"Bless You" | Sunday AM | Pastor David K. Caruthers

Together again with me.

And I'm going to read in Numbers chapter 6, verse 22 through 27.

Numbers 6:22–27

Numbers 6, 22 through 27.

And I invite you to join me there if you have your Bible.

If not, it'll be on the screen.

And we're just going to read these verses.

It's familiar to you all, I'm sure, if you've uh at least parts of it you've heard, so you know.

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise you shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, The Lord bless thee and keep thee.

The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious to thee.

The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace.

And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.

I just want you to notice that God said, You speak it over them, and I will respond.

And I will give the blessing.

And uh so uh let's just pray together and ask God to speak to us today.

Lord, we thank you for this time together.

Thank you for every person that has joined together with us.

Thank you for this opportunity to look into your word and to receive your grace and mercies in our lives.

We ask you, Lord, to speak to us through your word.

Let your anointing be upon us to speak and to receive what you want to do in our hearts today.

We thank you in your name, Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

Now, before you seated, trying to catch you before you sit down.

Uh, if you don't know somebody, you haven't met somebody right near you, you probably want to do that.

But I want you to look at two or three people and just say, bless you.

Bless you is not just something we say when somebody sneezes.

All right?

Look at somebody and say, bless you.

There you go.

Reach across the aisle, turn around, look the other.

Everybody can say that.

Bless you.

You don't even have to know their name to say that.

Bless you, bless you.

Thank you, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

You may be seated.

There is just something in the heart of every human being that longs for affirmation, acceptance, of blessing, of love.

And uh, you know, it starts uh at birth, really, uh, and maybe before.

And numerous studies have indicated that it's very important for babies to have that human, caring touch, to be held, to be acknowledged.

They don't understand what you're saying with your words.

Of course, you're brilliant, babies may have, but most babies don't understand the words you're saying, uh, but they but they feel it and they sense it, and there's something important about that affirmation.

But it's not just babies.

It's not just babies.

We all, we all, humanity has been created with a need to be loved and accepted by those around them.

Something important for us, and and it's important for us to experience it, and it's important for us to give that to the people around us because God has created them, made them, shaped them, formed them, and they are significant and important, whomever they may be.

And it's it's it's such a there's such a desire in people's hearts for that affirmation or or or that acceptance.

It's so powerful, it causes people even to do strange things at times or things that doesn't really uh seem to make any sense.

Even sometimes people that are abused, people that have been abused by other people, maybe a spouse that's been abused, they uh they they remain in an unhealthy relationship longing for that acceptance from that person or that embrace from that person or that that affirmation from that very the very person that wounded them sometimes.

They're seeking for that affirmation so much that that they're willing to stay in that kind of situation.

This this need for that affirmation is powerful in our lives.

It's important for us.

And in the Old Testament, God's blessing to his people was connected to his favor, his presence, and his approval.

Moses gave these final instructions to the Israelites before he passed, and he brought the people together, and he said, Stand here before me and I will speak to you.

And this is what he's telling them to do.

He tells them that they should speak the commandments, the statutes, the judgments, and they shall teach them, and they shall do them in the land that you see.

He's giving them instructions.

You need to hold on to the word of God, hold on to the instructions and the statutes that you have received, hold on to them.

And that would that would be that would be something someone that knows their time is at hand would say as leaders to the Israelites.

Just hold on to what God has given you.

Do what God has commanded you to do.

But with that comes a blessing, with that comes the expression of what God wanted to do for the Israelites.

He said, if you do this, you shall not turn aside to the right hand or the left, but you shall walk in the ways of the Lord your God, that you may live, that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you shall possess.

He said, with that instruction comes an affirmation from God, comes a blessing from God, comes a strength from God that's gonna make you stronger and and help you as you possess the promises of God.

Because God's desire for his people is to live under his blessings.

And his blessings aren't merely possessions.

I know sometimes in American mindset in our consumer culture, when we think of blessings, we're thinking of stuff.

You know, we're thinking of stuff that we have, and we clearly have a lot of stuff.

Have you ever noticed how many self-storage buildings are built everywhere?

And they just keep on building those things.

Somebody's got some stuff.

It's overflowed from their houses to a place they have to rent somewhere and put their stuff there.

We're very connected to our stuff in America.

Sometimes we think of blessings only in that sense of the material possessions that we have.

But God's blessings are much greater than that.

It's about living in this covenant relationship with God, living in the blessings and the strength of the relationship that God wants to have with us.

There's probably no character in the Bible that illustrates this any greater than Jacob.

Jacob purchased his brother's birthright, and that means that he purchased his older brother's portion, and not just his portion, but his position in the inheritance.

And in their culture, being first, being the first son, being the first male child meant that you got half everything.

Everybody else had to split up the other half.

And so there a lot came with that.

You had a favored status and you had a favored inheritance.

And the Bible says, it tells the story of Jacob purchasing Esau's birthright for a bowl of uh sometimes in the King James called porridge.

We would say stew.

You would say, I don't know.

What would you say, caldo?

I don't know.

What would you say?

You know.

Uh maybe if you like beans, lentils.

You maybe it's you know, whatever you would you would say, but but it's basically just a basic meal.

Just a basic meal to serve one time.

He purchased that in a in a difficult moment from his brother.

And then afterwards, Genesis 27 uh reveals just how desperate that Jacob was for his father Isaac's blessing that goes along with it with that.

So there was the inheritance, there was the stuff, there was the possessions, but there was also a blessing to receive from his father.

And the story is uh quite intriguing, and and uh, and you can read it in Genesis chapter 27.

Genesis 27 · chapter mention

Isaac, Jacob's father, was quite old and I guess blind, or at least mostly blind at this point and couldn't uh uh couldn't see well enough to know uh who was around him.

And so he depended on his other faculties to know who was around.

He depended on what he could smell, what he could hear, and he depended on that knowledge because he couldn't really see.

And so, with the prompting and the encouragement, the help of Rebecca, Jacob's mother, Isaac's wife, with the help, Jacob disguised himself as his brother Esau.

He he uh they didn't do it by himself, his mother helped him, they killed a goat and they made a meal out of that goat in response to his father's request from Esau to go and you know kill game and bring it and fix it for me so I can I can have this time to bless you.

Uh so Rebekah and Jacob, they schemed while Esau was out hunting, and they they killed a goat, fixed the meal, took the skin of the goat and put it on Jacob's arms, I guess, and maybe his neck, and put that skin on him so he would be hairy like his brother, because he would smell like his brother.

I know you're imagining that thinking, ooh.

Yeah.

And so Isaac clearly in the story had some doubts, but after a bit of time he was convinced, and so in verse 27 of Genesis 27, it says, So he went.

This is Jacob went and kissed his father, and when Isaac caught the smell of his clothes, that was the final thing that convinced him.

And he blessed him and he said, Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of the field.

I realize that's not the smell you were looking for this morning when you came to church, but okay.

The smell of my son is like the smell of the field that the Lord has blessed.

May God give you of heaven's dew and of earth's richness, of abundance of grain and new wine.

May nations serve you and peoples bow down to you and be Lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mothers bow down to you.

May those who curse you be cursed, and those who bless you be blessed.

It's quite a quite a blessing that Isaac gives to Jacob, that he sort of steals from his brother by positioning himself in this place.

And you, if you, even if you don't, even if you don't know the story, you know what happens next.

Because Esau finds out because he's coming back thinking he's about to be blessed, and his father says, Who are you?

And uh the whole plot, the whole, the whole scheme is revealed.

And Esau is angry and very angry, and Jacob is fearful, and so the next plan is that Jacob needs to run for his life.

And so in Genesis chapter 28, we read even more that Isaac the father calls Jacob in, and he says, You gotta go.

Genesis 28 · chapter mention

You've got to go, you've got to leave, but don't take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.

Don't take uh don't take the a wife of those people there, but go to go to the place of your mother's family.

Go there, and there you can find a wife of her family connected to her.

And so go to her brother's house.

Her brother's name is Laban.

And so he flees to Laban's house.

But even after Isaac has blessed him, it's like he blesses him more.

And he says to him, as he's departing, and God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may be a multitude of people, and give you the blessing of Abraham and to you and to your seed that you may inherit the land wherein you are a stranger that God gave to Abraham.

So he sort of heaps more blessings upon Jacob.

So Jacob flees, he goes to Laban's house, he starts working for his uncle.

And uh to narrow the story down, because some of you are gonna be smelling enchiladas before they get here, to narrow the story down, let me just say his flocks increased, his wealth multiplied, his family grew.

He was there for 20 years, and all of this accumulation happened.

He had all of these possessions, he had family, he had servants, he had all the things that he received from the marriage, but also God had blessed him.

And read the story.

I don't have time to go through the story.

And now he's headed back home.

And now when he's headed back home, it's not one man running for his life, but it's a whole entourage of people uh traveling across the countryside to come back to where he is from.

And so he's on his way there.

And when Esau, his brother, finds out he's coming, Esau gathers his uh hired servants and his soldiers and others, and he he hires this army of 400 men to come up against Jacob.

Jacob's not coming ready to fight, Jacob's coming with all of his family and possessions.

And Esau is still harboring this anger, and he is he is coming towards him, and of course, Jacob is fearful about that, and uh he realizes that uh he needs more, he needs more than just some stuff.

And so the Bible tells a story about the rest of his blessing unfolding in Genesis chapter 32.

Genesis 32 · chapter mention

It says Jacob was left alone and he wrestled with the man until the breaking of day, and when he saw, when the man saw, which is a uh when it's man, it's referring to an angelic being of some kind from God, and he touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, and as he wrestled with him, and they had this wrestling match going on, and the the the the the man of God as it's described here uh says, Let me go.

It's breaking day.

Jacob says, No, I won't let you go.

I'm not gonna let you go until you bless me.

After all of that, he's still saying, I've got to have a blessing.

This man has been hungry for the blessing since he was a young boy.

And he's got all kinds of blessings.

All of his blessings are stored over there, all of his family is set up over there, they're all sheltered over there, being uh uh uh you know, ready for what's gonna come.

He's got this whole entourage of stuff and people that he has brought, animals, all the trappings of wealth in their society.

He's got it all, and now he's saying, Will you bless me?

I'm not gonna let go until you bless me.

And this being says, What is your name?

And Jacob said to him, My name is Jacob.

And this is the blessing he got.

Your name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel.

For as a prince, you have power with God and with men and have prevailed.

And that's what Israel means, the prince of God.

In that moment, he was blessed, but this wasn't a blessing of stuff.

This was a blessing much greater than the stuff.

It was greater than what he had received from his father years earlier.

The first blessing Jacob obtained through deception, through the scheme, but the second blessing didn't come that way.

The second blessing said, I gotta be blessed, I've got to have you touch my life, but I've got nothing to give.

It was a blessing of surrendering to God.

It was a blessing of saying, I've got to have more than the stuff in my life.

And when when God blessed him, he didn't just change his circumstances, but he changed his identity.

Changed his name.

He changed his standing with God.

That blessing is a lot better than your stuff.

That blessing is a lot greater than your stuff.

It's a lot greater than what you can accumulate.

And that's what's important for you to grasp today.

If you can get nothing else from what I'm saying today, uh just hear me when I tell you that the blessing that God gives you is much greater than your stuff.

It's much greater than your wealth, it's much greater than your possessions, it's much greater than everything you could hold.

I know people spend their entire lives searching for affirmation.

They search it through success, they seek for it through money, they they they seek after it through popularity or through relationships.

And we see that on display every every day in a modern America.

Because we see celebrities who are famous, who have money, who get lots of recognition, but it's like all they can do is seek for more attention.

Their lives are empty, their lives are a train wreck on display.

Because that's not enough to feel the emptiness.

That's not the real blessing.

That's not the blessing that's gonna really change your life, it's gonna transform who you are.

That's not really the blessing that you and I should be searching for.

The blessing that you and I are searching for comes from God.

What we truly need is not the approval of people.

We need God's grace and mercy to touch our lives.

We need God to minister to us.

We need to be blessed, but not with our stuff.

We need to be blessed by God, by the hand of God in our lives.

And so Jesus says, Come unto me.

All you that are burdened and heavy laden, come unto me.

He doesn't say, fix all that first.

He doesn't say, when you get all that put together, when you get all the pieces of the puzzle of your life put together properly, then come.

He doesn't say, uh, prove to me that you love me.

He doesn't even say give a big offering.

That doesn't sound very modern Christian in America, it seems like.

But anyway, he doesn't say give a big offering.

He doesn't say you've got to do something uh fantastic, you need to feed the poor, you need to give your money away, you need to do he doesn't say any of those things that you might think he would say because his relationship with you is based on love.

He just says, Come.

Come, come and surrender.

Come to the place where I can touch your life.

The blessing we seek is found in God.

What we're seeking is God.

And he doesn't make us earn it first.

I know that some of us may have an experience, an experience of acknowledgement, of blessing, of love from someone else or from other people that says, I love you, but whatever the rest of the sentence is.

I love you, but have you ever experienced that kind of conversation with anybody?

Come on now.

I saw a few hands and a few little nice, you know, the hand went up like this.

It's like, I don't really want to acknowledge that, but it's true, right?

There's so much of that.

It's completely different when somebody says, I love you, and it's not qualified.

That's the kind of love that God has for us.

God's message is different.

He said, I leave the 99 safe and secure in the Korrala, and I go look for the woman that's lost.

I seek the one that is lost.

It's not inside the corral.

They got snatch track somewhere.

They wandered off somewhere.

They made a poor judgment somewhere.

They made a bad joy somewhere, and they're not there, but I'm gonna go seek them.

God loves the lost sheep exactly the same as he loves the sheep in the corral.

He loves that lost sheep just as much as he loves the ones in the corral.

That's the reason why he says, I'm gonna rejoice over the one sheep that is saved.

It's not that he doesn't rejoice over the 99 that are there, but in the moment the woman's sheep has been rescued.

And so I'm gonna rejoice in that.

Now I I've got to be clear with you.

Loving you is not the same as excusing your behavior.

It's not the same.

Doesn't mean everything you did was right.

It doesn't even mean you should continue doing those things at all.

It doesn't validate all those things, but God's love goes beyond that.

He loves you.

He loves you.

He loves you.

His love is not based on performance, but his love is based on the grace that he has for each one of us.

The blessing that you and I are seeking is not a blessing you can earn with human achievement.

It's the blessing of acceptance, of forgiveness, of belonging with God.

God doesn't just bless you with what you have or bless you with what you're doing.

He blesses you for who you are, for who he wants you to become, for who he's called you to be.

And I want to tell you today on this day of friends, day where we celebrate friends, and we've invited friends to come.

And, you know, uh some of them uh come and we appreciate you being here, and we're so glad you're here.

And and this is not the only friend we have necessarily, but you know, you we we invite people to come and join together with us.

But on this day of friendship, I just want you to know that God blesses beyond stuff.

The stuff is not really what you need.

I know there's stuff everywhere.

I mean, the politicians are constantly trying to give you stuff so you'll vote for them.

I don't mean that seemed like that's what they're gonna give you this, they're gonna give you that, they're gonna give you this, they're gonna give you that, and never returns out like that.

But anyway, but God's love for us.

And just as Jacob received a new identity, God wants to give you a new identity.

In fact, he wants to give everyone a new identity that comes to him.

That's his offer to you.

Not stuff, not power, not fame.

And today, my wish and my prayer for you is for you to be blessed.

My wish, my prayer, what I want for you today is to be blessed.

And I've tried to describe to you what that blessing is.

That blessing of the favor and the acceptance of God.

That blessing when your identity is changed into what God has called you to be.

How God has changed you.

Jacob was still the same man.

He was still the same man.

And God gave us this kind of interesting twist to this story.

He was still exactly the same man, but he looked a little different.

In fact, when he left this, he had a limp from the angel touching his thigh and his hip being out of joint.

He looked a little different.

He didn't actually look better.

He didn't look prettier, thank God.

He actually had a limp from his encounter.

But the blessing that God gave him was so great that it overrode all of that.

The blessing that God gave him was beyond the stuff that he had, the family had, the possession he had.

It was even his own physical fitness.

It was greater than all of that.

It was because God had received him and said, You are a prince with me.

And so in Numbers chapter 6, we read to you early, the Lord bless you and keep you.

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

May the Lord make his face to shine upon you, may he lift his countenance upon you.

These are the words that were spoken of God's favor, of God's presence, of God's acceptance, and that is the blessing that every heart is searching for from God.

And God promised the priests that if they would pronounce this blessing, that he would respond, and he would touch their lives, and he would bless the people.

And so my prayer for you today is that you will be blessed.

That you will be blessed and you'll receive what God can do in your life.

Would you stand with me?

Maybe you're here today and you came together today a little beat up, a little bruised and battered.

You came with an emptiness in your heart and mind, or it doesn't mean that everything in your life was just a terrible train wreck, but but you still have this emptiness.

In fact, you could have come with your hands full of all kinds of blessings that you have received in your life, but there's still an emptiness until you receive what God wants to give you: His grace and favor in your life.

And we want you today to know the favor of God, to experience the acceptance of God, to receive that new identity in Jesus, to become the temple of the Holy Spirit.

And so today I want you to be a good thing.