Commandment to bless

COMMANDMENT TO BLESS 

There is a story in the Book of Numbers in chapters 20 to 24 which tells of Israel coming to the plains of Moab just east of the Jordan River and opposite Jericho. It was towards the end of the forty years of wandering in the wilderness and just before the death of Moses. They would later cross the Jordan under the leadership of Joshua, but at this time under Moses the Israelites had already defeated two powerful kings in that area of the Jordan - Sihon the king of the Amorites and Og the giant king of Bashan. 

Balak the king of Moab was in great dread of the multitudes of the people of Israel as they marched relentlessly onwards, sending up huge dust clouds that could be seen from afar. Balak had heard of the devastating defeats of the other nations and had heard the reports of the supernatural help that Israel’s God had given to them, and Balak said to his elders, ‘This horde will now lick up all that is around us, as the ox licks up the grass of the field.’ and he sent some of his elders to procure a man called Balaam for him.
Balak had figured that it would take supernatural power to defeat Israel’s supernatural God so he hired Balaam, a non-Israelite who was a notable ‘seer’, with a gift of divination whom he would have calculated was the equivalent of Moses, the prophet leader of Israel. He arranged for Balaam to be given a handsome ‘fee of divination’ by the elders of Moab to curse Israel. He said to Balaam ‘I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed’. It is reported in many Jewish writings that 
Balaam had prophesied that Balak would become the king of Moab.

But God spoke to Balaam and told him not to go with the elders to curse Israel because he had given his blessing to Israel. So Balaam sent the elders back to Balak with the message that God had given him. Balak then sent a greater delegation of even more honourable princes with greater enticement and honour to be bestowed upon Balaam for him to curse Israel. God came again to Balaam and told him that if Balak’s men came to him he should go with them but to resist the offer of Balak and to only say what God put in his mouth to say.

God sent an angel to warn Balaam to not deviate from what God had instructed him. The Bible says that God had seen perversity in the heart of Balaam so he had to warn him again. The angel needed to get Balaam’s attention so he pressed Balaam’s donkey against the wall of a narrow pathway that they had to pass through on his way to make his proclamation over Israel, and the donkey became stuck, whereby Balaam flogged the donkey three times until the donkey had a most extraordinary conversation with Balaam and complained of such harsh treatment after all of his years of faithful donkey service. This strange going on opened the eyes of Balaam to see the angel of The Lord standing in the narrow pathway and it was too much for Balaam, so he said to the angel of the LORD, ‘I have sinned, for I did not know that you stood in the road against me. Now therefore, if it is evil in your sight, I will turn back.’ And the angel of the LORD said to Balaam, “Go with the men, but speak only the word that I tell you.” So Balaam went on with the princes of Balak. 
That conversation that Balaam had with the donkey would win the vote of being the strangest conversation in the Bible. It shows what lengths God will go to in order to get our attention to let us know that he has given commandment for the blessing of his people.

Then the LORD put a word in Balaam's mouth and said, ‘Return to Balak, and this is what you shall speak; 
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
Behold, I received a command to bless: he has blessed, and I cannot reverse it…
The LORD their God is with them, and the shout of a king is among them.

So Israel went on to become a nation greatly blessed of God and went across the Jordan into the Promised Land and took the territory that God had promised to them through Abraham. But in all the years that they lived under God’s Covenant and under his blessing they were never called to bless those other nations or become ‘evangelical’ by gathering nations to themselves, but rather to stay separate from them. 

This might seem strange considering that God told Abraham that he would bring God’s blessing to all the nations of the earth through his offspring. But the fact is they have brought the greatest blessings to all nations through the seed of Abraham – Jesus. 
It was not the call upon the nation of Israel to bless the nations of the world in their time under their Covenant. It was only through Jesus as the most perfect and complete blessing, that Israel could have bestowed blessing upon mankind, and when Jesus came he bestowed mankind with that blessing of his life to us all.

God’s commandment to bless now comes through Jesus to us. 
Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

No curse of evil will ever reverse that blessing of our inner spiritual life even in times of outward affliction and hardship. God has given commandment to bless us with all spiritual blessings through Jesus, and he will find ways to bless us that we could not even imagine, even within the disorder and disaster of this age in which we now live.
The devil is using his missiles of fear and resentment and anger and violence in today’s world, caught in the middle of a global pandemic, and all of these weapons of darkness add up to a commandment of cursing upon a humanity made in the image of God.
God is pouring out his love and peace and faith and hope into the hearts of his people, also in the midst of the same global affliction, and all of these are God’s arrows fired from his bow of love and they add up to being blessed in Christ with all spiritual blessings.

And not only have we received God’s command OF blessing but we have received God’s commandment TO bless 
God’s blessing to Israel came in the form of territory, the Promised Land of Canaan, but God’s blessing to us and through us is not the physical territory of land but the spiritual territory of the heart. He wins the territory of our hearts by his love and we win the territory of peoples’ hearts in the same way.
God has ordained for his imperfect people through Jesus to release the perfect blessing of Jesus and to bless all the nations of the earth. 

That is why the Bible says to us ‘Be perfect as God in Heaven is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48).
‘Being perfect as he is perfect’ is an act of faith that allows us as imperfect people to relate to a perfect God that we cannot see, where the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit can bless those we know and love, or strangers that God sends our way for him to bless. He has given commandment to bless and he will not reverse it.
Those things are waiting to happen to us all the time wherever we are, and they happen to us unexpectedly and uninvited. And we might not always feel prepared and ready like 
We might find things landing upon us when we would rather get on with what we want to be doing at any particular time, not realizing that Jesus is indeed still really perfect at that moment, ready to do his perfect will in our life and for our life and through our life.  He hasn’t forgotten and become distracted with other weightier matters. 
It becomes a matter of thinking about what is going on between us and God at that moment of time, and that he has not changed.

And we need to reassure ourselves that nothing we do will ever look perfect on the outside. It is not like being an Olympic diving champion and diving a perfect ten off a ten metre-high tower. It is like being an ordinary human being that is trying to stay afloat and swim the distance.

We can turn a simple act of care and good will in what seems like a very ordinary moment, into a moment of God’s perfect spiritual work of goodness and grace, like being kind to an ungrateful person or helping someone who is in need but who maybe really isn’t in need. That has not been a waste of time. It requires awareness and faith and hope. God is there waiting to love someone who doesn’t deserve it like we didn’t deserve it, and he is very patient and eager to endue us with power from on high to be used by him in this way. That is why he sent the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t just for church. 
Jesus didn’t just go to the churchgoers but to the outcasts and sinners who weren’t even allowed in the temple. He met them where they were and the power of The Holy Spirit was released.

Jesus comes to us in these moments disguised as our everyday life. That is why the Bible speaks about Jesus saying on the day of judgment ‘I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…And they replied  when did we see you thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, And the King will answer them, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
Those things we have done in partnership with Jesus through the Holy Spirit will accompany us into the age to come. That is what it means by storing up treasures in Heaven.

I don’t think this is easy and it takes practice to develop a keen awareness that God is with us, because there is so much that we have to process that presses in upon the narrow pathway of our everyday challenges of life that takes over our souls. 
So we can practice how to stop and reflect at that moment of challenge to consider what is really going on in the powerful realm of God’s perfection alongside our imperfection and that makes us rethink about what is going on between us and God – our ordinary life in partnership with his extraordinary life that desires to bless the world and draw them to himself through his people.

We get our minds off our weakness and onto him and his strength, as Paul tells us what God said to him when Paul was becoming weakened under attack from Satan ‘My grace is sufficient for you – My strength is made perfect in weakness’ (2Corinthians 12:8) - and that is what leads to the faith that assures us that God is at work mightily on our behalf.

We are living in days when God is shining a light to our path and bringing light into the darkness, and order into the midst of disorder. He is commanding his blessing in the midst of an outpouring of what could seem like cursing in the way many people are affronting and insulting one another in these contentious times. But no matter how much the enemy wants to spiritually defeat us through all this, God’s will to bless his people and for his people to be his blessing to others will be seen triumphing over those destructive and evil strategies of malevolence and ill will. 

We learn to wait ON God to receive the faith and the peace that he is at work, while we actively seek to bless, but we also learn to wait FOR God and his timing to reveal his supernatural activity, and as we move forward faithfully, waiting for God, with our eyes on the horizon of faith, God appears as a sunrise that rises above that horizon, and reveals what he is doing and what he has done that only he can do as he commands the blessing. Amen