Sunday Sermon - 18 October
Stuart Ibbotson speaks on Numbers 6: 22 - 27 and 1 Peter 3: 8 - 16.
We apologise that we are unable to provide a video of this talk. However, you can read the text below:
Over the past few weeks we have been considering some of the forms that blessings take and we continue that theme today by thinking about Blessing the person in front of us. In our OT reading we have the original blessing that the Lord told Moses to tell Aaron and his sons to use when blessing the Israelites. Even to this day this blessing is used and when this blessing is given, the priest will raise their hands and form the letter “shin”, which is the first letter of the last word of the blessing – shalom (peace.) Apparently when Leonard Nimoy was a boy, he opened his eyes one time to see this blessing and what sign the priest made with his hands. He remembered this later and used it as the greeting for his character on Star Trek, Spock. The greeting “Live long and prosper” is a summary of this blessing, one for you Trekkies out there! Just as this greeting was used to bless others, God wants to bless us and for us to bless others. He wants us to bless the person in front of us, whoever that is and wherever we are. It is not up to us to judge whether or not a person is worthy of God’s blessing, God wants to bless everyone.
There are six words of blessing that we can share with others from the reading from Numbers.
1. The Lord bless you.
The idea is that God will give us something as He knows what is best for us and what we really need. He does it because He loves us. For the Israelites it was crops, herds, flocks, good seasons and offspring amongst other things.
2. May the Lord keep you.
This means to ask for protection for those we are blessing as part of the blessing. This meant protecting the Israelites from bad harvests, enemies, barren flocks and herds.
3. the Lord make his face shine upon you.
God doesn’t want to just bless and guard us, He also wants to shine on us. But what does it mean for God to shine on us? God wants to reveal more about us. When God makes His face shine, it reveals everything about us, good and bad, there is nothing that He does not know about us. It also reveals our need for a Saviour. God wants to bless us, protect us, enlighten us, because He loves us.
4. May the Lord be gracious to you.
God’s grace is a form of God’s love.
God shares His grace with us. He wants us to share that same grace.
5. The Lord turn His face towards you.
This was about the Lord watching over His people and smiling upon them.
God wants to smile on us. He wants to bless us. He wants to guard us, and He wants to smile on us. Just as a parent smiles on their children because it brings them pleasure, God wants to smile on each of us. He wants to have a close relationship with us that is based on joy, not on fear.
6. and finally May God give you peace.
Some see in these blessings a reference to the Trinity for in verse 24, the reference could be to God the Father, in verse 25, to God the Son, and in verse 26, to God the Holy Spirit.
In verse 24, we would see God the Father as the Giver.
In verse 25, we would see God the Son as the Revealer.
In verse 26, we would see God the Holy Spirit as the Soother.
These blessings would have been important to the followers of Jesus.
In the reading from 1 Peter today he had wrapped up the preceding verses about the behaviour of citizens, slaves, wives and husbands by listing five qualities. He wrote that all Christians should be harmonious, sympathetic, loving, compassionate, and humble in their relationships with each other. What did he mean?
Be like-minded/harmonious: A level of agreement and cohesion is necessary if we are to work and worship together, and enjoy real fellowship as a community.
Be sympathetic: means to understand and identify with the feelings of others, including their pain and joy. Selfishness is a barrier to genuine sympathy.
Love one another: Love here is brotherly love, philadelphus, which is where the American city gets its name from.
Be compassionate: Compassion was the motive for many of Jesus’ healing miracles. Jesus was compassionate and, as his followers, we are called to compassion also. Real compassion should move more than our emotions, it should move us to actions.
Be humble: Humility was regarded as a sign of weakness and shame in the Greco-Roman world. Yet genuine humility is an important quality of a child of God. We are to recognise our utter dependence on God; and not rely on our own strengths, merits and honour. And we are to regard other people as more important than ourselves.
Turning to our actual reading from 1 peter this morning in 1 PETER 3:9-12 he writes about Insults and Blessings
It is not too difficult to display the five qualities he mentioned earlier when in the company of equally loving, compassionate and humble Christian brothers and sisters. The Christians in Asia Minor, however, were often in the company of antagonistic pagans and were being insulted by their unbelieving neighbours, masters and spouses. Peter’s advice is that they should not respond to evil with evil, or to insults with insults.
In honour-and-shame societies, a person could increase his honour by insulting and putting down another person. The person who had been insulted often responded with another insult to defend his honour and reputation- I can think of one politician at the moment who uses this technique to denigrate his opponent. Peter did not want his readers to get caught in this unedifying cycle. Peter had previously reminded his readers that Jesus had not retaliated to insults but remained silent (1 Peter 2:23). Here Peter writes that Christians should not respond to insults with insults, but should respond with a blessing (1 Peter 3:9 ). The Greek word used here, eulogia, is the word we get “eulogy” from. It literally means a “good word”, but it also means “blessing” in a broader sense.
We need to be very careful with our words. We need to be able to control what we say and take care that we do not speak malicious, deceitful or hurtful words. Rather we should be saying encouraging and beneficial things. We should be blessing our opponents as well as blessing our brothers and sisters.
Peter gives the reason why Christians can respond to unkind, hurtful and slanderous words with saying good things: Because we have been called to inherit a blessing. We can overlook present hardships and dishonour because of our future glorious blessing. Peter backs up his point by quoting Psalm 34:12-16.
In 1 Peter 3:13 Peter asks the rhetorical question, “Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?” In a just society, if we are well behaved, we will not get into trouble. However, Peter knows that good behaviour doesn’t always protect Christians from persecution. Echoing one of Jesus’ statements on the Sermon on the Mount, Peter says that Christians are blessed if they suffer because of righteousness
The Asian Christians were being threatened, and they were afraid. Peter urges them, however, not to be afraid or troubled. Instead of fearing their opponents, the Christians should be revering Jesus Christ as their Lord. The Christians needed to show outward respect and honour for their pagan neighbours and adversaries, but in their heart, Jesus was to be Lord.
He wanted their faith and hope to be evident and he wanted the Christians to be ready to give an explanation of their hope to anyone who asked. Peter asks his readers to respond to questions with gentleness and respect.
It is possible that Peter was suggesting that the Asian Christians should be ready to give a defence for their faith when interrogated by officials in a legal court. The context, however, seems to indicate that Peter was thinking about ordinary spontaneous conversations, rather than official interrogations.
We also should be ready and willing to share our faith when people ask us about it, and not be shy or ashamed. Like the exiles in Asia Minor, God is with us too. And his Holy Spirit will help us to give an answer. In this way is one way we can bless the person in front of us, by sharing the good news of the Gospels Jesus promises help from the Holy Spirit when we are testifying about faith. I expect that this help applies whether we are speaking in a court of law or simply sharing with our neighbour. May we be ready to bless whoever we find ourselves in front of over the coming and trying days, weeks and months. Not just those that we find it easy to love but anyone who we encounter as this is what Jesus has called on us each to do. I began by looking at the place of the Hebrew word Shalom in the original blessing that God told Moses to instruct Aaron and his sons to finish the blessing of the Israelites He told them to use. Jesus used the word a lot as well, and the word has many meanings and can refer amongst other things to:
Blessing someone’s bodily health, for protection and strength- which with covid 19 is more relevant now than at most times.
Blessing someone’s labour- their work, reward and security- which for many is so uncertain at this time.
Blessing someone’s emotions, hoping that they know joy and peace, even as they may feel physically separated from family and friends at this moment.
Blessing someone’s social live, that they may know love, in all of its many forms.
Blessing someone’s spiritual life- that they may know that they are saved through their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and feel His grace
Whether we are at home, in our neighbourhood, out shopping, on public transport at work, school, college or elsewhere we need to think about blessing whoever the Lord places in Front of us.
May the Holy Spirit give us the strength and guidance that we need to fulfil this calling. Amen