The Blessing of the Father

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♪ ♪ And I know you will do it again For your promise is just and amen You will do great things God, you do great things Oh, hero of man, you conquer the grave You free every captive and break every chain Oh, God, you have done great things We dance in your freedom, awake and alive Oh, Jesus, our Savior, your name is in high Oh, God, you have done great things So we sing, Hallelujah! Hallelujah, God, above it all Hallelujah, God, unshakable Hallelujah, you have done great things Hallelujah, God, above it all Hallelujah, God, unshakable Hallelujah, you have done great things You've done great things Oh, hero of man, you conquer the grave You free every captive and break every chain Oh, God, you have done great things We dance in your freedom, awake and alive Oh, Jesus, our Savior, your name is in high Oh, God, you have done great things Oh, God, you do great things Oh, God, you have done great things Let's give the Lord praise for the great things that he has done, continues to do. We're going to keep singing, keep worshipping. You tell somebody good morning, a happy Father's Day, something like that. Come back and sing with us in just a bit. Well, I searched the world, but it couldn't fill me There's magic to grace and treasures of faith I'm never enough You came along and put me back together And every desire is now satisfied Here in your love You sing in church. Oh, there's nothing better than you There's nothing better than you

Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you No, I'm not afraid to show you my weakness And my failures and flaws, Lord, you've seen them all And you still call me friend And I could lose this morning Because the God of the mountain is the God of the valley And there's not a place your mercy and grace won't find me again Oh, there's nothing better than you There's nothing better than you Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you ♪ Oh, there's nothing is better than you ♪ ♪ There's nothing better than you, Lord ♪ ♪ There's nothing, nothing is better than you ♪ ♪ Than you, Lord ♪ ♪ You turn mourning to dancing ♪ ♪ You give beauty for ashes ♪ ♪ You turn shame into glory ♪ ♪ You're the only one who can ♪ ♪ You turn mourning to dancing ♪ ♪ You give beauty for ashes ♪ ♪ You turn shame into glory ♪ ♪ You're the only one who can ♪ ♪ You turn graves into gardens ♪ ♪ You turn bones into armies ♪ ♪ You turn seas into highways ♪ ♪ You're the only one who can ♪ ♪ You're the only one who can ♪ ♪ You're the only one who can ♪ ♪ Oh, there's nothing better than you ♪ ♪ There's nothing better than you, Lord ♪

♪ There's nothing, nothing is better than you ♪ ♪ Oh, there's nothing better than you ♪ ♪ There's nothing better than you, Lord ♪ ♪ There's nothing, nothing is better than you ♪ ♪ You turn graves into gardens ♪ ♪ You turn bones into armies ♪ ♪ You turn seas into highways ♪ ♪ You're the only one who can ♪ ♪ You turn graves into gardens ♪ ♪ You turn bones into armies ♪ ♪ You turn seas into highways ♪ ♪ You're the only one who can ♪ ♪ You're the only one who can ♪ ♪ You're the only one who can ♪ ♪ You're the only one who can ♪ ♪ You can ♪ ♪ I believe He gave sight to the blind ♪ ♪ I believe that the dead came alive ♪ ♪ And you're still the same ♪ ♪ I believe every word that you say ♪ ♪ I believe there are scars in your hands ♪ ♪ That your goodness is good without end ♪ ♪ And you'll never change ♪ ♪ I will settle your heartaches ♪ ♪ Sing of your grace to God and creation ♪ ♪ And those who die in vain, the Lord is faithful ♪ ♪ Yesterday, now, and always, always ♪ ♪ Your mercy is mighty, age after age ♪ ♪ And all generations bow down in praise ♪ ♪ The Lord is faithful, yesterday, now, and always, always ♪

♪ I believe you will come in the clouds ♪ ♪ I believe you are here even now ♪ ♪ In your presence I know there is power, power and strength ♪ ♪ I will tell of your wonders, sing of your grace to God and creation ♪ He knows me by name, the Lord is faithful Yesterday, now and always, always Your mercy is mighty, age after age And all generations will bow down and praise The Lord is faithful, yesterday, now and always, always You are, you are, you are, you are You always will be God You are, you are, you are, yes you are You always will be God Yes, you always will be God I will tell of your wonders, sing of your grace The God of creation, He knows me by name The Lord is faithful, yesterday, now and always, always Your mercy is mighty, age after age And all generations will bow down and praise The Lord is faithful, yesterday, now and always, always You are, you are, you are, you are You always will be God You are, you are, you are, yes you are You always will be God You always will be God Your mercy is mighty, age after age And all generations will bow down and praise The Lord is faithful, yesterday, now and always Let's declare His name together I know a name that can silence gloomy days

I know a name that can empty out the grave I know a name It's the only name that saves And it's worthy of all praise I call you Jesus I call you, I call you Heaven Risen and reigning in power Something comes out of the grave Every time I call you Jesus I call you, I call you Savior Worthy of glory forever Something comes out of the grave Every time I call your name I have a key With dominion over death He holds the keys In His holy hands, God hands He is the heel That has crushed the serpent's head I'm resurrected, great I am I call you Jesus I call you, I call you Heaven Risen and reigning in power Something comes out of the grave Every time I call you Jesus I call you, I call you Savior Worthy of glory forever Something comes out of the grave Every time I call your name Chains break, dry bones break

Every time I call your name The gates of hell shake Every time I call your name Chains break, dry bones break ♪ Every time I call your name ♪ ♪ The gates of hell shake ♪ ♪ Every time I call your name ♪ ♪ Every time I call your name ♪ Oh, sing it out, church, well done. ♪ Well, oh, death is now your sting ♪ ♪ And well, oh, break your victory ♪ ♪ Well, oh, death is now your sting ♪ ♪ And well, oh, break your victory ♪ ♪ Well, oh, death is now your sting ♪ ♪ And well, oh, break your victory ♪ ♪ And well, oh, break your victory ♪ ♪ Death is coming alive, death is coming alive ♪ ♪ Death is coming alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Death is coming alive, death is coming alive ♪ ♪ Death is coming alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Death is coming alive, death is coming alive ♪ ♪ Death is coming alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Death is coming alive, death is coming alive ♪ ♪ Death is coming alive in the name, I call you Jesus ♪ ♪ I call you, I call you, Healer, risen and made in power ♪ ♪ Something comes out of the grave, every time I call you Jesus ♪ ♪ I call you, I call you, Savior, worthy of glory forever ♪ ♪ Something comes out of the grave, every time I call you Jesus ♪ ♪ Chains break, tribones break, every time I call you Savior, Savior, Savior, Savior ♪ ♪ Every time I call you, death is coming alive, death is coming alive ♪

♪ Death is coming alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Death is coming alive, death is coming alive, death is coming alive in the name of Jesus ♪ Oh, somebody clap for our praise this morning. We'll sing that chorus one last time. I call you Jesus, no other greater. One. I call you Jesus, I call you, I call you, Healer, risen and reigning in power Something comes out of the grave, every time I call you Jesus I call you, I call you, Savior, worthy of glory forever Something comes out of the grave, every time I call your name Lord, it's a privilege. Go ahead, give the Lord praise. Amen. Father in heaven, it is such a privilege to call on the name of Jesus. And your word says whoever will call upon the name of Jesus, that person will be saved when we call with repentance, when we call in faith. Lord, we thank you for a great time to sing your praises. We just thank you for just you being such a good God to us. Now, we pray that you would teach us as we study your word, that you would speak your word directly into our hearts. You know exactly where we are. You know what we need to hear. And Lord, I pray that you would speak it in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, when it comes to the Lord, many of us have a distorted picture of who the Lord is. There's a very, very famous quote from A.W. Tozer. It's in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy. It was written in 1952. 59, he says this, what comes into our minds when we think about God

is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion and man's spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason, the gravest question before the church is always God himself. And the most portentous or important fact about any man is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. So what do you perceive God to be like? And the reality is, and this fits in with Father's Day, so many of us, we get our understanding from God and we get the distortion so often about God from our earthly fathers. It is well been said, a child is going to have a hard time finding a father in God if that child does not find something of God in his or her father. And if you had a father who was mean and cruel and ready to bust you at the drop of a hat, impossible to please, angry all the time, you project that onto God. Because you read in the scripture about God getting angry and you say, oh yeah, it's just like my dad. And you see God in that way, he's distorted in that way. Does God get angry? Yes, he does.

He has righteous indignation, but that's not the full picture of God. So we distort that. Others have a father maybe that was absent and just not around. And so that's your view of God. You know, you think of God the father and it's like, well, not so much angry, just not there. And just an absentee father. And so God seems very, very distant to you. Hard to get close to a God like that. And so we have these distortions that come into our minds. Well, listen, whether you had a great dad, a mediocre dad or a bad dad, God the father is a God of love. He is a God who is good. He is a God that we can get close to and we can overcome. Even if we had a difficulty in our families, we can overcome that as we set our focus on God. And what the Bible has to say about the true God, not the distorted view of God, but the true view of God. Now in Numbers chapter six, very, very famous passage of scripture. It is the blessing that God told Moses to tell Aaron, who was the priest and his sons who were priests. This is what I want you to say to the people. They had in number six, they had already received the 10 commandments and they were getting ready to head out from Mount Sinai to go to Kadesh Barnea,

which God wanted them to take the promised land. They didn't take it when the Lord wanted them to do that because of their unbelief. And then they ended up wandering around for 40 years, but this is before that. And they have this, the 10 commandments, the law of God, and they're going forward. And the Lord wants to bless his people. Now, if you remember, Moses was trying to get out of the job that God had given him. Lord, I'm not able to do this. I'm not a good speaker. Send somebody else. And he said, well, is Aaron your brother? I know that he can speak. So I'm gonna link you up with Aaron and you are going to be like God to him. He'll be like your prophet. I'll speak to you. You'll speak to Aaron and Aaron will speak to the people. Now, Aaron and his sons became priests. They were priests of the Lord. And they were the ones that went into the temple. They were the ones that offered the sacrifices. Remember this about a priest. A priest represents the people to God and he represents God to the people. Very, very important for the priest to be walking with God because he represents God to the people.

And so this is what the Lord said to Moses. Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron and to his sons saying, thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace. So they shall invoke my name on the sons of Israel and I then will bless them. I want to share with you three wonderful discoveries about who our God is so that we would clear out the distortions and see him for who he really is. The Bible says taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed are those who take refuge in him. So we want to taste. We want to see that our God is good. So discovery number one, the Lord is a good God who loves to bless his children. That is God. He's the God who wants to bless us. And in the passage that we just read three times, he talks about blessing the sons, the children of Israel. The Lord bless you. He wants to bless them. Now, bless is the Hebrew word Barak, which is used 330 times in the scripture. Now, we we talk about blessing God. We bless the God of heaven. That means that we praise him and adore him. But that word also can mean to confer favor and good

and benefit on another person. It literally means to kneel down. So it's a picture of God. And when he blesses us, he's kneeling down. It's almost like a father would do with his little child. And he is kneeling down and putting his hand on that child's head to confer good upon that child. And that's what God does for us. See, God actively wants to do good for his children and to his children, because God is a good God. He likes to do good things for us. I was thinking about, you know, when my kids were little and they're in the house and Debbie and I have been empty nesters now for a long time. And so you get to kind of redo with grandchildren. Grandchildren are so great. There's a reason why grand is in there. They are super. And we love spending time with our grandkids because you love them and leave them. You know, I mean, you just you don't have to mess with a lot of the stuff that you had to mess with as mom and dad. But when my kids were little, you know, I loved as a dad, I love doing things for them. And hey, we're going to do something special. We're going to go out to dinner tonight or we're going to go to the movies tonight or we're going to take a vacation where we're going to save up and we're going to go to Disney World or or some, you know, Six Flags or whatever it might be.

We're going to do something really, really special. Or maybe we do something where we just do something that that's not super expensive, but it's fun. We are going to the pool and we're going to do this or we're going to do that. Well, they would get excited. Little kids get excited about that stuff. And it's fun as a mom, as a dad to do those things for your children. Well, God wants to bless his children. He enjoys blessing them and bestowing favor upon them. Now, the word Barak used 330 times. There's another Hebrew word for blessing that's used in Scripture. It's used about 40 times. And that word, well, 45 times, that word is Esher. And that word means happy. We run across that same idea in the New Testament. Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the peacemakers. All those beatitudes, the blessed are. There are nine of them in there in Matthew chapter five. That word in the Greek is Makarios, which means happy. Happy are the pure in heart. Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Happy are the peacemakers. And see, here's the thing. God wants to do good to his children. And God wants his children to be happy.

Now, you want that for your kids. I want that for my kids. Here's the difference. God knows that true happiness only comes from being rightly related to him. It only comes from walking with him. And so us today as parents, we say, well, you know what? Just so long as my kids are happy, you know, but we're not thinking in terms of their holiness. God is always thinking in terms of his children's holiness because holiness is what really makes you happy. And we need to see that those things go together. So, Psalm 119 says this, uses the word not Barak, but Esher. How blessed, happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord? How blessed, how happy are those who observe his testimonies, who seek him with all their heart? You go the way of the world, and let me tell you, as I've told you many times before, and we have to continually remind ourselves, because the things that the world has, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, they're not from the Father, but they're from the world, and that is, those are passing pleasures, and the devil will use that, and he'll bring that across your path, as the Bible talks about in James. Each one is tempted when he's carried away and enticed by his own lust,

and that's a fishing term, that's a lure that the devil uses, shows you something shiny, something that your flesh wants, and you're like, I need to go after that. But you have to remember where that leads. That always leads to the pigsty. That's the prodigal son. He left his father, where does he end up? Well, he has some thrills and chills along the way as he's blowing his father's wealth on wine, women, and so on, but then he ends up penniless, destitute, at the pigsty. That's where sin will always take you. It always goes there, and so we have a choice, and we can tell ourselves, listen, I can stay in the light with the Lord, and I can experience true happiness. God wants to bless his children. God is a good God who loves to bless his children. Second discovery, the Lord, all in caps, because it's Yahweh, it's the name of God, the special name of God, he's a good God who loves to protect his children. Not only bless his children, but to protect his children. Speak to Aaron and to his sons, the Lord says, saying, thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. That word keep is the Hebrew word shamir.

It means to guard, to protect, to watch over, and God actively watches over his children. He watches over us, like a shepherd actively watches the sheep, watches for their protection, makes sure that a bear's not coming, or a wolf's not coming, or some animal, and some predator to try and steal away the sheep, and God is watching over us. Now that doesn't mean that the Lord is going to protect us, so we never skin our knee, we never bloody our nose, we never have a boo-boo. God doesn't do that, because we need those things. As that old song says, through it all, through it all, I've learned to trust in Jesus, I've learned to trust in God. If I never had a problem, I wouldn't know that God could solve them. I wouldn't know what faith in God could do. Sometimes, as parents, if we're not careful, we can short circuit what God is trying to do in the life of our son or our daughter, because we're fighting all their battles, and we're trying to keep them bubble-wrapped, so to speak, and they're not gonna have any difficulty in life, and we just so immediately step in, you might not be helping them, you might be hurting them in the long run, and you gotta take the long look with your children. God takes the long look with you and with me. He allows us to go into the refiner's fire, but he watches the temperature gauge, he watches.

He lets us go through difficulty, because we learn to trust him through the difficulty, and as it says in Malachi chapter three, just as the smelter of silver and the smelter of gold, that refiner, he turns up the heat so that you can bubble off the impurities and skim off the impurities, take the dross from the silver, as the Bible says, and there comes out a vessel for the smith. God does that with you and me. So he keeps us, but that doesn't mean that he won't allow us to go through difficulties, that he won't allow us to go through tests. I think about in Mark chapter four, one of my favorite passages of scripture, when the disciples are there with Jesus in the boat, and he's asleep in the boat, and they're in a storm, and the Lord had said, we're going over to the other side, but they're thinking they're going to drown, and they're trying like anything to get to the other side, but the boat is filling up with water, and they wake up Jesus, don't you care that we are perishing? He wasn't gonna let them perish, but he was testing them, because when he calms the storm, then he says, why are you so afraid? How is it that you have no faith? Didn't I say, now this is implied, didn't I say we're going over to the other side? Why didn't you trust me? And so when you and I go through difficulties,

doesn't mean that God's not watching over us, he is, but God doesn't prepare the path for the child, he prepares the child for the path, and he prepares us for the difficulties that we're going to encounter. So he actively watches over us, Shemar, but then secondly, he faithfully keeps us. secure in His hand. So, when the Bible talks about the Lord bless you and keep you, He is going to protect your soul. He's going to keep you in His hand, protected in His hand. First Peter chapter 1, verse 5, talks about those who've been born again, and it says they are protected, they are kept by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. You know, we talk about that phrase, once saved, always saved. You'll have people that will get on social media and say, you know, this idea that once you're saved, you're always saved, that's a lie from the pit of hell. Well, no, it's not. That's a truth from the Bible, from the Word of God. How do we know once you're saved, you're always saved? If you're truly saved, you're saved forever because it's God who does the saving. We don't hold on to Him, He holds on to us. And Jesus said this in John chapter 10, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give to them eternal life and they shall never perish

and no one will snatch them out of my hand. I'm safe and secure. He says that I'm in His hand and He puts His hand over me and He says no one will snatch them out of my hand. And then He says, my Father who is greater than all has given them to me and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one. And here you are, as I've showed you before, here you are in the palm of the hand of Jesus and God the Father puts His hand over there and you're never going to fall out of there because you are kept by the power of God. The Lord bless you and keep you. Your soul is secure. That doesn't mean you're not going to go through difficulties and problems, but it means He's never going to let you go. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 24, the one who endures to the end, he shall be saved. Not that the one who endures to the end is holding on like Noah holding on to the side of the ark for 40 days and 40 nights and it's not that. The one who endures to the end shall be saved because the one who endures to the end is saved. How do you know that person's saved? Because they endured to the end. Because the Lord would not let them go. So the Lord, Yahweh, a good God who loves to bless His children, a good God who loves to protect His children. And thirdly, a good God who loves to shine on His children.

To shine upon His children. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace. Face and countenance are the same Hebrew word, panim. And so when the Lord switches from saying that the Lord make His face shine on you to the Lord lift up His countenance on you, He's saying that the Lord make His face shine on you. The Lord lift up His face on you. You say, what's the difference between those two things? Well, it basically means this. God looks at you with favor. You're His. You belong to Him. I look at my children just like you look at your children and you look at them with favor. Now they can do things that tick you off. They can do things that disappoint you and grieve your heart. But you look at them and you have favor toward them. You care about them. I do that with my daughters. I do that with my granddaughters and with my grandsons. There's just something about you see their picture and all of a sudden your heart is drawn to them. God has that kind of attitude toward us, toward those of us who belong to Him. And so His face is toward us. He's shining on us. It was said that if the King, if His face shone on you in Old Testament times, that means that you had favor with the King.

I mean, somehow you had won His heart over and He was for you, not against you. And that's what God is saying. Hey, Aaron, well, it's Moses. You tell Aaron. Aaron, you tell the people. You represent me to the people. And you tell the people that my face is toward them and I'm looking upon them. And not only do I have favor for them, but I'm watching them. My eyes are on them because they matter to me. And God looks at us with favor and God opens the door to heaven to us. You know, the Bible says, I love the Lord. Psalm 116, I love the Lord. The Lord, because he hears my voice and my supplications, because he has inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call upon him as long as I live. God is saying, I'm looking to you. My ear is open to you. I want to hear from you. Sadly, for many of us, he doesn't hear anything because we're not calling upon his name, but you have the green light. As a child of God, I have the green light. We don't have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted on all things as we are yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence, with boldness before the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help

in time of need. God's face is not turned away from his children. God's face is turned toward his children. Years ago, I heard this story about a father had a little girl, about six years old, and his wife died. The girl lost her mother and the father lost his wife. And after they came home from the funeral, he put her to bed and she wasn't in bed for too long before she came back down and she said, Daddy, it's just, can I sleep with you tonight? I'm just so afraid. And he said, yes, that's fine. So they turned off the lights, they're there in bed. And the little girl said to her dad, Daddy, it's dark. He said, yes, darling, it's dark. She said, Daddy, I can't see you. He said, I'm here. She said, Daddy, is your face toward me? He said, yes, darling, my face is toward you. She said, Daddy, can you love me even through the dark? He said, yes, I can love you even through the dark and I do love you even through the dark. You can go to sleep, sweetie. And his daughter drifted off to sleep, but that father didn't go to sleep. He was so hurting, so troubled. And after his daughter fell asleep, he slipped out of bed and got on his knees and said, Father, it is so dark. And he felt the Lord say to his heart, I know, it's so dark. And he said, Lord, is your face toward me?

He said, yes, my son, my face is toward you. He said, Father, can you love me even through the darkness? And he said, my son, I can love you and I do love you even through the darkness. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. So God looks at us with favor. He bestows on us his amazing grace. The Lord be gracious to us. God wants us to experience his grace. How do we have any kind of a relationship with the Lord? It's only by grace. For by grace, you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, lest any man should boast. And he bestows on us his amazing grace. The Bible says about Jesus, for you know the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, although he was rich yet for your sake, he became poor so that you through his poverty might be made rich. We have grace to help us. Hebrews 4, 16, in our time of need, God sits on a throne of grace. You have trouble in your life. You don't know what to do. God says, come to me.

I have grace to help you in your time of need. Amen. And that's available to us. God wants to give us that. But not only does he bestow his amazing grace, he bestows on us his peace that passes understanding as the Bible talks about in Philippians chapter four. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. He says, the Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace, give you shalom. So do you notice there's grace and then there's peace. You know what you find 17 times in the New Testament as the epistles are written and the salutation is given, you find from Paul 13 times, two times from Peter and first Peter and second Peter, two times from John and second John and in the book of the revelation, grace and peace, grace and peace. As Peter says, grace and peace be multiplied to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. You know what you'll never find in scripture? You'll never find. the salutation, peace and grace from God our Father. Say grace and peace, peace and grace, same thing. No, it's not the same thing. Grace always comes first, then there's peace.

Because you'll never know the peace of God until you first receive the grace of God. So it's always grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God. And God wants to give us that grace so that he can give us the peace. And as been pointed out, you may have noticed that in this Aaronic blessing, the Lord Yahweh bless you and keep you. The Lord Yahweh make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord Yahweh lift up his countenance on you and give you peace. Three times, Lord is stated. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. It's a faint reference to the Trinity, I believe. Second Corinthians chapter 13 verse 14 says this, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. God the Father wants to bless. Jesus is the God of grace for us. The second person of the Trinity where you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit comes to live inside to give us the peace that passes understanding and to guide us into all truth. And then lastly, he bestows on us his great name. I love this. So they shall invoke my name on the sons of Israel and I then will bless them.

Or as it says in the easy to read version, so shall they put my name upon the people of Israel and I will bless them. Hey, God wants to put his name on those for whom he died. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. He wants you to be his. He wants to put his name on you. And everybody who's a child of God, who's trusted Jesus as Savior and Lord has the name of God stamped upon them, so to speak. They're sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise as it says in Ephesians chapter one. And so you have God's name on you. I'm reminded what one preacher said when he would take his kids, his children to school and before he would let them off, he would pray for them and he would say to his children, now you remember who you are and whose you are. You belong to God. His name is upon you. You are his. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Paul says to the Corinthians, whom you have from God, you've been bought with a price. You're not your own anymore. You belong to him. His name is upon you. So you remember who you are and whose you are and who you represent.

Just as Aaron represented God to the people, you and I as Christians, we represent God to the people that we come in contact with. We might be the only Jesus they ever see. And the Lord wants us to represent him well, to speak the truth in love, to care for people and to love your neighbor as yourself. And his name is upon us. I love what it says in Revelation chapter 22, the last chapter of the Bible. His bondservants will serve him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads. Everybody in heaven belongs to the Lord. The Lord knows those who are his. So I wanna ask you, is his name on you? This blessing is for the children of God. Is that you? Are you a child of God? How do you become a child of God? Not by being born into this world, but by being born again, by receiving Christ as savior and Lord. And you have to cry out to him in order for that to happen. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And there is salvation in no one else. Where there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. Have you cried out to him?

He wants you to cry out to him. And the moment you cry out to him, he comes to you and embraces you and bestows his name upon you. That can happen to you today if it's never happened to you before. And listen, if you're living like a second-class Christian because you feel like God is so disgusted with you because you're struggling. in life and struggling with sin. I want you to know that God is a God who wants to bless you. God is a God who wants to embrace you. Maybe you're at the pigsty like the prodigal son. You can leave there and you can come to him and find his arms open wide to embrace you and love on you and tell you, as my own, you make me very happy. Would you do it? Father in heaven, thank you for your love for us. Thank you that you demonstrated your own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And thank you, Lord, that whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And Lord, I pray for folks under the sound of my voice if they've never cried out to you. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Lord, that they would do that today and feel your love, your embrace. ♪ Look at the flowers, all of the leaves ♪

♪ You don't have to wonder, you know what you're doing ♪ ♪ You don't have to wonder, you know what you're doing ♪ ♪ So why would I worry at all, you're faithful to survive ♪ ♪ Everything I need, everything I need, my Father has it ♪ ♪ My Father has it, every single time, the Lord will provide ♪ ♪ The Lord will provide, my Father has it, my Father has it ♪ Now we come to the most important question of all. Have you turned from sin and selfishness and given your heart and life to Jesus? Listen, if not, today is the day for you. Just pray this simple prayer from your heart. Lord Jesus, I need you. I know that I'm a sinner and I can't save myself, but I believe, Jesus, that you are God in the flesh. I believe you died on the cross for my sins and rose again from the dead. And right now, I ask you to forgive me and save me, come into my life, change me, make me the person you want me to be. I surrender my life to you and I promise to follow you all the days I have left. Now, if you pray that kind of prayer and mean it, the Lord will come in and your life will never be the same. Listen, I would love to hear from you, so please contact me and share with me what's going on so we can pray for you. And if you are ever in the Texarkana area, we would love for you to visit us live and in person at FBC Texarkana. Listen, you really are important to God

and you're important to us, and we're here for you.