his face: ‘Restore to us your special presence – your shining, smiling face that brings deliverance and blessing.’

So, what is it today that you would want to cry out to God for? For yourself? For the congregation to which you belong? For the church in our land? For your friends and neighbours? For your place of work? For our world? Take the words of the psalm and make them your own: ‘Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.’

And as you do so, remember that some broken things are restored because they’re precious, because they’re loved. God remains, to this day, in the restoration business.

Echoes of Blessing #3: A Missional People

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

May God be gracious to us and bless us

and make his face shine on us –

so that your ways may be known on earth,

your salvation among all nations.

May the peoples praise you, God;

may all the peoples praise you.

Psalm 67:1-3

The glorious benediction of Numbers 6:24-26 impresses upon us that God is the source of every blessing: ‘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.’ In this case, the blessing is mediated through the priests – bringing with it the guarantee that the sacrifice for sin has been successful, confirming God’s love for his people, reminding them that his presence is with them.

That the blessing shaped the faith of subsequent generations is clear from the number of times we hear its echoes elsewhere in Scripture, not least in the opening line of Psalm 67: ‘May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us.’ However, here the blessing is sought not for its own sake or even for the sake of Israel, but for all peoples, as seen in the next line – ‘so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations’ – expressing the hope that God’s blessing will become a global reality.

Far from an isolated reference, the Psalms are packed with exhortations to Israel to sing of God’s mighty deeds among the nations, summons to the nations to praise God, and promises of a future in which the nations will join Israel in worship. In line with God’s original promise to Abraham, the blessings for Israel were always the precursor of a still greater blessing – for all nations – ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.

The Psalm is of a piece with the rest of Scripture not only in providing a vision of God’s salvation embracing all nations, but in seeing the people of God as those chosen to be instruments of his blessing to others. Through his grace, God brings together a people who exist so that others might be blessed. God’s desire to bless hasn’t changed, and nor has his means of doing so. The Psalm thus enables us to see the arenas of our everyday life as places where God blesses us, calls us to be living proofs of that blessing, and invites us to share it with those around us – in our families, neighbourhoods, and workplaces.

And then, beyond even this amazing privilege, the Psalm reminds us of the ultimate goal of mission – nothing less than the worship of the Lord among ‘all the peoples’. To God be all the glory.

Echoes of Blessing #2: A Secure People

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Answer me when I call to you,

my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

have mercy on me and hear my prayer...

Let the light of your face shine on us...

In peace I will lie down and sleep,

for you alone, LORD,

make me dwell in safety.

Psalm 4:1, 6, 8

In 1967, psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe conducted a study with over 5,000 patients on the connection between significant life events and illness. The resulting chart – known as the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale – which contained 43 causes of stress in 1967, was updated to 55 causes in 2006. It appears we are finding more ways of feeling stressed! Not far from the top of the list are finances, work, family, personal concerns, relationships, and death – issues that many people face, regardless of how secure they may appear.

Stress spans the ages too, as this Psalm makes clear. Although the cause in this case is not immediately apparent, David’s prayer has a very human and contemporary feel to it – ‘Give me relief from my distress’. How recently have you prayed that for yourself?

But note how he addresses God – ‘Righteous God’, or ‘God of my right’. Here, as elsewhere in Scripture, God’s righteousness is bound up with his covenant love and faithfulness to his people. It’s because he is the God who does what is right, who makes things right, that we can pray, ‘Give me relief from my distress’. It’s this God alone who can provide the compassion we seek. We pray on the basis that God is a righteous God, and has mercy on his people. Ultimately, we have no other source of hope, no other means of deliverance.

It’s completely of a piece with God’s covenant faithfulness that towards the end of the Psalm, David can use words from the priestly blessing of Numbers 6, to ask God to shine on the people, and expresses the confidence that he will enjoy peace, shalom, the wellbeing that the priestly blessing goes on to pray for. It’s the Lord alone who does this, he says; only the Lord counts.

And so he lies down to sleep. It’s not apparent that the situation has changed by the end of the Psalm, or that the cause of the stress has been removed. But praying it through has somehow put it in perspective. Prayer to the covenant-keeping God has a way of doing that. The Psalms are unrelenting in pointing us back to the one who stands at the heart of our faith – the one who still promises that his peace, which passes all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Echoes of Blessing #1: A Favoured People

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

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 towards you

and give you peace.’”

‘So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.’

Numbers 6:22-27

How would it feel to go into the rest of this week joyfully confident of God’s favour resting on you? What difference might it make to how you’d approach the things you’ll do, the conversations you’ll have, the decisions you’ll make?

Confidence comes in knowing that God is the source of every blessing.

We see something of his intent on the first page of the Bible when God blesses the creatures he has made – to be fruitful, to multiply, and flourish. And he blesses human beings too – as made in his image and called to steward the earth, to exercise loving rule over other creatures. God’s plan to bless creation is reinforced with the call of Abraham in Genesis 12 when God promises to form a people through whom he will extend blessing to all nations.

The Lord reinforces his larger purpose in the ongoing blessing of the Israelites mediated through the priests. Somehow he knew they’d need a regular reminder.

For them as for us comes the reassurance that the Lord and the Lord alone is the one who blesses his people. For them as for us the blessing declares that God cares for us and keeps us, delights in us and forgives us, watches us and restores us. That’s how God marks out those who belong to him. No wonder that these words of blessing shaped the worship of Israel through the centuries as, in different contexts, the people of God echoed the promises made and occasionally glimpsed how it would spill over to others.

And the words speak to us and shape us in the process of doing so. It’s somehow too easy to look for blessing in all the wrong places, to be uncertain of the father’s love for us, unaware of his enfolding grace, unsure of his gift of peace. It’s too easy to forget that every day his face lights up as he sees us, because his favour rests on us.

Because of the God he is, we’re not only encouraged to live under the reality of being treasured by him, but emboldened by the conviction that there is nothing worth having that he withholds from us. This God who, as Paul says in Ephesians 1:3, has ‘blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ’, is the same God today.