Redefining Blessings: The Life of Ezra, God's Grace, and The Power of His Word

I want to say thanks to Jeff for doing a phenomenal job with the welcome host there.

Jeff, thanks, man, appreciate your testimony there and I love Ms Sharon's intro today this idea that in Christ there's a foundation upon which to stand in the good days and the bad days of life, and the good times and the tough times.

And we're asking a question today for the next few minutes together.

I thought at first that we were going to talk really solely about the Scripture and what is the Bible and all that today I didn't quite get there.

What we're actually going to talk about today is a question what does it mean to be blessed?

The title of today's message is Under the Good Hand of Almighty God and we're asking the question what does it mean to be blessed by God?

What does it mean to be blessed by God?

Before we pray and read our Scripture this morning, I do want to give two shout outs.

One Sam.

This is Sam's one year anniversary of being on staff at Somerville.

So Sam man, grateful for you.

He is ignoring me like he has done most of his life, and that's okay.

The other shout out where's Randy Gullick?

There's Randy Gullick.

Randy Gullick turned 70 years old today.

He's not sure where he is either right now, but he turned 70.

And we're grateful for you, we're grateful for you and Kathy.

So happy birthday, my friend, happy birthday.

With that, we're going to take a journey back to the 500s BC.

Today we're going to be in Ezra, chapter seven.

Ezra, chapter seven.

The narrative that we're going to read today.

It's after the Persian Empire has conquered the Babylonian Empire.

So now where that leaves our characters in our story today, israel, the southern kingdom of Judah, is under Persian rule, and when Persia came to power, their first king that was over that part of the empire's name was Cyrus.

He issues a decree that allows some of the Hebrew people to travel back to Jerusalem, and so a group of exiles led by a man named Zarubabel, they leave where they were in captivity and exile and they travel back to Jerusalem and they begin to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.

And then, a few years later, in 458 BC, a man named Ezra was given the decree from the king Artis, erkseys in this case, to go back as well, the second group of exiles going back to Jerusalem.

Ezra was sent back to Israel, and this is what it says about Ezra, verse seven of Ezra, chapter seven.

They went up also to Jerusalem in the seventh year of Artis Erkseys, the king, some of the people of Israel and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and the gatekeepers and the temple servants.

And Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king.

So a four month journey back to Jerusalem.

For on the first day of the first month he began to go up from Babylonia and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, for the good hand of his God was on him, for Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.

Father, we pray this morning that from a brief glimpse into the life of a man named Ezra and some exiles from Babylonia who are traveling back to their homeland, father, we pray that our faith this morning would be challenged and encouraged, father, that our perspective might be shifted so that we can see things the way you see things.

We can see us the way you see us.

We can see our life the way that you see our life.

Father, we're grateful this morning for who you are.

We're grateful that you are mighty to save that.

Father, you love us in spite of us, and Father, you call us and purpose us.

So, god, today we ask that, by the power of your spirit, through the pages of your word, that you would speak to your people in Jesus name, and everybody says amen.

I'm old enough or maybe young enough I don't know which way is the right way to phrase this to remember the early days of Instagram, like anybody on Instagram, like when it first came out, like you were one of the you know the early adopters.

You were on the IG, as the cool kids say.

Now.

Y'all remember there was a phenomenon that swept the social media world where everything was hashtag blessed.

Do you remember that?

Anybody remember that?

Some of you are like I don't know what that means.

Stay with me.

Some of you are like I was right there in the middle of the hashtag, hashtagging everything as blessed.

I googled blessed earlier this week and actually googled a question, and it was what does it mean when we say that we're blessed?

That was the question that I googled and the first thing that I read in the search results for that question was well, to be blessed means that your life is fortunate, and I was like, okay, maybe, hashtag blessed.

If you think back to the Instagram days hashtag blessed.

You know you get a promotion.

Hashtag blessed.

You have enough stars for a free latte at Starbucks.

That's hashtag blessed.

You got to, you know, the movie on time and there was a parking spot at the front of the theater and you didn't have to walk all the way across the parking.

Like that was hashtag blessed, right, like that was.

That was if you tagged the hashtag, that was what came up and maybe, if that's all that blessing is, then blessed means fortunate.

But I just get the sense that when we talk about the blessing of God, we're talking about so much more.

You know, when you think about the word blessing, we talk about saying the blessing.

You sit down for a meal, somebody say the blessing.

At least that's how we said it in my house growing up.

Maybe you said we say grace or we return thanks, but in my house it was we say the blessing and we talk about.

You know, when somebody sneezes, right, what do you say?

You say bless you and they say thank you.

Right, there was a video circulating a couple years ago.

There was a defensive lineman that got drafted, I think, to the New York Jets and he sits down at his introductory press conference and in his press conference he sneezes, he says bless you to himself and he responds with thank you to himself.

So he blessed himself and thanked himself in the moment.

And that's kind of like when you think about blessing, like we use blessing in a lot of strange ways and I'm just not sure that's how it works right, like I don't think I can sneeze, bless myself and then thank myself.

It's hilarious but wrong.

And then, like, think about blessing in the Bible.

If you know the story of Genesis, there's a man in Genesis whose name is Jacob and he is obsessed with the idea of blessing.

Like he wants to live a blessed life, he wants to be blessed.

He is desperate for a blessing, so much so that he actually tricks his brother into giving him his birthright, which you know Jacob was the younger brother.

His brother, esau, the older brother, had the majority of the birthright and Jacob tricks Esau, his older brother, into giving Jacob Esau share of the birthright.

He was desperate for a blessing.

Later, jacob and his mom conspired together to trick Jacob's father into blessing Jacob.

That's the first point.

He's desperate for a blessing.

Fast forward in his life a few decades.

And there's a moment in his life where he's so desperate for a blessing that he wrestles with God all night long.

You're like James I need some details.

I don't know all the details of that story, but that just sounds incredible.

And he wrestles with God all night long until the morning and somehow, some way like the narrative that we get in scripture, it's like Jacob gets the upper hand and says to the angel of the Lord that he's wrestling with I'm not gonna let go until you bless me.

And so he gets the blessing of God.

But then something incredible happens.

The one that Jacob was wrestling touches Jacob's hip and for the rest of his life he's marked by the blessing of God.

He literally walks with a limp the rest of his life, and it's a fascinating story of blessing and purpose and calling and the weight that comes with the blessing of God.

Then there's a moment a little later in Jacob's life where he is renamed and his name is shifted from Jacob to God says now I'm gonna call you Israel, I'm gonna call you Israel, and it's like you can almost look at the line where that happens.

Jacob sets up a pillar to his wife, rebecca, who's passed away.

And then the scripture says that Jacob set up the pillar, but Israel moved forward.

And so it's like, finally, jacob has come to this place where he realizes that God is with him, that God's blessing is on his life, and he moves forward with a new name but still carrying the mark of God, the weight of the blessing of God.

This all sounds a little strange, I know, this morning, but I just want us to think about what it means to be blessed by God, to live life under the good hand of Almighty God.

Because see, in Jacob we see a man who struggles and strives and chases after blessing all his life, only to realize that God was present in every moment, every space, every area that his foot tread.

God was there, jacob's words, at a place called Bethel.

He looks up and he says surely God was with me all along and I just wasn't aware of it.

And then we fast forward to our narrative in Ezra, chapter seven, and we read that phrase in verse nine.

For the good hand of his God was on him.

And it's interesting if you read through Ezra, that phrase appears over and over and over.

Ezra seven six the hand of the Lord, his God, was on him.

Ezra seven, nine.

The good hand of the Lord was on him.

Ezra seven, 28,.

I took courage, ezra says for the hand of the Lord, my God was on me.

Ezra eight, 18, by the good hand of our God on us.

Ezra eight, 22,.

The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him.

And then Ezra eight, 31,.

The hand of our God was on us, and you don't see Ezra striving for this.

You don't see Ezra wrestling with God for this.

You don't see Ezra trying to earn God's blessing or deserve the good hand of God on his life.

It just is there.

And so I want us to wrestle with this for a moment this morning, like what does it mean for us to be blessed?

What does it mean for us to live under the good hand of Almighty God?

God, is this something that, like Jacob, we've got to wrestle for and search for and strive for and fight for, or is it, like it seems to be an Ezra's case, something that is just part of who we are and how we live our lives?

I'm gonna see what we can learn from Ezra this morning.

When you look at Ezra, chapter seven, there's a couple of interesting ideas that emerge.

The first is you see that Ezra's lineage is a lineage of faithfulness.

If you go back to the beginning of chapter one, it says this or chapter seven, now, after this, in the reign of Artisirksis, king of Persia, ezra, the son of Sariah, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah, son of Shalom, son of Zadok, son of Ahitub, son of Emariah, son of Azariah, son of Moriah, son of Zariah, son of Uzzi, son of Buki, son of Abushua, son of Phineas, son of Eleazar, and then we get to this name, son of Aaron, the chief priest.

So Ezra's lineage goes all the way back to the first chief priest of the nation of Israel.

So there's this lineage of faithfulness from which Ezra comes.

Scripture says this Ezra is the one that went up from Babylonia.

So Ezra's got this lineage of faithfulness in his life.

But also Ezra, verse six says, was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses, that the Lord, the God of Israel, had given, and the king granted him all that he asked for.

The hand of the Lord, his God, his God, was on him.

What does this mean?

That the hand of the Lord, his God, was on Ezra?

Well, if you dig into that idea the hand of God in the Old Testament.

It can mean a few different things.

It can mean that God was gracious to Ezra, and we see that play out in Ezra's life.

God was gracious to him.

It can mean that God was merciful to him.

God showed him mercy, maybe even when he didn't deserve it, maybe even from time to time.

In spite of him, god was merciful, he was gracious.

It means that God's goodness was present in his life.

God was kind to Ezra and y'all.

I want that, don't you want that?

Like Almighty God, to be merciful and gracious, kind and good in your life?

Like that sounds amazing.

But there's also the idea in the Old Testament that the hand of God is equivalent to the saving power of God, the working of salvation or the working of deliverance.

So on one hand, the idea of God's hand means that God is good and gracious and kind and merciful, but on the other hand it also means that God is at work to save and to deliver and Ezra's life is under the good hand of Almighty God.

Psalm 81 or Psalm 98, verse one, says this sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things.

His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.

Then Psalm 136, verse 12, talking about the Exodus narrative, it says this with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, god's steadfast love endures forever.

Psalms 136:12

You're all like what are we talking about this morning?

Old Testament narratives God delivering his people.

God showing up and being gracious and kind and merciful.

It's like so far removed from us in the 21st century.

Right Like I'm glad God was gracious to Ezra.

I'm glad God was kind in Ezra's life.

I'm glad God worked for deliverance and delivered the people from Egypt, and I'm glad that God worked to save the people in Ezra's day and to deliver them back to their homeland.

I'm glad Zerubbabel got to go and rebuild the temple with some exiles.

That's amazing.

But what does it mean for us here in 2023?

Because maybe you're here and you're like well, my life doesn't look like God's been good and gracious and kind.

In fact, I don't see a whole lot of rebuilding happening.

Maybe it feels like the blocks are being removed one at a time, and things are crumbling around me.

I don't know if I'm under God's good hand.

It seems like, if anything, I might not have God's hand anywhere at work in my life.

It seems like God might have turned his back.

So what do we do with this idea of a God who blesses when our life doesn't look blessed?

There's nothing we can hashtag about right now, and I just wanna offer to us today that maybe somewhere along the way, we have, at least in our minds, changed the definition of what it means to be blessed by God and we've adopted a little bit of the Google mentality that to be blessed means that things are going fortunately in my life and circumstances are good and things are improving, and I got the promotion and I got the stars for the latte and I got the number in the bank account and my family is standing strong and the job is going well and all is good.

We've equated in a lot of cases, I'm afraid, the blessing of God with the circumstances of our lives, and if my circumstances look like I like them to look and things aren't too difficult and my life is relatively comfortable, well then God is blessing.

And if our nation is trending the direction we like and the persons in office that we voted for, then our nation is blessed.

And if my family is doing well and things are going well at home, then my family is blessed.

If my kids are getting good grades in school, then God is blessing our lives.

We've equated the blessing of God with the ideal circumstances in our temporary time and space, and I just want to offer to us today that the blessing of God is so much better than temporary circumstances, than it working out your way today.

The blessing of God is so much more than a temporary win on a Tuesday afternoon.

So much better than that.

And the reason I say that the hand of God is on Ezra.

That's what we read right, like over and over and over.

The hand of God is on Ezra's life, and we read y'all in Ezra 7, the first scripture that we read, we read the cliff notes of Ezra's journey back to Jerusalem.

We didn't get all the details.

Let me give you the details really quickly, and I'm gonna tell you why this is such an important thing for us to understand.

So Ezra goes to rally a group of people to lead to go back with him to Jerusalem.

He's trying to round up some people and they're supposed to be leaving Babylonia by decree of Artisirkses on the first day of the first month.

And so Ezra sends out the word and they begin to rally some people up.

They're going back to a rebuilt temple in their homeland.

Like this is a good thing, right, they're gonna get to worship God and the place that they're supposed to.

God's working to restore the spiritual heart of Israel and people get to partner with it.

So the message goes out, the group's going back, they rally together and Ezra looks around and guess what?

There is not a single priest that has come to join Ezra on his return trip to Jerusalem.

And it's like if anybody they should be leading the charge.

Like their work is to serve the people of God and the place of God, the Levitical priesthood.

And there's not a single priest ready to go with Ezra on the journey.

And so Ezra's like well, we're supposed to go back, and like Ezra's job is to teach the word of God to the people of God and the house of God.

And Ezra's like we don't have any priest to go back into the temple, we gotta get some priests.

And so Ezra's trip gets delayed for 12 days while he's trying to find some priest willing to go with him back to Jerusalem to lead worship in the temple.

Amazing, and then they set out on this journey we said earlier, a four month journey from Babylonia to Jerusalem.

And it is a dangerous journey.

The good hand of God is on Ezra.

But I guarantee you, when Ezra set out from Babylonia, leading the exiles and some hesitant Levitical priests that weren't even sure they wanted to be on the journey to start with, there is nobody in that group who is certain of how the journey's gonna go.

In fact, so much so that in Ezra, chapter eight, one of the things that Ezra says is that on the journey we have people that we've gotta guard the stuff that we're carrying with us.

But in Ezra, chapter eight, verse 31, it says this the hand of our God was on us and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from ambushes along the way.

So think about that.

For four months their journey, and for four months they are concerned.

Hey, we might get ambushed, we might get derailed.

There's enemies all around us.

We know that the future is in front of us, but the journey is difficult and all the while the good hand of God is on Ezra.

And I say that to say sometimes we look at our life, we equate the blessing of God with the circumstances of our life.

Ezra's life was blessed by God when no Levitical priest showed up to travel with him.

Ezra's life was blessed by God every step of an incredibly dangerous and difficult journey.

The blessing of God did not equal the removal of every obstacle.

The blessing of God on Ezra's life did not mean that every step would be clear and obvious and easy.

In fact, it might be the exact opposite.

How do you know if your life is blessed by God?

Are you encountering obstacles?

Are you going through difficulty?

And what you find, when you encounter an obstacle and you go through difficulty and your life is blessed by God, is you find that God meets you there, because the hand of God is on your life and that means that God will deliver and he will save.

God is good and gracious and kind and merciful, and sometimes y'all, we get to know the goodness and the kindness and the mercy and the grace of God better when we're dealing with things that are not good, we're working with people that are not kind, we feel like there's an absence of grace surrounding us and it feels like everything is working against us.

That's where God's goodness and his grace and his mercy and his kindness shows up like never before.

It is fun to celebrate God on the mountaintop, is it not, when you can see how God's worked and you can see how he brought you through and you can see what God is doing.

Those moments are amazing and I think God gives them to us because we need to celebrate every now and then.

But y'all, our faith, our faith is deepened on the four-month journey where the enemies surround us, where the ambush could come at any moment, and all we can do is trust in the good hand of Almighty God for our salvation and for our deliverance.

Ezra was blessed by God.

The good hand of God was on him, but the blessing of God, the hand of God on Ezra's life, was not for him.

I want you to see that this morning.

Sometimes, again, we look at blessing and it's all about what God can do for us or what we think God should do for us.

But but I love what the Scripture says about Ezra.

It's that that Ezra understood that the reason God was blessing his life was not for him.

It was for the people that he was sent to serve.

Look back at our Scripture, ezra 7, verse 9.

Ezra 7:9

The first day of the first month he began to go out from Babylonia.

On the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem for the good hand if his God was on him, for Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach his statutes and his rules in Israel.

Why was Ezra blessed by God?

What was it about Ezra that caused God to bless his life?

I think Ezra understood that the blessing of God on Ezra's life was not something for Ezra to stockpile for himself, but Ezra was to be a channel of God's blessing for the people in his life.

Ezra scripture says in verse 10 he had set his heart to study the law of the Lord.

See, ezra made a commitment that he was going to know the word of God.

He was gonna live in the word of God.

He was gonna be a person who didn't just give lip service to the scriptures or to the presence of God in his life, but he was going to seek diligently the face of God in the pages of God's word.

He set his heart to study the law of the Lord.

One of the most difficult things for us to do as followers of Jesus is to set our heart to study the word of God.

I believe that with all my heart, that is one of the most difficult things that we could do to set our heart to study the scriptures.

Why?

Because the last thing that the enemy wants us to do is to set our hearts on the word of God.

Because the enemy knows like this is a life-changing eternity, altering story from cover to cover, and it is impossible for us to set our heart on the word of God and not be transformed from the inside out as well.

He had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, but not just to study it, not just to know it and to do it and to do it.

The New Testament, in the book of James, it, says that that the last thing we want to be is to be people who who know the word but don't do the word, who sit under the teaching of the word, or who go and read the word but don't put into practice what we learn from the word.

We don't want to be hearers only, but those who hear and and do.

We want to obey the word of God.

Ezra not only knew the word, he lived under the authority of God's word.

He set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.

See, as we understood that that what God did in his life and in his heart needed to be shared with the people around him.

Ezra wasn't storing up blessing for himself.

He was committed to revealing to others, showing to others the revelation that God gave him from the word.

This is not a formula y'all it's not a formula, but if we want our lives to be under the good hand of Almighty God, I think in Ezra we do see a pattern for getting to know the character and the nature and the person of God.

So a couple of reflection questions for us this morning.

Number one am I diligently spending time in the Word of God?

I want the blessing of God in my life.

I want God to move.

I want the kindness and the mercy and the goodness and the grace of God to be present.

Am I spending time in the word?

The second question am I obedient to what God reveals in his word?

Am I obedient to what God reveals in his word?

There?

There's a lot in this book, is there not?

And like we said last week, some of it's hard to understand, hard to make sense of, hard to apply.

But a lot of what we read in this book is clear our calling to love God and love people, to be people who worship God with all of our hearts, so mind and strength to forgive, to be kind, to be gracious, like.

There's so much in this book that's clear.

So, while we're asking God to clarify what's unclear, let's be diligent to obey what God has made clear.

Am I being obedient to the revealed word of God?

And then the third question for reflection for us am I?

Am I sharing with someone else what God is sharing with me?

Am I sharing with someone else what God is sharing with me?

And you know this.

This doesn't necessarily mean that you've got to stand in front of a group and teach, or lead a life group or teach a class like are you letting the word of God shape your daily conversations?

Are you looking for opportunities to to speak the name of Jesus in your office, in your family, in your commute?

Are you looking for ways to engage the world around you with the story of who God is and what God has done, as reset his heart to teach his statutes and rules in Israel?

May we be people who set our hearts to live out the teachings of scripture in Somerville.

May we be people who set our hearts to speak about Jesus without compromise, with deep conviction in the day to day, hour by hour, moment by moment, days of our lives.

What does it mean to be blessed by God?

I would offer to us today that it means to be people who who live under the authority of the word of God, and my love about that is that that's not conditional upon circumstances, it's not conditional upon everything working out in my favor.

I can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the hand of God is on my life, even in the worst moment of life, because my life is oriented around the person of Jesus.

One one commentator said that the book of Ezra is all about God's restoration of the spiritual heart of the people of Israel.

And you know, I just believe that today, what God wants to do in our lives is to restore our spiritual hearts, to remind us that that, even if life around you doesn't look like you thought it would look today, even if you're lamenting the state of our nation or our state or our world, if, if things maybe are not working out according to your plan, in the midst of all, that God wants to do a renovation project on our hearts and that begins with a people committed to living under the authority of the word of God and what's powerful is that the good hand of God can move and work and shape and renew and restore at any moment, in any way that God sees fit.

God's not bound by the things that limit us.

God's able to get involved.

And some of you that's your story, like you were not looking for God, but God was looking for you and your life radically transformed because the good hand of God was on your life and you didn't even know it.

And in the midst of the brokenness, in the midst of the pain, all of a sudden there the good hand of God was an almighty.

God did something for you that you could not do for yourself.

Quick example last Sunday some of y'all were here at the 9 o'clock service last Sunday.

If it could have gone wrong last Sunday at the 9 o'clock service, it went wrong last Sunday at the 9 o'clock service.

I mean, and y'all, what they didn't tell me in the moment that they told me afterwards was that it was my fault Because apparently I plugged the light switch into the wrong place.

It was supposed to go there and I plugged it in there, and so when everything went off, everybody that had set up that morning knew James did that.

Sam, after church, looked at me and said stay in your lane, bro.

And I was like my bad, I'm sorry, just trying to be helpful If it could have gone wrong.

It went wrong, and you know the question.

Then, all right.

So the next service, people fixed my error, plugged stuff in the right place and everything technically went off without a hitch.

And at the end of the service, when we gave the invitation, a young lady stepped out and she comes down with two of her friends and she says to me she says I want to be baptized.

And I was like that's amazing.

Have you had a moment in your life where you gave your life to Jesus and, by grace, through faith, move from death to life?

And she was like yes, just a minute ago.

And I was like that's amazing, that's amazing.

And so the question for us which service was blessed?

The one where I plugged something in the wrong spot and everything blew up, or the one where we did everything right from a technological perspective and somebody got saved Both?

Because see, here's the thing when we worship King Jesus and we preach the name of Jesus, god doesn't need lights to work.

He can circumvent my lack of knowledge about how many amps you can pull from one outlet and he can work and he can move.

And I promise you, at the second service, it was not the fact that the lights didn't flicker and the screen didn't go off and my mic stayed on.

That was not what saved this young lady who gave her life to Jesus.

No, what saved this young lady was the fact that God broke through and she realized the good hand of Almighty God was on her life and he was reaching out to her to pull her out of her pit of sin and put her on the solid foundation of Jesus.

It wasn't me, it wasn't technology, it was the Holy Spirit.

The blessing of God is not dependent on me or you or circumstances around us.

God blesses because God is good.

That's it Like, that's bottom line.

God blesses because God is good.

God chooses to use us because God is good.

God loves us because God is good.

God is good.

That's the story.

How do we know that we live under the good hand of Almighty God?

Because he's good and he loves us and he wants us and he's pursuing us and he has a purpose and a calling for us.

He's given us his word, revealed himself to us so that we can know him Y'all, the invitation to live under the good hand of Almighty God is for every single one of us, regardless of what your life looks like today.

Like I'm not convinced, I'm not convinced, all right, fast forward a few hundred years from the time of Ezra.

Jesus Christ, son of God.

Messiah walked the planet for 33 years.

He's done his thing.

He's healed people, he's saved people.

He called Lazarus out of a tomb, dies on a cross, sheds his blood, resurrects three days later that evening, shows up in a locked room because why not?

Shows up, doors locked.

Here's Jesus.

The disciples are all there, except for a guy named Thomas.

Later the disciples find Thomas and not Thomas.

Dude, jesus is back.

He resurrected from the dead and Thomas is like I'm not sure.

Thomas, he's very practical, right, very logical.

He's like people don't just come back from the dead.

And Thomas says to the other disciples he says I'm not going to believe unless I can see his hands.

I can see his hands.

So they gathered again up a room.

This time Thomas is there and Jesus shows up again and he goes straight to Thomas.

And I love this.

The first thing he does doesn't say Thomas, what's up with that man?

Like I told you this was going to happen.

I told you I was going to resurrect.

I told you and you didn't.

He says Thomas, I want you to see the hands of Almighty God.

How do we know that the good hand of God is on our lives?

Because the good hands of Jesus were pierced and his blood was shed to cover our lives.

The good hand of God is on your life because the blood of Jesus was shed to cover your life, to forgive you of your sin, to give you a future and a hope, to remind you that the circumstances of surrounded by enemies and ambushes at every end and Levitical priests that don't show up whatever the circumstances look like, that's not the end of the story, because the good hands of God bled for you.

And so today I just want to invite you in to a life under the good hand of Almighty God, regardless of circumstances, regardless of what it looks like from the outside.

Looking in, there is a peace, there is a hope, there is a joy that comes only through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And today the invitation is to step into the person and work of Jesus by grace, through faith and trust Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

If you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, the invitation is to let what Jesus has done reframe how you see what you're walking through.

It might be painful, it might be difficult.

It might be the most painful, difficult, longest journey of your life, but you take the journey under the good hand of Almighty God.

The blood of Jesus is applied to your life.

His power is at work within you.

His Spirit is leading and guiding you.

He will see you through.

So, father, we pray in this moment today, a father that we would understand that your blessing is a gift.

And, father, there is no greater evidence of your blessing or your gift to us than the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Father, if you never did another single thing for us, what Jesus has done is enough for us to celebrate for eternity.

It's enough for us to worship you for eternity.

Father, help us to trust you, even on the journey, when the steps forward are not clear.

Lead us by your spirit, anchor us in the truth of your word.

Remind us, father, that we never walk alone.

Father, we trust that by your grace, you will see us home.

We love you.

We thank you in Jesus' name, amen.