The Blessing
5 min read
12 But God said to Balaam, “Do not go with them. You must not put a curse on those people, because they are blessed.”
Numbers 22:12
Whatever God blesses, no person can curse. Whatever God curses, no person can bless.
The elders of Moab and Midian went to considerable lengths and allocated significant resources to send a delegation to Balaam so that he might curse the people of God. But the people of God, by their very nature, cannot be cursed. They are the people of God.
The covenant people of God, despite how much they had rebelled against God, were under the blessing that God had given to Aaron to bless the Israelites with:
24 “ ‘ “The LORD bless you
and keep you;
25 the LORD make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.” ’
27 “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”
— Numbers 6:24-27
And that blessing was sort of like the “wrapper” that was around God’s covenant established with Israel at Mount Sinai. That covenant blessing was also a reminder of the covenant promise that God gave to Abram:
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
— Genesis 12:2-3
And the Apostle Paul restated those covenant promises to the Romans, except that now, those covenant promises are through faith in Christ:
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. 31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
— Romans 8:28-31
Outside of God’s covenant promise—which is His great plan of salvation for the world in Christ Jesus—there is no promise of blessing.
What a wonderful assurance we have of God’s blessing when we are found in Christ.
Father, I pray that out of Your glorious riches, that You may fill us with power through Your Spirit in our inner being. And that we, being rooted and established in love may have power, together with all Your holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know His love that surpasses knowledge—that we may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of Christ. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
